Tidbits - May 9, 2019 - Reader Comments: Barr Lied; Trade Wars; Economic Reality; Don't Fall for 'Electability' Trap; Redistricting; Iran; Venezuela; Jakarta Sinking; Top 100 People Killing Planet; Pete Seeger; Announcements...
Re: Barr Lied to Congress. That’s a Crime. No One is Above the Law (Marisol Febo; Sarah Larkin; Amparo Ocasio; Roberto Rosario)
Failure to Appear -- cartoon by Rob Rogers
Re: Operation Take Down Bernie (Jose Rinaldi Jovet)
Re: Stung by Trump's Trade Wars, Wisconsin's Milk Farmers Face Extinction (Matthew Weinstein; Jay Lowden; Dale Jacobson; Angel Mejias Jr.)
Re: The Price of Plenty: How Beef Changed America (Judy Atkins)
High prescription prices -- cartoon by George Danby
Re: Democrats: Don’t Fall Into the ‘Electability’ Trap (Al Cholger; John Eklund; Bill Yund; Al Cholger)
Re: The Reality Behind the ‘Surging’ U.S. Economy (Howie Leveton; Betty Rguez Benitez)
Re: What the Strike Ahead of Uber's IPO Exposes About American Inequality (The Laura Flanders Show)
Re: Ohio Congressional Map Tossed Out for Partisan Gerrymandering (Alan Hart; Peter Goldberg; Ben Waller; Marcos N. Melendez Ortiz)
How to Remove Stains -- Meme
Re: Will the U.S. Start a War Against Iran? (Roberto Rosario; Brandon Lerda; Maurice Wade)
Re: Clashes Rock Venezuela as Guaido Urges Opposition Uprising (Jose; Patrick Harbeson)
Re: Venezuela: U.S. Coup Fails, Is Intervention Next? (Joshua Hinchman)
Re: Eyewitness Report from Caracas - Tidbits - May 2 (Ruben)
Re: Jakarta Is Sinking (Daniel Millstone; Paul H. Lutton; Columbia Climate Change Coalition; Lucy Rosado)
Re: Names and Locations of the Top 100 People Killing the Planet (David Frazer; Elaine MacLean; Miles Whitfield)
Re: Oil Companies Will Be Bad Investments Within Five Years, Predicts Survey of European Fund Managers (Progressive Truth Seekers)
Re: Why No Labor Party Here? (Steve Pomeroy)
Re: Trump Labor Board Postpones VW Vote (Leanna Noble)
Re: Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger (Jeannie Friedman; Peter Burr; Seymour Joseph; Bill Crow; Peter Honig; Ann Dermansky; Seth Goldman; Barbara Lipski; Rosenberg Fund for Children)
Re: Americans Might Love Cinco De Mayo, but Few Know What They’re Celebrating (Sandy Ruiz)
Re: “Our Country is Full” (Seymour Joseph)
Resources:
May 8 was V-E Day - 1945 Defeat of Hitler Fascism - Almanac Singers - Round and round Hitler's Grave
Announcements:
Lessons from East Germany for building socialism in the US, Europe and around the world - Three Events in Washington, DC with Victor Grossman - May 15, May 17 and May 18
Memorial for Blase Anthony Bonpane - Los Angeles - May 26
Re: Barr Lied to Congress. That’s a Crime. No One is Above the Law
These people keep committing crimes as children eat candy and no one is able to stop them. As Comey brilliantly said, " Donald Trump is a soul devourer". That is the fact maybe overseen by some. He has taken all republicans souls and laughs at the american people every day!
Marisol Febo
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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CONGRESS should be filing charges of perjury, contempt of Congress and violation of his oath of office and abandoning his job to go protect the Traitor-in-Chief. ARREST BARR, JAIL HIM and then move on to interviewing Mueller!
Sarah Larkin
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Barr openly and willingly committed crimes and needs to be held accountable.
Amparo Ocasio
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Roberto Rosario
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Failure to Appear -- cartoon by Rob Rogers
Rob Rogers
May 3, 2019
robrogers.com
Re: Operation Take Down Bernie
This from a Gary Younge column in The Nation magazine on May 6: "At the end of May we will have elections to the European Parliament...If the polls are anything to go by, far right parties will do well from Finland to Italy. Fascism is not only a mainstream ideology again in Europe; the presence of fascist in government is now a banal fact of life across the continent".
USA government is tugging right along. That's what should be very worrisome!!
Jose Rinaldi Jovet
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Stung by Trump's Trade Wars, Wisconsin's Milk Farmers Face Extinction
Besides the Mueller report, the media fascination with Trump's vulgar behavior and the Russian hoopla is the very much hidden nefarious activities of the Trump regime, behavior that negatively impacts the lives of most Americans.
This article from The New York Times via Portside demonstrates clearly the extent of the damage that this dangerous pretender to the throne has unleashed on the dairy farmers of Wisconsin with his outrageous and un-thought out tariff policy, They are now literally threatened with extinction in what is referred to as the Dairy State.
Read and weep. Then join the fight.
Matthew Weinstein
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Devastating, breaks my heart to see the full onslaught of the destruction we have created in the name of politics
Jay Lowden
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Give him longer. He's doing GREAT things, just needs more time to do GREATER things.
Dale Jacobson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Be at the next rally and keep the lie alive. Wake up. Vote him out. Do not play his game.
Angel Mejias Jr.
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Price of Plenty: How Beef Changed America
Horrifying conditions for workers, farmers and the animals. Many of us in the northeast have no idea what goes on on these farms and factories.
Judy Atkins
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
High prescription prices -- cartoon by George Danby
George Danby
April 25, 2019
Bangor Daily News (Maine)
Re: Democrats: Don’t Fall Into the ‘Electability’ Trap
"The fact is, we don’t know who is electable, and in absence of empirical meaning the term has come to reflect our collective biases—a euphemism for things we would rather not say, but want, consciously or otherwise, to imply.
Unless we get a handle on the meaninglessness of the word, it risks infecting the public debate about whom Democrats should nominate with those biases—that the country is not ready for a female or progressive president—such that, electable or not, Democrats don’t ultimately nominate the best person for the job.”
Al Cholger
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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"What if, instead of attempting to navigate “other people’s” biases, we put our energy into supporting the candidates that wanted to solve our society’s biggest problems? What if, instead of trying to outsmart the electoral process, and anticipate what others want, we put our efforts into fighting for the people who we know will serve us best?"
John Eklund
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Happy nonsense.
Whether white, black, old, young, gay, straight, male, female etc, the candidate has to be electable. Not just preferable. You need a foundation of some kind to build on. Trump is a rancid cesspool, not a foundation for anything worth building. He has been an incubator for slime, and if that goes on for four additional years it's difficult to imagine any remedy but violence.
Bill Yund
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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You prove my point. Trump was not electable, but we allow people who we disagree with to attack our candidates as unelectable
Al Cholger
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Reality Behind the ‘Surging’ U.S. Economy
Disposable income is at 1960 levels!
Paycheck to paycheck.
And nothing better go wrong!
Howie Leveton
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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I have learned from 30 years as a voter that the attitude of not voting because I don't like the candidate has turned government into an elite of the worst people in power. 2016 is the best example of that. When you don't vote, you shoot your own foot, and worse, the Republicans have been feeding us this to stay in power since their base is smaller and older. They can't renew, but they have been successful in making Democrats toxic. And the rest is left with their intact pride and empty pockets. Think about this for 2020 before rejecting anyone who's not Bernie, or Biden, or Beto or whomever, because the US won't be a Nation anymore if we let Republicans continue destroying...
Betty Rguez Benitez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: What the Strike Ahead of Uber's IPO Exposes About American Inequality
(posting on Portside Labor)
"Uber’s IPO will make some people billionaires while potentially driving down pay for others is symptomatic of the growing inequality in today’s American economy." - Portside
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Ohio Congressional Map Tossed Out for Partisan Gerrymandering
I fear the Trumpian Supreme Court will reverse this decision and restore the gerrymander. Here in Pennsylvania we overturned the gerrymandered congressional map in state court, beyond the reach of Roberts, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
Alan Hart
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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But watch for the SCOTUS decision probably at the end of the term.
Peter Goldberg
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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State court decisions can be appealed to the federal courts...
Ben Waller
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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and that is how you steal an election
Marcos N. Melendez Ortiz
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Will the U.S. Start a War Against Iran?
Not surprising...they need to create a detraction to try and get the press off Trump's nasty deeds.
Roberto Rosario
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Um ~ already started and underway, if you haven't noticed yet
Brandon Lerda
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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A war would distract the electorate and Congress. It works every damned time.
Maurice Wade
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Clashes Rock Venezuela as Guaido Urges Opposition Uprising
Reading this article four days after the facts, the lies, distortions and partiality are more than obvious.
Jose
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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There was a very large gathering of people in support of President Maduro. He had a fair election that has been verified internationally. The Coup has been Economically instigated by Corporate Oil Interest in the US. Venezuela has the largest Oil Reserve in the World. The United States does not care about the wellbeing of the people of Venezuela. If they cared about the wellbeing of Venezuela then they would not be imposing sanctions on Venezuela. So, therefore no money for food or medicine. The US is an Economic Terroristic Organization.
First the devastate a country economically, then they blame the devastation on the leaders of that country that they wish to pillage. Then they say that they need to help the same people that they have devastated. It is a Regime Change Strategy that makes the Military Industrial Complex rich and then the Oligarchies Corporations come in to rebuild what they just destroyed.
Examples: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etcetera !!!
Oh by the way it is a virtual Genocide, with death and destruction.
See here for more details.
Oh by the way it is a virtual Genocide, with death and destruction.
Patrick Harbeson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Venezuela: U.S. Coup Fails, Is Intervention Next?
We need control of area I get it. We cut them off they flood the border and there is the manufactured crises
Joshua Hinchman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Eyewitness Report from Caracas (Tidbits - May 2)
I am against the US intervening in Venezuela or everywhere else for that matter. At the same time when I read this from Americans in Venezuela, reminds me of reading the People's Daily in 89. On the eve of the fall of the Soviet Union, you could not find anything wrong with the Soviet Union. They ignore it or they did not want to see it.
Ruben
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Yes. A city of 10 million people is sinking fairly quickly. Yes, some of the danger is posed by climate change and some by pumping ground water. How dangerous and for whom? Well the rich will move and the poor will sink, absent a political revolution. Thanks to Portside for the link.
Daniel Millstone
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Where will they put New Miami and other eastern seaboard cities as they sink? Routine flooding is already a huge issue.
Paul H. Lutton
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Indonesia has to move their capital
Columbia Climate Change Coalition
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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With global warming, Indonesia and Bangladesh to name two, and whose population is in the millions, will be inundated and its people will be displaced from their homes. And the problem with their countries is they are at sea level. The same is supposed to happen to the East coast of the U.S., especially Florida, Manhattan, NY and most of the east coast cities.
Lucy Rosado
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Names and Locations of the Top 100 People Killing the Planet
The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses. --Utah Phillips
David Frazer
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Jordan Engel is a cartographer and researcher at the Decolonial Atlas project, a virtual collaboration with Indigenous peoples from around the world, which aims to bring together maps that challenge our relationships with the environment and the dominant culture.
Elaine MacLean
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Very effective way of calling people out!
Miles Whitfield
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
European fund managers are casting an increasingly skeptical eye towards the oil industry, concluding that the industry’s financial future looks grim, according to a new survey published by a London-based organization today.
Just 18 percent of the responding fund managers, including representatives of firms based in the UK, France, Spain, and Italy, predicted that “oil companies will be good investments if their business is still focused on fossil fuels in five years’ time,” according to the survey, published by the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF) and the Climate Change Collaboration.
“68 percent believe they will still be attractive if they adopt business models aligned with the Paris targets,” it adds, referring to the international agreement to limit global warming to well below 1.5°C (2.7°F). “However, just under a quarter do not see oil companies as good investments in any timeframe.”
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
(posting on Portside Culture)
What kind of misinformation are you trying to spread? No Labor Party? This country has many parties but only two keep control. They are the ones that won't let others play. Those that try to represent other factions go nowhere in the big picture so they change to fit in. Start telling truths instead of misleading untruths.
Steve Pomeroy
Re: Trump Labor Board Postpones VW Vote
(posting on Portside Labor)
Did we expect anything different from the NLRB? I hope not! Got to include reality in our strategies!
Leanna Noble
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger
Love Pete. Love that he and Bruce collaborated. Love them both!
Jeannie Friedman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Rest In Power, Dear man
Peter Burr
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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I interviewed Pete for the World Magazine, the weekly for the Daily World, at his home in Beacon. I brought a tape recorder and a note pad. We sat on his shag rug and I turned the recorder on, leaving the mic on the rug. When I got home I played the tape. Nothing! Only static. The rug had eaten up the sound. Fortunately, I had enough notes to put a piece together. But it would have been better if I wasn't such a jerk and didn't leave the mic on the rug.
Seymour Joseph
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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I met Pete in 1951 when a jazz band led by John Benson Brooks that I was playing with shared a Town Hall concert with the Weavers. They were playing their first concert since the blacklist. Pete played his long-neck banjo brilliantly, and sang with his usual gusto. I had been a fan of his since I first heard his 78RPM record of "Darlin' Corey." Changed my mind about the banjo as a musical instrument.
Bill Crow
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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He loved this photo (I was asked to take for FRB fundraiser at John Harms Theater) and invited my wife and I to picnic at the Clearwater festival 198?. His wife's chicken was delicious. He introduced us to Arlo Guthrie, Livingston Taylor and Louden Wainwright III. Happy 100.
Peter Honig
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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The Rosenberg Fund for Children site is filled with pictures of Pete, including some of mine taken at a Camp Woodland reunion that was held in New Paltz and Phoenecia some years ago.
Ann Dermansky
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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So lucky I got to hear and meet him at our local high school a few years before he died!
Seth Goldman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Yes! Check out the RFC site below, I was just listening to Louis Armstrong singing We Shall Overcome on UpFront Soul, so good!
Barbara Lipski
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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See the complete collection here or view and share our Facebook photo album or Instagram collection(#PeteSeeger100).
Want to add your memories? Send them to info@rfc.org.
Watch, listen, celebrate
Celebrate with the RFC on May 3rd from 7-10 pm, at a birthday party and jam session to honor Pete. 116 Pleasant St., Suite 348, Easthampton, MA. Details at rfc.org/pete100.
Find a celebration near you: Check out this list of centennial events across the country and internationally, to find another commemoration near you.
View the RFC-curated YouTube playlist of videos of Pete and others performing his songs, and other related content.
Listen from 9 am - midnight, Eastern Time, to WBAI (99.5 on the dial in NYC, and streaming at wbai.org) as they pay tribute to Pete with archival programs of the folk music icon, talking and performing, ranging from the 1950's to 2013. His music, his social, environmental and political activism, his influences on youth, other musicians, etc., all of this will be discussed by Pete and others, including Judy Collins, Nora Guthrie, David Amram etc. The programming will remain available on the WBAI website for those unable to listen in real time.
Listen anytime to UpFront Soul's April 26, 2019 radio show celebrating Pete's centennial with funk, soul, jazz, gospel, & hip-hop versions of the songs Pete wrote and helped to spread all over the world. It's Pete Seeger like you've never heard him before!
116 Pleasant St., Suite 348
Easthampton, MA 01027
email: info@rfc.org
tel: (413) 529-0063
fax: (413) 529-0802
Re: Americans Might Love Cinco De Mayo, but Few Know What They’re Celebrating
How beautiful is the truth and how it changes everything you thought you knew...it is the same with Puerto Rican history,.many know very little about the changes a country goes through when invaded by a large empire, like France, Spain, Brittany, America..
Sandy Ruiz
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
(posting on Portside Culture)
For a change, here's a poet who makes sense. Good poem!
Seymour Joseph
May 8 was V-E Day - 1945 Defeat of Hitler Fascism - Almanac Singers - Round and round Hitler's Grave
Listen here
Round and Round Hitler's Grave
Artist: The Almanac Singers
Album: That's Why We're Marching: World War II and the American Folksong Movement
Licensed to YouTube by: The Orchard Music (on behalf of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings); ARESA,
Victor Grossman deserted the US Army during the McCarthy Era by swimming across the Danube River in 1953 to the Soviet Zone of Austria from where he was sent to East Germany. There he worked for 39 years helping to create a socialist society in our capitalist world (and in the process became the only person to graduate from both Harvard and the Karl Marx University). He is an active blogger on political events in Germany and Europe. Victor will be visiting Washington, DC from May 15-May 18 on a national book tour of his latest memoir entitled A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee by Monthly Review press..
The events are as follow:
- Wednesday, May 15, he will be speaking on lessons from East Germany for building socialism in the US, Europe and around the world at 6:30-8 PM at Bus Boys and Poets at 14th & V Streets.
- Friday, May 17, he will address why did socialism "fail" in East Germany at 6:30-8:30 PM at the Goethe Institute at 1990 K Street, NW.
- Saturday, May 18, Victor will speak about what could the East German government have done differently to appeal to their citizens without imposing authoritarian state control and why did 'de-Nazification' occur differently in East Germany compared to West Germany at 2:30-5 PM at the Nation Magazine Discussion Group in DC at the Cleveland Park Public Library at 3310 Connecticut Avenue, NW.
All events are free, and all are welcome!
Memorial for Blase Anthony Bonpane - Los Angeles - May 26
April 24, 1929 - April 8, 2019
Sunday, May 26, 4pm
Immanuel Presbyterian Church,
3300 Wilshire
Los Angeles 90010
Blase Bonpane, USC football player turned priest turned peace activist, dies at 89
by Gustavo Arellano
April 10, 2019
Los Angeles Times
In early 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, newspapers across the country ran a sensational story: A group of Roman Catholic nuns and priests were trying to foment a Communist revolution in Guatemala.
The Guatemalan government had accused priests and nuns associated with the Maryknoll order of planning to smuggle in arms to help rebels. Superiors ordered the missionaries back to the United States, and told them not to speak to the press about the affair.
But 38-year-old Blase Bonpane couldn’t stay silent. On Feb. 4, the Washington Post ran an essay by the Angeleno that blasted the American government for supporting “an oligarchy of 2 per cent of the Guatemalan people who possess 80 percent of the land and resultant power.”
“I am a patriot,” wrote the former Marine. “It sickens me to see my country on the wrong side in Guatemala. I think the United States is the greatest country in the world, and I don’t want to see it on a self-destruction course.”
Read full Los Angeles Times story here.
photo credit: KPFK