#their culture is made up but inspired by Latin and Central America. Eastern Europe and Siberian regions

[lalounia]

It might be a human au but BY GOD AXTUL ISN'T WHITE and I'll die on that hill. Those two get a Xothanese wedding!

Thetras (people from planet Xothan) have lots of traditions and I might have made it up, it's CUTE! Axtul is not a thetra in this au but he's still Xothanese!

[kimberlycollins]

NIPPON GA DAI SUKI (JAPAN WE LOVE YOU)

Traveling to an exotic country sounds, well, exotic. And it is. It’s a true adventure in life. It’s also exhausting. And enlightening.

I’ve traveled afar throughout my entire adulthood. All over Europe, The Middle East, Egypt, Central America, Mexico, Eastern Europe, Canada, the Caribbean, Australia… Florida. ;)

I give travel (and my parents, *ehem*) credit for keeping me grounded, humbled and modest, in the sense of “I AM BUT A SPECK ON THIS EARTH” or “MY BELIEF SYSTEM IS NOT EVERYTHING” or “I DON’T KNOW AS MUCH AS I THOUGHT I KNEW” or “I REALLY DON’T KNOW HOW I GOT BEST DRESSED IN HIGH SCHOOL” (read: France ;)).

Travel helps us all to get out of our comfort zone and to see what a tiny place we occupy on this planet. It’s a liberating realization, embracing one’s insignificance in this world. It’s not about being small, because none of us are. It’s more about the world being BIG.

Travel puts your life into perspective; your problems and celebrations do not hold as much weight as they seem. It also shows you how much you have or what you don’t have. It’s a healthy reality check.

That’s why travel is good for you.

I am reminded this after a crazy year. My husband and I have been on tour with our music (The Smoking Flowers) for a lot of 2018, in and out of the country. It’s been a healthy year of these reality checks for sure.

That’s why I am writing this post on my health blog, as this type of health is just as important as the physical.

And so I write.

I write to journal.

I write to inspire (myself, if no one else).

I write to remember.

I write because I am bored today, it’s cold outside and my matcha is steaming, infusing me with memories.

I’m also writing because I miss Japan.

Of all my travels, I think Japan smacked me across the head when I needed it most. It made me feel like I was five years old again. Everything, down to using the toilet, I had to relearn/rethink. Yep, it took 43 years off my life. Now that’s a natural youth serum I can live with.

It also made my brain function differently. Trying to learn a foreign language audibly and visually that has no history in the Latin world is truly a foreign language. I now know how to order water, draft beer, sake and vegetarian ramen in Japanese. Basics. (Although a friendly laugh is usually the response to the veggie ramen inquiry). I now know how to tell a Japanese punk band they did a great job after seeing them open up for us at our show. I learned to say just plain “awesome”, and used it a lot. Japanese is pretty “saikou”, after all.

Japan can feel very futuristic, and Tokyo is like being on a movie set at times. They are the future for most of the civilized world seemingly 10 years ahead of us all, yet still remaining ancient and historic at the same time. Eating sushi or having tea can be presented like it was 400 years ago or like something out of The Jetsons (ala conveyor belt computer sushi restaurants).

But beyond the exotic veil, it was the culture and etiquette that really impressed me and made my head spin.

Below are but a few observations of the plentiful Japanese culture I experienced over my month long visit. And of course, they are my own, so they are neither right nor wrong. Just observations from a somewhat worldly gal who grew up Southern in America:

1. The Japanese have manners like I’ve never seen.

They are unwavering in their politeness. Selfless hospitality is a cornerstone of Japanese culture, and you can feel it in everything down to their quiet nature to their cleanliness to the way they package your purchased goods like a present. And that bow! That Japanese bow. It makes you feel special.

2. They are startling quiet and calm.

Given that Tokyo houses more than 13 million people, the sense of order and calm as everyone goes about their responsibilities with concern for others is remarkable. The Tokyo city streets are shockingly silent. You can hear the air, the machinery hums that run a city and the cars passing, but they don’t honk like NYC. I think I heard two honks the entire time in Tokyo, and that’s not an exaggeration. We drove the interstates a ton on our tour, all over the country... aggressive driving doesn’t seem to exist. Could this be from their Zen culture?

Also, they don’t bump into you trying to get on the subway in a hurry. It’s an orderly line and gentle squeeze to fit everyone on the trains, like a can of sardines without the stink.

I want to throw in another aspect of “calm” here; safety.

Feeling safe, stable, and secure is central to our health and wellbeing. How safe we feel at home and in our neighborhood can influence our social habits and feeling of freedom. When we feel safe, we find it easier to relax, do all the things that comfort us, and focus on the work or study we need to do to help ensure our stability.

I’ve never felt safer anywhere in my life than when in Japan. I never worried about my purse or goods being stolen. Never worried about locking our apartment or car doors. Never got ogled at or hit upon. Wowza.

3. There’s no trash on the streets. And I mean zero. Not even cigarette butts. And it’s not like there are janitors sweeping the streets and alleys. To make this fact more amazing, it’s hard pressed to find trash bins anywhere. So where does a city of millions dispose of their goods while walking/biking about? Their pockets… until they reach home to throw in appropriate bins.

RETRACTION: One time we were walking under an over pass in Tokyo and we saw, gasp, trash. The remarkable thing was that this trash was piled neatly in a small pile, waiting anxiously to be picked up properly.

For an interesting article on Japan and the waste culture check out this article: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/why-japanese-dont-litter/

4. They seem to really care about the planet.

And don’t just post about it on social media.

You won’t find paper towels anywhere, sans a few nice restaurants. Water waste is thoughtfully considered in everything they do it seems. Yes, even the toilet fill water after a flush is used as a sink to wash your hands before entering the tank. They line dry their clothes (like most of the world except America). They ride bicycles like it’s Amsterdam on steroids. There are even parking lots just for bikes. This eliminates the need for excess taxis on the streets (i.e. “fossil fuels”). I know this goes on all over the world, but I again, I’m sticking to Japan here.

5. Buddhism and Shintoism.

I have practiced Buddhism since my 20’s and see it as more of a mind set and lifestyle than a religion. So for me, I felt right at home in a country that houses over 77,000 temples (No typo there). Incense permeates the air, especially in Kyoto. Smelled like my house and I couldn’t have been happier about that aspect.

But it’s more than Buddhism. The main Japanese religion is Shintoism. Many Japanese people practice both. The beliefs are very compatible and not contradictory.

6. ROBOTIC TOILETS!

Japan has a magic thing called Toto Toilets. And the toilet culture there is really something to behold. I fell in love with their toilets and never once worried to sit on the public toilet seat. I can simply not go back to our classic Kohler again. Trust me, once you experience a heated seat, self-cleaning, massaging, butt-cleaning, “privacy sound”, hand-washing toilet all in one small package, you’ll never go back. Don’t know how to expand on this in a blog… just “go” try it for your self.

7. 7- Eleven heaven!

Yep, you heard this health advocate correctly. When you are looking for a healthy bite on the road or on the quick, there’s a 7-Eleven on every corner. And it’s not the 7-Eleven we know in this country at all! Made fresh daily veggie sushi, veggie rice “sandwiches”, miso soup, raw veggies, healthy drinks, tea, fairly healthy snacks if you are into the packaged food thing. All for super cheap. I cannot tell you what a lifesaver it was on the road for us when there were practically no healthy options. Also, we decided to add fish into our diet while in Japan, and certainly glad we did. I’ve never had better fish in my life. It really felt healthy. My nails are still shiny like they’ve been shellacked. Win win.

8. VENDING MACHINES!

Super convenient and anonymous, there are vending machines all over Japan (even in remote villages) that can get you most anything you need instantly: from fermented bean drinks to green tea to hot or cold coffee to fully cooked meals to used panties. Yep, the Japanese can get weird.

Ok, so maybe the last three points are less about culture, but I had to throw them in for the “wow” factor.

I could go on and on about Japan… it’s as wide and deep and old and beautiful as it’s countryside beacon Mt. Fuji. But it has its pitfalls too. No culture is perfect. I just prefer to focus on the ideals I look up to, rather than focusing on the negatives. Their negatives are no different than America’s: too much sugar and meat in the diet, it’s a highly misogynistic society, cigarettes, stressful six day work weeks with long hours, those darn plastic bags… But we all know those are WORLD WIDE ISSUES.

Japan, you definitely stole my heart. Thank you to all who came to our shows and to those that showed us your rare style of hospitality. And a huge special thanks to my tour manager, Gus Bennett, who introduced my husband and me to this beautiful country, showed us the ropes and helped us navigate into this great unknown that will certainly be with me forever.

Mata, chikai uchini, aeruto iine.

