This is Saab Lofton, and I was afraid this shit would happen …

Never mind all the poor people Chavez helped over the years, all y’all motherfuckers care about is USING what I wrote (what I’m sure y’all only half-ass read) to try and hurt this great man. Well, let’s see if you bastards are this fucking concerned with presidential term limits when Emperor Cheney USES another 9-11 as an excuse to stay in office past 2009 …

Let me ask you something, Aaron. Let’s say Chavez steps down in 2012 and someone just as devoted to the poor takes Chavez’s place … and wins three landslide elections in a row … and is then succeeded by yet ANOTHER enemy of poverty, etc. etc. etc. Would you have a problem with that?

Chavez shouldn’t give a three-legged rat’s ass whether he’s redeemed himself in your sight UNLESS you first acknowledge and respect all he’s done to ease/end the suffering of victims of IMPERIALISTIC capitalism AND unless you also want his good works to continue long after he’s gone. “Use the poor as a springboard on their quest for power,” indeed ..! Oy vey! And I suppose all the times Chavez helped the blind to see FOR FREE (“Miracle Mission”) was all a ploy to win hearts and minds, huh? If you “think” that, YOU’RE the one who’s blind!

You sarcastically call Castro a hero — well, I tell ya whut: I better not EVER catch yo’ ass wearing a Punisher or a Wolverine T-shirt, because the same Machiavellian ethos that guide those Marvel Comics characters are the same that account for Castro’s sins. If someone is going to claim the ends justify the means, they better be talking about free colleges and health care, NOT stealing Iraq’s oil!!
Since you’re so interested in my work, Aaron, check out my interview with the head of Amnesty International …

http://coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=1985

Lofton: How much of Cuba’s Human rights abuses can legitimately be blamed on the paranoia caused by the embargo, American imperialism and the decades of attempts on Fidel Castro’s life? Most? Half?

Power: More than half.

… and here, take two of these and call me in the morning …

http://coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=1407

http://coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=1683

“No pure socialist or communist nation has ever succeeded in evading the corruption caused by power … all humans, deeply flawed. “

WRONG. Even though all too many don’t consider the Netherlands/Amsterdam to be communist — and even though the Dutch themselves don’t think of themselves as such, it is and they are. I look at the results, not the labels …

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2003/06/11/scorched_earth/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt

Recently, Larry Ebersole, who works with a branch of Amnesty International in Washington state, called me and we spent about an hour talking about a variety of subjects. What we talked mostly about was whether the socialistic, civil libertarian Netherlands should be used as an ideal for other countries (especially ours). Essentially, Ebersole wanted to concur — but couldn’t because of Amnesty’s policy of neutrality. As the organization’s handbook reads, “[Amnesty International] does not support or oppose any government or political system.”

Fortunately, I’m biased as hell — so let’s go Dutch, shall we? In the CIA’s 2002 World Factbook entry about the Netherlands, the population below the poverty line is listed as “NA%” — which means not applicable, nothing, nada, zero, zip. As in no-fucking-body! But wait! A society without poverty is supposedly impossible due to “human nature,” right?

The Dutch use what most American politicians would disparagingly call “tax and spend,” which is to say capitalism is allowed to exist so long as the capitalists themselves never whine when they’re heavily taxed in order to pay for public services. (OK, so they have the civil liberty to whine, but they’ll still be taxed.)

Decriminalized marijuana and prostitution; free college tuition and universal health care; the freedom to dissent; artists who are actually fully funded … oh, lawd, I done found the Promised Land!

In fact, according to the March 9 New York Times: “The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science … is the largest of any Dutch government agency. Adjusted to population size, it’s roughly equivalent to the military budget of the United States. … [The Netherlands] spends $400 million a year directly on the arts — about $25 for every Dutch citizen. By comparison, the National Endowment for the Arts’ budget is $115 million — 40 cents for every American.”

… and whether anyone is willing to actually label Amsterdam communist is irrelevant; the end result of its societal choices is a country Marx would be proud of.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111135/

… and last time I checked, the Dutch are Human, not aliens from another planet — which brings me to my next point …

http://coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=1881

Oh, and for the record, “Human nature” does NOT exist; it’s about as scientific as Murphy’s Law. There isn’t any gland, organ, etc. in the body called “Human nature”. Professor Howard Zinn–author of A People’s History of the United States–told me this himself.

Before he died in 2005, one of Las Vegas’ most fiery activists, Steve Hampton, said, “The claim that ‘Human nature’ is inherently corrupt and evil is the last philosophical refuge of reactionary politics. ‘Human nature’ is a quasi-metaphysical concept, and in fact this idea is merely a rehash of the Christian doctrine of ‘original sin.’ There is no such thing as ‘Human nature,’ merely Human behavior, which is almost infinitely variegated. People are mainly products of their environment. Capitalism encourages and rewards greed and selfishness, so ‘naturally’ people living in a capitalist society tend to be greedy and selfish. People living in a society that encourages and rewards communality, sharing and a sense of communality would
take readily to that.”

… when George Washington was elected president, there was talk of him staying in office forever. Washington himself said, no, we just got done fighting a king …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington

Washington reluctantly served a second term as president. He refused to run for a third, establishing the customary policy of a maximum of two terms for a president which later became law by the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.

