Friday 8th of November 2024
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the empire's liberal-progressives-neocons want war as they fear the truth more than bombs...

war

From David William Pear

How can I write a review of Andre Vltchek’s new book Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism? I am damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. Andre himself says that:

There is nothing to add to the writing of maverick revolutionary philosophers. Hands off their work! Let them speak! Editions without prefaces and introductions, please; no footnotes! The greatest works of philosophy were written with heart, blood and passion! No interpretation is needed. If allowed to read them, even a child can understand.”

He is speaking about the works of other great revolutionary writers, not himself. I think Andre is a great revolutionary writer, too. But, who am I to speak for Andre or greatness? Read his great works for yourself, and you will understand them without my introduction. You will find that Andre has the guts to put himself out there, let it all hang out, and expose his vulnerabilities as well as his wisdom…

But I am damned if I don’t write a book review for Andre’s book, because I told him I would give it a try. I don’t want to let him down, but this is the best I can do, which is not good enough. So, you can stop reading right here if you wish, and just buy Andre’s book and let him speak to you for himself.

Our struggling revolutionary artists who still speak and write the truth need all the support we can give them. That goes for the alternative media site you are reading this on, such as The Greanville Post. We are in a war, an information and propaganda war. Truth tellers are an endangered species. The Empire is trying to shut them up and shut them down.

Now if you are still with me, I do have a few words to say. Take what I say that you like and leave the rest.

A lot of people are not going to like Andre’s book “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism”, I can tell you that right now. The first to hate it will be the Empire, because they fear truth more than bombs. The next group who will not like Andre’s book will be the smug critics who want to nitpick his every word. I am not talking about the Deep State and its Mockingbirds. I am talking about the so-called liberal/progressives; especially the ones that never get off of the “proverbial couches of spinelessness”, which Andre speak of.

You have to be brave to put up with that shit, but it is obvious that Andre is a revolutionary writer and doer that is on a mission that is bigger than himself. It is called “life”. This is the time when we should be organizing and supporting each other, instead of criticizing each other, and letting the Empire divide us.

As Andre says: “Obedient and cowardly masses hate those who are different”. Different is an understatement to describe Andre Vitchek. You’ll not find many like him in Europe or North America. You would have to go to South America, Africa, Asia, or Russia to find such uniquely honest voices.

Russia is the perfect metaphor for Andre: Russia is neither Europe nor Asia; it is both and neither. Like Russia, Andre is unique. He is neither this nor that. He is a writer, philosopher, photo journalist, pamphleteer, activist, witness and doer. He is all of those things, but above all he is a humanist and an artist. He is an optimistic pessimist. Only a hopeless optimist would say:

One day, hopefully soon, humanism will win over dark nihilism; people will live for other people and not for some cold profits, religious dogmas and “Western values”.

Western values, now that is an oxymoron if there ever was one. Andre is a pessimist that sees and writes about the anti-humanism and the soullessness of so-called Western values. He exposes it for what it is: gray, cold and without spirit.

Andre says he is a Communist in an era when being a communist is not fashionable. Most liberal/progressives are afraid to mention John Maynard Keynes, let alone Marx, Lenin and Mao.

For a while in 2016 socialism was popular among supporters of Bernie Sanders, who claimed to be a socialist. He promised his followers what every poll shows that most Americans want: universal healthcare, low cost higher education, better economic safety nets, and $15 dollars an hour minimum wage. Where have all the socialists gone now that Bernie disillusioned them?

The Sanders and his “Sandernistas” rarely talked about ending US illegal wars of aggression. If liberal/progressives had insisted that Bernie take an anti-war platform and a reduction of the military-industrial-complex, then Bernie might well be in the White House now, instead of Trump. Instead most of the Sandernistas told liberal/progressives to shut up about the wars. They said it would be political suicide for Bernie to bring up war during a presidential campaign. Sandernistas said not to worry about the wars, because Bernie was secretly antiwar. We fell for that one with Obama, who committed more war crimes than George W. Bush.

Andre has the guts to say that liberal/progressives do not deserve free college, universal healthcare and all the goodies that Bernie was selling us, while also selling us the trillion dollar F-35 boondoggle. I agree with Andre, especially since Bernie sold out his loyal followers, and sheep dogged for warmongering Hillary. We do not deserve socialism at home with all the US illegal wars of aggression. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

A time comes when silence is betrayal… I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.” 

