Remembering Commander Hugo Chavez on His Birth Day

Hugo Chavez

Nino Pagliccia

Communist Online | August 04, 2020

 

Hugo Chavez and Liberator Simon Bolivar

 

In anyone’s life, the years of greatest impact for character training, learning skill and even human values are children’s and youth years. Sure, it doesn’t mean there’s a foolproof formula to create heroes or geniuses, or else we all were.
But the curiosity arises to see how Hugo Chavez’s formative years were before he took his course in the military career.
What can we detect before Chavez became an adult that could have influenced his historical history in Latin America?

A Fractured Empire, Within and Without

U.S EMPIRE

Interview of John Bellamy Foster

MR Online | July 25, 2020

Birgün: U.S. hegemony is in decline. There are signs that the divide between the United States and its European allies is widening. Lately, there is a tension with Germany over the Nord Stream 2 Project. What does that mean about the future of the hegemonic order that the U.S. leads and late imperialism? Can we talk about a real crack in the ‘triad’? Is the U.S. losing its ‘big brother’ role in the ‘triad’?

JBF: Washington’s relations with its European allies sour periodically, since they are capitalist competitors and have divergent national interests. European nations are especially angry about recent U.S. interference in their affairs which goes along with U.S. hegemony. None of this though runs so deep at present as to constitute “a real crack” in the imperial triad of the United States, Europe, and Japan. In terms of U.S. opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany, which is now almost completed, this should not be seen as arising simply from the Trump administration since Obama too opposed the pipeline. The proposed new round of sanctions to be imposed on corporations engaged in the construction of the pipeline are being promoted on a bipartisan basis in the U.S. Senate with both Democrats and Republicans in support.

Amazon Women Warriors and Revolutionary Pants

FEMINISM AND HISTORY

Fred Magdoff

MR Online | July 24, 2020

For much of human history, most people—men and women—wore loose fitting robes of various types to cover their bodies. It is thought that trousers were invented relatively recently in human history, around 1000 BCE, so that people could be more comfortable riding horses.

The Scythians, nomadic horse people on the Eurasian grasslands (the steppes), had a reputation of being excellent and fierce warriors. They flourished from around 900 BCE to 200 BCE, living mainly in what is now the Crimea region but having wide influence on the steppes to the east. In these nomadic societies, based on the use of the horse, it was common for women to wear trousers and to fight as warriors alongside men. Some of the earliest depictions of trousers were being worn by both male and female Scythian warriors. It is thought that while women were not able to match the strength and size of men—a distinct disadvantage in ground combat with swords, shields, and armor—they could control horses and shoot arrows as well as men. “They were horse people par excellence, and—no coincidence—many of these groups were also distinguished by relative gender equality, compared to the Greeks.”⁽¹⁾ Viking women may also have participated as warriors, but it was the norm among the Scythians.

A Few Explanations on Bhabani Shankar Nayak’s Article on Crime, Justice and Capitalism

DEBATE 

 Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents | July 23, 2020

Countercurrents has posted an article – “Crime, Justice and Capitalism” – by Mister Bhabani Shankar Nayak (Coventry University, UK) on July 12, 2020, which deserves a few explanations.

The spirit and orientation of the article – anti-capitalism – is nice. It joins today’s millions tormented and tortured by capitalism. The voice must be appreciated.

However, a few points raised in the article need a brief explanation as the time is full with confusing ideas appearing anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, but, in essence, fueling bourgeois ideas/concepts, which, in the long-run, will hinder organizing people’s struggles.

Crime, Justice and Capitalism

CAPITALISM

 Bhabani Shankar Nayak

Countercurrents | July 12, 2020

The right-wing henchmen and their liberal brethren provide moral justifications for extra judicial deaths during colonial plunders and imperialist wars. From Iraq wars to the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and from honour killings to domestic violence, police encounters, and custodial deaths around the world are part of the same genealogy, that justifies violence on moral grounds. Colonialism as civilising mission, imperialist wars for democracy and human rights are products of unfounded moral discourses shaped by the ruling class propaganda. The moral arguments continue to provide justifications to institutionalise violence and patronise it in the name of nationalism, religion, community and caste honour. The masses fall into such false intellectual narrative and celebrate such extra judicial, structural and institutionalised violence as justice. It has shaped the Orwellian proverbial expression. “Those who live by the sword die by the sword. Those who do not die by the sword die of smelly diseases”. Such a violent social formulation derives its cultural legitimacy from Christian theology.  The Gospel of Matthew echoes it by saying “sword shall perish with the sword”. The patronage of violence is an integral part of most of the world religions. The idea of god and religions will perish without cherishing the ideals of violence and fear in the name of justice. In this way, normalisation and naturalisation of violence as justice derives its legitimacy from religious and moral discourses, which is antithetical to ideals of justice.

Gun Sales Spike Among African-Americans

U.S SOCIETY

 

A Journal of People report

 

Gun sales have spiked in the United States during the Pandemic months.

A new survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) found: During the first six months of 2020, gun retailers have reported a record 10.3 million firearm transactions, overall, gun sales in the U.S. have increased by 95 percent while ammunition sales have increased 139 percent compared to the same period last year. And among various demographic groups, African-Americans account for the highest increase in gun purchases.

“The highest overall firearm sales increase comes from Black men and women, who show a 58.2% increase in purchases during the first six months of 2020 versus the same period last year,” Jim Curcuruto, NSSF director of research and market development, wrote in his report. “Bottom line is that there has never been a sustained surge in firearm sales quite like what we are in the midst of.”

Exclusive: Bill Richardson Undertakes Private Mission After U.S State Dept Abandons Families of Mercenaries Detained in Venezuela Invasion

U.S IMPERIALISM 

Anya Parampil

THE GRAYZONE | July 13, 2020

The Grayzone has confirmed that former US ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson traveled to Venezuela on Monday, July 13, following conversations with the families of former Green Beret soldiers Luke Denman and Airan Berry. Venezuelan authorities detained Berry and Denman on May 4, after they participated in a failed mercenary invasion of Venezuela with the stated goal of kidnapping the country’s elected president, Nicolas Maduro.

Mark Denman, the younger brother of the detained mercenary Luke Denman, told The Grayzone that Richardson had agreed to help his family after the US Department of State failed to offer assistance. Denman said the FBI had contacted his family, but only to advance its apparent criminal investigation into the ringleader of the botched mercenary invasion, Silvercorp CEO Jordan Goudreau.

Blockbuster Oil Bribery Scandal Exposes Corrupt Double-dealing of Guaidó ‘Attorney General’

IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION AGAINST VENEZUELA

Anya Parampil

THE GRAYZONE | July 14, 2020

Below the radar of US media, a district court in Florida tossed out a multibillion-dollar bribery case in March 2018 thanks to testimony delivered by a former member of the shadow administration of Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó.

That ex-official, Jose Ignacio Hernandez, served as attorney general in the US-backed Guaidó junta until July of this year. As this investigation will reveal, Hernandez’s testimony was bought and paid for by foreign oil giants with an interest in defrauding Venezuela’s state petroleum company out of billions of dollars.

These corporate titans, which included some of the world’s largest oil companies, bribed corrupt officials within Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state-run Venezuelan oil company, to rig contracts in their favor.

Leonardo DiCaprio Joins the Cultural War Campaign Against Venezuela

IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION AGAINST VENEZUELA

 

Mauricio Montes

ORINOCO TRIBUNE | July 30, 2020

 

 

The President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, had warned about it. In a national TV broadcast, he warned that the person responsible for managing the multidimensional aggression against the South American country, Elliott Abrams, would finance “a campaign by all media, radio, television, social networks, against Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution.”

To advance this end, Abrams would use media such as AP (The Associated Press), Bloomberg, Euronews and, in addition, “a group of mercenaries on social networks that have portals and accounts so that they are all day at rumors and campaigns,” Maduro pointed out.

Evidence that this attack not only is occurring but raises the stakes, by recruiting world-class media figures.

The Latest ‘COVID party’ had 700 Attendees and Took New Jersey Police 5 Hours to Break Up

COVID-19 IN USA

Aysha Qamar

DAILY KOS | July 29, 2020

Screenshot of footage shared by ABC News of the house party in Jackson, New Jersey.

Hold the press, New Jersey is busted for partying again! While not at the level of Florida yet, residents in the state of New Jersey are trying to play catch up. Large social gatherings have begun to resume as the state started reporting a decline in the number of novel coronavirus cases. Just Monday, Daily Kos reported over a dozen lifeguards from two New Jersey towns tested positive following indoor beach parties.

In the most recent incident, three residents were charged for violating the governor’s order limiting the size of gatherings after at least 700 people were found partying in an Airbnb rental on Sunday, police officials said. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s order limits outdoor gatherings to 500 people and indoor gatherings to 100 or 25% of a room’s capacity. The three charged were identified as the Jackson homeowner, 40-year-old Yaakov Weiss, and 23-year-old Patience Guanue and 22-year-old Alicia Hinneh, the two party organizers. According to NBC News, it took the authorities almost five hours to shut down the event.