#i live in venezuela nothing and everything is legal

[snarkylinda]

I am happy to announce I no longer go through the "would they say that" phase while writing fics 💜 unfortunately it had been changed by a more soul-crushing, devasting "are they legally able of doing that north American territory"

[solinposts]

I interrupt my normal programming of posts about movies, TV shows, art, books and everything I love, to tell you this:

If you’re thinking about sharing something about Venezuela, make sure you have all the facts and not just the Government-approved “facts”.

I get it. It’s difficult. The Venezuelan Government controls almost all the media, and those they don’t control are threatened into silence. So when you Google what’s going on, you’ll find yourself thinking we live in the most wonderful place on Earth. 

We don’t.

Here are nuggets of information that can help you understand:

1- No, what happened is not a coup. Guaidó is using our Constitution -articles 233 and 333- against Maduro, showing him that his illegal means to get things done have, finally, backfired. The figure of “interim President” is completely legal, and has been used by the Government before after an actual coup -but they’ve conveniently forgotten about it!

2- No, Maduro wasn’t elected in a "transparent” election. Prior to it, he: moved the date of the event to benefit him, imprisoned / disabled our main candidates, stole the National Assembly’s faculties -which was composed mostly of the Opposition after a massive popular election, and that pissed him off- and gave it to an illegal alternate Assembly appointed by him and his cabinet -which was supposed to change the Constitution, but later became an institution that could act above the law and responding to no one but themselves-, and changed the members of the Supreme Court and the Electoral Council so they were both composed mostly of -you guessed it!- people in line with his ideas.

Oh! And Smartmatic, the company in charge of those “transparent” elections Maduro-loving foreigners love to talk about so much, admitted the numbers given by the Government in favor of the illegal alternate Assembly had been tampered with.

So, what did the Opposition do? Tried to negotiate and to reinstate a more level ground with certain conditions, he refused and went on to do his election anyway. Which, by the way, had the lowest turnout in recent years, since people refused to participate in his sham.

Did he care?

No.

Now, tell me: after all that, would you have voted in that election, considering that glorious landscape?

Probably not. 

3- The Opposition isn’t perfect. They have done really shitty things and let down their own people over and over again. 

Still, today, we are in the hands of people who are completely inept at doing the only thing we pay them to do: care for their own people and managing our resources fairly. Because, remember: we owe them no loyalty. They’re our employees. The people we pay and trust to handle our resources correctly.

If they can’t do their job and people are suffering, dying and fleeing the country on foot, risking their lives in the process... we are just supposed to just...take it until they’re done screwing us over?

Why do we have to bear the people who have been in control of everything for almost 20 years and given away our oil and resources to Cuba, China and Russia?

Guaidó is a young politician. For many, he represents change, and we not only yearn for it, but we need it.

4- The Government relies on an empty ideological war to keep itself going. It’s easier to tell people that, sure, everything can be blamed on the U.S; instead of holding Government officials accountable for corruption, squandering and failure.

The worst part is: foreigners eat it up! They love the Venezuelan Government although they have never set foot in the country and would never give up their comfortable lives to come here.

These are also the same people who are very concerned about our oil and resources going to the U.S, but conveniently forget that:

a- our Government hates the U.S but has no problem receiving their mighty dollars after selling their oil almost exclusively to them -so the U.S already has most of our oil, darlings!

and b- our Government loves to buy allies like Cuba, Russia and China by giving away our oil and resources to them. But I guess being under the thumb of those countries is perfectly Ok. Good Imperialism, right?

5- No, your country isn’t doing worse than us. Yes, every country has violence and poverty, unfortunately. But let me give you a little list of what we’re going through:

- Famine

- A staggering scarcity of food, medicine, and medical supplies -which, by the way, kills patients in hospitals every day

- A high rate of child mortality, like never before

- Illnesses that had been eradicated are coming back

- An inflation rate around 1300000.00 -yes, that many zeroes!- percent 

- Our technology is mostly outdated, and anything new is unaffordable for a regular citizen

- We have one of the most dangerous capitals of the world, and people abandon the streets as soon as the sun comes down, out of fear

- There’s total impunity since our policemen have no resources -or legal ability, thanks to laws passed by Chavez and company- to actually get things done or protect us

- Suicide rates have skyrocketed in the last few years

- Many schools and businesses have closed because they can’t keep up with the inflation

- A large majority of the youth has left the country

... and I’ll stop there, because I could go on, but I think you can get a pretty good picture just from that.

So no. Things might be bad in your country, but if you go into a store you will probably see aisles properly stocked, and you probably don’t live with the crippling fear of getting sick or killed on the streets for that old cellphone that took months to pay. If anything, you can have hope. Which is something we lost a long time ago.

6- My experience is not less important than what you think you know. I’ve lived here for 27 years, and lived under this regime for almost 20 years of my life. I’ve lost friends, family, people I love. I work three jobs. I never have enough money to save and provide for a better life for my family. My grandmother and mother were middle-class women who worked all of their lives, and still, they have nothing left because we’ve had to use our combined savings to survive in the last 6 years.

My mother and I have cell phones, we need them for our jobs, but we don’t take them out with us anywhere because we know we could get killed for it. So when one of us goes out, the other stays at home praying nothing bad will happen to me/her.

We sold our second-hand car because we couldn’t afford to maintain it, so we depend on our feet and pitiful public transportation to get where we need to go.

We’re afraid of getting sick. And I haven’t had a check-up since 2016 -which was paid by my job at the time.

Still, I’ve had to deal with pro-Maduro foreigners since yesterday -like, for example, Boots Riley-, spouting “facts” at me and dismissing my struggle. Because, I guess, I don’t matter.

So, don’t tell me how the statistics you Googled have convinced you that Venezuela is a wonderful paradise and we all love Maduro. Don’t tell me that my experience contradicts what you think you know, so therefore I’m either lying or unimportant. Keep your Venezuelasplaining to yourself, because I have to actually live it.

So. PSA over!

There’s so much more to say, and so many things to consider...But for now, continue with your lives, and please help educate people outside.

We need it.

[e-idp]

Everything You Need To Know About Securing an International Driving Permit Spain

Driving in Spain is a quick and easy way to explore the country. Whilst Spain is well-known for its excellent public transport links. Making it easy to visit or live in the country without a car, there’s nothing quite like the freedom of having your own vehicle.

International Driving Permit

An international driving permit Spain isn’t necessary for driving in Spain, but if you’re living in Spain and plan to drive to a country that is outside of the EU common area then you may need to secure an international driving permit in Spain in order to complete your journey.

And if you’re just visiting Spain temporarily? The good news is you can still use your UK driving licence in Spain after Brexit. And you won’t need an International driving permit to drive in the country. Here’s everything you need to know about international driving permit countries and securing an international driving permit in Spain:

Driving in Spain After Brexit

Brexit has changed everything, and that applies to driving in Spain too. It used to be that if you were a Briton living in Spain you could simply transfer your UK driving license and exchange it for a Spanish one. Now if you move to Spain and wish to drive you will have to take both the theory and the practical aspects of the Spanish driving test from scratch in order to secure your Spanish driving license.

International Driving Permit

If you’re living in Spain and you already have a Spanish driving license. Then you won’t need an international driving permit Spain to drive in the country. Or in any other country in the EU. However, you will need one if you plan to take a trip and drive in a country outside of the EU. The good news, if you’re wondering how to get an international driving permit, is that it is now surprisingly simple. As of August 2021, it is possible to apply for the permiso internacional de conducir (the Spanish name for the International Driving License Spain) online. Without any need for a face-to-face appointment.

Where Do I Need an International Driving Permit?

Your Spanish driving license can be usable across the European Union and European Economic Area. It is usable in the following countries, which accept Spanish driving licenses without the need for an international driving permit: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco, Nicaragua, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, El Salvador, the Philippines, Guatemala, Serbia, Turkey, Tunisia, the Ukraine and North Macedonia. If you intend to visit a cuontry which isn’t on this list then you will be need to get an international driving permit to drive there.

With doubt, it is worth getting in touch with the embassy or tourist information office of the country you intend to visit, so that you can ensure you have exactly what you need in order to travel.  If you do need an international driving license, you should allow enough time to secure this before your trip.

Driving in Spain With UK License and Securing an International Driving Permit

https://usercontent.one/wp/www.e-idp.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/spanien-laenderinformationen-stadt-ozean-wasser-natucate-1024x576.jpg?media=1649925231

There is currently no options for non-EU/EEA driving license holders to apply for an international driving permit whilst they are in Spain. Because they do not have Spanish drivers licenses, the DGT cannot issue international permits. If you are a UK driving license holder then driving in Spain with UK license is perfectly legal, but at this point you will have to apply for your International Driving Permit in the UK. This may change in the future, as post-Brexit talks around driving regulations between the UK and Spain evolve.

International Driving Permit

It is worth emphasizing that you do not need an international driving permit to drive in Spain, provide you have a photocard driving license that has been issue in the UK, or anywhere else in the EU. The focus of this piece is if you reside in Spain, and hope to travel to a non-EU country so an international driving permit will be require to drive your vehicle.

How to Get an International Driving Permit Online in Spain

https://usercontent.one/wp/www.e-idp.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Last-minute-Alhambra-tickets-1200x900-1-1024x768.jpg?media=1649925231

When it’s time to collect your driving license. You need to take a passport size photo on a plain background with you. Which will be adde to your license to ensure that it’s valid. You will also need to take a valid form of ID. So that you can be identified and your license can be issued to you.

If you’d rather not apply for your international driving permit online. You can also do so by visiting your local DGT office. This is a more time-consuming process. However, as you will need to request and secure an appointment. In order to process this application in a face-to-face setting.

Once you have secured your international driving permit Spain, it will be valid for a period of one year. This cannot be extended, so if you still need an international driving permit once that year is up. You will need to apply for a new permit. The good news is, this process is relatively easy. So you shouldn’t be put off driving when you take your next international trip!

International Driving Permit

Are you thinking of taking the plunge and moving to Spain? There are plenty of wonderful reasons to make this beautiful country your home! Why not let our local property estate agents experts help you with your property search. Get in touch today with Right Casa Estates. We are perfectly placed to present to you a wide selection of properties for sale on the Costa Del Sol. From affordable houses in Benalmadena to luxury villas in Marbella. 

[lairofsentinel]

you know, right now, living in this fucked up country, which keeps strangulating your salary, increasing unemployment to crazy levels and in general, pushing you to poverty closer and closer, every fucking day something worse happens: a child of 12 y/o is forced to give birth after being raped by a man 60y/o, and all the fuckers pro-life clapped that despite the baby died and the child had to pass through c-section when the law allowed a legal abortion, and now she is dealing with an infection; you have to read every fuckgin day that an ex-boyfriend or ex-husband, or husband has killed his girlfriend/wife out of jealousy and fragile masculinity, once a week knowing that some lgbt person was attacked and killed by some random person who hates us, or a damn group of men raping in pack a single teenager, just because she was drunken or “she was in a wrong place”. Every week a religious old man, raping children. Thousand of them. It never ends. Catholicism is the worse illness around the world. It always was.  You pray to the universe not to get ill, because you can’t pay in dollars anything (nor the doctors, neither the drugs), or your dear ones, because the gov. did everything to make public health a disaster. As a scientist, I’m super down, because the gov. keeps on its policies of destroying the public education and science budget, while calling like “parasites” to teachers and researchers alike. Hell, you study superior school for more than 12 years, to be called a parasite by your own gov. and half of the population whose brain was washed by massive media.  Even worse, this year we have no money at all to go to congresses or schools, but the gov. paid an astrologist asshole to go to USA and give a fucking congress about the “year of the pig” in the Argentinian consulate. The same gov. that invites an indian “scientist” fucker that “cleaned” the gov. house from “bad vibres” and speaks about chackras and bullshit like that.  All this public policies brought terrible consequences, and besides all the political and social and economical disaster, we are dealing now with an epidemic outbreak that kills you.  It ‘s a completely preventable illness, that simply went out of control because the gov. fired all the personal specialized on it.  This gov. calls themselves “meritocratic”. They know shit about everything.  You try to think that somewhere out there from this hell, there is some peaceful country that still can do better... and then you see Brasil, the poor people from living a horrible shitty situation of having a fucked up president forced on them, that nobody voted (but hey, USA recognized him immediately, because they supported him all along the way) they went a step more into fuckery and voted a neo-nazi who hates women, lgbt, black people, and... well, everything that’s not a white cis hetero man.  Then you see Venezuela, the poor country living for years such terrible things, just to go into more fuckery, with a random guy calling himself president and, once again, supported by the gringos. And I remember all the analysis I’ve been reading long time ago, about how before the imperialist countries start falling to the last step, they are going to prey on latinoamerica, to force a neo-fascism that, sadly, part of the population supports too because the lost faith in institutions, in democracy, in justice, in everything, went too deep. Corruption is destroying latinoamerica, and half of the blame of all this is because the corporations and the imperial countries that support the abuse their companies do here. Because latinoamerica is the last piece of good natural resources still untouched, and they came to prey on them.   And you see all those problems, so much violence increasing, the certainty that one day it’s going to take you, if it is not you, it will be a friend, or a family member.... is such a desperate emotion.  Anxiety and depression are spreading faster than that killing disease outbreak that happened recently. The amount of suicides are increasing to alarming rates. Hell, I have friends that are speaking about suicide more than they should. Friends who never had those thoughts in their minds, now are thinking in them too often. And one can’t do shit, but following that general mood. Dead at least you are not going to worry about these things, about these so many things strangulating us all. The exploitation is so tough. The chances are so low. And the tiredness of one’s soul is so heavy.  Sometimes I just think it’s too much to bear, to analyse, to understand, to live, to survive. I’m a person who has no family almost. My mother and that’s all. The rest are friends. The feeling of wild loneliness that comes just to think if something bad would happen to any of them.... This kind of situation always reminds me the image of dogs being beaten by their owners. they keep loyal, beat after beat, but one day, they reach the limit, and they bite. The bite can go out of control, and can kill the owner. The violence reaching higher levels is such a bad omen, an unpredictable bad omen. That terrible point in which you start learning to walk in the street as if it were a war zone, not sure if that man is going to assault you, or that group of men are going to burn you alive, or if you are going to die in a robbery. Life doesn’t matter a shit here. Your own life, doesn’t matter a shit.  yourself are just a ball of meat and nothing else.  and the hole inside your chest is so deep, that you can’t even cry to vent. There is nothing that will help you to vent that thing.  Damn shit. I feel so fucking down. 

