Denmark Vesey's Plantation

EVEN MORE CHUCK NORRIS FACTS

2006-06-21T20:48:00.000-04:00

Chuck Norris once visited the Virgin Islands. They are now The Islands.
Chuck Norris' calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Chuck Norris.
Chuck Norris doesn't use pickup lines, he simply says, "Now."
Chuck Norris can speak braille.
Chuck Norris can slam revolving doors.
Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice.
Chuck Norris has only one hand: the upper hand.
Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
Superman owns a pair of Chuck Norris pajamas.
Chuck Norris never hides, he only seeks.
The only reason Chuck Norris didn't win an Oscar for his performance in "Sidekicks" is because nobody in their right mind would willingly give Chuck Norris a blunt metal object. That's just suicide.
Chuck Norris was originally cast as the main character in 24, but was replaced by the producers when he managed to kill every terrorist and save the day in 12 minutes and 37 seconds.
Chuck Norris does not hunt because the word hunting implies the possibility of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.
The quickest way to a man's heart is with Chuck Norris's fist.
Whenever someone is constipated, doctors send them to Chuck Norris so he can scare the shit out of them.
Objects in Chuck Norris's rear-view mirror appear at their correct distances.
Jack was nimble, Jack was quick, but Jack still couldn't dodge Chuck Norris' roundhouse kick.
The reason newborn babies cry is because they know they have just entered a world with Chuck Norris.
If you try video taping Chuck Norris without his permission you will very quickly be filming the inside of your own ass.
Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.
The movie Anaconda was filmed in Chuck Norris' pants.
A Handicap parking sign does not signify that this spot is for handicapped people. It is actually in fact a warning, that the spot belongs to Chuck Norris and that you will be handicapped if you park there.
Chuck Norris' cowboy boots are made from real cowboys.
Chuck Norris did that to Michael Jackson's face.
Leading hand sanitizers claim they can kill 99.9 percent of germs. Chuck Norris can kill 100 percent of whatever the f*ck he wants.
Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants. 34 7.735
Chuck Norris is the reason for Attention Deficit Disorder. There is no way anyone can pay attention when they know Chuck Norris is lurking.
Chuck Norris once had an erection while lying face down. He struck oil.
Chuck Norris died ten years ago, but the Grim Reaper can't get up the courage to tell him.
Rosa Parks refused to get out of her seat because she was saving it for Chuck Norris.
If you lost your virginity, Chuck Norris probably has it.
A blind man once stepped on Chuck Norris' shoe. Chuck replied, "Don't you know who I am? I'm Chuck Norris!" The mere mention of his name cured this man blindness. Sadly the first, last, and only thing this man ever saw, was a fatal roundhouse delivered by Chuck Norris.
Ozzy Osbourne ate the head of a bat, but Chuck Norris ate Batman.
Jawbreakers were originally in the shape of Chuck Norris' fist.
Wilt Chamberlin claims to of slept with over 20,000 women in his lifetime. Chuck Norris calls this "a slow Tuesday."
Ghosts are actually caused by Chuck Norris killing people faster than Death can process them.
Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse... horses are hung like Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris owns the greatest Poker Face of all-time. It helped him win the 1983 World Series of Poker despite him holding just a Joker, a Get out of Jail Free Monopoly card, a 2 of clubs, 7 of spades and a green #4 card from the game Uno.
Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck roundhouse kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of the month.
Chuck Norris was once on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune and was the first to spin. The next 29 minutes of the show consisted of everyone standing around awkwardly, waiting for the wheel to stop.
Chuck Norris has to maintain a concealed weapon license in all 50 states in order to legally wear pants.
Chuck Norris puts the "laughter" in "manslaughter".
There is three ways to do things. The right way, the wrong way and the Chuck Norris way. The Chuck Norris way is just the wrong way but with more roundhouse kicks.
When Chuck Norris visited the Vatican, he took the Pope's confession.
Chuck Norris once fell into a pool of toxic waste, and the toxic waste gained super powers.
Inspired by the movie Alien vs. Predator, Chuck Norris has begun work on a screen play tentatively titled, "Alien, Predator, Frankenstein, Wolfman, The Mummy, and a Whole Shitload of Vampires vs. Chuck Norris."
Chuck Norris uses Viagra eyedrops so he can look hard.
If you stare directly into the sun it will bring some eye problems. If you stare directly into Chuck Norris it will bring death.
Chuck Norris got in touch with his feminine side, and promptly got her pregnant.
There is no Control button on Chuck Norris' computer because Chuck Norris is always in control.
Chuck Norris is allowed to talk about Fight Club.
If you know some one who doesn't like Chuck Norris, you won't know them for long.
When Chuck Norris exercises, the machine gets stronger.
Chuck Norris doesn't have hair on his testicles, because hair does not grow on steel.
Chuck Norris' dog is trained to pick up his own poop because Chuck Norris will not take sh!t from anyone.
Chuck Norris thought up some of the funniest Chuck Norris facts ever, but he hasn't submitted them to the site because he doesn't believe in any form of submission.
When Chuck Norris gives you the finger, he's telling you how many seconds you have left to live.
Chuck Norris is like corn. No matter how much sh!t he is in, he still come out in one piece. 25 7.320
Chuck Norris uses Tabasco Sauce for eye drops.
Little kids enjoy lighting ants on fire with magnifying glasses. Chuck Norris enjoys lighting little kids on fire with ants. Scientists have yet to find out how this feat is achieved.
On Neil Armstrong's second step on the moon, he found a note that said, "Chuck Norris was here."
When Chuck Norris answers the phone, he just says "Go". This is not permission for you to begin speaking, it is your cue to start running for your life.
When Chuck Norris gets in a car crash the air bags do not save Chuck Norris, they save the car.
The saddest moment for a child is not when he learns Santa Claus isn't real, it's when he learns Chuck Norris is.
Someone once tried to tell Chuck Norris that roundhouse kicks aren't the best way to kick someone. This has been recorded by historians as the worst mistake anyone has ever made.
When asked why he round-house kicked an entire school of children Chuck Norris replies "I don't like Mondays." When informed that it was Tuesday he replied "I still don't like Mondays."

Chuck Norris invented the internet so people could talk about how great Chuck Norris is.
If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris you may be only seconds away from death.
Chuck Norris likes to knit sweaters in his free time. And by "knit", I mean "kick", and by "sweaters", I mean "babies".
If it looks like chicken, tastes like chicken, and feels like chicken but Chuck Norris says its beef, then it's fucking beef.
During a game of golf, Chuck Norris shot 2 holes in one, struck out 9 batters, passed for over 300 yards, recorded a hat trick, and broke the single lap speed record at Daytona Speedway.
Chuck Norris only uses one chopstick.
Chuck Norris does not teabag the ladies. He potato-sacks them.
Chuck Norris once killed a bird by throwing it off a cliff.
Chuck Norris doesn't see problems. Chuck Norris only sees victims.
Chuck Norris always has the right of way.
As a child, Chuck Norris played Hungry Hungry Hippos with real hippos.
To show its patriotism, the American flag recently got a tattoo of Chuck Norris.
Chuck Norris was once the F.B.I's chief negotiator. His job involved calling up criminals and saying, "This is Chuck Norris."
To prove it isn't that big of a deal to beat cancer. Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong.
Chuck Norris can divide by zero.
Chuck Norris can create a rock so heavy that even he can't lift it. And then he lifts it anyways, just to show you who the fuck Chuck Norris is.
The fences at the zoo are to keep the animals safe from Chuck Norris.
Chuck Norris frequently donates blood to the Red Cross. Just never his own.
We once had a bachelor party for Chuck Norris. He ate the entire cake before we could tell him there was a stripper in it.
Chuck Norris once caught the common cold, then broke it's neck.
The only reason the Energizer Bunny keeps going and going is because it knows Chuck Norris is after it.
In order to speed up the wait time for death row inmates, Texas added death by roundhouse kicks to the list of acceptable methods of execution. The wait has gone down from 7 years to before you step out of the courthouse.
Geico saved 15% by switching to Chuck Norris.
It is widely known that Houdini died when a kid punched him in the stomach. What isn't widely known is that kid was Chuck Norris.
Jeeves asks Chuck Norris.
If you see Chuck Norris crying he will grant you a wish, if your wish is dying.

GANGSTA: The Steroids Of Hip Hop?

2006-06-21T20:21:00.000-04:00

Living in America makes it always time it pull out the race card. I really smell race stench on the MLB back turning on Barry Bonds this year as he passed the Babe. Not so much in the media itself , but in the atmosphere they fester in their big payback to BBs so called 'career surliness' toward them. The media kind of lets the average sports ( usually white) working class male pull the pin to the grenade they plant, and step back and witness the perfect storm. Fed right into a millennium lynch mob. The Babe will always be a hero, regardless of how much pork was in some of those ingested hot dogs, liquor binges, and chick orgies in his career and especially the year he almost overdosed in all that excess.

It's much of the same demographic that has supported the posturing of gangster rap. Who am I to argue? As I named the group Public Enemy off what I knew was a fascination of 1930's Capone era lifestyle. In the depression era , the gangster was blown up by the media to the largely skeptical Americanation. It was like modern day Robin Hood fantasies come to life or at least the big screen when that aura was passed from the Capones' and Schultzes' to the Edward G Robinsons and George Rafts depicting them. Escapism in rough times.

Like a sport. As with war and cowboy westerns, television era brought guns to the living room during the baby boom. The first eleven years of my life were Vietnamed with violence. Cartoons were laced with bombing, lasers, and thunderous blows in fights, at least the ones I dug. During the depression era of R&B (Reagan and Bush) the imagery of the updated Robin Hood came in rap music. Somehow crack and guns were in post disco black neighborhoods while kept outside of the white privileged Rubelled fueled cocaine laced Studio 54. Its the 80's and as presented by NWA ...surprise niggers, uh I mean niggas..yeah..WTF?

At college radio WBAU around 1985, KING TEE painted a picture to us in the east first depicting that life wasn't all 'soul train dancers and palm trees in the left coast. Better Get A Gun was the name of the record. Caught my attention. ICEburg T brought the tales of that life to the wax , depicting the details of the good, bad, and the ugly. The South Bronx escapism from the reality of thuglife 1980 style was peace, love, unity and having much fun rather than witnessing the broken glass everywhere. Nobody there wanted to hear no depressing sht. It was already right thurr. By 1987 Scott LaRock and blastmaster KRS ONE brought that reality to east coast rap wax with Criminal Minded. Well the answers were no where to be found on who was gonna fix the ghetto. Not Reagan, Nor the next prez Bush. PE found a way to flip all this gun fare and criminality in the air and morph it into black nationality on the remembrance edges of militancy.

By that time white kids invited to the hip hop party through the portals of FLASH, RUN-DMC and The BEASTIES had to walk gingerly on the black paper rug laid down of afrocentricity. It was a entrance fee of respect beyond the registers of retail.

NWA and the POSSE one upped the lyrical pictures of ICE T with a super team of emcees along with a west coast master of records named DR DRE, who produced with the WRECKING CREW and made early mixtapes of largely East coast rap joints sold at the swap meets( I clearly remember a swap meet outside in the parking lot of the San Diego Sports Arena in 1987, where the ever intimidating ERIC B single handedly confiscated every tape he saw with his music on it from sellers he placed fear upon). I think back then it was the good and evil that balanced upon the shoulders of NWA, the righteousness that made DRE say he wouldn't give into the drug-game at the time so easily when he claimed he didn't smoke weed or cess. Crack and mo guns spread to the cities in 1987-1990, the media bias considered everything outside NYC lines the suburbs, and thus called it that way.

The cable privileged side of YO MTV Raps swelled up at the bravado of the black gangsta though. Black guns, style and maybe some ass in the living room on the sneak tip. Besides the nationalism was a bit too much of a price to pay , where maybe NATIVE TONGUE style invited those to the peace, love, unity and having fun thing as BAM intended. The other flip was that the spread of urban reality into the first Bushsht years, brought the aspect of gangsterism as escapism. The Source immediately praises the gangsta black life because the numbers of fascination were higher, and they never knew it existed in the first place. Black folks in the east were tired of the reality of gangsta life. But something was sold under the counter. Maybe via Viacom. Possibly dragging along everything in its path as well. The key balance of conscious ICE CUBE defected to the east keeping the balance, while NWA spiraled to being 'Niggas for the rest of their lives to white amerikkkas praise.

By this time it was about numbers and the quantity was king over the quality of the issues at hand. There was no looking back as one year the Source claimed that everything that sprouted from the Straight Outta Compton existence had generated into tens of millions of records, white the PE, BDP-XCLANish stuff only resulted in a couple million. The numbers were staggering al the way up to these Get Rich Or Die Trying times. Through the murders of PAC, BIG, BIG L, MAC DRE etc , the style was the dominant identity praised by the media. The films followed path of the modern day rapper classic 'SCARFACE' ( which by the way I think is the most mis-followed movie of all time. The world is never his and people ignore his wackass ending...hello? .. there's a message here..)

Seventeen years stemmed from the seed it could've went either way. Taking the reality and making a better situation from it. But the numbers don't lie. It is what it is. 'Die nigger Die' is amerikkkas longest running profitable horror flick. But its a horror flick to my constituency, possibly a chitlin western porno, possibly comedy to the Barry Bonds hating crowd. A sad documentary, in fact, not a friendly game of baseball as MAIN SOURCE said. It might be what it is Amerikkkan like baseball, hot dogs and big apple pie,but let's check the bat and the blood, before it splinters and splatters into the basics of what was originally intended to do. Balance yall.

mistachuck@rapstation.com

My New York Trip...

2006-06-06T00:09:00.000-04:00

AWESOME!!! I got to hang out with my better half's side of the family and check out a few reggae record shops, but the icing on the cake happened while my father-in-law was wearing us out by walking us through Manhattan on 42nd Street. As we approached BB King's for lunch, my wife noticed that YELLOWMAN was on the marquee for that night! Cool, but we were going to see The Color Purple Musical. As we entered BB King's, Yellow's guitar player spotted me and said HEY PAPA Wha'agwaan! "Yellow inna de van ova deh so". I walked over to the van & bigged up Desi (drummer) and Simeon (keyboard player) While Yellow chatted on his cell in the back. When he finished running his mouth, I yelled to him "Yellow, A Papa Robbie dis"....Yellow jumped out of his van and introduced himself to my father-in-law and hugged my wife (VERY FUNNY)...What are the odds that my musical mentor would be just outside of the venue that I was going to just for lunch???...We could'nt see his show because we already had plans to go see "The Color Purple".....I truly enjoyed our trip! We'll DEFINITELY be back!!! I need to check a couple more spots in Brooklyn (record shops)...lol.

Dead Guy Quote

2006-05-31T22:25:00.000-04:00

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.
- George Burns

Conditional Love???

2006-05-21T15:40:00.000-04:00

I recently shaved my lil' moustache off & my wife doesn't like it....she's even treating me differently because of it. LOL.

Protesting the Da Vinci Code???

2006-05-21T10:21:00.000-04:00

Ummmm....You people really need a life.

Yellowman:My Musical Mentor

2006-05-19T16:17:00.000-04:00

Yellowman

* Birth Name: Winston Foster
* Real Name: Winston Foster
* Genre: Reggae
* Active: '80s, '90s, 2000s
* Instrument: Vocals

Biography
Jamaica's first dancehall superstar, Yellowman ushered in a new era in reggae music following Bob Marley's death. His early-'80s success brought the popularity of toasting -- the reggae equivalent of rapping -- to a whole new level, and helped establish dancehall as the wave of the future. For better or for worse, he also epitomized dancehall's penchant for "slack" lyrics -- that is, casual violence, sexism, homophobia, and general rudeness. Graphic sexuality was his particular forte, reaching levels of explicitness previously unheard in Jamaica. It brought him numerous detractors, but it was also a big reason for his early popularity. There was more to it than that, though; Yellowman was one of the most verbally nimble toasters of his time, with a loose, easy flow, a talent for improvisation, and a definite wit in his wordplay. Plus, all the boasting about his prowess on the mic or in the bedroom had to be over the top to be convincing: true to his stage name, Yellowman was an albino, which carries a tremendous social stigma in Jamaica. His rise to stardom was unlikely enough, but his transformation from untouchable outcast into sex symbol was staggering -- and may not even have taken place without his trademark lewdness. Shocking though it could be, it affirmed him as a sexual being just like his listeners, and was delivered with enough humor to let the audience know that he wasn't taking himself too seriously. Bouts with cancer pushed him into more thoughtful, socially conscious territory in the '90s, but his initial style remains the most influential, paving the way for countless dancehall toasters to follow.

Yellowman was born Winston Foster in Negril, Jamaica, in 1959 (some accounts say 1956). An early target for abuse because of his albinism, he grew up in an institution in Kingston, with little to keep him company besides music. Influenced by early toasting DJs like U-Roy, he practiced rhyming and got a job with the Gemini Sound System as a substitute DJ. Christening himself Yellowman and dressing in a bright yellow suit, he peppered his lyrics with jokes about his skin color and outlandish tales of his sexual conquests. In 1979, he won a landslide victory at the well-known Tastee Talent Contest, and within months he had become one of Jamaica's top concert draws, thanks to a dynamic, humorous stage show in which he often used the microphone to mimic his anatomical gifts.

Yellowman recorded prolifically in the early '80s, at one point flooding the Jamaican market with more than 40 singles. His first full-length album, Them a Mad Over Me, was recorded for Channel One in 1981 and featured the hit title track and the single "Me Kill Barnie," an answer record to Lone Ranger's hit "Barnabas Collins." He also scored with singles like "Operation Eradication" and the infamously slack "Shorties," which Peter Tosh condemned as degrading to women (hardly the first time such a criticism would be leveled at him). Despite this success, Yellowman didn't truly hit his stride on record until he hooked up with groundbreaking dancehall producer Henry "Junjo" Lawes. The 1982 LP Mister Yellowman kicked off their collaboration; released internationally by Greensleeves, it started to break him in the U.K. and U.S., and is still often acclaimed as his best album. It also launched a series of Jamaican hit singles over the next few years that included including "Yellowman Getting Married" (a rewrite of the My Fair Lady number "I'm Getting Married in the Morning"), "Mr. Chin," "Who Can Make the Dance Ram" (a rewrite of "The Candy Man"), "Zungguzungguguzungguzeng" (sampled by several hip-hop acts), "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," "Soldier Take Over," "Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt," and "Wreck a Pum Pum," among others. Many of his recordings during this era featured vocal contributions from fellow DJ/toaster Fathead, whose specialty was punctuating lines with animal noises ("ribbit" and "oink" were his favorites).

After 1983's Zungguzungguguzungguzeng album, Yellowman signed a major-label deal with CBS Records, which encouraged him to maintain the stylistic versatility of his previous work. However, his lone album for the label, 1984's King Yellowman, sported mixed results, attempting everything from slack toasts to R&B and pop-tinged crossover tracks, including covers of "Sea Cruise" and "Take Me Home Country Roads," and the much-maligned fusion attempt "Disco Reggae." He subsequently released several albums on Shanachie, including 1984's Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt, 1985's Galong Galong Galong, 1986's Going to the Chapel, and 1987's Don't Burn It Down. The latter found him delving more into social consciousness; the title cut was a pro-marijuana protest, while "Stop Beat Woman" condemned domestic violence, and "Free Africa" criticized apartheid. Around the same time, he suffered a bout with throat cancer, but fortunately recovered. He returned to action with the hit Fats Domino cover "Blueberry Hill," and moved to the Ras label to record the well-received Yellow Like Cheese album with producer Philip "Fatis" Burrell.

Yellowman's recording career continued apace, as his sexual boasts and gay jokes kept getting raunchier and nastier. His popularity had slipped after 1985, due in part to less consistent material, and also in part to the emergence of a legion of new dancehall artists, many of whom harked back to his early material for inspiration. Things changed, however, after an early-'90s bout with skin cancer. Greatly shaken after this second life-threatening illness, Yellowman completely rethought his approach to music, and thereafter devoted himself almost exclusively to spiritual and social concerns. 1994's Prayer album (still on Ras) was the first effort in this new direction, and it was followed quickly by Message to the World in 1995. 1997's Freedom of Speech continued in a similar vein, after which Yellowman switched over to the Artists Only label. His first effort was 1999's Yellow Fever, which concentrated on conscious reggae but also featured some good-natured party tracks. New York followed in 2003, and Round 1 in 2005.

Don't Cross That LINE!!!

2006-05-18T21:42:00.000-04:00

Person shot dead at US border
From correspondents in Washington
May 19, 2006
US authorities shot dead a person apparently trying to illegally cross into the United States from Mexico, police said.

The victim was apparently in a car trying to drive past the San Ysidro border control post in southern California when border patrol officers fired, Gary Hassen, a spokesman for nearby San Diego police, said.

The San Ysidro post, between the Mexican city of Tijuana and San Diego, is one of the busiest in the world, with 14 million cars and 40 million people crossing into the United States every year.

The shooting comes amid a heated debate in the US over illegal immigration from Mexico.

The Bible vs. The Bible!!!!

2006-05-17T22:26:00.000-04:00

The creation story

GENESIS 1: The Seven Days Creation Story

Day 1 - Light and darkness: day and night
Day 2 - A "vault" separating the 'waters' that make up the oceans and the (blue) sky
Day 3 - Earth, followed by plants
Day 4 - The Sun, Moon and stars (as calendrical and navigational aids)
Day 5 - Animals
Day 6 - Humans (both sexes at the same time - many of them, apparently)
Day 7 - A day of rest

Note that there are "days", "evenings", and "mornings" before the Sun was created.

GENESIS 2: The Story of Adam in Eden

First, God made earth and heaven.
Then he placed Adam on an otherwise lifeless Earth.
Next he made plants grow in Eden, including the trees of life and of knowledge of good and evil.
Then he placed Adam in this garden.
Only then did he create animals.
Finally, he made Eve from Adam's rib. (The rest is history - or so literalists would say.)

The current scholarly hypothesis as to the Pentateuch's origins is that the divergent stories of different Hebrew tribes were put together at a comparatively late stage. GENESIS 1 is thought to embody the 'Priestly' tradition, GENESIS 2 the 'Yahwistic' (so-called because God is called 'Yahweh', rather than being referred to as 'Elohim', which is a plural literally translated as "the Gods").
Should we own slaves?

* LEVITICUS 25:45-46 "Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, . . . and they shall be your possession . . . they shall be your bondmen forever."
* GENESIS 9:25 "And he [Noah] said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren."
* EXODUS 21:2,7 "If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. . . . And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the manservants do."
* JOEL 3:8 "And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it."
* LUKE 12:47,48 [Jesus speaking] "And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes."
* COLOSSIANS 3:22 "Servants, obey in all things your masters."

vs.

* ISAIAH 58:6 "Undo the heavy burdens . . . let the oppressed go free, . . . break every yoke."
* MATTHEW 23:10 "Neither be ye called Masters: for one is your Master, even Christ."

In the American civil war, churches cited the numerous pro-slavery verses in the Bible as justification. And indeed, according to the Bible, slavery is clearly justified as there are only a very few, highly ambiguous, anti-slavery quotes and many emphatic statements in favour of slavery. The word servant comes from the original Greek word for slave - this is just some creative translation.
Should we steal?

* EXODUS 20:15 "Thou shalt not steal."
* LEVITICUS 19:13 "Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbor, neither rob him."

vs.

* EXODUS 3:22 "And ye shall spoil the Egyptians."
* EXODUS 12:35-36 "And they spoiled [plundered, NRSV] the Egyptians."
* LUKE 19:29-34 "[Jesus] sent two of his disciples, Saying, Go ye into the village . . . ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him. . . . And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said, The Lord hath need of him."

God good to all, or just a few?

PSALMS 145:9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.

JEREMIAH 13:14 And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith the Lord: I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them.
How long was Jesus in the tomb?

MATTHEW 12:40 has Jesus prophesying that he will spend "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth", and MARK 10:34 has "after three days (meta treis emeras) he will rise again". As far as I can see from a quick look, the prophecies have "after three days", but the post-resurrection narratives have "on the third day".
What was Jesus given to drink?

MATTHEW 27:34 says vinegar. MARK 15:23 says it was wine with myrhh.
War or Peace?

EXODUS 15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.

ROMANS 15:33 Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.
Is strong drink OK?

See PROVERBS 31:6,7 But... see JOHN 2:11-11
For or against me?

MATTHEW 12:30 He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.
(ie. against)

MARK 9:40 For he that is not against us is on our part.
(ie. for)

LUKE 9:50 And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.
(ie. for)
Which first--beasts or man?

GENESIS 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

GENESIS 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

GENESIS 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

GENESIS 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Is it folly to be wise or not?

PROVERBS 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.

ECCLESIASTES 1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that in- creaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

1 CORINTHIANS1:19: "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and wil bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."
Should good deeds be publicised or not?

MATTHEW 5:16 says "In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." (NIV)

MATTHEW 6:3-4, though, says "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secert. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (NIV)
Did those with Saul/Paul at his conversion hear a voice?

ACTS 9:7 "And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man."

ACTS 22:9 "And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me."
Who killed Saul?

SAMUEL 1 31:4 Then said Saul unto his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it.

SAMUEL 1 31:5 And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise upon his sword, and died with him.

SAMUEL 1 31:6 So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together.

SAMUEL 2 1:15 And David called one of the young men, and said, Go near, and fall upon him. And he smote him that he died.
When second coming?

MATTHEW 24:34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

MARK 13:30 Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.

LUKE 21:32 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.

See also 1 THESSALONIANS 4:15-18

More a contradiction with facts, this - as far as I can tell, we're still waiting.
Ascend to heaven

"And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." (2 KINGS 2:11)

"No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, ... the Son of Man." (JOHN 3:13)
Is (human or other) sacrifice the way to go?

* Deuteronomy 12:31 "Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods."

vs.

* GENESIS 22:2 "And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."
* EXODUS 22:29 "For thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors; the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me."
* JUDGES 11:30-39 "And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hand, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon . . . and the Lord delivered them into his hands. . . . And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: . . . And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed."
* 2 SAMUEL 21:8-14 "But the king [David] took the two sons of Rizpah . . . and the five sons of Michal . . . and he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord: and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest . . . And after that God was intreated for the land."
* HEBREWS 10:10-12 " . . . we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ . . . But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God."
* 1 CORINTHIANS 5:7 " . . . For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us."

Is God omnipotent?

* JEREMIAH 32:27 "Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for me?
* MATTHEW 19:26 "But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."

vs.

* JUDGES 1:19 "And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."

Did Michal have children?

* II SAMUEL 6:23 "Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death."

But...

* II SAMUEL 21:8 "But the king took the two sons of Rizpah . . . and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul."

When was Jesus born?

According to Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1). Herod died in March of 4 B.C., so Jesus had to have been born BEFORE that time. According to Luke, Jesus was born during the first census in Israel, while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). This census took place in 6 AD and 7 AD, about 10 years after Herod's death.
How old was Ahaziah when he began to reign?

22 in 2 KINGS 8:26

42 in 2 CHRONICLES 22:2
How old was Jehoiachin when he became King?

8 in CHRONICLES 36:9

18 in 2 KINGS 24:8
The number of animals in the ark

GENESIS 7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

GENESIS 7:8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, GEN 7:9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
Hares

LEVITICUS 11:6 And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.

This may not contradict anything the Bible says, but it does clash with reality - hares don't chew cud.
The shape of the earth

ISAIAH 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

MATTHEW 4:8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

As everyone now knows, the earth is spehrical (actually, ovaloid), so you cannot see its entire surface from any one place. Greece, Crete, Egypt and Middle Eastern kingdoms could not have been seen from even "an exceeding high mountain."
Should we swear an oath?

HEBREWS 6:13-17 says "For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself . . . for men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath." But JAMES 5:12 clearly says ". . . swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation."
The sins of the father

ISAIAH 14:21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities.

DEUTERONOMY 24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the chil- dren, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.
Was Jesus a peaceful man?

* JOHN 14:27 "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you."
* ACTS 10:36 "The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ."
* LUKE 2:14 " . . . on earth peace, good will toward men."

vs.

* MATTHEW 10:34 "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."
* LUKE 22:36 "Then said he unto them, . . . he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one."

Does God change his mind?

* MALACHI 3:6 "For I am the Lord; I change not."
Numbers 23:19 "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent."
* EZEKIEL 24:14 "I the Lord have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent."
* JAMES 1:17 " . . . the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

vs.

* EXODUS 32:14 "And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people."
* GENESIS 6:6,7 "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth . . . And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth . . . for it repenteth me that I have made him."
* JONAH 3:10 ". . . and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not."

How are we saved?

"For by grace are we saved through faith...not of works" EPHESIANS 2:8-9.

"...and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works" REVELATION 20:13.

"Ye see then that by works a man is justified, not by faith only. For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also" JAMES 2:26
What happened to Judas?

MATTHEW 27:5 states that he threw down his silver, ran from the temple, and hanged himself. ACTS 1:16-19 states, however, that he bought some land with his money, and that he had a fall, causing him "to burst open in the middle" so that his "bowels gushed out. And it became known to all of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Akaldama, that is, Field of Blood."
Jesus' last words on the cross

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?" that is to say, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" [PSALMS 22:1] ...Jesus, when he cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost." (MATTHEW 27:46-50)
But . . .
"And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, "Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit:" and having said thus, he gave up the ghost." (LUKE 23:46)
But . . .
"When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, "It is finished:" and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." (JOHN 19:30)

This is clearly a folk legend - the operative word being legend - in the making.
Is God cruel, destructive and unmerciful or good, kind and merciful?

"I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy." (JEREMIAH 13:14) "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling."

"The Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." (JAMES 5:11)

"For his mercy endureth forever." (1 CHRONICLES 16:34)

"The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works." (PSALMS 145:9)

"God is love." (1 JOHN 4:16)

"And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it." (JOEL 3:8)

Immigration And America's Bad Karma

2006-05-17T18:33:00.000-04:00

Immigration And America's Bad Karma
By Margaret Kimberley, Blackcommentator.com

Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly and other cable television blowhards have appointed themselves crusaders against illegal immigration to the United States. If tempted to succumb to their awful siren song, just think of the Wampanoag Indians.

In 1621 the Wampanoags watched as the Pilgrims landed at what is now known as Plymouth Rock. You know the rest of the story. The Indians were killed by warfare and disease. Treaties were broken and land was stolen. The horrific scenario played out across the rest of the nation for almost 300 years. The Iroquois, Seminoles, Choctaws, Lakotas, and Apaches all got the same treatment.

You reap what you sow. What goes around comes around. Payback is a bitch. All of those colorful expressions are apropos when the issue of immigration arises and especially when Dobbs, O'Reilly, and Congressional Neanderthals foam at the mouth.

The British, the French, the Spanish and the Dutch didn't get green cards when they showed up on Indian lands. O'Reilly's and Dobbs' ancestors didn't either. This nation was built by people who took what they wanted, land that belonged to someone else. The people who followed them accepted the terms of the original deal with the devil.

Before complaining about immigrants, compare yourself to a Wampanoag. Are Mexicans giving you small pox? Are they attacking your neighborhood and slitting your throat? Have they claimed your town as a colony for Mexico? Present day Americans are getting a much better deal from newcomers than the original Americans ever had.

Speaking of Mexico, a good chunk of the United States west of the Mississippi originally was part of Mexico. From 1846 to 1848 the United States government made its awful vision of Manifest Destiny a reality when it fought a war to steal half of Mexico's territory. Present day Texas, California, Utah, Nevada, parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming were all Mexican territory.

New immigrants from Mexico to the American west are just going back to their old neighborhood. What goes around does quite literally come around. Of course, Mexico was Indian territory stolen originally by the Spanish. So much bad karma, so little time.

America cannot have an honest discussion about immigration without revisiting its sordid past. Indians must be laughing as the descendants of their oppressors stay in a snit because newcomers arrive without permission.

Like the Indians, African Americans have a singular experience and therefore a unique view on immigration. Poor, uneducated immigrants compete most directly with low wage Americans for jobs. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, European immigrants were directly recruited to take jobs that could have easily been given to black Americans. That history and our perpetually precarious economic condition create a justifiable wariness.

Yet the answer to black Americans economic oppression is not to join with the likes of right wing Republicans. These hypocrites act only to improve the economic well being of the haves and the have mores. If they truly cared about the American worker they wouldn't cut taxes for the wealthy, try to end Social Security, and create a Medicare drug plan that is nothing but a windfall for pharmaceutical companies.

Instead of whining that some illegal immigrants use Medicaid, they should advocate for national health insurance. If Americans had this and other benefits that citizens of the rest of the world have, resentment against immigrants would diminish.

Are immigrant day laborers in Home Depot parking lots causing the worst problems for American workers? The wholesale disappearance of high paying blue collar jobs is the real problem. Images of Mexicans sneaking across the border make for a great distraction when the plight of union workers at Delphi and GM ought to be addressed.

Once again the supposedly generous nation brings out the worst in its citizens because it isn't generous at all. Americans live a dog eat dog existence, watching as corporate interests plot to destroy what little is left of the safety net. Because there is never a serious discussion about the economic system in this country, phony debates are deliberately created to keep the public from thinking about the issues that really cause their problems.

Of course, racism is at the heart of the anti-immigrant backlash and will be at the heart of any so-called solutions. Republican Congressperson Dana Rohrabacher (CA) had an answer to the argument that immigrants take jobs that Americans won't:

"We do not need more people from foreign countries coming in and taking American jobs - even jobs in the fields. I say, let prisoners pick the fruits. [Emphasis added] Let's not bid down the wages of American workers."

America has a greater percentage of its population under lock and key than any other country on earth. Now we have a new justification for mass incarceration. Prisoners can be used for free labor. The bad karma list is already too long.

As Republicans fight over whether they ought to be overtly racist or keep commerce and cheap labor flowing through the border, don't fall for the hype. Think about how life for American working people could be improved if cynical politicians weren't indulging in cheap theatrics. Then imagine being a Wampanoag in the 17th century.

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BC. Ms. Kimberley is a freelance writer living in New York City. She can be reached via e-Mail at margaret.kimberley@blackcommentator.com. You can read more of Ms. Kimberley's writings at freedomrider.blogspot.com.

They love executing BLACK MEN....

2006-05-09T21:54:00.000-04:00

SAN FRANCISCO - The more “black looking” an African-American man charged with murdering a white victim, the more likely he is to be sentenced to death, a Stanford University researcher said Tuesday.

Using scores given by white and Asian-American Stanford undergraduates to rate facial features of 44 black men tried for murder in Philadelphia over 20 years, researchers found that 57.5 percent rated to have “stereotypically” black features such as dark skin were sentenced to death.

By contrast, 24.4 percent of black men in similar murder cases and rated by the students as less stereotypically black were sentenced to death, said Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford psychologist involved in the research.

Despite the use of ratings from only white and Asian-American students, the findings suggest jurors use stereotypes of black features as a proxy for criminality and punish murder defendants with those features more severely, Eberhardt said.

“They do link although the students have no knowledge of who they are or who they murdered,” Eberhardt said, referring to the defendants, their features and their sentences.

Researchers also set ratings for facial features against a pool of 118 black men tried for murdering other blacks and found no relationship between their features and sentences.

“You could not use the features to predict whether they got a death sentence,” Eberhardt said. “You’re more likely to get a death sentence in the white cases than in the black cases.”

The study adds to other research showing murderers of whites are more likely than murderers of blacks to be sentenced to death, Eberhardt said.

Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited.

Anthem should be sung in any language....

2006-05-04T19:56:00.000-04:00

President Bush is a hypocrite according to the latest research. Dubya says the national anthem should only be sung in English, but he was apparently singing a different tune during his first run for President and at his inaugural festivities. On the campaign trail in 1999, Bush would often sing along as the national anthem was sung in Spanish during stops in Hispanic communities, GOP scholar Kevin Phillips wrote in his book “American Dynasty.”
After Bush was elected, Cuban exile and pop vocalist Jon Secada also sang the “The Star-Spangled Banner” in both English and Spanish at the 2001 opening ceremony of the presidential inaugural, according to media reports at the time.The White House had no immediate comment,Nonetheless, Bush still appeared to have amnesia when he suggested last week that the “The Star-Spangled Banner” is an English-only tune.

Another dead guy quote

2006-05-02T22:48:00.000-04:00

This racist fool made sense with THIS one....

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.
- Mark Twain

Dead Guy Quote

2006-04-26T19:19:00.000-04:00

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
- John Adams

So True

2006-04-25T18:39:00.000-04:00

If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.
- George Aiken

Hip-Hop's Betrayal Of Black Women

2006-04-24T09:28:00.000-04:00

by Jennifer McLune

Indeed, like rock & roll, hip-hop sometimes makes you think we men don't like women much at all, except to objectify them as trophy pieces or, as contemporary vernacular mandates, as baby mommas, chickenheads, or bitches. But just as it was unfair to demonize men of color in the 60s solely as wild-eyed radicals when what they wanted, amidst their fury, was a little freedom and a little power, today it is wrong to categorically dismiss hip-hop without taking into serious consideration the socioeconomic conditions (and the many record labels that eagerly exploit and benefit from the ignorance of many of these young artists) that have led to the current state of affairs. Or, to paraphrase the late Tupac Shakur, we were given this world, we did not make it. – Kevin Powell, Notes of a HipHop Head. [emphasis added]

To hip-hop's apologists: You were given this world and you glorify it. You were given this world and you protect it. You were given this world and you benefit from it. You were given this world and even in your wildest dreams you refuse to imagine anything else but this world. And anyone who attacks your misogynistic fantasy and offers an alternative vision is a hater, or worse, an enemy who just doesn't get it. What is there to get? There is nothing deep or new about misogyny, materialism, violence and homophobia. The hardest part isn't recognizing it, but ending it. Calling it unacceptable and an enemy of us all. Refusing to be mesmerized, seduced or confused by what hip-hop has come to signify: a betrayal of our imagination as a people.

Kevin Powell's "socio-economic" explanation for the sexism in hip-hop is a way to silence feminist critiques of the culture: It is to make an understanding of the misogynistic objectification of black women in hip-hop so elusive that we can't grasp it long enough to wring the neck of its power over us. His argument completely ignores the fact that women, too, are raised in this environment of poverty and violence, but have yet to produce the same negative and hateful representation of black men that male rappers are capable of making against women.

Powell's understanding also lends itself to the elitist assumption that somehow poverty breeds sexism, or at least should excuse it. Yet we all know that wealthy white boys can create the same hateful and violent music as poor black boys. As long as the boys can agree that their common enemy is female and that their power resides in their penis, women must not hesitate to name the war they have declared on us.

Hip-hop owes its success to the ideology of woman-hating. It creates, perpetuates and reaps the rewards of objectification. Sexism and homophobia saturate hip-hop culture, and any deviation from these forms of bigotry is made marginal to its most dominant and lucrative expressions. Few artists dare to embody equality and respect between the sexes through their music; those who do have to fight to be heard above the dominant chorus of misogyny.

The most well known artists who represent an underground and conscious force in hip-hop – like Common, The Roots, Talib Kweli and others – remain inconsistent, apologetic and even eager to join the mainstream player's club. Even though fans like me support them because of their moments of decency toward women, they often want to remain on the fence by either playing down their consciousness, or by offering props to misogynistic rappers. Most so-called conscious artists appear to care more about their own acceptance by mainstream artists than wanting to make positive changes in the culture.

The Roots, for example, have backed Jay-Z on both his Unplugged release and Fade to Black tours. They've publicly declared their admiration for him and have signed on to his new "indie" hip-hop imprint Def Jam Left to produce their next album. Yet Jay-Z is one of the most notoriously sexist and materialistic rappers of his generation.

Hip-hop artists like Talib Kweli and Common market themselves as conscious alternatives, yet they remain passive in the face of unrelenting woman-hating bravado from mainstream artists. They are willing to lament in abstract terms the state of hip-hop, but refuse to name names – unless it's to reassure their mainstream brethren that they have nothing but love for their music.

Talib Kweli has been praised for his song "Black Girl Pain," but clearly he's clueless to how painful it is for a black girl to hear his boy Jay-Z rap, "I pimp hard on a trick, look @#%$ if your leg broke bitch, hop up on your good foot."

The misogyny in hip-hop is also given a pass because some of its participants are women. But female hip-hop artists remain utterly marginalized within the industry and culture – except when they are trotted out to defend hip-hop against feminist criticism. The idea is that if women rap, then the industry and culture can't be all that sexist. If women find meaning and power within hip-hop culture, then it must be unfair to call hip-hop patriarchal. What about the ladies? they say. But the truth is, all kinds of patriarchal institutions, organizations and movements have women in their ranks in search of power and meaning. The token presence of individual women changes nothing if women as a group are still scapegoated and degraded.

Unlike men, women in hip-hop don't speak in a collective voice in defense of themselves. The pressure on women to be hyper-feminine and hyper-sexual for the pleasure of men, and the constant threat of being called a bitch, a ho – or worse a dyke – as a result of being strong, honest, and self-possessed, are real within hip-hop culture, and the black community at large. Unless women agree to compromise their truth, their self-respect, their unity with other women, and instead play dutiful daughter to the phallus that represents hip-hop culture, they will be either targetted and slandered, or ignored altogether. As a result, female rappers are often just as male-identified, violent, materialistic and ignorant as their male peers.

Hip-hop artist Eve, who describes herself as "a pit bull in a skirt," makes an appearance in the Sporty Thieves video for "Pigeons," one of the most hateful misogynistic anthems in hip-hop. Her appearance in this video displays her unity not with the women branded "pigeons," but with the men who label them. This is a heartbreaking example of how hip-hop encourages men to act collectively in the interest of male privilege, while dividing women into opposing camps of good and bad, or worthy and unworthy of respect.

Some women sing along to woman-hating lyrics because they've convinced themselves that Snoop, Jay-Z, Ludacris and others aren't talking about them. They are talking about women who act like bitches and hoes and thus deserve to called bitches and hoes. When do women ask what men deserve? Too many of us sing along to woman-hating lyrics because we have allowed men to decide which women are worthy of respect and which women are asking to be called names. But as long as men define the terms upon which any woman is worthy of respect, we are all bitches and hoes. And as along as we allow men to divide and label us, they've conquered us all.

Lip-service protest against sexism in hip-hop culture is nothing more than a sly form of public relations to ensure that nobody's money, power or respect is ever really threatened. Real respect and equality might interfere with hip-hop's commercial appeal. We are asked to dialogue about and ultimately celebrate our "progress" – always predicated on a few rappers and moguls getting rich. Angry young black women like myself are expected to be satisfied with a mere mention that some hip-hop music is sexist and that this sexism of a few rappers is actually, as Powell calls it, "the ghetto blues, urban folk art, a cry out for help." My question then is: Whose blues? Whose art? Why won't anybody help the women who are raped in endless rotation by the gaze of the hip-hop camera?

They expect us to deal with hip-hop's pervasive woman-hating simply by alluding to it, essentially excusing and even celebrating its misogyny, its arrogance, its ignorance. What this angry black woman wants to hear from the apologists is that black women are black people too. That any attack on the women in our community is an attack on us all, and that we will no longer be duped by genocidal tendencies in black-face. I want to hear these apologists declare that any black man who makes music perpetuating the hatred of women will be named, shunned and destroyed, financially and socially, like the traitor of our community he is. That until hip-hop does right by black women, everything hip-hop ever does will fail.

If we accept Powell's explanation for why hip-hop is the way it is – which amounts to an argument for why we should continue to consume and celebrate it – then ultimately we are accepting ourselves as victims who know only how to imitate our victimization, while absolving the handful of black folk who benefit from its tragic results. I choose to challenge hip-hop by refusing to reward its commercial aspirations with my money or my attention.

I'm tired of the ridiculous excuses and justifications for the unjustifiable pillaring of black women and girls in hip-hop. Are black women the guilty parties behind black men's experience of racism and poverty? Are black women acceptable scapegoats when black men suffer oppression? If black women experience double the oppression as both blacks and women in a racist, patriarchal culture, it is our anger at men and white folks that needs to be heard.

The black men who make excuses for the ideology of woman-hating in hip-hop remind me of those who, a generation ago, supported the attacks on black female writers who went public about the reality of patriarchy in our community. The fact that these black female writers did not create incest, domestic violence, rape and other patriarchal conditions in the black community did not shield them from being skewered by black men who had their feelings hurt by the exposure of their male privilege and domination of black women. Black women's literature and activism that challenge sexism are often attacked by black men (and many male-identified women) who abhor domination when they are on the losing end, but want to protect it when they think it offers them a good deal.

Black women writers and activists were called traitors for refusing to be silent about the misogynistic order of things in our minds and homes, and yet women-hating rappers are made heroes by the so-called masses. To be sure, hip-hop is not about keeping it real. Hip-hop lies about the ugly reality that black women were condemned for revealing. Hip-hop is a manipulative narrative that sells because it gets men hard. It is a narrative in which, as a Wu Tang Clan video shows, black women are presented as dancing cave chicks in bikinis who get clubbed over the head. Or where gang rapes are put to a phat beat. Or where working class black women are compared to @#%$-eating birds.

As a black woman who views sexism as just as much the enemy of my people as racism, I can't buy the apologies and excuses for hip-hop. I will not accept the notion that my sisters deserve to be degraded and humiliated because of the frustrations of black men – all while we suppress our own frustrations, angers and fears in an effort to be sexy and accommodating. Although Kevin Powell blames the negatives in hip-hop on everything but hip-hop culture itself, he ultimately concludes, "What hip-hop has spawned is a way of winning on our own terms, of us making something out of nothing."

If the terms for winning are the objectification of black women and girls, I wonder if any females were at the table when the deal went down. Did we agree to be dehumanized, vilified, made invisible? Rather than pretending to explain away the sexism of hip-hop culture, why doesn't Powell just come clean: in the end it doesn't matter how women are treated. Sexism is the winning ticket to mainstream acceptability and Powell, like Russell Simmons and others, know this. It's obvious that if these are the winning terms for our creativity, black women are ultimately the losers. And that's exactly how these self-proclaimed players, thugs and hip-hop intellectuals want us: on our backs and pledging allegiance to the Hip-Hop Nation. If we were all to condemn woman-hating as an enemy of our community, hip-hop would be forced to look at itself and change radically and consistently. And then it would no longer be marketable in the way that these hip-hop intellectuals celebrate. As things stand, it's all about the Benjamins on every level of the culture. And black women are being thugged and rubbed all the way to the bank.

Jennifer McLune can be contacted at jennmclune@hotmail.com

notes:

Kevin Powell, "Notes of a HipHop Head." Who Shot Ya? Three Decades of Hip Hop Photography. Ed. Kevin Powell, and Ernie Paniccioli. New York: HarperCollins Publisher Inc., 2002. x.Also posted at Pop and Politics

"Common Out To Show 'Conscious Cats Like Sex Too' In Kanye-Directed Clip." Mtv.com News. 04 Aug 2005. Mtv Networks. 05 Jan. 2006. Posted at mtv.com news.

Hamilton, Pierre . "Resurrection: Common Walks." PopMatters.com. 21 Sep 2005. 05 Jan. 2006. Posted at PopMatters.

Farber, Jim . "Jay-Z raps up with a Winner." New York Daily News. 05 Jan. 2006. Posted at nydailynews.com.

Artist: Jay-Z
Album: Reasonable Doubt
Song: Cashmere Thoughts
Lyric:"I pimp hard on a trick, look @#%$ if your leg broke bitch, hop up on your good foot"

Yuscavage , Christopher "Scav" . "Talib Kweli - The Beautiful Struggle ." MV Remix Reviews. MVRemix Media. 05 Jan. 2006. Posted at mvremix.com .

"President Jay-Z's Latest Act: The Roots Ink With Def Jam ." Mtv News. 9 2005. Mtv Networks. 05 Jan. 2006. Posted at MTV news .

Change, Jeff . The Progressive. Oct 2005. An Uplifting Voice of Hip-Hop: A Profile of Talib Kweli. 05 Jan. 2006. Posted at The Progressive.

True Origin Of Easter

2006-04-13T00:43:00.000-04:00

Origin of Easter - A Christian Commemoration
The origin of Easter, a holiday associated with the observance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is actually based on an ancient pagan celebration. Christians recognize this day as commemorating the culminating event of their faith, but like so many other "Christian" holidays, Easter has become commercialized and mixed with non-christian traditions like the Easter Bunny, Easter parades and hunting for Easter eggs. How did this happen?

Origin of Easter - Its Pagan Roots
The origin of Easter dates back to ancient times, not long after the global Flood recorded in Genesis 6-9 of the Bible. Nimrod, a grandson of Noah, had turned from following his grandfather's God and had become a tyrannical ruler. According to the biblical record, as king, Nimrod created Babel, Ninevah, Asshur, Calla and other cities, all known for lifestyles that promoted unspeakable evil and perversion. When Nimrod died, his wife, Queen Semiramis, deified him as the Sun-god, or Life Giver. Later he would become known as Baal, and those who followed the religion Semiramis created in his name would be called Baal worshippers. They became associated with idolatry, demon worship, human sacrifice and other practices regarded as evil.

The origin of Easter involves the birth of Semiramis' illegitimate son, Tammuz. Somehow, Semiramis convinced the people that Tammuz was actually Nimrod reborn. Since people had been looking for the promised savior since the beginning of mankind (see Genesis 3:15), they were persuaded by Semiramis to believe that Tammuz was that savior, even that he had been supernaturally conceived. Before long, in addition to worshipping Tammuz (or Nimrod reborn), the people also worshipped Semiramis herself as the goddess of fertility. In other cultures, she has been called Ishtar, Ashtur and yes, Easter.

The origin of Easter goes back to the springtime ritual instituted by Semiramis following the death of Tammuz, who, according to tradition, was killed by a wild boar. Legend has it that through the power of his mother's tears, Tammuz was "resurrected" in the form of the new vegetation that appeared on the earth.

According to the Bible, it was in the city of Babel that the people created a tower in order to defy God. Up until that time, all the people on the earth spoke one language. The building of the tower led God, as recorded in Genesis 11:7, to confuse their tongues to keep them from being further unified in their false beliefs. As the people moved into other lands, many of them took their pagan practices with them.

Contemporary traditions such as the Easter Bunny and the Easter egg can also be traced back to the practices established by Semiramis. Because of their prolific nature, rabbits have long been associated with fertility and its goddess, Ishtar. Ancient Babylonians believed in a fable about an egg that fell into the Euphrates River from heaven and from which Queen Astarte (another name for Ishtar or Semiramis) was "hatched."

Origin of Easter - Resurrection Day for Christians
For Christians, the origin of Easter is simply the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ about 2,000 years ago. According to the Gospel accounts, Jesus Christ, the true Messiah promised in the Old Testament, was crucified and resurrected at the time of the Jewish Passover. Since that awesome event took place, those who believe Christ is their Messiah have honored that day and often celebrated it with the traditional Passover. As the Gospel of Christ spread throughout non-jewish nations, among people who did not have a history of celebrating the Passover, the pagan rites of Easter gradually became assimilated into what the Christian church called "Resurrection Day." Compromising the commandments of God with the comfort of the world is as old as the nation of Israel itself. Actually, American history teaches us that Easter was dismissed as a pagan holiday by the nation's founding Puritans and did not begin to be widely observed until just after the Civil War.

A Nation Of Colonists....

2006-04-10T00:45:00.000-04:00

A Nation of Colonists ... and Race Laws
The Politics of Immigration
By JUAN SANTOS

You hear it everywhere. Even from Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, author of the vicious anti-migrant legislation that has polarized the US.

"We are a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws," he says.

And like almost everyone else, he's got it wrong.

The original Europeans in what is now the US were not immigrants, but colonists. And the US is not a nation of immigrants - it is a white colonial settler state, like South Africa under Apartheid, the former Rhodesia, Australia and Israel.

And like those states the US has always operated on a sometimes hidden, sometimes overt system of Apartheid.

Like those places, the US is a nation of colonists and race laws.

It is a place where white colonists arrived, seized the land, and dispossessed, exterminated or attempted to exclude the original "non-white" peoples all of them.

They did so at the point of a gun - by open terror and genocide, which was the precursor and the necessary pre-condition of European "immigration." And, of course, they didn't only use guns and overt terror. Where "necessary," they operated by "law."

Let me prove the point. It's simple. We all know the facts.

In the US, Native Americans were dispossessed, subjected to mass murder, and locked on separate, Apartheid-style "reservations." So it stands today.

Africans were enslaved, and once "freed," they were subjected first to Jim Crow, then, when that proved no longer advisable, Jim Crow was transformed into the mass terror of mass incarceration and permanent Apartheid-style ghetto-ization. So it stands today.

The Indian nation of Mexico was conquered in a racist war of aggression by the US in 1848. The only debate in the days of "Manifest Destiny" was not whether to seize Mexican / Indian land, only how much of it to seize, and what to do to keep the Mexicans out of what had been stolen.

Two choices were before them. These were the terms of the debate: take the whole nation and lock the people on reservations, or take as much land with as few Mexicans as possible. Thus the border was established through a race war, through brute and overtly racist violence. The border is an Apartheid Wall. So it stands today.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States.

The Act claimed that "the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory" of the US the same racist rhetoric used today against other Brown people. Like HR4377, the current notorious immigration bill, the Chinese Exclusion Act made it illegal for "any Chinese laborer to come, or to remain within the United States." So it stands today. Only the immediate target of the law has changed.

Every group the US has sought to eliminate or exclude has been a people of color.

The logic is simple. Allow entry or citizenship for those who can be "assimilated" into the colonists' culture those who can become loyal colonists themselves and exclude the "Other" - those who are the targets of colonialism those whose land, cultures, bodies and souls must be sacrificed for the colonists to remain dominant and for their system to function.

Immigration law has always been race law in the US.

As far back as 1790 the Federal government ruled that the right to become a naturalized citizen was reserved to "free white persons."

So it remained until 1952. Until then the Supreme Court repeatedly determined exactly which migrants might be considered "free" and "white," as applicants of various ethnic backgrounds sought to become citizens.

Today, "The Nation of Immigrants" theme is struck to avoid the historical and cultural truth. Europeans who could be assimilated to colonial culture were allowed entrance en masse.

But there was a "stark division," as Haney Lopez reminds us, based on skin color.

"This stark division necessarily also carried important connotations regarding, for example, agency, moral authority, intelligence, and belonging," he writes. "To be unfit for naturalization--that is, to be non-White--implied a certain degeneracy of intellect, morals, self-restraint, and political values; to be suited for citizenship--to be White--suggested moral maturity, self assurance, personal independence, and political sophistication."

In other words, those "unfit" for citizenship were the colonized. The description Lopez offers for the "unfit" matches precisely the characteristics ascribed to colonized peoples by European imperialists and settlers for hundreds of years.

It also matches the racist stereotypes offered today of immigrants from areas south of the US border with Mexico, who Congressman Sensenbrenner has referred to as degenerate "alien gang members terrorizing communities."

But the racial subtext around immigration is not a subtext. It is the text itself.

Before Europe could "immigrate," someone else had to be removed. Before there was land to settle it must be stolen. Before anyone could be "free and white" someone else had to be "non-white" and enslaved. Before "Americans" could become "Americans," "Latin Americans" who are overwhelmingly Original Americans had to become something else "Latinos," "Hispanic," the not-Native the Alien.

The Illegal Alien.

In a stunning bit of triple think the Natives, who knew no borders, became "Aliens," while Europeans became "Americans," and "Americans" became "Natives," while the Original Americans became "foreign" infiltrators and lawbreakers bent on who-knows-what brand of "terrorism" against "innocent" colonists, or if you prefer, "Americans." Or "Settlers."

Or is it "Afrikaners."

Take your pick.

The Six Nations Confederation - the Iroquois, or Hau De No Sau Nee - wrote in their classic Basic Call to Consciousness that colonialism means "to be controlled from afar," that "colonialism is the process by which we are systematically confused," and that confusion is "an agent of control."

Like this.

"We are a nation of immigrants, and laws."

But sometimes someone slips, forgets the double talk, and makes the agenda clear. They don't mean for us to overhear, but they can't help themselves.

In his mercilessly racist article Are We Really a Nation of Immigrants?, Lawrence Auster slips. He writes, "throughout its history the United States has been a member of Western civilization-in religion overwhelmingly Christian in race overwhelmingly white, in language English. Why shouldn't those little historical facts be at least as important in determining our immigration policy as the pseudo-fact that we're all 'descended from immigrants?'" (FrontPagemagazine.com).

Auster, and David Horowitz' Front Page Magazine, want one thing; they know what it is, and they're willing to tell you. They want a white nation. They slipped.

The many who write diatribes and hate mail on the theme of "What part of ILLEGAL don't you UNDERSTAND?!" also slip.

We understand "illegal" perfectly well.

Conquest of territory in wars of aggression is illegal under international law. The US occupation of most Native land and all of the occupied sections of Mexico is illegal. The presence of the conquering people, the usurpation of the land itself is illegal. The colonists themselves are illegal aliens.

But, for the Right, it's not really about some imaginary adherence to a just, neutral system of "law."

It's about race law and white privilege.

And race law, codified on paper or not, is deeply codified in white people's expectations about their place in society, and some of them are getting dangerously edgy about having "their" land their turf stepped on by Brown people.

On the web site of the anti-Mexican hate group Save Our State, a correspondent calling themselves "USA Today" writes:

"To be honest we are heading for a Balkinization and a racial cleansing

"I know its not politicly correct to say so but I think lots of folks see it coming and I'll bet the vast majority of Americans would have no problem with genocide as a last resort to save this country , Usually when you back somebody into a corner they will defend themselves by any means ........get it ?

"Does this sound like something you would hear the nazis say? sure it is but I spend lots of time scanning the forums and blogs and its coming from normal , everyday people that are just about fed up with the whole mess.

"I know a large number of Germans didn't agree with hitler but they didn't exactly act against him either.

"Just keep pushing and pretty soon you'll find the American people in a corner.

"On that day, Beware."

People who think like this are the social, cultural and political base of politicians like Jim Sensenbrenner.

They are classic colonists, with the colonizer's outlook. For them, mere "immigration" is impossible. Their "forefathers" conquered the land, so those coming here must be out to "re-conquer" the land to take it back from them.

These are the true inheritors of the American Dream, a dream which, for the colonized, has been nothing but a nightmare.

They intend to defend that nightmare no matter what it takes.

That's what "immigration reform" and "immigration control" are really all about.

Colonialism.

And the race laws that defend it.

Juan Santos is editor of Mexica Tlahtolli, a Chicana/o - Native American newspaper in Los Angeles. He can be reached at JuanSantos@Mexica.com

Homeland Security official arrested in sex sting

2006-04-06T21:47:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been arrested in a sex sting operation on charges of trying to seduce someone he believed to be a 14-year-old girl, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said on Tuesday.

Brian Doyle, 55, faces 23 charges in Polk County, Florida, related to use of a computer to seduce a child and transmitting harmful material to a minor, Judd said in a statement.

Doyle was taken into custody at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, outside Washington, on Tuesday evening while he was on the line with undercover detectives, Judd said.

"He was on his computer communicating with the undercover detective who he believed to be a 14-year-old girl at the time we knocked on his door in Maryland, took him into custody and served a search warrant," Judd said in an interview on CNN.

The statement said Doyle on March 12 contacted a 14-year-old girl whose profile was posted on the Internet and initiated a sexually explicit conversation. The "girl" was actually an undercover Polk County detective.

In subsequent conversations, Doyle gave the undercover detective his office phone number and his government-issued cell phone number. The statement alleged that the official Doyle used the Internet to send pornographic movie clips to the "girl" and had explicit sexual conversations in online chats with "her," the statement said.

According to the statement, Doyle also had sexually explicit telephone conversations with a detective posing as a child on his office telephone and cell phone.

Many of the conversations with the "victim" were too graphic for public release, the statement said.

"There is no question that Doyle believed that he was having these disgusting, obscene discussions, on-line and on the phone, with a young girl," Judd said.

"What stands out to me the most in this particular case was the fact that Brian, on his first conversation with our undercover detective, who he believed to be a 14-year-old girl, clearly identified himself as a deputy press secretary for Homeland Security," Judd told CNN.

"If he would provide that kind of information to include a photograph of himself with his identification tags, who else may he be talking to around the world who he thinks to be a 14-year-old girl?" Judd said.

The sheriff said Doyle already faces 23 felony counts in the state of Florida and could face charges in a federal investigation now underway.

"We take these allegations very seriously and we will cooperate fully with this ongoing investigation," DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said in a statement.

A Homeland Security official said Doyle was expected to be put on administrative leave on Wednesday.

Anyone See A Pattern???

2006-04-06T21:43:00.000-04:00

Adelphia Communications Corp.: Donated large sums of money to some of the most conservative members of Congress. They are also the first cable company to offer hard-core adult movies to subscribers. Daily Kos article

Edison Misla Aldarondo, Republican legislator, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for molestation of his daughter and her friend for eight-year period starting when they were 9. Full Article

Randal David Ankeney, Republican activist, arrested on suspicion of sexual assault on a child with force. He faces 6 charges related to getting a 13-year-old girl stoned on pot and then having sex with her. Source Also accused of sexually assaulting another girl. Denver ABC Article

Dick Armey (R-Texas), former professor, has been accused by The Dallas Observer of sexually harassing female students.

Jim Bakker, televangelist with Pat Robertson at Robertson's Christian Broadcasting network. Committed adultery with Jessica Hahn [1] and then used charitable donations to pay her hush money[2]. Fellow televangelists say he's gay. [3][4]Indicted on 23 federal charges of fraud, tax evasion, and racketeering [5].

Bob Barr, Republican Congressman from Georgia. Sponsored the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, saying "The flames of hedonism, the flames of narcissism, the flames of self-centered morality are licking at the very foundation of our society, the family unit." Was married three times. Paid for his second wife's abortion. Failed to pay child support to the children of his first two wives and while married to his third and present wife was photographed licking whipped cream off of strippers at his inaugural party.

Merrill Robert Barter, Republican County Commissioner, pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy. Booth Bay Register Article

Robert Bauman, Republican congressman and anti-gay activist, was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar. Source: Washington Blade

Parker J. Bena, Republican activist and Bush Elector, pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography (including children as young as 3 years old) on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000. Source

William Bennett, Drug Czar under George H. W. Bush, compulsive gambler who has had to wire as much as $1.4 million to cover gambling losses in a 2 month period. NY Press Article | Washington Monthly Article

Louis Beres, chairman of the Christian Coalition of Oregon. 3 of his family members accuse him of molesting them when they were pre-teens. Editor and Publisher article

Howard L. Brooks, Republican legislative aide and advisor to a California assemblyman, was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography. Sacramento Bee article

John Bolton Bush's appointee ambassador to United Nations, corroborated allegations that Mr. Bolton’s first wife, Christina Bolton, was forced to engage in group sex have not been refuted by the State Department. Raw Story Article

Mike Bowers Former State Attorney General, prosecuted the famous "Bowers vs. Hardwick" case, based on Georgia anti-sodomy laws. Admitted to a 10-year adulterous affair Slate article

Pat Buchanan predidential candidate, media talking-head. His campaign refused to confirm or deny whether Pat has had chlamydia or any other venereal diseases.

Andrew Buhr, Republican politician, former committeeman for Hadley Township Missouri, was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy. Source

Jeffrey Buley (http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/36931.htm), New York Republican Party's top lawyer, and senior political adviser to Gov. Pataki (R), arrested for assaulting his wife in a drunken rage. They have two young children.

