Venezuela, Guatemala, Same Old Same Old---

 

     What are the people of Venezuela facing? History tells us the the US imperial machine stamps its blood stained boot heavily in that part of the world.

Havana Reuters:

      "Cuba said on Thursday the United States was moving special forces closer to Venezuela as part of a covert plan to intervene in the chaotic South American country using the pretext of a humanitarian" crisis.

      Scaremongering, fake news, or just the usual US behavior in that part of the world. We should have no illusions about the cause of Venezuela's problems nor should we doubt the motives of the US imperialist Empire. History tells us the story.

This from Freedom Socialist Party:

       “We came to work. I know I’m not getting asylum because they don’t give you asylum for hunger,” a young migrant from Honduras told a reporter. “But us on the caravan would rather die fighting than sitting in Honduras waiting to starve or be killed.”
      These stark words show the desperation of thousands of people, half of them women and girls, who have recently fled Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. What could force so many people to leave home and everything they know for a future that is uncertain at best? The history of U.S. intervention in Central America largely supplies the answer.
       Guatemala: coup, civil war, climate change. In 1954, the CIA engineered a coup against the government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz. A 36-year civil war ensued, during which the U.S. militarily aided one bloody, right-wing regime after another. Each has conducted a genocidal campaign against the indigenous peoples, who are the majority of the population.
       During the war, more than 200,000 people were killed and another 43,000 “disappeared.” More than 80 percent of the victims were indigenous Mayans. Prosecution of the main military and political figures responsible for mass murder is still rare 23 years after peace accords were signed ending the war.
        Half of Central America’s people live in poverty. Global warming, caused mainly by carbon emitted by richer countries, is leading to drought and crop failures and making the situation even more dire. With hunger common across the region, Guatemala has one of the world’s highest rates of chronic malnutrition.

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The Dollar, Built On Blood.

 

 The bringer of democracy!!

      How can you in a sane and rational manner justify the total destruction of two countries which have never invaded or attacked you? Iraq and Syria are now fields of ruin, swamps of blood, filling the air with the stench of violent death. So we the moral and righteous West, decided that Saddam and Assad were bad men, therefore justifying the deaths of countless thousands of innocent people, and the displacing of millions, creating an endless flow of miserable, traumatised refugees fleeing death and destruction and ending up either drowned in the Mediterranean, or in concentration camps across Europe.  

      The UK has played a brutal and savage pivotal part in this modern Dante's Inferno. This country, weighted down with austerity, has seen fit to spend billions of pounds on this blood soaked imperialist resource grab, we have to accept, that is all this is about. During our "difficult times" when we the people of this country were seeing our social services being decimated, wages slashed, and benefits cut, with the cry, "we can't afford these thing", our beloved lords and masters saw fit to spend more than £30 billion on destroying Iraq, with all the misery, death and destruction that that entailed.

      Not content with that, our blood soaked parasitic masters decide to go gung-ho into Syria. To date our cash strapped loving, caring, people's government, this year alone, (2017) has  unloaded 216 bombs and missiles on that unfortunate country of Syria. Each of these implements of death costing between £22,000 to £800,000, not counting the cost of getting them there and then deploying them. Of course all of them will be replaced, with the arms industry rubbing its sweaty hands in glee, and praying that the war continues or intensifies. 

      What we have done to the Syrian people is dwarfed by that malevolent cabal that is American imperialism. In 2016 alone, the US dropped 12,192 bombs in Syria and 12,095 in Iraq, according to the American think tank Council on Foreign Relations. 

       What do you honestly think has been the outcome of all this lavishly expensive, death and destruction, what has it done for the people of that region? The only gainers in this human tragedy, has been the large Western corporations, mainly the arms industry and the oil and gas industry, not forgetting the financial Mafia. We pay for it in austerity, the people of the region pay for it in misery, blood and death.
     Not satisfied with their blood fest, in the Middle East, that brain dead, moronic psychopath, who sits at the helm of the world's largest and most dangerous war machine, narcissistic Trump, is bellowing about a nuclear attack on North Korea. A country, that as far as I am aware, has never attack any other country on the planet. Though it is one of only three countries in the world where the central bank is not controlled by the dollar. In 2000 there were seven, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, North Korea and Iran. Now there are only three, Iran, North Korea and Cuba. Could that be a reason why they are classified as "evil" countries. Of course China is also a state owned Bank, but that is a bigger fish, but no doubt the "evil" propaganda will continue, keeping it as the demon, until such times as the dollar monster sees fit to take it out. The strength of the dollar is built on blood.

