Speaking Truth to Empire w/Dan Yaseen (NOVEMBER 2017 EDITION)

November 2017

https://soundcloud.com/speaking-truth-to-empire/171115-speaking-truth-to-empire-steve-lendman

 
 “Speaking Truth to Empire” on KFCF 88.1 FM independently owned and locally operated since 1975 in Fresno Dan Yaseen interviews Steve Lendman, an author, a progressive blogger and an internet radio host. He writes on vital international and national topics, including war and peace, American imperialism, corporate dominance, political persecutions, and a range of other social, economic and political issues. His website is: www.stephenlendman.org

******************

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX 

Washington's Long War in Syria (Dakotah Lilly interviews Stephen Gowan for the Soapbox: Nov, 26, 2017)

November 26, 2017

Cindy Sheehan's co-host, Dakotah Lilly, interviews

author and activist, Stephen Gowans on:

"The empire's assault on the People of Syria and the DPRK. Dakotah talks with Canadian author and activist Stephen Gowans about Washington’s grudge against the DPRK and Syria, as well as busting some myths about planned economies and capitalism."

 CLICK IMAGE FOR MORE INFO ON BOOK

 

DAKOTAH IN VENEZUELA

*********

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX 

Storming the Gates and Long Live Robert Mugabe (SOAPBOX PODCAST 11/19/17)

November 19, 2017

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF NONE!

This week, on the Soapbox, we present two wonderful

interviews.

Guest: Richard Becker

Topic: Storming the Gates:

How the Russian Revolution Changed the World

(On the Centenary of the Russian Revolution)

CLICK FOR ORDERING INFORMATION

 ************************

LONG LIVE ROBERT MUGABE!

Guest: Caleb Maupin

TOPIC: Zimbabwe and the non-coup

Cindy chats with RT correspondent, Caleb Maupin,

about the recent events in Zimbabwe AND the 

history of the socialist revolution and counter-colonialism there.

Caleb
WWW.CALEBMAUPIN.COM

*********

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX 

Speaking Truth to Empire with Dan Yaseen (October Edition)

October Edition

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN 

ANN WRIGHT

 On Speaking Truth to Empire on FM 88.1 KFCF, an independently owned and locally operated since 1975 in Fresno, Dan Yaseen interviews Ann Wright. She is a retired Army Reserve colonel and a 29-year veteran of the Army and Army Reserves. She was also a diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She received the State Department’s Award for Heroism for her actions during the civil war in Sierra Leone. She resigned from the Department of State on March 19, 2003, in opposition to the Iraq war. She is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience and and appeared in the documentary “Uncovered".

*********

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX 

Erasing the Blackboard guest blog by Vietnam Veteran Mike Hastie

When I left Vietnam in September 1971 after being
in the Central Highlands for one year, I remember
an event that I could only see its importance many
years later.

Three days before I left Vietnam at the out processing
center in Cam Ranh Bay, I was with a couple of hundred
soldiers who were also heading home from a war that
was drenched in Lies.

I was sleeping in one of the large barracks with
a lot of other anxious people who just wanted
out of this place.

One of the things we had to wait for was the
results of a piss test to determine if we had
been using heroin while in Vietnam.
If you tested positive, you had to stay in Vietnam
for another 2-3 weeks to be detoxed.

It was obviously a temporary shake and bake
treatment that would only last until they got
home, where they would no doubt continue
the assault on destroying their lives with a drug
that was having a powerful impact on the morale
of American troops in Vietnam.

While I was in Vietnam, I saw the end results of
people killing themselves and killing others because
heroin was dictating every decision they made.
Heroin addiction was rampart in my unit, and it
was being supplied and transported by the CIA
and high ranking South Vietnamese officers,
because heroin was like cash, and the cash flow
never stopped.

It was another level of unfathomable corruption
that defined the entire American War in Vietnam.
We were all disposable chess pieces that were moved
around on a chessboard to suit the corporate elite's
orgasm of non-stop profit.
We were all chumps in a war that would eventually
kill millions of people.
So, when my piss test came back negative, I was
good to go-- back to the United States that pretended
to be my earthly home.

My last perceptions of being in Vietnam were written
on the walls of that barracks I stayed in for a few days.
On every square inch of the walls of that building was
highly toxic war graffiti telling the absolute truth about
the American War in Vietnam.

It was all graphic prose to say the least.
 
American soldiers spilled their guts about how much
they hated their government and Richard Nixon.
They were as articulate as any gifted writer who
had the personal experience of bull shit and betrayal.
 
Betrayal is like heroin, it would eventually kill anything
that moved.
 
And, when the Vietnam War ended, that graffiti was
destroyed with the walls it was written on.
 
The blackboard was erased forever.
 
The tragedy of all this is that future American
soldiers would see the same horror of Lies in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and would experience the
exact same pathology of betrayal.
 
Long after Vietnam veterans are gone, the new
American soldier will be pissing in the same
sewer of historical deceit.
 
It's all the same orgy of madness.
 
I am truly sorry the Vietnam War blackboard
was destroyed, because it would have saved
so many lives.
 
For the love of money is the root of all evil.
And, that is why the blackboard is erased.
Mike Hastie
Army Medic Vietnam
Full Disclosure
November 9, 2017

*************

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX 

What October (Rev) Means to Me: Cindy Sheehan interviewed on Voice of the Revolution Radio

 

CLICK IMAGE TO LISTEN TO INTERVEW

Voice of the Revolution Radio


 Famed Anti-War activist Cindy Sheehan is on Voice Of The Revolution Radio to reveal what her year of studying the revolution and Lenin's writings has taught her

Cindy's Points:
*During the Cold War, an intricate Propaganda system taught people to fear the Soviet Union, Communism, Cuba, and other places that weren't 'good old American Capitalism'
*That ideological indoctrination can be compared to child abuse
*Americans are so 'beaten down' they believe there is no other possible social and economic system
*American Capitalism teaches people that their poverty is their fault, not something that their society could ameliorate
*The United States is not 'emancipated'; "The only people who are emancipated are what Wall Street called the '1%'"

What October Means To Me - Cindy Sheehan by Voice Of The Revolution Radio is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

*************

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX 

The Emancipation of Women by Cindy Sheehan

This poster depicts a Russian woman holding the Soviet flag, with the caption: “Emancipated women – build up socialism”. The artist A. Strakhov-Bratislavskij created this poster in 1926 for the government of the Soviet Union (Global Fund for Women). After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, men and women were proclaimed equal by the Soviet government. Women were greatly desired by the Soviet government, and not only for raising children. The Soviets saw women as an economic asset that they believed would make a great contribution to the nation. As a result, the numbers of women in the workforce doubled from 423,200 in 1923 to 885,000 in 1930 (Goldman).

For the past year, I have been doing my best to study about the Great October Socialist Revolution (GOSR) on the centennial anniversary of that groundbreaking and historic event.

As a child of the Cold War, the lies I was told, indeed we all were told, about the Soviet Union take my breath away. When so many of us are trying to celebrate the gains of the GOSR, I find it not so coincidental that Russiaphobia is regaining undeserved popularity in the US as the Russian president is being purposefully, unfairly, and incorrectly compared to Stalin—and this is by those on the “left.”

As part of my study, I recently read a compilation of writings and speeches about the emancipation of women by the Father of the Revolution, Vladimir Lenin.

Among many of his very advanced thinking (more below) about the role of women in a revolutionary society, the thing that struck me time and again was how the great revolutionary philosopher, Lenin, decried how working women and peasant women on farms were still responsible for most of the housework, farm work and childcare.

