Venezuela Regime Change Project Revealed

When the U.S.A. wanted a regime change it used to be done in secret by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), especially when that country had a democratically elected government such as Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980's), Haiti (2006), Honduras (2009), Ukraine (2014) and Syria, where the bloody project is still raging, the body count mounting, and millions of refuges are homeless.

In the last few decades the U.S. has grown bolder in its regime change projects. What used to be done secretly is now unabashedly done in plain sight. The 2017 Venezuela regime change project has gone public. Most of the U.S. public cannot see the forest for the trees of propaganda that has the public confused about what is behind the chaos in Venezuela today. Mostly what is behind it is U.S. funding millions of dollars to the political parties of the oligarchs. Without that money the opposition political parties would be more divided than they already are and weaker.

 

Still Life Sings - from Paralysis toward Liberation

A concert to commemorate the 72nd year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki
A concert dedicated to the ending of global nuclear weapons and for the liberation of all oppressed by militarism, racism, and classism

August 6, 2017, 6:00 p.m. (Sunday)
Columbus State Community College, Center for Technology and Learning, 290 Cleveland Ave., Columbus (corner of Cleveland and Mount Vernon Avenues).
Free parking for the first 40 participants in the employee lot on the north side of the building (parking vouchers available at the venue)

Central Ohio residents will gather to commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings. The concert will feature Rocco Di Pietro’s original pieces along with Korean, Japanese, and American works that focus on the broken world in a quest for wholeness.

Contact for details: Mark D. Stansbery, 614-517-7237, walk@igc.org
Sponsors include:
Community Organizing Center, Columbus Campaign for Arms Control, Central Ohioans for Peace, Puffin West Foundation.

BOOK REVIEW: White Trash: The 400-year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

White book cover with black words White Trash the untold history of class

Not since President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty have we seen so much attention paid to poor white people. The iconic Life magazine photo of Johnson sitting on the front porch of a poor white Appalachian family was in part to ensure them that they, too, would be included in his War on Poverty.

The sub-title of Isenberg’s book is The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. Yet it is hardly untold, especially here of late. In the last several years we’ve seen a number of books about working class and poor whites: Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance, Angry White Men by Michael Kimmel, Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil and Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South by Keri Leigh Merritt immediately come to mind. (Why is there a book about slavery on this list? Because regardless of what the majority of whites think, everything in this country is connected to slavery.)

Prosecuting Famine Creation

I was asked to speak about prosecuting weapons dealers and war makers with a focus on Saudi Arabia. There are, I think, many ways that one could go about that. I say this as a non-lawyer, with certain perverse preferences that lawyers generally don’t share.

Congressional Opponents of Sanctions As Nuts As Supporters

Both houses of Congress have now passed big new sanctions bills by veto-proof majorities, in fact with near unanimity. The vote this week in the House of Misrepresentatives was 419–3 on a bill to sanction Russia, Iran, and North Korea as punishment for primarily imaginary crimes, despite the sum total of the global legal bodies having asked the United States to judge these crimes, skip over a trial, and move right ahead with punishment being exactly equal to the number of principled opponents of war employed on Capitol Hill.

The most recent vote in the Senate on a version of the bill that did not yet include North Korea was 97-2. The Senate will now take up the new bill for another vote.

Columbus Black International Film Festival

Black background with white words promoting film festival

Friday, August 4-Sunday, August 6, starts 7pm Friday night
Black representation is important to the Columbus artistic scene and filmmaking community, however, there is a large gap in representation of Black artists in the theater and film being showcased in the city. Columbus is rapidly becoming an important place for film on the national level and there are many Black filmmakers in the city who are underrepresented. Having a film festival that caters to the stories being told by African-American and African Diaspora communities provides an opportunity to change the lack of artistic diversity in Central Ohio.

The primary objective of the festival is to showcase Black filmmakers locally, nationally and internationally, while creating an opportunity to network with various people in the filmmaking
community. CBIFF will highlight a spectrum of stories told by people of the African Diaspora. Filmmakers will have access to workshops and panels discussions during the film festival. 

***FULL SCHEDULE***

FRI. AUG 4 – CBIFF OPENING NIGHT! AT WEXNER CENTER FOR THE ARTS

KEYNOTE: MARK A. CUMMINGS SR.

Goodbye Nuclear Power. Construction of Two of Four Remaining Planned U.S. Plants Just Canceled

Two of the last four commercial nuclear power plants under construction in the United States—both of them at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina—have been cancelled. A decision on the remaining two, which are in Georgia, will be made in August.

“DING DONG, Summer is dead,” says Glenn Carroll, one of a core group of safe energy activists who have labored for decades to rid the southeast of these last four reactor projects.

What to BUY and what NOT to buy

Pictures of a bag of health sugar and certified organic food against a bright colorful tie-dyed background

What to buy

Buy Fair Trade Items

The term “Fair Trade” may conjure up a variety of images in the minds of consumers today: “hipsters” sipping on special coffee, higher priced sections of produce at the grocery store, all-hemp clothing and handbags, or an overall vision of a “natural” lifestyle. Many of us, however, don’t know what the Fair Trade industry truly consists of. There is more to this craze than meets the eye. In a nutshell, Fair Trade is all about ethical business practices and individual consumers using their purchasing power to decide what kind of world we live in.

What is Fair Trade?

Concisely explained on non-profit Fair Trade USA’s website, this industry practices “rigorous social, environmental and economic standards (that) work to promote safe, healthy working conditions, protect the environment, enable transparency and empower communities to build strong, thriving businesses” (http://fairtradeusa.org/what-is-fair-trade).

Bob Bites Back: How Putin got the idea to interfere

Time magazine cover with heavy white haired man holding American flag and words Yanks to the rescue

Why would Russia meddle in a U.S. presidential election? They were just returning the favor.

This Time magazine cover from July 15, 1996 documents it all. The United States bragged about helping rig the Russian presidential election that year, helping drunken authoritarian Boris Yeltsin remain in power.

How and why could this happen? A good place to start is the book Rewriting Russian History: Did Boris Yeltsin Steal the 1996 Election?

Yes he did. And the U.S. directly meddled in the election.

Yeltsin was much beloved by U.S. neo-cons because he allowed the massive expansion of NATO into the former Soviet bloc and U.S. and western corporations to control many Russian natural resources.

Going into his 1996 re-election campaign, Yeltsin’s poll numbers were worse than Trump’s and opinion said he was unelectable.

U.S. political operatives came to the rescue, many tied to former California governor Pete Wilson, becoming Yeltsin’s “secret campaign weapon,” according to Eleanor Randolph of the LA Times.

Ohio Earthworks on the verge of taking World’s Stage

Bird's eye view of the serpent mound, a green snaky looking thing on the ground, surrounded by trees

Built by native peoples roughly 2,000 years ago, the Ohio Earthworks – such as Serpent Mound and the Newark Octagon – are on the threshold ofachieving global recognition by the United Nations.

An Ohio Earthworks application for World Heritage Site inscription as designated by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has been in the works by Ohio archaeologists and other experts for over ten years and is set for submission sometime in 2018.

Currently, the Ohio Earthworks are on the “US Tentative List”, but those working on the application told the Free Press they believe it’s just a matter of time before Serpent Mound and the other earthworks become inscribed. There are over 1,000 UNESCO sites across the globe, but Ohio has none.

Inscription would no doubt rectify the past as European settlers and their ancestors demolished many of Ohio’s pre-historic effigies, mounds and burial sites, seeing them as nothing more than piles of dirt.

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