Saturday, May 29, 2010

America the Beautiful, another view

People are sometimes bewildered or at least don’t understand why I believe or write what I do. That people, some friends and family, are so bewildered does not surprise me. It does depress me.

Many people today, young and old, educated and not, are more interested in reality TV and texting than in what is going on all around them. If you beg to differ---you believe otherwise of yourself and/or of others---you consider yourself and others very aware---and you are---then maybe I’m the one who should be bewildered.

How can anyone be aware of the egregiously unfair and unlawful practices going on all around us and not be concerned even if you see it from a different frame.

Over the past week I’ve read and listened to others equally passionate about sharing what they have uncovered about things public that lead to public policy. Most of it hardly inspires trust. It does justify apprehension.

Examples serve to illustrate the point. There are so many. Arizona’s immigration policies, the policy of this republic supporting Israel’s brutal treatment of Muslims in general and Palestinians in particular, our leaders and mainstream’s insistence that we are a democracy---these are but a few.

The following article is unlikely to see the light of day in the mainstream media. It makes it alarmingly obvious just how egregious Israel’s policies are not to mention that the four corporations that own every major radio station, television station and newspaper in America today control what we see and hear.

In the mid 1980’s Israel offered nuclear weapons to the oppressive, racist apartheid foisting (white) South Africans. When a people (Israelis) who daily complain that everyone is out to get them are willing to sell nukes to racists I’m concerned. Nukes for anyone but Muslims?

Israeli 'nuclear offer' to S Africa
The documents provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence.

The internet is considred by many one of the most---pardon the expression---“democratizing” forces of our times. So why is it that if we are the “democracy” we were never intended to be there are so many rich and powerful who seek only to undermine it?

Internet Debate: Preserving User Parity
Should the Internet be divided into fast and slow lanes? That's the question at the heart of the debate over "network neutrality." Broadband providers have clashed with Internet and software companies, who are concerned that giving some users preferential treatment for a price effectively shuts out competition.

Should anyone---especially those who trample the very rights they are paid to protect---be above the law?

Ex-Chicago Police Officer On Trial For Torture


California, a bellweather state, is presently the battleground for the very essence of our republic.

Corporate Bucks Behind 'Citizens' Initiatives In Calif.

The recent decision by the Supremes to allow corporations to fund almost any political ad they desire is playing out in the “down-on-its-luck” state of California.

In the Eureka state ballot initiatives are a way of life. Voters have used them to change everything from “taxes to medical marijuana to raising chickens.” The concern is that now well-heeled corporations are funding the “movements.”

“Take Proposition 16, for example. The initiative, which proponents call the "Taxpayer's Right to Vote Act," would require a city or county that wants to start a municipal utility or expand an existing one to get approval from two-thirds of its voters. The backer of all this extra democracy is Pacific Gas and Electric, California's largest private, for-profit electric company.

"Prop 16 puts the power back in the hands of the people," says Robin Swanson, spokeswoman for the "Yes on 16" campaign. Pacific Gas and Electric, she says, isn't afraid of competition from publicly owned power providers.

"If our opponents can provide cheaper, greener, better electric service, then they shouldn't be afraid to go to the people and sell it to them," she says.

Except those municipal power providers are forbidden by law from spending a dime on electioneering. PG&E, on the other hand, has already put about $44 million into the campaign for Proposition 16.”

Demcracy! Right.

Meanwhile in Texas Red: a cratered landscape of prisons, deplorable public education, lack of healthcare and politicians and majority population intent on keeping it that way and bastion of backward thinking have re-written history in their image.

One analysis is that “voter apathy” was behind the success of the well-funded religiosities who have now foisted their worldview on the unsuspecting---too busy watching reality TV and texting crowd. I disagree.

Consider that apathy presupposes and requires knowledge of the problem and no desire, interest or enthusiasm to do anything about it.

In the Lone Star state people with the most reason to do something about it are products of the system put in place by the very people now abusing it, racist religiosities.