[danielamariaguzman]

Love, in the Time of Fake News: A Colombian Story of MisInformation

The first notifications I get each morning are not from the likes of The New York Times, El Tiempo or the BBC. As I wake up and check my phone habitually, trying to make sense of the events and issues that matter each day, I am hit by the ubiquitous Whatsapp viral meme message. Today, it is a meme of Gustavo Petro, former mayor of Bogotá, who is running for Colombia’s presidency on a leftist progressivist platform. The Mona-Lisa smile headshot of the former M-19 activist and now career politician is captioned, in Spanish: “Searching for idiots: I was a guerrilla member, pyromaniac, assassin, I ruined Bogota and I promised much and didn’t follow through with anything, I contracted without necessity and I aspire to be President of Colombia.” But wait, there’s more. “I want to develop a government like Venezuela’s. Would you give me your vote?” The flagrant accusations made in this image, forwarded with nonchalance without a single phrase of explanation, are terrifying. Whether they are true or not, I cannot verify in the two seconds it takes me to digest the information. Nor do I analyze why my friend, a Colombian living in the United States, highly educated and with no affiliation to a news organization would send me this meme. This is the experience of “fake news” that Colombians are facing - along with the rest of the world as social media blurs the lines between truth, rumors, and propaganda. There are thousands of chain messages like these passed on in Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter, relating to the upcoming Presidential elections about all of the presidential candidates,ranging from the comical to the defamatory. Besides the smear campaigns flooding social networks, as is expected in any presidential election, there are serious allegations that are portrayed as public service announcements, often forwarded to “warn the population” - the latest being a series of messages that claim the government census is a plot to gather voter data and commit election fraud through the electronic vote. The thing is, the electronic vote does not exist in Colombia. The pervasiveness of these false information campaigns is troubling, to say the least, for a country that has just signed a peace deal to end the longest civil conflict in the hemisphere, is looking forward to presidential elections this year, and has a long road in transitional justice, reconciliation and post-conflict development. Political analysts in Colombia are still reeling from the results of the 2016 plebiscite which was President Juan Manuel Santos’ idea to gain buy-in on the peace process and the product of four years of negotiation in Havana with the FARC. It failed spectacularly, as the rest of the world watched in shock as Colombians rejected their own peace deal. As my father would say, “ahi estamos pintados”, or a Colombian colloquialism meaning “we screwed up”.

The problem was not the rejection of the peace deal, as I myself do not agree with all of the specifics of the 323-page agreement, which contains complex legal and political language. The issue was expecting a population, which is incredibly disparate in education and resources, to be able to make a “yes” or “no” decision on whether to end a war. It was the polarization and politicization of peace that created a schism between Colombians that continues to deepen nearly two years later. Political analysts consider the elections in Colombia this May to be a Referendum, Part II. The divide was created with the epic assistance of social media campaigns. Juan Carlos Velez,the Centro Democratico campaign manager even admitted to using social networks to spread an “indignation campaign” to get people out to vote for “No”. Alvaro Uribe, the godfather of the Centro Democratico party and a vehement opponent to the peace deal and former ally Santos, was one of the most egregious offenders, publishing false information frequently on his Twitter account like the rumor that demobilized FARC members would receive a COP $1.8 million salary. Another message that all Colombian citizens would have to contribute 7% of their pension funds to the peace fund also became viral, provoking the anger of millions of Colombians,a country where the average GDP per capita is still only $14,000.

The great ease of disseminating information nowadays through these informal channels can cause incongruent injury to the unity of a state. In these times, when a misinforming meme can hop from phone to phone, to news network, fake news becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s up to the institutions that once wielded truth as their power, also known as the fourth estate, to discriminate fact from falsity. The press is the only watchdog that can combat the epidemic of fake news in Colombia by fact-checking, calling out propagandists, and investigating the truth. 

It will mean nothing to the future of Colombia if weapons of war are turned in but weapons of communication are exploited and used to misinform the population. Social media users themselves must be wary of what they read and even more so of what they spread. For peace to fully be accepted, for a new leader that benefits the country, and for the well-being of Colombians, we have to stop believing everything we read. Today, in response to the Petro meme, I simply asked “En serio?” to my probably clueless friend who had himself received it from another chain. “No lo se,” he replied. At least not knowing is an acceptance of uncertainty, and not a reality.

[downthatrabbitholewego]

May 2017

This is a compilation of fics that I've read/re-read over the past month. Faves get a star ( ★ ). There is also a separate fic rec page for my favorites here and a fic rec sorter here, if you'd like to check those out. :)

MONTH: May, 2017 | (older lists)

▶▶ hazelnut, strawberry, and mint by jollypuppet ★ Teen And Up | 3,417w In which Stiles is cheeky, Derek likes dogs, and coffee is gourmet as hell.

▶▶ How to Make It Right by loserchildhotpants ★ N/A | 3,337w Stiles, in his years with Derek as his slave, has grown used to Derek's tones of voice. Derek is a man of few words - Stiles was never sure if this was just his nature, or the product of his horrific environment. With so few words to work with, Stiles learned to read Derek's body language, hear all the things unspoken in the way Derek said those few words and he learned quite quickly that silence is often many words at once.

▶▶ The Moon's Gonna Follow Me Home by turningterrific ★ Explicit | 82,866w Derek doesn't want to call the window repair guy. He doesn't want to sweep up the glass. He’ll inevitably miss a few shards and pull them out of the bottom of his bare feet for weeks. He doesn't want to try to make this place feel like home when it isn't. Derek stayed in Beacon Hills and tried to make it work because he wanted pack, wanted purpose. He gave his best effort and found himself back where he started: alone, with a few begrudging allies. He's tired, and even though his werewolf body heals quickly, he feels the weary ache down to his center. He packs his car with the few things he cares about enough to drag them from place to place. He locks the loft and calls a realtor about listing the building he'd bought in a misguided attempt to secure a future. And then he leaves.

▶▶ Under Development by dr_girlfriend ★ Teen And Up | 24,763w Environmental lawyer Derek Hale is determined to stop the planned defacement of his beloved Beacon Hills Preserve by the mammoth Starr Development company. To do so, he makes a deal with the devil himself — Stiles Starr, the brash young scion of the Starr family and COO of Starr Development. Derek hates Stiles at first sight. Mieczysław Stilinski, on the other hand, is someone that Derek could grow to like...or even love.

▶▶ 5 Times Stiles & Derek's Classmates Noticed They Were in a Committed Relationship and 1 Time Stiles Noticed by Survivah Teen And Up | 2,825w In which Derek and Stiles are college roommates, and everyone saw this coming before they did.

▶▶ All the broken hearts in the world still beat by dragon_temeraire Teen And Up | 3,354w Stiles totally needs to make Lydia Martin jealous. Yeah. And his best chance is to convince star lacrosse player Derek Hale to (fake) date him.

▶▶ Breaking the Ice by veterization Explicit | 15,411w Stiles is a figure skater turned pair skater who gets teamed up with has-been skater Derek Hale, and neither of them are exactly pleased.

▶▶ Burn It Out by Omni Teen And Up | 6,390w Everything that he was got burned out of him, turned to ash and shadow just like everyone he loved. He was hollowed out and empty, and it hurt like claws across exposed nerves. Then, it was done.

▶▶ Full On Rainstorm by BarlowGirl Explicit | 10,534w He catches Derek by the arm and Derek lets himself be turned, surprised when Stiles shoves a small box into his hands. "I don't know if you still celebrate it or what but... I wanted you to know someone was thinking about you. Happy birthday." Then he squeezes Derek's arm and bolts, gone before Derek can think to stop him. He opens the box standing there, only to find one singular, misshapen, sloppily-frosted, cupcake, with a candle in the box next to it. It's kind of squished despite the paper towel all around it to keep it from banging around in the box. Derek has to take a moment to sit down because yeah, he can't deny it anymore. He's gone on Stiles.

▶▶ Good Thing Going by SylvieW Teen And Up | 4,989w Stiles has been dating Jennifer for months when he finds out she's been seeing someone else almost as long, but didn't tell him. When he confronts her, he doesn't expect the other guy to be blindsided... or so damn hot.

▶▶ Hot & Bothered by Inell Teen And Up | 3,651w During their first photo shoot together for the House of Eros, sparks fly between Stiles and Derek.

▶▶ Hunger by DiscontentedWinter Mature | 55,382w Beacon Hills. Two lost souls. A homeless boy, a lone wolf, and people who will stop at nothing to destroy them both.

▶▶ In Name Only by Cobrilee Explicit | 15,089w In a world where no one finds out who their soulmate is until after they get married, Stiles concocts the perfect scheme: marry his long-time client, Derek Hale... You know. Just to find out who he should be marrying. There's no way this could go wrong.

▶▶ First Date Series [1] Is It Cool if I Hold Your Hand? by HalfFizzbin General | 1,343w "So," says Sheriff Stilinski, raising one eyebrow. "You decided not to play video games at Scott’s, after all?" "Uh," Stiles says. His eyes are wide and caught-out, and he's got his arms wrapped around two giant tubs of popcorn. Beside him, Derek Hale—the same Derek Hale that the Sheriff last saw in his interrogation room—is handing a $20 bill to the cashier and clearly trying to appear as casual as possible. He fumbles the change three times before he gets it into his pocket, though, so it's a lost cause.

▶▶ Staying by hazelNuts General | 678w Stiles and Derek are on a trip, and can't help but feel like he's already ruined it.

▶▶ Sundae Mornings by raisesomehale Teen And Up | 5,463w Derek had had his doubts when Cora first suggested their family play host to a foreign exchange student from Poland, but it wasn't until the kid arrived that Derek really began to resent the entire program. Sure, Stiles Stilinski cleans up after himself – never not a perfect gentleman around the house – and gets straight A's while still somehow managing to make friends insanely fast. But he's also cocky and sarcastic; quick witted in a way that can tangle Derek into a neat, flustered little bow with only a few choice quips. The worst part is that English isn't even Stiles' native tongue, and he still manages to be better with it than Derek. Bested at his own damn language.

▶▶ Teenage Dream by matildajones Mature | 58,596w After an accident, Stiles wakes up to what can only be a dream. He has money, he has fame, he has award winning actor Derek Hale as his husband. It quickly seems more and more like a nightmare because Stiles doesn't remember getting any of it - and it's hard to accept the reality that Derek can still love him.

▶▶ The Long Way Around by banryeo, secondstar Teen And Up | 10,293w After searching through his family's vault, Derek finds a key to a vacation cabin that his family own. He decides to fix it, along with allowing himself to heal for the first time since his family's death. In taking the time for himself, he comes to realize his feelings for Stiles, albeit slowly.

▶▶ The Way Back by ineachplace Teen And Up | 4,695w "Greetings from Venezuela!" Derek didn't sign the postcard. Didn't write anything on it at all, except for a return address on the right and a little black squiggle where he presumably checked to see if his pen still had ink. It's the first anyone has heard from him since he left. Scott and Kira had a working theory that he became a humble farmer, living off of beets and carrots and tending to a ridiculous amount of horses while Cora fought bulls or tigers or something. No one asks the obvious question when Stiles tells them. Maybe out of decency, out of some shred of respect for his feelings, or maybe because they really don't know. He can't be sure. No one asks why Derek sent it to HIM.

▶▶ Think To Me, Like Lovers Do by clotpolesonly General | 3,458w A cursed amulet forces Derek to hear everyone's thoughts. He doesn't much like what he hears, at least until Stiles comes to rescue him from starvation.

▶▶ This is Not (In Fact) Okay by rileywrites Teen And Up | 3,062w Derek and Stiles end up partnered for a project, and Derek contents himself with being a part of Stiles' life. For a while.

▶▶ Through Veiled Eyes by Dexterous_Sinistrous Explicit | 25,796w "Lay with me," Stiles plainly stated, as if he asked a menial thing of him. Derek narrowed his eyes at Stiles, observing him carefully as he kept his features stoically guarded. "To touch you is sacrilege," he finally uttered, unable to completely deny his desire to discover what touching Stiles would be like. "What they force me to do is sacrilege," Stiles countered, carefully observing Derek. "What you would do would be divine. You would keep me from being their plaything—taking a key player off the board in their pursuit of corruption. What I've asked of you... I've already seen it—the phantom touch of it lingering on me afterwards."

▶▶ Wolfsbane by DiscontentedWinter Mature | 48,231w Kate Argent has kept a little trophy of the Hale fire for all these years - Derek Hale. When Deputy Stiles Stilinski finds him, he doesn't just need to rescue Derek from the Argents. He needs to rescue Derek from his past.

▶▶ Won't Do Me No Good Washing in the River by DevilDoll, Jinxy, Rahciach Mature | 5,939w "Remember, Derek: you never get back what you lost."

▶▶ Worth the Wait by Dexterous_Sinistrous Explicit | 13,381w Stiles always had a thing for Derek, but then again, so did everyone else. Stiles just wanted to be seen as different, which was why he waited. But maybe he waited a little too long.

▶▶ You Were a Kindness When I Was a Stranger by DevilDoll Explicit | 8,092w "It's not all handcuffs and spankings and learning to deep throat." This is an AU with consensual BDSM sex acts, in which Derek supports Stiles financially in exchange for a sexual relationship. Stiles is of legal age.

▶▶ Untitled Tumblr Ficlet by bibliosexxual N/A | 586w "Derek Hale at the supermarket at like nine at night on Feb. 13, innocently going through the checkout with his cucumber..."

▶▶ Untitled Tumblr Ficlet by bibliosexxual Explicit | 1,247w Out of necessity, Derek has fine-tuned a few simple tests for anyone he goes on a first date with.

▶▶ Untitled Tumblr Ficlet by doctortay Mature | 1,548w So yes, he's in Derek's loft, and that is most definitely Derek, sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed, naked and smoking a joint, head thrown back, totally blissed-out.

▶▶ Untitled Tumblr Ficlet by loserchildhotpants N/A | 837w Sniffling into Derek's shoulder, Stiles tucks his face further into the crook of Derek's neck. His own neck and ears feel too hot and he's embarrassed, but he can't let go.

▶▶ Untitled Tumblr Ficlet by redhoodedwolf N/A | 981w "I'll take care of it. I am the son of the Queen of Hell, after all,"

- - - - -

[aksandfire]

Aurora, [29.08.17 00:06]

I cant just take a breath. There are things that need to be corrected in society.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:10]

things that affect me directly...

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:10]

Like what?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:12]

Sexism, non-universal profit based medical care, bigotry, the fact that hate crime laws are either nonexistent or really shit in most places in the US, the fact that its legal to discriminate against me in most places, including my home.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:14]

And how do you plan on fixing all of it?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:18]

Fighting back against it through lobbying and protest.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:20]

and sadly, politicians need that constant force against them or the whole thing becomes fruitless.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:21]

and when you have a lot of people who don’t think it affects them and thus they need to do nothing, it leads to the attitude of people who do have the power and clout to change it feeling that there isn’t any point in changing.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:22]

If I were to be inactive on subjects that I deemed didn’t affect me then I would be sealing my own fate because I would be ignoring the start of something that has the potential to affect me in the future.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:27]

That's all well and good but "fixing" one problem won't be the end of it one problem leads to another and so on. It's a vicious cycle.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:28]

That’s why a broad front steadily pushing forward is far more effective than single issue idpol.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:29]

Its why I cannot for the fucking life of me stand tankies....

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:29]

Tankies?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:30]

economical purist communists who believe that fixing class divide will somehow solve everything else.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:30]

when in reality it doesn’t fucking work like that.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:31]

Venezuela is good example of that

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:32]

Venezuela is another USSR. They took the means of production from bosses and gave it to the state effectively becoming a new boss and forcing a state-capitalist command economy.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:34]

And yet there are people over here that want that for this Country, like Bernie Sanders for example

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:34]

And myself.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:35]

I am an ardent socialist and would prefer a state that is smaller but focuses on regulation and workers’ rights than true communism.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:35]

I don’t like the idea of state capitalism at all.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:35]

I just want a state that works for its people, not for its corporations.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:38]

So big government or small government?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:38]

Small government socialist. Right and left really don’t have the market corner on big or small government so to speak.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:40]

A government should be focusing on regulation of the institutions as well as providing security for the people within it, not regulating the people within.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:42]

However, you can't have too much regulation or it just makes the whole thing fall apart some of this sounds similar to some conservative ideals in some ways.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:44]

I personally despise the so called free market. They want to do whatever is most profitable at the expense of the people but when the lack or regulation causes destabilization and collapse they expect the state to bail them out.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:45]

Regulations prevent collapse, the lack of them causes it.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:46]

That's not a true free Market though, the government shouldn't bail out companies because they fucked up. If they fail than let them.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:47]

but that’s exactly what happens. you can’t have true anarchy capitalism because it leads to corruption and failure and far too much exploitation and instability.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:48]

The same could be said for Communism

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:49]

Only when the system is built on the state capitalist soviet model.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:51]

Nothing is ever free of Corruption, doesn't matter which system there will always be people in power to take advantage of that.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:53]

So, focusing on the minimization of that potential is key. Capitalism is clearly the weaker of the two systems.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:54]

That's a matter of opinion

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:55]

More a matter of fact than opinion.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:55]

Capitalism has boom and bust cycles. Basically, capitalism thrives of instability and the apologists for that instability.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 00:58]

And your sources?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 00:59]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:00]

If there is a failure of a system every ten years or so it’s not to be supported, it’s to be corrected.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:01]

http://247wallst.com/investing/2010/09/09/the-13-worst-recessions-depressions-and-panics-in-american-history/

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:02]

Even directly from wall street there is an admission of extreme instability within the system of capitalism.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:03]

Plus, we're still inside of a recession.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:04]

"instability is an essential part of the creative process of capitalism. Its darker side, which Minsky focused upon, was the tendency for this instability to lead to excessive debt and, ultimately, a Depression." Joseph Schumpeter.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:04]

^^Evidence that capitalism thrives off of instability and those who are its apologists.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:06]

"THE frequency and severity of financial crises suggest that they are an inevitable part of capitalism. That does not mean policymakers should give up trying to limit the damage they cause." The Economist.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:09]

Like I said too much regulations don't work but not enough also doesn't work, it's a balancing act.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:09]

Proving the severe instability within the system itself.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:11]

countries that are that unstable fail.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:11]

Governments based on capitalism lead down the road to such extreme instability.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:13]

http://www.tokyofoundation.org/en/articles/2008/global-financial-crisis-shows-inherent-instability-of-capitalism

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:13]

Another great article by The Tokyo Foundation.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:24]

I still don't communism as a viable alternative to Capitalism, and the Tokyo article does point out flaws but doesn't say Communism is inherently better.

  There will never be a perfect system though, and everyone has different opinions on this and different points of view. A hybrid system of both would be ideal but that may not happen

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:24]

True. And I agree, communism isn’t any better. its why I’m a socialist.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:28]

I see it work in a small scale, maybe at the state level or small community, but when applied to a whole country where the government is in control of everything it doesn't work.

  I'm more of a Constitutionalist if anything.

  I hope this conversation isn't making you like me less ^^;

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:30]

Well communism with a smaller government is possible. Democratic Socialists like myself and Sanders agree with a regulatory government, not an authoritarian government.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:32]

Any authoritarian government fails. Its why people like myself are so up in arms about Trump /Pence. Trump's administration has a very authoritarian stance against the people.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:32]

You know Bernie Sanders and his Wife Jane are under investigation by FBI for bank fraud, right?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:33]

True.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:33]

Another example of how a capitalist economy leads politicians corrupt.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:34]

Plus, he took money to Endorse Hillary and used it to buy another house.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:34]

Plus, under investigation doesn’t imply guilt of any kind.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:35]

And again, proof of capitalist politics causes mass corruption.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:35]

just because one person fails doesn’t mean the policies they stand for are false.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:36]

But that makes him a huge hypocrite

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:36]

Exactly.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:36]

Because of corruption brought on by existing in a capitalist system.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:37]

So, its societies fault?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:37]

Never said that, I said it was a failing of his brought on by living within a capitalist system.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:38]

Still his failing, but failings like that are far easier within a capitalist framework that leads to exploitation.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:40]

Do you support Antifa?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:41]

A) Does it matter? B) not particularly however I do understand where they are coming from and have no real problem with what they do.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:42]

So, you support terrorists?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:44]

How is Antifa a terrorist group? Antifa throws bricks through windows whilst fascists shoot up Jewish community centers and drive cars into crowds of people. You know, like the literal ISIS

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:48]

Look at what they Did at Berkley they assaulted people because they had a different opinion they nearly beat a woman to death with a flag stick and other used a back lock, plus they dress in all black and look like ISIS.

  Violence for political reasons is never justified no matter what side you are on.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:48]

So, anyone who looks like ISIS is just as bad. Got it.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:49]

What they did at Berkley wasn't good, I’ll agree to that, but it’s very difficult to have everyone within a non-hierarchical group of protesters adhere to the same rules.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:50]

it’s like saying that anyone on 4chan is a terrorist simply because a lot of people showed up at the the unite the right Nazi rally with kekistan flags.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:51]

It's a Tactic used by terrorist groups. And they are not protesters, those people are paid to do this, members of The Democratic party have admitted this.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:51]

So, because some people are paid to do fucked up shit, the whole group is a terrorist group. The "Both sides" argument is as much a crock of shit as fascism is.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:53]

Plus, by that logic, anyone who doesn’t agree with you being terrorists is incredibly regressive.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:53]

The rise of fascism in the US today is far more terrorist than a bunch of people protesting fascism.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:55]

So, these people are Fascists because they don't agree with you? How convenient. I'm using the same logic you are.

  Both groups are bad plain and simple.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:56]

No, they are fascists because they carry the confederate flag, the Nazi flag, and shout "Jews will not replace us" as they march carrying literal torches.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:57]

These are the people who stand for a white ethnostate and go around vouching for the lynching and gassing of "inferior races"

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:57]

You know, literal fucking Nazis.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 01:57]

As I said Both groups are BAD but people that don't support this hate are still called that myself included simply because I don't agree with something.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 01:59]

Are you sympathetic to the Nazi cause? the kekistan cause? The confederate causes? If not then you aren't a Nazi. If you are apologetic to them however, it does show your sympathies with their cause and their hate thus by many you would be seen as someone who does support this neo-Nazi cause.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:01]

The "both sides are bad" argument does tend to imply sympathy with the neo-Nazi cause because in its very nature, it was an argument created by the right and perpetuated by liberal centrists so that it SEEMS like logic from both sides, ignoring the fact that the fascists do want to play the victims here and thus perpetuated a lie of persecution in order to spread that narrative.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:07]

Again, not saying you are a fascist, just that it’s what many might think because of the Nazi-sympathetic tone underlying the whole of the 'both sides' argument.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:12]

The fact of the matter remains that Antifa is not in fact a terrorist organization. A few fuck ups and a riot doesn’t mean terrorist.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 02:15]

Um yes it does, but the very definition of terrorism

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:16]

by that logic, every politically motivated group that has had a period of violence is a terrorist organization.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:16]

So that means every political party and religion is a terrorist organization.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:17]

hell, by that definition the USA is a terrorist organization because of what we did throughout the cold war.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:18]

And still is a terrorist organization today because of what we do through the CIA and crimes against civilians in Afghanistan.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:22]

"the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims." bad definition for many reasons but let’s just use international law. war crimes would be considered acts of terrorism under that definition and the fact that the US government and military has committed war crimes would make the US government itself a terrorist organization.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:23]

Not even including the large amount of war crimes the US has refused to prosecute simply by the fact that it helped their cause.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:24]

Which is even more evidence to the hypothetical point that the US government is in itself classifiable as a terrorist organization by the definition provided.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 02:26]

If this country is so terrible then why not move somewhere better?

Aurora, [29.08.17 02:26]

I plan to.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:27]

Plus, the idea that the united states is the greatest country on earth is not only jingoistic in nature but deeply flawed if not flat out wrong.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 02:28]

Then why does everyone want to come here?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:28]

That’s false.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:28]

not everyone does want to come here.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:29]

Many, like myself, far prefer Europe than the united states. it only seems like everyone wants to come here because the media here portrays that.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 02:30]

Then what's stopping you?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:30]

Money really.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:31]

Again, another issue within the capitalist framework. people being unable to move to better places for them due to the cost put on moving in general.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 02:31]

Cause you to have to the earn it, nothing in this world is free.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:32]

So, anyone who is impoverished is just too lazy? I can’t even begin to start on just how wrong that argument is and how many problems come from that.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:36]

Plus, that the concept of earning is yet another part within the capitalist framework that is quite problematic. It’s as if the concept of rights is somehow foreign to capitalism.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 02:40]

Personal responsibility, only you control your actions and what you do with your money. The thing with Capitalism is that you can work your way up, from nothing to having something if you do it right. My mom started with nothing, worked Three jobs to raise me and with that hard work ethic and determination she is now head of her company. It took her 25 years but she did it. She didn't have government aid, no handouts, nothing.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 02:41]

So, everything should be just given to you?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:41]

And that’s fucked up that your mother had to struggle in three jobs to raise you. Very courageous and valiant of her but still fucked up.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:42]

Don’t have food? Lazy. Don’t have water or shelter? Lazy. Don’t have the resources to get out of the low economic area that your family has been stuck in for generations due to issues internet in society due to a myriad of issues? lazy.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 02:42]

Blame her abusive husband on that

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:43]

but the fact that she had to struggle in the first place is attributable not to the abuse, but to the fact that the system we live under is fundamentally broken.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:44]

And I’m not saying it would work but what is wrong with things being given to you?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:45]

if one needs something but doesn’t have it should they just learn to go without?

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 02:48]

But sometimes you have to struggle in life, how else with you learn, nothing is ever easy.

  Because you don't appreciate something as much as it being handed to you. I just bought a new car with my own money. That made me feel amazing because I worked my ass off to get it. I'm not saying people shouldn't get assistance but that assistance shouldn't be an absolute every single time. Just like how companies shouldn't get bail outs for making bad decisions people shouldn't get bail outs because they decided to make bad decisions.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:49]

People aren’t companies. They are living, breathing people.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 02:50]

And what do you consider a "bad decision"?

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 02:55]

But people are still responsible for their own actions, and having kids out of wedlock for example, wasting all your income in things you don't need, taking out loans you can't pay back., etc.

  And despite these companies being "evil" we are taking advantage of the things that all those companies have mad right now from the device you are using to the building you live in.

  Not all companies are bad just like not all people are bad

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:00]

well the idea that its irresponsible to have kids out of wedlock is incredibly sexist and completely ignorant that there are many women out there who are raped and forced to have kids out of wedlock because the abortion laws in many states don’t allow them to get the care they need. Wasting income is something that isn’t exactly a viable argument because it seems to assume that all people have the exact same requirements and are mindless automatons that just don’t do what they should do. A rather authoritarian standpoint given the wide variety of human beings in the world. Then there are the predatory loan companies and the desperation that many have to just make it through the week that lead to people taking out loans they can’t afford because they think that just maybe it will lead them to get ahead in life and be one of the rich when that’s just a pipedream in modern society.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:00]

Also, it ignores the many well-off people who are now in poverty because they trusted the financial institutions that eventually fucked them over.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:03]

many, many people are right now where your mother was and they will be stuck there and their kids will be stuck there and their grandchildren will be stuck there. not because they are just a bunch of lazy people but because they are living in a place where all the money has left and there is nothing for them so they are stuck having to work 3 jobs in order to just survive. It’s not because they are lazy or are bad at money management or are just bad people, it’s because they are stuck there. That is a fault of the system, not a fault of them.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:03]

The whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" seems really cool and all but in reality, it’s something that very few people have the capabilities of doing.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:04]

not because of them, but because of the system at hand.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:04]

In order to obtain something, something of equal or greater value must be lost.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:05]

That is the law of nature, of science and of the world.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:05]

Everything functions based on that rule and for many, that means they are the ones stuck with the loss just so that those who have the most can have even more.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:05]

Plus, I’d love to see your example of a "good company"

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:10]

What's funny is I don't actually see you offering any real fixes to these problems, you state what the problem is and some sugar way to fix it but no real solutions and the company I work for right now is offering relief aid to it employees that where hurt the hurricane as well as out store and bunch of other getting food, water, and other essentials to help people in Houston, Rock Port, Victoria. And a few other places.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:11]

What company is this?

