Sunday, November 04, 2018

Mexican Corn Chowder in the Kitchen

First up, Sam e-mailed that he and his girlfriend like the soup recipe with creamed corn in it.  What was it?

 

People do love that recipe.  And, just FYI, I use two cans of creamed corn in the recipe below.

 

Here it is, from December 1, 2007:



Each week, Ava and C.I. are out on the road meeting with groups to discuss Iraq. Kat goes with them on those trips a great deal. With the weather getting colder, she has been in a soup mode and not really in the mood for canned soup. So Ava and C.I. whipped up a soup this week that Kat insisted they make "again and again." I asked them to write down the recipe and was told, "Trina, you have that book. You recommended it and we bought it." That was flattering.

What's the book? Kevin Mills and Nancy Mills' Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen.


Mexican Corn Chowder
1 medium onion
2 medium celery stalks
2 tablespoons corn oil
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon flour
1 15-ounce can creamed corn
1/2 4-ounce can diced green chilies, (drained
2 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup shredded Monterrey Jack cheese
Handful tortilla chips, whole or broken

Peel and finely chop the onion. Wash the celery stalks, trim and discard the ends and cut the stalks into 1/4-inch slices.
Heat the oil in a medium-size pot over medium heat. Add the onion and celery and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to soften.
Add the cumin and flour and stir carefully until both are fully absorbed into the onion/celery mixture. Add the corn, chilies, milk, salt and black pepper and stir thoroughly.
Cook, uncovered, over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for 8 to 10 minutes. Stir in the cheese and cook for another 1 to 2 minutes, or until the cheese melts and the soup is hot but not boiling. Ladle into bowls, sprinkle on a few tortilla chips, if you like, to provide crunch, and serve.

 

 

That’s a solid recipe.  So few things are solid these days.  Patrick Martin (WSWS) explains the bad news:



A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, made public Tuesday, underscores the role of inherited wealth in the growth of social inequality in the United States. The report, titled, “Billionaire Bonanza: Inherited Wealth Dynasties in the 21st-Century United States,” analyzes the Forbes magazine list of the 400 wealthiest individuals in the United States, and finds that one-third of them derived their wealth primarily from inheritance from their parents or from an even older generation of the super-rich.

The three wealthiest of the dynasties, the Waltons, the Koch brothers and the Mars family, saw their combined wealth increase nearly 6,000 percent since 1982, while average household wealth in America actually declined slightly. These three families, based in retailing, oil production and food manufacturing respectively, had a combined wealth of $348.7 billion in 2018, up from $5.84 billion in 1982, adjusted to 2018 dollars.

Besides the seven Waltons, two Kochs and six Mars, the report notes nine Cargill heirs on the Forbes 400 list, along with five Johnsons (Fidelity Investments), nine Pritzkers (Hyatt Hotels), five heirs to the Cox media fortune, four heirs to the Duncan oil fortune, four Lauders (perfumes), five billionaires from the Johnson & Johnson empire, four Bass brothers (oil), three Strykers (medical equipment), and so on. The top 15 billionaire dynasties had a combined wealth of $618 billion.

In the 100 years since the first US “Gilded Age,” the vast wealth of the original dynastic families like the Rockefellers, Mellons, Carnegies and DuPonts has been dispersed among large numbers of descendants, as well as diluted by progressive taxation (before 1980) and, in a few cases, by transfer to foundations. Few heirs of the original “robber barons” now make the Forbes 400 list. But the report notes, “Now several decades into the second Gilded Age, dynastic wealth families once again appear in force on the Forbes 400 list. And like previous dynasties, a segment of these families use their considerable wealth and power to rig the rules of the economy to protect and expand their wealth and power.”

These wealthy families have pushed through major changes in the tax and inheritance laws that will allow them to pass on their wealth to the next generation virtually without hindrance—changes which will be taken advantage of by the new layer of super-rich, personified by the trio of Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose combined wealth is greater than that of the bottom half of the American population.

But their impact on American social and political life goes well beyond the immediate accumulation and preservation of family fortunes. The report begins by citing a warning by Paul Volcker—who, as the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the US central bank, was intimately familiar with the political and social psychology of this layer—about the dangers of the rule over society by a tiny elite of the fabulously rich.

“The central issue is we’re developing into a plutocracy,” Volcker said. “We’ve got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart and constructive. And they don’t like government and they don’t like to pay taxes.” Hence the agenda of tax-cutting and deregulation carried out by Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

 

We are fleeced.  Daily.  Our politicians take our money for their salaries but refuse to actually represent us.  Our politicians take our money -- our tax dollars -- and refuse to spend those dollars to better our health, to better our education, to better our lives.  Instead, they fleece us dry and send that money to war and war makers and death and destruction.


This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Friday:


Friday, November 2, 2018.  Actions in DC this weekend as the never-ending wars continue.


On this week's BLACK AGENDA RADIO, hosts Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey spoke with Omali Yeshitela about a number of topics including the actions in DC this weekend which include the march Saturday on the White House.


Nellie Bailey:  This year, the theme is US Out Of Africa. Omali Yeshitela is chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition.  He says the US Command in Africa (AFRICOM) is there to prop up foreign, economic and social control over the continent.  But Yeshitela says American global rule is in disarray.

Omali Yeshitela: Things are falling apart but it's an extremely dangerous moment as well -- which is one of those things that makes our mobilization so important and even how we've characterized our mobilization: There is no peace, Africa and Africans are at war, US to the world "Comply or Die."
I think it's quite appropriate, looking at what we see, that this chaos -- and some of it even maybe planned chaos -- this false debate that's going on between different sectors of the ruling class who are calling themselves Republicans and Democrats as part of a shell game that they play against the masses of people, with some of them using impoverished and desperate people, in order to make their political point while others are using the same phenomenon to make a point that speaks to reaction and calling on the whole reactionary history of the United States government and the White population of this country.  So you've got one sector with a very cynical and callous way of using the poverty, the oppression, even the actions of repressive sector of the bourgeois -- right now Trump represents the public face of that -- so you've got them using those actions to mobilize people, or attempt to mobilize people, for their own benefit which serves capital and not the people.  Then you've got people like Trump and the social base that he represents in terms of reaction.  All of them, again, using the people.  And that's why the Black is Back mobilization is so critical at this moment because it calls on African people to get organized.  It calls on Black people to get organized.  It calls on us to come to terms with the fact that even when we look at this crisis of imperialism, that there's an escalated aggression that's being made against our people, against the people of the world, and even against the ability of the people to protest against the things that are happening to us.  So it's a splendid moment but it's also, like I said, a very dangerous moment.  A wounded animal, as you know, as has often been described correctly so, is most dangerous and that's what we're looking at here with the United States government, US imperialism and, in many ways, imperialism in general.  But, of course, the hegemon is wounded and that creates an interesting sort of dynamics because everyone who is the friend of the hegemon is not a friend.  They're a friend because it's  the hegemon, it's got the guns, it's got all the money, it's got all the influence or appears to have but as you see US imperialism showing any signs of weakness in that case you will see -- and we are seeing -- the emergence of other forces who are willing -- even if timidly -- to challenge the hegemon for its own space and for its own interest. It's a very interesting and critical moment in history and the Black is Back is right on time, I think, to be pushing this mobilization.





The Black is Back coalition notes:

Hundreds of black people from throughout the U.S. and from every town, city and state, will descend on Washington, D.C.—capital of imperialist white power—on November 3 and 4.
This is a Call for you to take your place in the rally, march and conference with the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations under the banner: “There is no Peace: Africa and Africans are at War!”
For nine years in a row the Black is Back Coalition has been leading the charge to unite our people against the growing, desperate white nationalist attacks by the U.S. and other imperialist countries against our people and the colonized peoples and countries of the U.S. and the world.
The Coalition is calling on everyone to join with our brothers and sisters at Malcolm X Park on Saturday, November 3 at 12 noon. Numerous speakers that represent our community’s demand for self-determination and our historical opposition to imperialist white power will expose the relentless war being waged against Africa, African people and the peoples of the world.
At 2 P.M. there will be a black people’s march on the White House. Then there will be another rally at Lafayette Park across the street from the White House.
On Sunday at 12 noon the people will gather for a conference at the Stuart Center, 821 Varnum Street NE for a full discussion of all these issues and resolutions of how we should move to defend ourselves against the war on our people in a process that will build a new world without black oppression and human exploitation.
Every day the blood-stained list of African people within the U.S. who are shot or killed by U.S. white citizens or police grows grotesquely long. In 47 of the cities with the largest police departments, police shot at least 3,649 African people from 2010 through 2016.
These same domestic military occupation forces are the primary instruments leading to the prisons within the U.S. bursting at the seams with African people who are now organizing within the prison concentration camps for an end to this colonial slavery that is justified by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. constitution.
Regular white citizens are also assaulting our people with sometimes deadly consequences—in churches, on college campuses, at public transportation stations and in fast food restaurants, to name just a few places.
In St. Louis-Ferguson, Missouri, with one of the highest incidences of police shootings in the U.S., the U.S. government, through the weapon of eminent domain, has confiscated nearly 100 acres of land previously owned by African people, to build a massive, $2 billion super-secret international spy station known as the National Geo-spatial Intelligence Station (NGA).
This spy agency, to have its own police force in our community, is also part of an ever-expanding gentrification process in St. Louis that is daily driving our people into deeper poverty and despair.
The Black is Back Coalition is also calling on you to join your brothers and sisters protesting the growing U.S. military secret wars in Africa.
Hundreds of U.S. Special Operation forces are violently destroying villages and supporting thuggish African governments to prevent African workers from coming to power and gaining control of our own resources for Africa’s benefit instead of the benefit of white power.
U.S. Special Operations forces are also in Africa to contend with China for economic influence. In addition, they are there to protect the interests of its junior imperialist partners on the Continent that contains at least a third of the world’s known mineral assets.
The U.S. has created a vast war project called the Africa Command or AFRICOM, a command center solely dedicated to keeping Africa under white power control and our people in a permanent state of violently impoverished exploitation and indirect colonial domination.
The Black is Back Coalition is calling on African people to join in our protest of U.S. initiated or actual armed and economic warfare against and political destabilization of other countries like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, China and Russia—countries that have refused to comply with U.S. imperialist demands.
The Coalition’s 19-point National Black Political Agenda for Self-determination calls for an end to AFRICOM. It also demands that the U.S. get out of Africa, Asia and Latin America and pay reparations to Africa and Africans everywhere.
We demand the upliftment of African women and the African family as well as black community control of police and the immediate withdrawal of U.S. domestic military forces from the African community.
Come out to join with your brothers and sisters in the demand for the release of all our political prisoners and the end to the mass incarceration of our people and the release of African people from the colonial concentration camps called prison.
The escalated attack by the U.S. on Africa and African people worldwide is evidence of the growing crisis of imperialist white power. The Black is Back Coalition is calling on all African people and friends of peace to join with us in a great celebration of resistance.
We can win!
We will win!
We are winning!

Featured Speakers:

Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Glen Ford, Kamm Howard, Ajamu Baraka and Lisa Davis.



BREAKING: BAP has launched its campaign to shut down and end the U.S. occupation of Africa! Read our statement and find out how you can get involved 👉🏿





Why the need to mobilize?

Because of idiots like this.




This is who Trump is afraid of. The reason more troops are on the border now than currently in Iraq. LOOK. 








Debra Messing 'discovers' Iraq.  How very Columbus of her.  She discovers it to complain that more US troops are on the US border than in Iraq.  She's upset that there are not more US troops in Iraq.  15 years and counting of ongoing war and Debra is upset that more US troops are not in Iraq.

To Debra, this passes for 'logic.'  Because, to Debra, continued and never-ending war -- hell, war period -- is a-okay and normal.  War period?  Debra Messing didn't speak out about the Iraq War.  It was even a joke on WILL & GRACE.  Debra's character protested not getting free noodles.  That she protested.  She said good people have to care and it was all a joke that she didn't care about war.

That's what the world is up against, selfish bitches who don't give a damn about people dying.  The only time people matter to the Debra Messings is when they can be used for political football.  So, to attack Donald Trump, Debra suddenly 'discovers' the Iraq War.  She's fine with it.  She doesn't protest it.  She doesn't even call for an end to it.  She's glad it's there because it allows her to use it for political football.

Shame on anyone who buys into her crap.

You can call out what Donald Trump is doing without seeking to justify war.

Otherwise, you're just the ridiculous Jim Sciuotto who only mentions Iraq to either endorse it so he can whine about the march or to endorse it so he can whine about the fact that, in two years of being president, Donald Trump has not visited Iraq.  (For those who've forgotten, in eight years as president, Barack Obama only visited Iraq once.)

The wars are nothing but political props that the Jims and Debras grab on to repeatedly to try to political football.  The fact that people are dying doesn't matter to them.  Like the late Barbara Bush, they don't bother their 'beautiful minds' with such things.

Oh, look, here's another stupid bitch.



As Trump plays golf & holds rallies at the expense of taxpayers, he has the nerve to tell our servicemen and women that he can't visit them in Iraq or Afghanistan because he's "very busy".

These people are fighting for us!  Trump is not!

Trump doesn't care!







The US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't fighting "for us."  They're fighting because the US government sent them there.  Why are they there?  Why are they still there?

Those are questions the world is asking but not questions that bother Tiny Ed because he's all about using war as a political football.  He's a con artist who defrauded people and the fact that he's part of the 'resistance' should scare any honest participant of that group.



They don't care what happens in Iraq.  They don't care about the people of Basra.




Political and civil authorities in ’s oil-rich region of revealed that activists are planning  demonstrations again, in light of the suspension of parliamentary membership of a number of their lawmakers.





The protests are starting again.  Already, there's been a sit-in.  They were put on hold for the religious pilgrimage but they are returning.  Why?  Oil rich Basra produces so much wealth for the government of Iraq yet the people in Basra need jobs (the multi-nationals stealing oil from Iraq don't even try to pretend to employ a significant number of locals).  The people can't drink the water unless they want to be part of the over 100,000 so far that have been hospitalized for drinking the water.  They don't have regular electricity which was a nightmare in the oppressive heat of summer but will also be bad as winter arrives and temperatures drop.


Not only have these issues not been addressed, there's also the appearance -- on the part of Prime Minister Adel Abdul al-Mahdi -- that these issues are not pressing.

This appearance is upsetting politicians in Basra.



4 Iraq MPs protest government failure to honour Basra, Basra has 25 seats in Iraqi parliament  "Four Iraqi lawmakers have suspended their membership in the government after no ministers were chosen to represent Basra in the government" via






Again, this is the politicians.  The protesters are not making this their fight at present.




Despite walk-outs from Basra MPs over the lack of places in the new Iraqi government cabinet, protesters told BasraPress24 that this is not one of the focuses of their protests:




In fact, let's note the thread.



Protests set to resume in Basra on Friday, the first under the new government of Adel Abdul Mahdi:




  • "We are now organizing a new demonstration in Basra in order not to lose  our rights and in make sure that the current government is paying  attention to us and our demands that we have [been voicing] for the past months"




  • Despite walk-outs from Basra MPs over the lack of places in the new Iraqi government cabinet, protesters told BasraPress24 that this is not one of the focuses of their protests:




  • Kazem al-Sahlani says that "in the previous government there were three ministers from Basra" and they "did not provide anything."



    He says that "water is not drinkable, unemployment is the same proportions, and the calamities and corruption are still the same, and those responsible for the killing of demonstrators are still present in the province."








    Former European Parliament member Struan Stevenson offers:

    Iraq is now the world's fourth-largest oil producer, with an output of over 4.78 million barrels a day and forecasts that this will rise to 7.5 million barrels by 2024. But industrial-scale corruption by successive Iraqi political leaders has left the country with little to show for its vast oil wealth. Sporadic power cuts, crumbling infrastructure, poor healthcare, wrecked sewerage systems and even water shortages are still the order of the day, as petro-dollars find their way into Swiss bank accounts and the divide between rich and poor escalates dramatically, even in Basra, where most of the oil is extracted.


    al-Mahdi reduced the Cabinet to 22 posts and yet still couldn't fill them.  He has 14 members of his Cabinet currently.  The lie was that he'd make more nominations this week but this week is over and he made no new nominations.  Next week?



    : -backed political forces in are preparing to launch mass demonstrations in to pressure the new prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to choose their candidates for the key security ministries.




    The announced that PM Adil Abdul Mahdi will not introduce candidates for the remaining portfolios during the |ary session scheduled for the middle of next week.









    The following community sites updated: