No, Uncle Sam isn't Charlie. How about Orwell's Big Brother?

 

I think too many journalists in the so called capitalist democracies have deluded themselves about the ideal of FREE SPEECH in these societies. May I recommend leftist professor Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States" for a more sober perspective on all civil liberties here?

Wikipedia link to Zinn's book

Was the McCarthy era paranoia all about FREE SPEECH rights even for moderately liberal scholars or political activists? It is well documented how a leftist party with which I was a presidential elector in 1980, The Socialist Workers Party, was harassed, sabotaged, and illegally spied on. The SWP did finally win its lawsuit against the FBI. But the damage was done.

Presently numerous activists who protested Bush's criminal war in Iraq and Afghanistan have their own tales of persecution to tell. And Talk Radio in America is particularly odious for its 24 hour right wing thug view of the world. They always rant about creeping socialism. But they would also silence any intellectually honest-and courageous-militant socialists.

Yes, if they could, the American FBI would love to obliterate my comments here rather than defend to the death my right to say this.

The talk of FREE SPEECH is mostly cant. When the ruling class does not like it they call it HATE SPEECH or just un-American and subversive and unpatriotic.

Even the famous Ralph Nader- now associated with the Green Party–can barely get a fair hearing in the capitalist news media.

And I must point out that too many individuals -even conservative types-have lost their jobs just over something they said.

As Professor Zinn pointed out, free speech is very problematic here. After suggesting that our Memorial Days just might glorify war more than they honor our war dead, he lost his column in a major newspaper. So much for FREE SPEECH in America!

And with the president of Israel coming to America to address the Congress, can anybody here criticize Israel's war crimes against the Palestinians without being branded anti-Semitic?

And so I hear: "Karl Marx was a self-hating Jew!

Forget about democratic DIALOGUE in the United States. Uncle Sam isn't Charlie. He is Orwell's Big Brother!

( published in Le Point ( France ) on Jan. 12, 2015 by Michel Colomes:"Obama Isn't Charlie", WATCHING AMERICA)

"The Socialist" -Barack Obama or Francois Holland?

A while back I noted in my blog ( http://radicalrons.blogspot.com/ ) that the aging pop singer Pat Boone accused President Obama in a Fox News interview of being a Marxist because  he does not want anybody to get rich. (link to blog article)

In his Jan.19 letter,  Class Divisions won't help America", Lewis A. Prescott thinks Obama is "once again trying to take us down the road to socialism". The Providence Journal editorial Jan.20 "Mr. Hollande's super tax opus" implies that even a very tamed, housebroken socialist is more than a little dangerous and foolish in high office.

The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was very familiar with all varieties of bourgeois socialism. He would have dismissed France's Hollande as "the ideal socialist leader for successful dentists."  The fate of the assassinated leader of Chile, Salvadore Allende, proves once again that real socialism can only be established by a powerful mass movement of the WORKING class.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the very idea of SOCIALISM has been kept alive by its fanatical ideological opponents. I get a strong dose of anti-socialism any time I turn on Red Eye Radio. Your editorials are more polite: anti-socialism for successful and prosperous used car salesmen.


To: letters@providencejournal.com

A truly Orwellian paradox

I am presently staring at today's Providence Journal front page -pondering a truly Orwellian paradox: "After attacks, crackdown on hate speech" (Jan.15)

And it seems that pure HATE can be combated by the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, on its way to terrorize not the fanatical few but the religious many in an Islamic country. But just days ago there was a multitude of people in Paris crying out that free speech is ABSOLUTE.

 

But the good Pope Francis disagrees. Don't insult MY mother! Well I am certainly not holier than the Pope. But I would dismiss any insult to my dear departed mother as being simply uninformed. At least I thought she was a peach.

Does he also mean: "Don't insult Holy Mother Church"? In the good old days there was the not so Holy Inquisition. But the Church has finally repented  of this extravagant solicitude for the Faith. As the late radical professor Howard Zinn said, this FREE SPEECH is very enigmatic in the most democratic countries on earth.

To: letters@providencejournal.com