Photo credit: Marley Parker at ML Parker Media

[ericfruits]

The flickering light of liberalism in Latin America

Bello The flickering light of liberalism in Latin America

Do liberal ideas suffer in the region because they are imported?

Apr 18th 2020

IN “THE LIGHT THAT FAILED”, an influential recent book, Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political thinker, and Stephen Holmes, an American law professor, argue that the rise of populist nationalisms in central and eastern Europe is in large part due to frustration with the way that liberalism was foisted on these countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The practice of copying a foreign model, presented to citizens as if there were no alternative, is a humiliating one that denies national traditions and identities, they write. For Latin America their argument raises an interesting question. It, too, formed part of the global wave of democratisation in the 1980s and 1990s, and it, too, has seen a recent resurgence of populist nationalisms. So are the troubles of liberalism in Latin America down to it being a foreign import, with few local roots?

The answer must start with liberalism’s long history in Latin America, a region that has seen waves of copying of foreign ideas and of their rejection. It achieved political independence two centuries ago under the twin inspirations of the European enlightenment and the constitutionalism and republican values of the fledgling United States. But those Latin American founders who set out to build nations, ravaged by the independence wars, on liberal principles quickly ran into crude local realities of power and social and racial inequality. They yielded to caudillos (strongmen, often military), who embodied “the will of the popular masses”, according to Juan Bautista Alberdi, an Argentine political theorist.

Liberalism came into its own in the region from the mid-19th century until the 1930s. Civilian governments, albeit often elected fraudulently, became the norm. They suppressed church privileges and opened economies to the world. Yet then Latin American liberalism lost its way. It partly morphed into positivism, which exalted science but denigrated freedom, while industrialisation posed new challenges. The region’s new mass societies became more interested in social than political or civil rights. Leaders and intellectuals embarked on a search for “authentic” national formulae incorporating indigenous cultures. For Mexico, European liberalism was “a philosophy whose beauty was exact, sterile and in the long run empty”, complained Octavio Paz, a poet and thinker, in 1950.

The desire for national authenticity reached its apogee with the Cuban revolution of 1959. Fidel Castro, its leader, claimed to be at war against American imperialism in the name of egalitarian national liberation. In fact, to stay in power he became the biggest copycat of all, slavishly imitating the Soviet Union. His disciples elsewhere were opposed by military dictators of the right.

Despairing scholars began to argue that Latin America’s Catholic, corporatist heritage made it impervious to liberalism. Yet the failure of dictatorships, nationalists and Castroism brought liberals (who by then included Paz) back in, with democratisation and pro-market economic reforms from the 1980s. The liberal achievement has been mixed, and politically fragile. Electoral democracy and constitutional rule have generally held up. But the separation of powers is often more notional than real. Liberalism’s opponents on the left have damned its economic recipes, often called the “Washington consensus”, as an alien import, even as many have continued to follow them.

Contemporary Latin American liberalism suffers from two weaknesses. It has failed to shed the damning characterisation that it is heartless ��neoliberalism”. In part that is because some who call themselves “liberals” in Latin America (and Iberia) are in fact conservatives, who oppose efforts to reduce unacceptable inequalities from which they benefit. Second, genuine liberalism tends to be the preserve of an upper-middle-class elite, with degrees from foreign universities. They have failed to produce a new generation of effective leaders to replace those who steered democratisation.

Yet it is liberalism that is best placed to provide many of the things that Latin Americans want: justice systems that check the powerful; equality of opportunity; the public good rather than the protection of private privilege; better public services at an affordable fiscal cost; the defence of minority rights and tolerance in the face of renewed religious bigotry; and science rather than ideological quackery. Covid-19 makes all these things more urgent. This should be Latin American liberalism’s hour.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "The light that flickers"

https://ift.tt/3akzSZ3

[gibsongirlselections]

It’s Time for a Nuremberg Trial for Communism

In 1945, the victorious Allies convened a trial in Nuremberg, Germany, in an attempt to come to legal terms with the crimes that had been committed by the National Socialists since the 1930s. The event was unprecedented. Criminality had outstripped the law. While the jurists and justices at Nuremberg wrestled with how to mete out justice to some of the most heinous offenders in human memory, a cruel irony was brewing even in their company. Soviet jurists at Nuremberg were themselves guilty of crimes that in many ways were even darker than what the Nazis had done.

And yet, while Nuremberg put the stamp of humankind’s disgust on everything National Socialist, for reasons of political expediency and gullibility, there never was a trial for the international socialists, the Bolsheviks and Stalinists and other Soviets who racked up a death count some 10 times higher than their Teutonic socialist counterparts. The Nazis sat in the dock and then swung from the gallows. The Russians, however, walked off scot-free. In the years after Nuremberg, they kept on killing. Their communist counterparts in China, Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, the Middle East, and beyond kept on killing too. There has never been a Nuremberg for communism.

It is time for that to change. Last year, the world lost perhaps the greatest, bravest Russian dissident who’s ever lived. Vladimir Bukovsky spent some dozen years in a psychiatric prison in the Soviet Union—hellish years detailed in his classic work of zek literature, To Build a Castle—all for the “crime” of refusing to be a socialist. Tortured, threatened, harassed, Bukovsky never backed down. When he was finally released to the West, he spent the rest of his life telling the world what was really going on behind the Iron Curtain. Few listened, for the same reasons that few at Nuremberg thought to throw their Soviet colleagues into jail where they belonged.

But now that the world can see, again, what communism really looks like—cover-ups that cost hundreds of thousands of lives as Party Central grows ever stronger, the police state spreading where communities and human life once thrived—the day is here when the Nuremberg Trial for Communism can, and should, be convened.

TAC contributor and legal history researcher Jason Morgan recently interviewed Italian professor of philosophy Renato Cristin, the leader of the worldwide movement to achieve Bukovsky’s dream and see communism, like Nazism, forever exiled from among the human race.

What first interested you in Vladimir Bukovsky and his work?

I knew the works of Vladimir Bukovsky because, together with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and others, he was one of the main dissidents of the Soviet regime, and in particular because he had developed a pointed political criticism, as well as cultural and historical, of the communist system and ideology.

Did you ever have the opportunity meet Bukovsky?

My meeting with Bukovsky was quite recent, dating back to 2005, when I invited him to give a speech at a conference that I organized as director of the Italian Cultural Institute in memory of the victims of both totalitarianisms, Nazi and Soviet. It was then that Bukovsky told me about his idea to hold a Nuremberg Trial for Communism.

It seemed to me an exceptional idea, the expression of a historical, political, and ethical need that could no longer be postponed: an historical and moral judgment of condemnation, similar to the rightful condemnation and banishment of Nazism from the civilized world.

How did Bukovsky’s idea progress after that?

In the summer of 2019, I wrote to Bukovsky proposing to launch his idea with an appeal. I thought that this could serve as the basis for an international initiative. Although debilitated by disease, he enthusiastically agreed to take part. Together we wrote the text of the appeal and decided to launch it with a collection of signatures, to present it to the public on the symbolic date of November 9—the day in 1989 when the Berlin Wall began to be torn down.

Unfortunately, Bukovsky died on October 27, two weeks before the appeal was to be announced. His death left a great void in all of us, the many people around the world who had applauded his decades-long battle against communism.

But Bukovsky’s spirit was greater than his disease. His legacy lived and stirred among us, and his commitment to hold communism accountable spurred his admirers to action. What he dreamed of, we would finally achieve. It is fitting, in a way, that the men who tormented Bukovsky, and the inhuman system they used to justify their torment, be judged after Bukovsky was already at peace. His fight was always about so much more than himself anyway.

Bukovsky argued that it was just one form of control that collapsed in 1991 in the Soviet Union, and before that in Eastern Europe. He thought that the impulse to control other human beings outlived the fall of communism and continues to plague us today. According to Bukovsky, the people who had been responsible for the misery of communism were almost never faced with consequences for what they had done.

Bukovsky was right. This is the key point. The collapse of the structures of the Soviet regime and its satellites in Eastern Europe was not accompanied by a systematic judicial action against the people who had been guilty of crimes in various regimes. A particular regime fell, but nobody who was a part of it faced justice at all. It’s as if the Soviet Union was the scapegoat for the people who actually committed all the crimes.

There are a few reasons for this strange disconnect. First of all, the situation was objectively very complex. It was simply not possible at the time to establish a single general court for all the formerly communist countries. Also, since liberal-democratic development was different from country to country, the degree of infiltration of former communist leaders into the structures of the new societies was also different. It would have been impossible to hold a real trial as one huge social structure was collapsing and morphing into two dozen other, smaller structures.

