Speak Up Before VA Health Care Is Gutted #Project2025

While controversy swirls around last week’s mass firing of 1,000 Department of Veterans Affairs’ employees, a far greater threat to veterans’ health care is going completely unnoticed. Powerful leaders in Congress have quietly unveiled their plan to gut VA-delivered care, wrapped in the misleadingly titled “Veterans’ ACCESS Act.” If veterans don’t act fast, they will lose the VA health care system they know and depend on.

The bill appears innocuous enough, with aspirations of accountability. But don’t be fooled. Hidden in its depths like a ticking time bomb is a provision intended to dismantle the integrated VA health care system faster than you can say “privatization.”

Follow the money, which will hemorrhage from the VA to the private sector. The likely outcome is that the VA will close its inpatient services and instead become a sprawling assortment of outpatient clinics. If that sounds familiar, it is the plan laid out in the Project 2025 playbook. Veterans are being hoodwinked that the VA facilities they rely on won’t be impacted. Don’t buy it for a second.

Speak Up Before VA Health Care Is Gutted

Previously:

What’s in Store for VA Disability Benefits with New Office of Management and Budget Chief?

Read More »

Brazil’s Lula toes the Western line and opposes Venezuela’s and Nicaragua’s membership in BRICS

Source: Gringa Brazilien

Brazil, Lula reiterates opposition to Venezuela’s entry into BRICS

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has reportedly informed his international interlocutors that the country will oppose Venezuela’s entry into the BRICS. The newspaper “G1” reported this, pointing out that this “possible veto” would represent a further sign of distancing between Lula and the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, a relationship which, according to sources at the newspaper, “has been frozen for some time now”.

Lula is definitely compromised! As for UNSC reforms, I’m pretty sure that it’s about China and Russia.

Related:

Pro-Western Rio Times: Lula Blocks Venezuela and Nicaragua from BRICS Amid Diplomatic Tensions

Read More »

Left Anti-Communism: a Trojan Horse That Weakens the Working Class

“The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.”

Left Anti-Communism: a Trojan Horse That Weakens the Working Class – MLToday

[2013] Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: How the West Won

Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: How the West Won (archived)

There are many theories of why Soviet communism collapsed and the Cold War ended. Here are a few of them to consider:

That is a claim also made by a former Hungarian ambassador to Washington, Andras Simonyi*, who led a rock band in Budapest during the Cold War. In a talk titled “How Rock Music Helped Bring Down the Iron Curtain,” delivered at the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Simonyi said, ”Rock ‘n roll, culturally speaking, was a decisive element in loosening up communist societies and bring them closer to the world of freedom.”

Related:

*Wikipedia-András Simonyi:

He plays guitar in the rock band, The Coalition of the Willing (est.2003) with top rated U.S. guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter (Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers) which has Secretary of State Tony Blinken (guitar, vocals) as a regular guest.

Blinken picks up guitar for new US music diplomacy push