… HOWEVER, if the people of Venezuela really wants Chavez to stay in office an extra term or two (hopefully not much more than that) and Chavez truly believes in his heart of hearts that he could pull it off (without becoming tempted by power), then who are we to say otherwise? Maybe Hugo Chavez is a better man than George Washington? Maybe Chavez is the New Man Che spoke of …

“Orwell. He was an enemy of not only fascism, but also communism. He was an enemy of totalitarian governments in which power is concentrated permanently in just a few people.”

Since a handful of corporations own every major, mass media outlet there is, then capitalism must be totalitarian as well — not to mention all the countries who had their legit, democratically elected leaders violently replaced with CORPORATE puppets by the CIA …

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2003/04/10/scorched_earth/fear_no_evil/opinionfear.txt

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2004/04/21/opinion/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt

And NO … Orwell only had a problem with Stalinism. It’d be more accurate to say Orwell was an anarchist — just like those he fought beside during the Spanish Civil War. Check out this passage from Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia:

“I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper
articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time
and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The
Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was
still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it
probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was
ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was
something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been
in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building
of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with
the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the
hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost
every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were
being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an
inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been
collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers
looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial
forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Senior’ or ‘Don’ or
even ‘Usted’; everyone called everyone else ‘Comrade’ and ‘Thou’, and said
‘Salud!’ instead of ‘Buenos dias’. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first
experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a
lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and
all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and
black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in
clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs
of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of
people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing
revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the
crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town
in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small
number of women and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all.
Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some
variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in
it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I
recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.”

“his own website describes Orwell as a ‘democratic socialist’”

I don’t quite get that. Orwell died decades before the advent of the Internet, so it’s not as if he could’ve created “his own website” …

Anyway, bringing about a socialistic democracy isn’t the job of any one activist. It’ll only happen when everyone does their part. If you ask a pacifist, they’ll swear the Ghandi/Dr. King path is the only way. If you ask a militant, they’ll swear the Che/Black Panther path is the only way. I say it’ll take all of the above and more.

There’s a book called, How Far We Slaves Have Come! Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro tag-teamed to write it; and they also appear on the front cover side by side.

It turns out that a key battle was fought in 1988 at Cuito Cuanavale in southeast Angola, so that the South African apartheid system could be weakened enough for Mandela’s movement to thrive. Castro provided assistance, even though it was risky for Cuba to send military forces overseas.

After he was freed, Mandela traveled to Cuba and paid tribute: “Without the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale our organizations would not have been unbanned. The defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale has made it possible for me to be here today.”

So that’s an example of pacifists and militants working together — each doing their own thing — for the greater good.

Imitating Amsterdam — and the BEST of Chavez/Castro — is a good start, but in the end, a socialistic democracy is a neverending work in progress. As they say, the price of liberty is ETERNAL vigilance.

The issue ain’t whether you can totally eliminate corruption. The issue is, what’s to be done about it once it’s discovered.

“Socialism is a false hope …”

Boy, the rich must love yo’ ass; letting them off the hook like that! Now they can CONtinue to water ski behind their yachts with utter impunity since people like you divorce them of any responsibility to give a fuck.

This is why Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the single most important book in Human history, because of the lesson Ebenezer Scrooge learned. It’s even more important than the Koran, the Torah or the Bible, and speaking of …

“… the only way to escape corruption is to be connected to a source of superhuman goodness, namely, God.”

I’m sure you heard this one: A dude is drowning in the middle of the North Atlantic. A boat sails by and offers to fish dude out, but he says, “That’s OK — GOD’S going to save me,” so the boat sails away …

Then a plane hovers above him and lowers a rope, but dude again says, “That’s OK — GOD’S going to save me,” so the plane flies off …

Even a school of dolphins swims by, but dude shoos them away, repeating, “GOD’S going to save me!”

Finally, dude drowns, dies and appears before God. Outraged, dude asks, “Why didn’t you save me?”

God then frowns and answers, “Motherfucker, didn’t I send yo’ dumb ass a boat, a plane AND a school of dolphins ..?!”

The moral of the story is “superhuman goodness” can be found in Chavez’s “Miracle Mission,” it can be found in Castro’s Medical Justice League (damn shame Condi Rice’s sold out ass didn’t allow all those free Cuban doctors into New Orleans when Katrina went down), it can be found everywhere people are practicing socialism, everyday. If you give someone homeless spare change, you’re a commie. If you buy a starving student lunch, you’re a commie. I don’t know what image or stereotype you have of socialism floating around in your head, but it’s probably way off the mark. If there are all these poor people where you’re at, why don’t you go talk to them and see if you can give them hope — I guarantee you, it woN’T be “false.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315327/quotes

Bruce: What if I need you? What if I have questions?

God: That’s your problem, Bruce. That’s everybody’s problem. You keep looking up. Parting a bowl of soup is not a miracle, Bruce. It’s a magic trick. A single mom who’s working two jobs, and still finds time to take her son to soccer practice, that’s a miracle. A teenager who says “no” to drugs and “yes” to an education, that’s a miracle. People want me to do everything for them. What they don’t realize is *they* have the power. You want to see a miracle, son? Be the miracle.