There was also the reluctance of the West to take a firm stand. Many believed that the collapse of communist regimes entailed the disappearance of communist ideology. This is still the general consensus today. There was a huge sense of relief when East Germany and the Soviet Union fell, and many wanted to believe that with those regimes also fell the ideology which had made them. However, there is a darker reason. Many left-wing political and cultural movements supported communism and helped conceal the crimes of communists. Many still do.

You have said that communism is a dangerous false religion. What do you mean by this?

Despite the undeniable evidence of the crimes committed by communist totalitarianism, communism has an aura of mysticism, a sort of taboo: it is believed that the idea of ​​communism is good, that its only fault is that it has not yet been fully realized. This false millenarianism inspires the weak of mind and causes reason to be clouded by utopian romanticism. This colors historical understanding, too. Communist regimes are seen as merely unfinished forms of communism, and therefore the idea retains all its saving potential despite the horrors that communism brings to human societies everywhere. This is nothing less than a secular religion. One must continue to believe despite all evidence to the contrary.

Thanks to its persuasive force, this form of secular mysticism has managed to penetrate even into authentic religion, into Christianity. Catholic thought and response were not enough to defeat the anti-Christianism of Marxism-Leninism. In fact, Catholic communism, which is in all respects an oxymoron, has become a point of reference for many people throughout the West, forming one of the aspects of neo-communism in circulation today.

After decades of collaboration between Liberation Theologians and Latin American revolutionary and terrorist movements, the current forms of this Christian communism have overcome militant atheism but with apotheosized communism, and not with authentic Christian faith. Our new, religious communism is not the hard-edged atheism of old, but a much more palatable, even “spiritual atheism,” which has the religious fanaticism of German Reformation preacher Thomas Müntzer’s all-out rebellionism.

This “spiritual atheism” is promiscuously polytheistic, as can be seen, for example, in the theses that accompanied the Synod for the Amazon. One cannot be a Christian and a communist, but if enough high-ranking Christians seem to be making it work then millions of others will be led along.

Who are the communists? What do they really want?

The symbol of the communist regimes and of the ideology that underlies them is the Gulag, the analogue of the Nazi concentration camp. The Gulag, where the state imprisoned anyone for any reason, even the mere suspicion of dissent, had different “denominations” according to the different communist states. But the basic idea is always the same: total control of human lives. The Gulag is the symbol not only of massacres, but also of the dictatorial control over individuals and societies that is the very essence of communism.

Total control over human life is what communists want. It is who they are: controllers, insatiable and ruthless controllers of other human beings.

We must not be confused by terminology, though. What is sometimes called “real socialism,” for example, is not an aberration of the Marxist-Leninist theory, but the political-state form with which this theory is sometimes instantiated. Therefore, criticism of real socialism, that is, of the Soviet Union and all those states which have continued to practice that theory even after the collapse of the USSR, must imply criticism of the communist ideology from the outset. There is no difference, because the personnel are the same. It is not what the thing is called, but what the people in a given system do, that ultimately matters.

Consequently, assuming towards this historical-political monstrosity an ambiguous or even simply neutral position means giving voice to a disease that has proved deadly for any people who have had the misfortune to experience it.

Do you see any trends or events or people in the world today, in 2020, against whom or which Bukovsky would have been opposed? What would he have thought of the Wuhan virus situation, for instance?

In 2001, together with Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng and German human rights champion Gerhard Löwenthal, Bukovsky published an article requesting that the International Olympic Committee reject Beijing’s candidacy to host the 2008 Olympic Games. Their argument was that the Olympics would provide Chinese communism with further legitimacy among the free world.

What Bukovsky, Wei, and Löwenthal here call Chinese “tyranny” repressed individual freedoms and civil rights and was rooted in the same Gulag archipelago as is found in every other communist state, past and present. Disregard for human rights was, and is, the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party. The Wuhan virus outbreak reflects all of this perfectly. Communists simply do not care about any human life except their own. As a result, millions upon millions suffer and die.

What is the Nuremberg Trial and why should it be applied to communism?

On September 19, 2019, the European Parliament resolved that Nazism and communism are equally at fault. I think this resolution must be substantially and finally buttressed by a Nuremberg Trial for Communism.

But to have a trial we must have the courage and the intellectual honesty to call the crimes of communism by their real name. The massacres and genocides, the murder of hundreds of millions of consciences, the destruction of religion, the devastation of entire societies, the economic and moral misery visited upon continent after continent. The mass graves, the shattered lives of entire generations. All of these things happened. Many who are alive today remember. We must not be afraid to say that a horrific crime of world-historical proportion has taken place. We must first prepare ourselves for the psychological toll it will take on us to learn the full truth about the communist past, and present.

To give just one example, seven million Ukrainians were exterminated—subjected to genocide—by the Soviet Union in order to clear the ground in the Ukraine for the Soviets’ criminal ideology. Seven million murders. The world will never stop mourning the six million Jews killed by the Nazis: the Shoah is an authentic manifestation of absolute evil, and it is out of human solidarity with the living and the dead that we join our Jewish brothers and sisters in rejecting that evil completely. By the same token, we must be strong enough to face the truth about communism, whatever it costs us. Justice demands at least that much.

The post It’s Time for a Nuremberg Trial for Communism appeared first on The American Conservative.

[bedbeer65-blog]

The Grid: Exploring the Avondale neighborhood - Chicago Sun-Times

Welcome to the “The Grid,” the Chicago Sun-Times’ in-depth look at Chicago neighborhoods.

Today’s stop: Avondale.  This working class neighborhood is about 8 miles northwest of downtown Chicago.  Long known as the Polish Village because of its large Polish population, it’s more recently been touted as the the place where “Eastern Europe meets Latin America” due to an influx of Latino residents.  Avondale’s long industrial focus has evolved through the years, and today you can find breweries – and even a collaborative working space for makers.

The food scene in Avondale has an exciting mix of traditional Polish fare (and old-style Polish supper clubs) and some of the city’s trendiest new spots.

The Grid: Avondale has two fun-filled videos with a big focus on the unique food, plus a detailed article with everything you need to know to plan your visit here including:

The history of Avondale

Interviews with local experts

Ji’s picks for some of the best places to eat and drink

Interesting things to do, including a visit to the hacker space, Pumping Station: One

And much more!

A view down North Milwaukee Avenue, one of the main streets that runs through Avondale. | Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

This story on Avondale is one in a series by the Sun-Times focused on the interesting people and places in Chicago’s many neighborhoods, in hopes that all will be inspired to explore our city. We have engaging videos and a comprehensive story – all curated by the Sun-Times to help provide you with the most current and meaningful information about the important and best things to do in this and each neighborhood we visit.

We’re proud to welcome Baird & Warner as presenting sponsor of “The Grid.” Leading our video adventure is Sun-Times program host, Ji Suk Yi.

Ji Suk Yi has advice about things to do and places to eat in this new episode of The Grid. | Brian Rich/ Sun-Times

Avondale has deep industrial roots and is historically known for its smoke stacks and steeples. It’s not a fancy neighborhood and is ingrained with a blue collar heritage. It’s down-to-earth, hard-scrabble and full of people with different ethnic backgrounds.  For years, it was considered the neighborhood that helped build Chicago because of the brick-making plants, lumber yards and coal factories that lined Belmont Avenue.

Historically, Avondale has been a mostly Polish and Eastern European neighborhood and part of Chicago’s so-called Polish Village.

It’s also the neighborhood where Eastern European culture meets Latin American culture given the now substantial Latino population. Add to that a sprinkling of other ethnicities, artists and an influx of new residents and young families… and you’ve got a neighborhood once again on the move!

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The more time you spend exploring the independent businesses and walking down its streets of modest bungalows and two flats, you’ll see the charms of the neighborhood reveal itself. Architectural details are abundant but not opulent. The diversity of the businesses, restaurants and people will broaden your palate and perhaps your viewpoint. That to me, reveals a beauty to the neighborhood that’s truly unique. The key to seeing that beauty is taking the time to look!

A little bit of Avondale history

The former Dad’s Root Beer sign at the Avondale bottling plant. | Courtesy dadsrootbeer.com

Avondale’s proximity to the river and the railway created the perfect scenario for factories and warehouses to keep up with the production and distribution demands across the country.

Florsheim Shoes, Olson Rugs, Dad’s Root Beer, Maurice Lenell cookies and I.S. Berlin Press were a few of the larger companies that made their homes in Avondale. Along with the large industrial, construction and manufacturing plants were smaller mom-and-pop businesses contributing to the bustling neighborhood.

Initially a quiet suburb, Avondale was incorporated as part of Jefferson Township in 1850. Later it was incorporated as a village in 1869 and was eventually annexed as part of the city of Chicago in 1889.

