31 Comments

Awesome that got to meet with Hugo Chavez! The fact that remains salient to me about the 2020 "election" is that 25 million more Americans were said to have voted than any previous quadrennial. Maybe the Covid Psy-Op made people vote like crazy, like never before? All I know is you have to beat a lot of bushes to get that many voters, or: in 2020, there was a voter under every woodpile...

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It was also awesome that he got to meet me.

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No doubt Biden has lowered the presidential bar to its lowest in history. I mean, what's left to respect? Total embarrassment.

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Hm…Chavez being a hero is not what I’ve ever heard/seen/read. The country is and has been in absolute shambles for the last few decades. Inflation up the wazoo…lack of meds, empty grocery shelves, huge stacks of bolivars needed for the smallest purchase…the list goes on. All the while the Chavez family (and maduro and other connected ppl) have amassed great wealth. Not trying to say he did it all himself (after all, are not most or all leaders puppets?) but the dude’s policies made pretty much everyone poor. They used to be the wealthiest country in South America. I say that with the full understanding that there were still serious problems, and that not everyone was wealthy…which is typically the case in most countries.

Try not to pile on me too unkindly 🙂

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I will as kindly as possible tell you that your sources must be full of shit.

Briefly: I got to know Chavez pretty well and even was honored to travel with him to Uruguay for the inauguration of Pepe Mujica. Lula was there, Evo Morales was there, the Kirchners were there, etc...when the people (regular South Americans) saw Chavez, they went berserk. His presidential motorcade (which I was in one of the cars) was stopped several times, and he plunged into the people to shake hands, take pictures, and get hugs.

Vz was wealthy for the oligarchs, but the poor were desperately poor. Now, because of the new constitution get food, education, healthcare, and dental care. The standard of living for them has been greatly improved.

Why is there so much bullshit propaganda about Vz? Because when Chavez came to power, he, and the people decided that Vz's oil belonged to them, not Standard Oil, Shell, or ?

I am sure if you ask John Bolton, Hillary Clinton, or any of them, they would agree with you, but I have talked to dozens, if not hundreds, of regular Venezoalanos who revere him to this day.

I would invite you to read my book about the subject which I linked up in the post. It wasn't a best seller, but it's an honest evaluation of my observations and study of history.

Thanks for your comment, and, as long as you aren't hostile or violent, I would always try to treat my subscribers with respect.

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Let me add: I would NEVER, EVER ask the likes of bolton, clinton, or any of the war pigs about anything...they'd just lie, as usual.

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You might not ask them, but you sound just like them.

Talk about corrupt murderers.

I hope you have a nice evening, I see you are deeply indoctrinated in US propaganda so I wish I could educate you but it seems you've already made up your mind. Peace

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Lol! I just saw this comment! You are clueless about me...you should be very careful of making assumptions of strangers online. Notice, I said nothing of the kind about you, nor would I, as I don't know you. Peace to you also.

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I don't doubt your sources...but there are always 2 sides to every story. I do agree that the oligarchs had it good (don't they always?), but Chavez and his connecteds (not a word, I know) became ultra wealthy because of corruption. I think he really did have a heart for the poor, but he ultimately didn't do the country any favors...and Maduro has done nothing to fix things.

Thank you for your respectful response.

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All nope except your last line

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With all due respect, poverty in Venezuela was greatly reduced until the U.S. decided to "meddle" and tried to install a fake president, impose crippling sanctions and steal assets. Another vile example of imperialist fascism....

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I agree, the US gov is horrible...in many places around the world.

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Biden is the greatest example to show that the position of president has been long a puppet position.

I'm trying to explain to Trump fans that he too was a puppet.

When he claimed to want to fire Fauci, he held back Dr Atlas from challenging Fauci and Birx. Those two critters are the reason why we got this con-vid mess.

Also how come Trump couldn't withdraw from Afghanistan due to BS reasons but Biden was allowed to do a botch withdrawal?

All puppets managed by idiots.

https://robc137.substack.com/p/looking-behind-the-curtain-of-oz

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I really think Trump has too big of an ego to become a total puppet---more like a loose cannon, but as Dakotah and I often say on SheeLilly, he definitely is a pawn in the games and makes everything about him.

Willing pawn? Who knows, but Biden has been attached to those strings since even before he was elected.

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He obviously didn't bow to the deep state on everything; that's why they're so intent on annihilating him. If he didn't have so many vehement supporters, he would be dead by now....

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Trump is a coward that follows orders but perhaps seeing how his support transcends the party bullshit might make his second term what he promised.

Perhaps he won't be a moron this time and appoint the worst of the deep state like he did in 2016-20...

🤞

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Trump will always be Trumping. 😂

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Agree! It's like people don't even care that his brain has turned to mush because it's obvious that he's not in charge. It's a bad look tho...

The era of Hugo Chavez was one of those rare times when I had a glimmer of hope.

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Chavismo still gives me hope.

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I gained tremendous respect for Chavez after I read the economic history of Venezuela. Until 1920 the country made and sold a wide variety of high-value exports, from coffee to specialized wood types that weren't available anywhere else. In 1922 oil was discovered, and Big Oil instantly took over the govenment. After that, Venezuela was completely enslaved to petroleum. All other industries disappeared. By the time Chavez came along, there wasn't much left to rebuild, but he tried as hard as he could.

Now USA is a resource colony of China. All of our varied industries have disappeared, and our sole purpose is supplying oil and natural gas to China. Even if an FDR or Chavez took over here, he wouldn't have much ability to rebuild a real economy.

Nature always gets the last laugh.

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Wow, Hugo Chavez was kind of a hero of mine, and the way he was treated in the US press, esp the odious NY slimes was pretty telling of how bad that "paper of record" was, even back then.

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He was definitely a hero of mine.

And just a very nice person, as well .

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Is there a German compound word that combines "aggravated" and "dismayed"? If so, it describes my reaction to mostly secondhand reports that progressive-liberal lesser-evilists, ergo "Democrats", remain indifferent or oblivious to Biden's advanced dementia.

I may have mentioned before that an old friend, M., goodhearted and often shrewd and insightful, is sort of stuck in a progressive-liberal mindset from the previous century. She's antiwar and a critic of capitalism, but she also reverts or regresses to the old idea that the Republicans are the truly evil, villainous party of the rich, whereas the Democrats are relatively humane, if also corrupt and inept.

FWIW, M. also still thinks certain Hollywood celebrities and late-night celebrity comedians who supposedly "spoke truth to power" during the Dubya Bush administration are cool. Anyway, in 2020 when M. expressed tepid enthusiasm for Biden, I gingerly asked her if she wasn't concerned about Biden's mental fitness for the presidency.

Without missing a beat, she retorted, "Oh, I know Biden is losing it! But, see, that means that he'll be surrounded by people who are determined to see that his presidency doesn't fail!" I admit I hadn't expected this rationalization, and I didn't have the heart (or nerve) to ask her if she really thought it through.

But over the months, I was made aware that more highly-educated prog-libs apparentlly weren't even bothering to invent convoluted and frankly absurd "workarounds" to explain away Biden's manifest descent into acute dementia. Instead, they express a "glass half full" assessment: Biden is doing a pretty good job running the country, even if he's admittedly no spring chicken and has momentary lapses now and then.

Accordingly, they dismiss opinions or claims that Biden is too cognitively impaired to responsibly discharge the duties of his office-- that's just Republican or MAGA "ageism". I don't know whether to laugh or cry! 🤣 😪 🤨

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It's very aggravating-dismaying, for sure!

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I know ALOT of people like that. They just can't admit they have been wrong about practically everything for the last 15 years...since Obama came on the scene.😟

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Great picture. Chavez was a true hero.

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Totally can see mistaking Pelosi for Haley, or vice versa.

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Very cool memory lane stuff.

As far as forgetting names of kiddos, your own, or mixing them up? Or Trump and Nancy? Or Biden and Macron?

Yikes. We have no standards for electing these pieces of shit. You do remember stories/articles on the number of diplomats and ambassadors who not only did not speak the language of those respective countries they were assigned to, but couldn't find them on a map.

Ahh, the lowered bar. Look, there are demands of the mind that should be standard operating procedure with these positions -- in fact, there should not be a President or Prime Minister or fucking head of state.

You know that, Cindy. We need collectives, not this top down queendom shit. And so you put all the weight (sic) of the world on one man or woman, what do you expect? Prime time fuckery.

But a sharp mind is a very terrible thing to lose. And, yep, if you can't pass the BP and pulse Ox and stress test to make it on a million jobs, then, well, I guess these pukes we call POTUS need to have a decent battery of tests and town halls and other challenges to see just what's under the hood.

I'm not Jesus like Eric Adams declared (whatever the fuck that is, means, Jesus Fucking Christ, these people need bats to the head, or a convolescent home, young, middle aged or old, it don't matter).

I have a bad reputation of having a "really good memory." Sure, turned 67 yesterday, and sure, I write across the spectrum, and I have advanced "who fucking cares" degrees. Yep, tinker here, and tinker there. Systems thinker in terms of how the world goes round, and what's east-west-north-south-up-down-inside.

A mind that is willing to be interested in a thousands things to some moderately advanced level is a mind that should be on that "collective team."

But instread, we are a nation of posers, thespian, actors -- B actors -- who get director's nods and all sorts of "potty training in communications appearences and posturing."