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:11]

Walmart

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:12]

A company that historically has treated its workforce very poorly and profits off of child labor. Not something that some relief aid can really counter-balance.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:13]

I don't see you doing anything to help

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:13]

So just because you don’t see it, I must not be doing anything.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:13]

Got it.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:14]

Nothing is ever good enough for you, is it?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:14]

well for your information, vie donated what I can from my meager sum to relief organizations and have given blood. I'd fly down to help the on-the-ground relief effort but but I neither have the time nor money to do so.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:15]

So, you insult me by implying I’m doing nothing then when I comment on the insult its somehow "never good enough".

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:15]

A very condescending attitude to have.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:16]

Just an observation

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:16]

Sidestepping an insult by calling it an observation doesn't make it any less of an insult.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:16]

Also, you completely ignored my statement on Walmart and its business practices being bad for both the workers and suppliers of their product.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:17]

And sure, it’s far easier for a company that pays its workers shit and profits by undercutting and destroying smaller community businesses to do more for a community than single individuals doing what they can to help.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:18]

-1% of their profits vs nearly a week of my salary somehow means I’m giving less. got it.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:19]

Not to mention Walmart’s attitude in making profits by all means legal and illegal wherever they can.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:19]

Or the fact that the few times the workers have stood up for themselves by trying to form a union, it was crushed with little effort and no mercy.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:20]

Unions are corrupt

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:20]

That’s a blanket statement with no evidence.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:22]

Unions turned into Nazis in Germany

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:22]

Citation needed.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:23]

A statement that is wrought with horrid and apocryphal implications. As for solutions for capitalism? well a start would be encouraging co-ops over corporations, taxing larger corporations and using that money to fund education grants, fixing the loopholes in the current tax systems, raising the minimum wage to livable levels, changing the law to be far more pro-consumer/pro-union and pro-worker. It’s a good start on massive problem.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:24]

Obama tired that but I didn't work

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:24]

*tried

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:24]

what exactly did he try?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:25]

Not to mention welfare reform, universal healthcare, education reform, the abolishment of the whole BS "States-rights" system that has been used to justify anti-lgbt laws/Jim-crow and laws that prevent minority populations from voting.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:25]

As well as the abolishment of the electoral college.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:26]

You can’t simply make statements without any evidence or refute arguments by saying "well so and so tried and it failed so anything they tried to do didn’t work"

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:28]

I love how Ignorant and intolerant you are being to my criticism or me criticizing your criticisms of me: P

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:30]

So, having a set standard for debate makes me intolerant?

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:31]

simply requiring that you show evidence for your claims isn’t intolerance, it’s the basis for reasonable debate.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:32]

Your statement that unions are corrupt and turned into Nazis is not only founded on misconception but its blatantly false. Asking for evidence for the statement you made isn’t being bigoted, its rational and requiring you to submit evidence to your claim.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:33]

I may learn something new but being as you have consistently failed to provide evidence for that claim in itself makes the claim bunk.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:33]

I wasn't even debating you, I really don't care, I just wanted to talk to you and see how your day went, not this crap. I have been just trolling you now and watching you get so mad over nothing. Nothing you say to me over the keyboard will ever hurt or offend me, but I have to leave his fantasy world to go to work in the real world, this has been fun. Laters ;) :P

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:33]

Funny, I’m not even mad.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:34]

I believe that you believe that

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:35]

I thought that we were having an intellectual debate over serious issues in society and you turn around admitting that your trolling? I gave you the courtesy in assuming that you wanted to actually have an intellectual conversation. The fact that you saw all of these issues that I brought up as just a joke to be laughed off says far more about you than it does about me.

Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:43]

Not the issues, just you. I never said I wanted to have a debate, you just assumed that I did. I actually was trying to sleep but I made the courtesy of giving you my time, but once it was apparent that my opinion didn't really matter and you only are hearing yourself told I started just give you dumb comments to watch what you would do an say.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:43]

had I known that, I wouldn’t have engaged you.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:44]

Your opinion does matter, just that when you make claims, you have to provide evidence.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:45]

I simply assumed you wanted to have an intellectual conversation with someone you were interested in seeking a relationship with.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:48]

I actually didn't want to because I knew this would happen. It's why I wanted to talk to you.

  I'm an asshole and jerk when it comes to this stuff...at the end of the day politics are just politics, and it consumes you if you surround yourself with it. I wanted to escape that when talking to you, not be dragged right back in... I already hear it at work, and family, not with friends.

  Expect for one I know IRL, we act like assholes to each other but we are like brothers.

  I am sorry if I upset you.

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:49]

Meh. Just shows we would never work. I need someone who understands the issues and is willing to fight with me against those issues, not someone who is going to bait me and laugh and the pain and suffering of people.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:51]

That's your right as an American but I also have the right to make fun of you

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:51]

Make fun of me all you like. Its cruel, but by all means if that’s what you like to do, then do it.

  Artyom Derison, [29.08.17 03:52]

Yay!

  Aurora, [29.08.17 03:53]

It's really heartless to take joy in the suffering of others and to then make fun of them for trying to fight back against the suffering of the system they have to endure.

[alexsmitposts]

A Threatening Monster President Trump used to attack President Obama as being weak with regard to Syria for not being more ruthless in the American led war of aggression against Syria, a prelude to war with Iran; that he had drawn red lines in the sand and dared the Russians to cross. That the Russians had called his bluff and nothing happened, he said, as if the death of hundreds of thousands and destruction of entire cities are nothing. Trump bragged that when he was in power and America “was great again” Russia would be forced to dance to the American tune because, of course President Putin would respect him more, making the mistake of thinking that Vladimir Putin respects brutality and arrogance rather than good intentions and intelligence. But now, in Venezuela, Trump is in the same position as Obama, having drawn red lines in the sand only for them to be ignored by the Venezuelan government and people and by the Russians and the Chinese. In a feeble fury the American government has issued one warning after another against “Russian intervention” forgetting that Venezuela can have any friends it wants, and forgetting that the United States is not the ruler of the planet. The warnings are issued the more sternly the less effective their plans and actions become. They hope every day for the Venezuelan army to change sides. They hope their selected hand puppet Juan Guaido will somehow catch on with all the people who hate him. They hope God is on their side. They have no hope. When 100 Russian military technicians arrived in Caracas with tons of equipment last week, Trump’s national security adviser, that is, war adviser, claimed that Russian support of a popular and legitimate government to guarantee its peaceful development was “a direct threat to international peace and security in the region,” an astounding claim from a man who had just conducted an attempted armed coup against the government of Venezuela and whose boss was threatening to bombard and invade it if their economic war and sabotage was not enough to destroy the country. When he made this absurd statement Bolton echoed the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which was just as much a statement of American arrogance then as Bolton’s statements are now. The more President Maduro proves his resilience, against rising economic warfare and sabotage of the electricity grid, and other infrastructure, and the more Russia and China increase their support of the government of Venezuela, the more frustrated the Americans become. There is no indication that a big military action is planned, nevertheless the “all options are on the table” card is still being played in statements and the media. “We may not do it, but let’s scare the hell out of them anyway” is the type of psychopathic thinking we are dealing with. But the main strategy is not a direct military one. Instead they are intending to conduct a long hybrid war on Venezuela to wear the people down. Elliott Abrams, a notorious American war criminal, the State Departments’ special representative for Venezuela, whose crimes span Latin America, stated, ‘I don’t imagine that Juan Guaido is deeply worried because the Maduro regime, while it may be around in 15 days, is not going to be around in 15 years.” He threatened to cut oil sales and threatened Russia by saying “It would be a mistake for the Russians to think they have a free hand here-they don’t.” But of course they do. Russia will conduct its affairs as suits its interests and that means support of Venezuela. It is instead the Americans who are making the mistake, because it is a fact that they no longer have a free hand in the region. Trump’s opponents in the Democratic Party and their allied media, still dazed and confused about the Mueller investigation’s inability to produce any evidence at all of Trump being a Russian agent, are still calling him weak on Russia because he is not doing enough to oppose Russia. But the truth is they have tried to oppose Russia in every way at every possible opportunity, from Germany to Ukraine, to Turkey, from Syria to Venezuela, and failed at every point. Trump is the scapegoat for the real decline in American power and prestige and all they can do is fall back on their nuclear threat, to demand more nuclear weapons and fight wars they cannot pay for and cannot win in the vain hope, that somehow, just by brute force, they can regain their former power ad prestige. But they can’t because brute force is not enough to win the ultimate political objectives of the war. Power means little if everyone thinks you’re a thug. In August 2011, Obama declared that “for the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside’ Yet Obama is now history while President Assad leads his people still. It was Obama who stated “the use of chemical weapons” is a changer, and then had his proxy and special forces stage several chemical attacks to be followed by big attacks on the Syrian forces. But he was stopped every time by the skills and resistance of the Syrian, Russian and Iranian forces resisting the American aggression. Obama was accused of stepping back from decisive action, the old “stabbed in the back” claims made by the Germans to explain their defeat in World War One and used by many American to explain their defeat in Vietnam, and Trump was one of those to make that claim. But the truth was not about having the moxy to confront the Russians. It was about what the Americans knew would happen to them if they did. The Americans have suffered defeat in Syria though they still cause trouble for example for the refugees they hold hostage at the Rukban refugee camp, located in the American occupation zone at Al Tanf near the Jordanian border, where they block food and medicine from relieving the suffering of the Syrians held hostage there, and where they refused access to senior dignitaries of the UN and Red Crescent to inspect conditions in the camp. They try to cause trouble among the tribes and other groups with the few remaining forces illegally in the country, The Russians report the French and Belgian special forces are plotting to stage yet another chemical attack provocation and British lawyers, with close links to British and NATO intelligence, are attempting to have the ICC label President Assad a war criminal. These actions are planned with the USA. So Trump and his men can still cause a lot of trouble in the pain of their Syrian defeat. They have suffered another defeat in Venezuela but their war goes on. They intend to cause a lot more trouble. The Americans are going to apply, besides all types of sabotage, political and economic pressure, as well as quasi-legal actions. They think they have a strength the Russians do not have, their proximity to the regions against Russia’s distance. But again, they misjudge the situation and Russia has demonstrated that it is in the region to stay not only being able to fly in aircraft from great distances, but has expanded military training and flight schools, S300 missile battery training, and other areas of cooperation. The coup attempt failed. Guaido has failed. Sabotage and sanctions have failed. Political pressure has also failed, despite the fact that Canada led the Lima Group in support of the US aggression against Venezuela. But they do not have Mexico on their side and it is making them furious. President Obrador has proven more independent than they expected. He refused to join the Lima Group, refused to condemn Maduro, and has demanded reparations on behalf of the Mexican people from Spain and The Vatican for all their crimes committed during the colonial period. There is already talk in Washington about what actions to take against him. The Americans seem to have lost the art of making friends and know only how to make enemies for now Trump has cut aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as if he wants the entire region to be opposed to the USA and in support of the Venezuelan people. President Trump, on behalf of the United States of America, keeps drawing red lines in the sand. He has paralyzed the US government to build one along the Mexican border, a hostile act towards Mexico, he has drawn them in Ukraine, in Turkey, in Syria, in the Pacific, in Korea, and now Venezuela but the trouble with red lines is they’re never the right lines. Red lines issued by a nation that acts as a neo-colonial power are violations of international law. They are ultimatums. The peoples of the world rejected this type of aggression from militaristic, chauvinist powers at the end of World War Two when the militarism of Germany and Japan was destroyed, the United States claimed it’s role in the world was to “bring democracy,” the United Nations was formed. A Charter was adopted, to which they agreed, which makes everything the USA is doing a crime against peace. We don’t need more red lines, we need the leaders of the American state to read and understand and adhere to the lines written in the Charter of the United Nations, to join the society of nations that wants to live in peace and respect with each other, instead of standing outside the society of nations; a threatening monster everyone fears.

[realdonaldtrumpet-blog]

Ok the problem with illegal immigration is not the jobs the people who say it is are stupid the problem is this. I, and many other people, immigrated legally. We went through naturalization and took the test and did it lawfully. The illegals broke the law. They're criminals because they broke the law it's illegal to enter illegally it's that simple. It's just upsetting when I reminisce upon studying for hours and hours, getting a sponsor, when these people can just walk right in, no problem.

What I was trying to get across was to not just put the blame on illegals for taking peoples jobs, something they’re accused of a lot of the time by many, MANY conservatives. The main point was that there are people in the US that fuel this and yet nothing, NOTHING happens to them. If we punished the entrepreneurs that hire the illegals, wouldn’t that help deter many businesses from hiring illegals? I’m gonna go more in-depth with this later, so please read all of this.

 I understand what you’re saying but since you know the extensive, difficult, and tiresome process, why not help make citizenship easier and be forgiving? What about those that have been here for like 5, 10 years? That have worked for a job extremely hard, just as hard as you for studying, and have actually planted a life here? I understand they didn’t go through the legal process but they have put in a lot of work as well, just as much as you have. IDK how long it took you to get your citizenship but if they’ve been working for 5+ years, shouldn’t they too deserve citizenship, even legally like you wish?

The NY Times states that 60% undocumented illegal immigrants have been here for 10+ years as of 2012. If they have abided by the laws (besides illegally crossing over), been productive, work hard, and if they have been here for that 10+ [years], already having a life here in the US, why not, instead of just pushing them out, accept them? A very small percentage have committed felonies or misdemeanors. To even please many immigrants like you who dislike those who are illegal because of the extensive, difficult process you unfortunately had to go through, why not help them become legal? Provide them the education to have the ability to take the test. There are illegals around where I live who work extremely hard, do nothing wrong, and have been here for about 5 years that I know of. They deserve at least the ability to try and get citizenship but they know that if they go out and try, they could get caught and be deported to just try and get citizenship.

The NY times also informed that “A partial government estimate released last year said that 416,500 people whose business or tourist visas had expired in 2015 were still in the country in 2016.” So they overstayed their visa, they’re used to living in the US and working here (or owning a business), they’re doomed to stay since they could be deported, and they’re doomed if they go back because then they’d have to find another job, re-comfort back to the same living, and potentially face the dangerous and violent situation of their country. IDK what your living was like but hearing a few of the examples the NYT shared, which I will post a story below the link, I wouldn’t want to go back either or I’d much rather continue the life I’ve started in the US. I’d rather show them some hospitality and help them become citizens.