Avondale is on Chicago’s northwest side. | Graphic by Tanveer Ali/Sun-Times

Like the rest of the Chicago area, the initial settlers were Native Americans. Two prominent Native American trails were planked and known as the Upper and Lower Northwest Plank Roads. These later would become Elston and Milwaukee Avenues.

A great resource on Avondale is the book “Images of America: Avondale and Chicago’s Polish Village” by Jacob Kaplan, Daniel Pogorzelski, Rob Reid and Elisa Addlesperger. Full of archive images and history on the fluid boundaries of Avondale and Polish Village, it’s a good compilation.

According to Pogorzelski, the Upper Plank Road that later would become Milwaukee Avenue was particularly notorious because its wood planks were warped, and many were missing.  There was also a toll to use the road despite its pitfalls. Amos Snell, the road’s owner had set up toll booths at regular intervals and one was located at Milwaukee and Belmont Avenue. Snell’s attempt to charge the city’s fire department was the final affront, the toll booths were set on fire and Snell was mysteriously murdered in 1889.

After Avondale was annexed by the city, extensive infrastructure improvements attracted new residents. Within two decades the population grew to include mostly Polish, German and Scandinavian settlers. The largest group of immigrants were the Poles, who first began to move to the area in the 1890s. By 1930, they made up 33 percent of the population (of around 48,000).

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The first wave of Polish immigrants arrived in the Chicago for mostly economic reasons and the booming need for workers in the growing city. The second wave of immigrants arrived after World War II. The third wave arrived in the 1980s as political refugees from the Solidarity and Post-Solidarity movements.

Many Polish settled west of Kedzie Avenue along the Milwaukee Avenue corridor. Where Polish settlement was most visible was west of Kedzie Avenue along the Milwaukee Avenue corridor. Many settled in the Jackowo or the Waclawowo sections of “Polish patches” In Avondale. However, the larger Polish Village extended beyond the boundaries of Avondale.

The enclaves were named after the churches they surrounded. The two most important Polish churches were St. Hyacinth Basilica established in 1894 and St. Wenceslaus founded in 1912.

St. Hyacinth is a classic cathedral that can seat more than 2,000 people, has imported stained glass windows and a dome measuring 3,000 square feet with more than 150 figures. They have various concerts throughout the year including an upcoming concert for peace.

Avondale is known for being home to these two Polish churches, but an interesting history note is that the first church in the area was African-American (east of Milwaukee Avenue, near what is now the Belmont stop). “The Allen Church” was founded in the late 1880’s by John B. Dawson, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal church who purchased a large tract of land in Jefferson Township (which later would become Avondale) in the years immediately following the Civil War. The church served around 20 African-American families who had settled in the area.

Where Eastern Europe meets Latin America

Ji Suk Yi explores Avondale, a Chicago neighborhood with a rich Polish history and a new Latin vibe. | Brian Rich/ Sun-Times

Avondale is now known as the neighborhood where Eastern Europe meets Latin American and Mexican culture. According to the “Encyclopedia of Chicago”, by 1990 Hispanics and Latinos accounted for 37 percent of the total population of Avondale. Restaurants and businesses reflect the growing Latino population in the neighborhood.

The Puerto Rican Arts Alliance is one organization that reflects the Latinos’ important contributions to the neighborhood. Over the past 20 years, PRAA has emerged as a primary cultural resource, offering high-quality, music and arts educational programming to 30,000 participants each year. In addition to classes the alliance has a rotating gallery exhibit in their Avondale Elbridge location.

While many Polish residents have moved to the suburbs and dispersed to other locations in the city, Avondale still maintains its Polish vibe with many authentic restaurants and businesses. In addition to the Latin American presence in the neighborhood, there are other cultural influences as well such as people from the Soviet Bloc, Asians (of note historically was a strong Filipino presence) and African-Americans.

Artists working at Pumping Station One – a collaborative makers space at the intersection of art, technology and culture. | Ji Suk Yi/ Sun-Times

If you’re looking for more on Avondale check out “The Avondale Neighbors Association.” A nonprofit, its goal is to preserve Avondale’s history, embrace diversity, and connect neighbors. The association has organized neighborhood clean-ups, socials, spearheaded murals and runs a local art walk called “A Day in Avondale.”

Other cool organizations and resources to check out include nonprofits “The Corner Project” (focuses on the community on Milwaukee Avenue between Kimball and Central Park and promotes actions for embracing future change by raising awareness and strengthening relationships); “Voice of the City” (local artist alliance that connects quality art experiences to the community); and Elastic Arts (fosters community, art and performance through local music concerts, exhibitions, and multi-arts performances).

If you’re a working artist or want to learn or perfect a craft, Pumping Station One is a community cooperative of artists, makers, craftsman and engineers. It fosters an environment for the exploration of the intersections between technology, art and culture. The facility has a wide variety of equipment, tools, and workshops to help you build what you envision. There are classes on electronics, programming, crafts, and any other skills that members (or guests) are willing to share.

Where to eat and drink

Ji Suk Yi at Polish restaurant Staropolska in Avondale. | Brian Rich/ Sun-Times

For Polish food, I’d recommend Staropolska. You’ll find all the usual Polish classics like pierogi, stuffed cabbage, sausage and classic soups. The ambiance is great; there’s even a fireplace perfect for winter months and Polish beer on draft.

If you’re wanting a quick service option or to pick up deli items, sausage and prepared foods to go, head to Kurowski’s Sausage Shop. Just remember the shop provides dozens of sausage options so do your research ahead of time and practice your Polish pronunciation. If you’re looking for a Polish buffet then head over to the Red Apple. It’s all you can eat with a separate price for lunch, dinner and weekend.

Tacos Tequilas is owned by two “Jorge’s” – Jorge Pizana and Jorge Manzano. It’s a colorful, friendly spot where you’ll feel comfortable on a casual date or hanging out with a group of friends for a while. The tacos and cocktails are delicious, and the menu features cuisine from various regions of Mexico. If you want to literally heat things up, order the molcajete surtido which is served in a lava stone bowl that’s set on fire! It’s a sharable bowl of skirt steak, chicken, chorizo, panela cheese, grilled cactus, onions and salsa rustica.

Barra Ñ has Argentinean eats, tropical drinks, and late night DJ’s. If you’re looking for an intimate space where you can dance, listen to live music, nosh on delicious empanadas, then this cozy corner spot is perfect for a night out.

Other Latin American and Mexican cuisine to check out in Avondale include:

Cafe Tola -one of two locations in the city, known for their empanadas

La Cocina  -Mexican cuisine with special care on offering vegan options

Taqueria Mazamitla -my friends who live in Avondale love the burritos and tacos here (cult following)

Gorditas Loli’s -gorditas are like arepas or masa/corn pita stuffed with meat and cheese – I like the pollo en tinga but please know it’s cash only!

El Gallos Bravo 2 -which is practically open 24 hours save for a few hours – I like their chicken flats

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I’m guessing everyone knows about Honey Butter Fried Chicken. Co-owners Christine Cikowski and Josh Kulp have been in Avondale since 2013. They’ve garnered national attention for their delicious, high quality food and for their commitment to the environment, local farms and giving back to the community. I’m a big fan of the corn muffins. Sometimes it’s about the simple things and they are addictive!

Plus, there’s the equally famous Kuma’s Corner for burgers and mac-n-cheese. They’ve expanded with locations in the city and suburbs but their original location opened in 2005 at the corner of Belmont and Francisco.

But… if you’re looking for another chicken spot, head to Mr. Pollo. Its speciality is Ecuadoran rotisserie chicken and it’s crispy, tender and juicy. The sides are great, and it’s easy to pop in, no pretense, just a good bird.

Head over to DMen if you’re craving a doner kebab, poutine or sauer kraut balls. The German-Turkish food mash-up originated as a food truck, but the brick and mortar location is in Avondale. They have a special for every day of the week listed on the website

Metropolitan Brewery’s taproom views of the Chicago River are as enjoyable as the beer. Open since 2017, the floor-to-ceiling windows showcase a serene view that feels very tucked away from the city. As I sat and enjoyed my beer, I watched high school rowing teams glide across the water. Dogs and children are also welcome. The brewery doesn’t serve food, but you can get food delivered or bring it in yourself. The brewery specializes in German style lagers that are easy to drink so spending an entire day in the beautiful space is even easier.

Metropolis Coffee’s roastery is in the same development complex (yet to be named) as Metropolitan Brewery on Rockwell on the Chicago River. (The similarity in names was just a coincidence.) The complex is a beautifully restored former tannery, built with hopes of becoming a food-lovers, artisanal-makers hub that will draw customers from near and far. Metropolis is the anchor tenant, moving into the facility in September 2015.