“You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain downtrodden because all house work is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most savage and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and and does not include anything that would in anyway promote the development of woman.”  Lenin, Pravda No 213 September 1919

As a mother/worker/revolutionary, I was touched by the Comrade’s perspective that women are “doubly oppressed under capitalism” (Lenin’s statement on International Working Women’s Day, 1921) and feel like this past year the burden of being a woman in a capitalist society has really affected me.

My dear sister Dede Miller who worked her entire life from the time she was 16 until she was diagnosed with cancer in March of 2015 passed away on January 22, 2017. Even with putting aside the terrible “Cancer Industrial Complex” that we had to struggle with the entire time and besides trying to deal with her disease, we were both thrust into very stressful socioeconomic situations.

In contrast to Lenin and the GOSR envisioning and implementing helpful things, such as childcare and catering kitchens, to ease the burden of women workers, here in the capitalist/imperialist state, there are very few social safety nets and the ones that there are, are filled with large holes and mostly insurmountable gaps.

For the last two years of Dede’s life, my life was consumed with taking care of her with the resources that we already had before Dede got sick. After she was diagnosed, for the over four decades that she worked, she received a measly Social Security check every month because of her inability to continue working. If not for the kindness of our peace/revolutionary communities and the strength of our family, we would not have survived. It’s wonderful that we did get help from friends and family and it’s wonderful so many wanted to help, but why is something like that even necessary? What about people who don’t have such a vast network of compassionate comrades? Even so-called charities failed us. At the local American Cancer Society we were told that, even though Dede could barely walk in the door and our resources were stretched thin, she could find a wig and makeup tips to make her “feel better about herself!” That’s all the “help” they could give us!

Anyway, back to this wonderful book The Emancipation of Women.

To me, at a time when women in the US didn’t even have the right to vote (and we still are not equal under the law, even if it is just bourgeois law), Lenin’s views were very far ahead of his time and I was thrilled that women were honored as very valuable fighters in the Civil War and recognized as necessary for an advanced socialist society. In February of 1920, he wrote in Pravda: “The proletariat cannot achieve complete liberty until it has won complete liberty for women.”

As Lenin struggled against the bourgeois (neo-Malthusian) idea of not bringing children into oppressive societies (“we must fight for a better future for our children”), he also argued in favor of reproductive freedom and divorce rights for women.

“Down with this foul lie! There is no ‘equality’, nor can there be, of oppressed and oppressor, exploited and exploiter. There is no real ‘freedom,’ nor can there be, so long as women are handicapped by men’s legal privileges, so long as there is no freedom of the worker from the yoke of capital.” Lenin, Pravda
#249, November 1919

Lenin was a radical feminist before the label was even invented. We radical feminists do not want “equality” with our oppressors, we want emancipation from our oppressors through the overthrow of capitalism, imperialism, chauvinism, and, for our sisters of color, deeply ingrained racism.

Revolution is an ongoing struggle and even though many of the wonderful programs that were envisioned weren’t fully realized, or whether counter-revolutionaries and/or US meddling undermined the real and positive gains of the GOSR, the struggle of emancipation for all oppressed peoples of the world is still a very worthy and, sadly still needed, cause that many people carry on to this day.

There is much “gold’ to be mined from the Soviet Socialist process and much inspiration to be found there, also.

This year of my personal struggle and continuing studies have inspired me to continue this profoundly necessary and principled fight.

 *******

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX 

Centenary of the October Revolution in Russia (Compilation of Posts)

Articles:

ROL, USA has presented five articles (so far) of historic significance about the Great October

Socialist Revolution (Bolshevik) this year.

c

 CLICK IMAGE FOR ROL BLOG

The World-Historic Achievements and Historical Significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution by RAY LIGHT

   

The October Revolution and the Working Class of Russia and the World Part One by RAY LIGHT

   

The October Revolution and the Working Class of Russia and the World Achieve Unprecedented Victories: Part 2 of 2 Part Series by RAY LIGHT

 

