This Society has a race problem ...... WATCHING AMERICA

I am a citizen of the United States and a registered Democrat (more a democratic Socialist) in the beautiful state of Rhode Island. Outraged by the Ferguson decision, many blacks here-with their white and latino supporters- on the day after, blocked interstate Route 95 for nearly an hour.

It was all rather foolish, I think. But it shows that alienation in American capitalist society is reaching a breaking point among the nation's have–nots. For too long Neo-Democrat inspired "political correctness" has racialized  POVERTY IN AMERICA. I can't imagine a million homeless white people identifying with our ONE PERCENT ruling class in common hostility to "lawless and rioting" black people.

The vast majority of white people are just unpretentious working class people who create the wealth and fight the foolish wars of our ruling class. They know that the MAJESTIC LAW swindles the common people.

I am by disposition a believer in non-violent social change. But I wonder if the assassinated black revolutionary firebrand Malcolm X is more relevant today to Afro-Americans than Martin Luther King. Malcolm's last year alive is very interesting to left-wing scholars. He was invited to speak before enthusiastic liberal audiences, mostly radicalized white students. "Show me a capitalist", Malcolm said passionately, "and I'll show you a bloodsucker!".

Will Washington D.C. soon look like Cairo, Egypt in 2011? PEACE!

POST under WATCHING AMERICA commentary published in Die Presse ( Austria ) on 26 November 2014 by Wieland Schneider : "A  Society in which Some Members Feel Locked Out Has a Problem."

Fire Ed Achorn at Providence Journal!: Letter to Buddy Cianci

Dear Mr. Cianci, I recently sent off a letter to the publisher of The Providence Journal, Mr. Szachara, strongly suggesting that he fire editorial page editor, Ed. Achorn. I wrote that Achorn "crossed the line of ethical decency in over-vilifying former Providence mayor, Vincent "Buddy" Cianci ." I also accused Achorn of being a science illiterate who encourages "pseudo-open-minded skepticism" on human caused climate change, a scientific FACT, not a THEORY.

I also asked Mr. Szachara to take a critical look at other names on his page A2 Executive List: One Thomas J. McDonough has a strange hobby of wife abuse: "twisting her arm while on the phone (Providence Journal, POLICE NEWS ). And there is even a DRUNK among them.

I know you never stopped loving Providence, Buddy. My whole letter is published on my blog: http://radicalrons.blogspot.com/ )

To: buddy@630wpro.com
Ron  from Cranston

"Interesting Times in America" ( WATCHING AMERICA – My post comment )

Link to article "Interesting Times in America"
Published in Asharq Al Awsat (Pan Arab)
by Emile Ameen 11/22/14

I am a citizen of the United States and a registered Democrat in the state of Rhode Island, but more of a democratic Socialist. I note that the above commentary was posted on November 22, a very meaningful day here in America: "The Day John F. Kennedy Was Assassinated."

The JFK era was also "Interesting Times in America." The country was more optimistic back then, more idealistic. I think JFK shared FDR's compassion for the poor. And his brother Robert– also assassinated, called poverty in America "unacceptable".

The above commentary asks: "Is the United States a democracy for the rich only, without the poor?" JFK said if we cannot help the many who are poor, we certainly cannot save the few who are rich.

Today I fear Ralph Nader  is right about both Democrat and Republican parties being controlled by corporate America – the infamous one percent. I think mass action can still transform the now decayed-and corrupted- Democrat Party back into the socially progressive party of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Passionate reform is, of course, preferable to ugly-but inevitable- class struggle. It might be a good time for third parties here, progressive, liberal, socialist.

Best wishes to all from America.

("Interesting Times in America,"published in Asharq Al Awsat ( Pan Arab ) by Emile Ameen, posted on November 22, 2014 )

A frustrating Monday at Cranston Public Library

My personal computer broke down so I am, for now, using public library computers. Here at Cranston Public things have improved for regulars like me. You no longer need to be priggishly BUZZED into the rest room as a sort of security measure. Against whom? Of course, those maggot like child molesters who worm their way into seemingly secure places.

In fact, I just wanted to comment on Ann Hagan Webb's letter to the editor: "Accused priest should not be out on bail" (11, 24, 2014 , Providence Journal) – but first I needed to print it out (screen reading is tedious compared to print). When I got back to the library computer table, I noticed that most of Webb's letter was covered over by an obnoxious DUNKIN DONUTS ad : "New TURKEY FEAST SANDWICH...... get yours today." SOCIALISM will abolish this capitalist advertising madness.

I had a creative thought about how to PREVENT child abuse: a very socialistic idea- people should live in larger social groupings like the Israeli kibbutz. The modern nuclear family is becoming increasing isolated, atomized, and helpless.

I also had a another passing thought on Providence Journal editorial page editor, Ed Achorn. On my blog I accuse him of being not only nasty but also a science illiterate. You should be more polite to this guy if you expect him to publish your so enlightening letters, full of wit and wisdom for the ages. So I reconsider my accusation of science illiteracy. Now I see Mr. Edward Achorn as only "a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue" ( Karl Marx's phrase from "The Communist Manifesto").

To: letters@providencejournal.com

Time to clean house at 75 Fountain Street? – My Letter to Providence Journal Interim Publisher

Dear Mr. Szachara, as Interim Publisher of the Providence Journal you might be paying attention to the harm done in our community by your arrogant and ignorant editorial page editor, Edward C. Achorn. To be sure, he crossed the line of ethical decency in over-vilifying former Providence mayor, Vincent "Buddy" Cianci, who continues his respected and popular radio talk show at 630wpro.com.

