reader dialog

2005-11-11

Richard Moore

--------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:03:04 -0500
To: •••@••.•••
From: "Raging Grannie (Wanda B)" <>
Subject: NPR on Chavez

Got this from Liberty Underground....

This morning on NPR's Morning Edition the news reader
again screamed that Hugo Chavez is "anti-American" and
there will be "anti-American" demonstrations in Venezuela
where Bush meets today.  The corporate media logic is that
if you are against Bush, you are against America, but that
is not what the demonstrations are about (corporate media
don't want you to know)
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=42&ItemID=9039


Hugo Chavez has offered to debate Bush about the Free
Trade Area of the Americas proposal
http://www.mercopress.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=6693 
but Bush will not agree to it.  If Bush agreed, corporate
media would not cover it, because Americans are not
allowed to get facts like those which would be aired in
such a debate.  The public might learn something about
what the euphemistically-called "free trade" actually does
to working class people and the environment and the whole
scam would be exposed.

Chavez is often smeared by his association with Fidel
Castro, since most Americans know only extreme propaganda
about Castro and Cuba.  What most Americans do not know is
that Castro has provided thousands of medical doctors to
Venezuela to provide medical care, for the first time, to
the Venezuelan masses, and Chavez is thankful.

Every opportunity is taken by corporate media to twist
facts about the Cuban people, since they overthrew the US
puppet dictator Batista, who allowed American organized
crime and corporations to do their will in Cuba.  The
crime of overthrowing the ruthless dictator will not be
forgiven until Cuba is once again under the thumb of the
transnational corporations, and its girls once again have
no hope but to grow up to become prostitutes, its boys to
chop sugar cane.

Because its treasury is gone to Miami with the thugs who
ruled before the revolution, Cuba is more impoverished
than ever, but has managed to put together the best
education system in the Western hemisphere, with the
highest literacy rate and medical care for all, something
the world's richest nation, the US, shamefully does not
have for its own people.

To undo all of the propaganda Americans know about Cuba,
and only propaganda comes through our mass media
concerning Cuba, would take a large book, so we will not
go into the many raids on Cuba by the terrorists who train
in Florida this morning, the history of attempts on
Castro's life by US agents, or other terrorist acts
committed by our government against the people of Cuba.

We will try the microcosm approach this morning,
describing only one incident horribly distorted by mass
media, in Saul Landau's latest piece.  What do you think
the US government would do if foreign planes were flying
over the country, dropping leaflets reading "Kill your
leader" --Jack

A Cuba Story: 
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?id=935&lists=newslog

--------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 07:19:53 -0800 (PST)
From: Diana Skipworth <>
Subject: Re: Help: Student Faces Expulsion for Nov. 2 action
To: •••@••.•••

Dear Richard,
 
I will fax the school first thing tomorrow when I get to
the office.

In Batavia, IL between 30 to 50 Batavia High School
students walked out of the building on November 2 and the
school called the Batavia police to assist in rounding up
the truant students.  24 were cited by police and given
$25 tickets (fine for being truant).  The story was
printed by the Daily Herald on November 3. 
<http://www.dailyherald.com/>www.dailyherald.com .

Many of the students had their comments listed in the
paper as well, mostly that it was worth the $25 to show
their displeasure with President Bush.  Some people
wondered what this country was coming to, having the
school telephone police to squash dissent.  (However,
being someone who has attempted protests at Congressman J.
Dennis Hastert's Batavia, IL office, only to be prevented
by the Batavia, IL police, I am not at all surprised.)

In another matter, a citizen was writing in the newspaper
10/31/05 (Daily Herald) asking if this nation is the land
of the free or land of the dictated-to regarding the oil
companies and their record profits this last quarter.  I
responded (of course) but have not yet been printed.  I
mention this, because I found the exact quote from the
book The Seven Sisters, The great oil companies and the
World they shaped.  Being a native of Los Angeles, the
town sited in the quotation, I thought you may be
interested.
 
Diana Skipworth

------------

Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 06:37:41 -0800 (PST) 
From: "Diana Skipworth" 
Subject: My Reply to Chris Miller, of 10/31/05 
To: "The Daily Herald Fencepost" <•••@••.•••>

To the Editor:
 
I would like to take this time to answer one of the
questions raised by Chris Miller:  "Is this the land of
the free...or land of the dictated to?"  Dear Chris, yes
to both questions, but brevity permits only the second
part of my answer.

