Chris Hedges's Blog, page 573

Alberto Strikes Gulf Coast With Dangerous Surf, Heavy Rains

Subtropical Storm Alberto lumbered ashore Monday on the U.S. Gulf Coast, pelting white sand beaches with blustery winds and stinging rain that kept the usual Memorial Day crowds away.

Forecasters warned heavy rain, flash flooding and dangerous surf posed the biggest threats as Alberto’s ragged core made landfall near Laguna Beach in the Florida Panhandle. A few brief tornadoes also were possible in much of Florida and parts of Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said at 5 p.m. EDT Monday that Alberto was centered about 15 miles (24 kilometers) west-northwest of Panama City, Florida. With maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (72 kph), Alberto was moving north at 9 mph (14 kph).

Rough conditions were whipping up big waves off the eastern and northern Gulf Coast, and authorities warned swimmers to stay out of the surf because of life-threatening swells and rip currents.

Between four and eight inches (10-25 centimeters) of rain could pummel Florida Panhandle, eastern and central Alabama, and western Georgia before the storm moves on. Isolated deluges of 12 inches (30 centimeters) also were possible as the storm heads inland, threatening heavy rains around the Southeast in the coming hours and days.

As Alberto’s center heads inland — deprived of the warm waters that fuel tropical weather systems — the storm was expected to steadily weaken. A subtropical storm like Alberto has a less defined and cooler center than a tropical storm, and its strongest winds are found farther from its center. A tropical storm warning is in effect for a stretch of coastline between Aucilla River in Florida’s Big Bend and the Alabama-Florida border.

Lifeguards posted red flags along the white sands of Pensacola Beach, where swimming and wading were banned.

Meanwhile, the storm forced some Memorial Day tributes to be cancelled across Florida’s Panhandle. Safety was the priority, but the decision was still a “heartbreaker,” said Tom Rice, a 29-year-old Army veteran who leads the organizations that planned a ceremony Monday at Beal Memorial Cemetery in Fort Walton Beach.

Some stragglers still made their way through the rain to pay tribute at the cemetery’s Veterans Tribute Tower, however. Rice said American flags had been placed Saturday on the graves of all 1,700 veterans buried in the cemetery.

“We got the flags out,” Rice told the Northwest Florida Daily News as wind whipped a massive U.S. flag flying at half-staff. “That’s what’s important.”

Along the Florida Panhandle coast known for its pristine beaches, tourists vowed Alberto wouldn’t dampen their vacations.

Jason Powell said he was seeking to keep his children entertained until Alberto blows past his Panhandle vacation spot.

“So far we’ve seen a lot of wind and the ocean is really high, covering up the entire beach,” Powell said. “We’re not letting it ruin our vacation … we’re going to watch some movies inside and a little TV, and hopefully maybe even get into the pool” despite the rain.

Janet Rhumes said her group of friends from Kansas had been planning their Memorial Day weekend on Navarre Beach since October. They stocked up on groceries and planned to play card games. No storm could deter them.

“We’ve never seen one before and we’re here celebrating a friend’s 20th birthday,” Rhumes told the Daily News. “So how often can you say you rode a storm out?”

The mayor of Orange Beach, on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, said Alberto brought rain and aggravation — and dashed hopes for record Memorial Day crowds. Instead, red flags flew on Alabama beaches and officers patrolled, making sure no one entered the water.

Elsewhere, Florida’s Division of Emergency Management said, about 2,600 customers were without power in northwestern Florida on Monday morning.

Scarlett Rustemeyer, a barista at the Fosko Coffee Barre in Pensacola Beach, said she always frets about power outages whenever storms bluster through.

“My boyfriend and I usually try to go to the store and stock up on lots of bottled water, and get like canned goods and things that won’t go bad if our power goes out,” she said.

Alberto, the first named storm of 2018, got an early jump on the Atlantic hurricane season.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released the annual hurricane season forecast Thursday in which they call for 10 to 16 named storms, with five to nine hurricanes. One to four hurricanes could be “major” with sustained winds of at least 111 mph (178 kph).

If that forecast holds, it would make for a near-normal or above-normal season. An average hurricane season produces 12 named storms, of which six become hurricanes, including three major hurricanes.

____

Kay reported from Miami Beach, Florida. Associated Press writer Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed to this story.

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Trump Says Settlers ‘Tamed a Continent.’ Now for Indigenous People’s Side.

This knowledge seems rudimentary, and yet it’s not: The same ships that transported the “American dream” from 15th century Europe likewise delivered a nightmare to indigenous lands now known as America—a nightmare that would persist for centuries for millions of indigenous people, African slaves and their many descendants. But it was far beyond a nightmare. It all was callously and painfully real.

This knowledge also seems rudimentary, and yet it’s not: Indigenous communities today bear the stubborn scars and residual societal ills stemming directly from colonization: being dehumanized, disenfranchised and imprisoned in our own lands, confined to desolate reservations, and brutally ripped from the lifeways and teachings that sustained us for millennia.

Much that should be rudimentary knowledge has been flattened throughout American history by colonial apologists while the humanity of indigenous peoples has been routinely denied, our vast achievements and painful stories of near-annihilation squelched by whitewashed American narratives and a dehumanizing lexicon woven into the fabric of American consciousness: savage, redskin, squaw; uncivilized, Manifest Destiny, American dream.

In a speech to the U.S. Naval Academy’s class of 2018, President Trump recently said of his settler ancestors that they “tamed a continent,” adding “We will not apologize for America.”

Trump’s remarks, true to white supremacy and American colonial form, hark back to the very first classifications of indigenous peoples as untamed savages. The humanity of indigenous peoples and our right to life was once again denied by Trump’s words, anti-Indianness recharged, by the man tasked to lead a nation that he and many others continue to arrogantly dub “the greatest,” admiring their own reflection in the mirror while selectively narrowing their gaze to exclude their brutal, white supremacist past and present.

Trump’s words were also a bitter reminder: There would be no “America” without the dehumanization of indigenous peoples. But many settler Americans still prefer the lie. They prefer the version of history that justifies Indigenous extermination, the version that attempts to muddy if not bury the truth, the version that positions white Americans as brave pioneers and the indigenous inhabitants as uncivilized savages deserving of our tragic fate.

For many indigenous people, those words sting. They trigger deep and unhealed colonial wounds.

On one hand, Trump’s characteristically dehumanizing words are but a drop in the bucket of centuries-old assaults on indigenous people, and confronting every instance of Trump-foolery can certainly be counterproductive. On the other hand, dehumanizing propaganda has very real consequences and therefore should not be given a pass.

Indigenous social media users dealt myriad responses to the commander in chief’s words about “taming a continent.” On Twitter, the hashtag #UntamedAndUnapologetic collected punchy clawbacks, some with indigenous selfies from the Native Twitterverse.

Gritting her teeth in one selfie, and giving a side-eye in another, Otoe-Missouria and Choctaw writer, podcaster and multimedia specialist Johnnie Jae tweeted, “The faces I’m gonna make at Trump and anyone else who thinks this continent… who thinks Natives were tamed cuz as a Native woman… I’m still here, my heart wild, kooky, and always ready to fight for my people and for justice and liberty for ALL. #UntamedAndUnapologetic”

And from the Instagram page of Indigenous Goddess Gang, a digital magazine founded by and for indigenous women, came “Can someone get me a strand of trumps [sic] hair? Asking for a friend.”

All joking and sarcasm aside, it wasn’t just indigenous people who immediately noticed the obscenity of Trump’s “tamed a continent” speech.

“Genocide. He’s celebrating genocide,” said Samuel Sinyangwe on Twitter. Sinyangwe is a black activist, data scientist and policy analyst. His tweet garnered 143,000 likes and 60,000 retweets in just a day.

Tim Walz, educator, Minnesota U.S. representative and candidate for state governor, also weighed in on Trump’s remarks. His gubernatorial running mate is Peggy Flanagan, an Anishinaabe member of the Minnesota House of Representatives. Walz tweeted, “This is disgusting. As a social studies teacher, I know how much history matters. It’s time to tell the truth and acknowledge past atrocities and the genocide of indigenous people. We must face our past so we can move forward together.”

Trump’s latest slight to indigenous peoples also points more plainly to where the U.S. is as a nation: far too many still in denial of the past, stuck at the intersection of truth and reconciliation. This same denial of facts holds humanity back. It holds our children back from becoming fully informed and empathetic humans.

Putrid white supremacy fights to hang on, in government offices, rural communities and school curricula. Unless we call it out and shout it down, white supremacy will hang on, if even by dusty orange threads.

As for indigenous peoples, we are a hardy bunch. We stay firmly rooted and weathered into the natural landscape. We stay connected to ancestral lands where our grandmothers and grandfathers, the first human beings to touch and intimately know this continent, left vast footprints and prayers in order for us to survive. No white supremacist, no vile president, can ever change that. We are still here, and we have stories to tell.

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Cuba to Update Soviet-Era Constitution

HAVANA — When Cuba adopted its current constitution, the sugar-based economy was being bolstered by aid from the Soviet Union, citizens were forbidden to run private businesses or sell homes and gays kept their sexual identity a tightly guarded secret.

Now a rewrite is on the way as the country’s communist leaders try to adapt to the post-Soviet world in which hundreds of thousands of Cubans work for themselves, American remittances and tourism keep the economy afloat and the daughter of Communist Party chief Raul Castro is campaigning for gay rights.

The country’s parliament is scheduled on Saturday to name the commission to draft a new constitution, consulting with the citizenry and eventually bringing it to a referendum.

Officials have made clear that the constitution will maintain a Communist Party-led system in which freedom of speech, the press and other rights are limited by “the purposes of socialist society.”

But Castro and other leaders apparently hope to end the contradictions between the new, more open economy and a legal system that calls for tight state control over all aspects of the economy and society.

The current ban on dual citizenship collides with the government’s effort to reach out to exiles. The definition of marriage as between a man and a woman runs up against Cuba’s growing gay rights movement. Many small businesses employ workers even though the constitution now forbids “obtaining income that comes from exploiting the work of others.”

The current constitution allows worker cooperatives, but only in the farm sector, and officials have allowed other types of cooperative but placed sharp limits on their growth and operations, keeping them as a marginal economic player.

The government, too, is likely to see changes. Castro, who turned over the presidency last month to Miguel Diaz-Canel, has proposed limiting presidents to two five-year terms and imposing an age limit — a dramatic shift following a nearly 60-year run of leadership by Castro and his late brother Fidel, who both ruled into their 80s.

“Cuba needs to change its constitution because our society has been radically transformed in recent years,” said political scientist Lenier Gonzalez, one of the directors of Cuba Possible, a think-tank aimed at promoting reform with the limits laid out by Cuban law and its single-party system. He noted the society has become more international, forms of property ownership have diversified and new social movements have emerged that now exist on the margins of the law.

He also said the revamp could help build the legitimacy of Diaz-Canel, 58, and other members of the new guard who are finally replacing the men enshrined as national heroes of the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro.

The Communist Party newspaper Granma has reported that the new constitution could boost the role of the country’s parliament, which now usually meets for two days a year to listen to speeches and approve official proposals. It said the congress might be professionalized and its membership trimmed. The 605 deputies now receive no pay other than what they get from their other jobs.

Parliamentarian Mariela Castro, the daughter of Raul and director of the Center of Sexual Education, has said the reform will expand gay rights, partly by tackling the current wording of the constitution that limits marriage to a man and woman.

The current constitution was adopted four decades ago at a time when Cuba was a potential Cold War flashpoint and a pillar of the Soviet Bloc. The document proclaims Cuba’s adherence to Marxist-Leninist socialism and to solidarity with countries of the Third World, particularly Latin America.

The Communist Party is described as the “superior guiding force” of Cuba’s society and it says the economic system is “based on socialist property of the entire people over the fundamental means of production and on the suppression of the exploitation of man by man.”

“It is a historic constitution, the only one that remains in our hemisphere” from the time of Soviet-style socialism, said Julio Antonio Fernandez Estrada, a law professor at the University of Havana. “It’s more than 40 years old … It continues speaking of things that now do not exist in the world, such as the formation of the citizen for communism.”

He said the economic reforms promoted by Castro, which sought to allow the limited introduction of private enterprise within the communist system, “have been carried out, if not against, then in large part in spite of the constitution.”

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The One and Only Thing Driving Trump’s Foreign Policy

I spent last week at a conference in South Korea, during which time Trump went from seeking a meeting with Kim Jong un to cancelling it, then suggesting it might be back on.

“What does Trump want?” South Korean officials at the conference kept asking me. Notably, no one asked what the United States wants. They knew it was all about Trump.

Trump’s goal has nothing to do with peace on the Korean peninsula, or even with making America great again. It’s all about making Trump feel great.

“They are respecting us again,” Trump exulted to graduating cadets at the Naval Academy last Friday. “Winning is such a great feeling, isn’t it? Nothing like winning. You got to win.”

In truth, the United States hasn’t won anything, in Korea or anywhere else. After fifteen months of Trump at the helm, America is far less respected around the world than it was before.

The only thing that’s happened is Trump is now making foreign policy on his own – without America’s allies, without Congress, even without the State Department. Trump may consider this a personal win but it hardly makes America safer.

Some earnest foreign policy experts are seeking to discover some bargaining strategy behind Trump’s moves on North Korea. Hint: There’s no strategy. Only a thin-skinned narcissist needing flattery and fearing ridicule.

Trump got excited about a summit with Kim when he thought it might win him praise, even possibly a Nobel Peace Prize. He got cold feet when he feared Kim might be setting Trump up for humiliating failure. Now he’s back to dreaming about the Prize.

The delicate balance in Trump’s brain between glorification and mortification can tip either way at any moment, depending on his hunches. All international relations become contests of personal dominance.

He rejected the 2015 Iran treaty for no apparent reason other than Obama had entered into it. Trump couldn’t care less that by doing so he has harmed relations with our traditional allies, who pleaded with him to stay in. And he’s undermined America’s future credibility. Why would any nation (including North Korea) enter into a treaty with the United States if it can break it on the whim of a president who wants to one-up his predecessor?

Ditto with the Paris climate accord. Obama got credit for it, so Trump wants credit for unilaterally sinking it.

Trump has demanded that America’s nuclear arsenal be upgraded. Why? Since 1970, the United States has been committed to nuclear nonproliferation. What changed? Trump. A more powerful arsenal makes him feel more powerful – “respected again.”

It’s not about American interests in the world. It’s about Trump’s interests.

Wonder why Trump promised to lift trade sanctions on ZTE, China’s giant telecom company? ZTE has been trading with North Korea and Iran, in violation of American policy. Everyone around Trump advised against lifting the sanctions.

Look no further than Trump’s personal needs. ZTE is important to China, and China recently pledged a half-billion-dollar loan to Trump’s family business.

While we’re on the subject of high tech, why has Trump pushed the Postal Service to double the shipping rate it charges Amazon? I mean, isn’t Amazon important to America’s high-tech race with the rest of the world?

The most likely explanation is that the CEO of Amazon is Jeff Bezos, who’s also far richer than Trump. Bezos also owns The Washington Post, and the Post has been critical of Trump.

As you may have noticed, the man doesn’t like to be criticized. As Trump recently explained to Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes,” his aim is “to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”

Any halfway responsible president of the United States would be worried about Russian meddling in U.S. elections. Protecting American democracy is just about the most important thing a president does.

But Trump has turned the inquiry about the Russians into a “dark state” conspiracy against him. And he’s demanded that the Justice Department investigate the people who are investigating him.

With Trump, there’s no longer American foreign policy. There’s only Trump’s ego.

If peace is truly advanced on the Korean peninsula, the Prize shouldn’t go to Trump. It should go to South Korean president Moon Jae-in, who has tirelessly courted the world’s two most dangerous megalomaniacs.

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U.S. Team in North Korea Raising Hopes of Trump-Kim Summit

A U.S. team was in North Korea to plan a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to President Donald Trump, raising expectations that the on-off-on meeting would indeed take place.

Both the State Department and South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said the American and North Korean officials have been engaged in talks at the Korean village of Panmunjom, which straddles the border inside the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ. One can cross the border simply by stepping across a painted line, but moving beyond several footsteps into the North at Panmunjom would be rare for U.S. officials.

Trump withdrew from a planned June 12 Singapore summit with Kim last Thursday, but quickly announced it could still happen. His tweet Sunday afternoon, which offered praise for the longtime U.S. adversary, was the latest signal that his concerns about the North’s stance toward the summit had been allayed.

“Our United States team has arrived in North Korea to make arrangements for the Summit between Kim Jong Un and myself,” he tweeted Sunday. “I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and financial Nation one day. Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this. It will happen!”

South Korean President Moon Jae-in gave details about his surprise meeting Saturday with Kim in Panmunjom, saying Kim had committed to sitting down with Trump and to a “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tapped veteran American diplomat Sung Kim, the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, to handle pre-summit negotiations. On a separate but complementary track was the CIA team Pompeo set up last year when he headed the spy agency. And on a third track was a White House logistical group sent to Singapore on Sunday to prepare in case the summit takes place. It was led by Joe Hagin, White House deputy chief of staff for operations.

The Korean leaders’ second summit in a month saw bear hugs and broad smiles. But their quickly arranged meeting appeared to highlight a sense of urgency on both sides of the world’s most heavily armed border.

The talks, which Moon said Kim Jong Un requested, capped a whirlwind 24 hours of diplomatic back and forth. They allowed Moon to push for a U.S.-North Korean summit that he sees as the best way to ease animosity that had some fearing a war last year.

Kim may see a meeting with Trump as necessary to easing pressure from crushing sanctions and to winning security assurances in a region surrounded by enemies.

Moon told reporters that Kim said he’s willing to cooperate to end confrontation and work toward peace for the sake of the successful summit with Trump.

Moon said he told Kim that Trump has a “firm resolve” to end hostile relations with North Korea and initiate economic cooperation if Kim implements “complete denuclearization.”

“What Kim is unclear about is that he has concerns about whether his country can surely trust the United States over its promise to end hostile relations (with North Korea) and provide a security guarantee if they do denuclearization,” Moon said.

“During the South Korea-U.S. summit, President Trump said the U.S. is willing to clearly put an end to hostile relations (between the U.S. and North Korea) and help (the North) achieve economic prosperity if North Korea conducts denuclearization,” he said.

Kim, in a dispatch issued by the North’s state-run news service earlier Sunday, “expressed his fixed will on the historic (North Korea)-U.S. summit talks.” During Saturday’s inter-Korean summit, the Korean leaders agreed to “positively cooperate with each other as ever to improve (North Korea)-U.S. relations and establish (a) mechanism for permanent and durable peace.”

They agreed to have their top officials meet again June 1. Moon said military generals and Red Cross officials from the Koreas will also meet separately to discuss how to ease military tensions and resume reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

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Venezuela Defeated the U.S. in Its Election. Now It Must Build an Independent Economy.

Upon returning to the United States from Venezuela and reading the terrible media reporting of the election, it was evident that the people of the United States are being lied to. The Intrepid News Fund and Venezuela Analysis invited me and others to come to Venezuela for the election to see first hand what actually happened so we could report what we saw and break the media blockade against Venezuela.

The US is leading an economic war against Venezuela that is causing tremendous damage, but there is also a media blockade preventing the truth from being told. Mayor Carlos Alcala Cordones of Vargas, speaking to foreign delegations, told us the media blockade was more damaging than the economic blockade.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) summarized the biased and inaccurate media coverage, writing,

“Western media have taken an entirely different outlook to the [elections], unanimously presenting them as seriously flawed, at best, and at worst a complete sham presided over by a dictator. The New York Times (5/20/18) presented the election as ‘a contest that critics said was heavily rigged in his favor,’ Huffington Post (5/21/18) christened it ‘a vote denounced as a farce cementing autocracy in the crisis-stricken OPEC nation,’ while NPR (5/21/18) stated: ‘Nicholas [sic] Maduro has easily won a second term, but his main rivals have refused to accept the results, calling the polling fraudulent—a view shared by the United States and many independent observers.’” [Emphasis in original]

In reality, Venezuela had free, fair and transparent elections and manages the most sophisticated and accurate voting system in the world. Former President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center has a Democracy Program, said, “As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” This is consistent with others who have monitored Venezuelan elections. In the recent election, there were 150 international observers from over 30 countries who also noted the advanced nature of the election system and validated the results.

The opposition and the United States faced two choices in this election: (1) run against President Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution, or (2) seek to undermine the election by not participating. The US decided the latter approach was the best alternative and directed its vassals in Venezuela to boycott. Henri Falcon, the leading opposition candidate, did poorly, falsely declaring the election a fraud. Not only did the boycott hurt him, but he also advocated succumbing to the United States, e.g. dollarize the economy and seek loans from the IMF and western financiers. This was not popular because such loans end up being a disaster for national sovereignty as the financiers dictate neoliberal policies that send money to the capitalists while cutting essential services for the people

Despite the boycott, Maduro received the vote of 28% of the eligible electorate, around the same as Barack Obama received in 2008 and more than he got in 2012 or Trump in 2016. The 46% turnout is similar to US turnout and much higher than countries like Chile and Switzerland.

The economic punishment is not related to democracy. There is no economic blockade of Honduras, where a coup was followed by questionable elections, or Brazil, where there was a coup, or Saudi Arabia, a monarchy without national elections. Granma, the official voice of Cuba, which has a lot of experience with US economic war, describes ten examples of efforts to destabilize the government since the election.

Why Maduro was supported by the electorate in the midst of an economic crisis

The people of Venezuela are suffering from serious impacts of the economic war being fought against them. The US sanctions combined with the drop in oil prices has sent the Venezuelan economy reeling. This election was important because Venezuela withstood the attack of the US and western powers, who refused to accept the election and tried to oust Maduro.

The Venezuelan people are well aware of who is causing their problems. When we took a tour of the Metro Cable, a Chavez-built gondola that brings people in poor neighborhoods down the hillside, we were stopped by a grandmother who had a message she wanted us to share with people in the United States. She said, “We know you want our oil, but stop punishing the people of Venezuela.”

When the Bolivarian Revolution had money from high oil prices, it was used to improve the lives of the poor. The results were marked decreases in poverty and illiteracy and increased access to health care and housing. The economic war has put stress on all of these programs, but Maduro persists despite it.

One of the great successes of the Maduro era is the Housing Mission, which built two million homes for the poor. Each home houses four to five people, meaning eight to ten million people received housing, which included furniture. This is quite an accomplishment in a nation of 32 million people. The program began in 2011 after there were devastating mudslides and hopes to reach 3 million homes by 2019.

Compare this to the United States, which is in a housing crisis, where the 2,461 people are evicted every day, and poor and middle-class families are housing-insecure. Consider the US response to the storms in Puerto Rico, where nine months later the island is still in crisis, or cities like my hometown of Baltimore, where we have thousands of homeless and 16,000 abandoned homes.

The economic sanctions are creating food shortages in Venezuela with blockades of food and medicine purchases and with some wealthy Venezuelans adding to the problem by hiding food or sending it to Colombia. In response, Maduro announced an expansion of the Local Provision and Production Committees (CLAPs), to distribute food to six million people.

The Bolivarian Revolution is seeking food sovereignty in response to the injustices of the global food supply system, a goal made more difficult but also more essential due to the economic war. Food production is a long-term problem in Venezuela due to its oil-based economy, which caused farmers to move to urban areas in the 20th Century.

Maduro has also fought off agribusiness by banning GMO’s and the privatizing of seeds, protecting indigenous food knowledge from corporate capture and seeking to create a democratic food system.  Venezuela is an example of ecosocialism, where food systems are socialized and developed in an economically sensible and sustainable way.

These are just some of the social programs that Venezuela has sought to expand under Maduro. Maduro has also tried to break the financial blockade with oil-backed cryptocurrency.

US sanctions have had the effect of causing the people to blame the United States and unify around Maduro and the current government.

Deep Democracy, Not Dictatorship

US leaders and the media describe Maduro as a dictator. It is absurd on its face when the election history of Venezuela is examined. Not only does Venezuela have lots of elections, but it is seeking to develop participatory democracy at the local level.

The Chavistas have won almost all elections since 1998, but lost two national elections. In 2007, the opposition defeated Chavez-supported constitutional amendments. In 2015, the opposition won the national assembly. In the last presidential election, Maduro narrowly defeated Henrique Capriles by 1.49%. This history shows consistently free and fair elections, not a dictatorship.

The National Constituent Assembly is pointed to as an example of dictatorship. When the opposition won a large majority, they showed their true colors by removing portraits of Hugo Chavez and Simon Bolivar. Then they passed an amnesty law for themselves where they listed all 17 years of crimes in seeking to overthrow the government. This law was found unconstitutional by the court.

The opposition promised removal of Maduro within six months and incarceration of Chavista leaders when they took power. Violent opposition protests followed that led to over 125 deaths. The Supreme Court found that three of the right wing legislators were elected by fraud and until they left, the Assembly could not act. The Assembly refused the court’s decision and in the midst of a stalemate, Maduro used his constitutional power to activate the National Constituent Assembly. The opposition tried to block the vote and 200 polling stations were besieged on election day, but it went forward. Chavistas were elected but the opposition claimed the turnout of over eight million voters was “too high” to be credible.

The National Constituent Assembly has an interesting democratic makeup. Two-thirds of the members are geographically based and one-third represent different constituencies, including trade unions, communal councils, indigenous groups, farmers, students, disabled people, and pensioners. They are currently writing amendments to the constitution, which will be voted on.

The communal councils show the participatory nature of Venezuelan democracy. The 2006 law on Community Councils allowed groups of citizens to form Citizen Assemblies that represent 150 to 400 families in urban areas, 20 families in rural areas, and 10 in indigenous communities. More than  19,000 councils have been registered. They elect their leadership, meet and decide on projects needed for the community.  They have received $1 billion in funding for various projects and have established nearly 300 communal banks, which provide micro-loans. Communes are combinations of local councils that work on larger projects.

These councils are the frontline of participatory democracy, but are ignored by the western media, as they are inconsistent with the claims of ‘dictatorship.’ For the Bolivarian Revolution, the councils are intended to ultimately replace the democratic liberal state by bringing together citizens, social movements, and community organizations, to practice direct participatory self-governance. They are a main pillar in the transition to an ecosocialist, communal state. They are a work in progress, striving toward these goals based on a belief in the sovereignty of the people, which take on more functions of the public sector as they demonstrate competence. Maduro recognizes Venezuela is still a capitalist-based economy and has identified the commune as the centerpiece of democratic socialist governance.

The example of creating real democracy, working to break from capitalism and moving to a socialized economy by and for the people, is what the United States and oligarchs fear. That is why Maduro is called a dictator and the US calls for a military coup “to restore democracy”, which really means restore the pre-1998 oligarchy and protect capitalism.

The presidential election, originally scheduled for the end of 2018, was moved up to April when the US State Department, OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, other regional conservative governments and opposition parties called for 2018 presidential elections to be brought forward. Then, they claimed April was too soon. To appease the opposition, the government agreed to move the elections to May 20, signing an agreement with right-wing candidates Henri Falcon and Javier Bertucci that included a host of electoral guarantees. Despite this, the US and its allies said the elections were illegitimate. In the end, the elections went forward and Maduro won an easy victory.

Maduro Takes First Steps After Election

While Maduro won the election against Venezuelan candidates, he was really running against US imperialism. Maduro overcame great challenges to win a mandate to continue the Bolivarian Revolution. After the election, he urged dialogue with the opposition, seeking to move Venezuela to peace. Maduro also ordered the US Charge d’Affaires Todd Robinson and head of political affairs (who he described as the head of the CIA), Brian Naranjo, to leave Venezuela.  He accused them of being involved in “a military conspiracy” against Venezuela. This is consistent with calls for a military coup by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Senator Rubio as well as Trump’s claims of a military option for Venezuela.

Maduro must confront the economic war and build an independent economy, alongside and often led by the communes. Grassroots activists are calling for a National Emergency Plan on food, the electric system and Internet, health care and education. China and Russia recognized Maduro’s victory. He needs their support for major projects.

Maduro and the Venezuelans still face significant obstacles. The internal traitors, who seek a return to the pre-Chavez era, have been exposed as more loyal to the US and international finance than to Venezuela will need to be held accountable. The problems of corruption and crime will continue. And, Maduro will be under threat of attacks from US-allied Colombia and Brazil.

To show solidarity, people in the US should call for an end to sanctions and threats of regime change in Venezuela. Let Venezuela be independent and pursue its Bolivarian revolutionary path. We may learn something about democracy from them.

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Maryland Community Devastated After Second Flood in Two Years

ELLICOTT CITY, Md.  — After flash floods sent cars floating down Main Street in historic Ellicott City, Maryland, local officials said they were heartbroken to see the community so severely damaged again less than two years after a devastating flood killed two people and caused millions in damages.

As the flood waters receded late Sunday, officials were just beginning the grim task of assessing the destruction.

During an evening news conference, Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman said authorities aren’t aware of any fatalities or missing people. But first responders and rescue officials were still going through the muddied, damaged downtown, conducting safety checks and ensuring people evacuated.

Kittleman said the damage was significant and appeared to him to be worse than the flooding two summers ago.

Residents and business owners, Kittleman said, “are faced with the same daunting task again.”

“We will be there for them as we were in 2016,” he said.

Gov. Larry Hogan also toured the area and promised “every bit of assistance we possibly can.”

“They say this is a once every 1,000-year flood and we’ve had two of them in two years,” Hogan said.

The flooding Sunday swept away parked cars in Ellicott City, set along the west bank of Maryland’s Patapsco River and about 13 miles (20 kilometers) west of Baltimore.

Jessica Ur, a server at Pure Wine Cafe on the city’s Main Street, told The Baltimore Sun that she watched as gushing waters swept three or four parked cars down the street.

“It’s significantly higher than it was before,” she told the newspaper, comparing the floodwaters to those of 2016.

Mike Muccilli, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sterling, Virginia, said it’s too early to make comparisons between the two floods. But he said both were devastating.

In July 2016, Ellicott City received 6.6 inches (17 centimeters) of rain over a two- to three-hour period. On Sunday, the community received nearly 8 inches (20.32 centimeters) of rain over a six-hour period, but most of it fell during an intense, three-hour period, Muccilli said.

“In a normal heavy rain event, you wouldn’t see this amount of flooding, where you see cars floating down the road,” Muccilli said. “This was a true flash flood.”

Some people reported hearing a blaring alarm during the flooding. Others said they gathered in the second story of a building to anxiously watch the seething waters. One sight during the flood: a handmade, white flag hung from an upper story of a Main Street building bearing the letters SOS.

“If you are trapped, we are coming,” the Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services tweeted at one point.

Ellicott City has been rebuilding since the 2016 flooding damaged and destroyed businesses. Local officials recently said that 96 percent of the businesses were back in operation and more than 20 new businesses had again opened in the Main Street area.

Just two weeks ago, Hogan announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had awarded the state and county more than $1 million to pay for projects aimed at reducing the flood risk in areas around Main Street.

Some are already asking questions about whether enough was done after the last flood to prevent a similar catastrophe.

Hogan said temporary improvements were in place and more things were in the works to reduce the community’s vulnerabilities. But he said big changes take time, and no one expected such a huge flood so soon after 2016.

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Sticking to Climate Accord Could Save $20 Trillion

California scientists have worked out how to reduce global warming so as to make the world 20 trillion US dollars better off. It’s simple. Just stick to the spirit of an international agreement that the American President Donald Trump has already broken.

The researchers arrived at their forecasts of climate profit and loss to calculate that if the 195 nations who agreed in Paris in 2015 to contain global warming to “well below” 2°C by the end of the century kept their promise – and global temperatures have already crept up 1°C in the last century as a consequence of the profligate use of fossil fuels – then there would be a 60% chance that the benefits would exceed $20 trillion.

That represents the savings made by avoiding the calamitous economic damage that would accompany higher temperatures. The same scientists also argue that 71% of the world’s nations – including China, Japan and the US – with 90% of the world’s population have a 75% chance of experiencing reduced economic damage, if global warming is limited to 1.5°C: that is, to just an extra half of a degree this century.

And although conjectures about wealth that has yet to be generated and disasters that have yet to happen are subject to enormous uncertainties, the scientists stand by their argument: if the world fails to meet the 2°C limit, the economic damage could add up to 15% of the world’s entire economic output.

Calculations like these are difficult enough, but at least one of the authors has been making the case for concerted global action for years. Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University, has already warned that global extremes of heat and drought are an inevitable consequence of continued warming.

He says warming that has happened so far has already increased California’s vulnerability to devastating drought and may now be influencing the south Asian monsoon, on which a billion people depend.

“It is clear from our analysis that achieving the more ambitious Paris goal is highly likely to benefit most countries – and the global economy overall – by avoiding more severe economic damages,” Professor Diffenbaugh said.

And Marshall Burke, his Stanford colleague who led the study in the journal Nature, said: “Over the past century we have already experienced a 1°C increase in global temperature, so achieving the ambitious targets laid out in the Paris Agreement will not be easy or cheap. We need a clear understanding of how much economic benefit we’re going to get from meeting these different targets.”

Worse outcome possible

The researchers think they may even have underestimated the costs of a dangerously hotter world: they cite, for instance, the rapid rise in sea levels if the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps melt, or heat waves and floods intensify more dramatically than anything seen so far in human history.

Although the richest nations stand to benefit most from sticking strictly to the Paris ambitions, some of the world’s poorest regions will also feel the benefit, with a noticeable increase in gross domestic product per head.

“The countries likely to benefit the most are already relatively hot today,” Dr Burke said. “The historical record tells us that additional warming will be very harmful to these countries’ economies, and so even small reductions in future warming could have large benefits for most countries.”

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Budget Battle Brews After Trump Threatens Another Shutdown

WASHINGTON—President Trump has warned Congress that he will never sign another foot-tall, $1 trillion-plus government-wide spending bill like the one he did in March. His message to lawmakers in both parties: Get your act together before the next budget lands on my desk.

After a brief government shutdown earlier this year, Democrats and Republicans now agree on the need for budgeting day-to-day operations of government by the old-fashioned way. That means weeks of open debate and amendments that empower rank-and-file lawmakers, rather than concentrating power in the hands of a few leaders meeting in secret.

But Capitol Hill’s dysfunction is so pervasive that even the most optimistic predictions are for only a handful of the 12 annual spending bills to make it into law by Oct. 1, the start of the new budget year. The rest may get bundled together into a single, massive measure yet again.

The worst-case scenario? A government shutdown just a month before Election Day, Nov. 6, as Republicans and Democrats fight for control of the House and possibly the Senate. Trump is agitating for more money for his long-promised border wall with Mexico. So far, he has been frustrated by limited success on that front.

“We need the wall. We’re going to have it all. And again, that wall has started. We got $1.6 billion. We come up again (in) September,” Trump said in a campaign-style event in Michigan last month. “If we don’t get border security, we’ll have no choice. We’ll close down the country because we need border security.”

At stake is the funding for daily operations of government agencies. A budget deal this year reversed spending cuts that affected military readiness and put a crimp on domestic agencies. A $1.3 trillion spending bill swept through Congress in March, though Trump entertained last-minute second thoughts about the measure and promised he would not sign a repeat.

The demise of the annual appropriations process took root after Republicans took over the House in 2011 and is part of a broader breakdown on Capitol Hill. The yearly bills need bipartisan support to advance, which has grated on tea party lawmakers. GOP leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and his predecessor as speaker, Ohio Republican John Boehner, have preferred to focus on other priorities.

Ryan did throw his weight behind a two-year budget agreement this year that set an overall spending limit of $1.3 trillion for both 2018 and 2019, citing a need to boost the Pentagon.

That, in theory, makes it easier to get the appropriations process back on track. But in the GOP-controlled House, where Democratic votes are generally needed to pass the bills, Democrats are complaining that Republicans have shortchanged domestic agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency.

That’s not the case in the Senate, where the new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Alabama Republican Richard Shelby, is determined to get the system working again. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York is on board, as is Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., himself a decades-long veteran of that powerful committee.

“We want this to work,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who criticized the GOP-controlled House for continuing to pack legislation with “poison pills.”

Obstacles remain, however.

For starters, floor debates could lead to votes on contentious issues such as immigration, the border wall, gun control and others that some lawmakers might hope to avoid.

Democrats are wary of Republicans trying to jam through the Pentagon spending bill before dealing with some agencies.

And Trump could blow up the whole effort at any time.

Trump is prone to threatening government shutdowns on Twitter or when he riffs in public, and then backing off when bills are delivered to him.

In the House, a familiar problem awaits.

Many conservative Republicans won’t vote for some bills because they think they spend too much money. That means Democratic votes are a must. But many Democrats are upset over unrelated policy add-ons pushed by the GOP, and they won’t vote for the spending bills unless those provisions are removed, which usually doesn’t happen until end-stage talks.

At the same time, House GOP leaders are distracted by disputes over immigration, and they haven’t made the appropriations bills a priority.

An effort led by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to cut or “rescind” $15 billion in unspent money has run into greater opposition than anticipated. Meantime, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., is unpopular with some House conservatives, who cite his votes against a recent farm bill and against last year’s tax cut measure, and that may hamper his effectiveness.

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Teaching ‘Les Misérables’ in Prison

I spent the last four months teaching Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel “Les Misérables” at a maximum-security prison in New Jersey. My students—like Hugo’s main character, Jean Valjean, who served 19 years in prison—struggle with shame, guilt, injustice, poverty and discrimination, and yearn for redemption and transformation. The novel gave them a lens to view their lives and a ruling system every bit as cruel as Hugo’s 19th-century France.

“Les Misérables” was wildly successful when it was published, including among Civil War soldiers in the United States, although Hugo’s condemnation of slavery was censored from Confederate copies. It was American socialist leader Eugene V. Debs’ favorite book—he read it in French. The socialist British Prime Minister Lloyd George said “Les Misérables” taught him more about poverty and the human condition than anything else he had ever read and instilled in him a lifelong ambition “to alleviate the distress and the suffering of the poor.” Hugo’s novel, however, enraged the ruling elites. It was panned by French critics. Copies were burned in Spain. Pope Pius IX put it on the church’s list of banned books, along with “Madame Bovary” and all the novels of Stendhal and Honoré de Balzac.

“While through the working laws of customs there continues to exist a condition of social condemnation which artificially creates a human hell within civilization, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; while the three great problems of this century, the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjugation of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child in darkness, continue unresolved; while in some regions social asphyxia remains, while ignorance and poverty persist on earth, books such as this cannot fail to be of value,” Hugo wrote in the preface.

My students interpreted the novel through the peculiar reality of prison, something that would have pleased Hugo, who relentlessly chronicled the injustices meted out to the poor by ruling institutions and agents of the law. The heroes in his book are the outcasts, the demonized and the impoverished—les misérables—as well as the rebels, usually doomed, who rise up in their defense. The theme that runs through the novel can be summed up in Leo Tolstoy’s dictum: “The only certain happiness in life is to live for others.”

Jean Valjean, after 19 years in prison—five for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s hungry children and 14 more as punishment for attempts at escape—is released with no home, no occupation and little money. He tramps through the French countryside, ending up in the town of Digne. He is required to present to local authorities his yellow identity card, a document that brands him for life as an ex-convict. He is refused a room at several inns, despite having the money to pay for lodgings. Finally, after Valjean is found sleeping outside, Monseigneur Bienvenu, the local bishop, gives him a place to rest in his modest house. Valjean arises early and, leaving before the bishop wakes, steals the household silver—platters, forks, knives and spoons—the cleric’s last and only extravagance after having given away most of his possessions to the poor. The gendarmes spy Valjean on the road with his plunder. They haul him before Monseigneur Bienvenu. The bishop lies to the gendarmes, saying he gave the silver to Valjean. After the police leave, he turns to Valjean: “Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man. … Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to what is evil but to what is good. I have bought your soul to save it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”

Valjean, shaken, nevertheless commits one final crime. He robs a boy of a coin, almost instinctively, but it was “an act of which he was no longer capable.” The theft plunges him into despair. He desperately searches for the boy to return the coin. He cannot find him. The boy has run away in terror. Valjean vows to become a different man.

The decision by the bishop to lie on behalf of Valjean triggered an intense debate in my classroom.

“Who would do this?” a student asked.

“No one,” another student answered.

Several students dismissed the scene as improbable.

And then from the back of the room a student, speaking in emotional undertones, told this story.

“I came back to my bunk one day,” he said. “There was a new Bible on it. Inside was a letter. It was from my victim’s sister. She wrote, ‘I forgive you. Now you must forgive yourself.’ I broke down. I could be more than a criminal. I could change. She made that possible.”

My students will spend their lives condemned as felons. They, like Valjean, will never completely wash away the mark of Cain. Transformation, even when it occurs, will not free them from the criminal caste system. Transformation must be carried out not for what it will achieve, for often it will achieve nothing, or how it will be perceived, for most of the wider society will not perceive it. Transformation is about making peace with yourself. It is about obeying your conscience, which Hugo equates with the divine. It is about never living at the expense of another. Transformation is about rising above the hatred many feel, with justification, for a society that has betrayed them.

“If you are persecuted for virtue, why be virtuous?” a student asked.

“Those who have nothing need other people,” another student said. “We can’t survive alone. The more we sacrifice for those around us, the more we reduce our collective suffering; the more we recover our humanity, the more people reach out to us when we need help, and we all need help. Goodness is contagious.”

And yet, as my students know, this internal battle is hard and fierce within a society that denies the poor dignity and respect.

“Obscurely he perceived that the priest’s forgiveness was the most formidable assault he had ever sustained,” Hugo wrote of Valjean, “that if he resisted it his heart would be hardened once and for all, and that if he yielded he must renounce the hatred which the acts of man had implanted in him during so many years, and to which he clung. He saw dimly that this time he must either conquer or be conquered, and that the battle was not joined, a momentous and decisive battle between the evil in himself and the goodness in the other man.”

Hugo was aware that there are some who cannot be redeemed. They are incapable of empathy or remorse. They are driven by greed and ambition. They take a perverse joy in inflicting suffering on others. They are capable only of deceit. These people must be kept at bay. In the novel they are represented by Monsieur and Madame Thénardier, “human creatures which, like crayfish, always retreat into shadow, going backwards rather than forwards through life, gaining in deformity with experience, going from bad to worse and sinking into even deeper darkness.”

