Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Friday, March 14, 2014

Progressive Democrats of America makes excuses for Obama's imperialist wars.

Okay, PDA (Progressive Democrats of America) [see letter from PDA below]... So the Ukraine is on your mind, eh?

But here is the problem: Obama and Kerry, both reactionary neo-liberals, are every bit as reactionary as those "neo-cons" you want them to fire.

Obama and Kerry are carrying out Wall Street's thoroughly reactionary agenda in the Ukraine.

Is this article from the Guardian accurate as to Russian and U.S. objectives in the Ukraine?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/06/ukraine-crisis-great-power-oil-gas-rivals-pipelines
PDA members, prior to PDA being organized, supported Obama, not once, not twice, not three times, not four times but not five times before they organized PDA and three more times in running for public office--- twice for president; and, obviously, PDA still supports Obama.

PDA needs to dissolve itself; your "strategy" hasn't worked.

Progressives here in the United States need a new working class based progressive people's party that is anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist with the objective of challenging Wall Street for political and economic power.

Certainly PDA must be looking at Minnesota with its "bait-and-switch" super-majority which has delivered absolutely nothing for working people.

PDA does not have one single success in convincing Obama to do anything... not while he served as a U.S. Senator, not since Obama has been President.

What does PDA want from Obama when he fires these "neo-cons;" John Kerry neo-liberal clones?

Let's get something straight: "Neo-conservatives" did not "hi-jack" U.S. foreign policy. The United States government's foreign policy has been dominated by Wall Street's imperialist agenda beginning with the Spanish-American War and it has never deviated from this imperialist agenda.

Wars and Occupations are part of this Wall Street imperialist agenda.

Mark Twain was a founder and leader of the American Anti-imperialist League.

Is it too much to expect from members of PDA that you speak in terms of imperialism when it comes to the Ukraine and all of these other dirty imperialist wars?

These wars aren't about Obama and Kerry versus the "neo-conservatives." These wars are about neo-liberals and neo-conservatives carrying out Wall Street's imperialist agenda.

Both the United States and Russia are imperialist countries with capitalist economies where state monopoly capitalism is dominant. One could argue the United States undermined the socialist Soviet government and imposed, through imperialist CIA intrigue, capitalism on Russia and the Ukraine and the rest of what used to be to "Eastern European" countries.

Raisa Gorbachev all but admitted, in her book--- "I Hope"--- that both she and her husband Mikhail Gorbachev were tools of the West as they were flown around by Forbes in their jet, "Capitalist Tool."

Guess what, PDA?

You helped create a seamless transition from one imperialist government headed by Bush to another imperialist government headed up by Barack Obama who has turned out to be as bad or worse than George Bush.

You send me this letter asking me to join you in asking Barack Obama and John Kerry to fire two "neo-cons" but you don't invite me to join a struggle against imperialism... do you, or don't you, understand that we are dealing with Wall Street 's imperialist agenda? And replacing two "neo-con" imperialists with two more neo-liberal imperialists has no impact on Wall Street's imperialist agenda being carried out by Barack Obama?

Is there "Peace!" should these two "neo-cons" be fired?

Was there "Peace!" when Obama shuffled the generals?

Where is the "Peace!" from Obama's murderous drone warfare.

Goddamn! 

Where is the logic in supporting imperialists like Obama for any public office and then insisting he fire a couple imperialist war-mongers that he kept on instead of firing and replacing them with two-more imperialist warmongers to carry out U.S. foreign policy which will remain an imperialist foreign policy of dirty imperialist war after dirty imperialist war just as Wall Street orders?

Shouldn't progressives be insisting no U.S. involvement in the Ukraine because we already did enough damage in restoring capitalism in Russia and the Ukraine?

Shouldn't U.S. progressives be joining with the anti-imperialist movements in Russia and the Ukraine in preventing this situation from erupting into one more dirty imperialist war where working people will fight and die and two countries more than twice ravaged by wars will suffer huge destruction?

Peace! Yes... Peace! through anti-imperialist unity, not shuffling around imperialist warmongers appointed by an imperialist President working for Wall Street--- our enemy. 

We need public ownership of the entire energy industry.

We need a Peace Dividend to create jobs putting people to work delivering free health care and free child care through National Public Health Care and Child Care Systems--- publicly funded, publicly administered and publicly delivered... just like public education. These dirty imperialist wars of Wall Street's Military-Industrial Complex are depriving the American people of these kinds of needed universal social programs while making us all poor as the Military-Industrial Complex is the major contributor to global warming and climate change.

Fund jobs not imperialist wars. We need to bring back the WPA, CCC and C.E.T.A.

See: 

Climate change and the military-industrial complex


Sorry, PDA, I'm not buying into your shuffling of the chairs as any kind of solution to stopping these dirty imperialist wars.

Peace to Power... 

For people and nature before Wall Street's profits.

Yours in the struggle for Peace! through anti-imperialist unity,

Alan L. Maki  

Note: In the interest of dialog, discussion and debate I hope PDA will share this response with its members and I hope others will circulate this among their circles of friends, too.
-- 
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
 
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell: 651-587-5541

Primary E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net






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After thinking about the implications of the coup in Ukraine for U.S.-Russian diplomacy on Syria, Iran and other vital issues, PDA's End Wars & Occupations team sent this out this afternoon. We hope others will echo it. - Sandy Davies - PDA
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Click here to View Online and share on Facebook/TwitterTell a Friend

Tell Obama and Kerry: Fire the Neocons - Diplomacy Now!

Dear friend,
After the end of the Cold War, neoconservatives hijacked U.S. foreign policy to engineer the overthrow of independent and left-wing governments across the world, from Yugoslavia to the Middle East to Haiti and Honduras. After the US invasion and destruction of Iraq woke Americans to the danger and horror of these policies, we threw the neocons out at the ballot-box in 2006 and 2008. But guess what? They never left!
       
Remember the Project for the New American Century, which drew up the blueprint for the failed "war on terror" and the invasion of Iraq? PNAC was co-founded by Robert Kagan, who later became an adviser to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and still works at the Brookings Institution.
       
Kagan's wife, Victoria Nuland, was a senior foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. President Obama rewarded her with positions as State Department Spokesperson and now Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.
       
Victoria Nuland plotted with US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt to overthrow Ukraine's elected government and hand power to a group of oligarchs and the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party. They fomented street violence by Svoboda and Right Factor militias, who seized weapons from armories, fired on police and protesters, and executed a Russian journalist. Read transcript of intercepted recording of Nuland and Pyatt here. Now President Obama and Secretary Kerry are standing by Nuland's unelected junta and welcoming its leader to the White House, allowing the neocons to sabotage U.S.-Russian relations at a critical time for peace and diplomacy.
       
Please join PDA as we call for the resignation of Assistant Secretary of State Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt; for no further U.S. action to recognize or support the coup regime in Kiev; and for a diplomatic solution involving all parties to the crisis in the Ukraine. Click here to take action.
       
Thanks for telling the President to ditch his pet neocons before they wreck more countries and more people's lives around the world. Their elusive but relentless quest for unchallenged U.S. global power is not a blueprint for a new American century but a recipe for endless violence and chaos. Tell Obama, "We want peace - not more neocon chaos!"
       
Peace!
Tim Carpenter, PDA National Director
End Wars and Occupation Issue Team (Sandy, Mark, Sally, Rob and Rich)


From the Greaves School in Ireland

Anyone interested in working class struggles will appreciate these videos from Ireland. U.S. trade unionist from New York makes presentation on the 2nd video from the top:
http://www.greavesschool.com/