Letter To A Longtime Friend

Following are excerpts of a letter to a long-time friend who has historically voted for Republicans… almost exclusively, at all levels – local, state, and federal.

I have not.

As I recall, the last Republican for whom I voted was Reagan in his first campaign. Yet, I have not voted for Democrats whom I either do not like, nor think they would do a good job. And, I would vote for a Republican… if I could find one worth voting for.

I cannot.

And the party nowadays is in wholesale disarray, which further complicates matters. One faction wants to tear it all down, while another radicalized faction has actually attempted to burn it all down by attempting to overthrow its Constitutionally-ordered processes… and to add insult to injury, it was at the behest of the sitting President. And neither faction wants to repair anything, much less economic infrastructure.

“Privatize it all!” is their battle cry.

Yet, he is like me in this regard: He is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of ANY political party. He is also like me insofar as he cares for the future of our nation, which, more specifically, means We the People — the Common Man.

“Blind Men Appraising an Elephant,” c.1800-1850, by Ohara Donshu (d.1857), Japanese Edo Period, Brooklyn Museum

But, to casual observers, they would not know that how we are similar, and would rather, note our seeming dissimilarities, when in fact, the opposite is true. We are more similar, than not — at least we are, on an essentially basic, fundamentally root level.

As I have long stated, we — he, I, and many others who, superficially seem to disagree — are like the proverbial blind men describing an elephant, which is an ancient moralistic tale about human nature with origins in the Indian subcontinent which is known as far back as circa 500 BCE.

“Our individual views of the universe may be different from one another’s because we each encounter only one small part of what is there. The ancient Hindu parable of the six blind men and the elephant — wherein each man describes only the part of the elephant he is touching, forming an incomplete representation of the whole — is an illustration of such individual differences. The elephant, a metaphor for the universe, is perceived by one man as a snake (because he feels the trunk), by another as a tree (because he feels the leg), and so on. However, individual differences in perception are not usually as large as the differences between the six blind men’s percepts of the elephant. The differences are not so large because perception is a complex phenomenon resulting from multiple small effects, such as many different genes and accumulated experiences, acting mostly separately.”

— “Individual Differences In Perception,” entry by Ariella Popple, PsyD, PhD, in “Encyclopedia of Perception,” E. Bruce Goldstein, ed., 2010, SAGE Publications, Inc., Thousand Oaks, California

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Hey Bud-E! How you are?

Still taking a licking, and keeping on ticking?

How’re your eyes? Still in your head?

Your eyes we can fix. My hearing, we can’t.

I’m going deaf.

No kidding.

My hearing loss is now much more significant than previously. And, I contend that it was because of the loud *!*BOOMS! *!*BANGS*!* & *!*EXPLOSIONS*!* to which I was exposed while in the Army. Training, of course. And so far, I’ve been denied a Service-Connected Disability rating. But, to be certain, I’ve not hammered the piss out of ‘em — the VA, that is — to get such a rating, and more importantly TO GET HEARING AIDS WHICH I DESPERATELY NEED!

You see, T, my good friend, this – my example – is but ONE of MILLIONS MORE exactly like me. Good and decent pubic education, college degreed, honorable service to our nation, and despite it all, not having healthcare insurance, nor the ability to shell out $10,000, or more, for hearing aids. And if my glasses break, I’m similarly up shit creek. And forget about my teeth. I’ve not seen a dentist in I-don’t-know-when. My next-door-neighbor D, who is 1 year younger than I, and a widower, had all his teeth pulled recently so that he could get fitted for dentures. ALL of that he had to shell out of pocket. ALL OF IT. And he delivers flowers for a living. A very modest paying job – not even $15/hr.