In his book, The Seven Sisters, The great Oil Companies &
the World They Shaped, by Anthony Sampson, let me direct
you to page 154, where he talks about 'rival transport':

..."In Los Angeles, for instance, the first sprawling
suburbs had been built not round cars and freeways, but
round an electric railroad system, whose relics can still
be seen alongside the freeways; but in the late 'thirties
General Motors collaborated with the local oil company,
Socal (and also with Firestone), to buy up the railroad,
and soon afterwards to close it down.  They did similar
deals with oil companies in other big American cities;
ensuring that the inhabitants would be dependent on
road-transport alone.  The freeways cut further into the
country and through the hearts of cities, while the
railroad decayed."
 
I hope this answers your question.
 
Regards,
 
Diana Skipworth

--------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 23:51:46 +0100
To: •••@••.•••
From: Prospective Internationale <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Re: rkm : What are the French riots about?

Great piece Richard!

Georges Drouet

--------------------------------------------------------
From: "Cal" <>
To: <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Re: What are the French riots about?
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 19:50:32 -0600
X-Priority: 3

Thank you Richard for once again providing some much
needed perspective on the bigger picture.  We get so
caught up in individual events that we lose sight of their
connection and larger significance.

Some thoughts about your piece:

I think people ARE, of necessity,  beginning to fall back
on their own resources more and more as the world seems to
turn topsy turvey...where up is down and right is left. 
Of course many remain rudderless and fearful. It is
nothing less than a societal polar shift.  Who can hold
their center during such times when all the usual points
of direction and reference are lost? The media's
propaganda is contributing to this too....we have to
'discover' the truth for ourselves amidst all the 'noise'.
Even without the propaganda this would likely be the
result of technological shifts that have exposed us to a
massive proliferation of information.  People like
yourself who help to sort it out and interpret it are
invaluable.

Of course, we have to learn to trust ourselves more and
the deep roots of universal law.  We'll have to sharpen
our instincts and develop non-linear intuitive guidance
systems to maneuver.  Those who don't have these tools
will indeed get caught up in an abysmal undertow of
hopelessness.  The props which supported their  illusions
will fall like a house of cards.

Very disorienting when you don't have your usual points of
reference.  So its understandable that some will continue
to look for a White Knight, or have loyalty to a system or
company even when it is not returned.  Because without our
contrived 'reality' we often don't initially know who we
are or where we fit or even what to do.  People can't give
up their version of reality upon which everything in their
life has been built, until they reach a tipping point.

How many voluntarily accept such a death?

Disillusionment is a bit different than hopelessness,
although hopelessness can be the result of disillusionment
if there is no light that emerges or lessons learned.   I
don't know if people or systems need a complete breakdown
if they are provided with another model or choice that
feels 'right' to them and that they can transition into,
even if they aren't entirely cognizant of why or how. 
Maybe that is unrealistic and an avoidance of an
inevitable cyclical death.  Or is there something of value
in the current system that can be a bridge?

How can we identify which parts need to be discarded and
what we can keep (if anything?).  Well, the clearer we get
about where we're heading, the easier those questions will
be to answer.

If people are left too long in the dark and all hope is
lost then  violence seems unavoidable.  Is that ultimately
constructive?  Or is there another way?

I think its important for people who have already been
through this disillusionment phase, to begin working on
new models and living it as much as possible.  There are
limits because we are still IN the old systems, but there
are seeds that can be planted and visions to share and
discussions to have that can manifest as the scaffolding
of the 'new' structure even as the old disintegrates. 
Then it seems less likely that false prophets of economic
globalism  will step into the dark void, the vacuum of
power, after the collapse with their self-serving
blueprints (as the neocons did just after 9/11, and the
developers did after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast).  They
are opportunistic and would happily shine a light to lead
us out or our darkness into their reality.  That is also
what multinational corporations have done.  They have
stepped into the power void of globalization where there
are no world regulatory bodies or laws established.  They
want to govern the world and offer up neoliberalism as the
light.

The new values being born will sculpt the new system like
water on stone...gradually.  You cannot impose a system on
people for very long if it doesn't resonate with their
deepest values.  The resistance/pressure is too great.

It's relatively easy to tear things down but quite a bit
more challenging to know what to do from there.  Easier to
identify what's wrong with a system than to design a new
one.