Products of that system are unlikely to have awareness of the issue. Products of dysfunctional cultures are unaware they are. Even those who are cognitively capable are products of that system and many if not most are victims of the wholly trinity (government, big business and organized religion), to boot.

Put another way, “the apple never falls far from the tree.” A person cannot teach what they do not know.

Textbook decision stems from apathy

Too Black for School?

How race skews school discipline in Texas.

Of those who insist we are a “democracy” I ask where is the “democracy” in any of these headlines?

Consider this, in the beginning 274 years ago, our senate was created in the image of the British House of (pardon the expression) Lords. The role of senators was to be if you are benevolent minded a check and balance on the folks’ house of representatives and advisors to the president.

Senators were to be elected by state legislators not the folk. By the way, then only property owning white men over the age of 21 could vote.

In the late 1960’s and early 70’s in the City of San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas minorities, Mexican-Americans, African-Americans were not served at the counter of then department store, Joskes.

Last year a high school in the state of Mississippi held its first ever “integrated” prom---because an African-American actor paid for it.

Early this year a judge in the south retired rather than perform an interracial marriage ceremony.

Today, gays, homosexuals, cannot openly serve in the military of this republic. Just three generations ago (1945) African-Americans could be in the military just not with the white guys.

Does that sound like a democracy to you?

The efforts of the malintended to assert their gosh-awful brand of worldview is never-ending---so must my one indiviudal vigilance and efforts to counter them.

More:  George Carlin - Saving the Planet

America the Beautiful, another view

Saturday, May 22, 2010

America the Beautiful: home of the free (for some) and land of the brave (when in the majority)

A quick show of hands---how many of you are from here? No, not like---were you born here? I mean how many of you are from here?


Okay, I’ll give you a hint. I see all these blond, blue-eyed rednecks driving around with bumper stickers that read “Native Texan.” And I think, “Really.” “You don’t look like me.”

Let me explain. These white people don’t look like me, Mexican. They don’t look Native American. So just how does that make them a “native” of this land? We've been in Afghanistan for almost a decade as terrorist-occupiers. Does that make us Native Afghanis? I’m just saying.

No dudes. You are not native “Texans” any more than wearing boots means you are some how a rancher or farmer or even a cowboy. The Africans and Mexicans are doing all that work for you. But by the way, maybe because you aren’t from here (think rent cars, hotel rooms) you sure have managed to fuck it up big time. I’m just saying.

The fact that you European and British terrorist exploiters have been occupying these lands almost as long as you have occupied the Middle East doesn’t make you a native.

You want your country back??? Which one---England, Germany, Austria, Poland, Ireland????

You are the same hateful, mean-sprited people a/ka/ Tea Partiers, Libertarians and reactionary Gopers who want to keep out the people who truly are native to this land. Dudes, what is your problem?

Don’t believe me? Guess you missed the Rand Paul giddy gaff. Here’s the link. On live television the senate nominee says the 1964 Civil Rights Act went “too far.” It was a giddy—if racist, bigoted moment of letting the mask slip so we could peek at the monster behind the curtain and he’s not the “great and powerful wizard of oz.”

Well let’s see. Blacks and Mexicans in 1964 were:

Harassed if they tried to vote, even after paying a poll tax---by a Supreme Court Chief Justice to be

Unable to sit at most public lunch counters in America (and expect to be served)

Had segregated “Coloreds” facilities from movie houses to rest rooms and swimming pools

Still fighting to sit at the front of the bus

Just newly integrated in the military

Still attending “separate but equal” apartheid public education system schools

Starting to die in, pardon the expression, spades in Vietnam along with Mexicans and poor whites

Living in largely segregated-by-design cities

And what--- a mere century (100 years) since Blacks had been freed to find jobs and pay taxes? Hell, they had only been slaves here since 1607.

Mexicans and the other indigenous peoples of the southern part of North America and parts south had only been under the boot of European/British terrorist-occupiers for half a millennia---that’ s 500 years to you Bubba. What is all the fuss about? (and “about” is spoken as if it had at least three syllables).

Speaking of less taxes and smaller “government” maybe the white guy/libertarian/terrorist-occupiers are on to something. I could spare myself a lot of taxes if we got rid of farm and ranch subsidies. At the same time it would level the global playing field for farmers. Without subsidies the farmers and ranchers wouldn’t need roads so we could stop building and maintaining farm to market roads. Think how much that will save in taxes! It’s enough to make your head spin.

Wait; let’s get rid of one of the really big “government” give-aways, the real welfare mothers and cheats---the military and the military-industrial comlex! Now we’re talking really big bucks.

To make “government” really small I think all “smaller government” people who win elections this Fall should give up their salary, entitlements, perks and even the office they’ve just won. That would save a passle of money, lighten the tax burden and reduce the size of government. That would only be right.

If these “less government” folks assume office just how did that reduce the size of government? I’m just saying.

Then again they’re doing what the real Natives of this land always called them on, “speaking with forked tongue.”

More:  George Carlin on Democracy


            America the Beautiful

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Mexican-Americans and Mexicans: the U.S. Palestinians? Or the new N—gers?

The First Lady put it this way, “For the First time in My Adult Lifetime, I’m really Proud of My Country.”

That statement raised the ire of many a history-ignorant individual of European and/or Anglo-Saxon heritage. But really, how could she feel otherwise?

European and the Anglo-Saxon colonizers tore African-American's ancestors out of their native land, enslaved them and brought them here to do the white man’s bidding. The first such group landed at Jamestown in 1607 and in the quaintly and simplistically named Latin America more like 500 years ago.

For almost 400 years those of black skin were treated as anything but human. Though African-Americans have been here almost four centuries helping the white man stand-up this republic, fighting in all of its wars, it has only been the last four decades Blacks have (at least on paper) enjoyed any manner of “equality.”

Until after WWII African-Americans were bought, sold and traded across the racist South.

In 1946 even in “liberal” California inter-racial marriage was not allowed. Only after the 1967 case of Loving vs. Virginia was that made possible by the Supreme Court. The following year one of the last known lynchings of a Black man occurred. But for at least another decade Blacks were denied basic civil rights and killed by white men across the South. In Texas Mexicans and Mexican-Americans are subjected to the same type treatment because of the color of their skin.

Despite the best efforts of Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 Blacks and those of Mexican ancestory were still denied even the most basic civil rights a century after the Civil War.

In Texas at least two Black men have in recent times dragged to their deaths by white men---the most recent in late October 2008.

More than half the prison-industrial complex population (2.3 million) across America in general and Texas in particular, is comprised of those of African-American desent though they only make up 12.8 % of the general population. Hispanics 13% of the general population are 25 percent of the prison-industrial complex population. Put another way, 3 of 4 inmates in America’s prison-industrial complex are of color---though combined African-Americans and Hispanics comprise only 26% of the general population.

Even today, redlining, zoning and steering advance the racist practice of denying Blacks and Mexican-Americans the right to purchase a home where white people simply do not want them.

Think of “w’s” new digs the Neo-con, some would say, Neo-nazi Dallas-Fort Worth area. These are the people who insist on making it a crime to even rent an apartment to Mexicans.

Those practices are re-inforced by the property tax based apartheid public education system.

How would you feel if someone treated you and your family to that----because of the color of your skin.

Mexicans and Mexican-Americans have toiled under the boot of the European and Anglo-Saxon in what is the native land of the Mexican. Still we are called "illegals." What is that? How can anyone be "illegal?" What is that about? Is that white-speak for "n----ger." Is the Mexican the new "n---ger?"

America’s roads, schools, hospitals and homes were built by immigrant Mexican and Mexican-American labor. The cost of those roads, schools, hospitals and lavish homes of mostly Europeans and Anglo-Saxons were made cost effective by virtue of the pittance paid those who come here seeking work from Mexico and the rest of Central and South America.

America has ridiculously and artificially low-cost fruit and vegetables because Mexican migrant workers and families have worked as quasi-slaves to make it so. Working under sub-human conditions, for less than minimum wage without healthcare or benefits of any kind.

People from Mexico and Central and South America come here looking for work because there is none in their respective countries. This so by reason of a combination of factors the greatest of which are America’s historical suppression, exploitation and domination of the region.

This is reminiscent of what Israelis do to Palestinians. Jews have occupied the Palestinian’s West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights since 1967---two generations.

Israelis treat Palestinians much the same way Anglo-Saxon America has treated Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.

Palestinians aren’t even allowed to collect taxes owed them---Israelis do that and then won’t hand the funds over.

Israelis in American and European supplied tanks and fighter jets drive into and fly over Palestinian lands that Israelis occupy and then kill Palestinians indiscriminately and with impunity. Israelis know big brother, America, is there to enable their racist, bigoted ways.

It is no coincidence that in the Middle East Israelis build fences. Consider the one being built here across the south while the white north, a 3000 mile stretch is largely unwatched, much less fenced. It is ironical and maybe a little humorous that even as American “leaders” taunted the Soviet Union to “take down this wall” we were constructing a real one to enforce the cultural one that has always been here.

Now Arizona has institutionalized that racism. More humorous still in a day and age when the world is more diverse than ever, when being multi-lingual is a plus (as our CIA and military are learning the hard way) barely literate Americans of Eropean and Anglo-Saxon heritage demand “English only.”

How would you feel if your family and you were treated this way? What would you do about it White man? Never mind those of us of color already know. Oh and about the First Lady, really, how could she feel otherwise?

More: Dragging death in Texas raises tensions

Farmers Branch keeps up illegal-immigration fight

For the First Time in My Adult Lifetime, I'm Really Proud of My Country

Speak English Only, Small NY Towns Decree

Palestine Peace Not Apartheid

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Arizona, 9500 Liberty, Golfo de Mexico y mas

What a tumultuous week (Monday 3 May – 9 May 2010) this one has been! Life for me (as it is for most people who are often blind to it) is a confluence of events, in-formation and the ever increasingly furious pace of ceaseless activity. Much of the activity results from the actions of the particularly mean-spirited.





The week started and ended with the simultaneous events of open hostility and racism in Arizona and the environment-choking catastrophe in the Golfo de Mexico. Both events brought aggressively into existence by the same colonial occupiers who invaded this land more than four centuries ago. This violent force declared all men equal while commiting genocide against the indigenous peoples of this hemisphere from Artic to Tierra del Fuego all the while buying, selling and trading enslaved Africans.

Interestingly, today 2010, there are more African-American/Black men in prison than were enslaved in 1850.

Meanwhile, on Latino USA, Maria Hinojosa’s guests including 9500 Liberty director Eric Byler, and Linda Valdez, member of the editorial board of The Arizona Republic discussed Arizona law (SB 1070).

Eric Blyer’s documentary looks at the alarming but not unexpected racism playing out across the nation. Much of the hate is the product of the laughably misnamed, FAIR, a hate group that poses as a source of public policy.

The world according to FAIR would rid this nation of people who had been here for millennia before the forebears of FAIR had managed to develop a language just a short thousand years ago.

Those same European terrorists now bring a pogrom of sorts to this land, five centuries after the first European “illegal aliens” arrived. Arizona has a long history of racial intolerance. Arizona, alone among the 50 states refused to accept Martin Luther King Day as a federal holiday until the effects of a nationwide, some say worldwide, boycott helped the folk of the state to change their minds.

Linda Valdez for her part echoed the discussion Terry Gross (Fresh Air) had with journalist Howard Fischer last week. Fischer is a journalist who has covered events in Arizona for years. The state is indeed a world apart.

None of this is new. In a Playboy interview in 1979 William Colby, then head of the CIA, was asked what the greatest threat facing America was (at that time). Colby’s response may surprise many since in 1979 we were locked in the Cold War with the Soviet Union and wary of China---Colby’s response, “Latin America and in particular Mexico.” Adding, “We don’t have enough bullets to stop them all.”