Michelin-starred Parachute has received national acclaim. The seasonal menu changes, and it’s so worth frequenting on a regular basis. Husband and wife team Johnny Clark and Beverly Kim craft a Korean-inspired menu with locally sourced ingredients. Always start with the bing bread.

The Avondale Mural Garden in Avondale. | Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

While you wait for your table head over to Chief O’Neill’s for a pre-dinner drink. Since 1999, the restaurant has been importing Irish beer, spirits and serving up authentic Irish food and music. On the weekends it serves an all-you-can-eat brunch.

If you’re craving Korean food and you’re in a hurry, head over to Jong Boo Market. It’s every Korean Chicago-city dwellers secret snack spot. In the back corner there’s a snack shop where you can order simple Korean fan favorites that taste as good as mama made!

Sleeping Village has 56 taps for mostly beer – but they also have wine, cider, mead and even kombucha on draft. It’s open all day, so you can grab a coffee and work on your laptop during the day. At night it’s a bar that has a concert venue with a capacity for more than 300 people.

Another bar to check out is cocktail-focused Ludlow Liquors and the Filipino-inspired food from side-kick permanent food pop-up Old Habits. If you’re looking for something really old-school head over to Podlasie Club. It’s a Polish bar that’s full of polka dancers on a Saturday night. It’s surreal because it seems as though it’s been untouched for decades and rightfully takes its premiere spot as a preserved piece of Polish Chicago dive bar history.

One more fact …

Avondale was once home to the Olson Park and Waterfall Complex, a 22-acre garden and waterfall remembered by many Chicagoans as the “Bohemian Dells.”

See you next time on The Grid!

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This new Sun-Times video series showcases the best of Chicago’s neighborhoods by turning a spotlight on the people, places and things that make our city one-of-a-kind. Look for a new video episode each Wednesday on the Chicago Sun-Times website. #thegrid. We hope you will watch, read and share all of The Grid stories!

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Source: https://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment/avondale-neighborhood-things-to-do/

[freeworldimmigration]

White supremacists have expressed fear that Europeans and those of European descent in the U.S. and other English speaking countries will become minorities in their countries due to immigration. This has been termed “The Great Replacement” and apparently inspired the Unite the Right marchers at the University of Virginia in 2017 to chant “You will not replace us.” (See here, here, here and here.) The suspect in the murders at mosques in New Zealand titled his manifesto “The Great Replacement.”   

White supremacists also have conjured up conspiracy theories that liberal elites are orchestrating this “replacement.” While I have never encouraged immigrants to come to the U.S. (they have their own motivations to migrate), I am a liberal who welcomes high levels of immigration as a means to reduce the proportion of the population which self-identifies as white. This reduction could help diminish the influence of white supremacists and their fellow travellers by shrinking the proportion of the population from which they can draw recruits and influence the country’s direction.

Unfortunately, white supremacy has always been part of America’s fabric. While the Declaration of Independence supports universal rights, former white nationalist Derek Black notes that the first naturalization laws in the 1790s restricted citizenship to white people and states that

“the United States was founded as a white nationalist country, and that legacy remains today. Things have improved from the radical promotion of white people at the expense of all others, which has persisted for most of our history, yet most of us have not accepted the extent to which white identity guides so much of what we still do. Sometimes it seems that the white nationalists are most honest about the very real foundation of white supremacy upon which our nation was built.”

A 2017 article in The New Yorker echoes Black’s analysis: “… the Founding Fathers organized their country along the bloody basis of what we now tend to understand as white supremacy.” And Adam Serwer notes in the Atlantic that

“America has always grappled with, in the words of the immigration historian John Higham, two ‘rival principles of national unity.’ According to one, the U.S. is the champion of the poor and the dispossessed, a nation that draws its strength from its pluralism. According to the other, America’s greatness is the result of its white and Christian origins, the erosion of which spells doom for the national experiment.”

The “radical promotion of white people” has had devastating consequences for millions. Native Americans were massacred and forced off the land they inhabited. African Americans endured centuries of slavery, followed by the oppression of segregation, disenfranchisement, the Ku Klux Klan, lynchings, “slavery by another name,” red-lining, police brutality, mass incarceration, and other forms of discrimination. Asian immigrants suffered violence and discrimination, particularly in the 19th century. Hundreds of thousands of Latino Americans were forcibly pushed out of the U.S., while others experienced mob violence and endured segregation.  Racist ideology directed against eastern and southern Europeans also led to the restrictive immigration legislation of the early 1920s, which ultimately blocked many Jews from fleeing the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s. (See also here and here.)

In recent decades, overt white supremacy in the U.S. has weakened.  Research based on 2016 data suggests that less than 6% of non-Hispanic whites support the promotion of white interests over those of other groups. In addition, a 2017 poll, which apparently included respondents from a variety of racial and ethnic groups, found that strong majorities agreed that all races are equal and that all races should be treated equally. Moreover, the American public appears to be increasingly comfortable with diversity.  

However, the 2017 poll revealed that “while only 8 percent of respondents said they supported white nationalism as a group or movement, a far larger percentage said they supported viewpoints widely held by white supremacist groups.” The 2016 study also suggests that millions of European Americans think like the alt-right. (See also here. )

One implication of the resilience of white supremacist beliefs among many Americans has been hate crimes. Examples include the 2018 massacre of Jews in Pittsburgh, the violence in 2017 in Charlottesville, the 2015 massacre of African Americans at a South Carolina church, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Hundreds of people have been killed in recent years by white supremacists and members of the far right. Assaults, intimidation, and vandalism are other manifestations of this hate. 

Another implication of the continued existence of white supremacy in the U.S. has been the elevation of a demagogue, Donald Trump, to the presidency. Vox notes that “study after study has shown that Trump’s primary and general election victories were driven by the racial resentment and demographic panic he activated among white voters.” Adam Serwer also writes that “the specific dissonance of Trumpism—advocacy for discriminatory, even cruel, policies combined with vehement denials that such policies are racially motivated—provides the emotional core of its appeal… As the president continues to pursue a program that places the social and political hegemony of white Christians at its core, his supporters have shown few signs of abandoning him.” The columnist Charles Blow has similarly stated that “Trump’s central promise as a politician has been the elevation, protection and promotion of whiteness, particularly white men who fear demographic changes and loss of status and privilege.” (See also here.)

Trump threatens our liberal democracy and encourages violence against his political opponents. Some his prominent supporters such as Steve Bannon, who has described himself as a “Leninist,” also apparently have little respect for liberal democracy. Moreover, his administration has exacerbated the suffering of immigrants through its draconian policies. And his resistance to tackling climate change threatens the future of all of humanity.

Accelerating the rate of immigration into the U.S. could help prevent the emergence of future politicians who use racist demagoguery to persuade a substantial share of the white population to vote for them. With more immigration, the portion of the electorate made up of those voters will diminish faster.

Unfortunately, this approach to squelch white nationalism has its risks and uncertainties. To begin with, increasing immigration levels to transform the country’s demographics faces headwinds. Some assume that the demographic status quo, even with no change to current immigration levels, will eventually produce an America with a diminished white population, given Census Bureau predictions that non-Hispanic whites will become a minority of the population in the next two decades. However, the sociologist Herbert Gans posits that “… the ‘minority-majority’ forecast, as it is commonly interpreted, is likely to be proven wrong. Not only could whites remain a majority well past midcentury, but they will retain political, economic and cultural control of the country long after that.” He describes a “whitening” process whereby the offspring of intermarriage between individuals of different races often self-identify and are identified by others as “white.” He also notes “the long history of the whitening of populations previously labeled nonwhite,” such as immigrants from Ireland and southern and eastern Europe. Consider Stephen Miller, Trump’s ferociously restrictionist advisor, who also happens to be Jewish. 

Furthermore, elevated levels of immigration might push more white Americans towards nativism and white nationalism. While Americans are increasingly supportive of immigration to the U.S., with a large percentage believing immigrants are beneficial for the country and growing percentages supporting increased levels of immigration, more whites might feel threatened by greater numbers of immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Indeed, most Americans either want to keep immigration at current levels (38%) or reduce the levels (24%). In fact, the political commentator Andrew Sullivan has argued that the Democratic Party must become more restrictionist to prevent Trump from winning re-election. 

Despite these uncertainties, accelerating the rate of immigration to combat white nationalism is a risk worth taking. With regard to the “whitening” process, the children and grandchildren of interracial intermarriage will likely be less receptive to white nationalism, given that they have familial connections to people who are racial minorities and that families with a history of intermarriage presumably hold more tolerant attitudes. This tolerance should coexist with a white identity. For example, as The Washington Post reports, some demographers “note that many Hispanics already identify as white and yet still vote like a minority group.”

