grimpyUS forces seize oil tanker off Venezuela coast
DylanMc6 [any, any]we need to organize a bit harder, everyone. seriously!
fossilesqueYou all are sleep walking into another forever war nobody wants. I implore everyone to read your own and Latin American history from the last 50 years. It’s not taught.
read.dukeupress.edu/…/The-School-of-the-AmericasM… (Ask Anna for a copy.)
Venezuela
Name: Army Commander in Chief Efrain Vasquez and General Ramirez Poveda
Country: Venezuela
Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in 1988; 1972
Info: Both Vasquez and Poveda helped to lead a failed coup in Venezuela in April of 2002, despite supposedly receiving training at the SOA that encourages respect for democracy and civilian governments. Otto Reich, then Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, shared his support for the coup and a new government, and in the same year was appointed as a WHINSEC Board of Visitor member to “oversee” democracy and human rights curriculum, as well as operations at the school. Reich met with these SOA graduates prior to the coup and advised business leader Pedro Carmona, who subsequently seized the presidency.
Name: General Ramon Davila Guillen
Country: Venezuela
Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in 1967 for Irregular Warfare training
Info: General Guillen was indicted in November 1996 in connection with a shipment of one ton of cocaine into Miami in 1990, which he says was authorized by the CIA in an effort to catch drug dealers. In 1993, the CIA called the shipment “a regrettable incident” and dismissed the CIA agent involved. (CAP, 9/21/97)
do you think i should study a bit more socialist theory, and is there any way i can study in layperson’s terms without losing focus quickly?
No, I read that book (The School of the Americas by Leslie Gill) before I knew what socialism was in a Political Theory of Latin America class. It radicalized me and I have used it to radicalize ex military confused libertarians and liberals. It is good without theory, it is pure history. If you read enough history, you can passively get theory via trends and vice versa. That is ultimately what they discuss anyway if the author is decent, via materialist analysis (though that obviously brings its own problems). I am happy to send audio and pdfs as needed to whomever. I am not sure if there is an audiobook of this one, but I am due a refresher regardless.
like i wanna study for socialist theory, but there’s something about it makes my head spin. do you have any tips on “studying in layperson’s terms”?
Listen to that voice and read this: theanarchistlibrary.org/…/russell-means-for-ameri… That voice is telling you something very real and important. Trust yourself.
i mean the text - i’ve heard of a study method which taking long paragraphs and boiling them down into very short ones. however, sometimes i CAN’T find the right words to a point where i prefer NOT to say anything. do you have any tips?
To summarise the text I attached… Trust the resistance. If it feels like you are forcing something that doesn’t fit, that is probably what you are doing. What are you actually trying to learn? Not “study theory” but what do you want to understand?
learning about socialism and studying it without losing focus quickly or having my head spin. seriously!
You keep asking “how do I get better at the thing that doesn’t work for me” and I am saying “stop doing the thing because it isn’t the only or ‘correct’ way of doing things," not that there is a correct way. You aren’t asking the right questions or starting with questions if you are stuck here. Start figuring you what you want to know.
what do you mean by that?
You keep asking me: “How do I study theory better?” But, theory, as you say, makes your head spin. You lose focus. You can’t find words to summarize it. So my question back is: Why are you trying to force yourself to study theory? What do you actually want to understand? Not “I want to study socialism,” because socialism itself is just a method. Socialism is a tool, not an answer. A hammer without a nail. What questions do you have? What do you want to know about the world? What problems do you care about and want to solve? What do you care about and why? Once you know what you want to understand, learning becomes effortless.
ps: always happy to soundboard :)