But Mr. Achorn has also infuriated a good and decent man, Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee.  I have before me Chafee's commentary at  RI.gov: "Elevate the Dialogue." Chafee quotes with clear approval the sentiment of one Jack O'Rourke who in a published letter in the Providence Journal (June 2011) wrote: "I find it clear that Edward Achorn is a hater.... who repeatedly attacks Governor Chafee personally."

Lately it has struck me that Edward Achorn is also a SCIENCE ILLITERATE who encourages a pseudo– open-minded skepticism of the  established science of global warming. Like Darwinian evolution, human caused climate change is a FACT not a THEORY. Can even a very pro-business newspaper afford to keep a science illiterate editorial page editor?

You might also take a critical look at other names on your page A2 Executive List: One Thomas J. McDonough has a strange hobby of spouse abuse: "twisting her arm while on the phone".

Time to clean house at 75 Fountain St., Mr. Szachara?

Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com

                                                                                                                                                                                                           

WATCHING AMERICA - "Emperor Obama"?

I am a citizen of the United States and I am fascinated with the whole concept of WATCHING AMERICA. I am a registered Democrat but I am closer to a democratic Socialist. After listening to excerpts of President Obama's immigration crisis speech last night, I was reminded of President Kennedy's eloquence back in 1962 when he supported the black civil rights movement  against the then benighted American South. Civil Rights won!

No, I don't think Obama is "politically used up" at all. In fact, right now he is more representative of the American People than the new Republican dominated House and Senate.

They call him "Emperor Obama" now. But I can see a parallel in ancient Roman history. Was not the dictator Julius Caesar more representative of the Roman People than those proud ,snobby, and arrogant members of the decadent Senate of Rome? To be sure, the rotten Old Republic was doomed. A hundred greedy, squabbling aristocrats could not effectively rule an empire.

An unusual depiction – “Julius Caesar" 

by Andrea di Pietro di Marco Ferrucci (1465–1526)

link to essay by Kurt Keefner

Can our ONE PERCENT plutocracy still rule America -even indirectly? Let "Emperor Obama" call out the mob. For real Democracy- true MAJORITY RULE- it just might be "morning in America" again. President Obama just might be the unconscious and even naïve agent of the impish force of History –and not necessarily "The Imp of the Perverse" (Poe). Or am I too seduced by "The Audacity of Hope" (Obama)?

(WATCHING AMERICA commentary, "Landslide with Limited Consequence", published in Neue Zurcher Zeitung ( Switzerland, Nov.5 , 2014 )

A public hygiene suggestion

I frequently ride RIPTA's buses and frequently use Rhode Island public libraries. The windows of RIPTA buses are usually closed in winter. So when a guy next to me has a very sickly coughing fit in the warm dry stale air of the bus, I naturally get a little apprehensive.

I am not a hypochondriac myself and do not want to rebuke a fellow passenger -in need of medical attention and sympathy- in a crude ill-natured way.

Presently I am at the Warwick Public Library at a computer table. The guy next to me is having a coughing fit (tuberculosis? influenza 1918? early stage of Ebola? whooping cough?). The library is thoughtful enough to have large bottles of hand sanitizer. But could not these very public places have hospital masks readily available for anyone overcome with a coughing fit? Just a polite SIGN indicating their availability ?

Am I about to SNEEZE big time myself? I am sure it is just a late fall allergy. Absolutely harmless? AHHH CHOOOO! ("jackass", "idiot", "wretch" ..... I must be hearing voices, unfriendly ones .... "They're going to take me away ha, hah, they're going to take me away, ho, ho ... to the funny farm ... ". But that song was BANNED way back - a threat to the public's mental health.

Why can't they ban TUBERCULAR SOUNDING COUGHING IN PUBLIC? Thank God for Medicare! Thank God for Obamacare!


Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com

Bill Cosby date rape scandal ( post in Houston Chronicle )

What I like reading here-and hope are not deleted -are honest feelings about the relationship of these women to super-celebrity Bill Cosby- a lot of attractive power there to be sure. Hollywood gossip news suggests that money and fame are always wickedly seducing purity and virginity - with the help of alcohol and cocaine.

But young women are cruelly conditioned to play this very dangerous mating game. Most just have romantic visions of Cinderella and Prince Charming. And did not dear Mother warn them not to get stuck with a LOSER?

Under Socialism there will be no more rich Prince Charmings to seduce or ABUSE naïve social climbing females. They might have to settle for a guy like ME. But Professor Henry Higgins warned me not to "let  a woman in your life" a long time ago. But I still keep an eye out for MY FAIR LADY. An enduring daydream: "My shoes, Eliza!".

EXAMPLES of COMMENTS for "NBC scraps Cosby television project"  - Houston Chronicle: "All of these women are just attention whores" ...... "No, they slept on the casting couch and now want more cash".... "Shame on NBC for taking here-say for fact".

NOTE :  Yesterday NBC News interviewed the attractive young lady who just married 80 year old cult leader killer Charles Manson. Now this was TRUE LOVE! And so PLATONIC!

Celebrating Benny's 90th ( Warwick Beacon post )

Link to Warwick Beacon article on Benny's Anniversary

I know a beautiful Italo-American woman named Renata Mallozzi who worked for years at Benny's in Warwick, I believe. Renata is now almost 90 herself. Her husband Phill-also Italo-American-passed away shortly after my mother, Janet Ruggieri, Renata's beloved life long friend passed away too- a few years ago. I think the editor of the Warwick Beacon will recall publishing a touching article about the World War II romance of Renata & Phil Mallozzi. I last saw Renata at my mother's funeral. And I want to send her my family's love.

I remember the Benny's store in Washington Park, Providence in the golden post war years ( the 1950s and 1960s). What was special about this Benny's was the life size model airplane on the roof.

The interior entrance of The Roger William's Park,
Museum of Natural History. Inset is large portrait of "Galileo"
one of the many painting by Prof. Guido Nincheri

Back then not just Benny's but Washington Park was a real American Dream. That neighborhood had everything. I went to Broad Street School there. And Roger Williams Park was my back yard. I remember visiting the Museum and being welcomed by two huge portraits of Galileo and Copernicus; a huge New England whale bone; a glow in the dark model of the uranium atom with its 92 protons and 92 electrons; the old Planetarium where I could get a crystal clear view of our night sky.

Life was beautiful! – and it still is, Ma said!

Science illiteracy at Providence Journal Editorial

I just read Peter Glanz's published letter (Nov.17): "Science is all about probing, questioning." True enough, but does Mr. Glanz apply his own non-scientist gift of probing- open mindedness to ecological catastrophe caused by the very human activity of global capitalism? Does he question the social premises of the capitalist profit system? Or does Ayn Rand's atheist, "objectivism" suffice here?

Science is NOT about  never  arriving at definite conclusions, Mr. Glanz. It is perfectly clear-except to the willfully ignorant, that SCIENCE has indeed arrived at definite conclusions about human made climate change on this planet. And it would be disastrous to await for more confirming reports.

Only a bigger fan of the energy corporations than of "probing" SCIENCE would want to spread skepticism on global climate change. I suspect that you have a friend in Edward Achorn in his unfortunate position as Providence Journal editorial page editor. Is HE a science illiterate too? I wonder. Well, I hope he at least READS my letter before wisely deciding not to publish it (and others on the same topic– a bad career move! ).

Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com

                                                                                                                 

Cardinal O'Malley and TV documentary "DELIVER US FROM EVIL"

Link to YouTube excerpt:

Gene, just last night I viewed a mesmerizing  video documentary "Deliver Us From Evil" (2006) about one notorious child sex abuser, Father Oliver O'Grady, who molested hundreds of children in 1970s and was simply relocated again and again to various parishes around the United States. I think it is a very honest documentary in which many so called "good Catholics" interviewed were simply devastated by the truth.

The father of one of the molested and psychologically destroyed girls- now a rather unhappy unmarried woman of 40- cries out toward the end of the documentary: "There is no God..... God does not exist!" Of course this does not even sound Jesuit Logic talking. But how deeply moving  even to an already skeptical viewer. The documentary was nominated for an Academy Award but with a touch of irony lost out to "An Inconvenient Truth" (Al Gore on global warming).

I think Cardinal O'Malley has done much to heal the wounds of the scandal. But the Catholic Church can never be perceived here in America as it was in the late 1940s and 1950s when  Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was waging ideological war on national TV against "godless communism".

It is true enough but superficial to say that the Catholic Church lost its very special mystique with Vatican II changes-such as eliminating the Latin Mass. But I remember as a kid at St. Michael's School - in South Providence (now closed down)- sensing real spiritual GOODNESS in most priests and nuns. They did have a benign aura about them. I don't think this was due simply to innocent inexperience.

There is still more of a kindly bureaucrat than saint in this highly influential Cardinal O'Malley of Boston - who has the ready ear of the Pope himself in all affairs Catholic. What has been lost in the Catholic Church? Not the keenness of mind of the early and best doctors of Church– Augustine and Aquinas. No, what has been lost into the black hole of Evil is the prevailing feeling of GOODNESS. Can HE still deliver us from Evil?

 
(this is a response to an interview with Cardinal O'Malley I caught on Gene Valicenti's early morning radio news show Submitted to: Gene@630wpro.com

Public Relations Advice for the Islamic State Group

"Old Sparky," the Texas electric chair in
which 361 killers were executed.
Senators in Tennessee recently voted
to reinstate the electric chair.

These barbaric beheadings of hapless-and often foolish- American citizens by the Islamic State Group arouse bloody-righteous, wrathful patriotism –  in other words, the wrong kind of patriotism-here in America.

Imagine beheading people–the depraved wickedness of these executioners! But do not our good friends in power in Saudi Arabia routinely behead even women for such heinous crimes as adultery? And our newspapers editorialize about this outrage frequently?

Headline today (Nov.16): "Islamic State group beheads U.S. aid worker". Now if only they had executed this pathetic victim (a convert to Islam!) with our Texas state prison electric chair -which quickly cooks the condemned person alive in less than 15 minutes– or executed Peter Kassig alias Abdul Rahman- by means of "The Sheriff's Own Lethal Injection" (works wonders in 4 hours!), the furious American patriots would be less ready to applaud our Smart Bomb Air War over Iraq and Syria.

Execution failure in Oklahoma:Clayton
Lockett dies of heart attack after vein explodes.

Like the character in the "Twilight Zone" episode– on  zoo display in Alien Planet- they would conclude: "People are alike everywhere!"

A short clip from The Twilight Zone Season One episode,
"People Are Alike All Over" (1959)

Submitted to: letters@usatoday.com

 

Fair play for Sue Ann Hamm-just divorced?

Billionaire Harold Hamm and his wife of 26 years Sue Ann Hamm.
Their divorce COULD HAVE BEEN the most expensive of all time!

True socialists have argued for years about the fundamentally rotten nature of bourgeois marriage. Most often they have in mind upper class marriage where there is a significant amount of PRIVATE PROPERTY at stake in both unions and divorces.

How many bourgeois feminists will be indignant about the UNFAIR divorce settlement of Continental Chief Executive Officer Harold Hamm and his wife of 26 years Sue Ann Hamm? The Oklahoma oil magnate is worth some $18 billion but SHE gets only cash and assets worth just a little more than a billion dollars. Fair play for Sue Hamm!

No SOCIALIST judge in a SANE SOCIETY would have any problem simply denying excessive private wealth to the spoiled  "better-half" of any soured traditional marriage. By the way, the very same farce is now happening with over-sentimentalized and romanticized gay marriage.

Socialists pointed out more than a century ago that bourgeois marriage and the bourgeois family were the main social mechanisms for reproducing and perpetuating social inequality.

In a socialist society there will be no possibility of SOCIAL CLIMBING through marriage. In divorce court today the rich man rightly perceives his now unloved and unloving wife as a parasite. But so is HE!

Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com

Ed Achorn and the "Armies of the Night"

“‘X’ Stands for Unknown” is a collection

of non-fiction science essays including 

"Armies of the Night" written by 

Isaac Asimov in 1983.

Like abortion and gay marriage climate change is not my favorite topic to think about or comment on. It does not yet arouse my emotions in the same way as unacceptable social inequality- or, Mr. Achorn, fairness to that TWICE CONVICTED FELON, Vincent "Buddy" Cianci.

But at least Cianci's jail time was a fact not a theory. And here is where Ed Achorn is mistaken in this controversy. He is willing to publish both sides of the controversy while clearly leaning in favor of the climate deniers and their "courageous dissent". But like EVOLUTION science has accepted climate change-caused by humans-as a fact not a theory.

It does take courage (or just a warped ego) indeed to argue for Creationism in a room full of professional biologists and ecologists but you are not arguing science.

The equal space given to climate deniers in the increasingly reactionary Providence Journal (Ed Achorn could also "edit" Red Eye Radio) deceives the declining number of your readers into believing that scientists themselves cannot agree on climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I just reviewed a You Tube video of the late great science writer, Isaac Asimov, explaining way back in 1989 why global warming-caused by human activity- was the big science news of the year. If Isaac were alive today he would view Mr. Achorn as he did the Christian fundamentalist Creationist in his essay "The Armies of the Night".

Link to Asimov's 1989 video on YouTube

The climate change denying SCIENTISTS are rarely specialists in climate change with their published articles reviewed by peers. They ARE invariably the pets of many ruling class corporate executives ( mostly Energy people ) who are stupefied by the threat to big business profits.

Show me a professional climate change denier with no suspicious investments, Mr. Achorn?

German editorial : " The Americans Have Become Depressed "

Watching America.com | Discover What the World Thinks of U.S.
News and comment from around the
world translated into English. Includes video and audio clips.

I am a citizen of the United States who just discovered WATCHING AMERICA a while back. How refreshing to see the world from an astute European perspective.

I am a registered Democrat (with a democratic Socialist ideal) here in Rhode Island, the state with highest unemployment in the nation. We just elected our first woman governor, Democrat Gina Raimondo. This is just one example of the futility and impotence of the Neo-Democrat mania for "political correctness". What difference does the New Boss make– male, female, gay, straight, bisexual, white, black, Asian, Latino, Catholic, Jew, Protestant, atheist, agnostic, if they are all unquestioning TRUE BELIEVERS in so called Free Market Capitalism? Did the collapse of the old Soviet Union almost a generation ago validate the new Robber Baron Capitalism? Should the democratic Socialist perspective have died with Stalinism ? Has History ended ?

I never voted for President Obama back in 2008 because I could see him as a talented and charismatic Chicago politician puffed up by our "Power Elite" as a front for their Great Recession crisis management. Very strange indeed that rich American celebrities see him as a sinister Marxist, trained by one Saul Alinsky. Singer Pat Boone ( remember him and his racist song "Speedy Gonzales"?  ) insists that Obama is a Marxist because he does not want anybody to get rich!

In truth, the Neo-Democrat president makes New Deal FDR look like a flaming Bolshevik. And he finally earns his Nobel Peace Prize by bringing more war misery to the poor people of Iraq.

No wonder we Americans are depressed. Now back to the Paxil voice of TV newsman Brien Williams.

("The Americans Have Become Depressed", published in the German periodical "Die Walt", Nov. 8, 2014 )

Open message to Bob Healey ( Warwick Beacon post )

Johnny Friendly – from "On the Waterfront" a 1954 American
crime drama film about union violence and corruption
amongst longshoremen.

Bob, your remarkable 22% of the vote for governor of Rhode Island was a catharsis for all those voters utterly frustrated with establishment politicians. Earlier there was a sinister plot to keep you off the ballot. The health of what remains of our "democracy" is far more important than the fate of the usually hapless Republican candidate.

Both Raimondo and Fung claimed the other was a captive of "special interests". The old socialist in me fails to see much difference between Wall Street bankers and Main Street bankers. There was equal fawning over phony JOB CREATORS. And too much ridiculous image making.

Union bosses ( versions of "Johnny Friendly" of On the Waterfront fame ) were abject bootlickers of entrenched Democrats. If they had the backbone, they would have long ago organized the American equivalent of the British Labor Party.

The pragmatist in me would give ALL your ideas a chance. Right now I nominate you for Rhode Island Marijuana Czar.

But my own leftist views made me put a WRITE IN VOTE for Mother Teresa. I am no fan of Bishop Tobin ( a registered Republican, by the way ). But I like Pope Francis and the benign social philosophy of the Catholic Church.

No guy who was young during the tumultuous 60s would have a problem with your beard, Bob. I cannot imagine a clean shaven Allen Ginsberg reciting his famous once BANNED poem "Howl" .

I do think it possible to create thousands of needed jobs here in Rhode Island without the "magic" of parasite capitalists.

There was a era  in the springtime of humanity when our happy hunter-farmer ancestors NEVER looked or begged for a JOB. The Good Earth was still theirs.

Thank you for your service, Bob !

Free philanthropist Bernard Madoff !

I was outraged to learn that the great Ponzi Scheme Artist, Bernard Madoff, was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009 by a federal judge who called his CRIME "extraordinary evil". But swindling some of the world's wealthiest people out of their fortunes does not rate as a monstrous crime to most working class people- who would never enter Bernie's Wall Street office with the daydream of turning a year's savings into their private retirement fortune.

I say FREE BERNARD MADOFF- a victim of grotesque capitalist injustice. If I were, by some Twilight Zone magic, the president of the United States, Bernie would serve my administration in the same way that old Joe Kennedy served FDR. "It takes a crook to catch a crook", the shrewd New Deal Roosevelt reasoned.

Imagine all those super-greedy stock market players who wanted Wizard Bernie to quickly convert a mere one hundred million to a billion. And often Bernie delivered the fruit of their labor gift wrapped for Christmas or the Jewish holiday.

In truth Bernard Madoff was acting as the very wrath of the Old Testament God. His picture should be on the wall of Amos House in Providence. He showed the two-bit capitalists who darkened his office door that GREED is never good!

Bernie compares prison to a college campus. Like The Christ he gathers his adoring disciples around him. And one day- after time served- they too will open an office with grandiose visions of mega-philanthropy.

Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com

                                                                   

                                                                  

                                                          

Reply to CEO Mike Stenhouse 's Center for Freedom

Mike, I will listen to any any pragmatic idea that will create jobs for the jobless. But this love affair with capitalist, free market buzz words has all the fervor of a religious revival with the Born Again TV evangelist telling the credulous faithful to make Jesus their partner in business. Or if you are not religious, there is always crackpot Ayn Rand with her "Virtue of Selfishness". And also the mob of Tea Party true believers in the magic of the capitalist profit system.

How many working class people can you convert to the religion of capitalism? A lifetime of exploitation and oppression has taught them nothing about the real nature of the beast? Capitalists are capitalists for the benefit of the working class?

Reactionary Red Eye Radio (John DePetro's station) just told me that state workers have no inherent right to a union. Expert on inherent rights, the ONE WAY TALKER also tells us there is no inherent right to a job if you are jobless, no inherent right to medical care if you are sick, no inherent right to your own liberal-progressive-socialist Talk Radio Show if you do not own a radio station. No inherent right to a college education if you are poor.

But is there any CLASS with a greater sense of entitlement than our own ONE PERCENT plutocracy? They think they own the whole world by divine right. They all have the mentality of a cheap, lousy, lying, cheating Slum landlord. That is your capitalism in all its glory.

President Obama's real problem is that he is a Neo-Democrat who makes FDR look like a flaming Bolshevik.

NOTE: Mike Stenhouse is the CEO of the Rhode Island for Freedom and Prosperity in Cranston. This is a reply to his pro-capitalist blather in the Cranston Herald (letter, November 13). He is welcome to COMMENT on my blog here.

Some practical advice to the working poor from Radical Ron

The "working poor" I see and study every day at the bus stop– now under major reconstruction in Kennedy Plaza, downtown Providence. They are still survivors of a bitter struggle for existence. They are more insecure under modern capitalism than their ancestors were many thousands of years ago as hunter-gatherers. They are more insecure than their ancestors after the invention of agriculture- with perhaps a modest plot of fertile land, owned back then by THE TRIBE -if not the individual.

REUTERS

If they lose their jobs, they soon feel and may be perceived as absolutely USELESS. As horrible as was ancient slavery, no slave could ever feel useless.

What happens to human dignity in modern times when global capitalism just does not NEED tens of millions of still healthy people anymore?

But just because you may be USELESS to capitalists, you are not USELESS in some absolute sense.

A sane Socialist society can and will make use of your human potential. You must protect this potential by guarding your mental and physical health. Is there anything more ruinous to working class people than drugs, booze, cigarettes, gambling, and brainless, indiscriminate sexual relations?

To be sure, the last thing a poor man needs is an unexpected kid to support. This alone must be a source of much hatefulness and drunken misery.

At age 67 I ask myself: how was I spared the Great Catastrophe? I see an absolute beast of a prole woman downtown with four kids beside her. "How did IT happen?" I wonder. And I think:DRUNKENNESS is responsible for half the working class population!

What if at 3:00 am in a seedy bar a very drunk Radical Ron-years ago- started seeing real beauty in a beast? And when not a drunken whore herself, the lady was an ordinary Good Catholic type? No, no,THAT is unthinkable. But so is a lifetime of slavery.

But this scene never happened. In my drinking habits I am truly my dear departed Ma's son. And she did say : "Keep yourself to yourself!"

And I did. And I told dear sweet Ma when she was nearly 90- and I was caring for her- FREED by regular SOCIALIST social security- that SHE was the only woman with a claim on my money. Ma just smiled sweetly at me.

So  Radical Ron was SAVED by listening to the voice of his inner respectable Republican!

Speaking about insurance, George

George Bennett in his recent letter ("Aiming for comets", Nov. 12) writes: "I was amazed to learn that an attempted landing of a scientific probe on a comet was underway". And I am amazed to learn that the probe landing was successful.