 Packed with the gifts of democracy.

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Psychiatric Hospitals For Those People With A Conscience.

           What would you call a country that locks people up in a psychiatric hospital for following their moral conscience, to avoid others from suffering, rather than following the law and causing suffering? Obvious some despot regime or banana republic, certainly not a Western developed country. Of course you would be wrong, once again that land of the free, the good ol' US of A, stands out as the greatest terrorist nation on the planet. Ana Belen Montes, a US citizen, was no anti-statist, took no bribes, sold no information, received no payment, did not belong to some underground organisation, except the American intelligence agencies, which perhaps is the largest underground organisation in the world. However she now languishes in solitary confinement in a psychiatric hospital isolated from friends and family, unable to receive gifts, mail or visitors, with the exception of her brother. Her heinous crime is that she tried to create better relations between America and Cuba, she attempted to avoid conflict between the two nations, and so protect the lives of Cubans and Americans. How dare she, when  the US establishment is out to destroy its neighbouring country, Cuba.

        Of course you will look long and hard to find any of this in our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, they never mention the terrorist and brutal acts of our home grown despot regimes, it is all glitter and gloss, all bubble gum and candy floss, amuse and titillate the masses, but never inform them, that is their sworn duty.

     According to a report published in 2015, for more than ten years, Ana Belen Montes has endured the following confinement conditions, in frank violation of her human rights:

• “A Federal Prison Bureau decree (due to her espionage conviction) restricting contact to only her closest relatives.
• A prohibition on inquiries about her health or the reasons for her detention in a center for the mentally ill, when she suffers no such condition.
• A prohibition on the receipt of packages.
• Letters sent to her are returned by registered post to the sender.
• She is not allowed associate with other inmates.
• She is not allowed make or receive phone calls.
• She is not allowed read newspapers, magazines or watch TV.
• She is not allowed visits from friends.
• Her family members have, because of her commitment to the cause of Cuba, rejected or refused to maintain contact with her, meaning that Ana has been totally isolated from the world for more than a decade.”

        This translation on arrezafe slips from "he" to "she" but other than that, it is ease to follow.

      "Hon, I got involved in the activity that has brought me to you because I obeyed my conscience rather than obey the law I consider that the policy of our government towards Cuba is cruel and unfair, profoundly unfriendly.; I considered myself morally obliged to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose on it our values and our political system. "
       " We have displayed intolerance and contempt for Cuba for four decades. We have never respected the right of Cuba to define their own destiny, their own ideals of equality and justice. I do not understand how we continue trying to dictate ... how Cuba should select their leaders, who should not be their leaders and what laws are most appropriate for that nation. Why do not we let them decide how they want to conduct their internal affairs, such as the United States has been doing for more than two centuries? " " My greatest wish would be to see the emergence of a friendly relationship between the US and Cuba. I hope my case, in any way, encourage our government to abandon its hostility towards Cuba and work together with Havana, imbued with a spirit of tolerance, mutual respect and understanding. " " Today we see more clearly than ever that intolerance and hatred -for individuals or governments - all that is spread pain and suffering. I hope that the United States develop a policy with Cuba based on love of neighbor, a policy that recognizes that Cuba, like any other nation, wants to be treated with dignity and not with contempt. "

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Being And Being Bought.

Latest episode from Circled A Radio, certainly worth a listen.

        On this show is Swedish journalist, writer and activist, Kajsa Ekis Ekman. She is the author of several works about the financial crisis, women's rights and Marxism including 'Being and Being Bought - Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self'. She writes for the major newspaper in Sweden called "Today's News" and is a columnist at the leftwing daily ETC and is a member of the editing collective of the anarchist magazine 'Brand' in English translates as 'Fire' (published since 1898). 

       She is public speaker and was one of the key note speakers at the 2014 'Festival of dangerous ideas' and has delivered a Ted talk on capitalism. She has founded the networks, Feminists Against Surrogacy and the climate action group, Klimax.

Listen Now;

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Cuba, Re-awakening.

      What is happening in Cuba, now that American imperialism has decided not to strangle the island and its people, but to swallow them. We all know that when America softens its stance to any country the price that country pays, is to allow the army of American corporations to stomp all over the country and its people. the question is, how will the people of Cuba respond?

      Anarchism in Cuba, is shaking the dust off itself, and starting a steady re-birth. More power to its elbow. The following is an extract from an article in The Fifth Estate, some Glaswegian comrades may remember Mario, who visited Glasgow recently, and while here, among other things, popped into the Spirit of Revolt exhibition, The Rent Strikes, 100 Years On.

“We Want to Revive Anarchism in Cuba”
       The Cuban movement erased by Castro is coming back & they need our solidarity.

  Isbel, Mario & Jimmy (photo: Gabriel Uchida)

      Changes in the Cuban state’s regulation of private enterprise and in the relationship between Cuba and the U.S. over the last decade are opening up new possibilities and dangers for Cuban society.
      However, the new conditions have also inspired the rebirth of the long-repressed anarchist movement on the island. The Alfredo Lopez Libertarian Workshop (Taller Libertario Alfredo Lopez, TLAL), named for an early 20th century Cuban anarcho-syndicalist, is one of the main groups accomplishing this task.
      In the 1980s, there was a loosening of the state’s control over cultural matters. Cubans became very active in the punk movement, and street graffiti began to appear using the circle-A, understood as a symbol of freedom.
       The collapse of the Soviet Union and the so-called socialist camp at the beginning of the 1990s inspired many to think about a thorough critique of actually existing authoritarian socialism—in Cuba, as elsewhere.
        One clandestine student group active in the 1990s and early 2000s devoted themselves to studying anarchist ideas and incorporating them into their protests and challenges to the official culture. Anarchism was attractive because of its criticism of authoritarian and bureaucratic rule and its simultaneous concern for human freedom, political confrontation, self-organization, and social justice.

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The World's Bully.

      The Boston Bombing focuses the mind on what kind of society is America. There is justified horror at this event, but there seems to be a total unawareness of the fact that in countries across the world, this is a regular occurrence and in lots of cases, a direct result of American action.  In the "Land of the Free" it seems to be one killing after another, and it is not a new phenomenon, it goes back a long way. Individuals indulging in mass shootings are more or less a fairly regular occurrence. America, as a state, is undoubtedly the most violent nation on the planet, it is responsible for millions of deaths across the globe. It devastated the whole of South America for generations, you could say that Cuba probably got off lightly as it was not bombed into oblivion.  A state that perpetrates such  continuous violence, on such a wide scale and manages to sell this to its population as the best response, must expect to see that same attitude permeate through the whole of society. This is not denying that there are millions of Americans vehemently opposed the this war-tuned state, but sadly there are millions more who worship that state and see what it does, as always, the only and best response to problems. So why shouldn't they sort out their problems in a similar manner?

This from Straphanger's guide to the Galaxy: 

      "------This isn't to justify any of this violence. But in a nation that routinely uses violence to settle disputes, is it any wonder that citizens and non-citizens choose that same route? When our President doesn't like what's going on in North Korea he doesn't reach out to discuss the issue, he flies nuclear capable bombers over the peninsula.----"

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MORE ON THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT.

         Since this is 2012, International Year of the Co-operatives, another view on the co-operative movement. This time from Workers Solidarity Movement: 

 

          Workers’ co-operatives have always been championed by sections of the left and wider labour movement - from their advocacy by 19th century Welsh social reformer and utopian socialist Robert Owens to Proudhon through to their existence in various state capitalist countries today such as Cuba. While workers’ co-operatives can provide a small example of anarchist ideas based on self-management, direct democracy and mutual aid in action, we should not be blinded by their contradictions and should query their effectiveness as a strategy for real revolutionary transformation.

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