Now, back to the idea of punishing businesses: Georgia passed a law that made illegal immigration harder and even punished businesses with illegals, and that hurt them significantly. Most people don’t want those jobs since they’re low paying plus they involve much physical work. Illegals will take it up. This example, even tho it was back in 2012, still is a good example of how much illegals are apart of our economy and actual life since we need food. We really can’t afford losing them, especially since the Business Insider shows data results that more than half of the illegal immigrants work as a farm worker, maintenance, or construction. If we would legalize them, we wouldn’t have to find more help from the already showing denial of Americans wanting to work in those fields (quite literally at the same time). 

The attitude of “Since I had it hard to become legal, they should too!” is much like the older people today with us younger people. Instead of forcing others to go through that pain like you did, which I bet you they have gone through a lot of pain as well, why not be sympathetic, forgiving, or even caring, and make their process easier? Why not show sympathy (or empathy for some) and help them out, without them having the fear of losing their life here, going back to a worse, possibly deadly, situation, leaving family behind here in the US, and ultimately, not showing them basic human rights.

They’re people too. Desperate people. Desperate people that need help. And we should help them, whether you’ve been through the “legal” process, been pardoned, or are a natural born US citizen, we should help aid them to become legal instead of deporting them.

If you’d like to talk to me personally please message me. I will not, nor ever, expose someone’s name for having an opinion whether you agree or disagree with me. I understand why you went Anon here. I’d appreciate hearing your story, your passion, and your experience through the legal process and everything you’ve been through.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/06/us/politics/undocumented-illegal-immigrants.html - The NYT cites their sources, that’s why I’m using this one source as it has many in the article.

“After the expiration of the tourist visa that Rebeca, a former television reporter from Venezuela, used to enter the United States, she found work as a nanny, then got a job as a designer at a clothing business in Southern California. Rebeca, now 30, said she had left Venezuela after being attacked and receiving death threats for protesting against the government after the death of Hugo Chávez.” (I’m sure there are many other stories much like her’s)

Edit: [years] replaced “decades” as “10+ decades” was incorrect

[newsfundastuff]

More than 57,000 asylum seekers have been forced to wait for their court hearings in Mexican border towns – some of the most violent places on EarthAlex Guevara weeps as he describes the five-month odyssey that brought his family from Venezuela to a diner just metres from the United States border – and the uncertainty and danger that lie ahead.It was June when Guevara and his family fled on foot into Colombia, carrying nothing but a Bible and a worthless Venezuelan coin to remind them of their homeland..“It was life or death – either we left or we left,” Guevara’s wife, Andrea, said of the persecution they had suffered because of ties to the opposition movement trying to force Nicolás Maduro from power.From Medellín, the couple flew to Cancún with their two young children before traveling overland to one of the most dangerous stretches of the US-Mexico border and crossing the Rio Grande in a rubber dinghy.When border guards detained them on US soil, the Guevaras thought their ordeal was nearly over.But, rather than being allowed to stay in the US while they sought asylum, they were separated and spent a fortnight in detention before being released into one of Mexico’s most notorious border towns in the dead of night.“Wow, that was a low blow,” said Andrea. “After all the trauma and everything we had been through in our country … we found ourselves in the mouth of another wolf.”The Guevaras – who asked for their real names not to be used – are among more than 57,000 people who have been forced back into Mexico this year by an innocuously named immigration policy that activists consider one of the cruellest and most ruthlessly efficient strands of Donald Trump’s anti-migration crusade.Unveiled in January, the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) project, or Remain in Mexico as it is better known, stipulates that asylum seekers must wait for their court hearings in Mexican border towns – several of which count among the most violent places on Earth.Even when they do reach court after months of waiting, only a tiny proportion of applicants succeed. Research by academics at Syracuse University found that only 11 out of nearly 10,000 asylum requests were granted in the first nine months of this year.“It’s just a chicken-shit administrative way of not letting people legally seek asylum,” said Kelly Overton, whose NGO, Border Kindness, helps the policy’s victims in Mexicali, one of six border cities involved in the scheme alongside Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros.“The majority of people are fleeing something – whether that’s an immediate threat of violence, [or] a guaranteed life of poverty and despair for their children. They are doing this for a reason,” Overton said.“And it is shameful how the United States is responding. It is devastating.”Overton, whose group buses asylum seekers to hearings in the US, said the human consequences of the policy were twofold.Many of those sent back, convinced they stood no chance of being legally admitted to the US, were risking their lives by returning to Central American countries suffering some of the world’s highest murder rates. “Some of the people we have helped this year that have gone back will be dead by next year,” Overton said.Those who chose to wait it out, meanwhile, were exposed to con artists and kidnappers who preyed on those whose accents or clothes marked them out as outsiders.Earlier this month the advocacy group Human Rights First accused the Trump administration of exposing asylum seekers to “life-threatening dangers” after documenting 636 cases of kidnapping, rape, torture, assault and other violent attacks against those returned to Mexico.Victims included a nine-year-old disabled girl and her mother who were kidnapped and raped after being sent back to Tijuana.In Nuevo Laredo, which is located in a Mexican state the US considers as dangerous as Iraq and Syria, 197 kidnappings have already been recorded, including of a seven-year-old Honduran girl.Human Rights First researcher Kennji Kizuka said he suspected such perils were actually part of Trump’s plan. Exposure to hostile environments was designed to “scare people out of remaining and waiting for their immigration proceedings” and thus reduce migration.Terrifying stories of violence and exploitation are easy to encounter in towns such as Mexicali.A Cuban woman told of how armed men had forced her into a car in broad daylight at the start of a terrifying four-day abduction during which she was deprived of food and water.“They took everything – our money, our clothes, everything,” said the woman, who had also fled her country for political reasons.“Thank God we managed to escape and we’re alive to tell the story – not everyone is so lucky.”A Honduran woman, who also asked not to be named, said she had not left the shelter where she was living since being approached by a gang of pornographers offering her $50 to pose for naked photographs.“I’m scared – really, really scared,” she said.The Guevaras, whose home is now a cramped flat on Mexicali’s outskirts, said they also lived in constant fear, speaking quietly in public to hide their distinctive Venezuelan accents and hardly venturing outside.“People say to us: ‘Be careful. Don’t go out on the streets. Don’t leave the kids on their own,’” Andrea said. “You never know who you are dealing with here.”Her husband insisted they could not return to Venezuela. “But Mexico is almost as dangerous.”Remain in Mexico is part of a wider set of anti-immigration initiatives created since Trump took office in 2017, including an asylum ban targeting Central American migrants, a dramatic reduction of refugee resettlements and a highly controversial family separation policy scrapped after a global outcry.Margaret Cargioli, a San Diego-based immigration lawyer, called the policy part of “an astonishing anti-migrant machine” designed to repel outsiders.“All of the measures, fundamentally, are racist and xenophobic policies,” Cargioli said. “It’s very planned out, it’s very deliberate.”Trump defends the moves as intended to protect the US from “bad hombres”, “thugs” and “animals”.But in Mexicali the Guardian found mostly desperate young families forced from their homes by situations far beyond their control.In a dingy abandoned cinema converted into a migrant flophouse, Norma Quevedo said crime and deprivation had compelled her to flee Guatemala City with her five-year-old son, Antonio.“The truth is we want a better future for our children … so we decided to risk it all,” said the 30-year-old single mother.In another shelter Leonela Cabrera Martínez, a Honduran mother-of-three, said she was trying to outrun gangsters who targeted her family for failing to pay “rent”.“They killed one of my brothers. That’s why we came,” said Cabrera, who was with three daughters aged 10, six and three.“I can’t go back,” Cabrera insisted. “If I could go back, I would. But I can’t.”On a recent afternoon the shelter welcomed its latest guests: a 42-year-old asylum seeker called Santo Catalino López Velásquez who had been returned from the US just hours earlier after a 36-hour stint in the freezing hielera (icebox) detention centre with his wife, Fidelia Jaqueline García Álvarez, and their baby daughter and toddler son.Like nearly every other migrant interviewed for this story López shed tears that spoke of overwhelming emotional exhaustion as he told his story.In March, land-grabbers in southern Honduras had threatened to kill him if he failed to surrender his small farm. In April they torched his home. Days later López fled, stowing away inside lorries all the way to the US border with his wife and children.Penniless and still dazed from the ordeal, López said he had no idea how he would support his family as he remained in Mexico – let alone attend their court hearing 130 miles away in San Diego.“We haven’t got a single peso,” he admitted. “Nada.”But like many of those now stuck in border limbo, López was sure of one thing.“There’s no way we can go back – we’ll be killed,” he said, breaking down as he spoke. “I cannot go back.”Additional reporting by Jordi Lebrija

https://ift.tt/2ZaNH8s

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/china-bolivia-and-venezuela/

China, Bolivia and Venezuela are proof that social democracy cannot thrive in the global capitalist order

By Jeff J. Brown for Ooduarere via The Saker Blog

Crosslinked with:

https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2019/11/16/china-bolivia-and-venezuela-are-proof-that-social-democracy-cannot-thrive-in-the-global-capitalist-system-china-rising-radio-sinoland-191116/

https://youtu.be/ngJxuqdZ8SI

https://soundcloud.com/44-days/china-bolivia-and-venezuela-prove-that-social-democracy-cant-thrive-in-the-global-capitalist-order

Pictured above: The US orchestrated coup in Bolivia is being led by White supremist, fascist, Christian fundamentalists, just the type of jackbooted brown shirts the West loves, in order to plunder and rape countries around the world. Washington, London and Paris put fascists and mass murderers in power, because they make Wall Street billions in criminal blood money. Pictured center above is one of their psychopathic henchmen, Luis Fernando Camacho, giving a Nazi salute and wearing the Nazi Iron Cross. Notice Jesus Christ is portrayed on the flag on the right. Racist inspired blood is going to flood the Native streets of Bolivia. Read this article and get goosebumps of revulsion (https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-foreign-support-fernando-camacho/).

The US-orchestrated, fascist, racist overthrow of the popularly elected socialist government in Bolivia is depressing, but not surprising (https://www.rt.com/op-ed/473181-morales-bolivia-american-coup/). As a tweet shown in this article says, it’s nothing new, as this is US coup #5 in Bolivia,

1952, 1964, 1970, 1980, 2019. Brought to you by the Bolivian oligarchy and the CIA.

Western and White Supremist Bolivian capitalists will now plunge it into another Libya, while exterminating uncounted thousands of Native Americans (https://www.rt.com/news/473494-putin-bolivia-morales-libya/), as Russian President Vladimir Putin is already warning.

Before 2006, Bolivians, like most peoples of Central and South America, were sodomized, plundered, exterminated, enslaved (mostly) Natives, watching helplessly as their natural and human resources enriched the local White elite 1% (ongoing colonial, European family lines, who started settling in the 15th century), Washington, London and Paris. In the last 13 years, Native President Evo Morales’ socialist administration has reduced extreme poverty from 38% to 15%, and overall poverty from 60% to 35% (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/07/how-a-populist-president-helped-bolivias-poor-but-built-himself-a-palace) Socialism shrank the GINI index by an eyepopping 19% and tripled the median household income, something poorer and poorer Euranglolanders can only dream about. (https://www.thenation.com/article/economics-socialism-bolivia-evo/). Until this week, the economy was the fastest growing in the region, averaging over 4% a year (https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/BOL/bolivia/gdp-growth-rate). This will all be stolen back now, post-capitalist coup.

How did this happen? They nationalized key sectors of the economy (stolen land, oil, gas, copper, lithium) and began processing their mineral wealth into value added exports, as explained by deposed Morales here (https://www.rt.com/news/473353-evo-morales-imf-exports-oas/). This money was plowed back into infrastructure (schools, hospitals, rural roads) and social services (health care, education and retirement pensions) to improve the quality of life for the 99%, at the expense of the 1%. They did it without being plundered by IMF-World Bank gangster banksters and their corrupt loans that enrich Wall Street and each country’s local elites. Read John Perkin’s book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which he is now offering for free (https://www.academia.edu/7614432/John_Perkins_Economic_Hit_Man_Summary_of_Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man_About_John_Perkins_Author_of_Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man). You can see how the global elite destroy entire economies to starve and exterminate millions of mostly dark-skinned poor, in order to plunder trillions of dollars in assets. Another scathing exposé of how Western elites legally rape the weak, in the guise of the “Liberal World Order” is Paul Blustein’s And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out), which was being replayed again by Argentina’s neoliberal ex-president Mauricio Macri (https://www.gettextbooks.com/isbn/9781586483814/). More about this snake in a suit below.

Postwar, all of this shows how the transfer of trillions of dollars of human and natural capital are extracted and exploited by Eurangloland, so their poorer and poorer citizens can borrow printed money to buy Huawei/Apple mobile phones, Haier appliances and Lenovo/Dell computers on credit, all manufactured in communist-socialist China, while their elite owners become even bigger trillionaires and billionaires. When the current Western capitalist hyperbubble implodes in the near future, these same citizens will be driven even further into lower standards of living, but not communist-socialist Chinese, North Koreans, Laos, Vietnamese, Cubans, Eritreans and Iranians.

This brings us to the crux of my article. Western Europe, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Mozambique, Angola and all other countries that practice social democracy simply cannot thrive in the global capitalist order, without one key ingredient, and it may not be what you think.

Yes, you can nationalize core industries and second, repatriate stolen land to build agriculture, infrastructure, development and industrialization. The prior was done by Europe and every other social democracy after World War II. The latter was done by China, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and many others, or former Soviet states like the “Stans” and Belarus, which just kept the land in public hands.

Today, after 75 years of relentless Big Lie Propaganda and neoliberal treachery, almost all of Europe’s key industries have been de-nationalized and much of its public assets have been privatized for profit, in the name of “free market” dogma.

So, land and industry are not enough. Even being armed to the teeth, like Venezuelans is not enough. The US and Europe cannot invade or overthrow the people’s will there, like they do most everywhere else, Bolivia being a prime example. If NATO tried to go in, it would get its butt whipped by many thousands of neighborhood militias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colectivo_(Venezuela) ). When friends like Rory Hall at The Daily Coin (https://thedailycoin.org/) ardently support gun rights in the United States, I can see his point. Because Venezuela is locked and loaded, it is successfully drawing a line in the geopolitical sands. This is thanks to murdered former president Hugo Chavez (https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/03/14/murder-chavez-cia-and-dea-cover-their-tracks/), who understood Mao Zedong’s rejoinder that revolution must be defended by the barrel of a gun. Thus, Venezuelans will not be occupied by NATO.

But, the West is killing and starving tens of thousands of Venezuelans every year with genocidal economic sanctions and stealing billions of dollars in overseas assets. Sanctions and piracy are nothing more than warfare and crimes against humanity, making a mockery of the United Nations charter.

So, how can social democracies thrive in the face of global capitalist terrorism? The secret to survive and hopefully thrive is to nationalize the media. Venezuela’s media is owned by the same White supremist local elites who are destroying the country, with the help of the CIA and its thousands of faux NGOs. Ditto Bolivia (https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/bolivia-created-over-four-thousand-accounts-to-legitimize-coup-20191113-0011.html). We can see the suffering, slaughter and chaos, as a result.

The following story illustrates the point. When neoliberal thug Macri got elected president of Argentina in 2015, only to destroy the economy with tens of billions of corrupt IMF-World Bank loans that went straight into his and the local elites’ pockets, and on to Wall Street, I asked my friend, Moti Nissani (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/search/?q=moti%20nissani), who lives there, how the people could be duped into voting for such a blatant gangster.

This, after 10 years of socialist success, turning the economy around for the 99% and paying off billions of 1990s IMF-World Bank theft. My friend told me Argentina’s national media is owned lock, stock and barrel by the elites and it proved once again that Big Lie propaganda works. Tell lie after lie long enough, over and over, and people will accept it as reality, regardless of the facts and proof in their daily lives. Argentina’s elites vomited anti-socialist, pro-neoliberal Western Big Lie Propaganda on the masses and after ten years of being brainwashed, they elected to commit collective socioeconomic suicide.

Socialists just won to replace Macri, and like after the 1990s, will again be stuck fixing Wall Street’s gang bang in the making. But Washington, London and Paris will do everything possible to destroy them, while the local elite media will crank up the Big Lie Propaganda Machine (BLPM) into hyperdrive, to do the same.

This is why Hugo Chavez created the Pan-American, state owned media company, TeleSUR (https://www.telesurenglish.net/index.html). The problem is, with Latin America’s media being owned by gangster elites, they can exclude it in their TV programming and censor it in their press and on the internet.

The only countries hanging on, in a world of global capitalist pain, are the ones that openly tell their people they own and manage the media via the state, in the interest of social harmony, economic prosperity and to protect the nation from Eurangloland’s nonstop sabotage. This includes China, North Korea, Laos (where my wife and I just spent a few days and really enjoyed it), Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, Eritrea and I suspect most of the former Soviet republics. They all obviously know these famous quotes by heart…

Former CIA director William Casey famously said,

We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.

Ex-CIA director William Colby spoke the truth too,

The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.

Carl Bernstein was told by a high-ranking CIA officer,

One journalist is worth twenty agents [spies in the field].

I used these three quotes when writing The China Trilogy (see below). They and all my research prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the West has a very highly orchestrated press and tightly censored media, just like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley predicted. Another book I quoted in The China Trilogy is Edward Bernays’ Propaganda (easy to download for free online), where he truthfully stated,

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of… We are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Can it be any clearer than that, my dear Euranglolanders? Yet most of my fellow Westerners will go to the mat that they have “free press” and “liberty”. It’s a cruel mirage. When the 1% controls the media, the elites can turn the people into zombified sheeple, enriching themselves with Orwellian perpetual war, while keeping the masses entertained to death. Sheldon Wolin called this inverted totalitarianism, something I’ve also included in my books, because clueless citizens cannot recognize or admit the truth slapping them in the face. His book, Democracy Inc. is an essential primer to understand the simulacrum world Westerners live in (https://www.gettextbooks.com/isbn/9780691135663/).

Edward Bernays simply took the Nazi Big Lie playbook, then called it “publicity” and “public relations”. The CIA-Western corporate media adopted it very successfully to brainwash unsuspecting billions around the world – but not in China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Eritrea and former Soviet republics.

In my interview with James Bradley, he said that Western media is state managed and controlled (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/04/06/james-bradley-tells-it-like-it-is-on-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180406/), namely by the CIA, NSA, the Departments of Defense and State. Douglas Valentine said the same thing in our discussion (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2019/07/02/douglas-valentine-on-china-rising-radio-sinoland-the-cia-is-global-capitalisms-secret-gangster-army-190702/). Hell, the CIA owns and finances (with its global heroin and cocaine empire) billions of dollars in media companies and outlets around the world. How can we expect anything differently (https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cia-and-the-media-50-facts-the-world-needs-to-know/5471956)?

France’s Yellow Vests notwithstanding (no surprise – whose continuing protests in the thousands have been completely flushed down the West’s Orwellian Memory Hole, https://thesaker.is/?s=Ramin+Mazaheri+Yellow+Vests), Eurangloland is a lost cause, but any other country that does not want to be raped and plundered by gangster bankster Wall Street, invaded and occupied by NATO and have their people exterminated and starved, needs to nationalize its media 100%, like China, Iran and elsewhere. Otherwise, the devolution into a neoliberal, police state hellhole, like Eurangloland, or color revolution chaos, butchery and theft, like much of Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Ukraine and too many others to count, is all but guaranteed.

The other policy they need to adopt is a strong NGO control law, like Russia, China and India have done (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2016/04/30/baba-beijing-lowers-the-communist-boom-on-foreign-ngos-china-rising-radio-sinoland-16-4-30/). Some NGOs do good work, but too many are nothing more than color revolution shell fronts for the CIA-media complex to destroy countries from the inside. Today’s Western destruction of Hong Kong is a prime example (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2019/07/08/confucius-laozi-and-buddha-are-humbly-winning-against-the-imperial-west-in-troubled-hong-kong-china-rising-radio-sinoland-190708/ and https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2019/07/20/wests-hong-kong-color-revolution-still-making-a-mess-of-the-place-and-totally-backfiring-china-rising-radio-sinoland-190720/).

In closing, the one exception to this is Russia, which does not have 100% nationalized media. However, for economic prosperity, social harmony and to protect the people from Western sabotage, the government works hard to control and censor destabilizing (fake) news, as this article shows (https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/tech-giant-censorship/), staying on top of Twitter, Google and Facebook propaganda.

Russia is a social democracy, with a large, successful people owned industrial sector and many social services for the 99% from the Soviet era. But, unlike Bolivia and Ukraine, it is avoiding the West’s color revolution poison pill, because since 1999, Russia has gone from strength to strength, under the inspired leadership of patriotic President Vladimir Putin. But like all social democracies, the problem is what happens if another Western whore Boris Yeltsin succeeds Putin, and returns Russia to its dystopian Wall Street rape of the 1990s? Then what? It only took Macri four short years to bring Argentina back onto its groveling knees. Without a 100% nationalized media, Russians had better be demanding that Putin & Russian Patriots Inc. work overtime to censor all the Western overthrow garbage that is put in Cyrillic ink and on the airwaves.

I would love to hear what my good friend Andrei Raevsky thinks about this at The Saker (http://thesaker.is/), because let’s be honest: without China’s, Russia’s and Iran’s continued anti-imperial independence and socialist success into the 21st century, humanity can kiss its ass goodbye!

###

Jeff J. Brown is the author of The China Trilogy (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/06/30/praise-for-the-china-trilogy-the-votes-are-in-it-r-o-c-k-s-what-are-you-waiting-for/), blogs and podcasts at www.chinarising.puntopress.com. His forthcoming book, Faster than a Speeding Bullet – the Chinese People’s Unstoppable Socialist Dream for Global Leadership into the 22nd Century, will be released in 2021.

Creative Commons: This article by Jeff J. Brown is available for re-publication free of charge under Creative Commons. It may be translated into any language and republished anywhere in the world. Editing is permitted of the article(s). You may edit my article(s) and bio to correct spelling, grammar, word usage and any misstatement of facts.

You may change any wording that may be culturally offensive or inappropriate to the reading audience. You may change the title of my article(s) and you may edit them to fit the desired space and word length preferred by your publication.

If you edit and publish my article(s) the only request is that the intended meaning in my article(s) not be changed or taken out of context. You may use the suggested graphics, which to the best of my knowledge are available free under Creative Commons, but I cannot guarantee that they may be used without the permission of their creator and/or owner. You may select your own choice of graphics, pictures and /and or videos (or none) that complement the intended meaning of my article. Please share and distribute this article widely. My contact email is jeff@brownlanglois.com.

[gyrlversion]

Dangerous extremists’ Corbyn and McDonnell are fooling the country

Theresa May has performed a miracle. Her imploding premiership has allowed Jeremy Corbyn to undertake a skilful make-over. 

Over the past days, the bedraggled Marxist fanatic has been morphing into an elegant statesman smoothly preaching goodwill to end the Brexit crisis.

If the Government’s meltdown continues and Corbyn’s astute transformation gains traction, Britain faces the prospect of sleepwalking into disaster – heralding the most extreme Left-wing government in the nation’s history. 

Overnight, as John McDonnell has promised, Corbyn and his comrades would ‘irreversibly’ change the country – soaking the middle classes, punishing business and opening Britain’s doors to unlimited immigration.

These two men could be leading the country if the Government’s disastrous management of Brexit continues

In contrast to May’s sinking Government, Corbyn and McDonnell have in the past week presented themselves as the reasonable leaders of a united party, despite Labour’s own bitter divisions.

Dressed in his new uniform – blue suit, white shirt and red tie – Corbyn offers compromise while McDonnell utters platitudinous concern in a bank manager’s honey-toned voice. 

‘Put aside politics,’ McDonnell said last week on BBC radio – even though in reality he thinks about nothing else.

Their latest disguise is dangerously convincing. Listening to them now, few could imagine how Corbyn and McDonnell have plotted all their lives – through purges, plots and coups – for the chance to seize power.

Alarmingly, amid the aggressive politics unleashed by politicians on both sides of Brexit, Corbyn has positioned himself above the toxic atmosphere. In the Commons and in soft TV interviews, he presents himself as the moderate candidate to be Britain’s next Prime Minister. 

Cleverly, he camouflages the menace of his extremist policies – a far, far bigger threat to Britain than any No Deal Brexit.

Mistakenly, many Tories delude themselves that Corbyn’s popularity ratings are so low that he could not win a General Election and is therefore a manageable risk. 

They could hardly be more wrong. A Survation poll published yesterday, for example, puts Labour four percentage points ahead of the Conservatives.

And no one should underestimate the Queen’s position if the Government disintegrated and the Tory party disagreed about a new leader and the next Prime Minister – all of which now seem extremely possible. 

In that hiatus, the Queen might be obliged to ask Corbyn to form another minority government and he would immediately call for an Election – one in which many disillusioned voters would grasp the appeal of a man promising respite from dishonest politicians.

Many Tories do not see Jeremy Corbyn as a serious risk to their Government, but they could hardly be more wrong

Posing as Mr Reasonable, Corbyn would offer a compassionate vision of relief from austerity and cut-throat capitalism, the construction of millions of new homes, huge wage rises for public servants and the abolition of student loans. 

Pitifully, the Tories would be incapable of campaigning to save the country from Corbyn’s other agenda – mass nationalisation, confiscation of private property, legalised squatting, open borders and crippling tax increases propelling an exodus of wealth creators and talent. 

Eighteen months ago, I realised the danger of Corbyn’s cultivated ‘good bloke’ image. Anticipating the Brexit crisis, I set out to discover whether his authorised biography was true. 

After all, nothing is more important than establishing the character and honesty of a future prime minister.

My resulting book – Dangerous Hero, serialised in The Mail on Sunday – tarnished Corbyn’s halo, revealing how he had deliberately lied about his past. 

Dangerous Hero shows how Corbyn deliberately lied about his past

Among the most serious lies was the missing seven months in his youth. Corbyn has always said that he spent two years as a volunteer teacher in Jamaica in the late 1960s.

I discovered that he had left the island after 15 months and gone to Guyana, a centre of Marxist agitation across South America. 

During that period, Corbyn became a communist and embarked on his voyage of supporting violent and anti-Semitic groups.

Another lie was his claim that the break-up of his second marriage in 1996 was due to a disagreement about the private education of a son. 

In fact, Claudia Bracchitta left him because he had neglected his family and was utterly incompetent with his money.

A third lie was his claim never to resort to personal abuse. Innumerable members of the Labour Party in Hornsey and fellow councillors in Haringey described the hostile language, purges and persecution orchestrated by Corbyn against them during the 1970s. A fourth lie was his claim to be a pacifist. 

In truth, Corbyn has supported a succession of brutal terrorists in Africa, South America and especially the virulently anti-Semitic Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East. And of course, he worshipped the IRA.

Then there are the persistent allegations of anti-Semitism – of which his backing for a vile mural caricaturing Jewish bankers and his warning that Jews need to understand British irony are just two of countless supporting examples.

Naturally after Dangerous Hero was published, the Corbynistas at large unleashed a wave of lies and abuse against me – identical to the smears hurled at Luciana Berger and other Labour MPs who resigned from their party not least because Corbyn failed to protect them from his supporters’ hostility.

Long ago, the team of conspirators in Corbyn’s office recognised the opportunity offered by the Tory’s civil war. 

Diligently, they stoked the internecine flames. Only belatedly did they recognise one obstacle to success – anti-Semitism. A torrent of ugly revelations has provoked a crisis serious enough to damage Labour’s election chances.

Corbyn has supported a succession of brutal terrorists in Africa, South America and especially the virulently anti-Semitic Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East

So Corbyn’s office will have been delighted to see the London-based Middle East Eye, which some have claimed is a pro-Hamas ‘news’ group and which is financed according to the Saudis by Qatar, publishing an attack on my book.

Peter Oborne, the author of the attack, is on record as being an admirer of Corbyn. In 2015, Oborne wrote that he was ‘cheering for Corbyn… a hero of democracy’. Corbyn, Oborne assured his readers, would not ‘jeopardise our national security’ and ‘brings a welcome integrity back to the heart of our politics’.

Oborne acknowledged he called Corbyn’s office for information for his attack and posed 16 questions to me for Middle East Eye, including about my reference to Naz Shah, the Labour MP who applauded the idea of Israel being ‘transported’ to America. 

He ignored that Shah had written ‘problem solved’ about such a transport ‘solution’, and posted ‘#ApartheidIsrael’ above the words ‘never forget that everything Hitler did was legal’.

Corbyn had initially appeared to equivocate over Shah’s anti-Semitism when it was exposed in 2016. 

Indeed, he appeared to show some sympathy for her. Echoing his Marxist advisers, such as spin doctor Seumas Milne, Corbyn seems to show solidarity with those who believe that Jews have been engaged for centuries in a global conspiracy to exploit the oppressed. 