I’m fully certain that you KNOW that I am unapologetically FOR THE PEOPLE. And, I think you know me well enough to know that, by NO MEANS, am I “anti-business,” and rather, am anti-BIG BUSINESS — a scenario in which profiteering comes first, and people are an afterthought. THAT is a “cardinal sin,” because it demonstrates conclusively that, LITERALLY, we (our nation, our people, by and through our elected officials) DO NOT CARE FOR OUR OWN. And, I know the Scriptures well enough to know (and, I would hope that you do, also) that such a tact is 100% diametrically opposed to Biblical/Judeo-Christian principles. And indeed, it is against the principles of EVERY religion.

“If anyone fails to provide for his own, and especially for those of his own family, he has denied the faith [by disregarding its precepts] and is worse than an unbeliever [who fulfills his obligation in these matters].”
– 1 Timothy 5:8 AMP

For TOO LONG we have disregarded the sage, prophetic advice of POTUS Dwight David Eisenhower, a 2-term Republican, who, before campaigning for President, during WWII was Supreme Allied Commander – our nation’s last 5-star general.

And concurrently with that, we have continued to reduce income tax rates upon the wealthiest Americans, and their corporations, while simultaneously reducing and compressing the number of income tax brackets, thereby placing an increasingly undue responsibility and burden upon the impoverished and working families. Again, that burden has shifted AWAY from upon the wealthy, to be foisted upon the poor. Such an action is fundamentally UNJUST.

In his Farewell Address to the nation, delivered January 17, 1961, as POTUS, that speech, now known as the “Military Industrial Complex” speech, he warned about what we are now experiencing in our nation, and in part said:

All Afghanistan REALLY Wants Is…

While it may sound simplistic,

I have long maintained – and in the last 20 years often said – that what the United States needs to do with regard to Afghanistan, is…

Send select, expert teams from the USDA, about 40 or 50 John Deere tractors, combines, and various other farming & harvesting equipment (and give JD a tax break for donating them, they’ll appreciate that) — and truckloads of seed corn, wheat, soybeans, wheat, grain sorghum, and other foodstuffs, including silage/forage, and show the people how to use and care for the tractors, plant, tend, and harvest, the crops, care for/manage the soil, and their animals.

Why?

All those people REALLY want to do is:

1.) Feed themselves, and;

2.) Feed their livestock.

Help them solve those two problems, and we’ll have a friend for life.

And, for the faithful, there’s this matter to consider as well:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. If you do this, you will make him feel guilty and ashamed.”
— Romans 12:20 (GWT)

The Nation Suffers From Severe Localized Food Insecurity:

Due to civil conflict, population displacement, and economic slowdown – the food security situation worsened in recent months due to the impact of COVID‑19 as informal labor opportunities and remittances declined; between November 2020 and March 2021, about 13.15 million people were estimated to be in severe acute food insecurity and to require urgent humanitarian assistance, including 8.52 million people in “Crisis” and 4.3 million people in “Emergency”; the food security of the vulnerable populations, including IDPs (Internally Displaced People) and the urban poor, is likely to deteriorate as curfews and restrictions on movements to contain the COVID‑19 outbreak limit the employment opportunities for casual laborers (2021).

Yes, there are problems to be overcome – most notably low education levels perhaps being the most problematic – and the language barrier can be, and has been, relatively easily overcome. But education

Thoughts on America’s Afghan Experiment

Soprano Amalie Materna (1844-1918) as the character Brünnhilde in Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” at Bayreuth, Germany, 1876 – conjectural origin of the idiom “when the fat lady sings.”

What can anyone say about people that will cling to the body of a jet aircraft as it takes off, and then as it begins to reach altitude, fall to their deaths? Or stow away in a wheel well, where they are crushed by the mechanisms, or freeze to death at altitude?

Morons.

And desperate.

But still, morons.

They are utterly lacking common sense, stupid, and fundamentally absent the knowledge or intelligence to understand that such actions would be fool hardy at best, and – as it turned out – fatal at worst.

What would you say?

How would anyone describe it?

And yet, “it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings.”