Ted Bundy campaigned for the Republican Party. Infamous serial rapist who murdered 16 women. Source: BBC

Jim Bunn Congressman of Oregon: With his success due in great part to support from the Christian Coalition, Bunn won his congressional seat, then immediately ditched his wife (and mother of his five children), married a staffer, and put his new wife on the state payroll for the unheard-of salary of $97,500. Salon.com article

John Allen Burt, Republican anti-abortion activist, convicted of sexually molesting a 15 year old girl at the home for troubled girls that he ran. Source: Pensacola News Journal

Dan Burton, Republican Congressman who, while married, fathered a child by another woman. Salon.com Article

George W. Bush, Republican president, accused in a criminal complaint and lawsuit of raping Margie Schoedinger, who was later suicided. Accused by Tammy Phillips, a former stripper quoted in the National Enquirer in 2000 saying she had an affair with Bush that had ended in 1999.

John Butler, Republican activist, was charged with criminal sexual assault on a teenage girl.

Ken Calvert, Congressman (R-Ca), champion of the Christian Coalition and its "family values." Sued as an alimony deadbeat by his ex-wife. Said "We can't forgive what occurred between the President and Lewinsky." In 1993 he was caught by police receiving oral sex from a prostitute and attempted to flee the scene.

Charles Canady, Congressman (R-Florida), Judiciary Committee member. Lied to his constituents about his adulterous affair with Sharon Becker, which caused her divorce.

Lincoln Chafee, Republican Senator, admitted former cocaine user.

Helen Chenoweth, Congresswoman (R-Id.). Admitted to a six-year adulterous affair with a married associate. In 1995, Chenoweth had denied the affair when asked about it by The Spokane Spokesman-Review, but now she claims a pardon from a higher authority: "I've asked for God's forgiveness, and I've received it," she revealed.

Keola Childs, Republican County Councilman, pleaded guilty to sexual assault in the first degree for molesting a male child.Honolulu Star-Bulletin Article

Kevin Coan, Republican St. Louis Election Board official, arrested and charged with trying to buy sex from a 14-year-old girl whom he met on the Internet. Source: Newmax

Roy Cohn, continually condemned gays and gay rights. Was a closet gay who died of AIDS. Wikipedia Article

Dan Crane, Republican Congressman, married, father of six. Had sex with a minor working as a congressional page. Salon.com article

Paul Crouch Televangelist, Former President of Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). Paid $425,000 in hush money in an attempt to cover up a gay affair. Christianity Today article

Richard A. Dasen Sr., Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, convicted of sexual abuse of children, promotion of prostitution and several counts of solicitation, enough to add up to a sentence of 126 years in prison. Investigators estimated that he spent up to $5,000,000 on prostitutes.

Missoulian Article on the trial | Missoulian Article on his conviction

Richard A. Delgaudio, Republican fundraiser and Bush pioneer, was found guilty of child porn charges. WBAL Channel article

Peter Dibble, Republican legislator pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl. News Channel 8 Article

Nicholas Elizondo, Republican director of the "Young Republican Federation" molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison. Halfway down this Bakersfield Californian article

Larry Dale Floyd, Republican Constable in Denton County, Texas Precinct Two. Arrested for allegedly crossing state lines to have sex with an 8-year old child and was charged with 7 related offenses. Age 62 at time of arrest. Dallas News Article | Atrios Article

John Fund, of the Wall Street Journal, a prominent anti-abortion columnist and GOP fund raiser. He lost his position after it was revealed that he impregnated the daughter of an old girlfriend and then encouraged her to abort his child. American Politics Journal Article

Jeff Gannon Partisan blogger with no journalism credentials and a fake name who got invited to Bush's Press conferences. Is also a pimp and a gay prostitute. Truthout Article. See also dKospedia's page on Jeff Gannon.

Jack W. Gardner, Republican Councilman, had been convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl. when the Republican Party, knowing of these crimes, put him on the ballot. Article with documents

Richard Gardner, a Nevada State Representative (R), admitted to molesting his two daughters. Review Journal Article

Newt Gingrich, married three times. Gingrich campaign worker Anne Manning admitted that she gave Newt oral sex while he was still married to his first wife. Informed one wife he was filing for divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer treatments. Salon article

Philip Giordano, Republican mayor sentenced to 37 years for forcing two 8 and 10 year old girls to perform oral sex on him in his City Hall office. NBC Article | Newsday Article

Rudy Giuliani, had an adulterous affair. Pocketed $80,000 for speaking at a charity benefit for tsunami aid which raised $60,000 for the victims themselves (Feb 2005).

Matthew Glavin, president and CEO of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, big player in the Clinton Impeachment, and many anti-gay jihads, has been arrested multiple times for public indeceny, one time fondling the crotch of the officer who was arresting him. Full Article

Marty Glickman (a.k.a. "Republican Marty"), Republican activist, was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a juvenile and one count of delivering the drug LSD.

Mark A. Grethen, Republican activist, convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children. Orlando Weekly article

Jon Grunseth, Republican businessman and candidate for Minnesota governor, withdrew his candidacy after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter, and tried to grope one. "I've made some mistakes" he said. USA Today article

Dr. W. David Hager Bush appointee, member of Focus on the Family's Physician Resource Council, player in movement to ban the morning-after-pill. Had an adulterous affair, before divorcing his wife he sexually abused her, including sodomizing her in her sleep. Article

Mark Harris, Republican city councilman who is described as a "good military man" and "church goer," was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

John Hathaway, Republican Senate candidate, was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media. Source: Casco Bay weekly

Howard Scott Heldreth, anti-abortion activist who gained fame during the Shiavo media-circus, was convicted of two charges of raping a child in 2002. page at Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Sexual Offender/Predator Unit

Mike Hintz, a First Assembly of God youth pastor, introduced by Bush on the campaign trail, and promoted his policies. Says he supports Bush's values. Two months later, this married father of four turned himself into police, charged with the sexual exploitation of a child. Article | Commentary

Also signed an ad (that called for criminally prosecuting business that sell porn), along with another pastor who was repeatedly busted for public masturbation.

Neal Horsley, anti-abortion activist. Has called for the arrest of all homosexuals. Admitted on the Fox News Radio's The Alan Colmes Show, that he's had sex with mules. Put photographs on his Web site of naked men engaging in homosexual acts and a nude woman engaging in bestiality amid shots of grotesquely maimed fetuses. Drug dealer convicted of possession of hashish with intent to sell. He calls for "the establishment of a new government, one that can obey God's plan for government."

Tim Hutchinson, divorced his wife of 29 years to marry a congressional aide he was having an affair with.

Henry Hyde, Judge who oversaw Clinton's impeachment proceedings, prominent opponent of reproductive rights, who had an extramarital affair with a woman who was married and had three children, during the course of which she and her husband were divorced. Salon.com article

Don Haidl, Assistant Sheriff of Orange Country, in violation of California's rape shield law, led a smear campaign against the child his son poisoned and then violently gang-raped on videotape, adding up to 24 felony counts. He said that his son "acted accordingly" because the child was a "slut". The full gruesome story, with many newspaper articles.

Paul Ingram, Republican Party leader of Thurston County, Washington, pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison. Source: The Olympian

Bill Janklow, former S. Dakota Governor and Congressman, arrested for drunk driving, disorderly conduct, assaulting an officer, and indecent exposure in 1974. Pardoned his son-in-law for multiple drunk driving convictions in 2002. Resigned congressional seat due to a manslaughter conviction in a reckless driving incident in 2003.

Bernard Kerik, had two simultaneous adulterous affairs.

Earl Kimmerling, sentenced to 40 years in prison after he confessed to molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her. Source

Lawrence E. King, Jr., Republican Activist, organized orgies with child prostitutes at the White House during the 1980s. Full page including Washington Times article Discovery Channel documentary

I. Lewis Libby, former Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. In 1996 published a novel containing bizarre sexual content, including beastiality and pedophillia. Full Details (Oh yeah, and he's also been indicted on obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements, charges adding up to 10 years in prison.)

Rush Limbaugh, triple-divorcee[6], 30-pill a day drug addict. Goodies from The Smoking Gun.com

Bob Livingston, former Congressman (R-La.) resigned from the House in the wake of revelations about his past adultery.

Donald Lukens, Republican Congressman, was found guilty of having sex with a minor - a girl he was accused of sleeping with since she was 13. Time Article

Pat McPherson, Douglas County Election Commissioner. Arrested for fondling a 17-year-old girl. Article

Jon Matthews, Republican talk show host in Houston, was indicted for indecency with a child, including exposing his genitals to a girl under the age of 17. Source: ABC News

Jeff Miller, (R-Cleveland), Senate Republican Caucus Chairman in Tennessee and the sponsor of Tennessee’s Marriage Protection act, getting divorced (as of April 2005) because of an affair he was having with an office aid. Miller described the Tennessee Marriage Protection Act as a means of preserving the sanctity of marriage. He opposed an amendment, however, which stated that “Adultery is deemed to be a threat to the institution of marriage and contrary to public policy in Tennessee.” [7] [8]

Nicholas Morency, Republican anti-abortion activist, pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor The Dallas Morning News article.

Sue Myrick, Congresswoman (R-NC), describes herself as a "devout Christian." Committed adultery with a married man.

Bill O'Reilly Right-wing conservative talk show host on Fox News, sued for sexual harrassment by his producer.

Bob Packwood, Senator (R-Ore.), resigned in 1995 under a threat of public senate hearings related to 10 female ex-staffers accusing him of sexual harassment.

Jeffrey Patti, Republican Committee Chairman, was arrested for distributing what experts call "some of the most offensive material in the child pornography world" - a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped. Daily Record News Article

John Paulk, lied about prowling for gay sex while running a fundamentalist group to cure gays.

Brent Parker Utah State Representetive. Arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer posing as a male prostitute. KSL News Article |Deseret News Article

John Peterson, Congressman (R-Pa), accused of sexual harassment and creation of a hostile work environment by six women. Peterson has refused to admit a crime, saying only "I may have been an excessive hugger."

Harvey Pitt, SEC Chief under George W. Bush until he was forced to resign in 2002. Worked for New Frontier Media, a firm which distributed teen sex videos.

Mark Pazuhanich, Republican judge, pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation. Pocono Record article

Ralph Reed Former Executive Director of the Christian Coalition. Has called gambling a "cancer on the American body politic." Recieved $3.8 million in payments from 2001-2002 from a former aide of Tom Delay, which specifically benefitted two tribal clients in their efforts to protect casino interests.

Steve Rice City Councilman and former Mayor of Sterling Heights, Republican. Charged with possession of cocaine, a felony. Crystal meth was found on his housemate, Jeremy Burns.

Rick Roach, West Texas Republican district attorney who was elected in 2000 after running a "strong anti-drug campaign." According to the Washington Times, he was "once publicly praised for his efforts to stamp out narcotics in his part of the Panhandle." 2205: FBI agents confiscated two handguns from Roach's briefcase, before raiding his home and discovering "35 more guns, along with a cache of cocaine, methamphetamines, marijuana, scales and syringes."

George Roche III, carried on a 19 year affair with his son's wife, while serving as president of Hillsdale College, which "emphasizes the importance of the common moral truths that bind all Americans, while recognizing the importance of religion for the maintenance of a free society."

Beverly Russell, County Chairman of the Christian Coalition, sexually molested his step-daughter, Susan Smith, who later drowned her two children. Herald-Journal Article |Commentary on Newsweek Article

Rick Santorum, used $100,000 of PA state funds earmarked for that state's school children to educate his own children, who were not residents of Pennsylvania. source (http://www.postgazette.com/pg/04323/413787.stm)

Joe Scarborough, former Republican Congressman, currently a conservative talk show host. Resigned his congressional seat abruptly to spend more time with his family, amidst allegations of an affair. His intern, Lori Klausutis, was soon after found dead in his office. The medical examiner, who had his license revoked in Missouri for falsifying information in an autopsy report, and suspended in florida for six years, ruled the case an accident, after giving conflicting information about her injuries. He said he lied about them because "The last thing we wanted was 40 questions about a head injury."

Ed Schrock, two-term republican congressman, with a 92% approval rating from the Christian Coalition. Cosponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, consistently opposed gay rights. Married, with wife and kids. Withdrew his candidacy for a third term after tapes of him soliciting for gay sex were circulated.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, right wing conservative radio host. Promotes family values, estranged from her mother, opposes birth control, has had her tubes tied, espouses saving oneself for marriage, admits to having had sex before she was married, opposes adultery, has committed adultery while she was married, and has slept with a married man, opposes divorce, is divorced and remarried, has posed for nude photos which are available online.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican governor, had sex with a 16 year old when he was 28.

John Scmitz, right-wing republican congressman, who had had his committee chairship taken away from him in the California State Senate after issuing a press release attacking Jews, feminists and gays. Forced out of office in 1982 for having an adulterous affair and fathering two children out of wedlock with one of his students. He was caught because his baby was admitted to hospital for having hair tied so tightly around his penis that it was almost severed. His daughter, Mary Kay LeTourneau, was convicted of having an adulterous affair with one of her students, and giving birth to two of his children. Wikipedia article

Larry Jack Schwarz, Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, fired after child pornography was found in his possession. Rocky Mountain News article With his political career over, he went to work in the hard-core pornography industry for Platinum X Pictures, owned by his daughter, porn starlet Jewel De'Nyle (Stephany Schwarz). Wikipedia article

Jim Stelling, Seminole County Republican Party chairman who believes in "family values", as he told a judge. Filed a defamation lawsuit againt Nancy Goettman, a former county GOP executive committee member, for falsely claiming he had been married six times. Stelling has been married 5 times. Article

Don Sherwood, Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Eventually admitted to an affar with a woman 30 years younger than him, after she accused him of physical abuse and attempting to choke her. Post-Gazette article

Tom Shortridge. Republican campaign consultant, was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl. LA Times article

Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr., Republican City Councilman, pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison. Sex Offender Registry page | Article

John Snow, Secretary of the Treasury, securities fraud class action lawsuit, sued by his ex-wife for child support, and has been arrested for DUI.

Craig J. Spence, Republican lobbyist, organized orgies with child prostitutes in the White House during the 1980s. Full page including Washington Times article Discovery Channel documentary

Jimmy Swaggart, televangelist, said during a sermon "I'm trying to find the correct name for it … this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. … I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died." Had an affair with a prostitute.

David Swartz, Republican County Commissioner, pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Rocky Mountain News Article

Randall Terry, Right to Life activist, founder of Operation Rescue, involved in the Terri Schiavo protests. Once imprisoned for sending former President Bill Clinton an aborted fetus. His son Jamiel is gay; his daughter Tila had sex outside of marriage, became pregnant, had a miscarriage - she is no longer welcome in his home; his daughter Ebony had 2 children outside of wedlock and became Muslim. He has campaigned against infidelity and birth control, gays and unwed mothers. Terry himself was censured by his church after committing adultery.

Bill Thomas Republican congressman, had an affair with Deborah Steelman, a health care lobbyist who steered huge campaign gifts to Thomas' war chest.

Strom Thurmond, republican senator and racist, raped and impregnanted a 15-year old African American maid. (BBC Article)

Robin Vanderwall, Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate, convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet. Virginian-Pilot Article

Robert Waltrip, Bush campaign contributor. Runs a funeral company which had to settle a lawsuit because bodies were being dug up and dumped in the woods. George W. Bush, who had met with Waltrip, was subpoenaed but refused to testify in the case.

J.C. Watts, Representative (R-Oklahoma), loud champion of "moral values." Has out-of-wedlock children.

Jim Wesr, Spokane Mayor. Supported a bill, which failed, would have barred gays and lesbians from working in schools, day-care centers and some state agencies. Voted to bar the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves from AIDS. Proposed that “any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person” among teens be criminalized. Had a sexual affair with an 18 year old boy.Source: Spokesman review

Keith Westmoreland, a Tennessee state representative (R), was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to minors under 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children). Tennesean Article

Stephen White, Republican preacher. Was arrested after allegedly offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him. Daily Pennsylvanian article | Daily yale News Article

Includes content from Demopedia

See also:

* T. Rex's Guide to Republican Family Values
* Myth: Repuiblicans values sexual morality Includes an experiment you can try at home: use file-sharing software to spy on conservative VS liberal porn habits.
* Doublethink: Conservative Babylon

Statistics

One of the myths regarding child molesters is that they “look different” or behave differently from others in some way. Here are some statistics describing child molesters:

* 91% are heterosexual

* 91% are religious

Iraq: Mission Accomplished....

2006-04-05T14:47:00.000-04:00

THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED
by Greg Palast
for The Guardian

20 March 2006

Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong.

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney, accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,

"Operation
Iraqi
Liberation."

O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF.

"It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq's crude.

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with OPEC."

Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.

There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get MORE of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing TOO MUCH of it.

You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping LESS of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price.

It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just LOVE it.

Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.

No so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil.

As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister; the conquered nation "enhanced its relationship with OPEC;" and the price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%.

In other words, on the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished. However, it wasn't America's mission, nor the Iraqis'. It was an Mission Accomplished for OPEC and Big Oil.

**********
On June 6, Penguin Dutton will release GREG PALAST'S NEW BOOK, "ARMED MADHOUSE: DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINES OF THE CLASS WAR." Order it today -- and view his investigative reports for Harper's Magazine and BBC television's Newsnight -- at www.GregPalast.com.

"Ghetto Slut"???

2006-04-03T18:50:00.000-04:00

Talk Show Hosts Calls Cynthia McKinney "Ghetto Slut" Boortz: Rep. McKinney "looks like a ghetto slut"
Hear Clip at: www.poli-tainment.com

On the March 31 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Neal Boortz said that Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) "looks like a ghetto slut." Boortz was commenting on a March 29 incident in which McKinney allegedly struck a police officer at a Capitol Hill security checkpoint. Boortz said that McKinney's "new hair-do" makes her look "like a ghetto slut," like "an explosion at a Brillo pad factory," like "Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence," and like "a shih tzu." McKinney is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Georgia.

From the March 31 broadcast of Cox Radio Syndication's The Neal Boortz Show, with producer Belinda Skelton and talk radio host Royal Marshall:

BOORTZ: For instance, or for goodness sakes, jump in and I'm gonna say -- I'm gonna start out with something controversial. I saw Cynthia McKinney's new hair-do. Have you seen it, Belinda?
SKELTON: No.
BOORTZ: She looks like a ghetto slut.
SKELTON: Well, how is it?
BOORTZ: It's just -- it's hideous.
SKELTON: Is it braided? Or --
BOORTZ: No, it's not braided. It just flies away from her head in every conceivable direction. It looks like an explosion in a Brillo pad factory. It's just hideous. To me, that hairstyle just shows contempt for -- no, it's not an Afro. I mean, no, it just shows contempt for the position that she holds and the body that she serves in. And, I'm sorry, there's just no other way to -- it's just a hideous and horrible looking --
MARSHALL: Her hairstyle?
BOORTZ: Yeah, the hairstyle. It just, it looks like an explosion. Have you seen it?
MARSHALL: Yeah, I like it.
BOORTZ: Oh, jeez.
MARSHALL: It looks better than the braids she was wearing.
BOORTZ: No, the braids had some dignity. They had some class.
MARSHALL: The braids had dignity?
BOORTZ: They had more class than this thing.
MARSHALL: This says, you know, kinda 2000s, you know, stepping up to the plate. Contemporary look, you know?
BOORTZ: She looks like Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence.
MARSHALL: OK, so you don't like her hair.
BOORTZ: Yeah, OK, I don't like her hair. I'm sorry.
MARSHALL: That being said, I think a lot of people would say it looks a lot better than those cornrows she was wearing. You can't tell me that's dignified.
BOORTZ: Well, I'm not a big cornrow fan but I got used to her with that. OK?
MARSHALL: So she's staying the same for you?
BOORTZ: She looks like a shih tzu!
MARSHA LL: I like Cynthia's new hairstyle.
BOORTZ: Well, there you go. Differing opinions.

Boortz posted similar comments on the "Neal's Nuze" section of his website, in which he said McKinney "looks like ghetto trash." From Boortz's website:
It doesn't look like the latest Cynthia McKinney mess is going to go away any time soon. Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that the Capitol Hill police have notified the federal prosecutor's office in Washington that they are going to seek an arrest warrant for McKinney next week. OK, Now I've seen Cynthia McKinney's new hairstyle. There is just no other way to say this. It's just hideous. She looks like ghetto trash. Get a braider over there ... quick! Nobody with a modicum of self-respect would go around looking like that. And don't give me any stuff for saying this. I've endured years of "bald" remarks. I'm entitled.

IF YOU ARE OUTRAGED, CALL:

Paul Douglas
Managing Director
Cox Radio Syndication
Phone 404.962.2078
Fax 404.897.2226
paul.douglas@cox.com

Advertising Sales Manager
Jones Radio Network
Cathy Csukas
New York
212-302-1100
ccsukas@jonesradio.com

WRITE TO:
Cox Radio, Inc.
Corporate Secretary (ATTN: Board of Directors)
6205 Peachtree Dunwoody Road
Atlanta, Georgia 30328

Hear Clip at: www.poli-tainment.com

Bush...Losing Support For War

2006-03-30T08:51:00.000-05:00

Not all conservatives are mindless sheep.....

Many die-hard Republicans shaking their heads over Bush, war.

Oceanside, San Diego County - Dennis Dalbey, armed with scissors, an electric hair clipper and a steady hand, has given dozens of Camp Pendleton's young Marines the regulation haircut before they head to combat in Iraq.

In his Cut-Rite Barbershop on the Coast Highway, he wears his loyalty to those customers openly - the business is adorned with painted yellow ribbons, flags and "We support our troops" banners.

But these days, Dalbey, a Republican and a self-described conservative who voted for President Bush, is not nearly as supportive of the commander in chief.

"Enough is enough," he said of the war while showing Lance Cpl. Aaron Kernell, 19, from Tennessee, to a red Naugahyde chair for a cut. "If they haven't got this thing settled by year's end, it's time to bring the boys home."

As the nation marks the third anniversary of the country's entry into the Iraq war, Dalbey's deeply felt pessimism echoes through a region that remains California's most loyal Republican stronghold. The feelings, from California voters who have backed Bush, underscore the depth of political troubles for the president and his party in a year of midterm congressional elections.

With the war still raging, and the public growing increasingly sour over the outlook, Bush's approval ratings have plummeted. The once-positive images of the president and his party, which controls both houses of Congress, have been shredded in the wake of controversies ranging from the Dubai port deal to the response to Hurricane Katrina to lobbying scandals.

The president last week took to the stump to plead with Americans about the necessity for resolve in Iraq. But a tour through congressional districts of California's Inland Empire and northern San Diego County - Republican-dominated districts that have voted twice for the president - found surprisingly strong doubts about the president and his war policies.

While many conservative voters who spoke with The Chronicle remain supportive of America's military men and women, an increasing number are disillusioned with the nation's leader. And from the VFW halls to the local cafes, an increasing number in the region are expressing a profound concern about the human and financial costs of the continued Iraq conflict.

Oceanside's homes and businesses support the 60,000 military personnel and civilians who work at Camp Pendleton, home to the I Marine Expeditionary Force and the 1st Marine Division. At GI Joe's Military Surplus, just up the street from Dalbey's barbershop, owner Robert Anderson shares the pessimistic sentiments about the war. Another self-described conservative Republican who voted for Bush twice, Anderson is a military booster who sells "camo" pants and offers uniform dry cleaning for his Marine clientele. He shakes his head when asked about Iraq.

"We've done what we needed to do," he said. "We could spend 10 years there and get the same thing. ... It doesn't matter, it won't change. These guys have been fighting each other for generations, and they're going to hate us no matter what."

In nearby San Marcos, Herb Ranquist, 77, a retired Navy veteran perched on a stool in the local VFW hall, is equally perturbed, saying, "If we're going to war, we ought to do it right. If we let the generals and admirals do the job, we'd do OK.

"I voted for him two times, and I wish I hadn't," Ranquist said of the president. "It was probably one of the worst mistakes I ever made."

Ranquist recalls how on May 1, 2003, Bush stood on an aircraft carrier off the coast near San Diego - backed by a sign that said "Mission Accomplished" - and proclaimed that "major combat operations in Iraq are over."

"I remember that," he said softly. "We all remember it."

The Iraq war "did not protect us after 9/11. (Bush) was supposed to get bin Laden," said Marilyn Joy Shephard, 62, of Escondido, who has been a registered Republican since the Reagan era.

"But he wanted to go into Iraq, and I don't know why," she said. "I absolutely don't feel safer."

Shephard, a former high school teacher and financial adviser, survived the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center from the 66th floor of the second tower to be struck by a jetliner. Shephard said she ran down 66 floors and rushed outside - only to see a young woman who had jumped from the skyscraper land on the ground nearby. She recalls in painful detail the sights, sounds and smells of that attack, adding, "I even still have the 9/11 cough."

Shephard is bitter that the president "squandered his political capital" on a conflict that has tallied 2,300 American deaths, thousands wounded and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead.

"It has been a wanton squandering, a waste of humanity," Shephard said. "It's a national disgrace."

Tellingly, Shephard was one of a handful of Republicans in Escondido attending a house party for a Democrat, Francine Busby, a school board member from Cardiff-by-the-Sea who hopes to win the solidly Republican 50th congressional district seat vacated by GOP Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham after his conviction on corruption charges. A special election is scheduled for April 11.

Jerry Gould, 65, a retired pharmacist and a 40-year registered Republican also attending the party, was angered with Cunningham, his party and his president's performance on the war.

"I'm incredibly unhappy with the poor planning, and the thousands of people who've gotten killed," Gould said. "(Bush) had no idea of an exit strategy. They're dealing with a culture they don't understand ... and I have a sick feeling that 20 years from now, another Saddam (Hussein) will be in power. The guy with the biggest gun will prevail."

Yet despite the doubts, there remains a core of Republicans in the area who are stalwarts for the president and the Iraq mission.

One is Howard Kaloogian, a Republican candidate for the 50th congressional district seat who said he isn't surprised that loyal Republicans are showing "a Vietnam-like fatigue" on the war. The media and the president are to blame, he said.

"He's doing excellent on the prosecution of the war," Kaloogian said of Bush, "but he gets a D-minus on promotion of what we're doing there."

Kaloogian, sitting in a local restaurant in Rancho Bernardo while he met with supporters, said his views on Iraq come in part from his fact-finding trip there last July with talk-show hosts and political activists.

"It's a country of 25 million and 25,000 terrorists," said Kaloogian, a former California assemblyman. "People there believe it's better today than under Saddam Hussein. ... There's no massacres (as there were) under his killing machine," and Iraqis are being trained to take over the country's security and military forces. Hospitals and schools are being built, the economy is coming back, and riding on a humvee in the country, he recalled, Americans are "greeted by kids like an ice cream truck."

The Bush administration "needs to get out the message" of the nation's achievements there, while the media should cover such positive outcomes more, he insisted. "People have to understand this progress takes time," he said.

Thomas Morrow, 52, of La Jolla - a Vietnam veteran and a card-carrying Republican - agreed. "I'm not the biggest fan of Bush right now," mostly because of his immigration policies, he said, but in Iraq - while "things aren't going as well as we'd hoped ... we're slowly getting the country back on its feet."

But the president, he said, "will not be able to resolve all the challenges there before the end of his term."

Back in the barber's chair at the Cut-Rite Barbershop in Oceanside, young Lance Cpl. Kernell is not focused on public opinion. He is a Marine with a job to do. He repairs helicopters and will leave for Iraq in July.

"You ever been over to the big sandbox?" Dalbey said.

Kernell shook his head from side to side.

"You never know what's going to happen," the young Marine said. "But we're not going to leave until it's finished."

Dalbey finished up the precision trim - and gave his customer a piece of advice.

"Just make sure," the barber said quietly, "that you hook up with somebody who has been there before."
_________________

American Dream a Lie????

2006-03-29T17:10:00.000-05:00

The American Dream is a lie.

The American Dream, for many, promises an opportunity to blend into a melting pot that will no longer focus on race, creed or color, but will instead see only patriotism and red, white and blue.

But that dream is a lie.

That dream is a lie and any promise of melting is nothing more than an empty promise to Black people, who have never melted into the pot, sticking out sorely—some by choice and some by the nation’s force of will.

The melting pot and it’s tool of implementation, integration, can never work, because they require for Blacks that we give up the things about us that make us who we really are.

And, even though some of us have willingly given up portions of our soul and even offered up our very culture to be assimilated, there are too many of us who refuse to integrate into something that demands that we become less once joined to the whole.

In television’s Star Trek, The Borg is a population that is promulgated by assimilation of other races into it’s collective, which is then defined by the assimilated. When assimilated, the people are no longer individuals, and only the most useful portions of their culture are retained for use by the collective.

But America is only Borg-like for the African descendants. It’s other assimilants(sp) are allowed to maintain a connection to and pride in what they were before assimilation into the pot. They melt willingly, knowing that they will be greater once joined. They still pay homage to their ancestor’s land and many even speak their native language. But African descendants are asked to sever their connection to Africa in favor of America, and it is demanded that even slavery be forgotten and no longer discussed.

Yes, a powerful tool of the assimilation process is the erasure of history from the memory of many Black Americans.

There are Blacks in America today who can remember the look and smell of “strange fruit” hung from trees and burned. There are Blacks who can remember being sent to the back of the bus or turned away from the lunch counter and there are Blacks in America who can remember. There are Blacks younger than fifty who can remember “Whites Only” signs and there are even a few still alive who are children of slaves.

Yet, it is demanded that we become something new, but less than what we once were, by erasing those memories, or at least ceasing discussions of those memories.

For the African in America, assimilation is a dicey proposition, because popular culture in America can not exist without the portion of Blacks who can not assimilate, and therefore, out of necessity, create a counterculture that eventually becomes sexy and therefore appropriated and swallowed whole by the nation. In fact, a great portion of America’s popular culture is defined by denying that racism exists and the pretense that assimilation occurs evenly for us all.

But even for the confused and silly Negroes who willingly abandon all things Black, there is no true assimilation. There are and have been Negroes who have prayed and worked so hard for assimilation that their one true desire was to become so indistinguishable a part of the dominant culture that there would be no separating them from whites upon a cursory examination. But because racism has been such an integral portion of the stew in the melting pot, even those sad creatures eventually stand out and in many cases, are dis-assimilated.

Take glaring examples such as OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson, who did everything in their power to assimilate, yet still found rejection from complete melting when trying to be as white as possible by loving white people, marrying white people and even disliking and/or rejecting Black people, which is what the racism inherent in America dictates. Both were dis-assimilated, and now spend their lives trying to force themselves back into the collective.

And even in the more quiet assimilated such as Clarence Thomas and James Earl Jones, who quietly married white women and rejected Black people, assimilation became cruel and unusual.
Thomas, in willingly assimilating, gave up everything Black and even turned on his own sister for still being what America created and yet despised–poor and Black. Yet, he still raised the harbinger of racism when facing the fight of his life to become a Supreme Court Justice. Even when rising to the top of his game, he could not avoid the unmelting issue of race. He temporarily dis-assimilated himself and was quickly re-assimilated.

And poor confused Jones, who spent his entire lifetime as an actor, taking advantage of the divergent Negro sensibilities, took the opportunity to tell the media that there really was no Black culture after all. Since culture was shaped by language, he claimed, our culture was therefore neither African nor Black and he said he felt sorry for anyone who believed otherwise.

How sad did he appear at the end of a brilliant career based upon a culture that he now claims does not exist? At the top of his game, he raised the question of race himself, in an attempt to distance himself from the very thing which spawned his success.

The funkiest conundrum is witnessed in the quest by whites to embrace and appropriate all things hip and cool about Black culture, while silly Negroes seek to distance themselves from it, offering to embrace white America’s culture and values, praying to become so indistinguishable from them that they can live in a peace and harmony that was never designed for the sons and daughters of Africa in America.

But yet they try arduously.

Their work is witnessed in the blaming of poor Blacks for their condition as impoverished and oppressed as though they have the singular power and desire to place themselves in the worst possible position in this nation.

And assimilation is not an easy venture. Nor was it during the fifties and sixties, when James Baldwin was in France discussing the issue with African descendants from around the globe.

“It was not a question, on the one hand, of simply being swallowed up, of disappearing in the maw of Western culture,” said Baldwin. “Nor was it, on the other hand, a question of rejecting assimilation in order to be isolated within African culture. Neither was it a question of deciding which African values were to be retained and which European values were to be adopted. Life was not that simple.”

The true and perfect goal for the African the world over, should be to assimilate into a world African culture that could sustain us and even propel us to the forefront of the world, forcing all other cultures to come to us in earnest for that which they now appropriate by force or by de facto societal standards.

At that point, we would no longer be held hostage by a need to fit into the white world, but by a need to define our own world even if that definition is the universal impetus to no longer be controlled in any way by white culture or white people.

But sadly, some of us are so weak in the mind that resistance is futile.

Darryl James is an award-winning author and is now a filmmaker. His first mini-movie, “Crack,” will be released in March of this year. James’ latest book, “Bridging The Black Gender Gap,” is the basis of his lectures and seminars. Previous installments of this column can now be viewed at www.bridgecolumn.com. James can be reached at djames@theblackgendergap.com.

America's Greatest Hits...

2006-03-08T18:53:00.001-05:00

America's Greatest Hits
Kennie Anderson, "Land of Hypocrisy"

Truth often passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as being self-evident. This process occurs when a new truth is revealed that contradicts current superstition, whether the truth comes out about the Earth not being the center of the universe or the truth comes out about the horrible atrocities performed by the United States government.

Yes, violence and oppression exist all over the world, and the United States is not the only country that has done wrong and made mistakes. But there is currently only one country that has conducted destruction with such strong involvement on a global scale. There is only one imperialistic empire that has been so deeply linked to so many corrupt dictatorships, oppressive regimes, and corporate exploitations. This material will focus on that one country.

Many simply say to people who criticize the government, "If you don't like the country, then why don't you leave?" First of all, there is no utopia, and concerned citizens will point out problems and strive for improvements wherever they live. Running away from these problems will not solve them. Additionally, if they were to leave the country, the problems inherent to the country (especially militarism and corporate exploitation) would often affect them more if they lived abroad.

Readers not raised in America probably have a better understanding. It is easier to recognize wrongdoings when one hasn't been educated by the perpetrator. Many Americans will see the inverted US flag on the cover of my book and be overwhelmed with defensiveness or hostility and would rather burn it than read it. Most of those people have never even considered the possibility that the United States might be guilty of some very serious wrongdoings.

If this work seems to be biased towards the oppressed people of the world and doesn't defend the position of the government or corrupt corporations, it is because there is no need to publicize the position that is stated in 99% of the mass media. The purpose of this work is to accurately present the world from a perspective other than the one that is hammered out by the mass media and show the viewpoints of those other than the rich and powerful.

Despite the constant bombardment of propaganda boasting how great America is, there are those who have seen the world from non-American eyes. Many will read this material with a sense of confirmation. These are the people who already have suspicions about the interests and motives of the rich and powerful. There are also those who will read this work with great scrutiny. Hopefully they will eventually apply that same scrutiny to the misinformation and deception being disseminated by the media for their corporate and government sponsors.

It is difficult for people to change their opinions after they�ve reached a certain stage of development in their experiences and education. Beliefs are too strongly rooted in the foundations of their earlier years. Opinions were molded by early environmental factors and experiences, and many reject anything that does not support the information they were exposed to earlier.

The premature formulation of irreversible opinions is the result of people making judgments with only limited information. Many choose what they believe without researching a subject, and end up basing their belief on the information they are initially exposed to, even if that information is completely false.

This material focuses on presenting facts of record that have been ignored or concealed by mainstream sources of information.

America's Greatest Hits

Astonishingly, many Americans seem to be completely unaware of many of the atrocities committed by their own country. Ripping off the blindfold, the following contains a partial list of the death toll that American militarism has caused in the world during recent history (nearly all of the listings are within the past 60 years). The facts of this list will be expanded upon in following sections. Additional atrocities will also be presented in following sections.

This list includes interventions conducted both overtly and covertly. It includes the use of force through militaries armed, trained, funded, and directed by the US. It is true that some of these atrocities only had a few US officials actively involved, but these puppet armies would never have been capable of such destruction without US supplying and assistance (as detailed following sections show). There are countless mass killings missing from this list that the US is responsible for, but this list covers the most violent crimes committed by the US government in recent history.

Many horrible casualties are listed here, but it is important to not just think in terms of numbers and statistics. We should visualize each of the beautiful lives that were destroyed. Imagine stadiums filled with Korean children dying from napalm before your eyes. Visualize the mothers in Iraq digging up the corpses of their children. Picture children in Vietnam who were born without legs or arms because of residual effects of Agent Orange. Envision tens of thousands of Japanese civilians being wiped by out by atomic bombs before they even knew what hit them. Think about the children in Nicaragua crying on the street, seeking their mothers, not knowing that they had been killed by US-created contras. See the atrocities through the eyes of countless loving fathers in El Salvador who were forced to watch their infant children beat to death against rocks and their wives nailed upside down with their breasts cut off and skin of their face peeled off. Think about what it must have been like to be those victims or their grieving loved ones.

Worthy of noting is that almost all of these slaughters have been directed at non-whites and the vast majority of the victims of US militarism are civilians. The estimated ratio of civilians to soldiers that the US kills overseas is 10 to 1. In many cases the ratio is much worse. These innocent lives are the victims of the relentless drive by the United States� corporate and military elite for global economic domination. These victims have given their lives so that a small percentage of Americans can prosper.

The following is a partial list of atrocities, massacres, murders, and injuries in recent history for which the United States is responsible:

� 3,000,000 Vietnamese murdered over the course of about 30 years of US aggression.

� Well over 300,000 Japanese were massacred when the US raided Tokyo and dropped nuclear bombs on the urban civilian areas of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

� 600,000 civilians were killed in Cambodia by US bombing between 1969 and 1975.

� Over 500,000 people were killed in Laos when America subjected civilians to "secret bombing" from 1964 to 1973, dropping over two million tons of bombs on the country. Over one fourth of the population also became refugees.

� 100,000 people were murdered in South Korea prior to the Korean War by a brutal repression supported by US forces in 1945. This includes between 30,000 and 40,000 killed during the suppression of a peasant revolt on Cheju Island.

� Up to 4,500,000 Koreans were killed from 1951 to 1953 during America's massive slaughter in the Korean War.

� 200,000 were murdered when the Philippines were conquered by American forces. (This took place just over 100 years ago.)

� 23,000 people were slaughtered in Taiwan by US-backed, trained, equipped, and funded forces (Chiang's Nationalist army) during the late 1940s.

� 700,000 Indonesians (mostly landless peasants) were murdered in 1965 when the US armed and supported General Suharto.

� 200,000 were slaughtered in East Timor in 1975 by General Suharto with US support.

� 750,000 civilians were driven from their homes in East Timor by Indonesian forces in 1999 and 10,000 were killed.

� Over 1,700,000 Iraqis have been killed by US bombings and sanctions, mostly women and children.

� Over 1,000,000 lives were lost during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s in which the US used direct force and supported Hussein and Iraq.

� 35,000 Kurds were killed, 3,500 villages were destroyed, and between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 became homeless as a result of aggression by Turkey with US arming and training in the 1990s.

� Over 1,000,000 people were killed in Afghanistan's civil war from 1979 to 1992, in which the US strongly supported the Moujahedeen, the most violent and sadistic of the forces. (This also set the stage for the CIA-backed Taliban to attain power.)

� 45,000 people were killed in South Lebanon since 1982 by Israel, always armed and supported by the US.

� Thousands have been killed in Palestine and millions (in both Palestine and Lebanon) were made refugees by US-backed Israel.

� Over 150,000 were killed in Greece when America advised, equipped, and financed violent interventions in the late 1940s and late 1960s.

� Over 75,000 civilians were killed and over one million refugees were created in El Salvador from 1980 to 1994 when the US intensely supported the efforts of a brutal regime and its death squads to eliminate a popular uprising.

� 40,000 civilians were killed by the US-backed National Guard in Nicaragua over the course of almost 50 years.

� 30,000 lives were killed by the US contras in Nicaragua from 1979 to 1989.

� 200,000 Guatemalans were slaughtered from 1960-1990s by a military apparatus trained, armed, funded, and assisted by America.

� Over 35,000 Colombian civilians have been killed during the US-supported Columbian war against left-wing rebels.

� More than 4,000 innocent civilians were killed in Panama during the US invasion in 1989.

� Hundreds of thousands were killed by US direct and indirect interventions in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, and Argentina from the mid 60s through the 80s.

� 50,000 Haitians were killed when the US military destroyed a peasant uprising in 1915.

� Between 4,000 and 5,000 Haitians were killed in the early 1990s by US-established forces.

� Thousands were killed in the Dominican Republic during the 1960s when US and Dominican troops crushed a pro-Bosch rebellion.

� Over 3,000 were killed and countless others injured by US interventions in Cuba.

� Hundreds were killed or injured when the US invaded Grenada in 1983.

� Over 50,000 Somalians were killed between 1978 and 1990 by US-supported Siad Barre.

� Up to 10,000 more Somalians were killed by US troops during America's "humanitarian mission" in 1993.

� In the US-supported Rwandan genocide, an estimated 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days in 1994.

� Over 300,000 were killed and 80,000 were crippled in Angola from a US-supported civil war.

� Tens of thousands were killed and up to 200,000 were tortured in Chad by Hissen Habre with US support during the 1980's.

� 1,500,000 were killed between 1980 and 1988 in southern Africa by the US-armed South Africa.

� Thousands of people in Pacific islands, Puerto Rico, Utah, California, Nevada, Washington, New Mexico, and various other places have been killed, infected, or harmed as a result of US weapon experiments (especially nuclear weapons and weapons using depleted uranium).

� Hundreds of civil rights activists have been beaten, tortured, framed, and killed in the US by government agencies in recent history.

� Hundreds of Black Panther supporters and American Indians were framed, beaten, or murdered by the FBI and its cohorts in the late 60's and early 70's.

� Over a thousand American Muslims "disappeared" after September 11, 2001, and have been detained without evidence of wrongdoing.

Bitchslappin' Black Folks

2006-03-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

The Bitch Slapping of Blackfolk Using The Hand of Hip Hop.
by Chuck D

The news at the time was on blast about Busta Rhymes' bodyguard being
murdered while protecting his jewels for his star-studded video and
current hit song, Touch It. The 'stop-snitching stench' aroma, on a
viral pass-around, had everyone who saw 'what, who, when, and why' acting
suddenly like dumbass living mutes. @#%$ so bad that Busta flew 3000
miles to supposedly finish the video, via Jimmy Iodine's poisoned, deep
pockets. This was typical of the madness surfing atop the platform of
hip hop in 2006, enough to make one of the chief creators scream
stop.

Uptown in Harlem at the 126th Street's Black Slave Theater, a massive
town hall meeting was called by Afrika Bambaataa's ZULU NATION, about the
climate of the radiation of a radio, TV, movie nation; and how to stop
and fight the control-towers that be. The severe lack of balance
coming via the frequencies of the air, was akin to toxins pouring into the
9th ward after the levee expl- ur um, break.

Anything but a building full of bitter old hip hop headz, folks were
motivated to finally answer to the responsibility and accountability of
being grown. Those that claim they can't see the poison are duped by
the same reasons it's effective. Usually poison is hidden in something
deemed good for you. Poison has to be clearly identified with danger
signs, death, skulls, bones etc. to keep the not knowing, unreading,
and naive (usually children) from ingesting it. Speakers like Ernie
Pannicioli, Rosa Clemente, Shaka and others from the Zulus, Grandmixer
DXT and yours truly spoke to the room, of the clearly converted, about
really forcing the balance from rap/hip hop being the millennium
COINTELPRO. Yes, the new counterintelligence program steering the
masses toward the two booming industries of jail and death.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. But then again
the continued bitch slapping of blackfolk using the hand of hip hop
takes place as the masses, who are considered asses, are too blind,
deaf, and dumbed down to see or hear it. Or too numb to feel it.
Testing a sane one's sanity, I say. And when I know something I say
something. But do a 360 degree turn of your head....

In Selma, Alabama it was the 41st anniversary of the civil rights march
across the Edmund Pettis bridge while many of the acts involved had
'mafia', 'gangsta' and 'nigger' running rampant in their names,
lyrics, and imagery; as well as it being blastcasted across the Alabama urban
airwaves. Tables of CDs, DVDs and T-shirts of slain rapcats, seem to
parallel the ones of Garvey, King, X, and Harriet. Bootleg CDs from the
60's-70's sang about love and happiness as the 90's-06 CDs and DVDs
centralized on drug-pimp-thug lifestyle. Have we gone forward or back?
I wondered as I stared at the Edmund Pettus bridge hearing "It's Hard
Out Here For A Pimp" in the background.

Two weeks prior I approached BET's topdog Stephen Hill during the
Grammy rehearsal about the imbalance of their programming since Teen
Summit and Tavis Smiley. All he answered was he didn't want another
FRANK'S PLACE ...you know bad number ratings, only conscious folk
watching it, (i.e. too smart = no paper). Wondered what women thought
about pimpin not being easy in '06. Then again if the president of MTV, BET,
and Radio One are all black women, then why are the images of black
women at its lowest?? Yeah, don't let me tell yall, do some work and
google Debra, Christina, and Cathy....Death Any Child? Then again
the ultimate pimp flask got one from white America, on the heels of
Halle getting the bitch - ho treatment and Denzel doing Superthug.

Saw Kimora Lee Simmons has a book out called Fabulosity, caught it on
CNN as they search for more streetcred...cannot even take the news when
they feed the drug of America - celebrity to them asses.

I did a career day lecture booth at my youngest one's school as the
7th-8th graders asked who really won Flavor Of Love? Repeatedly
asked did I have any money or was I rich... Instead I pointed to my
head and said with my college degree in 1984 I'd always be rich (as in
enriched) and knowing it would pale in these 'white written for black
consumption hustle and flow and get rich and die tryin times'. Russell
and all the superstars on the radio-TV-movie stage increasingly find it
easier to avoid the masses and broadcast to them asses. Get that money
from those who barely have it, and stack and brag about them chips and
chicks in the back.

Dig this - it's really hard out there to defend against the wave of
ignorant acceptance. Forget about them town halls being called
ineffective. If anything they need to be held weekly, even daily in
fact. A reminder of waiting for something to acknowledge and reward
you, beyond recognizing self is like smiling at a bag of purchased
cotton you just picked on a field. I'm not a pessimist about hip hop, I
love the platform and its value to the world, history, etc. The
historical fact on the surface says Triple 6 Mafia from Memphis winning
the first Rap Academy Award for an original song is thirty-five years
after Sir Isaac Hayes won the first. Two different times in Memphis, mind you.
Dwelled on the negative as usual, you might say. But I know when my
head and heart feels bitch-slapped without having a chance to raise
up, breathe, swallow a positive thought and get my back straightened after manning
the burden. And so It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp... but damn in
anybody's right mind and soul why shouldn't it be?

Mrchuck@rapstation.com

Free BOB MARLEY!!!!

2006-03-02T16:26:00.000-05:00

Bob Marley's greatest-hits album, Legend, came out in 1984, three years after his death, at 36, of a cancer that spread from his big toe. It's one of the best-selling albums of all time, in the company of Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. During his lifetime, Marley's following outside Jamaica was mostly cultish and underground until his last years, when he acquired a modest international stardom. But Marley didn't really become a mainstream fixture—a singer instantly recognizable to anyone who's lingered over a fajita at Chili's or wandered through a freshman quad in the springtime—until after his death, and after Legend. Greatest-hits collections are notoriously bad showcases, but Legend was a doozy—a defanged and overproduced selection of Marley's music. Listening to Legend to understand Marley is like reading Bridget Jones's Diary to get Jane Austen.

Marley has had an astonishingly successful commercial afterlife—the booming sales of his catalog virtually created the world-beat music category, paving the way for countless Buena Vista Social Clubs and Gipsy Kings—but his artistic reputation may never recover from it. His musical legacy has been hijacked and simplified by his cheesier fans (all those trustafarians toking in his memory). In turn, the music cognoscenti and hipsters seem to hold his mainstream appeal and lame followers against him. The fact that Marley is known by his weaker recordings like Legend or Exodus (which Time magazine—bizarrely to anyone familiar with the Marley canon—named "album of the century") doesn't help his cause.

Bob Marley's golden period was the three albums he cut with the original Wailers and the brilliant, certifiably insane, Jamaican producer Lee "Scratch" Perry: Soul Rebels, African Herbsman, and Rasta Revolution. These records are more satisfyingly complex, both lyrically and instrumentally, than much of Marley's later work. The Perry recordings are steeped in R & B and soul harmonies, but also tough. (Marley's earliest British fans were punk rockers.) The albums' layered rhythms—trancelike and jolting, like reggae by gunfighters—anticipated dub music and later stars like King Tubby and Augustus Pablo. When the English producer Chris Blackwell took over in 1973, intent on making Marley a star, the music, despite a couple of great albums, notably Catch a Fire! and Natty Dread, became steadily more mellow and digestible.
Perhaps Marley can't be taken seriously in a self-conscious age—unlike Dylan, or even Lennon, Marley didn't cloak himself in protective irony—but that risks overlooking how sly the man was. (Once, when asked how he handled fame, Marley responded, "I handle fame by not being famous … I'm not famous to me.") Since Marley would have been 61 this month, it's a fitting time to ask: Can Marley's legacy emancipate itself from an American following that wants a multiculti teddy bear?

Rachel Saurer, in a smart piece on the 20th anniversary of Legend, sketched out the loose set of values that Marley has come to embody: "In the realm of musical-taste-as-statement-of-personal-identity, Legend says this: I generally care about world events. I favor cotton clothing. I think stress is bad. I want to stop injustice. I'm all for love. I wouldn't say no to the herb, if you get my drift."

But if Marley's fans are cheesy and annoying, at least in this country, so are Pablo Neruda's, and no one holds that against him. How can we grudge Bob the feel-good party boys and mountain-biking philosophy majors who cling to his memory?

After all, Marley is an international star with a strong following in the Third World, especially in Africa. There, Marley fandom has a different dimension. Say you're a middle-class American white kid. It's spring term freshman year, and you've just discovered pot, Bob Marley, and ultimate frisbee. You really want to drop that organic chemistry course, but you know your parents will be pissed. In such a scenario, Bob Marley's songs, with lines like "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery" and "No chains are on my feet/ but I am not free," seem to be talking to you in a way that's deeply profound. Sure, that's laughable. But let's take a different scenario altogether. What if you're black? Or from the Third World? Then the lyrics take on a lot more historical force and contemporary urgency.

The problem with Bob Marley in white America is one of perspective. Many of Marley's songs are about resistance and violent revolution. The threat implicit in the lines "Them belly full but we hungry/ A hungry mob is an angry mob" or the song "Burnin' and Lootin' " isn't too far from the surface. But lyrics about armed resistance make America's secular-progressive middle classes—those most responsible for the cult of Marley as a cuddly "One Love" Rastafarian—uneasy. And so does Bible-beating. Marley's music is steeped in the Old Testament, especially the Song of Solomon. Marley sings in "Small Axe":

Why boasteth thyself, O evil men;
Playing smart and not being clever?
I said, you're working iniquity
To achieve vanity …

And whosoever diggeth a pit
Shall fall in it; bury in it
And whosoever diggeth a pit
Shall bury in it; bury in it.

Here, he's plundering from at least four books of the Bible: Psalms 52:1 and 94:4; Proverbs 22:8; Isaiah 59:4; and Jeremiah 2:5.

Often in Marley, militancy and religion are fused in a way that wouldn't please, say, Pat Robertson. Sometimes, the fusing is literal, as in this line of wordplay on "revolution" and "revelation": "Revelation, reveals the truth, revelation/ It takes a revolution to make a solution." Other times, the relationship between religion and resistance is more ambivalent, and menacing: "Cause I feel like bombing a church/ Now that you know that the preacher is lying."

Bob Marley crossed over because he wanted to be heard. But even when he sounded a peaceful note, there was an edge in his voice. He once told a reporter, "There should be no war between black and white. But until white people listen to black with open ears, there must be—well, suspicion!" As it turns out, Marley had every reason to be suspicious about how he'd be listened to. One love, mon.

Bush Lied (AGAIN) about Katrina

2006-03-02T15:43:00.000-05:00

NEW ORLEANS, March 1 (Reuters) - Ray Nagin, New Orleans mayor, said on Wednesday night he was shocked by video showing President George W. Bush being told the day before Hurricane Katrina hit that the city’s protective levees could fail.

The tape contradicts the president’s statement four days after the hurricane struck: “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.”

“It surprises me that if there was that kind of awareness, why was the response so slow?” said Mr Nagin, whose city was devastated when the August 29 storm and sparked massive flooding.

“I have kind of a sinking feeling right now in my gut. I mean, I was listening to what people were saying and I was believing them that they didn’t know. So therefore it was an issue of a learning curve.

“From this tape it looks like everybody was fully aware.”

Mr Nagin listened with headphones and watched an excerpt from the video for the first time as reporters, who had just heard from city officials how successful the first post-Katrina Mardi Gras was, stood around him.

The tape shows President Bush and Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security chief, being told on Auguest 28 that the hurricane could trigger breaches of levees that protect the city as well as threaten the Superdome, which became a last-ditch shelter for storm victims. The tapes were obtained by the Associated Press, which played Mr Nagin the excerpt.

“I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm to help you deal with the loss of property,” Mr Bush says in one part of the video. “We pray there’s no loss of life, of course.”

Trent Duffy, White House spokesman, said the tape was misleading.

“It seems to me to suggest that the president was not fully engaged in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The president was fully engaged and involved in meetings on the response,” he said.

Mr Duffy said the president’s involvement included making disaster declarations, and pushing publicly for evacuations and also urging state officials to get people to move to safer ground.

The Bush administration has been heavily criticised for its slow response to Katrina, which killed about 1,300 people along the gulf coast and sparked crime-plagued anarchy in New Orleans.

After watching the tape, Mr Nagin said it looked as if top officials, including Michael Brown, then-Federal Emergency Management Agency head, knew the storm could be devastating, that the Superdome roof was “a question mark” and the military would likely have to be brought in to help.

“I’m just shocked,” he said.

Last month, a congressional report written by Republicans said federal agencies were unprepared for the Katrina catastrophe and quicker involvement by Mr Bush might have improved their response.

When will the Bush lovers call it like it is? I had no problem criticizing Clinton for his screw-ups (no pun intended). GW is not what I would consider a "model" leader. Why do some people follow this man blindly?

Dave Zirin on Gumbel's Comments

2006-02-23T10:55:00.000-05:00

White Blindness: The Winter Olympics and Defending Bryant Gumbel
by Dave Zirin

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0221-20.htm

The right-wing media hordes, in a mad dash to deflect attention from Dick Cheney's shooting spree, may have found their target of mass distraction: Bryant Gumbel. At the end of his HBO show "Real Sports," Gumbel unleashed a prolonged rant about the utter unwatchability of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. The Winter Games certainly are a worthy target. On ten-hour tape delay, NBC has been force-feeding us highlights of sports that seem concocted on Madison Avenue to sell Mountain Dew. As Gumbel took the Xtreme winter games to task, he said, "So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of Blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention." Immediately, and predictably, the bloviating bigots of the blogosphere started splattering Gumbel's statement all over the web.

This was to be expected. But more striking was the reaction to Gumbel on ESPN Radio's "The Dan Patrick Show." Normally, in the red meat world of sports radio, Dan Patrick seems happy to be veal: no gristle or fat, morally offensive to some, but generally just plain and easily digestible. But Dan blew a gasket on the air, going after Gumbel like he was president of the Willard Scott fan club. He called for Gumbel's job, saying that if Rush Limbaugh was fired from ESPN for making racially insensitive comments, - a firing Dan says he opposed - then Gumbel should suffer the same fate. Comparing Gumbel to Limbaugh is like comparing apples to an obese drug addict. Gumbel is an award-winning journalist who has had a foot in the world of hard sports commentary for three decades. Limbaugh is a gaseous hop-head who once asked, "Why do all composite criminal photos look like Jesse Jackson?" and telling an African-American caller to his show - who somehow got through the screeners -- to "Take the bone out of your nose." Gumbel hosts a critically lauded show. Limbaugh was a hired by ESPN as a gimmick by their ownership group, Disney, as part of their mission to make America stupider.

But when you actually compare their respective comments, the Dan Patrick argument not only collapses, but becomes intellectually dishonest. Limbaugh, of course, said on ESPN's NFL show that Pro-Bowl Philadelphia Eagle Donavan McNabb was "overrated" because of the "media's social concern" to see a successful Black quarterback. This was exactly the kind of ignorant garbage Disney hired him spew. What the rat shack didn't count on was thousands of phone calls and emails demanding the fat man's Sosa-sized head.

Let's look at Gumbel's comments again. "So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the winter games look like a GOP convention." Patrick told his listening audience that Gumbel was "playing the race card" by claiming whites couldn't be good athletes -- when in fact Gumbel was hardly saying anything so shocking, or even that new. The fact is -- and Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly confirmed this -- that the athletes and the audience in Torino are almost entirely white. This isn't because Black people aren't comfortable in the cold, but because of access to the types of sports on display at the Winter Games. In fact, the Winter Olympics are such a Snow White affair, it became international news Saturday when Shani Davis became the first Black Olympian to win an individual gold, not only in the 2006 Olympics but the entire history of the Winter Games. Davis knew it himself, saying, "I'm one of a kind." For Davis, his special status was heightened by messages he received on his personal web site, revealing, "they hoped I would fall, break my leg, using the n-word." [Maybe Davis is "playing the race card," too?] In the history of athletics, anytime African-American athletes have had access and opportunity they have excelled. Sports that require thousands of dollars of equipment, country club memberships and trips to Vail will continue to be as segregated as New Orleans.

Gumbel's comments on winter sports are not different from what John McEnroe and Andre Agassi have argued about tennis. They have both said, with no backlash, that there are potentially incredible tennis players in the inner cities of the US that we will never see because of an absence of public tennis courts and basic infrastructure. It's not different from the lament of Negro League baseball players of the 1930s like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Buck O'Neal who didn't understand how Joe Dimaggio and Dizzy Dean could be called "the best" baseball players when they didn't even have a chance to compete. Yet Gumbel is a target for stating the obvious. Dan Patrick wanted Rush to stay. Now he wants Gumbel to go.

The problem is not that Dan Patrick is a raving right-winger who likes to spend his weekends shooting 78 year old lawyers in the face. It's that he and ESPN are the anti-political guardians of sport. They are instinctually hostile to anyone who tries to challenge the athletic-industrial complex. ESPN Radio's "Mike and Mike In the Morning" even have a "Just Shut Up Award" for any athlete who dares step outside the box. One player said to me, "The fastest way to win the 'Just Shut Up Award' is to actually have something to say, particularly about race or [the war in] Iraq."

If we are going to have honest discussions about sport and society, we should look at the content of what Gumbel is saying. And if we are going to look racism in the face, then we can't let someone get canned for having the temerity to talk truth. Maybe if Gumbel had just shot someone in the face instead, Patrick and company would be more forgiving.

Dave Zirin's the author of "What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States". Check out his revamped website edgeofsports.com. You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com. Contact him at whatsmynamefool2005@yahoo.com.

Phil Taylor on Bryant Gumbel's Comments

2006-02-23T09:28:00.000-05:00

It's possible that the only people who were pleased by Bryant Gumbel's rather startling rant against the Winter Olympics recently were Gumbel's old colleagues at NBC. With Michelle Kwan sitting at home, Bode Miller skiing as though he really did hit the sauce before he hit the slopes, and more television viewers choosing to watch the team from CSI rather than the one from the United States, the Games badly needed a little buzz to help the lackluster ratings.

Along came Gumbel to provide it, by taking a few minutes on his HBO show, Real Sports, to rip nearly everything about the Winter Games except Johnny Weir's outfits.

"Count me among those who don't like 'em and won't watch 'em," said Gumbel, a former co-host of NBC's Today show. He added that we should "try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing," and "try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."

He went on to take a shot at highly subjective competitions like figure skating that masquerade as true sports and to dismiss the Games as little more than a marketing plan to fill up time during an otherwise slow sports period, opinions that won't find any disagreement here.

But most folks apparently stopped listening after the "paucity of blacks" line, because that's the one that has some critics calling for Gumbel's firing, charging that if a white broadcaster had made a similar remark, complaining about the absence of whites from the NBA for example, he would be looking for a new job by now.

That might be true, if the white announcer's remark were as misunderstood and inaccurately characterized as Gumbel's has been. In the first place, Gumbel didn't imply that the Winter Olympics needed to be more inclusive, or that blacks were somehow being unfairly kept out of the Games, which is what some of his critics seem to think he was saying. He didn't say that he didn't like the Olympics because there were too many white athletes.

His point was that a relatively narrow portion of the world's population participate in the sports of the Winter Games, and that it's hard to take the Games seriously as a collection of the world's greatest athletes when blacks, who inarguably have a history of producing some of the world's best athletes, are so underrepresented. There is no racism in that premise, only logic.

But the claims of a double standard do have some merit. Black public figures do get more latitude in discussing racial matters than whites do. Charles Barkley can get away with (jokingly) saying, "I hate white people," while Fuzzy Zoeller gets roasted for (also jokingly) suggesting that fried chicken ought to be on the menu for Tiger Woods' victory meal.

Why is that? It's partly a matter of power. When a member of a minority or less powerful group makes negative comments or jokes about the majority, it's easier to dismiss them because we don't perceive any real threat behind the words. When someone from the more powerful majority makes similar comments, it feels somehow more dangerous because of the threat, however small, that they might turn those attitudes into action. It's why it seems amusing when women joke about how clueless men are, but similar comments from a man about women often sound offensive.

It also has to do with history. When a white broadcaster, athlete or team official makes a remark critical of blacks, it dredges up ugly images of past oppression. When the roles are reversed, it is somehow less upsetting to many people because it doesn't conjure up those same memories.

So it's true, Bryant Gumbel's remarks don't elicit the same kind of outrage as, say, Rush Limbaugh's. It may seem unfair, but don't blame Gumbel for that. Blame the history of race relations in America. Fairness has rarely had anything to do with it.

Halliburton Detention Centers???

2006-02-21T14:24:00.000-05:00

Halliburton Detention Centers

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm

Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country and
become unapologetically paranoid. Paranoia should now be the normal state of mind for thinking people. Sneers and dismissive remarks about "conspiracy theorists" must be ignored. We don't want to end up like the proverbial frog who boils to death because the heat was turned up slowly.

The Bush administration is becoming ever more brazen in its effort to snoop on the American people. The Attorney General is making the case that warrants aren't needed if the government wants to spy on us. Unlimited government power is predictably effective. Anyone not wire tapped, investigated or banned from airplanes will be too intimidated to speak up or even to "Google."

The Bushmen are too smart to only go after political opponents. Instead they are honing their tactics on everyone who does an internet search, a majority of people in the nation. Under the guise of investigating the extent of child pornography on the internet, the ironically named Justice Department demanded that the largest search engines in the country turn over the results of millions of internet searches in the country. Yahoo, MSN and AOL all gave up without a fight and handed big brother the results of your inquiries on any and every issue or topic. Only Google challenged the subpoena in court.