As to the risk of driving more whites into the supremacist camp by increasing immigration, one should begin with the assumption that the Republican Party is a party of white nationalists and others who are comfortable making common cause with the nationalists, even though there is a minority of Republicans and Republican leaning leaning independents who support increased immigration levels. Therefore, the focus should be on whether some Democrats and Democratic leaning independents might defect to the Republicans if immigration levels are increased. A third of Americans apparently support an increase in legal immigration into the U.S., with 40% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents supporting the increase. Will increased immigration make many of the 60% of Democratic supporters who don’t endorse the increases receptive to white nationalism and/or greater immigration restrictions?  

Probably not. A political scientist has observed that “the Democratic Party is increasingly a coalition of professional-class whites and members of ethnic and racial minority groups.” Given the general cosmopolitanism of the Democratic Party, most of its supporters who don’t support increasing immigration levels likely would never support white nationalism and the Republican Party associated with it. In addition, most voters probably do not make electoral decisions based on a single issue. It therefore seems likely that most Democrats would swallow increased immigration levels while continuing to oppose the Republicans. A Washington Post columnist recently posited that “there’s virtually no evidence that support for more immigration is a political liability… At worst, an immigration supporter will lose the 30 percent of voters he or she would have lost anyway.”   

In fact, increasing numbers of Democrats may be persuaded to accept more immigration if that means preventing future demagogues from becoming president. It should be emphasized to Democrats that Trump is the catastrophic consequence of having an electorate with a large proportion of racist whites. Changing that electorate through accelerated immigration flows could be promoted as a way to vaccinate society against future demagoguery.

The vitality of jurisdictions with diverse populations should also be highlighted, including those with “majority minority” populations.   An article in Axios points out that “non-white Americans are now the majority of the population in four states, as well as in the most prosperous and powerful U.S. cities.”

One of these cities is San Antonio. Referring to white fears about America becoming a majority minority country, a journalist and San Antonio resident writes that

“… I’m here to calm those fears. Hear me out. I have seen the future and it is … San Antonio.  When I came to San Antonio to attend college in 1964, non-Hispanic whites, aka Anglos, were in the majority. It was about the time I left, in 1968, that this status changed. The 1970 census put us at 48 percent.

Anglos have been in the minority fully 50 years. Now we’re at just over 25 percent. Latinos are 63 percent and blacks 7 percent.

So how are things going for us Anglos now that we make up only one-quarter of the nation’s seventh-largest city? Has the city stagnated in a sea of corruption? Have our fellow Anglos fled after being subjected to discrimination and abuse?

The reality is that San Antonio cannot be compared with the stagnant, overgrown town it was is in the late 1960s when we Anglos were in the majority…

San Antonio showed little ambition and a well-earned inferiority complex. Its national image was such that outsiders were often surprised to learn that the city had an airport…

Fast forward 50 years to today. San Antonio is thriving as one of the U.S.’ fastest-growing cities – 1.5 million and counting. Its economy is humming and diversifying, with cybersecurity as a key growth industry. Downtown, previously almost abandoned to tourists, is booming both as a business center and residential magnet.

I’m not suggesting Latinos alone lead to the city’s economic growth. Anglos still dominate the business sector. But Latinos certainly contributed to that growth, both politicians – led early by Henry Cisneros – and business leaders.

Our 11-member City Council has been made up of at least five Latinos and one black member since 1977, with only a few years excepted. Cisneros was elected the first Hispanic mayor of modern times in 1981, but there have been only two Hispanic mayors since. Ivy Taylor served as the city’s first black mayor from 2014-2017.

That is partly because the Hispanic population doesn’t vote as vigorously as Anglos and blacks. It is also because Latino voters are discriminating – in the best sense of the word – but don’t discriminate, in the word’s worst sense.

Today’s seven-member “minority” majority on City Council is hardly lacking in qualifications. Every one has a graduate degree, even though most come from modest backgrounds. Councilwoman Ana Sandoval (D7) has a degree in chemical engineering from MIT, a masters in civil and environmental engineering from Stanford, and a masters in public health from Harvard.

Like all American cities, San Antonio has serious problems: severe economic and racial segregation, many underperforming schools, environmental challenges, a severe lack of adequate mass transit, and more. But we’re working on it together.

White folks who are frightened at becoming a minority need to understand the U.S.’ amazing power of assimilation. San Antonio has thrived under a City government that for 40 years has been governed by racial and ethnic minority councils, mostly the children and grandchildren of Mexican immigrants…

White Americans should not be afraid of such successes. They should be proud of them.”

Houston, another Texas city with a majority minority population, has been deemed the most diverse U.S. city. Like San Antonio, it has challenges, but a Rice University sociologist argues that ethnic tensions in the city have eased over the years and states that “’No city has benefited from immigration more than Houston, Texas.’” 

In addition, immigration supporters can point to small American towns that have succeeded while ethnically diversifying. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes about Willmar, Minnesota, population 21,000. It “is now nearly half Latino, Somali and a Noah’s ark of other East African and Asian immigrants. The languages spoken in the high school include English, Arabic, Somali, Spanish and Karen (spoken by an ethnic group from Myanmar).”  According to Friedman, the town has welcomed its immigrant workers, who fill jobs in a local economy with almost no unemployment and without enough “white Lutheran Scandinavians” to fill them. The town’s mayor, who favors helping immigrants integrate into the community, was elected convincingly when he ran against an anti-immigrant candidate.

Thriving Canadian cities also demonstrate the success of diverse societies in North America. Philippe Legrain, author of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them highlights Toronto, Canada as successfully integrating its ethnically diverse population. At the same time, the city has been highly ranked for its quality of life. About half of its population consists of “visible minorities.” (See also here, here, and  here.)

As a political matter, pushing for increasing immigration levels is probably a better approach to diminishing the influence of white racism than pushing for open borders. While open borders is the best policy choice from a moral standpoint, most Americans would be very uncomfortable with open borders, and calling for just an increase in immigration levels would be more palatable for voters than the radical approach. 

How much of an increase should be championed? In 2013, the U.S. Senate approved legislation which would have raised legal immigration levels by 50 to 70 percent within five years, which suggests a politically realistic goal. A more ambitious campaign would promote an annual immigration flow of between 6-7 million people and would cite the Israeli experience of successfully absorbing a comparable flow in the 1990s.

It is acknowledged that there is no easy solution to individual acts of violence and other harassment based on hatred toward a particular ethnic or racial group. But preventing future nationalist demagogues from attaining power means that there would not be people in power provoking individuals to act out their worst instincts.

While pushing to transform the nation’s population for political ends may seem brazen, the nationalists are not timid about realizing their own version of social engineering. While Trump’s recent proposal to overhaul legal immigration apparently would not change immigration levels, just last year he proposed changes which, according to The Washington Post, “could cut off entry for more than 20 million legal immigrants over the next four decades.” Michael Clemens noted that “’By greatly slashing the number of Hispanic and black African immigrants entering America, this proposal would reshape the future United States. Decades ahead, many fewer of us would be nonwhite or have nonwhite people in our families… Selectively blocking immigrant groups changes who America is. This is the biggest attempt in a century to do that.’” Dana Milbank of The Washington Post similarly summarized the intent of the legislation: “… the Trump-backed immigration proposal, combined with other recent moves by the administration and its allies — support for voter suppression, gerrymandering and various other schemes to disenfranchise minority voters — could extend the white hegemony that brought Trump to power and sustains Republicans.” Trump also  revealed his preferences for whom should immigrate when he infamously asked last year “… why we want people from Haiti and more Africans in the US and added that the US should get more people from countries like Norway.”

White supremacy has been a blight on America, from its origins up to the present, and its marginalization is long overdue. Allowing higher levels of immigration into the U.S. could be an effective way to erode its influence, and increasing immigration levels should be promoted by those who hope for a more tolerant and better governed America.

  from Open Borders: The Case http://bit.ly/2JR1igc

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Sanctions left and sanctions right. Financial mostly, taxes, tariffs, visas, travel bans, confiscation of foreign assets, import and export prohibitions and limitations; and also punishing those who do not respect sanctions dished out by Trump, alias the US of A, against friends of their enemies. The absurdity seems endless and escalating exponentially, as if there was a deadline to collapse the world. Looks like a last-ditch effort to bring down international trade in favor of — what?  Make America Great Again? – Prepare for US mid-term elections? Rally the people behind an illusion? – Or what? All looks arbitrary and destructive. All is, of course, totally illegal by any international law or, forget law, which is not respected anyway by the empire and its vassals, but not even by human moral standards. Sanctions are destructive. They are interfering in other countries sovereignty. They are made to punish countries, nations, that refuse to bend to a world dictatorship. Looks like everybody accepts this new economic warfare as the new normal. Nobody objects. And the United Nations, the body created to maintain Peace, to protect our globe from other wars, to uphold human rights, this very body is silent. Out of fear? Out of fear that it might be ‘sanctioned’ into oblivion by the dying empire?  Why cannot the vast majority of countries – often it is a ratio of 191 to 2 (Israel and the US) – reign-in the criminals? Imagine Turkey – sudden massive tariffs on aluminum (20%) and steel (50%) imposed by Trump, plus central bank currency interference had the Turkish Lira drop by 40%, and that ‘only’ because Erdogan is not freeing US pastor Andrew Brunson, who faces in Turkey a jail sentence of 35 years for “terror and espionage”. An Izmir court has just turned down another US request for clemency, however, converting his jail sentence to house arrest for health reasons. It is widely believed that Mr. Brunson’s alleged 23 years of ‘missionary work’ is but a smoke screen for spying. President Erdogan has just declared he would look out for new friends, including new trading partners in the east – Russia, China, Iran, Ukraine, even the unviable EU, and that his country is planning on issuing Yuan-denominated bonds to diversify Turkey’s economy, foremost the country’s reserves and gradually moving away from the dollar hegemony. Looking out for new friends, may also include new military alliances. Is Turkey planning to exit NATO? Would turkey be ‘allowed’ to exit NATO given its strategic maritime and land position between east and west?  Turkey knows that having military allies that dish out punishments for acting sovereignly in internal affair spells disaster for the future. Why continue offering your country to NATO, whose only objective it is to destroy the east, the very east which is not only Turkey’s but the world’s future? Turkey is already approaching the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and may actually accede to it within the foreseeable future. That might be the end of Turkey’s NATO alliance. What if Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China and many more countries not ready to bow to the empire, would jail all those spies embedded in the US Embassies or camouflaged in these countries’ national (financial) institutions, acting as Fifth Columns, undermining their host countries’ national and economic policies? Entire cities of new jails would have to be built to accommodate the empire’s army of criminals. Imagine Russia – more sanctions were just imposed for alleged and totally unproven (to the contrary: disproven) Russian poisoning of four UK citizens with the deadly nerve agent, Novichok – and for not admitting it. This is a total farce, a flagrant lie, that has become so ridiculous, most thinking people, even in the UK, just laugh about it. Yet, Trump and his minions in Europe and many parts of the world succumb to this lie and out of fear of being sanctioned, they also sanction Russia. What has the world become?  Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, would be proud for having taught the important lesson to the liars of the universe: “Let me control the media, and I will turn any nation into a herd of Pigs”. That’s what we have become – a herd of pigs. Fortunately, Russia too has moved away so far already from the western dollar-controlled economy that such sanctions do no longer hurt. They serve Trump and his cronies as mere propaganda tools – show-offs, “we are still the greatest!”. Venezuela is being sanctioned into the ground, literally, by from-abroad (Miami and Bogota) Twitter-induced manipulations of her national currency, the Bolívar, causing astronomical inflation – constant ups and downs of the value of the local currency, bringing the national economy to a virtual halt. Imported food, pharmaceuticals and other goods are being deviated at the borders and other entry points, so they will never end up on supermarket shelves, but become smuggle ware in Colombia, where these goods are being sold at manipulated dollar-exchange rates to better-off Venezuelan and Columbian citizens. These mafia type gangs are being funded by NED and other similar nefarious State Department financed “NGOs”, trained by US secret services, either within or outside Venezuela. Once infiltrated into Venezuela – overtly or covertly – they tend to boycott the local economy from within, spread violence and become part of the Fifth Column, primarily sabotaging the financial system. Venezuela is struggling to get out of this dilemma, which has people suffering, by de-dollarizing her economy, partly through a newly created cryptocurrency, the Petro, based on Venezuela’s huge oil reserves and also through a new Bolivar, in the hope of putting the brakes on the spiraling bursts of inflation. This scenario reminds so much of Chile in 1973, when Henry Kissinger was Foreign Secretary (1973-1977), and inspired the CIA coup, by “disappearing” food and other goods from Chilean markets, killing legitimately elected President Allende, bringing Augusto Pinochet, a horrendous murderer and despot, to power. The military dictatorship brought the death and disappearance of tens of thousands of people and lasted until 1990. Subjugating Venezuela might, however, not be so easy. After all, Venezuela has 19 years of revolutionary Chavista experience and a solid sense of resistance. Iran is being plunged into a similar fate. For no reason at all, Trump reneged on the five-plus-one pronged so-called Nuclear Deal, signed in Vienna on 14 July 2015, after almost ten years of negotiations. Now, of course, driven by the star-Zionist Netanyahu – new and ‘the most severe ever’ sanctions are being imposed on Iran, also decimating the value of their local currency, the Rial. Iran, under the Ayatollah, has already embarked on a course of “Resistance Economy”, meaning de-dollarization of their economy and moving towards food and industrial self-sufficiency, as well as increased trading with eastern countries, China, Russia, the SCO and other friendly and culturally aligned nations, like Pakistan. However, Iran too has a strong Fifth Column, engrained in the financial sector, that does not let go of forcing and propagating trading with the enemy; i.e., the west, the European Union, whose euro-monetary system is part of the dollar hegemony, hence posing similar vulnerability of sanctions as does the dollar. China – the stellar prize of the Big Chess Game – is being ‘sanctioned’ with tariffs no end, for having become the world’s strongest economy, surpassing in real output and measured by people’s purchasing power, by far the United States of America. China also has a solid economy and gold-based currency, the Yuan which is on a fast track to overtake the US-dollar as the number one world reserve currency. China retaliates, of course, with similar ‘sanctions’, but by and large, her dominance of Asian markets and growing economic influence in Europe, Africa and Latin America, is such that Trump’s tariff war means hardly more for China than a drop on a hot stone. North Korea – the much-touted Trump-Kim mid-June Singapore summit – has long since become a tiny spot in the past. Alleged agreements reached then are being breached by the US, as could have been expected. All under the false and purely invented pretext of DPRK not adhering to her disarmament commitment; a reason to impose new strangulating sanctions. The world looks on. It’s normal. Nobody dares questioning the self-styled Masters of the Universe. Misery keeps being dished out left and right, accepted by the brainwashed to-the-core masses around the globe. War is peace and peace is war. Literally. The west is living in a “peaceful” comfort zone. Why disturb it?  If people die from starvation or bombs, it happens far away and allows us to live in peace. Why bother?  Especially since we are continuously, drip-by-steady drip, being told it’s right. In a recent interview with PressTV I was asked why does the US not adhere to any of their internationally or bilaterally concluded treaties or agreements? Good question. Washington is breaking all the rules, agreements, accords, treaties, is not adhering to any international law or even moral standard, simply because following such standards would mean giving up world supremacy. Being on equal keel is not in Washington’s or Tel Aviv’s interest. Yes, this symbiotic and sick relationship between the US and Zionist Israel is becoming progressively more visible; the alliance of the brute military force and the slick and treacherous financial dominion, together striving for world hegemony, for full spectrum dominance.  This trend is accelerating under Trump and those who give him orders, simply because “they can”. Nobody objects. This tends to portray an image of peerless power, instilling fear and is expected to incite obedience. Will it? What is really transpiring is that Washington is isolating itself, that the one-polar world is moving towards a multipolar world, one that increasingly disregards and disrespects the United States, despises her bullying and warmongering, killing and shedding misery over hundreds of millions of people, most of them defenseless children, women and elderly, by direct military force or by proxy-led conflicts – Yemen is just one recent example – causing endless human suffering to people who have never done any harm to their neighbors, let alone to Americans. Who could have any respect left for such a nation, called the United States of America, for the people behind such lying monsters? This behavior by the dying empire is driving allies and friends into the opposite camp – to the east, where the future lays, away from a globalized One-World-Order, towards a healthy and more equal multi-polar world. – It would be good, if our world body, the members of the United Nations, created in the name of Peace, would finally gather the courage and stand up against the two destroyer nations for the good of humanity, of the globe, and of Mother Earth. http://clubof.info/

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Sanctions, Sanctions, Sanctions – the Final Demise of the Dollar Hegemony?

by Peter Koenig

Sanctions left and sanctions right. Financial mostly, taxes, tariffs, visas, travel bans – confiscation of foreign assets, import and export prohibitions and limitations; and also punishing those who do not respect sanctions dished out by Trump, alias the US of A, against friends of their enemies. The absurdity seems endless and escalating – exponentially, as if there was a deadline to collapse the world. Looks like a last-ditch effort to bring down international trade in favor of — what? – Make America Great Again? – Prepare for US mid-term elections? – Rally the people behind an illusion? – Or what?

All looks arbitrary and destructive. All is of course totally illegal by any international law or, forget law, which is not respected anyway by the empire and its vassals, but not even by human moral standards. Sanctions are destructive. They are interfering in other countries sovereignty. They are made to punish countries, nations, that refuse to bend to a world dictatorship.

Looks like everybody accepts this new economic warfare as the new normal. Nobody objects. And the United Nations, the body created to maintain Peace, to protect our globe from other wars, to uphold human rights – this very body is silent – out of fear? Out of fear that it might be ‘sanctioned’ into oblivion by the dying empire? – Why cannot the vast majority of countries – often it is a ratio of 191 to 2 (Israel and the US) – reign-in the criminals?

Imagine Turkey – sudden massive tariffs on aluminum (20%) and steel (50%) imposed by Trump, plus central bank currency interference had the Turkish Lira drop by 40%, and that ‘only’ because Erdogan is not freeing US pastor Andrew Brunson, who faces in Turkey a jail sentence of 35 years for “terror and espionage”. An Izmir court has just turned down another US request for clemency, however, converting his jail sentence to house arrest for health reason. It is widely believed that Mr. Brunson’s alleged 23 years of ‘missionary work’ is but a smoke screen for spying.

President Erdogan has just declared he would look out for new friends, including new trading partners in the east – Russia, China, Iran, Ukraine, even the unviable EU, and that his country is planning issuing Yuan-denominated bonds to diversify Turkey’s economy, foremost the country’s reserves and gradually moving away from the dollar hegemony.

Looking out for new friends, may also include new military alliances. Is Turkey planning to exit NATO? Would turkey be ‘allowed’ to exit NATO – given its strategic position maritime and land position between east and west? – Turkey knows that having military allies that dish out punishments for acting sovereignly in internal affair – spells disaster for the future. Why continue offering your country to NATO, whose only objective it is to destroy the east – the very east which is not only Turkey’s but the world’s future? Turkey is already approaching the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and may actually accede to it within the foreseeable future. That might be the end of Turkey’s NATO alliance.

What if Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China – and many more countries not ready to bow to the empire, would jail all those spies embedded in the US Embassies or camouflaged in these countries’ national (financial) institutions, acting as Fifth Columns, undermining their host countries’ national and economic policies? – Entire cities of new jails would have to be built to accommodate the empire’s army of criminals.

Imagine Russia – more sanctions were just imposed for alleged and totally unproven (to the contrary: disproven) Russian poisoning of four UK citizens with the deadly nerve agent, Novichok – and for not admitting it. This is a total farce, a flagrant lie, that has become so ridiculous, most thinking people, even in the UK, just laugh about it. Yet, Trump and his minions in Europe and many parts of the world succumb to this lie – and out of fear of being sanctions, they also sanction Russia. What has the world become? – Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, would be proud for having taught the important lesson to the liars of the universe: “Let me control the media, and I will turn any nation into a herd of Pigs”. That’s what we have become – a herd of pigs.

Fortunately, Russia too has moved away so far already from the western dollar-controlled economy that such sanctions do no longer hurt. They serve Trump and his cronies as mere propaganda tools – show-offs, “we are still the greatest!”.

Venezuela is being sanctioned into the ground, literally, by from-abroad (Miami and Bogota) Twitter-induced manipulations of her national currency, the Bolívar, causing astronomical inflations – constant ups and downs of the value of the local currency, bringing the national economy to a virtual halt. Imported food, pharmaceuticals and other goods are being deviated at the borders and other entry points, so they will never end up on supermarket shelves, but become smuggle ware in Colombia, where these goods are being sold at manipulated dollar-exchange rates to better-off Venezuelan and Columbian citizens. These mafia type gangs are being funded by NED and other similar nefarious State Department financed “NGOs”, trained by US secret services, either within or outside Venezuela. Once infiltrated into Venezuela – overtly or covertly – they tend to boycott the local economy from within, spread violence and become part of the Fifth Column, primarily sabotaging the financial system.

Venezuela is struggling to get out of this dilemma which has people suffering, by de-dollarizing her economy, partly through a newly created cryptocurrency, the Petro, based on Venezuela’s huge oil reserves and also through a new Bolivar – in the hope of putting the breaks on the spiraling bursts of inflation. This scenario reminds so much of Chile in 1973, when Henry Kissinger was Foreign Secretary (1973-1977), and inspired the CIA coup, by “disappearing” food and other goods from Chilean markets, killing legitimately elected President Allende, bringing Augusto Pinochet, a horrendous murderer and despot to power. The military dictatorship regime brought the death and disappearance of tens of thousands of people and lasted until 1990. Subjugating Venezuela might, however, not be so easy. After all, Venezuela has 19 years of revolutionary Chavista experience – and a solid sense of resistance.

Iran – is being plunged into a similar fate. For no reason at all, Trump reneged on the five-plus-one pronged so-called Nuclear Deal, signed in Vienna on 14 July 2015, after almost ten years of negotiations. Now – of course driven by the star-Zionist Netanyahu – new and ‘the most severe ever’ sanctions are being imposed on Iran, also decimating the value of their local currency, the Rial. Iran, under the Ayatollah, has already embarked on a course of “Resistance Economy”, meaning de-dollarization of their economy and moving towards food and industrial self-sufficiency, as well as increased trading with eastern countries, China, Russia, the SCO and other friendly and culturally aligned nations, like Pakistan. However, Iran too has a strong Fifth Column, engrained in the financial sector, that does not let go of forcing and propagating trading with the enemy, i.e. the west, the European Union, whose euro-monetary system is part of the dollar hegemony, hence posing similar vulnerability of sanctions as does the dollar.

China – the stellar prize of the Big Chess Game – is being ‘sanctioned’ with tariffs no end, for having become the world’s strongest economy, surpassing in real output and measured by people’s purchasing power, by far the United States of America. China also has a solid economy and gold-based currency, the Yuan – which is on a fast track to overtake the US-dollar as the number one world reserve currency. China retaliates, of course, with similar ‘sanctions’, but by and large, her dominance of Asian markets and growing economic influence in Europe, Africa and Latin America, is such that Trump’s tariff war means hardly more for China than a drop on a hot stone.

North Korea – the much-touted Trump-Kim mid-June Singapore summit – has long since become a tiny spot in the past. Alleged agreements reached then are being breached by the US, as could have been expected. All under the false and purely invented pretext of DPRK not adhering to her disarmament commitment; a reason to impose new strangulating sanctions. The world looks on. Its normal. Nobody dares questioning the self-styled Masters of the Universe. Misery keeps being dished out left and right – accepted by the brainwashed to-the-core masses around the globe. War is peace and peace is war. Literally. The west is living in a “peaceful” comfort zone. Why disturb it? – If people die from starvation or bombs – it happens far away and allows us to live in peace. Why bother? – Especially since we are continuously, drip-by-steady drip being told its right.

In a recent interview with PressTV I was asked, why does the US not adhere to any of their internationally or bilaterally concluded treaties or agreements? – Good question. – Washington is breaking all the rules, agreements, accords, treaties, is not adhering to any international law or even moral standard, simply because following such standards would mean giving up world supremacy. Being on equal keel is not in Washington’s or Tel Aviv’s interest. Yes, this symbiotic and sick relationship between the US and Zionist Israel is becoming progressively more visible; the alliance of the brute military force and the slick and treacherous financial dominion – together striving for world hegemony, for full spectrum dominance. This trend is accelerating under Trump and those who give him orders, simply because “they can”. Nobody objects. This tends to portray an image of peerless power, instilling fear and is expected to incite obedience. Will it?

What is really transpiring is that Washington is isolating itself, that the one-polar world is moving towards a multipolar world, one that increasingly disregards and disrespects the United States, despises her bullying and warmongering – killing and shedding misery over hundreds of millions of people, most of them defenseless children, women and elderly, by direct military force or by proxy-led conflicts – Yemen is just one recent examples, causing endless human suffering to people who have never done any harm to their neighbors, let alone to Americans. Who could have any respect left for such a nation, called the United States of America, for the people behind such lying monsters?

This behavior by the dying empire is driving allies and friends into the opposite camp – to the east, where the future lays, away from a globalized One-World-Order, towards a healthy and more equal multi-polar world. – It would be good, if our world body, the members of the United Nations, created in the name of Peace, would finally gather the courage and stand up against the two destroyer nations for the good of humanity, of the globe, and of Mother Earth.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog; and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.