Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalWhat the GOP learned when the wealthy tried to overthrow FDR and install a fascist dictator
written by DailyKos March 24, 2019
In 1933, a group of very wealthy bankers on Wall Street were mortified with FDR. He gave government jobs to many unemployed, ended the gold standard, and was planning on enacting a slew of government programs that would constitute the “New Deal”. Workers would be given the right to unionize, infrastructure projects would be established, and he pitched a pension program for workers called Social Security. For that, he was called a “socialist.” Up to that point, however, his gravest sin was going after the wealthy to pay their fair share. The Revenue Act, which imposed a “wealth tax” on those at the top, increased the tax rate to 75%.
Roosevelt was accused of being a “traitor to his class”.
Unlike what the GOP says today, Roosevelt wasn’t trying to do any great social experiment. He was trying to pull our nation out of the Great Depression. Unemployment was between 80-90% at several major cities, and those few who were working were being exploited with zero labor protections. FDR took action. He was hated by the rich, and he didn’t care:
More:
https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/what-the-gop-learned-when-the-wealthy-tried-to-overthrow-fdr-and-install-a-fascist-dictator/
Commemoration of Brazil's military coup causes anger, unease
Commemoration of Brazil's military coup causes anger, unease
Diane Jeantet, Associated Press Updated 11:29 pm CDT, Tuesday, March 26, 2019
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's call to commemorate the anniversary of Brazil's 1964 military coup is causing discomfort in Latin America's largest nation, with social groups organizing protests and the federal prosecutors' office saying the call "deserves social and political repudiation."
Bolsonaro, a former army captain who waxes nostalgic for the 1964-1985 dictatorship, on Monday asked Brazil's Defense Ministry to organize "due commemorations" on March 31, the day historians say marks the coup that began the dictatorship, which supporters call a "military government."
The reaction was immediate. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors said that under international criminal law Brazil's dictators "had committed crimes against humanity." In a long and strongly worded statement, prosecutors said Bolsonaro's initiative sounded like an "apology for the practice of atrocities."
. . .
The decision to commemorate the coup anniversary ended a 2011 move by then-President Dilma Rousseff, who had asked armed forces to suspend such commemorations. Rousseff, a former guerrilla, was jailed and tortured during the dictatorship.
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Commemoration-of-Brazil-s-military-coup-causes-13719112.php
Hubble Telescope Reveals What 200 Billion Stars Look Like (Photos)
By Meghan Bartels 22 minutes ago
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of a galaxy called Messier 49, which contains about 200 billion stars.(Image: © ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Blakenslee, P. Cote et al.)
Two incredible new images from the Hubble Space Telescope show galaxies in all their shining glory.
The first photograph, of a galaxy called Messier 49, includes some 200 billion stars, although there's no way to pick out most of the individual pinpricks of light within the image.
Most of the stars within this elliptical galaxy are about 6 billion years old, and those within its 6,000-odd globular star clusters are even older. And then there's the supermassive black hole at the heart of Messier 49, which contains the mass of 500 million suns. It's all quite a lot to fit in just one image, even an image of an object 56 million light-years away.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of a galaxy called Messier 28.
(Image: © ESA/Hubble & NASA, J.E. Grindlay et al.)
Both this galaxy and that shown in the second new image, Messier 28, were first categorized by astronomer Charles Messier, although he wasn't always sure what he was seeing. That's because he didn't have the benefit of Hubble's view from beyond Earth's atmosphere, which produces much sharper photographs.
More:
https://www.space.com/hubble-billions-of-stars-photographs.html
Mexico's 'voladores' seek to keep ancestors' flying spirit alive
Mexico's 'voladores' seek to keep ancestors' flying spirit alive
By Natalia CANO (AFP) Mar 22, 2019
Four teenagers climb to the top of a towering pole, fasten themselves to ropes and throw themselves, headfirst and backwards, into the air.
No, it's not the latest social media challenge. It's the "danza de los voladores," the dance of the flyers, a more than 2,500-year-old ritual practiced by the Totonac people of central Mexico, who are fighting to keep the tradition alive by giving it some modern tweaks.
Spinning in widening circles around the pole as they fly upside-down through the air, the four dancers slowly descend to the ground, dressed in white tunics, red pants and conical hats with rainbow-colored streamers that trail across the sky.
A fifth dancer balances atop the pole -- a 30-meter (nearly 100-foot) tree trunk -- playing a festive tune on a reed flute while beating a small drum.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/mexico-s-voladores-seek-to-keep-ancestors-flying-spirit-alive/article/545970#ixzz5j5aNNLyK
Colombia begins search for 126,000 missing persons with $15 million deficit
by Jake Kincaid March 22, 2019
More than two years into a peace process, Colombia’s transitional justice system is finally set to begin its search for 80,000 people who disappeared during the armed conflict. But with a major budget deficiency.
The Union in Search of Disappeared Persons (UPBD) will be sending out its first search units to find the remains of some 126,000 people who were forcibly disappeared during the conflict or never returned after being kidnapped.
Despite the mammoth task lying ahead, Colombia’s Finance Ministry underfunded the unit that, according to director Luz Marina Monzon is now $15 million short.
Consequently, Monzon can only hire 153 prosecutors while she had calculated the necessity of more than 260. Without extra investment, of which much comes from international sponsors already, the UPBD cannot do its job, the director told newspaper El Espectador.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombia-begins-search-for-126000-missing-persons-with-15-million-deficit/
Chile: retired soldiers sentenced over 1986 attack on activists burned alive
Source: Guardian
Staff and agencies
Thu 21 Mar 2019 17.13 EDT Last modified on Thu 21 Mar 2019 17.52 EDT
A Chilean court has sentenced three retired soldiers to 10 years in prison for their part in a horrific attack on two democracy activists who were doused with petrol and set on fire.
The 1986 attack on Rodrigo Rojas and Carmen Gloria Quintana was one of the most notorious torture cases in the 17-year military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
On Thursday, Julio Castaner, Ivn Figueroa and Nelson Medina were found guilty of murder and attempted murder. Eight other former soldiers received three-year prison sentences for acting as accomplices in the attack.
Rojas, a US resident, had returned to Chile to photograph popular protests against Pinochet. He and Quintana were captured by soldiers on 2 July 1986 during a two-day national strike.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/21/chile-soldiers-activists-attack-rodrigo-rojas-carmen-quintana
Carmen Gloria Quintana and Rodrigo Rojas
In the photo: Officer Julio Castañer, one of the
thirteen accused of having burned on July 2, 1986
in Estación Central, burned Rodrigo Rojas de Negri
and Carmen Gloria Quintana: Rodrigo died as a
result of the burns.
~ ~ ~
When the "Case Burned" occurred , the official press of the time said that it had been their fault, that they were carrying explosives that broke and exploded . Carmen Gloria Quintana and Rodrigo Rojas were 18 and 19 years old at that time, on July 2, 1986, they were stopped by a group of soldiers who sprayed them with benzine: she, who was standing in front of a wall, from head to toe him, in the back, for being face down on the ground. Both went to one of the many marches against the Pinochet dictatorship.
They set them on fire, then covered them with blankets and hours later threw them into a ditch in Quilicura. There they woke up, got up to seek help and were helped by a group of workers. Later, a Carabineros patrol took them to an office. 60 percent of Quintana's body was burned and 65 percent of Rojas's body was burned. He, who was exiled in Canada and then in the United States since he was 9 years old and who returned to Chile to photograph what was happening, died four days later.
The only defendant was the officer Pedro Fernández Dittus and only for not moving Carmen Gloria and Rodrigo to the hospital. What happened in this, the so-called "Case Burned", was what thousands have been accusing for years: the pacts of silence that exist within the Armed Forces to silence the deaths, torture and violations of Human Rights that occurred during the dictatorship.
But one of these obscure agreements broke this week. Fernando Guzmán Espíndola, who at 21 was part of the group that burned Quintana and Rojas, spoke after 30 years . He saw everything from the patrol and confessed that the testimonies they had given were lies, that they were forced to learn the statements, that the one who started the fire was Lieutenant Julio Castañer with a lighter and that the Army gave them money and permits in exchange for to keep their silence.
. . .
A mixture of sadness, to open new wounds; but also pride. Reliving this history - and at the same time remembering thousands of similar ones - has made me proud once more of those who fought against the dictatorship at any cost, of the families that up to now and will always continue fighting for the truth to be known and for justice to come, and also of hope to know that there is still courage and dignity.
https://www.zancada.com/2015/07/23/caso-quemados-la-tristeza-y-el-orgullo/
Brazil's Labor Unions Prepare for War with Far-Right President Jair Bolsanaro
MARCH 19, 2019
Brazil’s Labor Unions Prepare for War with Far-Right President Jair Bolsanaro
Bolsanaro has lowered the minimum wage, dismantled labor law enforcement and is threatening pension cuts.
BY MICHAEL FOX
FLORIANÓPOLIS, BRAZIL—On a gray afternoon in early February, 60 local leaders from roughly 40 unions meet at the tan, seven-story headquarters of the Santa Catarina State Commerce Workers Federation to discuss how to move forward under Brazil’s new, far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. They represent metalworkers, teachers and just about everything in between. Similar meetings have been held around the country.
Since Bolsonaro's inauguration January 1, he has unleashed an assault on workers and unions. He lowered the minimum wage (despite inflation) and closed the country’s 88-year-old Ministry of Labor. The sign was quickly taken down from the government building in Brasilia.