So, really, if one is in the real newspaperman/woman pit, where reporters (yes, I am one of those) are not afraid to prod and ask asymetrical questions, not afraid of the poodles nipping at their feet when asking these vaunted what-have-yous questions of merit and substance), then you think quickly, but alas, these people are LIARS, SHOWMEN, SNAKE OIL SALESMEN, and SOCIOPATHS.

Try arguing or pressing for truth from someone with co-occurring mental disorders. And so that's what we have in there, and they also forget names, forget humanity, and most of the pukes in office are fucking Go Navy or Go Army sweatshirt-wearing brokeback boys and girls, daft in the head, no matter how many finishing schools they attended.

AmeriKKKa is a tough fucking place to get real people with real holistic thinking who are immune to the fuckery of Holly-Dirt, sports, crocodile tears for the boys in uniform.

Tough to get someone who doesn't cream his or her pants when they hear the pledge or hum the Nation Anthem.

America has ALWAYS been (not Turtle Island, mind you) a place of smoke and suicide and enslavement and dispossession and despoilment and that odd combo of "we are the smartest people in the world" mixed in with "we are the richest and most powerful nation in the world."

Imagine a sic-leader admitting that there are a hundred other values in cultures and societies that have zero to do with greed, BlackRocking the world into submission, with MIC or FIRE or what have you.

Leaver Cultures. Not some funny happiness index or genuine progress index, but really genuine progress measures based on, hmm, drum roll: Wikipedia, that is, not great for articulation:

The GPI is used in ecological economics, "green" economics, sustainability and more inclusive types of economics. It factors in environmental and carbon footprints that businesses produce or eliminate, including in the forms of resource depletion, pollution and long-term environmental damage. GDP is increased twice when pollution is created, since it increases once upon creation (as a side-effect of some valuable process) and again when the pollution is cleaned up; in contrast, GPI counts the initial pollution as a loss rather than a gain, generally equal to the amount it will cost to clean up later plus the cost of any negative impact the pollution will have in the meantime. While quantifying costs and benefits of these environmental and social externalities is a difficult task, "Earthster-type databases could bring more precision and currency to GPI's metrics." It has been noted that such data may also be embraced by those who attempt to "internalize externalities" by making companies pay the costs of the pollution they create (rather than having the government or society at large bear those costs) "by taxing their goods proportionally to their negative ecological and social impacts" !

+--+

Of course, GPI has been hijacked by the jack-offs like Gore, Naomi Klein, McKibben, Greta, Kerry, Davos, WEF.

But it's the ONLY way to be a truly centered and repectful and real society within societies. Note:

Measured Economic Welfare (MEW) and the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW). In 1972, American economists William Nordhaus and Nobel Prize winner James Tobin developed the Measured Economic Welfare (MEW) in an attempt to answer if growth was obsolete. Ecological economist Herman Daly (currently at the University of Maryland, College Park) and theologian John Cobb picked up their work nearly two decades later as they investigated how to develop a macro measure of welfare by creating the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW).

+--+

But we measure it, can you believe it, Cindy, blatantly, by the number of stocks sold and lifted by the dirtiest of all capitalist industries -- war material, war things, all connected to war. And war is a multiple trillion dollar thing yearly. Every fucking button for a uniform, every fucking diode for a walkie-talkie, every optic for a drone, every theoretical physics this or biological that, everything tied to engines of killing, surveillance, monitoring, sanctioning, pontificating, propagandizing, bending toward war -- physical, economic, philosophical -- is what will kill you.

There has been not fucking leader in this country that has embraced the forward thinking of working their asses off for PEACE and PEOPLE and CULTURE and ECOLOGY and BASIC NEEDS and DEEPER NEEDS of humanity, air, water, sea, reef, wetlands, town, city, county, state, bio-region, etc.

The fuckers of the earth imagine a world gone, blown up, heated up, flooded before a world without CAPITALISM even enters their name-forgetting mother-fucking heads.

https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/area-of-terror-plans-for-splitting

*--*

Shit, I guess what I just wrote is my intro to the next insane Substack I'll scribe today.

Thanks a lot, Cindy, another fine mess you've gotten me into!

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For sure!

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I told you you'd inspire me to write around these issues, and MORE!

https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/if-you-could-only-see-my-dumb-phone

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We fortunate few possessed with the luxury of compassionate conscientiousness are not alone in our resistance to the #LeviathanOfAuthoritarianism (ref. #GrantPeeples).

Thanks so much, Cindy for your indefatigable efforts for #SocialJustice & #Peace; and to this righteous end, please identify asa #CREATORS (Conspiracy Realist Educator Activist Truther Organizer Reader Socializer) in #WeThePeople’s nonpartisan & nonviolent #RevolutionOfAwareness (ref. Bollyn.com); also known as our #NEARLY Ages Old democratic Struggle (not “fight” we’re certain to lose) for #EmancipatoryInternationalism (ref. #UniversityOfFlorida History Professor #PaulOrtiz).

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