Spin doctor Seumas Milne has been instrumental behind the scenes of Corbyn’s plot for power

Wall Street, Labour’s anti-Semites argue, is a plot to steal the workers’ wealth – led by Jewish bankers.

Importantly, that is the reason why Labour’s anti-Semitism is not just about Jews. In the wider picture, their prejudice fires their dream to ‘irreversibly’ change Britain. 

As prime minister, Corbyn has pledged, he would decimate the City and the private ownership of property.

Fulfilling his dream to create a communist society, he would follow the ambitions of his hero, Hugo Chavez, the architect of Venezuela’s self-destruction. Rather than Britain being a country of equal opportunity, he would strive for equality of poverty.

Perhaps the most distressing aspect of the Tory civil war is that the battle of ideologies between the virtues of capitalism and the horrors of communism has been buried.

The most effective Tory allegation against Corbyn remains Amber Rudd’s swipe in a TV debate prior to the 2017 Election. ‘We have to stop thinking there’s a magic money tree,’ she said – hardly a killer blow.

In the days ahead, as Corbyn and McDonnell speak about ‘compromise’, Britons would do well to recall Vladimir Lenin’s sermon that any capitalist’s civil war should be exploited to ‘crush democracy’ and, in its bid to create a genuinely revolutionary state, the leaders’ objective should be to ‘put an end to compromise’.

Britain’s fate is imperilled. Serious politicians need to stop their self-indulgence and join the battle against a group of determined revolutionaries.

The post Dangerous extremists’ Corbyn and McDonnell are fooling the country appeared first on Gyrlversion.

from WordPress https://www.gyrlversion.net/dangerous-extremists-corbyn-and-mcdonnell-are-fooling-the-country/

[sjohnson24]

Censorship In Old and New Media

In many countries, writing the truth can get you thrown in prison, tortured, or killed. In America the powers that be have better methods: they marginalize you, or threaten you with lawsuits until you quit.

Censorship is usually subtle and personalized in the United States. The control of the hearts and minds of a people has been achieved through the internalization of cultural, commercial and patriotic propaganda. It isn’t just Fox News that hews the line. The media is designed, like everything else in this country, for consumption.

My first experience with blatant censorship occurred with the Chico Enterprise-Record. When I moved to town in the mid-90’s, I landed a contemplative and philosophical column in the local paper, the ‘E-R.’ There was one condition, which I should not have agreed to (though I would not have gotten the column if I had not): I would not write about politics.

Over three years I built a strong readership across economic, educational and ethnic lines in this college town, and received letters every week to my post office box, the vast majority positive. (Email was still fairly new, and secondary.)

Readers would often say, “I can’t believe that column is in the E-R.” In a liberal town, the E-R was scorned as conservative paper with Christian fundamentalist leanings. So I made sure that my editor had ample evidence that my column was being widely read. But I knew I was skating on thin ice.

Though it seems like ancient history now, in the late 90’s, a scathing report came out about the corrupt “Food for Oil” program in Iraq. It was supposed to prevent starvation and needless medically related deaths, but in fact thousands of children and women a month continued to perish under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, and the US economic sanctions since the first Gulf war.

(Sound familiar? The same basic pattern is being repeated in Venezuela now, with a diabolical combination of long-term economic sanctions by the US, and mafia-like corruption by the Maduro regime, causing mass starvation.)

Since the American in charge of the program had quit in protest, going public with the entire scam, I thought it was safe to write about the Food-for-Oil program. But when the paper came out, my column wasn’t there. When I called my editor, she said I had violated our agreement by writing about politics. “Contemplations” was cut soon after, also without notification.

Perhaps some higher intelligence was at work, because I found other outlets for my work–in New Zealand, Europe, even Saudi Arabia and Tanzania (the Saudi site last a few years, but the Arusha Times published my column for 18 years, until the paper went under a few years ago.) And I wrote often about politics.

Fast-forward to recent weeks, when the Costa Rican site for ‘Meditations’ was threatened with a lawsuit for a column I wrote entitled, “What Is Apple Up To?” The warning of legal action was put in purely personal terms, as “libelous,” though a friend offered the information, I hadn’t used her daughter’s name, and I cast her in a positive light.

Why was the largest company in the world be threatened by an obscure column of an obscure writer publishing in a Central American country? It’s a testimony to the power of the individual and the Internet in our age. I thought I was ‘flying below the radar,’ but the online radar picks up everything, and no one and nothing escapes the Net.

As Jeff Bezos said, “If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?” The threat of a lawsuit by a huge company to suppress questions I was asking, under the guise of groundless libel, is an ugly and harmful thing that gives a lie to the blather of transparency in America.

When individuals and corporations behave in this way, we should not be surprised that our political discourse has become so toxic. Americans are taught from childhood that they create reality. Why should we be surprised that we have a president that believes the truth is whatever he says it is?

The larger issue is the power that huge, transnational companies have over our lives, a fact that they assiduously conceal and camouflage. The MSM talks endlessly about ‘truth,’ but truth to them means acceptable and respectable lines of thinking. They are motivated by a desperate need to uphold the status quo.

There are two completely different kinds of power. One kind rests on fear and force, coercion and control, propaganda and conditioning.

The other kind flows from questioning, insight and the passion to find and convey the living truth.

Martin LeFevre

Lefevremartin77 at gmail.com

Fountainoflight.net

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Latin America is re-converting into Washington’s backyard and as a sideline is returning to fascist rule, similar but worse than the sixties, seventies, and eighties, which stood under the spell of the CIA-led Operation or Plan Condor. Many call the current right-wing trend Operation Condor II which is probably as close to the truth as can be. It is all Washington / CIA fabricated, just with more rigor and more sophistication than Plan Condor of 40 and 50 years ago. As much as it hurts to say, after all the glory and laurels sent out to Latin America – with Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Rafael Correa, Evo Morales, Lula, the Kirchners, José Mujica, Michelle Bachelet – more than 80% of the population of Latin America were living for some 15 to 20 years under democratically elected mostly left-leaning governments, really progressive. Within no time, in less than 3 years the wheels have turned. Latin America was for about 20 years the only western part of the world, that was fully detached from the fangs of the empire. It has succumbed again to the forces of evil, to the forces of money, the forces of utter corruption and greed. The people of Latin America have betrayed their own principles. They did it again. Humans remain reduced as in ancient times, to the unfailing powers of reproduction and ego cum greed.  It seems in the end, ego and greed always win over the forces of light, of good, peace and harmony. That’s why even the World Bank calls corruption the single most hindrance to development. They mean economic development; I mean conscientious development. This time the trick is false and fraudulent election campaigns; bought elections; Washington induced parliamentary coups – which in Brazil brought unelected President Temer to power, a prelude to much worse to come, the fascist, misogynist, racist, and self-styled military man, Jair Bolsonaro. The 2015 presidential election in Argentina brought a cleverly Washington manufactured win for Mauricio Macri, a friend and one-time business associate of Donald Trump’s, as it were. The election was manipulated by the by now well-known Machiavellian Cambridge Analytica method of cheating the voters by individualized messages spread throughout the social media into believing all sorts of lies about the candidates. Voters were, thus, hit on the head by surprise, as Macri’s opponent, the left-leaning Daniel Scioli of the Peronist Victory Front, the leader in the polls, was defeated. Today Macri has adopted a fascist economic agenda, indebted the country with IMF austerity packages, increased unemployment and poverty from12% before his election in 2015 to close to 40 % in 2018. He is leading Argentina towards a déjà-vu scenario of the 80s and especially 1990’s when under pressure from the US, IMF and World Bank, the country was to adopt the US dollar as their local currency, or to be exact, Argentina was allowed to keep their peso, but had to commit to a one-to-one parity with the US dollar. The official explanation for this criminal move, in economic terms (to impose the use of the currency of one country for the economy of another country is not only insane, it’s outright criminal), was to stop skyrocketing inflation – which temporarily it did, but to the detriment of the working class, for whom common staple and goods became unaffordable. Disaster was preprogrammed. And the collapse of Argentine’s economy happened in 2000 and 2001. Finally, in January 2002, President Eduardo Duhalde ended the notorious peso-dollar parity. The peso was first devalued by 40% – then it floated towards a 70% devaluation and gradually pegged itself to other international trading currencies, like the euro, the Japanese yen and the Chinese yuan. Eventually, the newly floating currency allowed the Argentine economy to get a new boost and recovered rapidly. Perhaps too rapidly, for Argentina’s own good. The economy grew substantially under the left, fully democratically elected Kirchner Governments. Not only did the economy grow rapidly, it also grew in a widely ‘distributive’ mode, meaning reducing poverty, assessed at almost two thirds of the population in 2001, cutting it to about 12%, just a month before Macri was catapulted into office, by Washington and Cambridge Analytica in December 2015. Argentina has become rich again; she can now be milked again and sucked dry by the banking sector, and international corporatism, all protected by three to be newly established US military bases in the provinces of Neuquen, Misiones and Tierra del Fuego. They will initially be under the US Southern Command, but most likely soon to be converted into NATO bases. NATO is already in Colombia and may soon spread into Bolsonaro’s Brazil. Though nobody really understands what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has to do in South America – the answer is unimportant. The empire suits itself with whatever fits the purpose. No rules, no ethics, no laws – everything goes under neoliberalism. NATO is to become a world military attack force under Washington’s control and directed by those few “enlightened”, pulling the strings from behind the curtains, form the deep dark state. Macri marked the beginning of Latin America’s new fascism. South America struggled for 15 -20 years to become independent from the neoliberal masters of the north. It has now been reabsorbed into the northern elite’s, the empire’s backyard — yes, sadly, that’s what Latin America has become for the major part, a mere backyard of Washington. Argentina’s Washington imposed right-wing dictatorship was preceded by Paraguay’s 2012 parliamentary coup that in April 2013 brought Horacio Cartes of the right-extreme Colorado party to power. The Colorado Party was also the party of Alfredo Stroessner, the fascist brutal military dictator, who ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989. In Chile on 9/11 of 1973 a democratically elected socialist, Salvador Allende, was overthrown under the guidance of the CIA and a brutal military dictator, Augusto Pinochet installed for almost 30 years. After a brief spring of center and left-leaning governments, Chile, in December 2017, has returned to right-wing, neoliberal politics with Sebastian Piñera, a former associate of Pinochet’s. With the surroundings of his neoliberal friends and close accomplices in Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Peru and even Ecuador, to be sure, he will move to extreme right, neo-fascist economic rules and, thus, please Washington’s banks and their instruments, the IMF and the World Bank. Fascism is on the march. And this despite the fact that 99.99% of the population, not just in Latin America, worldwide, want nothing to do with fascism – so where is the fraud? Why is nobody investigating the scam and swindle in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and then putting the results up for everyone to see? In the meantime, we have learned about Cambridge / Oxford Analytica (CA & OA). How they operate and cheat the electorate. They themselves have finally admitted to the methods within which they operate and influence voters with lies – and with data stealing or buying from social media, mainly Facebook; millions and millions of personal data to target electronically special groups of people – bombarding them with lies to promote or denigrate the one or the other candidate. And precisely this happened in Brazil. A week before the run-off election that took place this past Sunday, 28 October, Fernando Haddad, (PT), launched a criminal investigation precisely for that reason against Bolsonaro’s campaign. Of course, nothing happened. All the judges, courts and lawyers are under control of the unelected corrupt right-wing Temer Government – which came to power by a foreign directed ruthless parliamentary coup, impeaching under totally false pretenses democratically elected Dilma Rousseff. And now – there is nobody investigating what happened in Brazil, bringing a military boy, Jair Bolsonaro to power? The left is dead? Flabbergasted into oblivion indeed? How come? With all the lessons to be learned around the world, and not least in Argentina, the neighbor – why can the Brazilian left be so blind, outright naive, as to not understand that following the criminally legalized system in their country is following the path to their own demise and eventually to shovel their own grave? From day One, the US firmly counts on Bolsonaro to encircle Venezuela, together with Colombia. President Trump has already expressed his expectations to work ‘closely together’ with the new Bolsonaro Government in “matters of trade, military – and earthing else.” Bolsonaro has already met with Mike Pompeo, the US Foreign Secretary, who told him that the situation in Venezuela is a “priority’ for Brazil. There you go; Washington dictates foreign leaders their priorities. Bolsonaro will oblige, for sure. Wake up – LEFT! – not just in Latin America, but around the world. Today, it’s the mainstream media which have learned the tricks and cheats, and they have perfected the Cambridge and Oxford Analyticas; they are doing it non-stop. They have all the fake and fiat money in the world to pay for these false and deceit-campaigns.  They are owned by the corporate military and financial elite, by the CIA, MI6/5, Mossad – they are owned and directed by the western all-overarching neoliberalism cum fascism. The rich elite groups have free access to the fake and fiat money supply – its government supplied in the US as well as in Europe; debt is no problem for them, as long as they ‘behave’. Yes. The accent is on behaving. Dictatorial trends are also omni-present in the EU, and especially in the non-elected European Commission (EC) which calls the shots on all important matters. Italy’s Fife-Star Eurosceptic Government presented its 2019 budget to Brussels. Not only was the government scolded and reprimanded for overstretching its accounts with a deficit exceeding the 3% EU imposed debt margin, but the government had to present a new budget within 3 weeks. That is how a not-so-well behaving EU government is treated. What a stretch of authoritarian EU rule vis-à-vis a sovereign government. And ‘sovereignty’ is – the EU boasts – the key to a coherent European Union. On the other hand, France has for years been infringing on the (in)famous 3% rule. And again, for the 2019 budget. However, the French government received a friendly drafted note saying, would you please reconsider your budget deficit for the next year. No scolding. One does not reprimand a Rothchild Child. Double standards, corruption, nepotism, are among the attributes of fascism. It’s growing fast, everywhere in the west. It has taken on a life of itself. And the military is prepared. Everywhere. If only they, the military, would wake up and stand with the people instead of the ruling elite that treats them like their peons. Yet, they are part of the people; they belong to the most common of the people. In the end, they get the same shaft treatment as the people.  They are tortured and shot when they are no longer needed, or if they don’t behave as the neocon-fascists want. So, Dear Military Men and Women, why not pre-empt such risks and stand with the people from the very beginning? The entire fake and criminal system would collapse if it wouldn’t have the protection of the police and the military. You, dear Men and Women form the Police and Military, you have the power and the moral obligation to stand by the people, not defending the ruthless, brutal elitist and criminal rulers – à la Macri, Bolsonaro, Piñera, Duque, Macron, May and Merkel. And there are many more  of the same blood. One of the first signs for what was to happen throughout Latin America and spreading through the western world, was the “fake election” of Macri, in 2015 in Argentina. Some of us saw it coming and wrote about it. We were ignored, even laughed at. We were told we didn’t understand the democratic process. Yes, right. In the meantime, the trend towards the right, towards a permanent state of Emergency, a de facto Martial Rule has become irreversible. France has incorporated the permanent state of emergency in her Constitution. Armed police and military are a steady presence throughout Paris and France’s major cities. There are only a few, very few exceptions left in Latin America, indeed in the western world. And let’s do whatever we can to save them from the bulldozer of fascism. http://clubof.info/

[newstfionline]

For Older Venezuelans, Fleeing Crisis Means ‘Starting From Zero,’ Even at 90

By Kirk Semple, NY Times, Dec. 9, 2017

CARACAS, Venezuela--María Abad Cruz, 90, sits on the cusp of her fourth migration, and it may be the hardest one.

Within a few months, if her children’s plan works out, she will move to Spain, the country of her birth, leaving behind Venezuela, the country where she has lived most of her long life and has loved like no other, even if that love these days has been painfully unrequited.

Venezuela is where she met her husband, raised three children and suffered a sorrow so great that she fled to Spain, only to return some years later because Venezuela, after all, was the place she felt most at home.

But amid the worsening economic and political crises, life has become too difficult and, with reluctance, she is coming to the realization that she might be better off leaving.

“Venezuela, for me, is the greatest there is,” Ms. Abad said. “But at the moment it’s impossible.”

In the past two decades, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans--by some estimates as many as two million--have migrated abroad, with the tendency accelerating in the past several years during the increasingly authoritarian rule of President Nicolás Maduro.

The vast majority have been younger Venezuelans in the prime of their working lives. Yet the huge flow of émigrés has also included a smaller number of older Venezuelans, driven abroad for many of the same reasons, including scarcities of food and medicine, soaring poverty and crime.

Many are following the steps of their children, nieces, nephews and grandchildren who have been imploring them to leave, too.

But for older migrants, the decision to leave is fraught with unique anxieties and uncertainties: about access to health care in destination countries, about the loss of social networks and the comforts developed over a lifetime, about starting from scratch in a brand-new place just when they expected to be enjoying retirement.

Ligia Reyes Castro, 71, and her husband, Mario Reyes Trujillo, 76, started thinking about migrating two years ago.

Mr. Reyes, who spent his career running small businesses, has glaucoma. With medicine increasingly scarce in Venezuela, it has become a near-daily ordeal for him to visit as many as seven pharmacies in an often fruitless search for the eye drops he needs.

Ms. Reyes, a retired employee of Venezuela’s Education Ministry, was told by her doctor that the cancerous lesion on her forehead was probably the result of all the hours she was forced to stand in lines in the sun waiting to buy food or withdraw money from the bank.

As inflation has soared, the value of the couple’s pension has diminished. The last three-milliliter bottle of drops Mr. Reyes bought cost him more than half his monthly pension.

“We want to live in tranquillity,” Ms. Reyes said in the couple’s homey four-bedroom house in the rolling hills of Los Teques, a suburban area south of the capital where they have lived since they were married 50 years ago. “The anguish is too strong for us.”

With the encouragement of a son who recently migrated to Chile and a niece living in Ecuador, they are planning to leave by early next year, bound for Quito. They have enough savings to pay for their flight and plan to sell one of two houses they own to enable them to open a small business wherever they settle. Ms. Reyes envisions starting either a restaurant or a copy shop.

They still don’t know whether or how quickly they will be able to get legal permission to work. But the biggest challenge, they say, is leaving behind their tight-knit family, many of whom live within walking distance or a short drive of their home, including Mr. Reyes’s 100-year-old mother.

“All our life is here, we have our roots, our house, we’ve lived nicely, we have our family,” Ms. Reyes paused. “But a bad government.”

Older Venezuelans who have recently migrated say that arguably the biggest hardship is coming to terms with the challenges of starting anew in their sunset years.

“Very hard, very intense,” said Fernando Galíndez, 75, who left Venezuela with his wife and a son several years ago and resettled in South Florida.

In Venezuela, Mr. Galíndez ran a successful landscape design company; his wife was a marketing director in the Venezuela office of a multinational firm. But the security situation got so intense that they decided to leave. They sold everything they could and settled in Doral, Fla.

In the time it took to get work permits, they ran though their savings. But Mr. Galíndez eventually found work as an adjunct science professor at Miami Dade College and his wife was hired as an administrator in a company.

To prospective migrants, Mr. Galíndez offered this advice: “You have to understand that to be an immigrant means starting from zero.”

The current rush for the borders is a reversal of a generations-long trend. For decades, Venezuela was a destination for economic migrants and political refugees seeking security and a new life in a country that was once one of the wealthiest in Latin America. Now many older Venezuelans, in deciding where to flee, are reconnecting with those foreign roots, some nearly forgotten.

María Mata, 67, a retired government social worker, plans to migrate to Germany, the birthplace of her great-grandparents.

Two of her three sons have already moved abroad, one to Ireland and the other to Spain. Now Ms. Mata and her third son, Eduardo Delgado, 39, are planning to move together to Munich. Both have obtained German citizenship based on their family lineage.

“I feel like a foreigner in Venezuela now; it’s not the Venezuela I know,” Ms. Mata said in an interview at a bakery in Caracas near her home. “It’s difficult to stay in a country when the identity is broken. It’s very, very sad.”

Ms. Mata said she hopes to find employment in Germany, anything that brings in an income and allows her to save a little. She has heard there is work in caring for the elderly and infirm.

This was not what she had in mind when, as a younger woman, she looked toward retirement in Venezuela.

“You work toward your golden years, you save,” she said, “and then everything goes toward survival.”

There was no alternative, she said, but to leave: “To stay is to die.”

In October, Carmen María González de Álvarez reversed her parents’ journey from Europe. They were born in Las Palmas, the capital of Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands of Spain, and in 1953 migrated to Venezuela, where Ms. González was born.

On the return to her familial homeland, she was accompanied by her husband, Nelson Álvarez, 64, and their son, Nelson Luis, 30.

The family was compelled to leave everything it had built in Venezuela because caring for Nelson Luis, who has catastrophic epilepsy, had become too trying in Venezuela’s collapsed health care system. They had run through their savings to pay for their son’s costly array of medicines.

Furthermore, Mr. Álvarez’s work as a real estate agent had dried up: He went a year without selling a property. “We were bleeding out,” he said. “If we waited six months, we’d be down to nothing.”

Ms. González, 58, and her son arrived with Spanish citizenship, which offered key advantages, like access to social services. But even so, it has been a rough transition for the family.

“An extremely painful and difficult decision for any human being,” Mr. Álvarez said. “Imagine how it is for me, at 64 years old. Who’s going to give me work?”

The family also had to tear themselves from the close-knit cocoon of their extended family and their community in the Caracas municipality of El Hatillo, where Mr. Álvarez was a civic leader.

“Imagine: As soon as I left the house, people would greet me in the street,” he said. “Here, I know nobody.”

As for the 90-year-old Ms. Abad, what she will miss about Venezuela, she said, are things already gone; she is practiced in loss.

“There isn’t food, there isn’t medicine, there isn’t anything,” she said in a recent interview at her apartment building. She was sitting in a wheelchair.

Born in Spain, she migrated to Venezuela in 1952 when she was 25, fell in love with the country and with a Venezuelan civil engineer who soon became her husband, and had three children. Following her husband’s death in 1963, she returned to Spain with their children and lived there for two decades, though she pined for Venezuela.

“I’ve always been Venezuelan,” she said.

She returned in 1985 and has lived in Caracas ever since.

She wipes away tears from the corners of her eyes as she remembers what Venezuela used to be, recalling an era in which people dressed up before they visited Bolívar Plaza, the landmark square in downtown Caracas, an area now plagued by crime.

“Today they kill there,” she said. “Everything has changed.”

Her last visit to the site did not go well: She encountered a place very different from the one she remembered and did not like it at all. “I told my daughter, ‘Get me out of here,’” she recalled.

Still, even though she called the country’s current state “deplorable,” she has not fully given herself over to the idea of leaving. Her children have been pressing, but she remains hesitant.

“I don’t know if we are going to Spain, but we are thinking about it because we can’t live here,” she said.

Ms. Abad takes 21 different medicines and has round-the-clock nursing care, all paid for by her children, one of whom lives abroad. But this situation is unsustainable, the family explained, making Spain and its health care system a better alternative.

Ms. Abad said she understood the wisdom of this. Still, the thought of yet another migration clearly pains her. Then again, so does the thought of further weathering Venezuela’s downward spiral.

Asked if she would leave Venezuela with the hope that she could one day return, she gave the question some more thought. “I don’t think so,” she continued. “But I’ll keep it in my heart for the rest of my life.”

[cubaverdad]

We Exist Between Illusions And Fears

"We Exist Between Illusions And Fears" 14ymedio, Mario Penton, David (Panama), 23 June 2017 — The green seems to fill everything in Chiriquí, in the western Panamanian province where the government hosts 126 undocumented Cubans in a camp in the region of Gualaca. The stillness of the morning in the middle of the huge pines that grow in the foothills of the mountains is only interrupted by the bites of insects, a true torture at dawn and dusk. "This place is beautiful, but everything gets tiring, being in limbo is exhausting," says Yosvani López, a 30-year-old Cuban who arrived in Gualaca in April after spending three months in the hostel set up by Caritas for Cuban migrants in Panama City. "Sometimes we sit down and talk about what we would do if we could get out of here and get to another country. Some relatives tell us that they are preparing a camp in Canada to welcome us, others tell us that they have everything prepared to deport us. Illusions and fears," he laments. The camp that houses the Cubans was built by the Swiss brigades which, in the 1970's, built the La Fortuna dam. It is 104 acres, occupied mostly by forests and a stream. One hour from the nearest city, the humidity is such that mushrooms and plants establish themselves even in the fibrocement roof tiles. Along with the wooden buildings, deteriorated by the passage of time, there are still satellite antennas, electric heaters and, according to the migrants, from time to time they find foreign currencies buried in the vacant land. López was born in Caibarién, a city on the north coast of Cuba. Although he had the opportunity to emigrate using a speed boat to cross the Florida Straits, he preferred the jungle route to avoid the seven years moratorium on being able to return to Cuba that the government imposes on those who leave Cuba illegally. "I wanted to go back before 7 years was up. I have my mother and my sisters in Cuba," he explains. He worked as a chef specializing in seafood at the Meliá hotel in the cays north of Villa Clara, earning the equivalent of $25 US a month. With the money from the sale of his mother's house he traveled via Guyana and in Panama he was taken by surprise by the end of the wet foot/dry foot policy that allowed Cubans who reached American soil to stay. "Here we pass the hours between chats with our relatives in Cuba and the United States, and searching the news for clues that will tell us what is going to happen to us," he says. The migrants in Gualaca not only do not have permission to work, but they can only leave the camp one day a week to go to Western Union, with prior notice and accompanied by presidential police officers, who are guarding the site. Some, however, have improvised coffee sales and even a barbershop. The locals also set up a small shop to supply the undocumented immigrants with the personal care products and treats, which they pay for with remittances sent by relatives from the United States. The authorities gave themselves 90 days to decide what they would do with the 126 Cubans who accepted the proposal to go to Gualaca. Two months later, the patience of the migrants is beginning to wear thin. At least six escapes have been reported since they were moved there. The last one, on Monday, was led by four Cubans, two of whom have already returned to the camp while two crossed the border into Costa Rica. Since dawn, Alejandro Larrinaga, 13, and his parents have been waiting for some news about their fate. Surrounded by adults, Alejandro has only one other child to play in the hostel, Christian Estrada, 11. Neither has attended school for a year and a half, when they left Havana. Alejandro spent more than 50 days in the jungle and, as a result of severe dehydration, he suffered epilepsy and convulsed several times. "It was difficult to go through it. It's not easy to explain: it is one thing to tell it and another to live it," he says with an intonation that makes him seem much more adult. "We had to see dead people, lots of skulls. I was afraid of losing my mom and dad," he recalls. But, although tears appear in the eyes of his mother while he recalls those moments, now he says he feels safe in Gualaca and spends his days playing chess. "I want to be a chess master, which is more than a champion. Someday I will achieve it," he says. His mother, Addis Torres, does not want to return to the Island where she has nothing left because she sold their few belongings to be able to reunite with Alejandro's grandfather, who lives in the United States. Although they have a process of family reunification pending at the US Embassy in Havana, the family does not want to hear about returning to Cuba. They eat three times a day and even have a health program financed by the Panamanian government, but for Torres "that's not life." "Detained, without a future, afraid to return to Cuba. We need someone to feel sorry for us and, in the worst case, to let us stay here," she says. Liuber Pérez Expósito is a guajiro from Velasco, a town in Holguín where he grew garlic and corn. After the legalization of self-employment by the Cuban government, Pérez began to engage in trade and intended to improve things by going to the US. In Gualaca he feels "desperate" to return to his homeland, but he has faith that, at least, he will get the help promised by the Panamanian Deputy Minister of Security, and leave a door open to engage in trade. "I am here against what my family's thinking. There (in Cuba) I have my wife, my nine-year-old son and my parents, they want me to come back and pressure me but I am waiting for the opportunity to at least recover some of the 5,000 dollars I spent," he says. His mother-in-law, an ophthalmologist who worked in Venezuela, lent him part of the money for the trip. Indebted, without money and without hope, he only thinks of the moment he can return. "During the day we have nothing to do. Sometimes we play a little dominoes, we walk or we go to the stream, but we have 24 hours to think about how difficult this situation is and the failure we are experiencing," he says. Liuber communicates with his family through Imo, a popular videochat application for smartphones. "They recently installed Wi-Fi in Velasco and they call me whenever they can," he adds. "Hopefully, this nightmare we are living will end soon. Whatever happens, just let it end," he says bitterly. —— This article is a part of the series "A New Era in Cuban Migration" produced by this newspaper, 14ymedio, el Nuevo Herald and Radio Ambulante under the auspices of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Source: "We Exist Between Illusions And Fears" – Translating Cuba - http://ift.tt/2tc3GoO via Blogger http://ift.tt/2ua2RKg