#michael parenti

[communistfeminist]

Michael Parenti on imperfect revolutions, via @/officialyclny on TikTok.

[holyfigtree]

Michael Parenti, “Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies” (2015)

[belleandre-belle]

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This should be taught in American schools !!!

[unitedfrontvarietyhour]

"They're gonna call you a commie anyway. Might as well become one."

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

All conservative ideologies justify existing inequities as the natural order of things, inevitable outcomes of human nature. If the very rich are naturally so much more capable than the rest of us, why must they be provided with so many artificial privileges under the law, so many bailouts, subsidies and other special considerations - at our expense? Their "naturally superior talents" include unprincipled and illegal subterfuge such as price-fixing, stock manipulation, insider training, fraud, tax evasion, the legal enforcement of unfair competition, ecological spoliation, harmful products and unsafe work conditions. One might expect naturally superior people not to act in such rapacious and venal ways. Differences in talent and capacity as might exist between individuals do not excuse the crimes and injustices that are endemic to the corporate business system.

~Michael Parenti (Book: Blackshirts and Reds) [Philo Thoughts]

* Sky Masterson: 

When I was a young man about to go out into the world, my father says to me a very valuable thing. He says to me like this... "Son," the old guy says, "I am sorry that I am not able to bank roll you to a very large start, but not having any potatoes which to give you, I am now going to stake you to some very valuable advice. One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come to you and show you a nice, brand new deck of cards on which (Sky snaps fingers) the seal has not yet been broken. This man is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of that deck and squirt cider in your ear. Now son, you do not take this bet, for as sure as you stand there, you are going to wind up with an earful of cider." [Guys and Dolls]

[lovehael]

Foreign Aid as a Weapon

Most U.S. aid commits the recipient nation to buy U.S. goods at U.S. prices, to be transported in U.S. ships. In keeping with its commitment to capitalism, the U.S. government does not grant assistance to state-owned enterprises in Third World nations, only to the private sector. Most foreign aid never reaches the needy segments of recipient nations. Much of it is used to subsidize U.S. corporate investment and a substantial amount finds its way into the coffers of corrupt comprador rulers. Some of it subsidizes the cash-crop exports of agribusinesses at the expense of small farmers who grow food for local markets.

The net result of foreign aid, as with most overseas investment, is a greater concentration of wealth for the few and deeper poverty for the many. A large sum of money cannot be injected into a class society in a class-neutral way. It goes either to the rich or the poor, in most cases, the rich.

Aid is also a powerful means of political control. It is withheld when poorer nations dare to effect genuine reforms that might tamper with the distribution of wealth and power. Thus in 1970 when the democratically elected Allende government in Chile initiated reforms that benefited the working class and encroached upon the privileges of wealthy investors, all U.S. aid was cut off- except assistance to the Chilean military, which was increased. In some instances, aid is used deliberately to debilitate local production, as when Washington dumped sorghum and frozen chickens onto the Nicaraguan market to undercut cooperative farms and undermine land reform, or when it sent corn to Somalia to undercut local production and cripple independent village economies. It should be remembered that these corporate agricultural exports are themselves heavily subsidized by the U.S. government.

A key instrument of class-biased aid is the World Bank, an interlocking, international consortium of bankers and economists who spend billions of dollars- much of it from U.S taxpayers- to finance projects that shore up repressive right-wing regimes and subsidize corporate investors at the expense of the poor and the environment. For instance, in the 1980s the World Bank built a highway into northwest Brazil's rain forests, then leveled millions of acres so that wealthy Brazilian ranchers could enjoy cheap grazing lands. Brazil also sent some of its urban poor down that highway to settle the land and further deplete it. Within ten years, the region was denuded and riddled with disease and poverty. As Jim Hightower put it: "All the world's bank robbers combined have not done one-tenth of one percent of the harm that the World Bank has in just fifty years."

Against Empire by Michael Parenti

[zuckermaedchen]

People took for granted what they had in the way of human services and entitlements while hungering for consumer goods dangling in their imaginations. The human capacity for discontent should not be underestimated. […] Once our needs are satisfied, then our wants tend to escalate, and our wants become our needs. A rise in living standards often incites a still greater rise in expectations. As people are treated better, they want more of the good things and are not necessarily grateful for what they already have.

Blackshirts & Reds, Michael Parenti

[alfedena]

From To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, Michael Parenti

[workersolidarity]

"Since the overthrow of Communism in Hungary, thefts and other felonies have nearly tripled. And there has been a 50% increase in homocides. The police force in Prague today is many times greater than it was under Communism, when relatively few police were needed. How odd that fewer police were needed in the Communist 'Police State' than the Free Market paradise?"

- Michael Parenti

Black Shirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

[susansontag]

That’s where our foreign aid goes. And as someone once said, foreign aid is when the poor people — that’s us — of a rich country give money to the rich people of a poor country.

— Michael Parenti

[corvianbard]

“People who think they're free in this world just haven't come to the end of their leash yet.”

Michael Parenti

[unitedfrontvarietyhour]

The Yellow Parenti Tapes (Color Corrected), Pt.2: History of the USSR, Pt. 1 ft. Michael Parenti (US Interventionism, The Third World, & the USSR)

This is an excerpt from Professor Parenti's lecture at the University of Colorado on April 15, 1986.

For current context, the methods described here by Mr. Parenti that are used against revolutionary or non-compliant states by the USA have been and continue to be used against: Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Chile, Syria, East Timor, Burkina Faso, Angola, and many more not mentioned.

[liberashen]

“Radical views that are outside the mainstream generally (but not always) are more reliable than the dominant view because they are more regularly challenged and tested against evidence. They do not get to float freely down the mainstream; they must swim against the current. They cannot rest on the orthodox power to foreclose dissent, and they are not supported by the unanimity of bias that passes for objectivity.”

— Michael Parenti

[buddyhead]

Ten books that changed my brain.

I’ve been doing these ask me anything posts over on my Patreon and I was asked what I was reading currently but I figured I should do better than that. So here are ten books that rocked me, these are all must reads and total game changers. I’d like to keep adding to this list, submit any recommendations of other based books in the comments please!

Reading is cool! We should all read more.

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

Blackshirts & Reds by Michael Parenti

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media by Michael Parenti

Speed and Politics by Paul Virilio

The Information Bomb by Paul Virilio

State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Against Empire by Michael Parenti

The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins

Honorable mentions/ currently reading:

Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney

Also a reminder that the discord has a book club / reading list thread. DM for the invite link if you’re not on it already.

Please hit this link for my Patreon, between that my donations and merch - it all keeps me alive and allows me to continue doing this.

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Appreciate y’all.

Haha oh hell yeah.

Love, BUDDYHEAD