This cold reality, nevertheless, proved to be a painful one to digest in the classroom. Several students argued passionately that everyone, no matter how depraved, could ultimately be redeemed, and yet the reality of prison, my students conceded, amply illustrates that there are human predators to whom one can never show vulnerability or expect mercy. Fyodor Dostoyevsky described hell as the inability to love. These predators inhabit this hell. This internal hell, a barrenness of the soul, is exemplified in the police inspector Javert, who hounds Valjean throughout the novel. Hugo wrote, “The Austrian peasants believe that in every wolf-litter there is a dog-whelp which the mother kills, because otherwise when it grows larger it will devour the rest of her young. Endow this dog with a human face, and you have Javert.”

Javert, born in a prison to a mother who was a fortune teller and a father who was a convict, came from the underclass he persecuted. The social backgrounds of corrections officers, police and prisoners were then, and are today, often the same; indeed it is not uncommon for prisoners and corrections officers to have familial ties. Javert embraced the rigid code of the law and absolute state authority, which absolved him from moral responsibility. “His duties were his religion,” Hugo wrote. Javert’s iron fealty to the letter of the law is juxtaposed with Valjean’s fealty to empathy and justice, which is repeatedly criminalized by those in power.

There is a moment in the novel when a man named Champmathieu is hauled into court and accused of being Valjean, who has broken parole and is living under the assumed name of Monsieur Madeleine. Javert and three witnesses who were in prison with Valjean insist the man is Valjean. Valjean, under his pseudonym, has become the prosperous mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. If he remains silent, allowing the innocent Champmathieu to go to prison in his place, he will throw the police off his trail permanently. During a night of anguished indecision, he burns his last personal effects from his life as a convict, but then sees the coin he stole from the boy when he left the bishop’s house—a coin that represents his last crime and his transformation. He goes to the courtroom. He announces to the stunned court that he is Valjean. He condemns himself, but recovers his name. He saves his soul.

The importance of a name, and the idea that carrying out a moral act means you will be crucified by the ruling elites, intrigued my students, most of whom, like Valjean, are known by their prison numbers. Valjean, Hugo wrote, sacrificed “his personal security to his moral principles” and “had, it seems, concluded after the manner of saints and sages, that his first duty was not to himself.” Jean Valjean, through this act of self-sacrifice, emerged from the court “even more honored and secure than before.” He had, in Hugo’s words, taken up the cross. Hugo went on:

Certainly his life had a purpose, but was it simply to hide himself, to outwit the police? Had everything he had done been for no better reason than this? Had he not had a greater purpose, the saving not of his life but of his soul, the resolve to become a good and honorable and upright man as the bishop required of him—had not that been his true and deepest intention? How he talked of closing the door on the past when, God help him, he would be reopening the door by committing an infamous act, not merely that of a thief but of the most odious of thieves. He would be robbing a man of his life, his peace, his place in the sun, morally murdering him by condemning him to the living death that is called a convict prison. But if, on the other hand, he saved the man by repairing the blunder, by proclaiming himself Jean Valjean the felon, this would be to achieve his own true resurrection and firmly close the door on the hell from which he sought to escape. To return to it in appearance would be to escape from it in reality. This was what he must do, and without it he would have accomplished nothing, his life would be wasted, his repentance meaningless, and there would be nothing left for him to say except, “Who cares?”

Hugo added: “It was his most melancholy destiny that he could achieve sanctity in the eyes of God only by returning to degradation in the eyes of men.” He is filled with terror, yet proceeds. “Whichever way he looked,” Hugo wrote, “the course of duty glared at him as though the words were written in letters of fire—‘Stand up and say your name!’ ” He could “cling to his paradise and become a devil, or become a saint by going back to hell.”

To save Champmathieu, Valjean gives up his freedom. In this singular act of justice and heroic self-sacrifice he exposes the bankruptcy and corruption of the courts, including the lie of authority. He elevates a convict, Jean Valjean, to a higher morality. He redeems his name and the names of all convicts. The price is catastrophic. But the price for moral acts is usually catastrophic. No one is rewarded for virtue. In my class this chapter triggered a discussion of Immanuel Kant’s “categorical imperative,” the idea that there are things we must do no matter what the consequences. The moral life, as Hugo pointed out, is not pragmatic or rational. It does not guarantee that we as distinct individuals survive. And yet, it permits us, by living for others, to become our best selves. It allows us a bittersweet happiness.

Valjean finds his ultimate fulfillment in raising the orphan Cosette. Most of my students have children. They struggle in prison to hold on to their role as fathers. Their children are often the only way left for them to have influence on the outside. But, as in the novel, these children grow up and drift away.

One of my students, serving a life sentence without parole and unable to be with his small daughter, structured his day as if she was in the cell with him. He woke her up in the morning. He cooked for her. He spoke to her. He read books to her. He wrote long letters. Every night he said goodnight to her as if she were in the next bunk. This ritual was not only about loss. It preserved his identity as something other than a prisoner. It allowed him to retain the title of father. It kept alive the virtues of nurturing, tenderness and love that prison can often crush. Hugo’s understanding of the titanic internal struggle to be human in an inhuman environment was intimately familiar to my 26 students.

Valjean, at 80, is consumed by the isolation that grips many in prison, dying alone, condemned as one of les misérables with no friends or family. Cosette has married. He feels forgotten. In the final scene his beloved Cosette appears as he dies.

We began each class with a student summarizing the main points in the week’s reading. On the day of the final class a student, Joel, rose to speak, holding two pages of notes.

“I think about the final interaction between Valjean, Cosette and Marius [her husband],” he said. “I think about the strength in [Valjean] for all he had suffered, all he had sacrificed, all he had endured just for the beauty and simplicity of love. I think about those last moments between them, the thankfulness for the opportunity to love; the opportunity to not be alone in his last moments; the opportunity to live. I thank Hugo for the picture he painted for me here. … I think about the man who became my father and how much pain and suffering I have caused him. I think about the things he sacrificed for me. I think about all the challenges he took on for the sake of me. Yet despite it all I think about how much love I have had the opportunity to share with him, how much life he has given me. I pray that on his last day he may be able to rest his hand on my head, to feel a sense of accomplishment when it comes to his son, to be free of this world with a sense of happiness. That I too can one day say [quoting lines penciled onto Valjean’s gravestone]:

He sleeps. Although so much he was denied,

He lived; and when his dear love left him, died.

It happened of itself, in the calm way

That in the evening the night-time follows day.

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