FACEBOOK LETTER TO A COLLEGE CLASSMATE´S QUERY ON HUGO CHAVEZ

@ JEFF: You went to a PROPER USA UNDERGRADUATE INSTITUTIONAL LEARNING FACILITY SO YOU GET IT. Chavez and Correa AND Lula and Bachelet have a LITTLE power, not a lot. That power is concentrated in the natural resources sector and for Chavez and Lula in the tech sector. When the sweep of 1998 cleared out the dictators, the new breed learned how to leverage what power they did have into more freedom from AMERIKKKA.

Chavez can bark and if he wants he can probably end the world if Russia gets cheated out of what its owed from its JVs but he cannot assemble enough men to rout AMERIKKKA in a ground war. Less still Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay or Chile.

Bachelet, probably the closest person this regiion has to Nelson Mandela, does it with moral right on her side. Chavez by gathering the peoples´ pride and bluffing. Testing choke points. Bill Clinton knew this and went with a half-assed PLAN COLOMBIA in his usual triangulating style. Bush tried to overthrow Chavez twice, failed, and folded his tent. Obama, nowhere near as smart as Clinton or Chavez, and not as tough as Bush, is searching and not finding. I expect he knows that a united Latin America is bad for him. I expect he knows that Chavez can outthink hiim but is less-coldblooded. So, Obama uses the imperial approach via Colombia for now and with lots of US troops later.

Obama,unlike the Big Dog or Bush, is chickenshit with very little life expeience and has no patience. He is also saddledwitha monster ego so ifthe counterparty doesn´t being by kissing his ass for whatever reason: black presidennt, handsome,smart perfect….he´s lost.

@ JEFF CONTINUED: My experience in gambling and finance gives me a good read on these things. Intially,my problems with Obama were financial. It didn´t like how he was stealing from the American people and using his color as a sword and shield at the same time, when with a decent tan, I hae the same color, but with Levantine not African features. I assumed he´d continue USA middle-east policy and use some form of ANTI-DRUG thing to get the FED into Latin America.

That´s when I sought Cindy Sheehan´s help and experience as multi-faceted intelligent movement. She has been down here a lot and knows the scene. I expected a bank raid and as she is as much anti-FED as ani this skirmish or that one, I knew she and her crew would sharpen-up my viewpoint.

I did not expect that Obama would risk the popularity he built up by being the most aggressive imperialist in my lifetime. If this were a game like chess or poker, I´d say that once he or someone in his inner ciircle realized THAT HE COULD GET WEAK SUBURBAN WHITE LIBERALS AND PREACHY OLD BLACK PEOPLE to buy into a fascism worse than anyone´s since McCarthy´s and love it, he´d have free domestic reigh which might give him an international edge. That´s what he´s testing here. He´s going to get a lot of people down here killled before he realizes that AMERIKKKAN VALUES don´t play here…. Read More

These cultures are too traditional and too finely balanced for bullshit. The history is too bloody for anyone to be seeking out more blood, so TOLERANCE and UNDESTANDING are the urban watchwords. I dont know enoughoranythng really about rural culture to offer an opinion. What´s happening in Colombia is totally fucked and I believe at some point the AUC is going to have the same realization the FARC has come to (SORT OF). Why kill your brother when the enemy is AMERIKKKA.

I probably defend Uribe more than most Wesstern peace movement peiople because I´ve seen his peaceable side and I know his family history and how that makes him a puppet and I would be no more courageous. I also praise Cesar Gaviria and Ernesto Samper more than most Western peace movement types because they were not or ever NWO types and they were not given a chance to lead despite Gaviria´s having taken down Escobar and Samper´s economic ideas which everyone else started adopting after Samper was gone.

We wait. We watch. We keep ouselves and famiilies safe. I dont have the AMERKKKAN option anymore. I can´t run to the embassy like a chicken. AG Eric Holder made that clear with his confirmation hearings: he was goiing to be a religious hardass, anti black to some degree and XEROTOLERANCE. In short, WORSE THAN ASHCROFT, even though as a prosecutor he was known for fairness.

KNLU

No Excuse.. just reasons, maybe

Fort Hood: Trauma is contagious– and effects those around the traumatized.
The stress of war damages beyond belief–years and years after serving in the military, troops can still be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But one thing we may not have sufficiently appreciated is that the trauma of war is contagious. Witnesses to violence, those who work with people who have experienced war directly, also can become severely traumatized.
Is this the case for Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the military psychiatrist accused of the horrific Fort Hood rampage? Early days yet, and all ‘reasons’ are being investigated. But some reports indicate that his job as a psychiatrist was to counsel many returning soldiers for their symptoms of PTSD. Fort Hood is the gate way for thousands and thousdands of soldiers going into war and coming back from war zones. Part of that therapy is for the soldiers to tell what happened to them in great detail–the ‘talking cure’ as it is referred to in counseling literature. But what happens to those who listen, day to day, as the traumatized solders tell of their horrific experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Judith Herman, in her groundbreaking work Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, actually describes how contagious trauma can be. Those who witness trauma, who work with victims of rape, battering, torture and with those who have experienced war, are vulnerable to the repeated stress of being present to those who have gone through these traumas. You can’t be an effective counselor unless you understand and to some extent even feel the pain of those whom you are counseling.
I spent several years as a part-time domestic violence counselor and I finally had to quit. I started dreaming of being beaten, I stopped eating well and I was jumpy and startled easily. I had caught a mild case of PTSD from counseling these women. My supervisor told me that I needed to take a break. I came back to this work by doing workshops on spiritual resources for those who work with women who have been battered. I knew what I was talking about.
Major Hasan also told relatives that he had been hassled for being a Muslim, even though his military records list “no religious preference.” He was a Virginian, born to immigrant parents from a small town near Jerusalem. Did this harassment add to his sense of emotional and physical threat and make him even more vulnerable to catching PTSD?
These kinds of insights may come out as this case is examined.
And the families of the killed and wounded, and the whole community of Fort Hood! How much more stress can these people take? Some reports indicate troops were looking at a third and fourth deployment.
The trauma of war is like a huge stone thrown into a pool; the ripples go out in wider and wider circles, catching those who serve, hitting their families, flowing into the lives of those who are supposed to care for them and help them, and finally into our whole nation. The effect of two wars both going on now for the better part of a decade has harmed this country, made it more brittle and divided. The stress of economic downturn only piles on, hurting us all spiritually and physically and certainly communally.
As our thoughts go out to Fort Hood today, let us really see war in its ever widening effects and really count the cost.

copied 11.09.09

BBC Starts In Tennessee…

… to see what is obvious to the rest of us.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/the_p_word/newsid_10000000/newsid_10002600/10002666.stm

Story and audio at above link…

Barack Obama was elected on 4 November 2008 after a campaign that promised change.
One year on, BBC’s Newsbeat traveled across the country to find out how people feel in Obama’s America.
In the first of five reports, Jonathan Blake travels to Tennessee where unemployment is highest among young people to see how he’s trying to fix the economy.

1989: Children of the revolution

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specialreports/2009/10/091003_1989_photowall.shtml

Story and Video Report at above link.

Twenty years ago communist governments in central and Eastern Europe crumbled. But 1989 extended far beyond that year – and continent.
BBC World Service hears from people who lived through those events – and from a generation born in 1989 whose lives have been shaped by that extraordinary year.
Hear stories and memories from the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Romania, Tajikistan and Cuba.