Sunday, June 16, 2019

Zoom Conference: Iranians and Americans Come Together

Zoom Conference: Iranians and Americans Come Together



Friends,

I have been to Iran twice. I have friends there. The USA has taken steps in the past six months to set itself up for war on Iran. This would be a crime of epic propportions. The time to act is now.

Two days ago, there were suspicious attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Only the US is blaming Iran. Without evidence. It's never been more important for there to be international activist dialogue, to begin laying the groundwork for a strong, global mass movement against war. And with this Zoom conference all I am inviting you to, on Sunday, June 16, at 12:30, together with Iranians we can stand for peace and reason, against false flag attacks, and for the truth to come out.

This is your chance to participate in a dialogue between Americans and Iranians and be a part of the international community.

Tehran's TV journalist Nader Taleb Zedah and his partner Zeina Mehanna, as well as Iranian journalist Medhi Farahmand, will join the US's Sander Hicks, former US Diplomat Michael Springmann, US Congressional candidate Lauren Ashcraft, US Veteran Scott Bennett, DSA activists, and others.

Sunday, 12:30 PM EST, June 16 on Zoom. One hour.

The International Peace Dialogue.

To Join this Meeting:
https://zoom.us/j/5301612841


Activists in the USA, Iran, and internationally, meet for one hour online to discuss how we can prevent US aggression against Iran.

Also we will discuss our upcoming physical meeting at New Horizon, in Beirut in September. We will look at the meaning of Trump and Bolton's recent actions, and the alternative of interfaith understanding as a tactic for peace.

We are open to suggestion for agenda items.

Full list of guest speakers TBA.

Confirmed to speak:
Nader Taleb-Zedeh, journalist and film-maker, Tehran

Moderator: Sander Hicks. Sander@newyorkmegaphone.com

One tap mobile
+19292056099,,5301612841# US (New York)
+16699006833,,5301612841# US (San Jose)

Dial by your location
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
Meeting ID: 530 161 2841
Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/ayUk29t59

Copyright © 2019 Sander Hicks / New York Megaphone, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you signed up to be on the Sander Hicks / New York Megaphone newsletter.

Our mailing address is:
Sander Hicks / New York Megaphone
52-05 Flushing Ave #213
MaspethNy 11378


Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.
-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MAPA Nuclear Disarmament" group. 
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mapa-nuclear-disarmament+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
To post to this group, send email to mapa-nuclear-disarmament@googlegroups.com
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mapa-nuclear-disarmament/075401d5244f%24ccafd770%24660f8650%24%40texnology.com
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

How a DIY petition succeeded RootsAction DIY 3:16 PM Via info=rootsaction.org

RootsAction DIY<info@rootsaction.org>
Via  info=rootsaction.org <info=rootsaction.org@mail.salsalabs.net>
GRAPHIC: Roots Action logo header
DIY RootsAction petition was central to a campaign that just succeeded in moving the City of Charlottesville, Va., to divest public money from weapons and fossil fuel companies. You can join a free webinar on July 2nd to discuss with RootsAction Campaign Coordinator David Swanson how this was done.

You can create your own petition for change at DIY.RootsAction.org.

First, please take a few seconds to sign these important campaigns created by others:


To: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

H.Res. 109 -- the "Green New Deal" -- has 94 House co-sponsors, including 28 from California. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents most of San Francisco and is the leader of House Democrats, should be on that list.

Learn more and sign.

To: Members of Congress (House and Senate)

We urge you to cosponsor the Hold the LYNE Act which will prevent further research, development, production and deployment of the new, “low-yield” nuclear warhead.

Learn more and sign.

After signing the petitions, please forward this message to your friends.

Then start your own petition that we can feature in a future email.

Thanks!

-- The RootsAction.org team

P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.

P.P.S. This work is only possible with your financial support. Please donate.




Donate buttonFacebook buttonTwitter button

Click here to unsubscribe and stop ALL email from RootsAction.
empowered by Salsa

6/19 Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba in JP

Charlie Welch<cwelch@tecschange.org>
Via  Act-MA <act-ma-bounces@act-ma.org>
As Pastors for Peace/IFCO says in their statement below

*This new Blockade makes IFCO's work in support of even more critical.*
Your support is needed! (AND TIMELY!)

The July 26th Coalition Of Boston is hosting

The Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan

Wednesday, June 19, 2019, 7:30 pm

First Baptist Church Of Jamaica Plain

633 Center Street

Featuring:

Gail Walker,

Executive Director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace,

“The Case for Ending the US Blockade Against Cuba”

Rachel Domond, PSL Boston, on

“The recent Boston Urban Farmers delegation to Cuba”

Lee Schlenker, Witness for Peace New England,

“Recently Returned: Update on Venezuela”

Facebook Event <https://www.facebook.com/events/292633434994214/>

ifconews.org <https://ifconews.org/cuba-caravan2018/> — july26.org
<https://july26.org/> — solidaritycollective.org


*This new Blockade makes IFCO's work even more critical.*
Your support is needed! (AND TIMELY!)
Trump’s new travel restrictions:
IFCO says, Don’t Mourn, Organize!

On Tuesday 4th June the US Treasury announced new regulations governing
licensed travel to Cuba from the US. At the core of the announcement was
the news that US cruise ships could no longer go to Cuba, effective
immediately, and that the most popular category of licensed group travel
– People to People – would also be scrapped, except that travel bookings
that were already confirmed could still go ahead.

The aim of these measures is to do the maximum possible damage to the
Cuban economy. They are in line with the dominant strategy towards Cuba
that US governments have followed since 1961 – to grind down the Cuban
people, “starve” them, in the belief that eventually they will rise up
against their own government. It is a strategy that has always failed,
as Obama recognized, but the economic damage it does is real.

Many in the media have stated that Trump’s policy will badly hurt all
the Cubans who cater for US tourists by providing private accommodation,
food in private restaurants, taxi services etc. That is true but it is
not the whole truth. There are many Cubans for instance who work in the
State run tourist sector whose income from wages and tips depends on
tourism. But digging deeper – ALL Cubans stand to lose from the drop in
tourism because the foreign exchange generated by tourism is what the
Cuban government uses to purchase goods from abroad such as the food and
medicines that the country isn’t able to produce itself.

We should be outraged by what Trump is doing, but we need to turn that
outrage into action. Trump doesn’t want us to travel to Cuba, so we need
to travel to Cuba. He is putting obstacles in the way, so we have to
overcome the obstacles. Make 2019/2020 the year you go to Cuba. IFCO
will be going – come with us!

US citizens with family in Cuba remain free to go. All the 12 categories
of licensed travel to Cuba remain in place such as religious travel,
academic and student travel, “support for the Cuban people” travel. The
most general and popular sub-category of educational travel - People to
People - has gone but the whole US travel industry that sends people to
Cuba will be working to offer group packages under other licenses. We at
IFCO are already discussing how we can best continue to offer licensed
delegations to Cuba.

Despite what Trump has just done it is still easier to travel to Cuba
than it was under Clinton, Bush and the first 6 years of the Obama
administration.

But Trump’s attack highlights the validity of what IFCO has been saying
since 1992 - that Licensed Travel is not the real solution. What one
president allows, the next president can, and does, take away. US
citizens can travel to any other country in the world, the rest of the
world can travel freely to Cuba. All restrictions on travel to Cuba need
to be eliminated and that requires an Act of Congress.

Such a one paragraph bill was introduced in both houses in the 2017-18
Congress. The bipartisan bill in the Senate had 55 signatories – a
majority – but the Republican leadership would not allow a vote. Similar
bills are soon to be introduced in the current 2019-20 Congress. We
understand fully the immense difficulty in getting such a bill passed in
this Congress, and Trump of course has veto powers. But compared to the
situation in Congress when we first started our Caravans to Cuba in
1992, a lot of progress has been made by the US solidarity movement, and
we have to keep pushing towards the goal. “Stay tuned” for specific ways
you can help.

This Saturday in New York we will have the launch of our 30th,
unlicensed, Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba. We will be visiting 40 US
cities over a 10 day period. Details can be found on our website. If we
are visiting your city come to our public event to learn about what is
happening in Cuba today – the hardships and the achievements. And what
we can do to fight back against Trump.

We will be taking 37 people to Cuba on the Caravan. In the big economic
picture of US visitors it is tiny. But our Cuban partners don’t see us
as tiny, they see us as immense, because we proudly raise the banner of
complete freedom to travel to Cuba.

Will you be coming with us on next year’s caravan, or in a delegation
in 2019-20?

Let's talk!
Together
we can end the US blockade of Cuba
#SomosCuba
#NoMasBloqueo


---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________
Act-MA mailing list
Act-MA@act-ma.org
http://act-ma.org/mailman/listinfo/act-ma_act-ma.org
To set options or unsubscribe
http://act-ma.org/mailman/options/act-ma_act-ma.org

Can you say what you want covered during the debate? BernieSanders.com

BernieSanders.com<info@berniesanders.com>
To  n  

 -
Got a minute? Tell us your top three issues you want Bernie to talk about in the first debate. We’ll show him the list before debate prep — put in your ideas now!
What are the top issues you want Bernie to cover during the debate?
Thanks,
Team Bernie







Imperialist Sanctions Starve Iranian Masses Down With U.S. War Moves Against Iran!

Workers Vanguard No. 1156
31 May 2019
 
Imperialist Sanctions Starve Iranian Masses
Down With U.S. War Moves Against Iran!
In an ominous escalation of U.S. threats to attack Iran, the Trump administration has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group, nuclear-armed B-52 bombers and an amphibious assault warship to the Persian Gulf region. John Bolton, the national security adviser, warns of “unrelenting force,” the Pentagon has drawn up plans to send in 120,000 troops and the White House has declared the Revolutionary Guard, part of Iran’s armed forces, to be a “terrorist organization.” Trump raged on Twitter: “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran.” All this belligerence comes on top of ever-intensifying sanctions designed to cripple Iran’s economy by totally cutting off its oil exports.
Some 70,000 American troops are stationed in countries surrounding Iran, and the administration has recently announced the deployment of another 1,500. Yet the White House asserts, preposterously, that it is semicolonial Iran that is threatening the U.S. Claims of an impending Iranian attack have as much credibility as the U.S. rulers’ lies about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” the pretext for the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Democratic Party politicians and some Republicans are criticizing the war moves. But they share with the Trump administration the goal of “regime change” in Tehran, differing only over the approach. The Democrats prefer to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) brokered by the Obama White House in 2015, which compelled Iran to drastically curtail its nuclear program and submit to foreign inspectors in exchange for an easing of sanctions. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal last May.
The Republicans and Democrats alike are parties of imperialism and war, with a common class interest in maintaining U.S. supremacy in the oil-rich Near East. The purpose of Obama’s JCPOA was to ensure Iran’s disarmament in the face of unrelenting threats from the U.S. and its regional junior partners, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Tehran regime has always denied any intent to develop nuclear weapons. However, Iran needs such weapons to deter imperialist attack. The possession of nukes is no guarantee of security from a U.S. assault, but it does provide a measure of sovereignty against the marauders in Washington.
It takes chutzpah for the U.S. rulers, who possess enough nuclear firepower to destroy humanity many times over, to rail against Iran possibly getting its own nukes. The 1945 U.S. A-bombing of Japan, which incinerated some 200,000 people and served as a warning to the Soviet Union, shows what these nuclear madmen are capable of. And Washington’s Israeli allies, ruthless oppressors of the Palestinians, have a sizable nuclear arsenal of their own.
As part of what it calls “maximum pressure,” the White House has now imposed a complete embargo on sales of Iranian oil, including a threat to take action against any countries that continue to import it. Trump has canceled temporary waivers that exempted a number of countries, including China, from such provisions. Iran’s oil exports have already fallen by half in the past year. If a total embargo is enforced, it would cost Iran about $50 billion annually, 40 percent of its entire government revenue.
It is in the direct interest of the U.S. working class to demand an end to all sanctions against Iran and stand for its defense against any U.S. military attack. The same ruling class that threatens war on Iran wages savage attacks on workers and on black people, Latinos and other minorities at home. Defense of Iran against U.S. assault does not imply the least political support to the capitalist Islamic regime in Tehran, which brutally oppresses women, gays and national minorities while repressing labor struggles. But U.S. imperialism is the greatest danger to the working people and oppressed on this planet. Nothing short of the overthrow of the American capitalist ruling class through workers revolution will rid the world of this menace.
U.S. Sanctions Mean Hunger and Death
Imperialist sanctions are a modern version of siege warfare: a weapon designed to conquer through attrition. Sanctions against Hussein’s Iraq led to the deaths of some 1.5 million people while hollowing out that country in the lead-up to the U.S. occupation. It was the Democrats who took the lead in imposing the sanctions on Iran, starting under Jimmy Carter in 1979. The sanctions were expanded under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and even more so by Obama. Among those signing on was imperialist “socialist” Bernie Sanders, who boasted in 2017, “I have voted for sanctions on Iran in the past, and I believe sanctions were an important tool for bringing Iran to the negotiating table.”
While Iran is more populous and powerful than Iraq, the sanctions, particularly those under Obama, have devastated its economy. As oil revenue plummeted, its currency was devalued by more than 450 percent. Industry was crippled by depriving Iran of replacement parts. Disease and death spread as medications became unavailable. Unemployment skyrocketed. A 2018 BBC report noted that the average consumption of food staples had decreased by 30 to 50 percent over the previous decade.
The 2015 deal, which was cosigned by Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China, eased the sanctions and gave Tehran access to $30 billion of its assets that had been seized and frozen abroad. Iran was able to increase oil exports, producing some economic growth. Trump’s scuttling of the JCPOA angered the European imperialists, who had expanded their dealings with Iran. For example, the French company Total had begun to develop a major Iranian gas field, but canceled this under U.S. pressure. Germany, France and Britain vowed to set up a special vehicle for barter-based trade with Iran that bypassed the American financial system, but it has proved stillborn.
The cruel effectiveness of sanctions is a result of the domination of world finance and trade by the U.S., the world’s chief imperialist power. Washington largely controls the international financial system through the supremacy of American banks and the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency. The position of the U.S. is enforced by military might, of which it continues to have an overwhelming preponderance, particularly since the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet bureaucratically degenerated workers state in 1991-92.
The rifts between the U.S. and European imperialists underline the inherent fissures among these powers as they pursue their own spheres of exploitation at the expense of their rivals and the oppressed masses. But the U.S. continues to hold the whip hand. As Patrick Cockburn noted in the London Independent (10 May), the European powers “have proved to be marginal players when it comes to the Iran deal.” “In the long term,” he adds, “they also want regime change in Tehran, though they oppose Trump’s methods of obtaining it as reckless.”
Iran, China and U.S. Imperialism
For its part, China, Iran’s main foreign oil market, condemned Trump’s latest edicts during a May 17 visit by Iran’s foreign minister. China has investments in Iran worth nearly $50 billion, mainly in energy and transportation, and Beijing has advanced lines of credit to Iranian banks in euros or Chinese yuan, rather than dollars, in order to bypass sanctions. Some Chinese oil refiners have stated that they will now comply with Trump’s edicts for fear of losing access to world financial markets. But there are reports that Beijing is continuing to import Iranian oil: a tanker owned by a Chinese state company recently left the Persian Gulf carrying two million barrels of Iranian crude.
The U.S. imperialists have their sights set on the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Chinese bureaucratically deformed workers state, where capitalism was overthrown by the 1949 Revolution. In pursuit of this strategic goal, the Trump administration has combined military provocations against China with a growing trade war. Some of the bourgeois opposition to Trump’s moves against Iran is based on worries that the White House’s attention may be shifting away from China. Right-wing New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote in a 19 May op-ed titled “Don’t Fight Iran”:
“The president is now in the middle of a trade war with China that by his own logic is far more important to long-term American interests than some immediate breakthrough or regime breakdown in Tehran. So he should return to that campaign-season wisdom, and to the maxim it suggested: Whenever possible, one war at a time.”
As Marxists, we stand for the unconditional military defense of China against imperialism and counterrevolution, and oppose all the tariffs and other trade-war measures imposed by Washington. At the same time, we recognize that the nationalist policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Beijing, including its promotion of “peaceful coexistence” with the U.S. and other imperialist powers, undermine the defense of the workers state. A proletarian political revolution is needed to oust the parasitic bureaucracy, replacing it with the rule of workers and peasants councils committed to revolutionary internationalism.
U.S./Saudi/Israeli Axis of Evil
Both Sunni-fundamentalist Saudi Arabia and Zionist Israel are furious over the expanded influence of largely Shia Iran in the Near East—an unintended consequence of both U.S. imperialism’s overthrow of Iraq’s Sunni-dominated Hussein regime and, more recently, the gains made by the Iran-backed Assad regime in the Syrian civil war. Spokesmen for Tehran regularly denounce the “B-Team” that yearns to destroy Iran, including Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump adviser Bolton, who wrote a foam-flecked 2015 opinion piece for the New York Times titled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”
It was against this backdrop that four years ago Saudi Arabia launched its brutal war in Yemen with the aid of the U.S. and other imperialist powers. At the time, the Saudi monarchs claimed, with no evidence, that Iran was funding and arming Houthi rebels based among Yemen’s Shia minority. Since early on, U.S. forces, as well as those of Britain and France, have directly backed the Saudi war effort, with Washington also supplying fighter jets and other military hardware. To date, some 80,000 Yemenis have been killed and over three million displaced in this savage war. A third of the population faces starvation. Thanks to Saudi destruction of infrastructure, one of the largest, fastest-spreading cholera outbreaks in history has raged uncontrollably.
Houthi forces recently staged drone strikes on a Saudi oil pipeline and a military base where U.S. forces have been deployed. The Saudi regime raged that Tehran had ordered the pipeline attack and an editorial in an English-language Saudi newspaper demanded retaliatory U.S. airstrikes on Iran. Marxists stand for the military defense of the Houthi forces and their allies against the imperialist-backed Saudi assault, without giving that movement any political support. All U.S. troops and bases out of the Near East now!
For a Proletarian Perspective
Iran’s clerical regime took power in 1979 amid a social upheaval against the despised, U.S.-backed autocrat Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Powerful strikes in the oil fields and elsewhere posed the potential for workers revolution. However, the then-sizable Iranian left criminally subordinated the working class to reactionary Islamist forces whose social base was among the priestly caste of mullahs and the traditional bazaari merchant class, which had been ground down by (uneven) modernization in the country.
While reformist pseudo-socialists internationally cheered on the Islamist movement, we warned that a victory for these forces under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini would be a disaster for workers and the oppressed. Uniquely, our international tendency raised the call: “Down with the Shah! Don’t bow to Khomeini! Workers to power in Iran!” The mullahs’ ascension to power led to the ferocious repression of Kurds and other minorities, the stoning of women who did not wear the oppressive veil, the mass slaughter of leftists and the execution of striking workers and others accused of “crimes against God.”
The British-based Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), whose American affiliate is Socialist Alternative, recently published an article titled “40 Years Since the Iranian Revolution: Learning the Lessons for Today’s New Working-Class Struggles” (socialistparty.org.uk, 6 February). This treatise laments that “the revolution did not end up as socialists expected” and that “many on the left were disoriented,” carefully avoiding any mention of the CWI’s own history. At the time, this outfit claimed that workers’ struggles were “forcing Khomeini in an anti-capitalist direction” and that the Islamic leader could well “complete the expropriation of capitalism” (Militant International Review, Autumn 1979)! This fantastical schema served to give a “left” cover to Islamist reaction.
The Iranian proletariat has still not recovered from the 1979 defeat. But the harrowing impact of sanctions and anger over poverty and the corruption of the ruling elite have fueled repeated working-class protest. Late last year, steel and sugar cane workers staged militant strikes against privatizations and unpaid wages.
The desperate conditions faced by Iran’s working and oppressed masses acutely pose the need for a revolutionary workers party. Such a party must be built in political opposition to all wings of the ruling class—religious or secular, hardliners or “reformists”—as well as implacable opposition to the U.S. and other imperialist powers, who will seek to manipulate the grievances of Iran’s masses to serve their own interests.
In Iran, as elsewhere in the semicolonial world, the bourgeoisie is too weak, fearful of the working class and dependent on the capitalist world market to break the chains of imperialist subjugation, overcome mass poverty and resolve other burning social issues. Thanks to its central role in production, the proletariat is the only class that can liberate the downtrodden urban and rural masses by smashing capitalist class rule through socialist revolution. There will be no end to ethnic and national oppression, no liberation of women, no end to the exploitation of working people short of shattering the capitalist order in Iran and throughout the region, laying the basis for a socialist federation of the Near East.
Success in this struggle crucially hinges on the international extension of proletarian revolution to the imperialist centers, including the U.S. Capitalist-imperialist rule in America is beset by contradictions. The rulers can send killer drones to take out today’s “enemy” from thousands of miles away, but at home basic infrastructure is collapsing, public education is starved of funds and much of industry is hollowed out. The multiracial working class must be imbued with the consciousness of its potential to overthrow the American capitalist order and create a new society organized to serve human needs. The Spartacist League is dedicated to forging the vanguard party necessary for this fight.

For God’s Sake Hunter S. Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, Give Us A Sign-Do Not Put Pearls Before Swine-With “Generation Of Swine,” Part 2 In Mind


For God’s Sake Hunter S. Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, Give Us A Sign-Do Not Put Pearls Before Swine-With “Generation Of Swine,” Part 2 In Mind




By Frank Jackman


No question politics is a hard-ball profession, tougher still when you have to write about these thieving bastards who would not know the truth if they fell over it in some forsaken gin mill some salty midnight. Are so crooked and here you can use your own variation, they need anything from their morning toilette valet to six Secret Service agents to screw them into their pants (the women too except maybe they need help with dresses). That is why whenever I have despaired, when I was ready to fold them and weep I would, still do actually as you will read below, I grab whatever Doctor Gonzo, that is the late lamented Hunter S. Thompson volume I can lay my greedy little hands on. To relieve that awful headache that reaches to my medulla every time I try to write anything about current political developments, in the United States mostly in the Age of Trump.

Now Thompson was not a taste for everybody and as he slid down the life trail he got caught in something of a trap having to accept, however reluctantly, the mantle every four years from poor Teddy White of the dreaded Making of The President series of books trap  covering the freaking presidential campaigns that in the end he knew were pure vanilla, pure bullshit even if he had some partisan favorite. In the end they all, the politicians and their hangers-on had feet of clay and corkscrew morals.

I find it very hard to draw any comparisons between today’s extreme low bar of political civility, today’s political gridlock and previous eras since these times seem to be sui generous but when I grabbed from the shelf Thompson’s Generation of Swine I knew why I grabbed the sucker (beyond that political twist a read which stopped my headaches-for a while). That book detailed mainly through weekly articles what Thompson did when he got a serious paying job for young Will Hearst whose grandfather Kane I think his last name was hired him after he had taken over his San Francisco Examiner flagship newspaper with the idea of treading new ground in the Age of Ronald Reagan, POSTUS in the 1980s. (I would be performing my own whitewash of the times, making it some kind of middle ground ‘golden age” if I did not include one Yankee cowboy, George Bush, the old man not the guy who dragged our asses into now never-ending wars in Afghanistan in those times. Pretty Boy George gave the Eastern imprimatur to every dirty trick, every ugly ploy, every bag job, every satchel filled with twenties for some ill-begotten adventure those silly bastards pulled dragging the rest of us along with them.)

The Age of Reagan, the age of the Generation of Swine, Part 1 is the perfect low-bar to compare with these days of the serious gutter that bourgeois politics has fallen into (beyond that possibility it is either hapless Warren Harding or the misbegotten Sam Grant but those boys were strictly amateur, would be eaten by a guy like now disgraced Ollie North or Steve Bannon for lunch and have time for a nap). No question at the time that likes of cowboy Ollie who ran the whole Iran-Contra out of the basement of the White House while Dutch (and Ivy League Bush slept the sleep of the dusted), Sleepy Bud MacFarlane, shifty Admiral Poindexter, bum of the month George Shultz, the Dragon Queen Nancy, some stone cold-killers running the hustle of the month club out in Evangelical land like Jimmy Bakker and Patsy Robertson (who laugh, laugh had some kind of demented presidential ambitions were in line for the first rank of hell.

I almost become bilious when I saw the names from out of the past since I thought we had buried those “undead” or at least put knives through their hearts. I know I was ready to kick the nearest television set in anger at the damn supply-side voodoo economics, the big- time red scare Cold War II and other assorted bullshit these bastards put us through. Thompson caught it just right when he said that was an age when it was unsafe to walk in the acidified rain or to touch any human blood, meaning any human being for any reason without worrying about winding up in some freaking hospice. Today is worse, far worse but you already know that.               

Yeah, those were tough times, the bar was pretty fucking low to hold the tattered social fabric together. But what would Thompson, who committed self-sought suicide over a decade ago, think about this current edition of the generation of swine. How would he go down in the mud with the bad ass boys and girls, the rabble, there is no other word for it, who run the show down in D.C. No one would blame him for barring the door to his cabin in Woody Creek and daring anybody to come within fifty yards of that locale. Still with true crazies like Trump, his family, his entourage of yes men and women, his putting the rest of us through hoops Thompson would cut to the bone, would go down in the mud and mix it up. I swear I will not ask for anything else, but Hunter give us a sign, tell us where the tarot heads, channel Johnny Depp if you have to but give us some pithy words to slay these bastard dragons. Hell, call collect if you have to I will gladly take your call anytime.