On the other side of the nation this past Thursday 6 May 2010 Diane Rehm discussed this week’s U.K. elections with delightful guests one of whom described America’s presidential elections perfectly as “parasitic decadence.” It is, of course. We spend billions on our elections an outcome neither invisioned nor intended by the founders. It is a sad, perhaps unmendable misfortune that after all that money we get less “democracy” by way of arcane convoluted machinations of “party” owned in large part by the oligarchy/plutocracy that run this republic and much of the world. The only clear winners are those participating in the fleecing of Americans---political action committees, the two major parties, the broadcast companies, those behind political commercials and those airing them. The recent Supreme Court decision will only exacerbate an already egregious condition.

Of course, that is not to say that England’s parliamentary system is any more democratic, it isn’t. Of the many forms of “democracy” Proportional Representation comes closest to giving constituents a voice but this is not the form England employs nor is it a common form of governance.

The first of its kind debates in the U.K. presented Nick Clegg to the world. Clegg spoke things that no American politician could ever state and hope to have the chance of an ice-cube in Hell of securing votes. Such an outspoken candid would be shunned or shot in this country. Clegg declared that he does not believe in God, but that he has great respect for people of faith. Don’t forget that our own Constitution specifically states that belief in God is not a requirement for office---no doubt much to the chagrin of the aforementioned group that would have us believe “we were founded as a Christian nation.”



On another topic that would be taboo in America, the First Amendment notwithstanding, “Nick Clegg announced that the “special relationship” between America and Britain was over. He criticised British leaders for their “slavish” devotion to Washington.” I understand.

Among other guests on the PBS’s Diane Rehm Show this week was Chilean-born writer, Isabel Allende. Her latest work, Island Beneath the Sea, is the culmination of four years’research. It is a work of fiction that bases the events of the book on the very real history of Haiti and the culturally accepted abuses of Haiti’s European colonizers, including the enslavement and exploitation of people of color.

Lest we forget the rules of enslavement chronicled in Allende’s book were practiced here as well. People of color were simply not thought of by 18th and 19th Century European terrorist-colonizers as people. To the European colonizers people of color were simply chattle. Thus the raping of women of color was not a crime nor was raping offspring resulting from the initial rape incest, much less a crime.

Somali pirates seem a constant presence in the news. Much is made of their practices. Admittedly, the notion of piracy is not so attractive and so begs the question then why it is this republic still reserves the right to use it---by its Constitution?

Forty years since Kent State? It seems like yesterday. So much hate spewed forth from the mouths of those said to be the “greatest generation” on that day and the days that followed. Many of that generation, parents to the generation protesting, stated that the only problem with the killing of students by the National Guard that day in April 1970 was that any students had been left alive.




A would-be New York car-bomber is in custody. He is a naturalized citizen possessing a graduate degree and seemingly someone who had bought into the “American Dream” lock, stock and barrel---if you’ll pardon the expression. Why? Indeed. If the foregoing doesn’t quite explain it---I am unlikely.

This nation through its public policy has us occupying Iraq, Afghanistan and for all intents and purposes Kwait, Qatar and bullying Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia---to say little of how we treat Iran and any other country that dare oppose our supreme authority. At the same time for almost two generations we have facilitated and enabled the bullying of Palestinians and most of the Middle East by Israeli’s. And still many need to ask, “Why do they hate us?” Please.

This brings us back to Arizona and the unscrupulous raping and exploiting of the people of color of the Americas as well as the oppression of the entirety of what those same Europeans coined, the Third World.

To the detriment of the “Third World” America, its elitist office holders and transnational corporations have raped pillaged and plundered most, if not all the Third World, throughout the entire history of this nation. That is a fact unlikely to change. My quest is to keep it in your face, to keep it at the fore-front of your awareness. Maybe then people might start to give a damn.