If internet snooping doesn't give one pause, then Halliburton can always be counted on to frighten anyone with half a brain. Vice President Dick Cheney's personal cash cow is the lucky beneficiary of yet another government contract. The Halliburton story of banana republic corruption is well known to anyone not living under a rock. Because their crimes have gone unpunished, news of Halliburton chicanery barely raises eyebrows anymore. Halliburton's latest contract strikes close to home, literally, and doesn't allow them to build barracks in Iraq or clean up after hurricane Katrina.

What ought to shock and terrify every American is that KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, was awarded a $385 million contract to build "temporary detention facilities" in case of an "immigration emergency":

"The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. In the event of a natural disaster, the contractor could be tasked with providing housing for ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) personnel performing law enforcement functions in support of relief efforts."

Anyone paying a little bit of attention will ask, "What immigration emergency?" If there is an immigration emergency looming on the horizon it is a big secret. Of course immigrants will be the first ensnared in the net that big brother Bush has in mind, but the net won't stop with them.

What sort of national emergency requires detention centers? America has plenty of prisons. More of our population is behind bars than in any country on earth. There are detention centers for immigration in existence already. As for helping in case of a natural disaster, hurricane Katrina proved that saving American lives is not on the Bush agenda.

When the word detention comes up, hairs should rise on the back of every neck. Thanks to the Patriot Act and the creation of "enemy combatants" these detention centers can be used to lock up anyone for any reason for any length of time that Uncle Sam wishes.

In the best case scenario, this contract may be just the latest hand out to the welfare queen of corporate America. It is a sad day indeed when we must hope that good old fashioned greed, and nothing more, is at work with this latest theft from the United States treasury. Even if greed is the larger part of the equation, the threat of taking our rights and subjecting us to fear cannot be far from the minds of Dick Cheney and his ilk.

Bush has successfully used fear to stay in power and quiet the ineffectual opposition. When questions arose about the legality of warrantless wiretaps, suddenly Bush revealed a three year old plot to crash a plane into a Los Angeles skyscraper. This announcement was even news to the mayor of Los Angeles, leading the cynical among us, the smart people, to ask if such a threat ever existed in the first place.

What sort of national emergency will trigger the beginning of detentions? Probably not Mexicans heading for the border. If Democrats show uncharacteristic boldness and begin impeachment proceedings against Bush, we will begin to see Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib on U.S. soil.

The endless war on terror would no doubt be a pretext for detentions of immigrants or Americans. Just ask Jose Padilla, the American citizen accused of planning "dirty bomb" attacks. Actually you can't ask Padilla anything. He hasn't seen the outside of a jail in years. An entirely new category of criminals, enemy combatants, was created to justify endless incarceration. If our government is planning to create more Padillas, Halliburton definitely needs a new contract.

You can look it up, if you dare. Searching for the words "Halliburton" and "detention" may bring more than you bargained for.

Late Night Quotables about Dick Cheney

2006-02-19T17:51:00.000-05:00

Craig Ferguson

"He is a lawyer and he got shot in the face. But he's a lawyer, he can use his other face. He'll be all right."

"You can understand why this lawyer fellow let his guard down, because if you're out hunting with a politician, you think, 'If I'm going to get it, it's going to be in the back."

"Apparently the reason they didn't release the information right away is they said we had to get the facts right. That's never stopped them in the past."

Jay Leno

"Cheney also admitted that he'd been drinking. He said he had one beer. Okay, it was a 40-ounce Colt .45, but just one."

"Here's my favorite part of this whole incident. After Cheney shot the guy, the police later showed up at the ranch where Cheney was staying and wanted to talk to him, but was told to come back the next morning. And that's what they did, they came back the next morning. Kev, that ever happen in the hood?"

"See, this is why Republicans have to commit white collar crimes to steal money. They're just not good with guns, they don't know how to handle them."

"They were in a car, they drive along, they get out of the car, he shoots his friend in the face, then they get back in the car and they go hide for 18 hours. That’s not hunting ... that's an episode of 'The Sopranos'"

"President Bush says he is standing behind the vice president. Way behind him."

"And you know what's really scary about all of this -- what if it turns out all this time Bush was the smart one?"

David Letterman

"Until Democrats approve Medicare reform, we have to make some tough choices for the elderly."

"Rumors are that the reason Dick Cheney didn't say anything about the hunting accident for about 24 hours was because he had been drinking. And I'm thinking, well jeez, he was probably drinking when we planned the invasion of Iraq."

"If this story gets any bigger, pretty soon they're going to have to tell the president."

Jimmy Kimmel

"But all kidding aside, and in fairness to Dick Cheney, every five years he has to shed innocent blood or he violates his deal with the devil."

"Cheney said he did have a beer during lunch. One beer, and the only reason he even drank it was to wash down the three hits of ecstasy."

"The man who was shot is named Harry Whittington. He's a high powered Republican lawyer, he was very lucky. They say the only reason that he wasn't killed is he was wearing the body armor that never got shipped to our troops."

Random but quotable

"He got faulty information on where the target was."

Bryant Gumbel on The Winter Olympics

2006-02-18T00:03:00.000-05:00

Because [the Winter Olympics] are so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try too. Like try not to be incredulous when someone tries to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of Blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something’s not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what’s called a “kiss and cry area” while some panel of subjective judges decides who won. And try to blot out all logic when announcers and sports writers pretend to care about the luge, the skeleton, the biathlon, and all those other events they don’t understand and totally ignore for all but three weeks every four years. Face it, these Olympics are little more than a marketing plan to fill space and sell time during the dreary days of February. So, if only to hasten the arrival of the day they’re done, and we can move on to March Madness, for God’s sake, let the Games begin.”

New Roots

2006-02-17T09:00:00.000-05:00

Wealthy African-Americans are using DNA kits to trace their roots - all the way back to Africa. But, says Gary Younge the results may tell them things they don't want to hear

Friday February 17, 2006
The Guardian

Oprah is a Zulu. Never mind that she was born and raised in Mississippi and her great grandparents hailed from no further away than Georgia and North Carolina, Ms Winfrey, the queen of the televised confessional, is not just suggesting her lineage might stretch back thousands of years to a specific African tribe. She is asserting it as a definitive fact. "I always wondered what it would be like if it turned out I am a South African. I feel so at home here ... Do you know that I actually am one?" she told an audience of 3,200 in Johannesburg last year. "I went in search of my roots and had my DNA tested, and I am a Zulu."

This month in the US, Oprah has been joined by eight other African-American luminaries, including Quincy Jones and Whoopi Goldberg, in tracing their genealogy. Thirty years after Alex Haley famously traced the oral history passed down through his family back to Gambia to find his African ancestor, Kunta Kinte, who had been sold into slavery these celebrities will undertake a similar journey alongside Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr in a television series called African-American Lives. But unlike Haley's Roots, few have been able to turn to family historians in search of their genealogical narrative.

So when the stories stop and the paper trail of slaves bought and sold runs out, the participants have turned to genetic science to trace their kin. But while these journeys into the past are essentially personal, they raise broader issues about racial authenticity and the genetic basis for racial categorisations. Furthermore, it addresses the fundamental issue of whether any of us can, ultimately, really say where we come from - and what use it would do us even if we could.

Over the past few years laboratories have begun to amass a database of DNA samples from around the world, including parts of West Africa, the area from which most slaves were caught, sold and shipped to the Americas.

The technology aims either to trace a person's lineage through their genes or compile a statistical breakdown, by geographical region, of their genetic makeup. Alondra Nelson, an assistant professor of sociology and African-American studies at Yale, says results "could stretch from several thousand years to tens of thousands of years in a person's ancestry".

Mark Shriver, an assistant professor of anthropology and genetics at Penn State university, conducts geographical genetic tests on his students among others. He describes himself as white but his own tests reveal that his DNA is 86% white but also 11% west African and 3% indigenous American. "For most people it is consistent with what they thought," he says. "How the west African DNA got into my family line was never explained to me."

Another method of testing follows the genes back through gender lines. One, the patrilineal, follows the Y chromosome through your father, your father's father, your father's father's father and so on. The other, the mitochondrial, follows DNA through your maternal line - or your mother's mother, your mother's mother's mother and so on.

"It's basically a matchmaking game," Megan Smolenyak, an expert in family history research, told the New York Daily News. "I like to warn folks: be sure you can deal with the results ... Some people don't like what they find."

The science, now commercially available, has become something of a boom industry. Growing numbers of relatively wealthy African-Americans have been buying up test kits that can cost up to $350 (£200) a throw.

While other Americans could travel to towns in Ireland, Italy or Germany in search of genealogical sustenance, slavery deprived African-Americans of a clear and precise geographical bond with their own ancestry. As Gates puts it: "There is no Ellis Island for the descendants of the slave trade." Moreover, since slave-owners changed people's names, regularly split up families and banned reading and writing, the usual methods of keeping family histories have not been available to African-Americans until relatively recently.

This new science, then, seemed to offer a means of telling a story that had been denied and hidden. Even as DNA evidence was freeing many - mostly black - prisoners from death row it was also unlocking historical secrets. For example, historians had insisted for 150 years that America's third president, Thomas Jefferson, could not have fathered children by his slave mistress Sally Hemmings. Many African-Americans claimed otherwise, however, and in 1998 scientists followed the Y chromosome DNA in Jefferson's family line to establish a definitive link with the Hemmings family. Almost 200 years after Jefferson had cryptically parried accusations of the affair with the words "the man who fears no truth has nothing to fear from lies", science had exposed the facts that a mixture of prejudice and politics had kept hidden.

In reality, however, the truths this science reveals are no less selective than those you will hear from a politician. Two years ago I swabbed my cheek with something that felt like a cotton bud and sent it off to a Washington-based organisation called African Ancestry. Several weeks later it sent me a letter telling me that the "Y chromosome DNA sequence that we determined from your sample matches with the Hausa people in Nigeria ... This result means that you have inherited through your father a segment of DNA that was passed on consistently from father to son to you. This segment of DNA is presently found in Africa in Nigeria."

They also sent me a map showing me where Nigeria is and a "certificate of ancestry" declaring that I "share paternal genetic ancestry with the Hausa people in Nigeria". It went on,"You can display it with pride among other important family documents."

Elsewhere in the letter, however, came information that would seem to minimise the entire enterprise if not negate it altogether. "The Y chromosome may represent less than 1% of your entire genetic makeup" it said. That is to say that I had possibly been awarded an ancestry courtesy of a fraction of my DNA.

Herein lies one of the central problems with tracing ones roots through DNA. Science can only tell you so much. Stop the genealogical wheel at an inconvenient moment and some of the world's greatest black icons could be rendered not African, but European. Muhammad Ali's great grandfather was Irish; Bob Marley's father was British. According to Shriver, Gates - the most prominent black academic in the country - has DNA that is 50% European and 50% West African. Both his matrilineal and paternal lines came back to Europe.

"I've spoken with African Americans who have tried four or five different genetic genealogy companies because they weren't satisfied with the results," says Nelson. "They received different results each time and kept going until they got a result they were happy with."

"There are some people who are black who may have only 10% African ancestry," says Shriver. "It helps create an understanding that race is an illusion and that there isn't any real difference between races. They show that we're all mixes."

Critics of Shriver's work say he is actually achieving the opposite - elevating race from a social construct - a difference created to justify racism - into something that appears both real and even calculable. Paul Gilroy, the Anthony Giddens sociology professor at the London School of Economics, says: "To make all these claims is to realign science with the racial categorisations of the 18th century."

Shriver defends his work. "That is a potential problem," he admits. "The labels are arbitrary. It's a model. We have taken these four categories that mean something for New World people. But I don't respect people who don't want to explore this issue and see what happens. There's quite a lot of hubris out there when it comes to genomic work and ethics."

Neither the mixing nor the denial is exclusive to descendants of former slaves or issues of race. Everyone could claim African ancestry given that civilisation is deemed to have started there. Although Mediterranean Europeans define themselves as white, they share a long heritage with North Africans.

"Everybody is mixed, but not everybody counts as mixed," says Gilroy. "These things are interesting but the truth is that no one can say with any certainty where they come from."

Like Nelson, Gilroy does not deny the need for these tests. "Some people say knowing made them feel complete," she says. She tells of one African-American woman whose match took her to an area of Sierra Leone where many of the women were accomplished potters. This woman came from a family of skilled potters. "I don't know how you like those two facts," says Nelson. "But I know it was very meaningful for her."

Which brings us back to Oprah. Last week she gave author James Frey a dressing down on her couch for the memoir he wrote and she helped promote that turned out to owe far more to fiction than fact. Angry, and at times tearful, Oprah asked the author of A Million Little Pieces to explain why he felt "the need to lie". "It is difficult for me to talk to you because I really feel duped," she said. "But more importantly I feel that you betrayed millions of readers." Whatever Oprah's belief about her ancestry, her assertion that she is Zulu is no less misleading.

According to most historical accounts, the Zulu nation was consolidated only after the departure of slaves from West Africa to the Americas. Moreover, there is little in the way of genetic lineage that comes close to matching a particular linguistic group such as the Zulu nation. When Oprah had her DNA tested for the programme, the results suggested her most likely match was from the Kpelles tribe of Liberia. Indeed she was told that she could not have come from South Africa. None of this is likely to stop her claiming the Zulus as her kith and kin. "I'm crazy about the South African accent," she said. "I wish I had been born here."

Perhaps her new-found relations, and those of her fellow celebrities say less about the power of science than something both far more elusive and compelling - the desire for identity.

The Deficit Lie

2006-02-16T22:49:00.000-05:00

By Tim Dickinson

Vice President Dick Cheney was on a rare mission abroad, expressing his support for the millions left homeless by a massive earthquake in Pakistan, when he received a summons to return to Washington immediately. His vote was needed to break a tie on the Senate floor, where five Republicans had broken ranks to oppose the president's Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

Racing halfway around the world on a trans-hemispheric red-eye, Cheney arrived on December 21st, just in time to cast the decisive vote. His "aye" gave Republicans a 51-50 victory on the budget cuts -- a measure that will saddle low-income college students with debt, cheat poor kids out of $8 billion in child support and deny medical care to as many as 100,000 people living in poverty.

In public, Republican budget hawks insisted that they made these "tough choices" to stem the "rising tide of red ink in Washington." But, in November, behind closed doors, House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas confided to a group of lobbyists that the GOP slashed social programs for the poor by $40 billion to help pay for $90 billion in new tax cuts -- almost half of which will go to wealthy Americans with incomes in excess of $1 million. The net result of the Deficit Reduction Act will be a $50 billion increase in the deficit. In the bizarro world of President Bush's doublespeak bills, the new spending measure takes its place alongside the Clear Skies Act, which sought to increase air pollution, and the Healthy Forests Initiative, which opened America's woodlands to more clear-cutting. "If this is deficit reduction," says Bob McIntyre, director of the nonpartisan advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice, "then up is down, down is up and George Orwell is president."

It wasn't easy for Republicans to get the measure through Congress. The final bill was hammered out in a closed-door, GOP-only session. Then -- when the spending plan was finally released to Democrats and the media after midnight on Sunday, December 18th -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert invoked "martial law" in the chamber, forcing representatives to pull an all-nighter and vote on the 774-page act after only forty minutes of debate. "Here you have one of the most consequential pieces of domestic legislation in years, with profound effects on millions of low-income Americans, and members of Congress were required to vote on it without even having a chance to read it," says Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In the Senate, the measure seemed headed for defeat when a handful of moderate Republicans refused to support the cuts, which GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine blasted as "draconian." Majority Leader Bill Frist was forced to give Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota a $30 million subsidy for his state's sugar-beet industry, essentially bribing him to back the bill. "They have no shame," Minority Leader Harry Reid tells Rolling Stone. "These cuts are simply un-American."

Sen. Kent Conrad, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, decried the dearth of public scrutiny for a bill "written behind closed doors, filed in the dead of night and voted on at the crack of dawn." But Rep. Dave Obey, ranking Democrat of the House Appropriations Committee, isn't angry with his Republican colleagues for operating in the dark. "I don't blame them," he says. "If I put together a bill like this, I'd do it with the lights out too."

The extent of the budget cuts caught even veteran Democrats off guard. "In all my time in the Senate," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, "I cannot remember a time when we have considered such drastic cuts to safety-net programs that threaten to devastate working families." Consider who will pay the price for the Republican budget crunch:

College Students Nearly a third of the cuts -- $12.7 billion -- affect student-loan programs. And a full seventy percent of those cuts, the largest in history, fall squarely on the backs of students and their parents. Rather than slashing aid directly, Congress simply raised the interest on student loans, replacing a lower variable rate with a higher fixed rate. As a result, students leaving college with $17,500 in loans will have to cough up an additional $5,800 to pay off their debt. The change will increase the cost of higher education for American families by $8 billion -- at a time when public universities have already raised their prices by forty percent.

"The Republican Congress is paying for tax cuts for the wealthy, making student loans more expensive for middle- and low-income families," says House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Adds Rep. Obey, "They think they can pretty much do whatever they want to students, because they think that students will march but they won't vote."

Single Moms The bill cuts nearly $5 billion in funding to state agencies responsible for tracking down deadbeat dads and collecting child-support payments. With fewer state and local officials available to enforce the law, an estimated $8 billion in payments will go uncollected -- money that single mothers rely on to feed and clothe their kids. "Congress should be fighting for the rights and well-being of children who depend on child-support payments, not against them," says Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Republican who opposed the measure. "I couldn't, in good conscience, vote for any bill that would cut this funding."

The Sick Medicaid has traditionally provided health coverage to the nation's poorest citizens -- including some 28 million children -- for as little as three dollars. But the GOP bill hikes premiums and co-payments, forcing low-income patients to pay as much as $100 to visit a doctor or obtain an asthma inhaler. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the added costs will prevent many patients from seeking treatment or, in the case of new monthly premiums, even enrolling in Medicaid. That's just what Republicans are counting on: Eighty percent of the projected $16 billion savings in Medicaid will result from a decline in poor people seeking medical care.

Republicans insist that the co-payments are necessary to "reduce the rate of growth of government." But the GOP showed no interest in cutting federal subsidies to Big Pharma. Lawmakers eliminated provisions in the original Senate bill that would have required pharmaceutical companies to discount the drugs they sell through Medicaid and ended a slush fund for insurers that a nonpartisan advisory commission declared a complete waste of money. The two measures would have produced a combined savings of $20.5 billion -- making the cuts to Medicaid unnecessary. "The priorities of the majority party consistently lie with the powerful special interests and big drug companies," declared Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. "The Republican leadership has had to choose between supporting the American people or wealthy corporate interests -- and they have sided with the corporate interests."

Foster Parents So much for family values -- the bill not only cuts $343 million from foster care, it specifically overturns a federal ruling that granted foster-care funds to low-income grandparents who take in their own grandchildren rather than sloughing them off on strangers. The cuts convinced Sen. Mike DeWine, a Republican from Ohio, to vote against the measure. "I felt that the bill hurt Ohioans who most need our assistance," he says, "whether it is poor children and seniors affected by cuts to Medicaid or families hurt by cuts in foster care."

The Working Poor Under tough new rules created by the bill, families on welfare will have to work longer hours to qualify for federal assistance. In two-parent families, both the mother and father must now find full-time jobs or job training. Meeting the requirement could cost states $8 billion -- but the bill provides no new funds, only fines as high as $100 million a year for states that fail to meet the new standard. To avoid the penalties, many states are expected to stop offering welfare to two-parent families -- providing a perverse incentive for working parents to split up to preserve their benefits. Even more troubling, the GOP budget slashes $11 billion in federal support for child care. By 2010, as many as 255,000 kids could be booted out of day care, forcing poor parents to choose between working or caring for their children.

As if this assault on the poor wasn't enough, Republicans also gutted another $3 billion from social programs in a separate bill on discretionary spending -- a measure that flew through Congress in such a pre-Christmas flurry as to make the Deficit Reduction Act seem well considered. The bill received so little public scrutiny that the Senate was even able to duck a traditional roll-call vote, leaving no record of which GOP senators voted to slash job training for the poor, cut funding for community colleges and kick as many as 25,000 kids out of Head Start.

Nor will the budget cuts do anything to reduce the deficit, which is projected to hit $365 billion. Thanks to tax cuts expected to be finalized early this year, most of the money will go directly into the pockets of the country's wealthiest citizens. Three-fourths of all Americans will not see a dime from the president's move to make permanent his cuts on dividend and capital-gains taxes -- while the nation's richest 1 percent will reap more than $25 billion. By 2010, thanks to Bush, America's millionaires will enjoy annual tax cuts of $130,000.

"I don't know of any religion practicing in America today that preaches from the pulpit that what one should do is take from the least among us to give to those who have the most," says Sen. Conrad. "But that's what this budget is about. It's so profoundly wrong."

Smothering The King Legacy

2006-02-16T22:42:00.000-05:00

By Norman Solomon

Hours after Coretta Scott King died, President Bush led off the State of the Union address by praising her as "a beloved, graceful, courageous woman who called America to its founding ideals and carried on a noble dream." For good measure, at the end of his speech, Bush reverently invoked the name of her martyred husband, Martin Luther King Jr.

The president is one of countless politicians who zealously oppose most of what King struggled for – at the same time that they laud his name with syrupy words. It wouldn't be shrewd to openly acknowledge the basic disagreements. Instead, Bush and his allies offer up platitudes while pretending that King's work ended with the fight against racial segregation.

Now that Dr. King's widow is no longer alive, the smarmy process will be even easier: Just praise him as a beloved civil rights leader, as though the last few years of his life – filled with struggles for economic justice and peace – didn't exist. Ignore King's profound challenge to the kind of budget priorities and militarism holding sway today.

On Tuesday night, the president was eager to seem like a fervent admirer of Martin Luther King. But the next day, in the same House chamber where Bush spoke, his administration pushed through a vicious budget measure that will slash $39 billion in spending – mostly for student loans and Medicaid for the poor – over the next five years.

Nearly 38 years ago, Dr. King was killed in Memphis while leading the Poor People's Campaign for an economic bill of rights. He'd been accusing Congress of "hostility to the poor." The federal government, King pointed out, was appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity" – but "poverty funds with miserliness."

Today, a slick rhetorical formula enables current generations of such miserly politicians to keep praising the legacy of Martin Luther King while sticking knives into it.

Such duplicity is facilitated by a baseline of media coverage that automatically recycles the truncated versions of history promoted by the politicians who dominate Washington. At least dimly, those political hacks understand a key axiom described by George Orwell: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."

Don't want to deal with calls for progressive change in the nation's economic power structures? Then don't mention Martin Luther King's statement, "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

Don't want to acknowledge King's assessment of global class war? Then just keep referring to his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech while carefully bypassing his later oratory about "capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries."

Want to keep King boxed as scarcely more than a Jim Crow foe? Then ignore his fierce opposition to the Vietnam War and his broader denunciations of what he called "the madness of militarism."

President Bush has no tactical interest in criticizing the positions that were central to Dr. King's final years. Instead, aided by media eagerness to sanitize King's political evolution, Bush and his right-wing compatriots pose as admirers of King while they desecrate his spirit every chance they get.

After Coretta Scott King died, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund said: "I'm concerned that people don't take her passing as an opportunity to further antique the causes that she and her husband and others stood for." Theodore Shaw added, "Anybody who thinks that work is over is either terribly ignorant or willfully blind."

Whatever his blend of ignorance and intentional evasion, President Bush is a leader of forces striving to roll back the King legacy of activism for social justice and peace. Sadly, the news media continue to be part of that retrograde political process – whitewashing instead of informing.

Abramoff's Evangelical Soldiers

2006-02-16T19:25:00.000-05:00

by MAX BLUMENTHAL, the Nation magazine
[from the February 20, 2006 issue]

Gambling might not rank as high as homosexuality or abortion on the list of social evils monitored by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, but its growth has provided many occasions for his jeremiads. The indictment of Indian casino lobbyist and influential GOP activist Jack Abramoff was one such occasion. In a January 6 press release issued three days after Abramoff's indictment, Dobson declared, "If the nation's politicians don't fix this national disaster, then the oceans of gambling money with which Jack Abramoff tried to buy influence on Capitol Hill will only be the beginning of the corruption we'll see." He concluded with a denunciation of vice: "Gambling--all types of gambling--is driven by greed and subsists on greed."

What Dobson neglected to mention--and has yet to discuss publicly--is his own pivotal role in one of Abramoff's schemes. In 2002 Dobson joined a coterie of Christian-right activists, including Tony Perkins, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, to spearhead Abramoff's campaigns against the establishment of several Louisiana casinos that infringed on the turf of Abramoff's tribal clients. Dobson and his allies recorded messages for phone banking, lobbied high-level Bush Administration officials and took to the airwaves. Whether they knew it or not, these Christian soldiers' crusade to protect families in the "Sportsmen's Paradise" from the side effects of chronic slot-pulling and dice-rolling was funded by the gambling industry and planned by the lobbyist known even to his friends as "Casino Jack."

The only Christian-right activist confirmed to be completely aware of Abramoff's rip-off was Ralph Reed. He and Abramoff have a long and storied history together. When Abramoff chaired the College Republican National Committee in the early 1980s, Reed served as the organization's executive director. They reunited in 1989, when Abramoff helped Reed organize the remains of Pat Robertson's failed 1988 presidential bid into the Christian Coalition. In 1997, with the Christian Coalition under IRS investigation and Reed facing accusations of cronyism from the group's chief financial officer, he left to start his own consulting firm, Century Strategies. Reed contacted Abramoff right away. "I need to start humping in corporate accounts," Reed told him in 1998. "I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts."

Though Abramoff apparently was not fond of Reed, he viewed him as useful. "I know you (we!) hate him [Reed], but it does give us good cover and patter to have him doing stuff," he wrote in a February 14, 2002, e-mail to his business partner, Michael Scanlon. "Let's give him a list of things we want...and give him some chump change to get it done." Reed thus became Abramoff and Scanlon's liaison to the Christian right, enlisting his evangelical allies into a web of shadowy casino hustles for "chump change."

Reed's first sleight of hand was enticing Perkins, Falwell and Robertson to try to block a 2001 bill in the Louisiana legislature loosening restrictions on riverboat casinos, which would have posed a competitive threat to Abramoff's clients, the Coushattas. At the time, Perkins was a right-wing State Representative hailed by Reed as the legislature's "anti-gambling leader."

As Perkins lobbied his colleagues against the riverboat bill, he pushed Reed to pour money into an aggressive phone-banking campaign to rally conservative Christian voters.

With a steady supply of gambling industry cash, Abramoff dumped a phone-bank budget of more than $60,000 into Reed's war chest for PR efforts against his clients' rivals, the Jena Choctaws (Reed had asked for $150,000)--supplementing the $10,000 in tribal gambling money he directed to Reed's 2001 campaign for chair of the Georgia GOP and the nearly $4 million he ultimately funneled into Reed's personal account. Reed then recruited Falwell to record a phone message against the bill. He also solicited the help of his former boss at the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson, thanking him for his "leadership for our values." Like the answering of a prayer, tens of thousands of Louisiana Republicans suddenly were bombarded with the voice of God against vice, played by Robertson and Falwell.

On March 22, 2001, the bill was resoundingly defeated in the legislature. "You are the greatest!!!" an ecstatic Abramoff wrote to Reed.

Miracle accomplished, Abramoff tapped Reed's services again in January 2002, when his clients learned that then-Louisiana Governor Mike Foster had secretly approved a casino site for the Jena Choctaws. Following a battle plan devised by Scanlon (who inexplicably signed a memo outlining the plan, Mike "The Sausage King" Scanlon), Reed re-enlisted his evangelical allies to rev up grassroots pressure on Bush Interior Secretary Gail Norton, who had the final say on the Jena deal.

Reed first prompted Dobson to attack the Jenas' lobbyist, Washington super-lawyer, former RNC chair and current Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, during a Focus on the Family broadcast. (In his 2002 campaign for governor, Barbour described himself as "a five-point Calvinist" on American Family Radio.)

"Let me know when Dobson hits him," Abramoff wrote to Reed on February 6, 2002. "I want to savor it." That same day, he e-mailed Scanlon, "He [Dobson] is going to hit Haley by name! He is going to encourage people to call Norton and the WH [White House]. This is going to get fun."

Abramoff transferred more cash to Reed to blast Dobson's tirade against the Jena casino across Louisiana airwaves. Abramoff was confident his Bush Administration contacts would make sure all the right people heard Dobson's hit. "Dobson goes up on the radio next week!" he told Scanlon on February 20. "We'll play it in WH [the White House] and Interior." Abramoff's gamble paid off when word of the ad filtered through the tension-filled halls of the Interior Department. "[White House liaison] Doug [Domenech] came to me and said, 'Dobson's going to shut down our phone system,'" an unnamed former Interior official recounted to the Washington Post. " 'He's going to go on the air and tell everyone who listens to Focus on the Family to call Interior to oppose the Jena compact.' "

But Abramoff's fun didn't stop there. Reed urged a Who's Who of the Christian right to lobby Norton against the Jena compact with a stream of breathless letters. On February 19 Perkins warned Norton that gambling leads to "crime, divorce, child abuse." American Family Association chair Don Wildmon sent a lengthy missive to Norton filled with statistics on gambling's adverse social impact. The Eagle Forum's Phyllis Schlafly sent another. American Values president Gary Bauer declared in a letter to Norton that the compact ran "contrary to President Bush's pro-family vision." Focus on the Family vice president Tom Minnery wrote Norton and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card to demand they stop the deal. Dobson capped the mail blitz with his own missive against gambling expansion.

Despite the best efforts of Abramoff and the Christian soldiers Reed recruited, in December Norton approved the Jena compact. Soon after, Louisiana's new governor, Kathleen Blanco, reversed the deal on the basis of her opposition to casino growth. Abramoff's goal was achieved, but all his work was for naught. And his skulduggery was beginning to catch up with him. "I hate all the shit I'm into," he moaned to Scanlon in a February 2003 e-mail. "I need to be on the Caribbean with you!"

However, Abramoff's campaign against the Jena compact was a blessing for most of its Christian-right players. Perkins got to prove his mettle in a national campaign, prompting his appointment the following year by Dobson to president of the Family Research Council, the Washington-based lobbying powerhouse. Dobson, for his part, got to demonstrate his grassroots muscle to the Bush White House, raising his visibility to Karl Rove & Co. and helping him increase his influence over its social agenda as the presidential election approached.

Among Abramoff's evangelical surrogates, only Reed emerged from their relationship with visible baggage. But this was not apparent at the time. Now, as a result of extensive media coverage of his involvement with Abramoff, his campaign for lieutenant governor of Georgia, intended as a stepping stone to higher office, is lagging. He has gone from denying early in his campaign that he accepted gambling money to claiming most recently that Abramoff lied to him about the source of his fees. To generate a strong turnout for his January 21 appearance at a Georgia Christian Coalition meeting, Reed was reduced to enticing his dwindling band of "supporters" with cash and free hotel rooms.

It is still unknown whether Dobson and his allies knew that Reed was working for Abramoff during the anti-Jena campaign. Abramoff claimed in a February 2002 e-mail to his employee Todd Boulanger that he was "working FOR and WITH them [emphasis in original]," referring to Christian-right activists. Dobson, Perkins, Robertson and Falwell have remained silent. Whether or not evidence surfaces to support the claim Abramoff made in his e-mail, it is undeniable he was deeply embedded in the Christian right's infrastructure.

In July 2002, at the height of the anti-Jena campaign, Bauer and Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a fixture at Christian-right events, founded the American Alliance of Christians and Jews. On the group's board were Dobson, Robertson, Falwell and one Jack Abramoff. Lapin's organization, Toward Tradition, which administered the AACJ, received $25,000 from one of Abramoff's gambling industry clients in 2000; took $75,000 from Abramoff and his clients; and then, upon Abramoff's written instructions, hired the wife of Tony Rudy to the tune of $5,000 a month. Rudy, who was Tom DeLay's deputy chief of staff at the time, later a lobbyist, has been named in Abramoff's guilty plea.

While Abramoff cooperates with federal prosecutors, his former Christian-right surrogates have abstained from coming clean about their relationship with him. Acknowledging willing collusion with a disgraced casino lobbyist would be suicidal among their followers. But there are also risks in casting themselves as useful idiots in Abramoff's game. Such a tactic would reveal the "pro-family" movement as just another gear in a sordid Republican political operation. What did Dobson know and when did he know it? As the wheels of justice grind on, those who claim to speak with the authority of Scripture may soon find themselves under oath.

Excusive photo Of Dick Cheney....

2006-02-14T18:31:00.000-05:00

moments before he attempted to wack that 78 year old lawyer....

10 Commandments were "borrowed"

2006-02-13T15:20:00.000-05:00

Many people don't want to believe that the 10 Commandments are simply an abridged version of 42 principles that existed a few thousand years before Moses did, but let's keep it real...GW, might need to follow #17 (I wonder why they got rid of THAT one in the Bible?)

Maát is ethical principles collectively embracing the values of truth, justice, harmony, balance, cosmological order, reciprocity and propriety.

Personified as a goddess, Maát is depicted as a woman wearing an ostrich feather on her head, a symbol of the principles she represents. Controlling the movement of the stars and the seasonal flooding of the Nile River, Maát also had codes of tradition and customs. For all Egyptians to live in a happy, prosperous and peaceful environment, they had to live within the order established by Maát. The pharaoh, as absolute ruler, was the individual most responsible to manifest in life, through all his actions, the entire concept of Maát. Deviation from the tenets of Maát could prove disastrous for the pharaoh.

Maát was central to funerary practices in which if the deceased had been found to not have followed the concept of Maát during his life (if he had lied or cheated or killed or done anything against Maát) his heart was devoured by a demon (she was called Ammut -- Devouress of the Dead) and he died the final death. If the heart weighed the same as Maát, the deceased was allowed to go on to the afterlife. The heart of a person was considered the center of intellect and memory.
NOTE:

This symbolic weighing of the heart against the feather of truth (Maát) was performed to established the righteousness of the deceased. The scale of Maát was balanced after the recitation of the 42 Declarations of Innocence or Admonitions of Maát from the tomb of a Nubian. Book of the Dead of Maiherperi):

This is to said before the Forty-two gods on reaching the Hall of the Two Truths so as to purge (name) of any sins committed and to see the face of every god:

The Judgment of the Dead
The Declaration of Innocence

Hail to you, great God, Lord of the Two Truths!
I have come to you, my Lord,
I was brought to see your beauty.
I know you, I know the names of the forty-two gods,
Who are with you in the Hall of the Two Truths,
Who live by warding off evildoers,
Who drink of their blood,
On that day of judging characters before Wennofer.
Lo, your name is "He-of-Two-Daughters,"
(And) "He-of-Maat's-Two-Eyes."
Lo, I come before you,
Bringing Maat to you,
Having repelled evil for you.
and Cosmological Order
Symbol of Truth, Balance...
The Goddess Maát
VIRTUES OF MAÁT
1. I have not committed sin.
2. I have not committed robbery with violence.
3. I have not stolen.
4. I have not slain men and women.
5. I have not stolen grain.
6. I have not purloined offerings.
7. I have not stolen the property of God.
8. I have not uttered lies.
9. I have not carried away food.
10. I have not uttered curses.
11. I have not committed adultery, I have not lain with men.
12. I have made none to weep.
13. I have not eaten the heart.
14. I have not attacked any man.
15. I am not a man of deceit.
16. I have not stolen cultivated land.
17. I have not been an eavesdropper.
18. I have not slandered [no man].
19. I have not been angry without just cause.
20. I have not debauched the wife of any man.
21. I have not debauched the wife of [any] man.
22. I have not polluted myself.
23. I have terrorized none.
24. I have not transgressed [the law].
25. I have not been wroth.
26. I have not shut my ears to the words of truth.
27. I have not blasphemed.
28. I am not a man of violence.
29. I have not been a stirrer up of strife.
30. I have not acted with undue haste.
31. I have not pried into matters.
32. I have not multiplied my words in speaking.
33. I have wronged none, I have done no evil.
34. I have not worked witchcraft against the king.
35. I have never stopped [the flow of] water.
36. I have never raised my voice.
37. I have not cursed God.
38. I have not acted with arrogance.
39. I have not stolen the bread of the gods.
40. I have not carried away the khenfu cakes from the Spirits of the dead.
41. I have not snatched away the bread of the child, nor treated with contempt the god of my city.
42. I have not slain the cattle belonging to the god.

The Declaration to the Forty-two Gods

O Wide-of-stride who comes from On: I have not done evil.
O Flame-grasper who comes from Kheraha: I have not robbed.
O Long-nosed who comes from Khbmun: I have not coveted.
O Shadow-eater who comes from the cave: I have not stolen.
O Savage-faced who comes from Rostau: I have not killed people.
O Lion-Twins who come from heaven: I have not trimmed the measure.
O Flint-eyed who comes from Khem: I have not cheated.
O Fiery-one who comes backward: I have not stolen a god's property.
O Bone-smasher who comes from Hnes: I have not told lies.
O Flame-thrower who comes from Memphis: I have not seized food.
O Cave-dweller who comes from the west: I have not sulked.
O White-toothed who comes from Lakeland: I have not trespassed.
O Blood-eater who comes from slaughterplace: I have not slain sacred cattle.
O Entrall-eater who comes from the tribunal: I have not extorted.
O Lord of Maat who comes from Maaty: I have not stolen bread rations.
O Wanderer who comes from Bubastis: I have not spied.
O Pale-one who comes from On: I have not prattled.
O Villain who comes from Anjdty: I have contended only for my goods.
O Fiend who comes from slaughterhouse: I have not committed adultery.
O Examiner who comes from Min's temple: I have not defiled myself.
O Chief of the nobles who comes from Imu: I have not caused fear.
O Wrecker who comes from Huy: I have not trespassed.
O Disturber who comes from the sanctuary: I have not been violent.
O Child who comes from the nome of On: I have not been deaf to Maat.
O Foreteller who comes from Wensi: I have not quarreled.
O Bastet who comes from the shrine: I have not winked.
O Backward-faced who comes from the pit: I have not copulated with a boy.
O Flame-footed who comes from the dusk: I have not been false.
O Dark-one who comes from darkness: I have not reviled.
O Peace-bringer who comes from Sais: I have not been aggressive.
O Many-faced who comes from Djefet: I have not had a hasty heart.
O Accuser who comes from Utjen: I have not attacked and reviled a god.
O Horned-one who comes from Siut: I have not made many words.
O Nefertem who comes from Memphis: I have not sinned, I have not done wrong.
O Timeless-one who comes from Djedu: I have not made trouble.
O Willful-one who comes from Tjebu: I have not waded in water.
O Flowing-one who comes from Nun: I have not raised my voice.
O Commander of people who comes from his shrine: I have not cursed a god.
O Benefactor who comes from Huy: I have not been boastful.
O Nehebkau who comes from the city: I have not been haughty.
O High-of-head who comes from the cave: I have not wanted more than I had.
O Captor who comes from the graveyard: I have not cursed god in my town.

OVERVIEW:

The students aim in ancient Kemet (Egypt) was for a person to become "One with God." The path to the development of god-like qualities was through the development of virtues. These virtues were sought by the Kemites (Egyptians) to become one with Maát (the cosmic order).

Control of thoughts;
Control of actions;
Devotion of purpose;
Have faith in the ability of your teacher to teach you the truth;
Have faith in yourself to assimilate the truth;
Have faith in yourself to wield the truth;
Be free from resentment under the experience of persecution;
Be free from resentment under the experience of wrong;
Cultivate the ability to distinguish between right and wrong; and
Cultivate the ability to distinguish between the real and the unreal

The British behaving like animals.

2006-02-12T23:46:00.000-05:00

World sees shocking images of British soldiers' brutality
By Dominic Kennedy
The assault on four Iraqi teenagers and the cameraman's mocking commentary have enraged people throughout the Middle East
A SHOCKING breakdown of military discipline is caught on video as eight burly British soldiers rain 42 kicks and blows on four puny young male Iraqi civilians, one of them a child.

The victims’ helpless cries for mercy and howls of pain and terror are ignored by groups of troops casually passing by. One man is heard to say: “In the f***ing head.”

The most senior soldier, thought to be a sergeant, does nothing to stop the brutality but instead delivers a vicious kick to one victim’s genitals.

The video’s soundtrack features a disturbing commentary from the cameraman, an excited sentry who laughs, sneers, encourages and mocks as the outrage unfolds before him.

Still images from the video, provided by a paid whistleblower and published in the News of the World, prove that the incident was far from being a unique atrocity perpetrated by the British forces in Iraq.

In another location an Iraqi civilian is seen being forced to kneel alone behind a brick wall by three soldiers who kick him hard in the chest.

A further episode sees a soldier display the corpse of a young Iraqi man, lift the victim’s head and display it to the camera. The cameraman defiles the body by twice kicking the dead face, a grievous insult to Arabs who regard shoes as dirty. A soldier laughs: “He’s been a bad motherf***er”.

But it is the casual savagery of the attack on the four young males, in effect prisoners of the British forces, which forms the most devastating two minutes of the video.

At first, groups of youths throw stones at the stronghold but they flee when lines of baton-wielding British soldiers emerge. A radio voice screeches targets for the troops: “Black top, blue bottoms — go on!”

Some of the Britons return, dragging their captives in headlocks. The moment they get inside the perimeter wall, out of sight of the civilian population, the violence begins.

The first victim, a boy no older than his early teens, is released from a headlock by a soldier still wearing his helmet who immediately head-butts him. The boy cries “No, please” and clings helplessly to the soldier’s baton. Another soldier grabs the boy’s neck and throws him to the ground. The first soldier brings his baton smashing down on to the child.

A second, slightly built youth is repeatedly dealt heavy blows with the baton until he crumples. A third victim is battered to the ground with a baton and kicked repeatedly like a football. In a distressing image the prisoner is last seen unconscious with a dark patch, resembling blood, around his head.

The cameraman shouts with delight when the captives are first brought into the compound. “Yes, yes, oh yes, you’re going to get it,” he says. “Yes, naughty little boys. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Phwoar. You little f***ers, you little f***ers. Die!” He mocks the captives’ pleas for mercy, adopting a high-pitched voice to say: “No, please don’t hurt me!”

The News of the World published extracts from the video on its website yesterday, allowing millions of people to download the images. The newspaper studied the video for several days, taking pains to confirm that it was genuine after hoax Iraqi abuse photographs cost Piers Morgan his job as Editor of the Daily Mirror. Stuart Kuttner, the News of the World’s managing editor, said: “We’ve made inquiries of the source, of people around the source, of military experts, of the Ministry of Defence and beyond.”

One of the key mysteries is how such a film could exist and be shown to military personnel for two years without the obvious crimes depicted being reported to the authorities.

"W" had to grin and bear it....

2006-02-12T23:28:00.000-05:00

It says something about our “democracy” when Bush can only face criticism in public as a side effect of his attendance at a funeral. The civil-rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery managed to take Bush to task for his war crimes and pathological lies (or the lies programmed in his alcohol and coke damaged head by the Straussian neocons) during the funeral of Coretta Scott King. “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there,” Lowery said, reading a poem. “But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here.” In response, Lowrey received a two minute standing ovation.

As if to add insult to injury, former president Jimmy Carter lambasted the neocons for their authoritarian NSA snoop program, comparing it to the FBI’s surveillance of the civil rights leader. “It was difficult for them personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated, and they became the targets of secret government wiretapping and other surveillance,” said Carter.

“Conservatives” (neocons) far and wide will take umbrage, outraged that somebody would dare criticize our ruler in public. I happened to catch a few seconds of Fox News on my way toward the computer. Michael Reagan, the neocon son of the dead president, expressed his anger in conversation with faux Fox “liberal” Alan Colmes. Reagan was upset over Carter’s comparison of the unconstitutional and illegal NSA snoop program to the surveillance carried out on King. Neocon cheerleaders such as Reagan, of course, want us to believe the NSA, at the behest of the Straussian neocons, are limiting the J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Vacuum Cleaner snoop program to “al-Qaeda” bad guys supposedly making phone calls when anybody with two or more brain cells to rub together realizes Bush and crew are using the criminal program to snoop thousands if not millions of Americans, especially those involved in activism against his Mafioso regime.

“No holds were barred,” William Sullivan, assistant director of the FBI’s Intelligence Division, testified before the Church Committee on the aggressive surveillance of King. “We have used [similar] techniques against Soviet agents. [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business.”

No doubt, as well, the Bush Straussians, utilizing the NSA and the FBI (and a grab bag of other federal agencies, including the Straussian infested Pentagon), believe subverting the Bill of Rights is “a rough, tough business.” In much the same way as the FBI surveilled and harassed King and his “Negro followers” (as Sullivan wrote Hoover in a memo dated January 8, 1964), the Straussian neocons are anxious to dig up as much dirt on their enemies as possible. “When the true facts concerning [King’s] activities are presented, such should be enough, if handled properly, to take him off his pedestal and to reduce him completely in influence,” Sullivan told his boss. “When this is done, and it can be and will be done, obviously much confusion will reign, particularly among the Negro people.” Of course, confusion did not “reign,” the civil rights movement grew in strength and intensity, and the government instead decided to have King assassinated.

The vicious Straussian neocons will likewise deal with their enemies as they mobilize against Phase Two (attack Iran) of the Master Plan to sow chaos and murder in the Muslim Middle East. Oliver North, working diligently from the basement of the Reagan White House, did not collaborate with FEMA to set up camps for illegal immigrants, but rather official enemies. And if you believe the CIA has established its flying torture circus of sadism strictly for Muslim goat herders and taxi drivers, you should think again. For the Straussians, there is no difference between Muslims and domestic opponents of the Bush administration.

Dick Cheney shoots lawyer

2006-02-12T16:37:00.000-05:00

Damn...I see why Dick Cheney never served in the military...Keep guns away from him PLEASE!

(AP) WASHINGTON Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.

Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.

Armstrong said Whittington was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.

Whittington was in stable condition Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.

Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president was with Whittington, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, and his wife at the hospital on Sunday afternoon.

Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shot at a covey of quail late afternoon on Saturday.

Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and found a second covey.

Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong told the Associated Press in an interview.

"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

She said Whittington was bleeding but not very seriously injured, and Cheney was very apologetic.

"It broke the skin," she said. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."

She said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington, holding his face and cleaning up the blood.

"Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."

Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year. She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together.

"This is something that happens from time to time. You now, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.

Who Is Sly Stone?

2006-02-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

You'd never know it from his "performance" at the Grammys on Wednesday night, but Sly Stone is one of the great musical innovators of the last 50 years.

During his all-too-brief creative peak — between the mid-1960s and early 1970s — he and his group, the Family Stone, fused soul, rock and funk into a dynamic sound that changed all three genres forever and played a profound role in the creation of hip-hop (his songs have been sampled and covered many, many times).

A young person today might know his songs only from oldies radio or the long-running Toyota commercial that used his 1969 anti-racist hit "Everyday People," but his influence is so vast, and his sound has been so incorporated into so many different styles, that it's simply part of today's musical language. His band's contribution to funk music is every bit as enduring as James Brown's, and Parliament-Funkadelic, Rick James, Prince, D'Angelo and Jermaine Dupri — not to mention every single funk band since the late '60s — all owe the essence of their sounds to him.

And before Sly's outlook turned dark — with 1971's haunting, paranoid There's a Riot Goin' On — his message was one of positivity, unity and self-empowerment, exemplified by just a handful of his song titles: "You Can Make It If You Try," "Everybody Is a Star," "I Want to Take You Higher" and "Stand!" With "Everyday People," he coined the term "different strokes for different folks." And as the electrifying 1969 performance captured in the concert film "Woodstock" shows, he and the band could hold tens of thousands of people in the palms of their hands.

Wednesday night's performance during the Grammy tribute to him — which found him attired bizarrely in a silver-and-purple robe, dark shades and a foot-high platinum Mohawk, pawing befuddledly at his keyboard, at times seemingly unaware of where he was — showed just how far he's fallen.

To understand how revolutionary Sly's music, image and message were, you have to consider the America in which the band was formed in 1966. It was still largely a segregated country, in terms of both race and gender. A controversial war in a far-off land, Vietnam, was dividing the country. And pop music was made mostly by single-race, single-gender groups who'd only just begun to let their hair down.

Sly was born in Dallas in 1944 but raised on the mean streets of Vallejo in the San Francisco Bay Area. A prodigious talent, he had his first hit single at the age of 16 and studied music at Vallejo Junior College. He honed his chops in the early '60s as a massively popular DJ on San Francisco's KSOL and KDIA, as a producer (helming a national hit for the Beau Brummels, "Laugh Laugh"), and with his group, the Stoners. He combined that band's trumpet player, Cynthia Robinson, with his guitarist brother Freddie, his keyboardist sister Rosemary and bassist Larry Graham (who pioneered the thumb-popping funk bass style that has since become a signature of the genre) to form the Family Stone. Their formation coincided neatly with the city's burgeoning psychedelic scene, and Sly seized the moment, fusing the sounds and attitudes of the era into something he called "psychedelic soul." The group signed with Epic Records in 1967 and released its first LP, A Whole New Thing, later that year.

While the title track of Dance to the Music brought the group its first hit, 1969's Stand! remains its definitive statement. The album contains many of the positive songs above, yet it also did not shy away from talking tough, via the confrontationally anti-racist "Don't Call Me N-----, Whitey" (the chorus of which replied, "Don't Call Me Whitey, N-----"). The album became the group's first gold disc, "Everyday People" was a #1 single, the group arguably stole the show at Woodstock — and just as the Family Stone were reaching the top, it all started to unravel.

The group began 1970 with a bang: the single "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," indubitably one of the funkiest songs ever laid to wax. Yet Sly's increasing drug abuse led to erratic behavior, and the group missed 26 of 80 scheduled concerts, many of which found the entire band present and ready to play, with Sly simply refusing to go on. Stories of his drug-fueled antics are legend: He obsessed maniacally with There's a Riot Goin' On, missing many deadlines and recording and re-recording so many times that the album has a dull, hissy sound (the tapes simply began to wear out). The album also had a dark, claustrophobic, doomed vibe, although Sly's powers of social commentary were as strong as ever on "Family Affair," which held the #1 spot on the U.S. singles chart for five weeks. By the time the album was done, the group's brilliant drummer, Greg Errico, had left, and Graham was not far behind.

The hits continued for another couple of years — 1973's Fresh, containing the excellent single "If You Want Me to Stay," was a strong effort — but 1974's "Loose Booty" was the group's last charting single, and it dissolved the following year, with Stone filing for bankruptcy in 1976.

And that, sadly, is largely where the story ends. Sly made comeback attempts in the late 1970s and early '80s, releasing three mediocre albums. P-Funk's George Clinton brought him on tour with Funkadelic in 1981; he also appeared on former Time guitarist Jesse Johnson's 1987 single "Crazay" — the title of which is so Sly-influenced that it verges on parody. The drug problems continued, with Sly being arrested three times on cocaine charges and ending the '80s in prison on a 55-day charge for driving under the influence of the drug.

Apart from the occasional impromptu appearance — in 1993, he surprised his former bandmates by joining them onstage when the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — Sly has kept a very low profile in the years since; his royalties presumably bring in significant income. He signed a contract with Avenue Records in 1995, but no releases followed. In the late 1990s, the creator of a Sly fan site claimed to have met with Sly at the artist's behest. He reported that Sly was lucid and friendly, and said that he played new material that ranks with his best work. None of that material has yet emerged.

Last summer, Sly was reported seen in the crowd during a tribute concert in Los Angeles, wearing a motorcycle helmet throughout the performance. His behavior was no less unusual during rehearsals for Wednesday night's Grammy performance: According to the Los Angeles Times, on Monday he participated in just two of three run-throughs of the song while dressed in a hooded raincoat and camouflage pants.

The Grammy performance — Sly's first with the original Family Stone since 1971 — was a halting, confused affair and a complete disservice to his music. For a taste of his and the band's greatness, Stand! and The Essential Sly and the Family Stone collection are probably the most definitive testaments.

Indeed, his legend is such that some defended even Wednesday night's bizarre showing. Adam Levine of Maroon 5 — who took part in the all-star tribute that preceded Sly's appearance — said to The Washington Post, "Can you really argue with an unbelievable-looking Mohawk and a silver jacket?"

Coretta Finally Joins Her Husband

2006-02-08T16:26:00.000-05:00

After 38 years, Coretta Scott King Finally Joins her Husband
by George E. Curry
NNPA Editor-in-Chief
Originally posted 2/8/2006

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – With four U.S. presidents in attendance – two Democrats and two Republicans – the 6-hour funeral of Coretta Scott King on Tuesday started out as though it might be a star-studded exercise in political correctness, with speakers gingerly avoiding issues that have sharply divided them in the past.

President George W. Bush, an ardent opponent of affirmative action and other social programs favored by both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta, was effusive in his praise of Mrs. King.

“I’ve come today to offer the sympathy of our entire nation at the passing of a woman who worked to make our nation whole,” he said. “… This kind and gentle woman became one of the most admired Americans of our time. She is rightly mourned, and she is deeply missed.”

Even Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who frequently spars with President Bush on social issues, focused on his family’s long-time personal relationship with the King family.

Noting that Dr. King was given a four-month jail sentence during the early 1960s for a minor traffic violation, Kennedy said: “I remember my brother calling her and saying he would do whatever was necessary,” he recalled. “And [Attorney General] Robert called the judge, who fortunately saw the light, and Martin was released.”

Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with Dr. King, made it clear that he would not bite his tongue simply because President Bush was in attendance.

“She extended Martin’s message against poverty, racism and war,” he said, referring to Coretta Scott King. “She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar.”

With many already applauding wildly, Lowery turned up the heat.

“We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here,” Lowery said, receiving a standing ovation. “Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more, but no more for the poor.”

Jimmy Carter, former governor of Georgia, credited the Kings with legitimizing him as a national candidate, thus making it possible for a White Southerner to be elected president in 1976.

In an indirect dig at President Bush’s fervent support or warrantless wiretapping, Carter reminded the mourners of what the Kings endured: “It was difficult for them personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated, and they became the targets of secret government wiretapping and other surveillance.”

As evidence that the struggle for equal rights is not over, Carter said, “We only have to recall the color of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.” After being interrupted by sustained applause, Carter continued, “Those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans.”

The funeral was one of the rare times that four present and past presidents –Bush, Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton – have made a joint appearance.

The elder Bush, noted for his clumsiness, drew laughter when he said, “This may be your lucky day. I lost a page.”

If this had been a presidential sweepstakes, Bill Clinton would have been declared the clear winner. He received a prolonged standing ovation before he uttered a word. And when he did speak, it was with a passion he routinely uses to connect with predominantly Black audiences.

“I don’t want to forget that there’s a woman in there,” he said, pointing to a casket adorned with flowers. “Not a symbol. But a real woman who lived and breathed, and got angry and got hurt, and had dreams and disappointments. I don’t want us to forget that.”

Clinton continued, “We’re here to honor a person. Fifty-four years ago, her about-to-be husband said that he was looking for a woman with character, intelligence, personality, and beauty, and she sure fit the bill. And I have to say, when she was over 75, I thought she still fit the bill pretty good.”

The audience laughed in agreement.

The former president observed that instead of remaining in mourning, immediately following her husband’s assassination, Coretta Scott King was on a plane from Atlanta to Memphis to continue his work.

“What are we going to do with the rest of our lives?” Clinton asked. “Do you want to treat our friend Coretta like a model? Then model her behavior.”

He issued a pointed challenge to the city of Atlanta, where the Kings spent most of their lives.

“Atlanta, what is your responsibility for the future of the King Center?” Clinton asked, referring to a complex that had been beset in recent years by debt and controversy. “What are you going to do?”

Bernice King, who was 5 years old when her father died, eulogized her mother, who died Jan. 30 of respiratory problems associated with advanced ovarian cancer. She was 78 years old. The youngest child was with her mother when she died in Mexico.

“I’m just here to celebrate,” said the younger King, an associate pastor at the church. “I don’t have to say a word.” But she said many words in a wide-ranging eulogy that lasted about 38 minutes. Alluding to a controversy over the funeral being held at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, Bernice King said, ''I said, 'God, why here?' He said, 'It's time for the world to be born again.'''

She urged mourners to live in the present, not the past.

''God is not looking for a Martin Luther King or Coretta Scott King,'' she said. ''The old has passed away; there is a new order that is emerging.''

There was some unspoken tension between some who had worked with Dr. King and organizers of the funeral, which was held at the 10,000-seat mega-church in suburban Lithonia, 15 miles east of Atlanta. Jesse Jackson, a former King aide who was with him when the civil rights leader was killed in Memphis, was not allowed to be part of the funeral program. Jackson and other top aides had participated in a service the night before at Ebenezer Baptist Church in the historic Sweet Auburn section of downtown Atlanta.

Many of those speakers were already upset that the funeral service was being held at a suburban Black mega-church instead of Ebenezer, Dr. King’s old church. And few tried to hide their displeasure over Bush being allowed to take part in Coretta Scott King’s funeral after opposing most of what she fought for while she was alive.

“We can’t let them take her from us and reduce her to their trophy and not our freedom fighter,” Jackson said at the Monday night services.

Another top SCLC official, Rev. C. T. Vivian, said: “As we think of Coretta, if she were here right now, she would say the president of the United States is the direct opposite to Martin Luther King. It is in fact our public policy that makes people poor. Nonviolence is the root of the matter. If we forget that, we might as well forget the movement.”

Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young, another former King aide, said the contrasting services at Ebenezer and New Birth showed that Mrs. King had a foot in each world

“They are both real,” he explained to the Atlanta Constitution. “[Monday] was a movement service. It was like a mass movement. It unfortunately was too little about Coretta, but it was about carrying on the movement. Everything we have said about Coretta has been the truth, but she still made sure Nixon helped build the King Center, and she still got Reagan to sign the King holiday [bill]. She was always so humble and graceful, and her protest was so pure. That’s why she was so effective.”

After the funeral, Coretta Scott King’s body was driven to the King Center, arriving at 7:14 p.m. There, the family released seven doves, the symbol of peace. The coffin was placed in a temporary crypt, where it will remain until a permanent crypt is build next to her husband.

Between the tombs is an eternal flame. Inscribed on Mrs. King's crypt, below her name and years of birth and death, is a passage from First Corinthians 13:13, which reads: “And now abide Faith, Hope, Love, These Three; but the greatest of these is Love.”

Diamonds Can Be Deadly

2006-02-07T11:24:00.000-05:00

"Bling, Bling" - The Murder of Our People,
Eyecalone

I've seen some pretty ignorant and bizarre things in music over the last few years, but of all the things I've witnessed today's "Bling-Bling" syndrome has to be the worst. Sometimes I wonder where the hell this absurd obsession with diamond jewelry came from. I mean flossin' and frontin' have always played a part in rap but this shit is ridiculous! You can't even blame a region because the obsession is everywhere, East, West, South, Midwest, and everywhere between. You've all heard it; the jewelry praises roll off forked tongues from Roc-A-Fella to the Hot-Boyz. Nowadays rappers make songs in tribute to Diamonds (�Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend" - Jay-Z), spend better than 50 thousand dollars on a single piece of jewelry, and then insult their fans (the people who paid for that jewelry) about being broke. Ain't that about a bitch!? The more I think about the more I think that these rappers just must not know any better.

�You know the wrist frost bit, minus two degrees/about as blue as the sea�

I can't help but wonder, what if Jay-Z knew that for more than a century the men controlling the diamond industry have been hardcore racists, some of whom were the founding fathers of Apartheid, and ruthlessly exploited black Africans as well as others. The Dutch, Germans, British, as well as other tribes of Europeans had come to Africa to pull, what today we would call a jack move. Many Europeans had convinced themselves that Africans and other non-whites were inferior people and many of the rest would do so later to justify their immoral actions. From this situation the racial segregation system of Apartheid was born, in South Africa, as well as similar social orders in other parts of Africa.

Cecil Rhodes, for whom Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe) was named essentially started the diamond industry back in the 1880's diamond rush when he "purchased" the farm of Dutch Boer farmers Deiderick Arnoldus & Johannes DeBeers. This farm would eventually turn into one of the largest mines in Africa at the time (DeBeers currently has a mine 3 times the size of New Jersey called the "Forbidden Zone�). Rhodes then went on to "buy" several other mines until he controlled 90% of the world's gemstones. Shortly after that Ernest Oppenheimer made a large discovery of diamonds in "German Southwest Africa�, that rivaled the Rhodes mines. Oppenheimer threatened to flood the market with diamonds and drive the price down if Rhodes did not make him chairman of DeBeers (which was Rhodes' Company at the time). Oppenheimer's company had financial investment from British investors and J.P. Morgan so it was called Anglo-American. Today, diamonds are a multi-billion dollar industry and most of them come from Southern African countries, yet black Africans from these countries remain some of the poorest people in the world.

�Every time I come around your city "Bling Bling" - Pinky ring worth about 50 "Bling Bling�

What if the Hot Boyz knew that from those early days up until now, the profits from the diamond industry were and continue to be one of the most important factors in upholding the region's racist policies and white minority rule? The best example is in South Africa. Once diamonds were discovered, the South African government instituted policies designed to force black Africans off their land and into the diamond mines to work in conditions similar to slavery. This was accomplished by the government creating new taxes on virtually everything from land to pets. In order to get money to pay the taxes black Africans had no choice but to work in the mines. For all their moral talk foreign investors, mainly in America and Europe, played a key role in upholding the South African government and economy, and similar ones throughout southern Africa.

During the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, where South African police murdered 67 black anti-apartheid demonstrators in the township of Sharpeville, many foreign companies and investors pulled out their investments (not for moral reasons but out of fear of South African instability) and sold their shares of stock. Anglo-American bought up these shares to uphold the apartheid economy. Another example of foreign support occured in the Congo (formerly Zaire) in the 1950s. In 1959 Patrice Lumumba was elected as Prime Minister of the newly "independent" Congo, a country extremely rich in diamonds as well as other natural resources. Lumumba was very critical of the racist and unequal power and social relations in the Congo as well as the diamond industry's theft of African resources. The Belgian mining company, the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), and the Belgian government conspired to have him overthrown and murdered. He was then replaced by Mobutu Sese Seko, a figurehead dictator that these foreign powers found more acceptable. Dictator Mobutu was finally overthrown in 1997 and he died of natural causes later that year. Mobutu ruled the Congo for 32 years and it is estimated that through his theft he amassed a personal fortune estimated at 5 to 8 billion dollars (yes that is a supposed to be a 'B' and yes that is 5-8,000,000,000) in addition to the countless billions he misdirected or gave to his cronies.

�I don't like it if it don't gleam-gleam/ and the hell with the price tag cause money ain't a thing�

What if Jermaine Dupri knew about the conditions that miners past and present endured? Even today most people believe that since apartheid technically ended that somehow it's "all good�. Nothing could be further from the truth. Black Africans continue to work and live in conditions, that make Chicago's Cabrini Green Projects look like Disney World. For example, in DeBeers' Kimberly mines division in South Africa there are between 1,200 and 1,400 workers. About 1,100 of them are black and live in squatter's camps - tin shacks with no electricity or proper plumbing. Many of these black workers are paid as little as 28 American dollars a month. But white miners and managers live in comfortable homes - oftentimes with black servants! In addition, only white and part white employees with families are provided with family housing. Married black miners are forced to stay in separate facilities from their spouses. If a black, female worker gets pregnant she is required to leave her job for 3 months and return without her child if she wishes to keep her job. White workers are never subject to these policies. If a white miner has a family, they are immediately given family housing.

Just slightly higher up the food chain, in West India (not the West Indies), hundreds of thousands of diamond cutters, many of them children under 13, cut low quality diamonds for inexpensive catalogue jewelry. At times they are required to place more than 50 cuts, the size of pencil tip, on a diamond. They are paid 4 cents per stone and work 12 hour days, 6 days a week. I doubt that comes with any health benefits.

�I Rock Ice (lil daddy) every time I step/ I rock Ice (lil mamma) cause I love to rep�

What if Baby knew that diamonds are not naturally rare? Diamonds are made from carbon under high pressure, and on Earth we live in a carbon based environment. Most of the major diamond producing countries are in Southern Africa, but diamonds are also produced in Sierra Leone, Russia, Australia, and Canada. The diamond industry is more about controlling and restricting what comes out of the ground than the actual mining of diamonds. DeBeers controls approximately 75% of the world's rough (uncut) diamonds through its marketing arm, the Central Selling Organization (CSO). It mines 50% of the world's diamonds in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. The rest are vacuumed up through contracts made with other diamond producers, and by sending their buyers to clean up diamonds that leak onto the market from places like Congo and Angola. Since DeBeers is a foreign based company they are not subject to American monopoly laws, so they artificially keep the price of diamonds high by monopolizing supply. Trying to keep control of the diamond supply has forced DeBeers into business dealings with borderline terrorist organizations and other shady characters, though they deny having dealings with most of these groups.

The lie that diamonds are extremely rare and valuable has been built up since the 1930s. During the 1930s and 1940s DeBeers paid to have diamonds placed favorably in movies. In 1947 DeBeers invented their famous slogan "A Diamond is Forever" which sells 2 dreams: (1) that diamonds bring eternal love and romance, and (2) that diamonds never lose their value. DeBeers spends no less than 200 million a year on marketing diamonds in 34 countries. Today the United States accounts for more than 33% of the worlds diamond jewelry sales. It sells the dream to every new generation of gullible young men and women. They sponsor women's magazines, host celebrity auctions and design competitions, and work to have diamonds placed on TV shows and in movies. As if the 1st gaffle wasn't enough they reinvent the dream for those who have already bought it once. Now they have the "Eternity Ring" - a band of diamonds bought to celebrate the tenth wedding anniversary - being sold using the slogan "Show her you would marry her all over again".

These fantasies are aggressively sold oversees as well. In the 1960's, before DeBeers muscled in, barely 1 in 20 Japanese brides wore a diamond engagement ring. Today, diamond engagement rings are sported by 70% of Japanese brides.

The fact that America's love affair with diamonds is the result of a marketing campaign is pretty bizarre, but even more amazing is that diamonds can be made synthetically. Their manufacture requires some expensive equipment, but if a company has the resources, it can manufacture flawless diamonds in most sizes and colors, even the more expensive pink or yellow shades. In the 1980's General Electric was making these synthetic flawless diamonds though they weren't selling them commercially. When former, GE executive Edward Russell suggested that GE begin selling these diamonds to the public he was promptly fired. Apparently GE's higher ups and the DeBeers thugs had an understanding at the time, although GE claims Mr. Russell was fired due to job performance. I try not to wonder these things when I'm watching music videos or listening to songs on the radio, but I just can't thinking about it. WHAT IF THEY KNEW?! Sadly enough though, I don't think they would even care. And that is the truly scary part!

Courtesy of Eyecalone at www.playahata.com.

Part 2

�Bling!Bling!" Baby says, his "medallion iced up" and his "Rolex bezelled up!" Jay-Z says she's his baby, drives him crazy and is a girl's best friend. We talkin' diamonds ya'll. Helen, a 20-year-old mother raped and held captive by armed men knows about diamonds. Adamsay, 15, who uses her severed limbs to manipulate a cup knows about them too. They live in Sierra Leone, where real thugs keep the block locked down -- all in the name of ICE.

Sierra Leone went from slave port to a haven for Britain's newly emancipated. A colony until 1961, it looked forward to prosperity in those early years of independence. But as with too much of post-colonial Africa, those dreams were short lived.

Government mismanagement led to rebellion in 1991 by a group calling themselves the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), led by a former official named Foday Sankoh. Attempts to quell the rebellion caused numerous coups and shifts in government. With the war still raging in 1996, the people finally called for democratic elections. Lawyer Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was declared victor and a peace accord with the rebels was signed.

But the peace deal unraveled. And when disgruntled government soldiers staged a coup, the RUF eagerly supported them to topple Kabbah and form a rogue government the international community refused to recognize.

Visiting Nigeria, RUF leader Foday Sankoh was placed under arrest. And Nigeria, backed by the UN and ECOMOG, fought a punishing war to return Kabbah to power in 1998. Sankoh was given the death penalty, but the RUF carried on nevertheless.

If the RUF were fighting on behalf of the people of Sierra Leone, they certainly neglected to demonstrate it. As if mimicking Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge or the brutally oppressive Belgian Congo, the RUF waged a bloody campaign of terror. They raped, maimed and killed civilians, including children and the elderly, in the tens of thousands.

When the RUF attacked the capitol of Freetown in January of 1999, they initiated "Operation No Living Thing" - raping young girls and women, burning homes and villages, and viciously hacking off the hands of children. At least 10,000 people died in this rebel terror campaign. As one UN official put it, "The RUF have turned Sierra Leone into the worst country in the world to live in�.

So who are these RUF? An extremist faction like the Peruvian Shining Path, with some profound political agenda? Something akin to the fratricidal, Hutu Interahamwe of Rwanda bent on revenge upon ethnic rivals? Or like the Hezballah, do they wage a struggle based on fanatic religious ideologies? No.

The 45,000 member RUF are simply disillusioned young men, some no older than 10, spurred on by older leaders and drug-induced acts of bravado. They come from diverse ethnic groups, practice no particular religion, and espouse no set political agenda or platform.

All that can be said is that their goals are rooted in greed. For it is diamonds that have caused and fed this war of atrocity. The eastern part of Sierra Leone, a RUF stronghold, produces some of the finest gems in the world. Reports say the RUF sells the diamonds through Liberia, who's president Charles Taylor supports them for his own corrupt ends, and receives arms in return. The evidence of this illegal trade is in the numbers: Liberia's own average annual mining capacity is 150,000 carats. But between 1994 and 1998, Liberia exported more than 31 million carats, an average of six million per year.

The RUF was eventually routed by Nigerian troops into the countryside. But pressure from the US and other governments forced President Kabbah to sign a treaty with the RUF. Jesse Jackson himself helped broker the much applauded peace deal which not only gave the RUF blanket amnesty, but ensured their leaders high-ranking government posts. Foday Sankoh went from death row, to the Vice-Presidency.

However, it soon became apparent that this deal was a sham. Only about 4,000 of the RUF disarmed while at least 13,000 government troops did so. UN observers noted that the RUF continued murder, rape and mutilation in Sierra Leone as if the peace deal never happened. In fact only days following Nigeria's withdrawal, the RUF ambushed and took 500 UN peacekeepers hostage. Terrified of the rebels, who's infamous reputation preceded them, the UN force surrendered their weapons, armored personnel carriers and even their uniforms without so much as a fight.

Sierra Leone citizens in Freetown, finally taking matters into their own hands, marched on the home of Sankoh to demand he end hostilities. They were greeted with bodyguards who fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades into the crowd, killing scores. Weeks of humiliation later, the UN hostages were finally released. So what went wrong?

Jesse, the US and foreign nations underestimated the RUF and miserably failed to understand the conflict in Sierra Leone. The RUF may be experts in tactics of guerrilla warfare and terrorism, but they amount in the end to little more than mafia-like thugs. Giving Sankoh and his rebels places in the new government would be akin to the NAACP giving gang members a place on their board. The people of Sierra Leone were betrayed by an international community looking to make deals with the devil. As one Sierra Leonean dryly observed, "they didn't make deals with Milosovic in Bosnia---why here?"

But perhaps there is hope in Sierra Leone's future. The UN, following Nigeria's lead, has taken a tough stance on the RUF. And the peacekeeping mission sent there has restored some semblance of order to the nation. Foday Sankoh was captured and marched through the streets of Freetown to the jubilant cheers of its citizens. A tribunal has been set up to prosecute both Sankoh and the RUF for their reign of terror. And a government diamond certificate is now being put into to place to keep rebel gems from financing this brutal war. And word is the RUF rebels have begun to disarm en masse.

As Nigerian author Chinua Achebe might say, in Sierra Leone things "fell" apart. It will take untold generations to heal the wounds the civil war has caused. The very existence of the RUF illustrates some of Africa's most pressing post-colonial problems: corrupt leaders, the powerful exploiting the powerless, the break-down of traditional African societal values and mores, and a lack of basic order on many fronts. What should be a diamond-rich and prosperous country, is today on the verge of chaos. Modern Sierra Leone is part of the African legacy of colonialism and the seeming inability of western styles of government and post-independence leaders to speak to the needs of their respective countries. The implosion of Sierra Leone is what happens when all of these factors go untreated for too long. It will take a world community and, most of all, the commitment of the people of Sierra Leone to fix it once again.

As I listened to yet another ghetto lyrical fantasy of ICE play out on my radio, I could not help wonder if some artists are dumber than a box of rocks? When a recent high profile rapper was asked about what he thought of Sierra Leone as he bragged about his shiny wrist pieces, he answered dumbfounded -- "Sierra who?" It seems while the rest of the REAL world was concerned with world affairs, these thugz, ballaz and ThOw'd YuNg PlAyAz could have cared less. Yet now I watch em' tripping over each other to get some American patriotic media glory after September 11th. These simps (yeah, I called em' simps) should all be loaded up in a plane and dropped ground zero into Sierra Leone, with all their flashy ICE wrapped around them. Let's see how long they make it.

Courtesy of Morpheus at www.playahata.com

"Reverse" racism is a dumb concept...

2006-02-07T11:03:00.000-05:00

Ray Nagin, White Rage and the Manufacturing of 'Reverse' Racism
by Tim Wise

If you're looking to understand why discussions between blacks and whites about racism are often so difficult in this country, you need only know this: when the subject is race and racism, whites and blacks are often not talking about the same thing. To white folks, racism is seen mostly as individual and interpersonal - as with the uttering of a prejudicial remark or bigoted slur. For blacks, it is that too, but typically more: namely, it is the pattern and practice of policies and social institutions, which have the effect of perpetuating deeply embedded structural inequalities between people on the basis of race. To blacks, and most folks of color, racism is systemic. To whites, it is purely personal.

These differences in perception make sense, of course. After all, whites have not been the targets of systemic racism in this country, so it is much easier for us to view the matter in personal terms. If we have ever been targeted for our race, it has been only on that individual, albeit regrettable, level. But for people of color, racism has long been experienced as an institutional phenomenon. It is the experience of systematized discrimination in housing, employment, schools or the justice system. It is the knowledge that one's entire group is under suspicion, at risk of being treated negatively because of stereotypes held by persons with the power to act on the basis of those beliefs (and the incentive to do so, as a way to retain their own disproportionate share of that power and authority).

The differences in white and black perceptions of the issue were on full display recently, when whites accused New Orleans' Mayor Ray Nagin of racism for saying that New Orleans should be and would be a "chocolate city" again, after blacks dislocated by Katrina had a chance to return. To one commentator after the other - most of them white, but a few blacks as well - the remark was by definition racist, since it seemed to imply that whites weren't wanted, or at least not if it meant changing the demographics of the city from mostly African American (which it was before the storm) to mostly white, which it is now, pending the return of black folks. To prove how racist the comment was, critics offered an analogy. What would we call it, they asked, if a white politician announced that their town would or should be a "vanilla" city, meaning that it was going to retain its white majority? Since we would most certainly call such a remark racist in the case of the white pol, consistency requires that we call Nagin's remark racist as well.

Seems logical enough, only it's not. And the reason it's not goes to the very heart of what racism is and what it isn't - and the way in which the different perceptions between whites and blacks on the matter continue to thwart rational conversations on the subject.

Before dealing with the white politician/vanilla city analogy, let's quickly examine a few simple reasons why Nagin's remarks fail the test of racism. First, there is nothing to suggest that his comment about New Orleans retaining its black majority portended a dislike of whites, let alone plans to keep them out. In fact, if we simply examine Nagin's own personal history - which has been obscured by many on the right since Katrina who have tried to charge him with being a liberal black Democrat - we would immediately recognize the absurdity of the charge. Nagin owes his political career not to New Orleans' blacks, but New Orleans' white folks. It was whites who voted for him, at a rate of nearly ninety percent, while blacks only supported him at a rate of forty-two percent, preferring instead the city's chief of police (which itself says something: black folks in a city with a history of police brutality preferring the cop to this guy). Nagin has always been, in the eyes of most black New Orleanians, pretty vanilla: he was a corporate vice-president, a supporter of President Bush, and a lifelong Republican prior to changing parties right before the Mayoral race.

Secondly, given the ways in which displaced blacks especially have been struggling to return - getting the run-around with insurance payments, or dealing with landlords seeking to evict them (or jacking up rents to a point where they can't afford to return) - one can safely intuit that all Nagin was doing was trying to reassure folks that they were wanted back and wouldn't be prevented from re-entering the city.

And finally, Nagin's remarks were less about demography per se, than an attempt to speak to the cultural heritage of the town, and the desire to retain the African and Afro-Caribbean flavor of one of the world's most celebrated cities. Fact is, culturally speaking, New Orleans is what New Orleans is, because of the chocolate to which Nagin referred. True enough, many others have contributed to the unique gumbo that is New Orleans, but can anyone seriously doubt that the predominant flavor in that gumbo has been that inspired by the city's black community? If so, then you've never lived there or spent much time in the city (and no, pissing on the street during Mardi Gras or drinking a badly-made Hurricane at Pat O'Brian's doesn't count). If the city loses its black cultural core (which is not out of the question if the black majority doesn't or is unable to return), then indeed New Orleans itself will cease to exist, as we know it. That is surely what Nagin was saying, and it is simply impossible to think that mentioning the black cultural core of the city and demanding that it will and should be retained is racist: doing so fits no definition of racism anywhere, in any dictionary, on the planet.

As for the analogy with a white leader demanding the retention of a vanilla majority in his town, the two scenarios are not even remotely similar, precisely because of how racism has operated, historically, and today, to determine who lives where and who doesn't. For a white politician to demand that his or her city was going to remain, in effect, white, would be quite different, and far worse than what Nagin said. After all, when cities, suburbs or towns are overwhelmingly white, there are reasons (both historic and contemporary) having to do with discrimination and unequal access for people of color. Restrictive covenants, redlining by banks, racially-restrictive homesteading rights, and even policies prohibiting people of color from living in an area altogether - four things that whites have never experienced anywhere in this nation (as whites) - were commonly deployed against black and brown folks throughout our history. James Loewen's newest book, Sundown Towns, tells the story of hundreds of these efforts in communities across the nation, and makes clear that vanilla suburbs and towns have become so deliberately.

On the other hand, chocolate cities have not developed because whites have been barred or even discouraged from entry (indeed, cities often bend over backwards to encourage whites to move to the cities in the name of economic revival), but rather, because whites long ago fled in order to get away from black people. In fact, this white flight was directly subsidized by the government, which spent billions of dollars on highway construction (which helped whites get from work in the cities to homes in the 'burbs) and low-cost loans, essentially available only to whites in those newly developing residential spaces. The blackness of the cities increased as a direct result of the institutionally racist policies of the government, in concert with private sector discrimination, which kept folks of color locked in crowded urban spaces, even as whites could come and go as they pleased.

So for a politician to suggest that a previously brown city should remain majority "chocolate" is merely to demand that those who had always been willing to stay and make the town their home, should be able to remain there and not be run off in the name of gentrification, commercial development or urban renewal. It is to demand the eradication of barriers for those blacks who otherwise might have a hard time returning, not to call for the erection of barriers to whites - barriers that have never existed in the first place, and which there would be no power to impose in any event (quite unlike the barriers that have been set up to block access for the black and brown). In short, to call for a vanilla majority is to call for the perpetuation of obstacles to persons of color, while to call for a chocolate majority in a place such as New Orleans is to call merely for the continuation of access and the opportunity for black folks to live there. Is that too much to ask?

Funny how Nagin's comments simply calling for the retention of a chocolate New Orleans bring down calls of racism upon his head, while the very real and active planning of the city's white elite - people like Joe Cannizaro and Jimmy Reiss - to actually change it to a majority white town, elicits no attention or condemnation whatsoever from white folks. In other words, talking about blacks being able to come back and make up the majority is racist, while actually engaging in ethnic cleansing - by demolishing black neighborhoods like the lower ninth ward, the Treme, or New Orleans East as many want to do - is seen as legitimate economic development policy.

It's also interesting that whites chose the "chocolate city" part of Nagin's speech, delivered on MLK day, as the portion deserving condemnation as racist, rather than the next part - the part in which Nagin said that Katrina was God's wrath, brought on by the sinful ways of black folks, what with their crime rates, out-of-wedlock childbirths and general wickedness. In other words, if Nagin casts aspersions upon blacks as a group - truth be told, the textbook definition of racism - whites have no problem with that. Hell, most whites agree with those kinds of anti-black views, according to polling and survey data. But if Nagin suggests that those same blacks - including, presumably the "wicked" ones - be allowed to come back and live in New Orleans, thereby maintaining a black majority, that becomes the problem for whites, for reasons that are as self-evident as they are (and will remain) undiscussed.

Until white folks get as upset about racism actually limiting the life choices and chances of people of color, as we do about black folks hurting our feelings, it's unlikely things will get much better. In the end, it's hard to take seriously those who fume against this so-called reverse racism, so petty is the complaint, and so thin the ivory skin of those who issue it.

Keep track of Tim Wise's lecture schedule and new commentaries at: http://www.timwise.org

And The Danish won't apologize???

2006-02-06T10:17:00.000-05:00

Damn....

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan security forces opened fire on demonstrators Monday, leaving at least four dead, as increasingly violent protests erupted around the world over published caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. European and Muslim politicians pleaded for calm.

The worst of the violence was outside Bagram, the main U.S. base in
Afghanistan, with Afghan police firing on some 2,000 protesters as they tried to break into the heavily guarded facility, said Kabir Ahmed, the local government chief.

Two demonstrators were killed and five were injured, while eight police also were hurt, he said. No U.S. troops were involved in the clashes, Ahmed said.

Lebanon, meanwhile, apologized to Denmark a day after thousands of rampaging Muslim demonstrators set fire to the building housing the Danish mission in Beirut to protest the series of cartoons satirizing Islam's holiest figure.

The
European Union issued stern reminders to 18 Muslim countries that they are obliged under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to protect foreign embassies, and Austria — which now holds the EU Council presidency, reported calling in a top representative of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to express concerns for the safety of diplomatic missions.

The prime ministers of Spain and Turkey issued a Christian-Muslim appeal for calm, saying "we shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation."

But Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said media freedoms cannot be limitless and that hostility against Muslims was replacing anti-Semitism in the West.

Anger has been spreading over the 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September and recently reprinted in European media and elsewhere in what the newspapers say is a statement of free speech.

One depicted the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. The Danish paper said it had asked cartoonists to draw the pictures because the media was practicing self-censorship when it came to Muslim issues.

The drawings have touched a raw nerve in part because Islamic law is interpreted to forbid any depictions of the Prophet Muhammad for fear they could lead to idolatry.

Afghan police also fired on protesters in the central city of Mihtarlam after a man in the crowd shot at them and others threw stones and knives, Interior Ministry spokesman Dad Mohammed Rasa said. Two demonstrators were shot to death, and two police were injured, officials said.

In Kabul, about 200 protesters tried to break down the gate of a the Danish government's diplomatic mission office but failed, said police who were guarding the building.

The protesters then threw stones at the mission and beat some officers guarding it, as well some guards at a nearby house used by Belgian diplomats. Police later used batons and rifle butts to disperse demonstrators walking toward the presidential palace. An Associated Press reporter saw at least three protesters bleeding from injuries, and at least seven more were arrested and driven away in a police vehicle.

"Long live Islam! We are Muslims! We don't let anyone insult our prophet!" chanted the demonstrators, many of whom appeared to be teenagers. They also chanted, "Down with America!" and slogans against the Afghan and U.S. presidents.

Some protesters moved toward the main American base in city and threw stones that smashed windows of a guard house. Police standing amid the protesters watched but did not intervene.

About 200 demonstrators in
Iran threw stones at the Austrian Embassy in Tehran, breaking windows and throwing firecrackers that started small fires. The demonstration lasted two hours, but police quickly extinguished the blazes and stopped some protesters from throwing stones.

Several thousand Iraqis rallied in southern
Iraq, burning Danish, German and Israeli flags, as well as an effigy of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to demand diplomatic and economic ties be severed with countries in which the caricatures were published.

Protesters called for the death of anyone who insults Muhammad and demanded withdrawal of 530-member Danish military contingent operating under British control.

Danish Capt. Philip Ulrichsen said Danish troops were shot at and targeted by stone-throwing youths on Sunday. A roadside bomb planted in the area also was defused. No soldiers were wounded in any of the incidents.

Several thousand students massed peacefully in Cairo on the campus of al-Azhar University, the oldest and most important seat of Sunni Muslim learning in the world, to protest the drawings.

The main city in Indian-controlled
Kashmir came to a standstill as shops, businesses and schools shut down for a day to protest the caricatures. Dozens of Muslim protesters torched Danish flags, burned tires, shouted slogans and hurled rocks at passing cars in several parts of Srinagar.

In the Indian capital of New Delhi, riot police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse hundreds of students from Jamia University, who chanted slogans and burned a Danish flag.

Muslim leaders in Australia demanded a newspaper there apologize after it published one of the cartoons.

Palestinian police in Gaza City used batons to beat back stone-throwing protesters who gathered outside the
European Commission building. About 200 protesters waved green flags symbolizing the Islamic Hamas movement and the yellow flags of the secular
Fatah Party.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also called for an end to violence and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the country would try to use its contacts with Arab countries to cool the violence.

"We cannot allow this argument to become a battle between cultures," Steinmeier said.

Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said the government had unanimously "rejected and condemned the ... riots," saying they had "harmed Lebanon's reputation and its civilized image and the noble aim of the demonstration."

"The Cabinet apologizes to Denmark," Aridi said.

Police investigating Sunday's fire and riot at the building housing the Danish mission said that, contrary to previous reports, the mission offices were intact. The fire and wrecking of offices had been confined to Lebanese businesses on lower floors.

At least one person died, 30 were injured — half of them security officials — and about 200 people were detained in Sunday's violence, officials said. Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said the arrested included 76 Syrians, 35 Palestinians and 38 Lebanese.

The Beirut violence came a day after violent protests in neighboring
Syria, including the burning of the Danish and Norwegian missions. The United States accused the Syrian government of backing the protests in Lebanon and Syria, an accusation also made by anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero published a column in the Paris-based International Herald Tribune in which they appealed for "respect and calm," saying the dispute "can only leave a trail of mistrust and misunderstanding between both sides."

The protests over the caricatures also claimed their first political casualty on Sunday when Lebanese Interior Minister Hassan Sabei submitted his resignation after the parliamentary opposition and even some Cabinet colleagues demanded he step down. The government appeared divided, saying it only "took note" of the resignation offer.

Going Postal...

2006-01-31T10:44:00.000-05:00

What in the blue hell is up with postal workers?

Deadly postal shootings
Associated Press

Some shootings at post offices:

Jan. 30, 2006 - A female ex-postal worker opens fire at a mail processing plant near Santa Barbara, Calif., killing six people before committing suicide, authorities say.

April 17, 1998 - Maceo Yarbough III, a 27-year-old letter carrier, fatally shoots a post office clerk in Dallas after they argue in a break room. He is found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

Sept. 2, 1997 - Jesus Antonio Tamayo, a 21-year postal veteran, leaves his counter at a Miami Beach, Fla., post office, gets a gun from his car, walks back in and critically wounds his ex-wife and a friend, who were waiting in line. Tamayo, 64, then goes outside and kills himself.

July 9, 1995 - Bruce William Clark walks up to his boss in a processing center in City of Industry, Calif., pulls a handgun from a paper bag and shoots him to death. Clark, 58, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced in 1996 to 22 years in prison.

March 21, 1995 - Christopher Green, 29, a former postal worker burdened with "a mountain of debt," kills four people and wounds another during a holdup at the Montclair, N.J., post office. Green was sentenced to life in prison in September 1995.

May 6, 1993 - Postal worker Larry Jasion kills one and wounds two at the post office garage in Dearborn, Mich., before killing himself.

May 6, 1993 - Fired postal employee Mark Richard Hilbun kills his mother, then walks into a post office in the Dana Point community near Los Angeles and shoots two workers, killing one. He was convicted of murder, attempted murder and other felonies and sentenced to life in prison.

Nov. 14, 1991 - Fired postal worker Thomas McIlvane kills four supervisors and wounds five employees at a post office in Royal Oak, Mich., and then killed himself.

Oct. 11, 1991 - Joseph M. Harris, a fired postal worker, kills a former supervisor and her boyfriend at their home in Wayne, N.J., then goes to the Ridgewood post office where he kills two mail handlers as they arrive for work. He was sentenced to death and was on death row when he died in 1996 after suffering a seizure in his cell.

Aug. 10, 1989 - Postal worker John Merlin Taylor of Escondido, Calif., shoots and kills his wife at their home, then drives to the Orange Glen post office, where he shoots and kills two colleagues and wounds another before killing himself.

Aug. 20, 1986 - Patrick Henry Sherrill, a part-time letter carrier in Edmond, Okla., kills 14 people in the post office there before taking his own life. Sherrill had a history of work problems and faced the possibility of being fired.

Jean Grae: One Of The Best You've Never Heard

2006-01-28T19:04:00.000-05:00

Jean Grae - Rich in ability, poor in bank account
story by Ronnie Reese

Last summer, Talib Kweli had this to say about Jean Grae: "She makes me think of Lauryn Hill, just more fierce. Lauryn is one of the best MCs ever, but she didn't have a love for MCing. If Lauryn had a love for MCing, she'd be like Jean Grae."

Respected by peers and critics alike, hers is an oft-told story: Formerly What? What?, now Jean Grae. Born Tsidi Ibrahim in South Africa, the birthplace of her parents, self-exiled jazz musicians. Her mother, a schoolteacher and singer, her father, African jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim. Moved to the United States as an infant, later becoming the youngest member of Alvin Ailey's second company at age 13. Attended the LaGuardia School of the Arts and Performing Arts in Manhattan, famous for being the model for television's "Fame," itself famous for introducing Irene Cara to the world as "Coco." Began running the streets of the West Village and learning culture in her mid-teens, dipping in and out of two early crews before going solo in 1999. Appeared on anything and everything prior to recording her 2002 debut, Attack of the Attacking Things, followed by the preposterous Bootleg of the Bootleg EP a year later.

After touring with the Roots in the spring of 2004, Grae - who has also produced records under the playful aliases Run Run Shaw and Nasain Nahmeen - went to work on her second full-length, This Week, released last October. With as much effort as she's put in over the past few years, it's hard to believe that Jean Grae is poor, but she is, and will usually be the first to admit it. Near-poverty is a reality for a lot of struggling rappers, something the general public is largely unaware of. Says Grae, "I was reading some Web site the other day about how artists like Jean Grae can still live comfortably making $70,000 a year, and I was like, 'Whoa...is this the other Jean Grae?...because I want to make $70,000 a year!'"

The yin to Grae's open bar-hopping, fried bologna-eating yang is an exceptional handle on her craft. She's arguably one of the best lyricists in recent history, rapping from a wellspring of experience and education, fueled in part by personal battles and industry frustrations in what has been a prolific career to date. When asked about an infamous onslaught written to a popular hip-hop Web site, where she unmasked the "old thugs club" mentality prevalent in the rap business, she replies, "I think it's definitely a situation where you don't want to get beat by a girl...whether you're in the first grade or in your thirties. They [men] will definitely give each other a chance before they'll let a girl in, unless you're willing to play by their rules."

Seems rather catty for a bunch of dudes. "I want a chance to play," Grae continues, "I just want a chance to play on my own terms." This independence and refusal to compromise, while admirable, may be the reason why she has yet to experience the fruits of labor one would expect a person with such immense talent would already have. "It's not like I'm choosing to go left," she explains. "I just don't know how to do the formula. I honestly don't know. If I could do it, I probably would be, but I just don't know how."

What Grae does understand is that you don't necessarily need rapping ability to succeed in hip-hop, but she is cursed with having too much of that unnecessary ability to do anything about it. "I definitely understand that it's easier to love celebrity and love the life," she states. "That's sort of an illusion of what your life could be, and that's what sells...that's what drives. If I were living a different lifestyle, I might be talking about that. Since I'm not, I have to talk about what I know."

Jay-Z once admitted, "I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars," but Grae doesn't have that option. Her mother would kill her. Furthermore, she says, "It's difficult when you're not in a category people can put you in. Why do I have to be in a category? Listen to it and enjoy it without having to put a label on it. There is no label, it's just me.

"Can I be me? Is that okay?"

It is okay, for some. Grae is blessed with a loyal following. To her disadvantage, however, is the fact that broke rappers are often "supported" by even broker fans. The situation is noticeably apparent while on independent tours, where she finds that due to a lack of promotion, there is no demand for her music in certain places. Part of being an artist is being able to share - to present your art to an audience, yet there has to be a demand for it. At times, the lack of support can be a tough sight.

"It's definitely a struggle to balance the marketing and promotion," Grae says. "If you have enough money behind you, it doesn't really matter what you sound like. I could put out a record of me farting and burping, with a 10 million dollar budget, and it would sell. I'm thankful to be able to sell records without actual promotion, or without video or radio play," she continues. "To be thought of as important and the semi-recognition I do get makes it worth it, but I think the perception of it is really not what we're going through and sometimes it's difficult to get that across."

Then there's the girl thing. At a seasoned 28, Grae has the skills and potential to become the best female emcee rap has ever seen, even if she's not quite ready to burn belly shirts and spit vagina monologues. "Don't categorize me as a female emcee, although beyond that, I am still a female," she affirms. "I want the shoes." Grae's demure, engaging and engaged, happily in love with fiancé and manager Colin Afflick, and staying wary of how she and other female rappers are portrayed. "On photo shoots...no matter how many times you ask for exclusive sneakers and no bathing suits, bathing suits somehow always end up on the rack," she explains. "It makes no difference what magazine it is.

"Every now and then," Grae reveals, "I wish I had gotten into this a long time ago, when it wasn't so much about these labels and categories, and we were afforded the luxury of versatility and definitely had a lot more control. It got to the point in the mid-'90s where [record] companies began to realize exactly how much money they could make off of this music. They tried with disco and alternative, but it stuck with rap."

Grae also might simply be so good that gaining commercial acceptance will always be a struggle. On her Bootleg of the Bootleg EP, where Grae raps her own lyrics over popular Jay-Z and Scarface instrumentals, as well as Nas and Mobb Deep classics, her lyrical abundance is often too much for the mainstream production. The EP includes seminal tracks from an early clique, Natural Resources, where ironically, Grae displays an innocent, more accessible style better suited for album sales. What she has become since then is a freak of the industry, a rap scholar falling somewhere among MC Lyte, early Eminem and some kid in a Bushwick cypher with a blunt behind his ear. It's a worthwhile mix, no doubt, just not one people are paying to hear. Although "if someone would send me that $70,000 I made last year," Grae suggests, "that would really help."

Dr. King On The Vietnam War...

2006-01-26T20:24:00.000-05:00

Just replace Vietnam with Iraq and you can see how Dr. King's words TRULY apply to today's world.

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967
Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them -- the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

Supreme Court halts US execution

2006-01-26T00:28:00.000-05:00

IT'S ABOUT TIME!!!

The US Supreme Court has blocked the execution of a Florida man to consider his appeal over the method used to carry out the punishment.

Clarence Hill was to be executed on Wednesday for the 1982 murder of a Pensacola police officer.

But the court wants to consider if the chemicals used in the execution cause pain - thus violating a Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Anti-death penalty campaigners say the move could delay other US executions.

Hill had been strapped to a gurney and intra-venous lines were running into his arms late on Tuesday night, his lawyer said, when Justice Anthony Kennedy issued a temporary stay.

The full court continued the stay on Wednesday.

"What a fantastic day! What a fantastic day," Hill's attorney D Todd Doss said, calling the ruling "a relief".

Oral arguments were set for 26 April, meaning it will likely be the summer before the court issues its opinion, Mr Doss told the Associated Press.

'Lethal cocktail'

Lethal injection is the most widely used method of execution in the US, although some offer inmates the choice of alternatives like electrocution or the gas chamber.

METHODS OF EXECUTION
Lethal injection: Authorized in 37 states
Electrocution: In 10 states (sole method in Nebraska)
Gas chamber: In five states (all of which have lethal injection as alternative)
Hanging: Only in New Hampshire and Washington
Firing squad: In Idaho and Oklahoma
Source: DPIC

The exact combination of chemicals used varies, but the process usually involves three stages, according to the Death Penalty Information Center - an anti-death penalty group.

The condemned inmate is injected with an anaesthetic, which puts the inmate to sleep. Next flows pavulon or pancuronium bromide, which paralyses the entire muscle system and stops the inmate's breathing.

Finally, the flow of potassium chloride stops the heart.

Richard Dieter, head of DPIC, told the BBC: "The argument is that the chemicals may mask the pain of what is going on - we assume people are just put to sleep, but if you are paralysed it may mask the fact that these people are under extreme pain."

Mr Dieter added: "It is too early to say what bearing this case will have on the many other lethal injection executions scheduled, but it could potentially be very significant.

"It could hold up a lot of other cases and I think that is why the Supreme Court wants to expedite its consideration of this appeal."

No challenge to injection

The case allows the court to revisit a 2004 ruling in an Alabama death case, in which justices said that David Larry Nelson could pursue a last-ditch claim that his death by lethal injection would be unconstitutionally cruel because of his damaged veins.

While Hill does not have damaged veins, his appeal cites medical studies about the drug cocktail used by Florida and other states.

Mr Doss told the high court that there is a risk his client will not be fully anaesthetised at the time of his death and that courts should look at his latest claims.

Like the Nelson case, the new appeal is more about stopping an execution than a direct constitutional challenge to using the lethal injection.

Thirty-eight of the 50 US states and the federal government permit capital punishment.

In December, Kenneth Lee Boyd, a 57-year-old Vietnam veteran, became the 1,000th person to be executed in the US since the Supreme Court re-instated capital punishment in 1976.

"We assume people are just put to sleep, but if you are paralysed it may mask the fact that these people are under extreme pain"
Richard Dieter, Death Penalty Information Center

Story from BBC NEWS

Thought For The Week....

2006-01-23T11:37:00.000-05:00

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often,
and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the
privilege of owning yourself.":Rudyard Kipling - (1865-1936)

Deceptions in Military Recruiting

2006-01-22T16:07:00.000-05:00

Deceptions in Military Recruiting:

An ex-Insider Speaks Out

by Chris White

The points in this essay concerning the dark side of military recruiting largely inform my decision to work incessantly to dissuade young men and women from enlisting. My primary audience is every U.S. citizens because it is necessary that as many people as possible understand the manipulation used by the military to lure young Americans. It is important to question the notion that the all-volunteer military is truly made up of volunteers. If one is lied to about a profession by the people who convinced them to join that profession, then is the person who was lied to a volunteer in the clearest sense of the word? My research has led me to forsake the ideology of "once a Marine, always a Marine", that imposes on us to refer to ourselves as "former Marines" and never "ex-Marines". I condemn my past Marine identity, and therefore, I proudly call myself an "ex-Marine" who is against any offensive use of the U.S. military.

I am not against the men and women serving in the military per se; I am against the way in which they are used by the government to promote the interests of its richest constituents. My doctoral research on U.S. foreign policy also convinces me that when viewed through the lens of the deceptive process of military recruiting, our actions abroad are further exposed as corruptly violent. Furthermore, I have learned that rarely has our military been used for national defense in its 228-year history. We can remember the War of 1812 and WWII as possibly the only national defense wars, but mostly poor young men and women, for the cause of defending the interests of the rich and the politicians, have fought hundreds of other engagements both here and abroad. Every service member contributes their share, which is why I work hard to dissuade anyone from joining the military.

The Bush administration's justification for waging war on Iraq is permeated by a fleet of hypocritical holes. From the absence of proof, to the double standards, to the erasure of history in public discussions, to all of the other deceitful practices that support the military industrial complex, it is clear that those who favor peace are up against a simultaneously powerful and tenuous force. The force is powerful because it has monetary and physical strength as well as the media to maintain power over the masses. Yet, the grip of the warmongers is tenuous as long as there are those who will speak out to expose the hypocrisies and lies that legitimize their rule in the first place.

Military recruiters are the first line of offense in this machinery that serves the interests of the power elite at the expense of the less fortunate. Recruiters creep into the civilian world touting slogans to make an otherwise dismal job seem appealing. Their training is largely oriented toward marketing and sales techniques: on the first day at recruiting school, a recruiter friend of mine was told to come up with a gimmick for selling a pen. What business does the military have teaching recruiters to sell anything? Are the lives of America's youth just another commodity for the government to exploit? If the war is justified, then why do recruiters have to exist at all? Why do they even have to sell the military to young people? Why do they have to use manipulative sales techniques to convince young, uneducated minds to carry out the dirty work of war? As an assistant recruiter, I witnessed first hand how recruiters manipulate the poor and young into fighting for the rich!

First, recruiters have every incentive to be dishonest. Speaking for the Marine Corps only, recruiters have monthly quotas and, once filled, they can slack off for the rest of the month. However, the more people they sign up, the better their chances for promotion. Therefore, the incentive for dishonesty is high indeed. Recruiters lie about college benefits, duty station assignments, veterans' benefits, and countless other aspects of the military in order to convince their clients to sign. Once you are in boot camp, it is too late to change anything.

How do they lie about college benefits? They fail to tell you that you must pay 1200 dollars in your first year of the military in order to get the G.I. Bill, which is quite a chunk of money when your salary is only 700/mo. You will be lucky if you get your monthly G.I. Bill check in your first three months of college anyway, as the bureaucracy is so inept that you had better hope to have enough money saved up before you arrive. Another point recruiters leave out is that most students who are independent and over 25, civilians and veterans alike, are eligible for enormous amounts of financial aid anyway. That is, unless you already receive the G.I. Bill.

Wait a minute. Back up. So, if I earned the G.I. Bill for serving "my country", then I may not be eligible for any financial aid? Yep, ask any veteran over 25 working in college, and they will tell you that the financial aid office determines one's eligibility for grants and fellowships (free money) according to one's income, and then deletes one's income from the amount of aid one is eligible for. Therefore, if one were eligible for 9,000 dollars in grants, but received 9,000 from the G.I. Bill, well, one gets no grants. One can get loans though. All the loans one desires. This may seem like a petty argument, but remember, recruiters use the G.I. Bill to lure civilians into joining the military. So, if the G.I. Bill is not necessarily a benefit, then why should one join for the college money?

How do recruiters lie about duty station assignments? Recruiters tell potential reservists that they can go to college and serve one weekend a month, with very little chance of being called back to active duty. However, the current administration wants to call up to 300,000 reservists to the Gulf alone. I can further illustrate this with the story of my neighbor's daughter who had considered joining the National Guard. As an incentive to get her to sign, her recruiter told her that she would be stationed in Kansas, but luckily, I persuaded her not to join. Her friend was not so lucky. Shortly after joining the Guard, he was called to active duty and sent to Bosnia for two years. Thousands of National Guard and other reservists have been called back to active duty since 9/11, and thousands more will still be called to go to Iraq.

How do recruiters deceive us about veterans' benefits? I can use VA medical facilities if I want to wait five months for an appointment, but my wife cannot use them (at least in Kansas). We are both veterans, but I am 30 percent disabled, and she is not at all. Of course, who would want to use the VA hospital in Kansas City anyway? According to an AP report in March 2002, the infestation of mice, maggots, and flies in the years leading up to 2001 created such as scandal as to pressure VA Secretary Anthony Principi to remove "the director and deputy director for the regional network, which includes Missouri, Kansas, and southern Illinois." (1) The janitorial staff did not touch the food storage areas or cafeteria for a year, and maggots had nested in two of the comatose patients' noses! This is not necessarily the fault of the VA because the federal government decides how much money will be allotted to our disabled veterans.

Ron Kovic exposed the horrible conditions of the VA hospitals during the Vietnam era in his book, Born on the Fourth of July. As a wounded Vietnam veteran, Kovic was outraged at the outdated equipment, under-qualified and uncaring staffs and the unsanitary conditions that disabled veterans were forced to endure. Therefore, not much has changed since 1970s, and any hope of future change is diminished by dubya's slashing of the VA's healthcare budget by 275 million dollars in 2002, and further cuts all around to the VA. Of course, recruiters never mention this in their deceit-filled speeches about the benefits of the military, which is why more veterans need to speak to high school students and parents about the realities of military life.

Although the lies are bad enough, interactions with recruiters can be hazardous to one's health. One poolee (person waiting to go to boot camp who has already enlisted) wrote me that my first essay had helped him to decide to leave the Marines. The recruiter lied to the poolee by saying that it was too late, that he had already enlisted and therefore he was obligated for the next four years. During my recruiting days, I learned that any poolee can get out before boot camp, and after several more e-mails, the poolee told me that he had finally received his discharge after pushing the matter a little more. His recruiter responded to him with a physical threat by saying, "If I was in front of you right now I'd knock you out." Great example of the quality of leadership instilled by military service.

My recruiter in 1994 was a Marine sniper who had served in El Salvador and Somalia among other places. He actually admitted to me with excitement that he had killed non-combatants in Somalia with a .50 caliber sniper rifle, a weapon only to be used on vehicles, and that he had taken pictures of his victims afterward. His story was semi-confirmed for me seven years later, once I read Scott Peterson's Me against my Brother. Peterson wrote, "the snipers killed more than 14 Somalis, some of them children who were found later to have a toy pistol, or nothing." (2) UN spokesperson George Bennet later told Peterson, "They were shooting at anything by the time they left," and this statement only further confirms my recruiter's story. (3)

Unfortunately, I too am guilty of following an unlawful order from that same recruiter, but of a much lesser magnitude. While assisting him for two weeks just after I graduated from boot camp, part of my job was to make poolees lose weight before they shipped out. One poolee was still twelve pounds overweight the day before boot camp, so naturally my recruiter ordered me to force the poolee to eat an entire box of Ex-lax, after which I had to make him do calisthenics until he lost the twelve pounds. Needless to say, he was admitted to boot camp the next day, but I am still ashamed that I made him do that. The business of recruiting is dark indeed.

Recruiters now have even more access to the young minds of America, with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002. These Acts require every high school receiving federal education funds to hand over the names, addresses, and phone numbers of every junior and senior to local recruiters upon request. (4) That means that even 15 years olds, with no idea whatsoever about the real world, let alone the military, are now vulnerable to the manipulation and deception of recruiters in their own homes. If a school refuses to hand the information over, the Department of Defense steps in and pressures the school, after which federal funding may be withdrawn. According to Secretary of Education Rod Paige and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the Acts give students more access to college, but we need to ask why it is that the government does not offer any alternative to the military for unskilled high school graduates that wish to go to college but are unqualified for college.

Our commander in chief himself took the opportunity to join the military, then took a Bush prerogative and failed to return to his duty station for a year and a half. Of course, he did not have to serve the prison sentences that others who left for that long did. Nevertheless, it makes perfect sense. After all, the president is not any different from half of Americans, who support our impending war on Iraq. While over fifty percent support an invasion, approximately 1 percent serves in the military. Therefore, only 1 percent of us is willing to fight a battle that over 50 percent of us favor, which makes it much more palatable to start a war. As long as the majority faces no direct military consequences, I guess anything, including deceptive measures in recruiting, goes. Thus, the cycle of historical amnesia is allowed to continue, and future U.S. military action will surely bring about more 9/11s.

-------------
Chris White, a contributing writer for Liberal Slant, is an ex-Marine
infantryman with experience as a recruiter-assistant. He is currently
working on his doctorate in history at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.
He served from 1994-98, in Diego Garcia, Camp Pendleton, CA, Okinawa,
Japan, and Doha, Qatar. He is also a member of Veterans for Peace.

(1) Libby Quaid, "VA Officials Reassigned Amid Scandal," Associated Press
28 Mar 2002.

(2) Scott Peterson, Me against my Brother: at War in Somalia, Sudan, and
Rwanda (New York: Routledge, 2001) 149.

(3) Quoted in Peterson, 149.

The Real Reason We're In Iraq

2006-01-21T23:16:00.000-05:00

I. Economics of Empires

A nation-state taxes its own citizens, while an empire taxes other nation-states. The history of empires, from Greek and Roman, to Ottoman and British, teaches that the economic foundation of every single empire is the taxation of other nations. The imperial ability to tax has always rested on a better and stronger economy, and as a consequence, a better and stronger military. One part of the subject taxes went to improve the living standards of the empire; the other part went to strengthen the military dominance necessary to enforce the collection of those taxes.

Historically, taxing the subject state has been in various forms—usually gold and silver, where those were considered money, but also slaves, soldiers, crops, cattle, or other agricultural and natural resources, whatever economic goods the empire demanded and the subject-state could deliver. Historically, imperial taxation has always been direct: the subject state handed over the economic goods directly to the empire.

For the first time in history, in the twentieth century, America was able to tax the world indirectly, through inflation. It did not enforce the direct payment of taxes like all of its predecessor empires did, but distributed instead its own fiat currency, the U.S. Dollar, to other nations in exchange for goods with the intended consequence of inflating and devaluing those dollars and paying back later each dollar with less economic goods—the difference capturing the U.S. imperial tax. Here is how this happened.

Early in the 20th century, the U.S. economy began to dominate the world economy. The U.S. dollar was tied to gold, so that the value of the dollar neither increased, nor decreased, but remained the same amount of gold. The Great Depression, with its preceding inflation from 1921 to 1929 and its subsequent ballooning government deficits, had substantially increased the amount of currency in circulation, and thus rendered the backing of U.S. dollars by gold impossible. This led Roosevelt to decouple the dollar from gold in 1932. Up to this point, the U.S. may have well dominated the world economy, but from an economic point of view, it was not an empire. The fixed value of the dollar did not allow the Americans to extract economic benefits from other countries by supplying them with dollars convertible to gold.

Economically, the American Empire was born with Bretton Woods in 1945. The U.S. dollar was not fully convertible to gold, but was made convertible to gold only to foreign governments. This established the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. It was possible, because during WWII, the United States had supplied its allies with provisions, demanding gold as payment, thus accumulating significant portion of the world’s gold. An Empire would not have been possible if, following the Bretton Woods arrangement, the dollar supply was kept limited and within the availability of gold, so as to fully exchange back dollars for gold. However, the guns-and-butter policy of the 1960’s was an imperial one: the dollar supply was relentlessly increased to finance Vietnam and LBJ’s Great Society. Most of those dollars were handed over to foreigners in exchange for economic goods, without the prospect of buying them back at the same value. The increase in dollar holdings of foreigners via persistent U.S. trade deficits was tantamount to a tax—the classical inflation tax that a country imposes on its own citizens, this time around an inflation tax that U.S. imposed on rest of the world.

When in 1970-1971 foreigners demanded payment for their dollars in gold, The U.S. Government defaulted on its payment on August 15, 1971. While the popular spin told the story of “severing the link between the dollar and gold”, in reality the denial to pay back in gold was an act of bankruptcy by the U.S. Government. Essentially, the U.S. declared itself an Empire. It had extracted an enormous amount of economic goods from the rest of the world, with no intention or ability to return those goods, and the world was powerless to respond— the world was taxed and it could not do anything about it.

From that point on, to sustain the American Empire and to continue to tax the rest of the world, the United States had to force the world to continue to accept ever-depreciating dollars in exchange for economic goods and to have the world hold more and more of those depreciating dollars. It had to give the world an economic reason to hold them, and that reason was oil.

In 1971, as it became clearer and clearer that the U.S Government would not be able to buy back its dollars in gold, it made in 1972-73 an iron-clad arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the power of the House of Saud in exchange for accepting only U.S. dollars for its oil. The rest of OPEC was to follow suit and also accept only dollars. Because the world had to buy oil from the Arab oil countries, it had the reason to hold dollars as payment for oil. Because the world needed ever increasing quantities of oil at ever increasing oil prices, the world’s demand for dollars could only increase. Even though dollars could no longer be exchanged for gold, they were now exchangeable for oil.

The economic essence of this arrangement was that the dollar was now backed by oil. As long as that was the case, the world had to accumulate increasing amounts of dollars, because they needed those dollars to buy oil. As long as the dollar was the only acceptable payment for oil, its dominance in the world was assured, and the American Empire could continue to tax the rest of the world. If, for any reason, the dollar lost its oil backing, the American Empire would cease to exist. Thus, Imperial survival dictated that oil be sold only for dollars. It also dictated that oil reserves were spread around various sovereign states that weren’t strong enough, politically or militarily, to demand payment for oil in something else. If someone demanded a different payment, he had to be convinced, either by political pressure or military means, to change his mind.

The man that actually did demand Euro for his oil was Saddam Hussein in 2000. At first, his demand was met with ridicule, later with neglect, but as it became clearer that he meant business, political pressure was exerted to change his mind. When other countries, like Iran, wanted payment in other currencies, most notably Euro and Yen, the danger to the dollar was clear and present, and a punitive action was in order. Bush’s Shock-and-Awe in Iraq was not about Saddam’s nuclear capabilities, about defending human rights, about spreading democracy, or even about seizing oil fields; it was about defending the dollar, ergo the American Empire. It was about setting an example that anyone who demanded payment in currencies other than U.S. Dollars would be likewise punished.

Many have criticized Bush for staging the war in Iraq in order to seize Iraqi oil fields. However, those critics can’t explain why Bush would want to seize those fields—he could simply print dollars for nothing and use them to get all the oil in the world that he needs. He must have had some other reason to invade Iraq.

History teaches that an empire should go to war for one of two reasons: (1) to defend itself or (2) benefit from war; if not, as Paul Kennedy illustrates in his magisterial The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, a military overstretch will drain its economic resources and precipitate its collapse. Economically speaking, in order for an empire to initiate and conduct a war, its benefits must outweigh its military and social costs. Benefits from Iraqi oil fields are hardly worth the long-term, multi-year military cost. Instead, Bush must have went into Iraq to defend his Empire. Indeed, this is the case: two months after the United States invaded Iraq, the Oil for Food Program was terminated, the Iraqi Euro accounts were switched back to dollars, and oil was sold once again only for U.S. dollars. No longer could the world buy oil from Iraq with Euro. Global dollar supremacy was once again restored. Bush descended victoriously from a fighter jet and declared the mission accomplished—he had successfully defended the U.S. dollar, and thus the American Empire.

II. Iranian Oil Bourse

The Iranian government has finally developed the ultimate “nuclear” weapon that can swiftly destroy the financial system underpinning the American Empire. That weapon is the Iranian Oil Bourse slated to open in March 2006. It will be based on a euro-oil-trading mechanism that naturally implies payment for oil in Euro. In economic terms, this represents a much greater threat to the hegemony of the dollar than Saddam’s, because it will allow anyone willing either to buy or to sell oil for Euro to transact on the exchange, thus circumventing the U.S. dollar altogether. If so, then it is likely that almost everyone will eagerly adopt this euro oil system:

· The Europeans will not have to buy and hold dollars in order to secure their payment for oil, but would instead pay with their own currencies. The adoption of the euro for oil transactions will provide the European currency with a reserve status that will benefit the European at the expense of the Americans.

· The Chinese and the Japanese will be especially eager to adopt the new exchange, because it will allow them to drastically lower their enormous dollar reserves and diversify with Euros, thus protecting themselves against the depreciation of the dollar. One portion of their dollars they will still want to hold onto; a second portion of their dollar holdings they may decide to dump outright; a third portion of their dollars they will decide to use up for future payments without replenishing those dollar holdings, but building up instead their euro reserves.

· The Russians have inherent economic interest in adopting the Euro – the bulk of their trade is with European countries, with oil-exporting countries, with China, and with Japan. Adoption of the Euro will immediately take care of the first two blocs, and will over time facilitate trade with China and Japan. Also, the Russians seemingly detest holding depreciating dollars, for they have recently found a new religion with gold. Russians have also revived their nationalism, and if embracing the Euro will stab the Americans, they will gladly do it and smugly watch the Americans bleed.

· The Arab oil-exporting countries will eagerly adopt the Euro as a means of diversifying against rising mountains of depreciating dollars. Just like the Russians, their trade is mostly with European countries, and therefore will prefer the European currency both for its stability and for avoiding currency risk, not to mention their jihad against the Infidel Enemy.

Only the British will find themselves between a rock and a hard place. They have had a strategic partnership with the U.S. forever, but have also had their natural pull from Europe. So far, they have had many reasons to stick with the winner. However, when they see their century-old partner falling, will they firmly stand behind him or will they deliver the coup de grace? Still, we should not forget that currently the two leading oil exchanges are the New York’s NYMEX and the London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), even though both of them are effectively owned by the Americans. It seems more likely that the British will have to go down with the sinking ship, for otherwise they will be shooting themselves in the foot by hurting their own London IPE interests. It is here noteworthy that for all the rhetoric about the reasons for the surviving British Pound, the British most likely did not adopt the Euro namely because the Americans must have pressured them not to: otherwise the London IPE would have had to switch to Euros, thus mortally wounding the dollar and their strategic partner.

At any rate, no matter what the British decide, should the Iranian Oil Bourse accelerate, the interests that matter—those of Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, and Arabs—will eagerly adopt the Euro, thus sealing the fate of the dollar. Americans cannot allow this to happen, and if necessary, will use a vast array of strategies to halt or hobble the operation’s exchange:

· Sabotaging the Exchange—this could be a computer virus, network, communications, or server attack, various server security breaches, or a 9-11-type attack on main and backup facilities.

· Coup d’état—this is by far the best long-term strategy available to the Americans.

· Negotiating Acceptable Terms & Limitations—this is another excellent solution to the Americans. Of course, a government coup is clearly the preferred strategy, for it will ensure that the exchange does not operate at all and does not threaten American interests. However, if an attempted sabotage or coup d’etat fails, then negotiation is clearly the second-best available option.

· Joint U.N. War Resolution—this will be, no doubt, hard to secure given the interests of all other member-states of the Security Council. Feverish rhetoric about Iranians developing nuclear weapons undoubtedly serves to prepare this course of action.

· Unilateral Nuclear Strike—this is a terrible strategic choice for all the reasons associated with the next strategy, the Unilateral Total War. The Americans will likely use Israel to do their dirty nuclear job.

· Unilateral Total War—this is obviously the worst strategic choice. First, the U.S. military resources have been already depleted with two wars. Secondly, the Americans will further alienate other powerful nations. Third, major dollar-holding countries may decide to quietly retaliate by dumping their own mountains of dollars, thus preventing the U.S. from further financing its militant ambitions. Finally, Iran has strategic alliances with other powerful nations that may trigger their involvement in war; Iran reputedly has such alliance with China, India, and Russia, known as the Shanghai Cooperative Group, a.k.a. Shanghai Coop and a separate pact with Syria.

Whatever the strategic choice, from a purely economic point of view, should the Iranian Oil Bourse gain momentum, it will be eagerly embraced by major economic powers and will precipitate the demise of the dollar. The collapsing dollar will dramatically accelerate U.S. inflation and will pressure upward U.S. long-term interest rates. At this point, the Fed will find itself between Scylla and Charybdis—between deflation and hyperinflation—it will be forced fast either to take its “classical medicine” by deflating, whereby it raises interest rates, thus inducing a major economic depression, a collapse in real estate, and an implosion in bond, stock, and derivative markets, with a total financial collapse, or alternatively, to take the Weimar way out by inflating, whereby it pegs the long-bond yield, raises the Helicopters and drowns the financial system in liquidity, bailing out numerous LTCMs and hyperinflating the economy.

The Austrian theory of money, credit, and business cycles teaches us that there is no in-between Scylla and Charybdis. Sooner or later, the monetary system must swing one way or the other, forcing the Fed to make its choice. No doubt, Commander-in-Chief Ben Bernanke, a renowned scholar of the Great Depression and an adept Black Hawk pilot, will choose inflation. Helicopter Ben, oblivious to Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, has nonetheless mastered the lessons of the Great Depression and the annihilating power of deflations. The Maestro has taught him the panacea of every single financial problem—to inflate, come hell or high water. He has even taught the Japanese his own ingenious unconventional ways to battle the deflationary liquidity trap. Like his mentor, he has dreamed of battling a Kondratieff Winter. To avoid deflation, he will resort to the printing presses; he will recall all helicopters from the 800 overseas U.S. military bases; and, if necessary, he will monetize everything in sight. His ultimate accomplishment will be the hyperinflationary destruction of the American currency and from its ashes will rise the next reserve currency of the world—that barbarous relic called gold.

--

Recommended Reading
William Clark “The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War in Iraq”
William Clark “The Real Reasons Why Iran is the Next Target”

About the Author
Krassimir Petrov (Krassimir_Petrov@hotmail.com) has received his Ph. D. in economics from the Ohio State University and currently teaches Macroeconomics, International Finance, and Econometrics at the American University in Bulgaria. He is looking for a career in Dubai or the U. A. E.

Also by this author
“China’s Great Depression”
“Masters of Austrian Investment Analysis”
“Austrian Analysis of U.S. Inflation”
“Oil Performance in a Worldwide Depression”
See: www.financialsense.com/editorials/petrov/main.html

Military Service is Hazardous...

2006-01-21T18:37:00.000-05:00

WARNING: Joining the Military Is Hazardous
www.objector.org

Military recruiters tour the country selling a dangerous product with glamorous ads, just like tobacco companies or drug pushers. The ads promise opportunity and adventure -- but don't believe the hype.

1. Joining the military is hazardous to your education.

The military isn't a generous financial aid institution, and it isn't concerned with helping you pay for school. Two-thirds of all recruits never get any college funding from the military. Only 15% graduated with a four-year degree.

What about going to school while you're in? Many GIs report that military life leaves them too busy and exhausted -- and doesn't really make time for them to go to class.

2. Joining the military is hazardous to your future.

Joining the military is a dead end. After you've spent a few years in the military, you're 2 to 5 times more likely to be homeless than your friends who never joined. And, according to the VA, you'll probably earn less too. The skills you learn in the military will be geared to military jobs, not civilian careers; when you come out, many employers will tell you to go back to school and get some real training. As former Secretary of Defense Cheney declared, "The reason to have a military is to be prepared to fight and win wars...it's not a jobs program."

3. Joining the military is hazardous to people of color.

During the Gulf War, over 50 percent of front-line troops were people of color. Overall, over 30 percent of enlisted personnel but only 12 percent of officers are people of color, who are then disciplined and discharged under other than honorable conditions at a much higher rate than whites. When recent studies showed a slight dip in young African-Americans' (disproportionately high) interest in the military, the Pentagon reacted with a new ad campaign. They're targeting Latino youth with special Spanish-language ads. The recruiters' lethal result: tracking high achieving young people in communities of color into a dead-end, deadly occupation.

4. Joining the military is hazardous to women.

Sexual harassment and assault are a daily reality for the overwhelming majority of women in the armed forces. The VA's own figures show 90 percent of recent women veterans reporting harassment - a third of whom were raped. Despite the glossy brochures that advertise "opportunities for women," the military's inherent sexism is evident from sergeants shouting "girl!" at trainees who don't "measure up," to the intimidation of women who speak out about harassment and discrimination - not to mention military men's sexual abuse of civilian women in base communities.

5. Joining the military is hazardous to your civil rights.

If you aren't willing to give up your rights, the military isn't for you. Once you enlist, you become military property: you lose your right to come and go freely, you're ordered around 24 hours a day, and you can be punished by your command without trial or jury. Free speech rights are severely limited in the military. You can be punished for being honest about being lesbian, gay or bisexual. Worst of all even if you hate your job, you can't quit.

6. Joining the military is hazardous to your health.

The military can't guarantee you'll be alive at the end of your eight-year commitment: they can't even promise you won't be desperately ill from "mystery illnesses" like those of the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars. Whether it's atomic testing in the 1950s, Agent Orange during the war against Vietnam, or experimental vaccines and toxic weapons in the Persian Gulf, the military shamelessly destroys the health of its personnel -- and then does its best to downplay and ignore their suffering.

7. Joining the military is hazardous to the environment.

The US military is the single largest and worst polluter in the world, from toxins at bases to nuclear-tipped missiles to the destruction of ecosystems from South Vietnam to the Persian Gulf. And in today's military, the tanks and weapons are coated with depleted uranium from toxic nuclear waste!

8. Joining the military is hazardous to our lives.

The "adventure" in the commercials is code for war, the "discipline" code for violence. The military trains recruits to employ deadly force, yet recruiters rarely discuss the dehumanizing process of basic training, the psychological costs of killing, or the horrors of war.

The ads lie because the product is lethal -- not just to you, but to all of us.

For more information contact or write:

Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors:

630 20th Street #302,
Oakland, CA 94612
510-465-1617
Fax 510 465-2459

or

1515 Cherry Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19102
215-563-8787
Fax 215-567-2096

Old Scratch Is Lookin' For Work.....

2006-01-19T10:56:00.000-05:00

Resume

Name: Satan/El Diablo/Thunder From Down Under
DOB: I never can remember dates.
Marriage Status: Single, dating Laura Bush.
Education:
1. Right Hand of God
2. MBA, Harvard
3. Yale Law School

Honors:
Voted Most Likely to Go to Hell
Member, Sigma Sigma Sigma Fraternity
Ralph P. Eubanks Negative Action Scholarship

Publications:
The Seven Deadly Sins
The Old Testament (only the Book of Leviticus)
The Book of Mormon (that was a lot of fun)
Dianetics (as by L. Ron Hubbard)

Other Writing Credits:
Sketch writer, Saturday Night Live (1992-94)
Designed Proctor & Gamble Logo

Employment History
1. 80,000 BC - 7,000 BC: Angel
Responsibilities: Sweeping up heaven, washing
linen, various other menial chores.
Salary: All the manna I wanted.
Reason for Leaving: Creative differences.
2. 7,000 BC - 6,999 BC: Computer Consultant
Accomplishments: DOS 640K Memory Limit
3. 6,998 BC - 1,996 AD: Independent Contractor
Accomplishments: Sodom and Gomorrah
Fall of Rome
The Nicean Council
The Black Plague
The Inquisition
John Calvin
Various Wars, Pestilences
Slavery
The Confederate States Of America
The Great Depression
Adolph Hitler
Joseph Stalin
Chairman Mao
Joseph McCarthy
Three-D Movies
Easy Listening Music (Kenny G)
GW Bush
Moral Majority/ 700 Club
"Three's Company"
Maury Povich
Saddam Hussein
Barney
Lil' Jon
"Laffy Taffy" song

Works in Progress: Global Warming
Wal-mart
Iraq
Republican Party
BET
Rap Music

Soon to begin: Mariah Carey's next movie

References:
Dick Cheney
GW Bush
Pat Robertson
Mike Tyson
Anna Nicole Smith
Suge Knight