The October Revolution and the National Question by RAY LIGHT

 

The October Revolution and the Issue of War and Peace by RAY LIGHT  

*******************************

A Century of Fighting Fascism with Socialism

Guest Blog by Matt Owen 

***

The Emancipation of Women  

by Cindy Sheehan

 

*********

PODCASTS:

CINDY SHEEHAN INTERVIEWS RAY LIGHT ABOUT THE GOSR

*******

Celebrating the Revolution with Ray Light

********

CINDY INTERVIEWS LUCIANA BOHNE ABOUT GOSR

 Why the Russian Revolution Matters Today

 ********

What October Means to Me

Cindy Sheehan interviewed for

Voice of the Revolution Radio 

********

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX 

 

A Century of Fighting Fascism with Socialism by GUEST AUTHOR, Matt Owens

The Bolshevik

A century of fighting fascism with socialism: 

what is to be done?

M.K. Owen, California 

Socialist League/Liga Socialista de California.

***********************************

On November 7 we celebrate the October Socialist Revolution which, one hundred years ago, overthrew not only the last in a series of Russian Provisional Governments, but the capitalist class on whose behalf it continued to wage, and lose, the First World War: what can we learn from it and from what became of the state to which it gave birth?

The first thing to note is that it did put an end to capitalism on most of the territory of the Russian state: because it did not expand into Germany and beyond, it retained its fundamentally Russian character, despite Lenin's campaign to break up Russia, resulting in the alienation of one-third of its territory from Russia to found a multinational Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Lenin wanted to go further, but Stalin, the Commissar of Nationalities, wielded his power as General Secretary of the Communist Party to fight Lenin to a standstill).

The Civil War killed off the original Russian proletariat, forcing the Bolsheviks to work amongst the peasantry to industrialise Russia, then the USSR: this forced the Bolsheviks to rely on the Soviet state bureaucracy and peasant initiatives to rebuild the Soviet economy...a retreat into capitalism for which Lenin honestly campaigned, correctly labeling it as such.

This “New Economic Policy” succeeded in rebuilding the Soviet economy, but could not grow it in the face of the Great Depression: Stalin, having already used Trotsky's scepticism of the NEP to turn the Communist Party against him, now turned against the NEP without acknowledging Trotsky's earlier critique...instead Stalin put the entire Soviet economy in the hands of the bureaucracy, relying on the employer-employee relation of production historically specific to capitalism to cement his rule over the CPSU, and its rule over the Soviets. Marx and Engels had predicted that Ferdinand Lassalle's state socialism opened the door to this kind of despotism...and Stalin, empowered by the failure of the Soviets to expand beyond the territory of the Russian Empire, walked through that door. The stupendous contradictions between the Soviets' democratic origins and bureaucratic destiny continued to dog the USSR until its demise in 1991, paving the way for open, honestly capitalist governments ever since.

The socialist revolutions which led up to the Soviet Revolution of 1917 were produced by extreme crisis: military defeat resulted in the Paris Commune of 1870-71,  the first Soviets of 1905, and  the Socialist Revolution of 1917. All were the products of general strikes, which necessitated the meeting of workers' deputies to democratically plan their economies. This began also to happen in Germany as a result of the hyperinflation of 1923, but when it did, the minty-new German Communist Party, anxious to preserve its United Front with the governing Social Democrats, hesitated, and the German Soviets were dissolved, welding the fate of the Soviets to that of Russia, limiting Communist rule to a country and a class to whom their ideas were utterly alien rather than commonsense.

The socialist revolutions have always been inherently anti-fascist: The Paris Commune closed the door on the return of the Bonapartes to power; the Soviets defended the Revolution against the Kornilov putsch, as did their German comrades against that of Kapp; and we all know what became of Germany once the German Soviets were defeated.