Mike Agliolo via Getty Images

And speaking of insurance George, we now have real high tech, space age hope of saving the Good Earth from catastrophic collision with a menacing asteroid. What would the late great popular science writer Isaac Asimov think about this breakthrough? A constructive use of nuclear weapons here? At least WE need not perish like the dinosaurs. Perhaps the Ebola Plague will end the glorious era of homo sapiens?

To: letters@providencejournal.com

                                                                              

ACLU question: Should Church HONOR veterans?

On Veterans Day I read this innocent looking headline: "Richmond church bestows blessing of quiet recognition on veterans" ( Providence Journal, Nov. 10). Yet I recall hearing on WPRO Talk Radio a new controversy about a Catholic poll worker being fired for saying "God bless you!" to individuals about to cast their vote.

In general, I loathe most forms of "political correctness" from a left-socialist point of view which emphasizes the Class Struggle even in local politics. Socialists are not impressed with with petty-bourgeois political causes which ignore more fundamental social and economic inequality. Why should we be impressed with a gay male or a lesbian female who becomes the chief executive of General Motors? They are still CLASS enemies!

But a passing thought on this Richmond church honoring war veterans: does THIS not violate the spirit of separation of church and state? It would make more sense for a Christian church to honor pacifists who take seriously God's commandment: "Thou shalt not kill".

We best honor ALL veterans by protesting imperialist wars! 

Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com

Red Eye experts on "inherent rights"

Submitted to Gene@630wpro.com

Gene, I can't help catching the rabid right wing rants of "Red Eye Radio" before my favorite Talk Radio shows come on the air. They ARE my favorites: guys like you and DePetro are quite entertaining– with a saving sense of humor.

But there is little humor in the far right Red Eye rants. This morning I hear the ONE WAY TALKER champion the abstract-seemingly CLASSLESS- "tax payer" against  all those rotten UNIONIZED state workers - an abomination to his sensitive Tea Party ears. I learn from him that there is no inherent right to join a union. Also, from past rants: no inherent right to a JOB, to EDUCATION, to HEALTH CARE, to a HOME if you are homeless. No inherent right to FREE SPEECH if you can't afford your very own "progressive" TALK RADIO program.

Image source

But just WHO is this abstract, but always angry and feeling much abused, TAX PAYER. The ONE WAY TALKER is very solicitous for this pillar of the capitalist social order. Who? Well, of course – THE ONE PERCENTER (and wannabe ONE PERCENTER)

Red Eye does not question the sacrosanct- INHERENT- right of the ONE PERCENT plutocracy to own the whole world. Their PRIVATE PROPERTY is an inherent, absolute right which goes way, way back, long before the Old Testament, way back to the Big Bang. PRIVATE PROPERTY - if you are an Ayn Rand atheist- is a cosmic right that pre-dated even the recently discovered God Particle.

Get my point, Gene ?                                                

Pacifists can't THANK military!

On Memorial Day and Veterans Day we get a lot of pseudo-patriotic ceremony pretending to THANK the veterans of any and all America's wars. But these quasi-religious ceremonies really HONOR not the veterans but the Moloch-God of War.

Link to "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg

Without knowing WHAT the war is all about, we are told ( by the ONE PERCENT via the news media ) to brainlessly say "THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE" to any poor slob of a veteran we may encounter in our daily routine. For all we know he or she may have been a participant in very dishonorable war crimes: like a guard at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq?

The best way to HONOR all veterans is to end our imperialistic wars and end capitalism at home- the root of modern war.

On his WPRO Radio Talk show this Veterans Day host Gene Valicenti wonders on the air if WE killed the leader of the terrorist group ISIS in Iraq. How "heroic" to kill a very dangerous man from the safety of a Drone Command or a high flying, high tech military aircraft.

Aren't WE so heroic: to kill the bastard from the safety of our comfortable Rhode Island homes? TRUE DOMESTIC HEROES– ALL of US !

Submitted to: To: Gene@630wpro.com

Should pacifists say THANK YOU to our warriors?

When I hear some comfortable, middle class, often middle aged, jackass American say with the deep feeling of a robot– "THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE" to a returning combat veteran, I am reminded more of the famous Russian psychologist Pavlov than of a Norman Rockwell scene- with its usual patriotic sentimentality.

Background Image: Norman Rockwell's ""Homecoming GI" (detail)
link to Michael Moore's 2013 article: "I do not support the troops"

Can an honest pacifist say THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE? Is it not a bit like asking a devout Jew to make the sign of the cross when walking past a Catholic Church?

Only the politically illiterate can continue to believe that modern American wars are all about making the whole world safe for democracy. They are more about making the world safe for the ONE PERCENT.

We can only hope that our returning combat veteran does not end up homeless, jobless, and insane.

Submitted to: letter@globe.com

                                                                          

Brainless "Thank You" for the military?

The American people have almost no say in making war. Our mass protests can't help end a foolish war. The HIDDEN PERSUADERS have conditioned us to say THANK YOU to any guy who claims he is a returning combat soldier. But do we not know just WHAT we are thanking him for?

Ron Kovic's memoir "Born on the Fourth of July" became a 1989 Academy Award
winning film of the same name co-written by Oliver Stone and Ron Kovic,
starring Tom Cruise as Kovic.

What if his (or her) SERVICE was a rather dishonorable participation in war crimes? We read every day about troubled veterans– struggling with mental illness, jobless, homeless. Could it be that human nature just rebels against being part of a KILLING MACHINE– no matter how PROUD, how BRAVE?

Ron Kovic at an anti-war rally in
Los Angeles, California in 2007.
Kovic, born July 4,1946 is a
paralyzed Vietnam War veteran who
became an anti-war activist.

All those sleepless nights are a tell-tale heart. Nightmares of evil deeds? Even Hollywood recognizes the awful truth now and then with popular movies like "Born on the Fourth of July". The real hero of that movie, Ron Kovic, is still an anti-war activist.

War is not a function of human nature. It is a function of our ruling class. Can an old lady here in the Rhode Island– about to have her heat shut off in freezing winter– seriously believe that the U.S. military just wants to protect HER from wicked terrorists living in holes in the Iraqi desert? Can homeless people here believe that THEY are greatly threatened by ISIS?

If you are a now jobless homeowner, will ISIS agents come to repossess your HOUSE? If you are very sick and without health insurance, will ISIS agents deny you access to a room in a hospital? If you are drowning in bills, will ISIS agents come here to garnish your wages?

True ISIS has cruelly executed Americans on their soil. But our own states have TORTURED and EXECUTED many more American prisoners sentenced to death (they could not afford a good lawyer)

So just THINK before you say THANK YOU to the returning combat soldier.
A look of ordinary human compassion is quite enough!
 
Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com

Socialists must not encourage anti-Semitism

After I read that President Obama would double the number of American troops in Iraq, I went to a respectable socialist web site- which invites COMMENT on published articles in a true democratic spirit. Naturally, socialists everywhere oppose all reckless wars and imperialist military interventions. Some of the comments focused on the sinister plots of "Zionist Israel" in the usual, near paranoid way. I read: "The Zionists are masters of Deception".

The very language here reminded me of J. Edgar Hoover's lying, reactionary book "Masters of Deceit", a now dated Cold War classic. For Hoover every shade of PINKO socialist-communist was as loathsome to his "democratic", ALL-American bones as any lackey of the Kremlin back then.

Click here for YouTube link to this snippet from "The Ascent of Man"

Remember there are very many liberal -even socialist- Jews- who call themselves Zionists simply because they believe in the right of Israel to exist. I am sure they would prefer some peaceful way out of this seemingly hopeless, many decades long, Israel-Palestine conflict.

The very language of this conflict -on both sides- is increasingly GENOCIDAL. So we have to be careful with this word ZIONIST. It is beginning to sound hateful.

Likewise, how do you reason with poor, ignorant Palestinians who think THEIR Holy Book condemns the Jews as a people?

I recall the kindly Jewish scholar in the TV series "The Ascent of Man", kneeling on the very ashes of his relatives in a muddy stream at Auschwitz, he cries: "Certainty did this!"

All hateful fanaticism is inseparable from the arrogant belief that YOU alone are in possession of ABSOLUTE TRUTH.

"I beseech you.... you may be wrong!"

Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com

Gay marriage – totally irrelevant to Old Catholicism

Hardly anybody- on the political left or right-can say anything new on the gay marriage controversy. Asked my RELIGION, I invariably and unashamedly say CATHOLIC. No more than any left-wing Jewish intellectual do I deny my birth and background. Even the great Humanist, Isaac Asimov did  not hesitate to call himself a Jew. Even an atheist might have a sense of SACRILEGE in denying one's family roots and history. In a sense, our very SOULS belong to our direct ancestors, to the not-so-dead-past.

My reading of a 100 year old Baltimore Catechism ( angelic Sis let me borrow it) – a classic even by secular criteria- tells me that this red hot issue of GAY MARRIAGE should be a matter of complete indifference to the "devout Catholic". (in contrast to abstract SIN in general).

Shocked? Well read this:

    

"What is the Sacrament of  Matrimony? "QUESTION/ ANSWER :

"The Sacrament of Matrimony is the Sacrament that unites a  Christian man and woman in LAWFUL marriage." 

The text of this old Baltimore Catechism then explains that marriage is NOT "a mere human institution". . .  "but is divine and holy... as instituted by God in Eden". (page 140)

However, "Only those marriages of CATHOLICS are valid which are contracted before the parish priest and two witnesses." (page 144)

In the present day gay marriage controversy the "Church Militant" declare STATE MARRIAGE of a gay couple as invalid and UNHOLY. And yet the state itself is -in fact- is "a mere human institution". But I read in my dear old Baltimore Catechism: "The marriage of a  Catholic before a minister or civil magistrate is INVALID."

So it seems that for years the Holy Roman Catholic Church did not recognize ANY marriage as VALID performed by the STATE.

Now a recent federal court ruling once again checks the momentum of gay marriage: "One side is euphoric, the other dismayed. . . (November 6 news headline).

To be sure, I am no Aquinas, and will not be a candidate for future sainthood. But it seems to this confessed and un-confessed SINNER that for centuries  Catholic Marriage was on a pure metaphysical plane.

I must be careful here, I know. Because I may be looking into the very jaws of HELL.

QUESTION:  "What is Hell?"

ANSWER :  "Hell is a state to which the wicked are condemned, and in which they are deprived of the sight of God for all eternity, and ARE IN DREADFUL TORMENTS".

But as a SOCIALIST– focused on the structure of human society- I have heard this lament before: "Marriage is an institution, but who wants to live in an institution?"

Others are more profane: "Marriage is Hell!"

In my sinful vanity, I think I have made here an original contribution to the gay marriage debate. An old bachelor, I am still more about rebellious DO IT than conformist I DO.

But God bless ALL of us!

          

                              

Does American capitalism still need God?

Yesterday (Internet news) I observed Russia's new Czar, Vladimir Putin, grand standing at a Unity Day parade with a guy in religious garb- who would seem ludicrously incongruous before atheist Lenin's tomb. Perhaps this guy was the Russian Orthodox Pope? Like the Emperor and Pope in the Catholic Middle Ages, Putin and this Orthodox Church religious leader need each other? Thus I wondered.

How odd that soon after the collapse of  atheistic communism in Russia the new rich in Russia feel a need for religious authority. A divine backup for dubious new Private Property Right?

Putin was educated under the old Soviet educational system which taught young Vladimir that "religion was the opium of the people".  Marx's "dialectical materialism" ruled out any need for God in the human social order.

According to the French philosopher Voltaire the French aristocrats - secretly non-believers themselves- wanted  the oppressed peasants to take Catholic priest-craft and dogma (which blessed earthly AUTHORITY) seriously. The Faith of millions kept THEM from getting their throats slit, so the privileges classes reasoned-before the 1789 Revolution.

Today in America we hear and read much about our ONE PERCENT plutocracy. In our secular country, religion and God seem to be under attack. Marx said that the ruling ideas in any social order were the IDEAS OF THE RULING CLASS. Question: Is the American ruling class now mostly estranged from the Christian faith of their ancestors? Are they closet atheists?

But you can still read on any dollar bill : "IN GOD WE TRUST". That still makes sense if the REAL religion of the American ruling class is global capitalism. And their God – MONEY !

This post was submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com

Welcome back "Buddy" – still loving Providence!

I was pleasantly surprised that "Buddy" Cianci was back on WPRO Talk Radio the very next day after the election- his "Last Hurrah".

He made this clear to a guy from Cranston: Loving Providence means "Never having to say you're sorry."
Now where did I hear that before?

This post was submitted to: Gene@630wpro.com

Russia – from atheist Stalinism to the New Czarism

The headline in Euronews did merit a second glance, I thought: "Russia shows strength on Unity Day?" And the patriotic parade viewed by tens of thousands "had a distinct flavor of defiance against the West".

If you are my age (67) you recall a very different, still proud, but intensely ideological nation that scared the hell out of American people with their "Sputnik" rocket launch back in 1957.

"We will bury you", their leader warned. Scary Russia (called the Soviet Union back then) was a bastion of atheistic communism. It had all begun with a euphoric overthrow of the Russian Czar in 1917.

World War I had brought nothing but defeat and misery to the long suffering Russian people. Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks, perhaps the most REVOLUTIONARY bunch of all time, backed by millions of Russian workers and peasants, seized power. Overnight the private property of the rich was converted into state property.

Leon Trotsky, a leader of this great revolution, explained a mere ten years later- now in exile- that the great ideals of the Bolsheviks had been betrayed by Joseph Stalin and his lackeys. Trotsky warned that the New Regime, having created a new aristocracy, was psychologically capable of actually restoring CAPITALISM in Russia.

Forward to PRESIDENT FOR LIFE – Vladimir Putin's regime, almost three decades into the post Soviet Union era. See Putin, their GREAT LEADER, viewing this Unity Day parade almost on the same day that once tens of thousands celebrated the triumph of Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution.

The Unity Day parade commemorates Holy Russia's defeat of the Polish invaders in 1612. In the film clip Czar Putin is standing next to a figure in religious garb who must be the Russian Orthodox Pope. Putin declares that threats from the West (brought on by civil war in the Ukraine) "will not force us to abandon our values and ideals."

What country in history ever changed its "values and ideals" so drastically and so soon? How could the Socialist Ideal have collapsed virtually over night? The rot must have been going on for years in this "new aristocracy"- as Trotsky described it in "The Revolution Betrayed."

Soon after the  GREAT COLLAPSE of 1991 "state property" must have been divided up by the New Robber Barons, jealous of the openly arrogant and unapologetic ruling classes of the capitalist West.

Has any Russian insider, not besotted by the new pro-capitalist values, told this strange story? How could  a whole class of Russian billionaires emerge in a few short years unless they were very connected to the old corrupt Communist Party?

Putin–himself a new billionaire, had said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was "a great historical tragedy." HE should know!

Is there such a thing as a "guilty communist conscience" ?

                                               

One vote for Mother Teresa not wasted!

Norman Rockwell's "Before & After Election Day"

To: letters@providencejournal.com

I did vote early yesterday in Cranston. Not pleased with the Democratic Party's smothering monopoly in this state, this registered Democrat still voted for "lesser evil" Democrats who at least pretend to be for the WORKING class– a vast class that has not disappeared into the comfortable but nervous and insecure MIDDLE CLASS.

But I just could not get myself to vote for Gina Raimondo for governor of Rhode Island. Like the party's national leader, Barack Obama, a puffed up, phony "leftist" in 2008, I did not sense in Gina a hint of a threat to the American plutocracy– the ONE PERCENT. So taking a hint from our Catholic Bishop Tobin, I did a WRITE IN for the "safely dead saint" Mother Teresa. For me it was no more a WASTED VOTE than all those votes (a remarkable 22%?) for the Moderate Party candidate Bob Healey.

In Providence it was clearly the "Last Hurrah" for the legendary  Vincent "Buddy" Cianci. I think this now aging and sickly guy achieved a moral victory in the end (he was hardly trounced by the Providence Journal's relentless elitist ANTI-CORRUPTION campaign.) And he "never did stop loving Providence".

I am not shocked or too discouraged by the Republican sweep of the United States Congress. As an ancient Roman Emperor put it, they are holding a wolf by the ears. It is NOT 1980 again, a return to Reagan Era conservatism.

The American voters are clearly fed up with the two party system- not embracing crackpot Ayn Rand-ism.

In voting for "Mother Teresa" I was not voting for the old Baltimore Catechism (a real CLASSIC in a way). I was expressing my CLASS interests. Real working people can easily identify with society's outcasts–the poor and homeless.