So goes a colloquial saying meaning “don’t count your chickens until the eggs are hatched.”

Speaking of eggs, they can’t be unscrambled.

And this matter may very well be exactly illustrative of that axiom.

But, I do hear her warming up.

The so-called “fat lady,” that is.

There’s also this to consider:

Trump Kills Soleimani -and- Muqtada al-Sadr is Correct

Maclean’s, a Canadian current affairs/news magazine since 1905, published an article headlined “The U.S. was justified in killing Soleimani—but is it ready for what comes next?“

First, let it be known that I am exceedingly glad that Soleimani is dead.
-and-
The Twidiot in Chief  is 100% correct when when he tweeted (in part) that “He should have been taken out many years ago!”

Qasem Soleimani, late commander of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force

Qasem Soleimani, late commander of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force

Even a broken clock is correct twice a day, right?

Look, Soleimani was a terrorist – plain and simple.

Following Soleimani’s death, the United States Department of Defense issued a Press Release on January 2, 2020, which stated in part that,

“Qasem Soleimani [was] the
head of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force,
a
U.S.-designated
Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

“General Soleimani and his Quds Force
were responsible for the
deaths of hundreds of American and
coalition service members and the
wounding of thousands more.”

The United States was not the only nation which considered Soleimani a terrorist. The Counter Extremism Project writes this of Soleimani:

“The U.S. government, the United Nations, and the European Union have all sanction-designated Soleimani for involvement in either Iran’s nuclear program or the Syrian civil war in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.¹ Furthermore, U.S. Central Command documents declassified in 2015 reveal that Iraqi Shiite militants under Soleimani’s command killed more than 500 U.S. service members in Iraq between 2005 and 2011.² U.S. intelligence has also linked Soleimani to a 2011 assassination attempt of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States in Washington, D.C.³

“Soleimani was banned from international travel because of his 2007 U.N. designation for his role in Iran’s nuclear program.⁴ Nonetheless, he reportedly flew to Moscow at least three times—in July 2015, April 2016, and February 2017—for meetings with Russian officials.⁵ After Soleimani reportedly traveled to Russia for military discussions in April 2016, the U.S. State Department confirmed that U.N. travel sanctions on Soleimani remained in effect despite the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1.⁵

“Soleimani’s influence extended to Syria as well. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Soleimani oversaw Iran’s military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.⁶ One Free Syrian Army commander told the Wall Street Journal in 2013 that Soleimani was “running Syria. [President] Bashar [al-Assad] is just his mayor.”⁷ During the October 2016 funeral of IRGC Brigadier General Hossein Hamedani, Soleimani justified Iran’s role in Syria as repayment for Syria’s support during the Iran-Iraq War. He further argued that it was in Iran’s interests to intervene on Assad’s behalf.”⁸

¹ “Council Implementing Regulation (EU) No 611/2011 of 23 June 2011 Implementing Regulations (EU) No 442/2011 Concerning Restrictive Measures in View of the Situation in Syria,” Official Journal of the European Union, June 24, 2011, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2011:164:0001:0003:EN:PDF;
“Treasury Targets Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” U.S. Department of the Treasury, October 11, 2011, http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/tg1320.aspx;
“Designation of Five Individuals Pursuant to Executive Order 13224 of September 23, 2001, “Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, or Support Terrorism,” U.S. Department of the Treasury, October 17, 2011, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-10-17/html/2011-26775.htm;
“Security Council Toughens Sanctions Against Iran, Adds Arms Embargo, With Unanimous Adoption of Resolution 1747 (2007), United Nations, March 24, 2007, http://www.un.org/press/en/2007/sc8980.doc.htm;
Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, “General Qasem Soleimani: Iran’s Rising Star,” BBC News, March 6, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27883162.

² Rowan Scarborough, “Iran responsible for deaths of 500 American service members in Iraq,” Washington Times, September 13, 2015, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/13/iran-responsible-for-deaths-of-500-us-service-memb/.

³ “Treasury Targets Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” U.S. Department of the Treasury, October 11, 2011, http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/tg1320.aspx.

⁴ “Security Council Toughens Sanctions Against Iran, Adds Arms Embargo, With Unanimous Adoption of Resolution 1747 (2007), United Nations, March 24, 2007, http://www.un.org/press/en/2007/sc8980.doc.htm.

⁵ Lucas Tomlinson, “EXCLUSIVE: Shadowy Iranian general visits Moscow, violating sanctions,” Fox News, February 15, 2017, http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/02/15/exclusive-shadowy-iranian-general-visits-moscow-violating-sanctions.html;Jennifer Griffin and Lucas Tomlinson, “Exclusive: Quds Force commander Soleimani visited Moscow, met Russian leaders in defiance of sanctions,” Fox News, August 6, 2015, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/08/06/exclusive-quds-force-commander-soleimani-visited-moscow-met-russian-leaders-in.html.

⁶ Lidia Kelly and Parisa Hafezi, “Iran’s Soleimani in Russia for talks on Syria, missiles: sources,” Reuters, April 15, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-iran-soleimani-idUSKCN0XC0TR.

⁷ Farnaz Fassihi, Jay Solomon, and Sam Dagher, “Iranians Dial Up Presence in Syria,” Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2013, http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323864604579067382861808984.

⁸ “Iran’s Soleimani Says Syria War Plays to Iran National Interests,” Asharq Al-Awsat, October 7, 2016, http://english.aawsat.com/2016/10/article55359787/irans-soleimani-says-syria-war-plays-iran-national-interests.

.
.
In September 2013, Dexter Filkins wrote a feature article about Soleimani for The New Yorker which was entitled

“The Shadow Commander – Qassem Suleimani is the Iranian operative who has been reshaping the Middle East. Now he’s directing Assad’s war in Syria.”

Donald Trump, United States President, official portrait

Donald Trump, United States President, official portrait

The article stated in part that, “Suleimani took command of the Quds Force fifteen years ago, and in that time he has

Thoughts On Fidel Castro’s Death & American Foreign Policy

Cuban President Raoul Castro – Fidel Castro’s younger brother – announced on Cuban television late last night (Friday, 25 November 2016) that Fidel had recently died, aged 90.

There are powerful lessons in Cuba for America.
Among them:

• When Corporations rule government, corruption inevitably ensues.

• American Foreign Policy has almost always favored Corporate Business Interests, especially in modern history.

• For well over 60 years, American Foreign Policy has largely been a disastrous failure.

The United States had dominated Cuba ever since the island nation became independent from Spain following the Spanish-American War in 1898, and Castro deeply distrusted America for that reason. Shortly after he assumed power in Cuba, at the invitation the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Fidel Castro made his only trip to the United States, and later met with then-Vice President Richard Nixon April 15, 1959 shortly before returning to Cuba. Eisenhower purposely avoided Castro, and specifically played golf that day to avoid any possible opportunity of meeting with him. Within four months of Castro’s trip to Washington D.C., the Eisenhower administration had drawn up a plan to overthrow him.

“In a manner certain to antagonize the Cuban people, we used the influence of our Government to advance the interests of and increase the profits of the private American companies, which dominated the island’s economy. At the beginning of 1959 U.S. companies owned about 40% of the Cuban sugar lands – almost all the cattle ranches – 90% of the mines and mineral concessions – 80% of the utilities – and practically all the oil industry – and supplied two-thirds of Cuba’s imports.”

Remarks of then-Senator John F. Kennedy at a Democratic Dinner, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 6, 1960, from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library

Acknowledging that it was a “glaring failure of American foreign policy… that our own shortsighted policies helped make,” then-Senator John F. Kennedy, remarked at a Democratic Dinner, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 6, 1960 that Cuban regime change under Castro “ended in the overthrow of the brutal, bloody, and despotic dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.”

Ironically, under Batista, the twice-president tyrannical military dictator of Cuba, the idyllic island nation was

BIG OIL’s Corrupting Influence in American Politics: Propping up Corrupt Regimes to Prop Up Profits

Report

Slick Moves

The SEC could help tackle corruption in resource-rich countries around the world — but the oil industry is getting in the way.

• BY Zorka Milin , Barnaby Pace
• MARCH 7, 2014

Angola, Africa’s second-largest oil producer, is regarded as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. And American oil lobbyists are only making the situation worse: They are exploiting Angola by seeking to delay and weaken the implementation of a crucial U.S. transparency law.

That law, Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act, also known as the Cardin-Lugar amendment, promises a breakthrough in preventing dirty deals and illicit payments being made for natural resources around the world, similar to the shady transaction recently uncovered by Foreign Policy. If implemented fully, the law would make U.S. oil and mining companies disclose the payments they make to governments across the world, including in Angola. However, oil lobbyists have been making misguided arguments that laws in Angola and three other countries prevent the required disclosures.

Off Shore Oil Drilling Rig – MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images

Angolan officials secretly profiting from the country’s oil riches is not a surprise. It is only the latest episode in a sad history that goes back for decades. Global Witness, where we work, began exposing the complicity of the international oil and banking industries in the plundering of state assets during Angola’s 40-year civil war in our 1999 report A Crude Awakening. This was followed by our 2002 report All the Presidents’ Men, which called on the oil companies operating in Angola to “Publish What You Pay” (PWYP). Under this rallying call, Global Witness co-launched the PWYP campaign, which is now an international coalition of more than 790 civil society organizations in over 60 countries, including Angola, advocating for transparency laws such as Section 1504.

These efforts are intended to prevent scandals similar to the Trafigura deal covered in Foreign Policy, which provide a glimpse of the endemic corruption in Angola‘s oil industry. Only a few days before Foreign Policy published its story, media reports about leaked documents relating to other corruption claims caused the share price of SBM Offshore, a Dutch oil services company operating in Angola, to plummet 17.9 percent when markets opened. SBM released a statement challenging the validity of the leaked documents, saying that they are partial, taken out of context, contain outdated information, and are not representative of the facts. SBM had also already disclosed to its investors that it was conducting an internal investigation into questionable payments in Angola. However, the dramatic stock drop suggests that SBM investors had not anticipated the scale of the corruption risk exposure.

Another oil services company active in Angola, Weatherford International, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and headquartered in Switzerland, has recently pleaded guilty to violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), including bribery of the executives of Sonangol, Angola’s state oil company. It has agreed to pay fines of $253 million to settle the case, one of the largest FCPA settlements ever.

These cases illustrate the urgent need for transparency in Angola’s oil sector. The successful implementation of

Romney Speech Offers Few Differences With Obama Policies

Romney Speech Offers Few Differences With Obama Policies

Mitt Romney’s speech on foreign policy did more to highlight his similarities with President Barack Obama than to draw sharp distinctions over handling global affairs.

In an address yesterday at the Virginia Military Institute, the Republican presidential nominee accused Obama of lacking a strategy for the Middle East, saying the region faces a higher risk of conflict now than it did when the president took office.

“I know the President hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope. But hope is not a strategy,” Romney told cadets and military officials in Lexington, Virginia, during his fifth visit in four weeks to the politically competitive state.

Still, Romney offered few details of his own approach, and in his attempt to appeal to a broader base of American voters, he echoed several policies already being pursued by Obama, said Charles Kupchan, a U.S. foreign policy specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The speech struck me as more moderate than previous ones, with less bluster and less neoconservative rhetoric,” Kupchan said in a phone interview, referring to a school of political thinking that emphasizes unilateral American leadership and military power. “The problem for Romney is when you take out the neocon rhetoric, he starts looking a lot like Obama.”