The Empire is waging all sorts of wars: militarily, economic and propaganda. It is waging economic terrorism against the Global South. The Empire-backed World Bank, IMF and banking monopolies force austerity on the poor of the world. Those poor countries in the Global South that are under attack by the Empire’s economic terrorist organizations do not get to have Bernie’s socialism. Not only do I agree with Andre that until the wars are stopped we in the Empire do not deserve Bernie’s socialism, nor do we have funds or the energies for it. Bernie and the Sandernistas rarely spoke about rehabilitation of America’s poor; it was all about the middle class.

Whatever the Empire does in its foreign policy, sooner or later the chickens come home to roost. The Empire keeps crushing countries of the Global South whose leaders want to use their country’s natural resources for their own people. Leaders like Castro, Che and Ho were personally vilified for not embracing capitalism. The Empire keeps conspiring to overthrow governments that nationalize their natural resources, and have social programs for the people.

The Empire never stops plotting to overthrow revolutionary leaders. Venezuela, Iran, Russia and North Korea are under attack because they want to go their own way. There will be economic warfare, propaganda warfare, political warfare and when those don’t work to impose conformity and compliance; then there will be the Empire’s military option. For the Empire “all options are always on the table”, including the nuclear option. The Empire would rather see the destruction of the entire world, than to coexist with a threat to its hegemony.

Now the cry goes out again that the Russians are coming! Those like myself that lived through the Cold War are seeing it repeated. The paranoia, propaganda, lies, repression, persecution and provocations are déjà vu. The US has encircled Russia with military bases, and plays war games on Russia’s border. We are told, and we are supposed to believe that Russia is the aggressor and an expansionist threat.

Georgia attacks South Ossetia, and we are told that Russia invaded Georgia. The US midwifes a coup against an elected government in Ukraine, but it is Russia that is blamed for destabilizing Ukraine. Crimea has a referendum to rejoin Russia, and we are told that the Russians used military force to annex Crimea. The US has criminally invaded Syria, but we are told that Russia invaded Syria, even though they are there legally. The Empire always needs and wants enemies.

We are supposed to be afraid that Putin will “destroy the West’s democracy” by sowing dissention, chaos and his meddling in US elections with a few Facebook ads. If anybody wants to destroy America’s democracy, then they are several decades too late. It has already been mostly destroyed. The Bill of Rights have been eviscerated, except for the 2nd Amendment, which is enabling the worst fascistic tendencies in the US to heavily arm themselves. The police are militarized. The US has secret police, secret courts, and secret prisons.

Nationalism that breeds repression at home and wars abroad is running amok. The people no longer have the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Protesters are restricted to so-called free-speech zones, and they are subject to indiscriminate mass arrest. The people are told to obey the government, but it is the government that is supposed to obey the people in a democracy.

Andre has much to say on all the above issues in his book “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism”. The book is a collection of many of his great writing of the past few years. Shorter versions of his essays have been published in articles by non-Western media, such as the New Eastern Outlook (NEO) as well as Western alternative media such as The Greanville Post.

Andre writes about the Empire’s many crimes. Terrible crimes have been committed against millions of people who have done the West no harm, and were of no threat to the West. The Empire and its vassal states punish people of the Global South for being born in countries with vast natural resources that the Empire covets. Andre gives these victims a voice and a human face.

Andre’s writings are not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. He will pound the truth into you on every page, and you may not be able to put his book down, as I could not. The reader realizes that Andre is on a mission. Part of that mission is to be the conscience of the world, and to make sure that the victimized are not forgotten and that they are not alone. Andre has a great capacity for empathy for the victims of the Empire. His writing, videos and documentaries cry out for the world to have empathy too. The world is empathy deficient.

Even for those that already intellectually know the truths that Andre writes about, will have that truth pound into their hearts and souls. Unfortunately, the people that are ignorant of the truth, are the most likely ones not to read Andre. We all know people like that. They are our brother-in-law, neighbors, and the students and professors in our institutions of so-called higher learning. Our schools do not teach the important truths and philosophies anymore. They have just become vocational schools turning out accountants, lawyers, propagandist, stockbrokers, and super sales people to keep churning money in the economy, so that it moves up the food chain.

In every direction one turns now they face a barrage of propaganda put out by the Empire. Most Americans are isolated and know very little about the rest of the world. For many people the mainstream media is their only source for information. What they get is a steady stream of propaganda that Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea and Russia are evil. They believe it, just like when I was a child, I believed the US propaganda during the Cold War. Russia was both feared and ridiculed when I was growing up. I was told that communism does not work, and that Russia cannot even make toilets that flush correctly. Imagine how surprised I was when I finally went to Russia and found out that their toilets work just fine.

When I mentioned the above story to someone who was regurgitating anti-Putin propaganda he asked me a rhetorical question:

As for Russia, besides the toilets flushing, was there anything you wanted to buy there besides vodka and nesting dolls? Or do they have anything that you would wish that we imported (like Japanese cars or Chinese clothing or Swiss watches, etc.)?”

I know that Andre gets the stupidity of that question. In the Empire one is only valuable for what they have to sell. It is all about dollars and cents, and the logic of the market. The market determines the value of everything, including people. If it has a market price, then it has value. If not then it is worthless and of no value, according to the market.

Andre writes about things that are priceless and have great value. They are the things of life that make us human, instead of robots. There is no market for love and living a fulfilling life. It is free if one knows how to find it. Andre helps to show us the way.

Besides Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism Andre has written many other books, such as Exposing Lies of the Empire, a novel titled Aurora and many other books. Andre is a world class philosopher, novelist, filmmaker, investigative journalist, poet, playwright, and photographer. He is a true revolutionary. He is a human being.

David William Pear is a progressive columnist writing on economic, political and social issues. His articles have been published by OpEdNews, The Greanville Post, The Real News Network, Truth Out, Consortium News, Global Research, and many other publications. David is active in social issues relating to peace, race relations and religious freedom, homelessness and equal justice. David is a member of Veterans for Peace, Saint Pete for Peace, CodePink, and International Solidarity Movement.

people everywhere are still capable of acting...

wn

The great Latin American revolutionary writer, Eduardo Galeano, once said to Vltchek, “It is time to raise old flags. It is time to un-dust them and once again gather under them.” The Revolution is not over. Communism and socialism are far from being defeated. One of the leading left-wing thinkers today, Andre Vltchek, in this collection of philosophical, revolutionary essays, explains why revolutionary optimism is so feared in the nihilistic West and, by taking us to all corners of the world, proves that people everywhere are still capable of dreaming, hoping and fighting for a much better world and for eternal ideals!

 

As mentioned before by Gus, we have to evolve — rather than fight with blood and bombs — into this old/new system which is to change the very sophisticated highway robbery of western "philosophy" (if we can call this a philosophy) into a more basic sharing humanism, while understanding the implications of what we do to the fragile planetary environment. As Australia reached its 25 million individual, the destruction that has been "necessary" to achieve this feat is beyond the pale — and nature pays back with droughts, floods and fire — coral bleaching and global warming. 


media support helps illegal immoral wars...

Donald Trump has again stirred the wrath of his critics by charging that the media can cause wars. His opponents immediately howled that he’d launched another salvo in his ongoing campaign to vilify journalists as the “enemy of the people.” They also ridiculed his contention as factually absurd. Fox News reporter Chris Wallace bluntly asked National Security Advisor John Bolton: “What wars have we caused?” Princeton University historian and CNN analyst Julian E. Zelizer epitomized the view that Trump’s charge is unfounded with a piece in The Atlantic titled, “The Press Doesn’t Cause Wars—Presidents Do.”

Zelizer and similar critics are technically correct, of course. Media outlets have no power to launch attacks on foreign countries or order U.S. troops into combat. But that view is much too narrow. As Zelizer himself admits, the new media have considerable ability to influence public opinion. Such a capacity to shape the overall narrative is not a trivial power. An irresponsible press can, and has, whipped up public sentiment in favor of military actions that subsequent evidence indicated were unnecessary and even immoral.

Two cases stand out: the Spanish-American War and the Iraq War. Historians have long recognized that jingoistic “yellow journalism,” epitomized by the newspaper chains owned by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, played a significant role in the former conflict. Months before the outbreak of the war, one of Hearst’s reporters wished to return home from Cuba because there was no sign of a worsening crisis. Hearst instructed him to stay, adding, “you furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.” 

Hearst’s boast was hyperbolic, but the Hearst and Pulitzer papers did repeatedly hype the Spanish “threat” and beat the drums for war against Madrid. They featured stories that not only focused on but exaggerated the uglier features of Madrid’s treatment of its colonial subjects in Cuba. Those outlets also exploited the mysterious explosion that destroyed the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana’s harbor. To this day, the identity of the culprit is uncertain, but the yellow press exhibited no doubts whatever. According to their accounts, it was an outrageous attack on America by the villainous Spanish regime.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/yes-the-press-helps-sta...

 

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attempted assassination of President Nicolas Maduro...

 

From Ricardo Vaz at IvestigAction

Venezuela was rocked this past Saturday by an attempted assassination of President Nicolas Maduro, during a public event, using drones armed with explosives. But as more details started to become available, the coverage of the mainstream media actually moved in the opposite direction: one after the other they have looked to sow doubt on the events, using words such as “apparent” or “alleged”, focusing instead on the government using this “alleged” event to step up repression. In the end, it is hard to tell apart the media coverage from the statements of John Bolton, one of the more hawkish advisers to the US president.

Although there are plenty of examples to choose from, we are going to focus on our personal champion of dishonest Venezuelan coverage – The Guardian. A quick search of Guardian headlines with “assassination attempt” shows that a qualifier such as “alleged” is never used. Be it Jacques Chirac, Guinea’s president, or even Saddam Hussein’s deputy, nobody had their assassination attempts questioned as a hoax to be used as a pretext to stamp out dissent. Such is the dishonesty of the media coverage of Venezuela. [1]

Yet this is the Guardian’s opening paragraph:

Venezuela’s opposition has warned that President Nicolas Maduro may launch a political crackdown after he accused adversaries of attempting to assassinate him with drones loaded with explosives on Saturday.”

Remarkably, it is the Venezuelan opposition takes precedence in an article describing an assassination attempt against Maduro. This would be akin to a report on 9/11 opening with “Al-Qaeda warns of increased US involvement in the Middle East.” Then there is the usual trick of encapsulating the events under “Maduro said”, so that all the previous work smearing Maduro can be used to discredit this version.

Several videos and testimonies, some even mentioned by the Guardian piece, corroborate the Venezuelan government’s version of events. Two drones armed with explosives targeted the stage where Maduro was giving a speech on the 81st anniversary of the National Guard. One of them, because of signal jammers, crashed in front of a nearby building. Residents testified to this, and some of them captured the events, thus demolishing the nonsensical thesis that the explosion had been due to a gas leak.

The second drone detonated closer to the stage, resulting in seven injured officers while bodyguards quickly moved to shield Maduro. Despite all this evidence The Guardian insists that “exactly what happened still remained unclear on Sunday”. Perhaps Maduro, his wife and everyone around them looked at the sky at the same time and soldiers in formation scattered as part of some devious coordinated plan to ramp up repression. We are before the Caribbean version of 9/11 Truthers.

The Venezuelan opposition, in their newly-minted Frente Amplio coalition, which is sure to have its fingerprints all over this, can count on The Guardian as a megaphone to accuse the government of “making “irresponsible” accusations without any proof” and preemptively denounce upcoming repression. Nevermind the fact that opposition leaders have repeatedly been involved in violent attempts to overthrow the government.

Also, just a few tweets later, one of the parties in the Frente Amplio, Primero Justicia, threatened Maduro with actions “like this one or worse”.

Following that we are told that “No one has claimed responsibility for the alleged assassination attempt”, although the group Soldados de Franelas, whose members are unknown, claimed this attempt as a victory, and later published a statement on a so-called Operation Fenix, read by notorious anti-government journalist Patricia Poleo in Miami [2]. The statement affirms that it is the duty of the armed forces to remove the current government which, among other things, is guilty of indoctrinating children with communism!

The Guardian then continues to find other victims, since they are not sure the assassination attempt took place, and mentions six people arrested, two of them having previously taken part in “street protests”. According to interior minister Nestor Reverol, one of those detained had been involved in the 2014 guarimbas, which were a little more than “street protests”. They involved violent barricades, shooting at bystanders, beheading motorcyclists, and a great deal more. He had been released by the government in a (clearly futile) gesture of goodwill. The second one was sought after an attack on the Paramacay barracks last year, and we can all agree that calling this a “street protest” is a bit of a stretch, even for The Guardian.

Then we are treated to two paragraphs replete with distortions. There is a mention of the economic crisis, which is fair enough but referring to an IMF prediction which is utter nonsense. Next we read that Maduro “replaced” Chavez (he was elected), that he repressed anti-government demonstrations left 100 dead (opposition violence was responsible for a large part of the casualties), and that he sidelined the opposition-led congress (they are in contempt of court) by installing (there were elections, 8M+ voted) a body stacked with loyalists (again, there were elections and 6,120 candidates ran for 545 seats).

To top it all off, there is a mention of last year’s terrorist attack by Oscar Pérez, who hijacked a helicopter and went on to throw grenades and open fire on public buildings full of people . It is priceless that The Guardian should bring this up, because back then it also ran with ludicrous theories that it might have been all a government stunt, and then had a great deal of fun looking at Pérez’s Instagram page and his past acting activities. Pérez’s repeated calls for a coup and his appearance in an anti-government protest days later were not enough for The Guardian to clarify that he actually was an anti-government terrorist.[3]

The icing on this cake of dishonesty is that Pérez was “hunted down and killed”, when even the Guardian hyperlink has the word “shootout”. Pérez and his group were surrounded by security forces, and there were videos showing him urging the soldiers to join his rebellion, while the commanding officer tried to get him to surrender. After Pérez allegedly refused, a shootout ensued in which two policemen of the FAES special forces were killed, which is not exactly the picture suggested by “hunted down and killed”.

All in all, it seems like the US Empire, its allies and the stenographers in the mainstream media are trying to play a game in which they never lose. They constantly call for a coup, even report on foiled attempts[4], but when something actually takes place, the reaction is along the lines of “the US/Colombia/Venezuelan opposition had nothing to do with this coup/assassination attempt which maybe did not even happen”. Had it succeeded, as the 2002 coup did briefly, they would be celebrating “a victory for freedom”. Since it failed, it was all in the dictator’s imagination! But the crackdown is certain, which will then justify people wanting to kill Maduro or attempt a coup, and the cycle starts again.

The reactionary plotting against the Bolivarian Revolution by the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, their northern masters and the latter’s regional puppets, only now and then materialises into actual operations or terrorist attacks. But there is a constant set of background assumptions being created to endorse and provide cover for these actions, and this is achieved through the western media’s systematically dishonest coverage of Venezuela.

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/08/11/venezuela-assassination-attempt-madu...

health stats about venezuela...

Venezuela has the largest known oil reserves in the world, but under the leadership of Nicolas Maduro, its hospitals lack equipment, medicines, food, anesthetics and even pens. The doctors who remain face a daily struggle to treat patients with little more than hope.

read more:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-country-of-hunger-inside-the-deep-suffering-in-venezuela-s-hospitals-a-1221061.html

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And so says Der Spiegel... But before one starts condemning, one has to look at the situation... Maduro is trying to run a country which is under severe sanctions from the USA, thus also from many other rich countries in the world. Why? Because Maduro is running a "socialist" government. The USA HATE socialist governments. Cuba has helped Venezuela before with sending doctors and hospital staff, and the situation is not as bad as Der Spiegel makes out. 

I could take pictures of hospital in the USA that would give the same impression of "poverty". Similar stints from the Western press have been done in Russia, in China and other countries such as Syria and Libya. Remember that it has been estimated that about half a million kids died in Iraq during the 1990s for lack of medical support, because the country was also under severe sanctions from the USA and their cronies.

So Maduro got re-elected because most of the poor people have now a better life than under the previous capitalistic regimes that were somewhat corrupt and in bed with the US multinationals. Chavez changed this to reclaim Venezuela for the Venezuelan people — including the poor. He paid with his life. Such socialist ideals are not easy to achieve when the USA (and/with the local rich people) are trying to get you out of the way by whatever means at their disposal. They tried the same caper in other countries before — including Indonesia, etc...

 

Articles like that of Der Spiegel are not helping the kids:

The government provides little money to the hospitals, but won't allow any aid into the country either. Doing so would make it clear that Maduro's autocratic government has failed. According to UNICEF, 15 percent of all children in Venezuela are undernourished.


Why is Maduro refusing help or aid? Cuba did help. But help from the West comes with strings attached and won't be coming unless the country returns to ugly exploitative capitalism.

According to the latest figures, more than 18 per cent of kids are obese (this is quite more than "fat") in the USA. What does this mean? It means that these US kids are badly fed, often living on junk food and carbonated sugar drinks. They have a great chance of having diabetes type 2 before turning 40.

On top of this, about 16.6 million kids in the USA are counted as undernourished. So there.

And in regard to the "exploitation" of oil, Maduro may be doing the planet a favour. "The state oil company, however, didn't have enough money for investment." Why is this so? Straight away, "corruption" is brought forward by the media such as Der Spiegel, (all without any proofs)  when the demands and restrictions made by the US empire are the real causes for "alleged" problems.

Can Maduro reduce these problems? Most likely. It's a question of trends. In Venezuela, the trend of the number of children who are malnourished is going down... In the USA, the trend is going up — as well as the trend in number of kids who are "obese".

 

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