“There is an excess of rights,” Bolsonaro has said of labor.
At the Florianópolis meeting, behind a long table hung with red, yellow and white union banners, Anna Julia Rodrigues, state president of the country’s largest labor federation, CUT, calls for unity. “We have to unite, or we will be carried away by a dictatorial government,” she says.
. . .
“Today we are living in the worst moment for the working class in recent history in Brazil,” Rodrigo Britto, the president of the Brasilia branch of CUT, tells In These Times. “We are returning to the 19th century.”
More:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/21770/jair-bolsonaro-war-on-brazils-unions/
Inside the August plot to kill Maduro with drones
Inside the August plot to kill Maduro with drones
By Nick Paton Walsh, Natalie Gallón, Evan Perez, Diana Castrillon, Barbara Arvanitidis and Caitlin Hu, CNN
Updated 4:56 PM ET, Thu March 14, 2019
Bogota, Colombia (CNN)New videos obtained by CNN provide chilling insight into a mystery drone attack against Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last year—the world's first known attempt to kill a head of state with a retail drone, purchased online and armed by hand with military grade explosives.
One man has come forward as an organizer of the attack, saying it was perpetrated by a group of Venezuelan Army defectors and others. In an exclusive interview with CNN, he recounted how they prepared for the attack, and provided cell phone videos of their drones, explosives, and practice flights in the rural farmlands of Colombia.
"We have tried every peaceful and democratic way to bring an end to this tyranny that dresses itself as democracy," he told CNN on condition of anonymity, referring to the Maduro regime. "We have friends who are in custody, tortured. This was a hard decision."
He also acknowledged that the attack could have killed innocent civilians alongside their target. "That was the risk we had to take," he said. "We cared about that as the Venezuelan people are always the ones feeling the consequences."
More:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/14/americas/venezuela-drone-maduro-intl/index.html
The Horrific Long-Term Consequences of Regime Change
The Horrific Long-Term Consequences of Regime Change
by Jacob G. Hornberger
March 15, 2019
84-year-old Emma Thiessen Alvarez has never forgotten the day in 1981 when Guatemalan officials came to her house looking for her daughter, a student leader who had escaped from military custody. Unable to find her, the officials settled for Thiessen’s 14-year-old son. She never saw him again.
Thiesen’s story was highlighted in a recent New York Times article because the Guatemalan legislature is now contemplating granting a blanket amnesty to military officials who participated in the rein of terror that the Guatemalan national-security establishment inflicted on the Guatemalan people for period of some 36 years.
Thiessen and other Guatemalans who were victimized during that period of time are not happy about the proposed amnesty. As Edgar Perez, a human-rights lawyer, put it, “For the victims, the sentence is their certificate of truth. It is their history.”
Guatemalans are not the only ones who have an interest in what is now occurring in that country. So do the American people. That’s because it was the U.S. national-security establishment that set into motion the events that ultimately led to the death of Emma Thiessen Alvarez’s son, along with 200,000 other Guatemalans, as well as to massive human-rights violations at the hands of the Guatemalan national-security establishment.
More:
https://www.fff.org/2019/03/15/the-horrific-long-term-consequences-of-regime-change/
Also posted in Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016228636
Rubio's Gloating Betrays US Sabotage in Venezuela Power Blitz
OpEdNews Op Eds 3/16/2019 at 23:32:04
By Finian Cunningham
US imperialists are so desperate in their regime-change predations over Venezuela, they seem to have a problem controlling their drooling mouths.
The latest orgy of American gloating was triggered by the massive power outages to have hit Venezuela. No sooner had the South American country been blacked out from its power grid collapsing, senior US officials were crowing with perverse relish.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio who has become a point man for the Trump administration in its regime-change campaign in Venezuela was a little too celebratory. Within minutes of the nationwide power outage last Thursday, Rubio was having verbal orgasms about the "long-term economic damage... in the blink of an eye." But it was his disclosure concerning the precise damage in the power grid that has led the Venezuelan government to accuse the US of carrying out a sabotage.
Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez noted how Rubio, in his tweeted comments "three minutes" after the power outage, mentioned failure of "back-up generators" in Venezuela's main hydroelectric plant, known as the Guri Dam, located in Bolivar State. The dam supplies some 80 percent of the Venezuelan population of 31 million with its electricity consumption.
Rodriguez mockingly ascribed "mystic skills" to Rubio because the Florida Republican senator appeared to know the precise nature of the power failure even before the Venezuelan authorities had determined it.
More:
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Rubio-s-Gloating-Betrays-U-by-Finian-Cunningham-Betrayal_Incompetence_Obscenity_Politicians-190316-150.html
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