-------

Hi Cal,

You state the problem well. My book, which is now ready
for publication, is my attempt to explore how we can
together evolve a new system within the old.

rkm

--------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 13:07:22 -0800
From: Jeff & Diana Jewell <>
Subject: Co-Op Radio discussion
To: •••@••.•••

Hi, Richard;

Jeff and I both listened to your interview/discussion with
Don Nordin just now (Jeff is home on his bi-weekly flex
day), and as usual, it was great to hear your views and
voice again.  The critique was superb as usual, but I was
disappointed that you guys didn't get down to the "what to
do" part which was promised in the introduction.  At the
end, saying that we are all brothers and sisters and
should work together for common goals was good, but I
hoped you would go beyond that.

In fact, I tried to call in, as we're about to be thrown
into another federal election, and I've promised John
Bunzl I would become more active (and he's got another
infusion of money), namely to send letters to all our
members of parliament and as many candidates as possible
telling them about Simultaneous Policy, and inviting them
to adopt.  I feel a renewed commitment to this very
valuable tool for change, and it would have made a good
contribution to getting the word out to Don's mainly
Canadian audience. However, maybe in a month if you do it
again, we can bring it out.  I think Jeff connected with
John through you and your Cyberjournal, and I'm not sure
how we got to J.W. Smith, probably from the same source.

We're still up to help you with your book tour.

Cheers,

Diana

------

Hi Diana,

I too wanted to get 'beyond that'. Unfortunately, Don kept 
bringing us back to 'the problem'. Looking forward to 
seeing you on the tour.

rkm

--------------------------------------------------------
From: "Gerry Masuda" <>
Cc: <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Now is the time to develop new appoached to our 
              political activism.  But what?
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 14:34:56 -0800


Hi Gang.  I have three quotes from an email from
•••@••.••• sent 7 Nov 05, titled What are
the French riots about?
 
    1.  "One of the reasons I continue to spend so much time
    publicizing 'how bad things are' is because I believe that
    the path to our salvation lies through hopelessness. Until
    we give up, entirely, on any hope of the system ever
    working, or responding to our demands and activism, we
    will not turn to ourselves, and to one another, for
    creating the social forms that can replace the toxic
    machine. "
    
    
    2.  "And the reason I try to unmask the Matrix is so that
    we can see that 'the system' is not merely dysfunctional,
    but is intentionally operated by intelligent people who
    have lots of power, who are flexible in using that power,
    and who want things to develop the way they are
    developing. They don't care what happens to the 'dregs' --
    the rest of us. "
    
    3.  "Once we realize that our situation is hopeless, and
    then realize that everyone else is in the same situation,
    we can see that 'we are all in this together', and begin
    to see that by making all of us dregs, our leaders have
    turned us into a majority constituency -- if only we can
    overcome our Matrix-encouraged divisiveness."

Another aspect to consider in our reappraisal of our
current approach to political activism is the following
un-referenced quote which supports Richard's
quotes. "Economic, social and political structures have
always been constructed for the benefit of those who stand
to gain the most: those, who, ultimately, have control of
the energy/wealth/power. People and ideas are controlled
commodities, and freedom of thought is stifled."

I think the time has come to give up on the current
political/economic situation and start to constructively
create our own 'social forms'.  We are spending too much
time and effort trying to reform or getting the system to
change.  It is time to develop our own system - whatever
that means.  Perhaps Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has a
possible approach with his idea of developing parallel
people's organizations when the current organizations do
not work for us.  Unfortunately we don't have a source of
funding.  However, we have to get our thinking straight
first.  Then we address the problem of funding.
 
Any ideas?
 
Gerry

------

Hi Gerry,

Thanks for your message.

I don't think funding is the issue. As regards getting our
thinking straight, I think the most important thing to get
straight is that we are all in this together, and that the
system won't help us. We need to begin dialoging together,
face-to-face, in our communities - not gathering only
with those we agree with.

Those are the ideas I try to develop in my book.

rkm

--------------------------------------------------------
From: "John Bunzl" <•••@••.•••>
To: •••@••.•••
Subject: Re: rkm : What are the French riots about?
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 12:08:50 -0500

Hi Richard,

<snip>

    rkm> And the reason I try to unmask the Matrix is so that
    we can see that 'the system' is not merely dysfunctional,
    but is intentionally operated by intelligent people who
    have lots of power, who are flexible in using that power,
    and who want things to develop the way they are
    developing. They don't care what happens to the 'dregs' --
    the rest of us.

Here we go again, Richard. I know we've discussed this
many times before but I feel I must again suggest that the
dynamic of destructive competition engendered by the free
movement of capital and corporations is itself perfectly
capable of explaining the phenomena you describe WITHOUT
them needing to be explained by 'intelligent people with
lots of power'. What is your evidence that these evil
'people with lots of power' are consciously driving the
system in this direction? While I don't doubt that there
are some evil people around acting independently to make a
buck (like George Soros when he busted the £ out of the
EMS) and that, according to competitive market forces they
may APPEAR to be acting intentionally and in concert, is
it not far more likely that it is essentially the dynamic
of destructive competition itself which is driving this
cancerous process rather than some 'evil and powerful
group'?

This assertion of yours, I'm afraid, does tend towards the
conspiracy theory genre that others have complained of and
I really wonder if it's truly helpful in getting people to
understand how the system that is killing us all works.
After all, lets suppose there IS an 'evil and powerful
group' at work that pushes the system faster than it would
otherwise go by itself. Even if they were got rid of,
wouldn't the underlying dynamic of destructive competition
still be in motion and still need to be dealt with, as the
Simultaneous Policy (SP) is starting to do?

all the best

John

--------

Hi John,

There are theories, and there are facts. You ask, "What is
your evidence?". I suggest you read Engdahl's, "A Century
of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World
Order". It's not the only book that gives the facts, but I
think it's one of the best.

rkm
 
--------------------------------------------------------
From: "William Engdahl" <>
To: <•••@••.•••>
Subject: RE: rkm : What are the French riots about?
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 23:35:40 +0100

Richard I've been trying to get more a fix on the French
events as the pattern suggests a professional
destabilization of a key opponent of the Bush neo con
agenda. What seems to be the case is that the neo-con
friendly and politically ambitious Interior Minister
Sarkozy is inciting this with calculated ugly racist
remarks and there are likely false flag provocateurs
inciting the youth mobs. Much like the Ukraine Orange
Revolution only violent.

Have a look at Thierry Meyssan 'The neocons new strategy
for Europe.' www.voltairenet.org/article129038.html

And 'Paris: The Hand that lights the Fire,'
www.pej.org/html...

Best,

wm

-------

Hi William,

Thanks. I haven't had a chance to look at those sources yet. 
Let us know if you come up with any further insights.

rkm

--------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 09:17:01 -0500
To: •••@••.•••
From: Don Chisholm <>
Subject: Re: Venezuela : intriguing initiatives

Hi Richard

It's nice to read about the courageous efforts of Chavez,
and I sure wish him success.  However, I hope that his
educational initiatives include and stress knowledge about
the dire need for negative population growth. 
Historically, when poor or disenfranchised people (or any
species) experience improvement in general well-being,
their population grows until the source of the improvement
is swamped.  I don't know what is the timing for peak oil
in Venezuela, but if global peak oil is somewhere between
now and a few years, the Venezuela peak would not likely
be long after that.  When the oil wells dry up, the
party's over, and if these people, like most of the world,
have not used this one time flow of black magic wealth to
learn how to live without it, the whole effort will simply
lead to greater peak population before collapse.

Oh well.
Don Chisholm

-------

Hi Don,

You seem to be caught up in social-Darwinist, Malthusian
mythology. You might want to take a look at Lappé &
Collins, "World Hunger: Twelve Myths". The problem of
resource depletion is not due to third-world population
levels but rather first-world consumption patterns.

rkm

--------------------------------------------------------
From: "David Lewit" <>
To: <•••@••.•••>
Subject: RE: Humor : We Survived !
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 10:44:59 -0500

Richard---

What made you want to forward this?  It's cute, but very
Tom Sawyer middle class, leaving out the majority's
childhood (and youth) experience in the cities of USA. 
With any one or more of the following: Guns, gangs, dumb
videos, drunken parents or no parents, beatings, boredom,
bad schools, stolen stuff and death.  Is that all just
propaganda?  Maybe you could run this "We Survived" thing
past some friend who grew up on the other side of the
tracks, and send out his rebuttal.  Or am I daft?
Aloha-----  Dave

--------

Hi Dave,

I liked the piece because it resonated with my own 
experience. No offense intended to those with other 
experiences.

rkm

-- 

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