How different 21st Century socialism is from its predecessors! It began with a failed insurrection in Venezuela, the “Caracazo,” which a cadre of paratroopers led by Lt. Colonel Hugo Chavez Frias tried to rescue. In 1998, Chavez ran for president and was victorious with the largest margin since the early 1960s.

President Chavez immediately promulgated a Constitution to meet the demands of the Caracazo, and launched the Social Missions to bypass the bureaucracy in order to deliver oil revenues directly to the Venezuelan people.

The achievements of the Social Missions were as remarkable as those of the Soviets; illiteracy was eliminated, healthcare was delivered to all Venezuelans, and the work of alleviating the effects of the poverty in the barrios and indigenous communities was begun...

...Yet Chavez correctly pointed out that, while many in the capitalist world regarded his government and its policies as socialist, they were no such thing, as they didn't address the question which befuddled the Soviets, that is, relations of production: hence he led his MVR party into a specifically socialist coalition, PSUV,  and from that platform, launched the Communal Councils, which, in turn, combined into Communes in order to organise a specifically socialist economy based on democratic planning...

That socialist project, launched in a capitalist country, has been besieged by domestic and international capitalists and their states from the outset: the result has been sanctions, shortages, and currency collapse, much as confronted the Soviet Union, as well as Germany in 1923. Can Venezuela succeed where the USSR could not, and can socialism triumph as it did not in Germany?

Here we confront the same problem as Marx did, that of the collective capitalist: even if a cooperative or government is in the hands of the workers, it can be forced into the same relation of production with them as is any individual capitalist: capitalism without capitalists, as it were. It was this fate which befell the Soviet Union, that that which awaits Venezuela even if Venezuelan workers overthrow domestic Venezuelan capitalists and fascists...

...Unless the 21st Century Socialist Revolution grows beyond Venezuela! Think of how different things would have turned out if Germany had joined the Soviet Union, which it almost did in October of 1923 (the date the German government set as the deadline for the German Soviets to disband). Hitler still merely a postcard-painter, Stalin a mere bureaucrat in a Russian bureaucracy fast fading in a Soviet Union which now included a German SFSR, led by a CPSU also including cadres drawn from the German proletariat!

Think of the possibilities if 21st Century socialism expands beyond Venezuela! Rojava showed some promise, but its leadership has been diverted into CIA's struggle to overthrow the Syrian government; Catalunya may have to travel the socialist road to independence via a general strike, especially promising if that strike spreads to Castilian Spain and Euzkadi, the Basque Country...

...And now California! The same abrogation of autonomy which drove the Catalans to declare independence, and which drove us to declare independence from the despotism of Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana in 1836,  is now again upon us, as we defend all the gains workers made in the US against the rapacious Trump/Pence regime: some think that the return of the Democrats to power would end that nightmare, but it didn't end when they were in power, and it won't if they return. 

Neoliberal market totalitarianism, along with perpetual war and unquestioned loyalty to Zionism, are so ingrained as bipartisan consensus that nothing less than social revolution will end it: even Trump's fascisti, like their counterparts in Venezuela and elsewhere, are wedded to market totalitarianism, unlike their 20th Century predecessors!

Will the US drive California away the way Spain did Catalunya? Can either succeed in winning their independence except through a general strike and socialist revolution?
That is the question before us: socialist revolution doesn't happen until everything else is tried first, and fails. We of the California Socialist League are preparing for it.

¡VIVA VENEZUELA, CATALUNYA, Y CALIFORNIA LIBRE, INDEPENDIENTE, SOBERANA, Y SOCIALISTA, CON LIBERTAD, JUSTICIA, Y DEMOCRACIA DEL PUEBLO, POR EL PUEBLO, Y PARA EL PUEBLO! ¡TRABAJADORES DEL MUNDO, UNÍOS! ¡TODO PODER A LOS CONSEJOS Y A LAS COMUNAS! WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS!

Watch Matt on FB Live

https://www.facebook.com/matt.owen.7792/videos/10215289105569695/

**************** 

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX