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| From The Ramparts Junious Ricardo Stanton
High Gas Prices and Low Bush Approval Rating
“WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's approval ratings have sunk to a personal low, with only a third of Americans saying they approve of the way he is handling his job, a national poll released Monday said. In the telephone poll of 1,012 adult Americans carried out Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN, 32 percent of respondents said they approve of Bush's performance, 60 percent said they disapprove and 8 percent said they do not know.” CNN April 25, 2006
George W Bu$h has totally lost the respect and confidence of the AmeriKKKan people. When recent public opinion polls reveal only 32% of AmeriKKKans asked indicated they approved of the job George W Bu$h was doing as president that means two thirds of the people believe and feel Bu$h is doing a horrible job. Bu$h’s ratings are so low, he is trying everything imaginable to impress the masses but nothing is working. Everyday Bu$h is beset by a new scandal, another setback or one more revelation of something going wrong in Afghanistan, Iraq or at home. The Iraq occupation is going badly despite Bu$h’s rosy and largely discredited assessment of the situation. The only allies Bu$h can muster to come to his aid are the corporate media mind control apparatus, his fellow NeoCons and fascists in both political parties. Now news is coming out of Afghanistan the Taliban are reasserting themselves and are retaking the countryside again. At home Bu$h is plagued and befuddled by escalating gas prices while oil companies are announcing quarterly record breaking profits and their executives and CEOs are being paid obscene salaries, bonuses and retirement packages. Bu$h is facing a mounting crisis and growing discontent from the AmeriKKKan citizens. This is an across the board phenomena. As dismal as Bu$h’s personal approval ratings are, the rating of his Vice President Richard Cheney are now subterranean. Cheney is universally despised and reviled by all but the most comatose and ideologically bamboozled AmeriKKKans. Cheney is the poster boy for corruption, lies and insensitivity. It’s almost as if the Law of KARMA has caught up with the Bu$h-Cheney cabal and the UNIVERSE is making an abject lesson of them. More and more people are thoroughly convinced Bu$h is a liar and a total incompetent. A recent CNN/USA Today poll indicated fewer and fewer people see Bu$h as trustworthy. “Asked whether ‘honest and trustworthy’ describes the president, 40 percent said yes, down from 56 percent in a survey carried out April 1-2 last year. Americans were evenly split on whether Bush is ‘competent,’ with 47 percent saying yes, 47 percent saying no and 6 percent expressing no opinion. Dissatisfaction with their leader appears to parallel Americans' unhappiness over gas prices. More than two-thirds of Americans (69 percent) said recent increases in the cost of gasoline have caused them hardship, with 28 percent saying they have not, and 1 percent saying they have no opinion.” http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/24/bush.poll
Rising gas prices are causing angst and anxiety for AmeriKKKans all across the country. Most people hear about the profits the major oil companies and the immoral profits the no bid contracts politically connected companies like Haliburton and Bechtel are reaping and they conclude Bu$h is colluding with the oil companies to gouge them to rake in a few billion dollars more. Bu$h, sensitive to his plummeting approval ratings and perceptions his oil business cronies are taking advantage of and exploiting the public has come out and announced plans to deal with the situation. In my opinion, I think this is a total scam, an brazen attempt to garner public support and increase his approval as Bu$h steps in to “solve” the problem; a problem he created by his (and Dick Cheney’s) energy policies. The reality is, oil prices are up because of a myriad of factors; the unrest in the Nigeria delta, ongoing sabotage of the pipelines in Columbia, decreased production in Iraq, unease about the Iran situation and competition from other oil dependent countries like China. So Bu$h will use this situation to grandstand in an attempt to pump up his falling approval ratings. Yet most of the causes are out of his control. An MSNBC analysis by John W. Schoen on the MSNBC Website today says quite succinctly, “For starters, there is little the White House or Congress can do to control the price of crude. At recent highs of $75 a barrel, the cost of crude oil has jumped by a third since November as demand for oil continues to grow faster than global production capacity. Nervous oil buyers are paying these high prices because they're worried about possible supply bottlenecks from multiple hot spots like Iraq, Nigeria and Iran. And the biggest single factor driving up the price of a gallon of gas is the sharp increase in oil prices.” There is no short term solution to the problem and with AmeriKKKa now seen as a ravaging wolf and pariah by many of the OPEC nations, things probably will not get better any time soon. AmeriKKKa squandered opportunities earlier to push for alternative sources of energy, and sacrifice to lessen this nation’s dependence on crude oil. Bu$h paid lip service to it in his last State of the Union speech but that was mere posturing and B.S. Like the boy who cried wolf once too often, Bu$h is now in the unenviable position whereby even on the rare occasion when he tells the truth, no one believes or trusts him.
From The Ramparts Junious Ricardo Stanton
The Current Immigration Debate From A Black Perspective
In many ways the current brouhaha over immigration policies is a bogus issue. It is a distraction being used by the administration to take our focus of the escalating federal debt, the ongoing debacle in Iraq, the administration’s subterranean approval ratings and the growing discontent with the way it does business. The administration hopes the resulting debate both pro and con immigration reform will take people’s minds off their own dismal performance. The other oddity is while reciting his 9-11-National Security mantra as the rationale for everything he does, Bu$h supports amnesty for illegal aliens while doing nothing to shore up security along the nation’s borders and ports. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are tripping over themselves to give some immigrants (keep in mind the Bu$h/NeoCon cabal and the corporate media have stoked Arab xenophobia since 9-11) the impression they are welcome here is not lost on Africans in America who remember the howls of protest against the Haitian “boat people” during the Clinton Administration. Vivid images of starving and impoverished dark skinned Haitians who only wanted an opportunity for a better life in America being turned back by the US Coast Guard still remain fixed in our consciousness. The fact that Africans and Caribbeans of African descant are not openly welcomed in America is also not lost on native African Americans.
Civil rights organizations like the NAACP and Urban League have remained mute on the issue probably because they do not want to get caught up in what they perceive as a divide and conquer scenario by attacking another group of people of color. Nevertheless, many grassroots Africans in America feel immigrants legal or otherwise take employment opportunities from them as they see employers looking for ways to enhance their bottom line as willing to pay lower wages and benefits to illegal aliens who are happy just to have any kind of job while not employing African-Americans already here. Many low skilled and low paying jobs such as laborers, landscapers, maids, nannies and housekeepers are now being filled by immigrants. Despite the animus and in some cases, envy percolating under the surface within the African-American community, the traditional African -American leadership which in many ways has lost touch with their poorer brethren have not weighed in on this issue. Over the weekend there were numerous rallies and demonstrations in support of immigration reform, yet many African-American leaders have shunned participation in both the debate and demonstrations . Part of the problem is the immigrants while claiming immigration reforms is a civil rights issue, have not reached out to, asked for support from or attempted to form alliances with Africa-Americans.
Many whites like to rationalize their exploitation and taking advantage of the illegal aliens and legal immigrants by saying they hire them because they have a better work ethic than African-Americans or poor whites. They claim they are more responsible and hard working than us. This is nothing more than a continuation of the lies they told about our ancestors being lazy, shiftless malingerers, the lies they used to rationalize the specious denigration and dehumanization of us as a people. So now they brag about hiring an illegal and pay them much less but they say they do it because the immigrants are better workers than native-born AmeriKKKans. Now they say if the reported eleven million plus illegal immigrants in this country were deported or sent home, the AmeriKKKan economy would collapse. That is utter nonsense and an insult to the hard working folks denied employment due to racial discrimination here in AmeriKKKa or globalization policies foisted upon us by the ruling elites and their stooges in the US Congress who passed legislation supposedly espousing “free trade” but that are in reality undermining the AmeriKKKan economy, depressing wages which will eventually undermine the standard of living of most AmeriKKKans.
Lastly, AmeriKKKa has always had quotas on the number of immigrants and unabashedly touted AmeriKKKa as a “white nation” meaning Anglo-Saxon based population passing restrictive immigration legislation as early as 1798. The US has a quota on the number of non-Europeans that come into this country. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act despite the fact Chinese helped build the trans-continental railroads and worked in the mines in California during the late 1860's. By 1917 Congress had passed immigration laws excluding a plethora of nationalities and ethnic groups. And the beat goes on. This debate is nothing new, in fact from my perspective it is a bogus issue, part and parcel to a program of white supremacist discrimination and exploitation.
From The Ramparts Junious Ricardo Stanton
Modern Day Sambos
“That's not, of course, the kind of story detailed in CORE's ‘Voices from Africa,’ where GM crops are presented as the only hope of salvation for resource poor farmers. Nor is it the kind of story told by CORE's Paul Driessen in his syndicated op-ed pieces, which were timed to coincide with CORE's UN "World Conference". Driessen informed his readers that "these safe, delicious foods" were vital for Africa because they could "replace staples devastated by disease -- including Kenyan sweet potatoes". Interestingly, just a week or so before Driessen made that claim, the Kenyan journalist Gatonye Gathura, received a Kalam award for journalistic excellence for his article on the sweet potato project, "GM Technology fails local potatoes." Gathura's piece blew the whistle on the abject failure of Monsanto's showcase project in Africa -- a project that had garnered literally thousands of column inches of positive press.” - The Uncle Tom Award Jonathan Matthews, 16 March 2005 http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php
Roy and Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality have been up to some seriously treacherous dealing in recent years. Ever since the US Supreme Court installed George W Bu$h in the presidency Innis has been maneuvering and attempting to position CORE as the preeminent House Negro organization in service to the NeoCon globalist agenda. After 9-11 Innis went to the Bu$h administration and warned them to watch out for the Nation Of Islam and other African-American Islamic organization as they might be a source of sympathy for Muslim terrorists and a possible fifth column. So here we have a so called black organization ( I intentionally used small case) promoting racial and religion profiling and surveillance just to get in good with what the group they consider Mighty Whitie. In recent years CORE has sponsored a Martin Luther King Jr Dinner and to the angst of most Black folks they have invited key members of the Bu$h administration to speak or receive awards, in 2004 Tommy Thompson the secretary of Health and Human Services was the keynote speaker and in 2005 CORE invited Karl Rove the architect of Florida voting scandal that helped disenfranchise thousands of African-Americans.
Not only has Roy Innis and his tag along son Niger shifted CORE to the Right, they have jumped on the fascist corporatist bandwagon big time. As more and more black folks eschew the notions of self-determination and doing for self in favor of corporation hand outs, branding and prostituting themselves to corporate AmeriKKKa, Roy Innis has taken it to an even higher level. Innis has hooked his wagon to the Republican Party machine and now rivals Jesse Jackson and the Negroes on the Democratic Party dole as a serious money grubber. CORE has allowed itself to be used by companies like Monsanto the mad scientists who manufacture Frankenfoods who have virtually cornered the market on genetically modified (or altered) foods. In a 2005 article on the Website http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php Innis and CORE are castigated for their support of genetically modified (GM) seeds and foods. Multinational giants like Monsanto need Black and Brown faces to support Frankenfoods as they target First World people (Africans Asians Pacific Islanders, South and Central Americans) as consumers and captive markets for their diabolical products. They use PR and Spin to make folks think GM foods are the latest and greatest innovative boon to mankind when in fact they are unproven, untested and potentially dangerous mutations that the FDA has rubber stamped but the European Union will not even allow in their countries. “Of course, such attempts to position biotech's soap box behind a black man's face neither began nor ended in Johannesburg. In late 1999, for instance, a street protest against genetic engineering in Washington DC was disrupted by a group of African-Americans bearing placards such as "Biotech saves children's lives." A Baptist Church from a poor neighborhood had, the New York Times revealed, been paid by Monsanto's PR firm to bus in the counter-demonstrators. But Johannesburg does seem to have been a kind of watershed. Since then, Monsanto's fake parade has really begun to hit its stride. And from US administration platforms to UN headquarters, from Capitol Hill to the European Parliament, we've been treated to a veritable minstrelsy of lobbying. Let's pick up the trail amidst the Martin Luther King Day observances in New York City this January. That was when the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) invited some 700 diplomats, scientists, journalists, and Gotham high-school students to come and consider the ‘implications and reality’ of biotechnology at UN headquarters. CORE's "World Conference" was presided over by His Excellency, Aminu Bashir Wali, the Ambassador of Nigeria, and after lunch came the premiere of the film "Voices from Africa", showcasing the results of ‘CORE's fact-finding trip to Africa’. The film opened and closed with comments by CORE's National Chairman, Roy Innis, who explained that it was his concern about hunger in Africa that led him to go there to see for himself and to investigate the potential for biotechnology. The film concluded with Innis saying, ‘We have to do everything possible to ensure that the African farmer has access to this new technology which potentially can do so much to improve his quality of life.’” http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=344 . Another sad case of Negroes selling us out for a few dollars more and allow Ol’ Massa to pat them on the back or rub their heads as they grin, shuffle and buck dance for our enemies.
Innis is being used as a front man and puppet in a strategic campaign to positively spin GM in Africa for Monsanto. The truth is many African nations are resisting GM foods and seeds and rightly so. “The scramble for Africa is getting hotter today than it may have been during the Berlin Conference at which she was partitioned. The partitioning of Africa sowed the seeds of discord and conflict that we are reaping today... We are talking about the onslaught by the biotech industry... The siege is on. Many people imagine that the pressure on Africa to accept genetically modified grains or other crops as food aid ended with the widely known case with Zambia in 2002. That emblematic case rightly showed that every country has the sovereign right to determine what type of food to eat, irrespective of whether it is purchased in the market or is donated as aid. And it demonstrated to the world that the predicted catastrophe of Zambians starving never happened. Genetically engineered food has been presented as the ultimate weapon against hunger in Africa and the world. This is also seriously suggested in the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) meaning that this may be the direction efforts will be concentrated in the years to come. African leaders have largely been co-opted into thinking this way because they are warned that since the so-called Green Revolution train left Africa standing at the station they should not miss the gene train. It has been noted that the Green Revolution required extensive chemical and equipment inputs and although food production increased in some areas, small scale farmers were marginalized, the environment took a beating and on the aggregate hunger was boosted in the world.” http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5174
This campaign by Monsanto is part of a global push to bum rush indigenous farmers, undermine their natural farming techniques, control the market and push their Frankenfoods on unsuspecting masses like they did in AmeriKKKa with the help of the FDA. Only in Africa people like Roy and Niger Innis are being used (paid) to be the piped pipers for Monsanto. The sad part of all of this is Innis knows what he is doing but chooses to sell our people out for a few dollars more.
From The Ramparts Junious Ricardo Stanton
Modern Day Sambos
“That's not, of course, the kind of story detailed in CORE's ‘Voices from Africa,’ where GM crops are presented as the only hope of salvation for resource poor farmers. Nor is it the kind of story told by CORE's Paul Driessen in his syndicated op-ed pieces, which were timed to coincide with CORE's UN "World Conference". Driessen informed his readers that "these safe, delicious foods" were vital for Africa because they could "replace staples devastated by disease -- including Kenyan sweet potatoes". Interestingly, just a week or so before Driessen made that claim, the Kenyan journalist Gatonye Gathura, received a Kalam award for journalistic excellence for his article on the sweet potato project, "GM Technology fails local potatoes." Gathura's piece blew the whistle on the abject failure of Monsanto's showcase project in Africa -- a project that had garnered literally thousands of column inches of positive press.” - The Uncle Tom Award Jonathan Matthews, 16 March 2005 http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php
Roy and Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality have been up to some seriously treacherous dealing in recent years. Ever since the US Supreme Court installed George W Bu$h in the presidency Innis has been maneuvering and attempting to position CORE as the preeminent House Negro organization in service to the NeoCon globalist agenda. After 9-11 Innis went to the Bu$h administration and warned them to watch out for the Nation Of Islam and other African-American Islamic organization as they might be a source of sympathy for Muslim terrorists and a possible fifth column. So here we have a so called black organization ( I intentionally used small case) promoting racial and religion profiling and surveillance just to get in good with what the group they consider Mighty Whitie. In recent years CORE has sponsored a Martin Luther King Jr Dinner and to the angst of most Black folks they have invited key members of the Bu$h administration to speak or receive awards, in 2004 Tommy Thompson the secretary of Health and Human Services was the keynote speaker and in 2005 CORE invited Karl Rove the architect of Florida voting scandal that helped disenfranchise thousands of African-Americans.
Not only has Roy Innis and his tag along son Niger shifted CORE to the Right, they have jumped on the fascist corporatist bandwagon big time. As more and more black folks eschew the notions of self-determination and doing for self in favor of corporation hand outs, branding and prostituting themselves to corporate AmeriKKKa, Roy Innis has taken it to an even higher level. Innis has hooked his wagon to the Republican Party machine and now rivals Jesse Jackson and the Negroes on the Democratic Party dole as a serious money grubber. CORE has allowed itself to be used by companies like Monsanto the mad scientists who manufacture Frankenfoods who have virtually cornered the market on genetically modified (or altered) foods. In a 2005 article on the Website http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php Innis and CORE are castigated for their support of genetically modified (GM) seeds and foods. Multinational giants like Monsanto need Black and Brown faces to support Frankenfoods as they target First World people (Africans Asians Pacific Islanders, South and Central Americans) as consumers and captive markets for their diabolical products. They use PR and Spin to make folks think GM foods are the latest and greatest innovative boon to mankind when in fact they are unproven, untested and potentially dangerous mutations that the FDA has rubber stamped but the European Union will not even allow in their countries. “Of course, such attempts to position biotech's soap box behind a black man's face neither began nor ended in Johannesburg. In late 1999, for instance, a street protest against genetic engineering in Washington DC was disrupted by a group of African-Americans bearing placards such as "Biotech saves children's lives." A Baptist Church from a poor neighborhood had, the New York Times revealed, been paid by Monsanto's PR firm to bus in the counter-demonstrators. But Johannesburg does seem to have been a kind of watershed. Since then, Monsanto's fake parade has really begun to hit its stride. And from US administration platforms to UN headquarters, from Capitol Hill to the European Parliament, we've been treated to a veritable minstrelsy of lobbying. Let's pick up the trail amidst the Martin Luther King Day observances in New York City this January. That was when the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) invited some 700 diplomats, scientists, journalists, and Gotham high-school students to come and consider the ‘implications and reality’ of biotechnology at UN headquarters. CORE's "World Conference" was presided over by His Excellency, Aminu Bashir Wali, the Ambassador of Nigeria, and after lunch came the premiere of the film "Voices from Africa", showcasing the results of ‘CORE's fact-finding trip to Africa’. The film opened and closed with comments by CORE's National Chairman, Roy Innis, who explained that it was his concern about hunger in Africa that led him to go there to see for himself and to investigate the potential for biotechnology. The film concluded with Innis saying, ‘We have to do everything possible to ensure that the African farmer has access to this new technology which potentially can do so much to improve his quality of life.’” http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=344 . Another sad case of Negroes selling us out for a few dollars more and allow Ol’ Massa to pat them on the back or rub their heads as they grin, shuffle and buck dance for our enemies.
Innis is being used as a front man and puppet in a strategic campaign to positively spin GM in Africa for Monsanto. The truth is many African nations are resisting GM foods and seeds and rightly so. “The scramble for Africa is getting hotter today than it may have been during the Berlin Conference at which she was partitioned. The partitioning of Africa sowed the seeds of discord and conflict that we are reaping today... We are talking about the onslaught by the biotech industry... The siege is on. Many people imagine that the pressure on Africa to accept genetically modified grains or other crops as food aid ended with the widely known case with Zambia in 2002. That emblematic case rightly showed that every country has the sovereign right to determine what type of food to eat, irrespective of whether it is purchased in the market or is donated as aid. And it demonstrated to the world that the predicted catastrophe of Zambians starving never happened. Genetically engineered food has been presented as the ultimate weapon against hunger in Africa and the world. This is also seriously suggested in the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) meaning that this may be the direction efforts will be concentrated in the years to come. African leaders have largely been co-opted into thinking this way because they are warned that since the so-called Green Revolution train left Africa standing at the station they should not miss the gene train. It has been noted that the Green Revolution required extensive chemical and equipment inputs and although food production increased in some areas, small scale farmers were marginalized, the environment took a beating and on the aggregate hunger was boosted in the world.” http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5174
This campaign by Monsanto is part of a global push to bum rush indigenous farmers, undermine their natural farming techniques, control the market and push their Frankenfoods on unsuspecting masses like they did in AmeriKKKa with the help of the FDA. Only in Africa people like Roy and Niger Innis are being used (paid) to be the piped pipers for Monsanto. The sad part of all of this is Innis knows what he is doing but chooses to sell our people out for a few dollars more.
From The Ramparts Junious Ricardo Stanton
Trans-Generational Black Poverty
“In fact, recent research for the U.S. population shows that the exact opposite of GlennHubbard’s claim is true: while a child’s income might deviate from that of his family for a few
years, the longer one compares economic outcomes, the more the experience of the childrenreproduce that of their fathers. Studies of economic mobility typically predict the son’s or daughter’s income on the basis of father’s income, correcting only for the age of parent and child. As recently as 1988, economists thought that a father’s earnings were only weakly correlated with his children’s income. Recently, however, new data sources have permitted studies that look at ten times as many father-children pairs (3000 versus 300) for periods as long as sixteen years.3 These studies show that the longer the period over which income is averaged, the higher the correlation between the incomes of fathers and children. That is to say, there is indeed a lot of year-to-year income variation over a worker’s lifetime. But averaged over many years, the income of the father is a very strong predictor of the income of the son or daughter. The correlation is even higher for families with low wealth, the poor, than for the wealthy; it is also higher for black families than for white.” The Century Foundation http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequality/ClassWarfare/myth4.pdf
While doing research on a piece about the ongoing and escalating class warfare in AmeriKKKa, I came across a report from The Century Foundation an organization whose Website says it “is dedicated to infusing the nation’s critical public policy debates with solid research and expert assessments. We call attention to facts and present analyses that debunk widespread misconceptions and provide policymakers and the public with new ideas for addressing the challenges facing the nation. Much of the work of the Foundation is aimed at challenging broad claims about the advantages of privatization, tax cuts, and market solutions and questioning assumptions about the ineffectiveness of safety net programs, education reform efforts, and government oversight.” http://www.tcf.org/about.asp The report I reviewed was entitled Class Warfare Fact or Fiction. I looked at Myth # 4 which says, “Over the course of their lifetimes, Americans are highly likely to enjoy upward economic mobility”. In other words the ol’ Horatio Algier rags to riches tale. The report was written by a man named Bernard Wasow but he quoted liberally from a study by Thomas Hertz entitled Rags, Riches and Race: The Intergenerational Economic Mobility of Black and White Families in the United States. Thomas Hertz documented something most of us already know, if you are African-American and your father was/is poor more than likely you will be poor too! Hertz’ studies hold true for poor whites but more so for poor blacks. What Hertz, an American University Economics professor says in his study is that for blacks the issue of poverty is more about race, than class. However since the masses of Africans In AmeriKKKa are not wealthy or rich most blacks are on the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder, it stands to reason as the AmeriKKKan economy tanks as it has been doing for a while, more and more blacks will go down with the ship especially since so many are being born into impoverished single parent families.
For whites, the dynamics of socio-economic class/caste are becoming almost as rigid as they are for Africans in AmeriKKKa according to a new line of research and investigation. A recent Wall Street Journal article pretty much bursts the Horatio Algier myth (which by the way was the focal point of The Century Foundation piece I referred to earlier) “As Mr. Mazumder, the Chicago Fed economist, put it in the title of a recent book chapter: ‘The apple falls even closer to the tree than we thought.’ Why aren't the escalators working better? Figuring out how parents pass along economic status, apart from the obvious but limited factor of financial bequests, is tough. But education appears to play an important role. In contrast to the 1970s, a college diploma is increasingly valuable in today's job market. The tendency of college grads to marry other college grads and send their children to better elementary and high schools and on to college gives their children a lasting edge. The notion that the offspring of smart, successful people are also smart and successful is appealing, and there is a link between parent and child IQ scores. But most research finds IQ isn't a very big factor in predicting economic success. In the U.S., race appears to be a significant reason that children's economic success resembles their parents'. From 32 years of data on 6,273 families recorded by the University of Michigan's long-running survey, American University economist Tom Hertz calculates that 17 percent of whites born to the bottom 10 percent of families ranked by income remained there as adults, but 42 percent of the blacks did. Perhaps as a consequence, public-opinion surveys find African-Americans more likely to favor government redistribution programs than whites.” As rich-poor gap widens in U.S., Class Mobility Stalls- by David Wessel, The Wall Street Journal articles says, quite succinctly “But the reality of mobility in America is more complicated than the myth. As the gap between rich and poor has widened since 1970, the odds that a child born in poverty will climb to wealth -- or a rich child will fall into the middle class -- remain stuck. Despite the spread of affirmative action, the expansion of community colleges and the other social change designed to give people of all classes a shot at success, Americans are no more or less likely to rise above, or fall below, their parents' economic class than they were 35 years ago. Although Americans still think of their land as a place of exceptional opportunity -- in contrast to class-bound Europe -- the evidence suggests otherwise. And scholars have, over the past decade, come to see America as a less mobile society than they once believed.” Given the current economic realities where former Blue Chip giants like GM and Ford teeter on the verge of bankruptcy and their hourly workers are being asked to make gargantuan pay and benefit sacrifices, what does this mean for future generations when these current hourly wage earners are forced to take massive cuts in their wages and standards of living?
Another article looking at class warfare in AmeriKKKa stated, “It should also be noted that the Wall Street Journal's focus only on income mobility leads it significantly understate the real degree of socioeconomic immobility in the U.S. The astonishing extent of American socioeconomic and related racial disparity becomes more fully evident when you factor in wealth. In the U.S., the most unequal nation in the industrialized world, the top 1 percent owns more than 40 percent of the wealth. The top 10 percent owns two-thirds of US wealth, leaving the rest of us - 90 percent of the population - to fight it out for one third of the nation's assets. Things get worse, again, when you factor in race. By 1999, economist Thomas Shapiro finds, the ‘net worth (all assets minus all liabilities) of typical white families was $81,000 compared to $8,000 for black families’ in the US. By the recessionary year of 2002, black net worth fell to seven cents on the white dollar.” http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7954 What they are saying Brothers and Sistahs is the wealth gap is widening and when you factor for race, the divide is more expansive and longer lasting! Recent reports in the New York Times based upon research paint a very bleak picture for African-American males. We are more likely to be unemployed, homeless, on probation or parole and incarcerated than our Euro-American counterparts. And our life expectancy is less than white males also. While researchers do acknowledge education as a key factor in “upward mobility”, our experiences here in AmeriKKKa suggests higher educational advancement does not cancel out racism! And researchers are fond of telling us more African-American males are incarcerated than attend college. So the prospects look grim. Is there a solution? Yes, but it means rethinking and redefining our status and position in this country. It means taking a positive proactive ethnocentric, race first survivalist approach rather than a “victim” or beggars’ mentality. Are we targets of white animus? Of course. Is it going to change any time soon? Not hardly. To survive, we have to decide to opt out of the mind control matrix and think about our situation from an intelligent historically based perspective rather than an ostrich head in the sand approach pretending this is not our reality. One person can’t have all the answers but ancestors like Booker T Washington, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Pop Singleton and others exhorted us to be self-sufficient, industrious and have a race first attitude. Survival means more than having a job, it is about creating values, culture, institutions and lifestyles that nurture and support us mentally, spiritually as well as physically. As the AmeriKKKa Empire implodes and crumbles, it is incumbent upon us to have a collective strategy to save ourselves, or we will surely go down with the ship.
From the Ramparts Junious Ricardo Stanton
Price Gouging By Big Oil
“Americans are feeling the pain of higher oil and natural gas prices. Accordingto a CBS News poll, 86 percent of people have been affected by higher gasoline prices‘some’ or ‘a lot.’ Polling shows that nearly 70 percent believe that higher gasolineprices will cause financial hardship for them or their family. The high price of natural gas will further squeeze family budgets. Yet while ordinary Americans suffer under the weight of high energy prices, the world’s largest energy conglomerates are enjoying record-breaking profits. According to The Washington Post, the 2004 profits for Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips broke records across all industries. In 2004, at over $25 billion, Exxon-Mobil booked the highest profit of any company in any year and broke its own record in 2005 with a $36 billion profit. Yet, oil company memos show that they made part of these profits by constraining refining capacity to drive up prices. These record profits have more than doubled CEO salaries, with Exxon CEO Lee Raymond receiving an astounding $144,573 per day on average for the last 13 years. So, while consumers are paying more at the pumps and on their heating bills, oil companies are getting billions in tax breaks and sweetheart deals from the Bush administration and their congressional allies.” Pain at The Pump Profits In The Boardroom , Center For American Progress Action Fund
The price shock we are experiencing at the gas pump is a direct result of policies initiated by the Bu$h-Cheney cabal and the blowback from these policies. What we are seeing at the gas pump is a replay of what Bu$h-Cheney friend Enron’s Ken Lay and his executives did with electric energy in California and several Western states several years ago prior to the collapse of the company. While most of us suspect the rise of gasoline, heating oil and natural gas prices is part and parcel to the Cheney energy task force’s polices; policies the Bu$h-Cheney cabal fought desperately to keep secret which even today are impacting their domestic, military and foreign policies. Since 2002 prices at the pump have jumped considerably. A report by the Center for American Progress Action Fund which calls itself a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to finding progressive and pragmatic solutions to significant domestic and international problems and advance policies that help create sustained economic growth and new opportunities for all Americans says, “Since January 2002, the price of a gallon of regular gasoline increased as much as $2, a 174 percent climb, and the average residential cost of a thousand cubic foot of natural gas is up about $5, a 60 percent increase. Despite these burdens on consumers, the administration and Congress have done little to increase conservation or energy efficiency, or take bold steps toward alternative sources of energy. Instead, conservatives have demonstrated their commitment to supply-only solutions, like drilling in protected areas off our coasts and in Alaska, undercutting our economic, environmental and national security interests in favor of oil and gas companies that are enjoying record profits.” Pain at The Pump Profits In The Boardroom , Center For American Progress Action Fund The name of the game is indirect bribery (euphemistically called “lobbying” and special interest groups) of public officials so the “elected officials” do what the energy and oil companies pay them to do. “ Overall, Enron gave $2.3 million to federal candidates and the political parties during the 2000 election, more than double its $1.1 million in 1998 and more than any other energy company, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan research group that studies campaign finance. Almost three-fourths of the company's donations went to Republicans. Right behind Enron in campaign contributions from energy companies was Southern Co., whose Southern Energy subsidiary, recently renamed Mirant, is an electricity supplier in California. Atlanta-based Southern Co. gave $1.3 million in 2000, including $14,000 directly to Bush.” http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/enrn25.
So the cause and effect relationship of escalating gas prices on one level, is due to the ruling elites, their elected puppets and sycophants operating in collusion and partnership with the major conglomerates and multi-national corporations so a corporatist oligarchy power relationship set policies and prices. Part of the cause of rising prices is the political unrest in Nigeria, Columbia, Iraq, Iran and the percolating intrigue the US is fomenting in Central Asia. Much of this is a reaction to US intervention and covert policies. So when Bu$h and Congress jump up to create the illusion they are concerned about rising gas prices and they are attempting to reduce them, they are merely posturing. The fact is most of the causes of the out of control gas prices are the direct result of what Bu$h and Co and their cronies in big oil have done. “Despite damage to rigs and refineries during the devastating 2005 season, oil companies reported record annual profits on the back and gasoline prices in 2005. The growth in energy prices has been very kind to Exxon-Mobil, the world’s largest publicly traded energy company. In 2005, Exxon-Mobil has announced record quarterly profits, including $10.7 billion in the fourth quarter. With nearly $100 billion in revenue in both the third and fourth quarters, it also posted the most revenue of any U.S. corporation in any single quarter. Its 2004 net income of $25.33 billion was the highest annual profit of any U.S. corporation in history, and they broke their own record in 2005 with an annual profit of $36.1 billion. Since 2002, the year that sharp increases in gasoline prices began, Exxon-Mobil profits have increased by 215 per cent... Over the past six years, oil and gas companies have spent nearly $450 million on politicians, political parties and lobbyists in order to protect their interests in Washington. Since 1990, energy companies have made $183 million in political contributions alone, 75 percent of which have gone to Republicans In addition, over the past six years, nine of the top ten recipients of contributions
have been Republicans. In just the last election cycle, the oil and gas industry contributed more than $20 million to Republicans, four times more than the amount donated to Democrats.” Pain at The Pump Profits In The Boardroom , Center For American Progress Action Fund
Both political parties have their hands out taking huge contributions from lobbyists and they have learned to be money grubbers par excellence at the expense and to the detriment of the taxpayers. “For their lavish political contributions, energy companies have been nicely rewarded in the energy bill that a Republican-controlled Congress guided into law this past August. Even as oil and gas companies enjoy record profits, hard working American taxpayers will be footing the bill for over $4 billion in industry giveaways including nearly $2 billion in tax breaks and a $1.5 billion fund for an consortium based in Rep. Tom DeLay’s district that was slipped into the 2005 energy bill without a vote. Harder to quantify but perhaps more egregious, the Republicans energy law also waives the requirement for oil companies to pay royalties and gas from federal areas in some instances. Essentially the record profits from high prices borne by American consumers without recouping any funds for the nation. The Government Accountability Office has estimated that incentives to drill in the Gulf of Mexico will cost the American Government $20 billion over the next 25 years.” Pain at The Pump Profits In The Boardroom , Center For American Progress Action Fund.
So you see we are suffering because our corrupt elected officials sold us out and acquiesced to the bribes of the big oil companies and their representatives. It is part and parcel to the ongoing class warfare in this country. Isn’t it about time we started holding these sell outs accountable and we begin treating them as the traitors they are?
From The Ramparts Junious Ricardo Stanton
The Same Ol’ Game
“Unsurprisingly, the West dominates the world arms market in terms of sales. Over the last six or so years, the US has towered over the other countries in weapons sales, clocking up $49,271 million worth of sales (at 1990 prices) between 1996 and 2000. Its nearest competitor, Russia, made $15,690 million worth in the same period, but a large majority of these were of second hand weapons. According to SIPRI, just under half of all transfers (movements) of major conventional weapons between 1996 and 2000 came from the US, Russia and France each accounted for 10 per cent, and Britain and Germany each accounted for between five and 10 per cent. The seven following biggest sellers - the Netherlands, Ukraine, Italy, China, Belarus, Spain and Israel - accounted for around 15 per cent of the world total transfers between them.
So it is clear that the global arms market is controlled by just a few players. The six biggest arms selling countries - four of whom, ironically, are permanent members of the UN Security Council - accounted for almost 85 per cent of all arms transfers over the last six years.” The Arms Trade by Gideon Burrows http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Weapons/Arms_Trade.html
When we hear of “rebels” attempting to overthrow a sovereign government be it a democratically elected one, a dictatorship or a puppet regime somehow the media never tells us where the guns and supplies came from the “rebels” used or who financed or supplied the logistical support for the rebels? That’s because the media doesn’t want us to know the real deal. For example the fighting and resulting refugee problems in Darfur is now spreading into Chad creating havoc and security problems for the Chad government. A report by the United Nations High Commission of Refugees states, “There is an overall security deterioration in Eastern Chad, with some reports of an increased proliferation of weapons, particularly around the border area. Reports from the border area indicate that cattle theft and other criminal acts appear on the increase. Equally, there is an increased military presence at both sides of the borders. Competition over scarce resources (such as water and firewood) and a poor harvest during the last rainy season are fueling the tensions between the local population and the refugees. UNHCR, ICRC and the Government counterpart are holding regular meetings in Abeche, together with representative of the Chadian police forces to improve the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding for camp security. According to the MOU signed between the Government of Chad and UNHCR, Chadian police forces, including female officers, have been deployed to the camps to improve physical protection of refugees. Local authorities, UNHCR and partner agencies are conducting sensitization campaigns in all camps and surrounding villages to promote more peaceful cohabitation between the local and the refugee communities” http://www.unhcr.org Notice the brief mention of weapons proliferation. If you want to destabilize a whole region one of the things you do is foment wars and conflict and arm both sides. In the case of Chad the refugee problem is being caused by the long running interracial fighting between the Arab militias from Sudan called Janjaweed and the indigenous Africans of the region. The infighting and civil wars in the region is causing displacement of massive numbers of people turning them into refugees, many who have fled to nearby Chad. There have been border clashes between Chad and the Janjaweed. Now Chad is having problems of its own as the government of President Idriss Deby is claiming Sudan is supporting the rebels who recently launched an attack on the Chad capital of N’Djamena. The fighting is causing massive social upheavals in both Chad and Sudan.
Ever wonder who funds and arms these “rebels”, “insurgents” or whatever the Western press calls them? We know it’s not African nations. How can cash poor, resource rich but African nations severely exploited by the IMF and World Bank afford to pay for small arms. munitions and ordnance to wage internecine warfare? The world arms sales tend to be the monopoly of European nations. “From 1989 to 1998, the US provided over $227 million in weapons and training to African military forces. Of this, over $111 million went to governments that have been directly or indirectly involved in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): Angola, Burundi, Chad Namibia, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
The big seven arms-selling countries in the world - the US, France, Germany, Britain, Russia, China and Italy have all sold arms to states currently involved in conflict including Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Israel, China, Taiwan, India and Pakistan. And they usually show their deadly wares at arms fairs.” http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Weapons/Arms_Trade.html The arms dealers don’t just do it to make money they do it as part of an overarching plan to depopulate and destabilize whole regions so their corporate buddies and partners can come in and rape and pillage the land of natural resources, control large swaths of territory or subdue strategic geopolitical positions. In the cases of Darfur (Sudan) and Chad there are several prizes, namely oil and water. “A consortium led by two US companies has been investing $3.7 billion to develop oil reserves - estimated at 1 billion barrels - in southern Chad. The nation's total oil reserves has been estimated to be 2 billion barrels. Oil production came on stream in late 2003. Chad began to export oil in 2004.” http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook “In 1999, Sudan began exporting crude oil and in the last quarter of 1999 recorded its first trade surplus, which, along with monetary policy, has stabilized the exchange rate. Increased oil production, revived light industry, and expanded export processing zones helped sustain GDP growth at 8.6% in 2004.” http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook
Nowadays where there is crude oil, expect the leeches and parasites to attempt to gain a toe hold in the region! When we connect the dots, we see what is really going on. The Europeans have exploited existing Arab-African tensions in Sudan and have moved to destabilize neighboring Chad in an effort to create massive social upheaval, disruption and human dislocation so they can bum rush the oil and in Sudan’s case the water from the Nile. Here’s where the arms sales come in. You can’t have a war, killing and massive dislocation without arms and weapons. So the leading arms dealers do their thing, sit back and wait for the resulting chaos, death and depopulation. “The ongoing bloody conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire, has been called Africa's 'first world war'. In 1965 Mobutu Sese Seko became president of Zaire with the backing of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who needed a strategic friend in Africa. Mobutu quickly became one of the continent's most brutal dictators, but was nevertheless supported by the US in weapons sales and military training. Even after the Cold War, the United States continued to supply military support to the Mobutu regime. In 1991, more than $4.5 million of military equipment was delivered to Zaire. In 1996 and 1997, Laurent Kabila and his Alliance of Democratic Forces fought running battles with the Mobutu dictatorship, eventually ousting the despot. The US immediately offered the Kabila regime military training, even as the new president suspended human rights and banned opposition political parties. On 2 August 1998, DR Congo's current brutal conflict began, with nine African nations siding with either the Mobutu faction or Kabila regime in a fight for DR Congo's rich mineral and diamond resources. Foreign troops from Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Angola, Namibia, Sudan, Chad and Zimbabwe have all been drawn into the fight, along with irregular and guerrilla movements from surrounding African states. US, Britain, China, Russia, South Africa and other weapons-selling giants have gathered like vultures, gladly supplying the factions with weapons of death. Even after six of the governments involved were drawn together to sign the Lusaka peace accords in July 2000, the battling continues, supported by Western countries and their arms companies.” http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Weapons/Arms_Trade.html The current situation in Sudan/Chad is merely a variation on the same theme of this ongoing program. When the smoke clears the big US oil companies Exxon Mobile and their consortium partners have the right of ways for the oil and in Chad’s case the right of way for the pipelines since Chad is landlocked. Plus the devils attain another one of their diabolical goals; the death and depopulation of huge numbers of African people. This is the same program they ran on the Native Americans. It’s the same ol’ game being played over and over again and Africans are the big losers.
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I
want to thank Junious Ricardo Stanton for always encouraging me to
write even though photography has
completely monopolized my time. I was attempting to publish a book and
I made major progress. In fact, for the last 18 months, my photography
has been the successful example of the agenda I propagated in the book!
It is the ultimate in practicing-what-you preach! Maybe I'll get back
to the book later on in life and from time-to-time, when it is
appropriate, I'll publish excerpts. But for now, I need to answer
many of your e-mails and an raise hell on this blog!
Tolbert
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Additional Socio-Moral Implications Of Neocolonialism
YAOUNDE, Jul 20 (IPS) - Business at the numerous
money transfer agencies in Cameroon's capital, Yaoundé, is typically a
brisk affair. Of the many people who frequent the agencies, one group
is of particular interest, however: the husbands of women who have gone
abroad to earn money from prostitution. Eavesdrop as the men receive
calls from their wives on mobile phones, and you will hear them sound
exultant as they get news of how much to expect.
A report form the Inter Press News Service dated
July 20, 2005 caught my eye, it was a story about husbands in Cameroon
who to earn extra money decided to send their wives overseas (mainly to
Europe) to engage in prostitution. The article stated economic hard
times hit the West African nation following a collapse in commodity
prices in 1986. Given the unbalanced trade and power relations between
African nations and the West, you can bet your bottom dollar the
collapse was caused in part due to manipulations by the economic arm of
the Neoliberal globalist establishment: The World Bank, IMF and US-AID.
These entities acting on behalf of Western governments and
multinational corporations set the prices, export and import fees, loan
and subsidy rates for so called Third World nations. The relationships
always favor the West at the expense of the so called developing
countries because of the legacy of colonialism in which the imperialist
nations of Europe and AmeriKKKa set the policies for single cash crops
or commodity markets in the exploited colonies. Farmers in Africa
cannot compete globally with their counterparts in AmeriKKKa or Europe
who receive government subsidies and whose governments set the prices
for crops and commodities the developing nations are powerless to
combat.
So when the cocoa and coffee markets collapsed in Cameroon due to these
forces, many families felt compelled to use drastic measures to make
ends meet. One way which either reflects a bourgeoning collapse in
morals or sheer desperation; was for Cameroon men to send their wives
to Europe to earn money as prostitutes! The IPS News article, in my
view contributes to a long standing stereotyping of Africans as poverty
stricken morally loose desperados looking for a quick way to make lots
of money. The article with a By Line by Sylvestre Tetchiada states, “
According to information gathered by IPS, women can make up to 20,000
dollars during their stay in Europe. The monthly salary of a mid-level
civil servant in Cameroon is just under 200 dollars... The practice of
prostituting wives gained popularity after a collapse in commodity
prices helped bring about economic decline in Cameroon, from 1986
onwards. ‘Because of this crisis, which has caused moral bankruptcy and
a lack of scruples among certain husbands, some men acting as their
wives' pimps think that sending them away to be prostitutes in far-off
places will earn them lots of cash,’ Colette Djuidjeu, a sociologist
who teaches at the University of Yaounde II, explained to IPS. ” The
article states the Cameroon men send their wives to Europe during the
Summer months and the practice is growing. The article further states,
“ Such scenes become ever-more frequent from June: the start of summer
in Europe, where Cameroonian women find work as prostitutes (the most
sought-after destinations are apparently Switzerland, France,
Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, Germany and Spain). Departure halls of
airports in Yaoundé and the commercial centre of Douala throng with
spouses bidding their farewells.”
The long term impact and implications of Cameroon
men pimping their wives has yet to be determined. However I can’t
imagine this practice helping marital relationships no matter how much
money the wife sends back to her husband in Cameroon. A pimp is a pimp,
whether he is doing it to buy clothes, jewelry and a fancy car in
Detroit Harlem or L.A. or to maintain a better lifestyle in Cameroon.
What if the couple has children? Who will care for them while the wife
is away, trickin’ to boost the family bank account? There is the issue
of safety, sending your wife to reside in Europe alone subjecting
herself to degradation and the perverted sexual fantasies of white men
is beyond my comprehension. An African woman all alone in a strange
European culture internalizing the objectification of herself as a
sexual commodity while placing herself at the whim and mercy of white
men for a few dollars ,in my view is both sick and dangerous. As tragic
as it is, the desperation and depravity of their husbands is merely a
secondary consequence of the impotence of Cameroon and many other so
called “developing nations” at the hands of a predatory Western
neo-colonial economic system that put them in that position in the
first place.
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Cracks In US Economy Expanding
GM, Ford Motor Debt Ratings Cut to Junk by Moody's (Update1)
Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the two
biggest U.S. automakers, were lowered to junk by Moody's Investors
Service. Moody's lowered General Motors Corp.'s rating two levels to
Ba2 and the rating on its finance arm to Ba1. Dearborn, Michigan-based
Ford was cut one level to Ba1, one step below investment grade. Moody's
also reduced its rating on Ford Motor Credit Co. to the lowest
investment grade. The Ford cuts affect about $150 billion in debt,
Moody's said in a statement today. It's the second junk rating for Ford
after Standard & Poor's lowered the company to non-investment grade
on May 5. That will push the automaker out of the most widely followed
investment-grade bond index by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and may
spark selling of the bonds. Chief Executive William Clay Ford Jr., 48,
saw his company's share of the U.S. auto market fall for 28 straight
months through June. In July, sales rose 29 percent after the company
offered employee-pricing discounts to all consumers. - Bloomberg.com
08-25-05
As the media focuses on the pros and cons of Cindy
Sheehan’s challenge to George Bush to face her and answer her questions
about why her son had to die for his lies, the beat goes on. The beat
in this case refers to the real deal about the AmeriKKKan culture and
economy. This week’s flap about Pat Robertson calling for the US to
assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is part and parcel to the
continuing moral melt down of AmeriKKKa. Robertson was one of the prime
movers of the Christian Right Bible thumping fascists who support the
Nazification of AmeriKKKa using the veneer of religiosity and morality
to camouflage their bloodlust and megalomaniacal imperialism. Cindy
Sheehan is like the little boy in the Hans Christian Anderson story The
Emperor’s New Clothes, the only one in the Kingdom secure enough in his
grasp of reality, rectitude to spontaneously acknowledge and
proclaim the truth, the emperor was as naked as a Jaybird.
By refusing to directly confront Cindy Sheehan, Bush further bunkers
himself in his upside down Bizarro World where occupation is freedom,
larceny is endowment and lies truth. Meanwhile in the economic sphere
two major giants of US industry and capitalism General Motors and Ford
Motor Company and their credit lending arms GMAC and Ford Motor Credit
Company respectively have suffered another major financial setback. GM
and Ford who employ thousands of AmeriKKKans and whose vendors,
suppliers and credit customers form an impressive network within the US
and global economy (both automakers now own foreign companies like Saab
and Jaguar) have been losing money over the last year or so. In May,
Standard and Poor investment dropped both companies’ bond rating to
junk status and recently Moody’s Investors Service did the same. This
means unless their fortunes improve investors will not buy their stocks
and bonds further endangering both companies’ ability to remain
competitive and viable. With contract negotiations looming with their
unions, this does not bode well for the working class wage earner.
Bush may call himself the War President but his
handling of the invasion and occupation of Iraq is not going well. His
approval ratings and credibility are at an all time low. Rightly so
since he and his Chickenhawk NeoConmen are the ones putting AmeriKKKans
at risk while Bush was a Vietnam combat dodger who went AWOL for
over a year from his Texas and Alabama Air National Guard units. Since
his installment as president in 2000 George W. Bush has presided over a
slumping economy which he blamed on 9-11 rather than corporate
malfeasance, greed and corruption. Even as the economy gradually
rebounded AmeriKKKa witnessed a protracted “jobless recovery”. If
GM and Ford go belly up it will create an economic tsunami that will
engulf workers and Wall Street. Yet you never hear Bush and Co. utter a
mumbling word about this or the fact US bankruptcies are at record
levels. According to a BusinessWeek Online article dated 08-24-05
bankruptcies have hit record numbers during the last two quarters. “
The number of bankruptcies in the United States surged to an all-time
high in the second quarter of this year as financially troubled
consumers scrambled to file before a rewrite of bankruptcy laws takes
full effect. Bankruptcy filings to federal courts in the April-to-June
quarter totaled 467,333, according to data released Wednesday from the
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. That marked a record number
of filings made in any quarter. Of that total, most -- 458,597 -- were
personal bankruptcy filings; the remaining 8,736 were businesses filing
for bankruptcy, the data showed.” The article anticipated another jump
during the third quarter of 2005 just before the new bankruptcy law
goes into effect in October. “The record 467,333 bankruptcy filings in
the second quarter surpassed the previous quarterly high of 440,257
filings in the second quarter of 2003, said Nathalie Martin, a resident
scholar at the American Bankruptcy Institute.” What the article failed
to mention was the new bankruptcy law was written by the major banks
and credit card companies. This latest bill is part and parcel of the
Bush administration’s and Republican Party’s bend over backwards
support of corporations and big business to the detriment of the little
man and woman, their not too subtle form of class warfare. Perhaps this
why Bush’s approval rating is plummeting so rapidly.
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Hurricane Katrina Media Psy Op
“The mass media made an abrupt turn, adapting and
shaping the images of the Administration’s catastrophe. In seven days
the magic of the media transformed the Bush team from incompetent and
ignorant leaders to decisive and caring officials. At the same time the
desperate, dying and furious were converted into an unruly,
crime-ridden, ungrateful and chaotic mob. The political message was
clear: Repression and militarization were priority conditions for
survival and humanitarian aid. The city had to be under de facto
martial law before it could be saved. Viet Nam and Falluja come to
mind. After all, counter-insurgency is what we do best. According to
the President, his Cabinet members and the media: “America is rising to
the occasion.” We won’t forget the 10,000’s of dead and injured, we’ll
even lower the flag for a few days – that is if the Congressional Black
Caucus raises the issue. As the President would say, ‘Let’s move on.
We’ve got a war to win in Iraq.’”- Prof James Petras The Militarization
of New Orleans http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?
I became suspicious of the outrage of reporters on
the cable news channels and networks about the inefficiency of the Bu$h
administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina because it was so out of
character. These white folks follow orders and read the scripts that
run the well oiled propaganda/PR/Marketing/advertising media machine.
The more I though about it, the more convinced I became it was a setup.
The same white folks who mindlessly cooperate with a fascist
administration as they bum rush, bombed, murdered and colonized three
sovereign countries (Afghanistan, Haiti and Iraq) without a whimper of
protest or dissent went into conniptions supposedly because poor and
infirm Africans in AmeriKKKa were marooned and stranded during a major
storm. Where was the concern about their plight and condition before
the storm? The Katrina situation from the beginning to the present was
a planned, deliberate and orchestrated move by the Bu$h administration
to condition the AmeriKKKan public and prepare us psychologically for
martial law/lock-down and military occupation of AmeriKKKan cities. Am
I saying the angst and concern of some of the reporters on the ground
in the midst of the hurricane was not genuine? No, I’m saying their
very real emotions were used by the media elites to set the stage for a
psychological warfare operation to depict how bad the situation in New
Orleans was, next to demonize and criminalize the blacks who weren’t
able to get out thereby setting the stage for acceptance of a military
occupation of the region. Now the media is back to cheerleading the
military’s role in the Gulf Coast.
Over the course of the hurricane, I’ve written
about how FEMA waited around doing nothing, how FEMA prevented first
responders, volunteers and needed supplies food and water from coming
into New Orleans, these are documented facts. I’ve already written how
these facts will be swept under the rug by the Republican or
“independent” Warren or 9-11 Commission type investigation. I’ve
written about mercenaries and the military who came into New Orleans
with a combat mind set rather than a search rescue and repair mission
(See www.Armytimes.com). I’ve hinted at the media’s role in the
psy op. I’ve read reports of the levees being sabotaged the day after
Katrina struck. I’ve seen stories about the in fighting between the
Bu$h administration and the Governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New
Orleans. I reviewed documents about how FEMA acted during Hurricane
Andrew in 1992 with the same arrogance and heavy handed approach
towards the citizens of Florida. I’ve read and written about advanced
technology that can be used as a weapon HAARP (see www.HAARP.net
for full details) to manipulate and control the weather.
Connecting the dots, it is clear this was a well coordinated fiendish
plan to use this storm as a practice run by FEMA, the military and the
Bu$h administration to upgrade plans already on the books, plans like
The King Alfred Plan or REX 84 that call for lock down relocation and
interment of huge numbers of US citizens. This is not written to
terrify you but to enlighten. We can no longer stick our head’s in the
sand and pretend not to know what we know! Not should we be in denial
about what we know about the psychopathy of the ruling oligarchy. The
media is in on it big time. They repeat their stories and pictures over
and over again. As someone once said, “If you repeat a lie convincingly
enough over and over the people will believe it.” This philosophy
is the key to getting the AmeriKKKan public to accept certain
underlying notions as reality, like: Osama bin Laden executed 9-11 from
a cave in Afghanistan , Saddam Hussein had WMD , Jean Bertrand Aristide
was a drug dealing criminal or no one honestly thought the levees were
in danger of being breached! If you believe any of these ideas it is
because you have internalized the media’s Jedi Mind Tricks. Snap out of
it! Think for yourself, ask yourself who benefits from this? How does a
military occupation of New Orleans and Biloxi Mississippi for example
help the flood victims? On the other hand, have the media and the
ruling oligarchy successfully conditioned us to accept armed soldiers
and mercenaries with “shoot to kill” orders in our streets?
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Following The Money Trail
“The first detailed tally of commitments from
federal agencies since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four weeks
ago shows that more than 15 contracts exceed $100 million, including 5
of $500 million or more. Most of those were for clearing away the
trees, homes and cars strewn across the region; purchasing trailers and
mobile homes; or providing trucks, ships, buses and planes. More than
80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with
limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among
auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or
abuse. Already, questions have been raised about the political
connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg,
Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been
represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former
campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.”- Eric Lipton and Ron
Nixon New York Times 09-26-05
Human beings are creatures of habit. Habits are
attitudes, emotions, behaviors and ways of responding to circumstances
and situations we have done over and over in the past to the point we
react automatically without even conscious thought about how to react.
On an individual or personal level habits are called patterns, on a
family or group level they are called folkways, mores, customs,
traditions and on the larger societal level they are called culture.
Once you discern a person’s or groups habitual behavioral patterns you
can accurately predict their current and future behaviors. In fact if
you are really clever based on your knowledge of their habits yo can
manipulate them to do what you want them to do! Looking at the Bu$h
crime family you can see clearly discernable patterns of psychopathy,
corruption and cronyism that are unfolding even as you read this
in the clean up operations for Hurricane Katrina. The New York Times
reported in today’s edition there are growing concerns much of the work
and money going to clean up the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is going
to close friends and allies of Republicans in general and the Bu$h
cabal in particular. Why should we be shocked that most of the
contracts have been awarded through no bid or low competition? You
could say time is of the essence and the work needs to be done as soon
as possible and these contractors have the expertise, so what’s the big
deal? Well the big deal is there is an appearance of impropriety and a
very real lack of fiduciary oversight. According to the Times article,
“ Some businesses awarded large contracts have long records of
performing similar work, but they also have had some problems. CH2M
Hill and the Fluor Corporation, two global engineering companies
awarded a total of $250 million in contracts, were previously cited by
regulators for safety violations at a weapons plant cleanup. The
Bechtel Corporation, awarded a contract that could be worth $100
million, is under scrutiny for its oversight of the "Big Dig"
construction project in Boston. And Kellogg, Brown & Root, which
was given $60 million in contracts, was rebuked by federal auditors for
unsubstantiated billing from the Iraq reconstruction and criticized for
bills like $100-per-bag laundry service. All of the companies have
publicly defended their performance.” What we will see especially when
you consider the Bu$h family pattern of corruption and fraud ala the
massive nation wide Savings and Loan Scandal that Jeb, Neil and George
H.W Bu$h profited from and when we understand the notoriously rampant
patterns of Department of Defense and HUD fraud and money laundering
will be more taxpayer rip offs, price fixing and gouging, out and out
fraud and theft. The cronyism and good ol’ boy network will reap
billions. The Times quotes Bennie Thompson a Mississippi Congressman
who complained about the rampant cronyism he sees already. “‘There is
just more of the good-old-boy system, taking care of its political
allies,’ Mr. Thompson said. ‘FEMA and the others have put out these
contracts in such a haphazard manner, I don't know how they can come up
with anything that is accountable to the taxpayers.’”. That’s their
pattern: steal and loot the public coffers with no oversight or
accountability. If you get caught, you just cover it up because for the
most part the media plays the game by the crooks’ rules. To get an idea
of how big a boondoggle or profit making venture this could turn out to
be, one company got rid of its total leftover 2005 inventory of mobile
homes, “FEMA has led the effort to line up contractors to install tens
of thousand of temporary homes. The scale of the job is still unclear -
depending on demand, FEMA may downsize its plans - but the agency has
been rushing to buy as many travel trailers and mobile homes as it can.
It has signed five contracts each worth more than $100 million with
major manufacturers. And it has scoured the country, buying up whatever
it can find on dealers' lots. That has turned into a bonanza for
businesses like Wagner's RV Center in Suamico, Wis., which sold 69
trailers to FEMA for $1.3 million. ‘In a single sale, we cleared out
most of our leftover inventory from the 2005 model year,’ said Leonard
Wagner, the owner of the RV center. ‘That does not happen very
often.’”. The clean up and relocation have to be done. However, the
victims and taxpayers deserve an honest effort, not another opportunity
to be ripped off. The work has to be done but the habit (patterns) of
the Bu$h crime family and their cohorts are to find ways to engage in
out and out fraud when doing business with the government. Worse, they
often manipulate the situation and circumstances or they have inside
information or foreknowledge. This is the petri dish that spawned the
corruption fraud and abuse we’ve witnessed in the past.
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Bu$h’s Real Goal In The Katrina Debacle, More Power
“By STEWART M. POWELL Hearst Newspapers
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday urged Congress
to examine whether the White House needs stronger powers to deal with
catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina. Bush’s backing for the
congressional inquiry raised the possibility that lawmakers might
expand presidential authority to:
• Order mandatory civilian evacuations
• Dispatch U.S.-based armed forces for emergency search-and-rescue operations
• Grant wider leeway for active-duty U.S. military personnel to carry out law enforcement operations.
“It’s really important that as we take a step back and learn lessons —
that we are in a position to adequately answer the question: ‘Are we
prepared for major catastrophes?”’ Bush said during a tour of hurricane
damage in New Orleans. He said if there was a terrorist attack with
weapons of mass destruction, such as germ-warfare agents, “we’ve got to
make sure we understand the lessons learned to be able to deal with
catastrophe.” Asked whether the federal government needed broader
authority to “come in earlier or even in advance of a storm that (is)
threatening?” Bush replied: “I think that’s one of the interesting
issues that Congress needs to take a look at.”- www.TheState.com
09-13-05
I kept wondering what the real motives behind the
federal government’s seemingly inadequate response to Hurricane
Katina were? Looking at what happened it seemed to me it was very
deliberate; that FEMA consciously delayed, they were premeditated in
preventing first responders, supplies and food from getting into the
city. We now know FEMA cordoned the city off preventing help and
supplies from entering the city. I went back and reviewed a book I read
about a year or so ago, Alice In Wonderland and the World Trade Center
Disaster subtitled; Why the Official Story of 9-11 is a Monumental Lie
by David Icke. On page 442 Icke talks about FEMA and Hurricane Andrew
which struck South Dade County Florida in August of 1992. He says, “Far
from helping the hundreds of thousands of homeless and injured victims,
FEMA cordoned off the area and left people to fend for themselves. They
were given no food, no water, no medical supplies, no shelter and no
help whatsoever when the disaster struck.” He quotes a resident
Ms K.T. Frankovich who wrote a book documenting her experiences
entitled Where Heavens Meet. In it she shared how police and FEMA
officials in a convoy of twelve to fifteen cars patrolling her
neighborhood three days after the hurricane hit who put a revolver to
her temple, threatened her and refused to assist her and treat her
wounds which included a broken jaw, cuts and embedded glass. (My
emphasis) Sound familiar? Was their behavior during Hurricane
Andrew in 1992 a dry run for 2005's Hurricane Katrina? Were they both
practice ops in preparation for a FEMA/military occupation/lock down
of major AmeriKKKan regions or cities during their most
vulnerable time? Is this a coincidence or an eery preview of
things to come? Was Michael Brown really that inept or was he a
convenient fall guy (chump) like former CIA Director George
J. Tenet who obediently fell on his sword to protect Bu$h’s lies about
WMD in Iraq ? Think about this, Brown is the only member of Bu$h’s
administration to resign under pressure no matter how bad things got!
People like Pearle, Powell, Wolfowitz, Tenet and Allbaugh all resigned,
some under clouds of misgiving and angst over their policies and
performance, but none of them were run out of town on a rail by
the media like Michael Brown. Was this a case of the media discovering
its spine or was there something more nefarious and clandestine going
on? While there is always the possibility members of the corporate
media did deprogram their minds and get some courage; I suspect
the whole affair is part of the usual pattern of the ruling oligarchy
creating or exacerbating pre-existing problems so they can offer
“solutions” which further their own New World Order agenda, which is
more government control over our lives.
In an article in The State, a South Carolina
newspaper, dated September 13, 2005 (following a partisan Republican
Party’s move to block formation of an independent commission to study
the federal government’s failures during Hurricane Katrina), George W
Bu$h is quoted as saying he urges Congress to determine whether or not
he needs more powers to deal with disasters like Hurricane Katrina or a
terrorist attack on the US? The article said, “Asked whether the
federal government needed broader authority to ‘come in earlier or even
in advance of a storm that (is) threatening?’ Bush replied: ‘I
think that’s one of the interesting issues that Congress needs to take
a look at.’ Bush’s comments came as outside experts urged a variety of
changes they said could improve the federal government’s ability to
respond to natural disasters or terrorist attacks.” The article doesn’t
identify these “outside experts” were, but you can bet your last money
many of them were members of right wing NeoCon think tanks, the Council
on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. These groups and
their puppets and stooges’ main objective is to facilitate the
consolidation of more and more power into fewer and fewer hands until
AmeriKKKa is a fascist oligarchy under the rule of a psychopathic
element. This criminal element would think nothing of plotting and
planning 9-11 using CIA assets and patsies, or manipulate the weather
using HAARP technology (see www.HARRP.net for full details), lie about
WMD or withhold assistance during a disaster to get what they wanted
which is more power and control over us.
It’s time to wake up and realize who and what we are
dealing with here. Bu$h’s mea culpa for the Katrina disaster is a sham.
He has never admitted a mistake or taken responsibility for any errors
or admitted he lied in the past, why the “change” now? It is all part
and parcel to their plan to use it to further their nefarious agendas.
Watch, just like 9-11, the Republican investigation will recommend more
consolidation of power, more bureaucracy, more invasion of
privacy, more erosion of civil liberties (ala the US PATRIOT ACT and
Kean Commission recommendations to form a secret police and super spy
agency) and expanded powers for FEMA and the military. Don’t say
you weren’t warned.
From the Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
What Are We Going To Do Now?
“Nationalism is a double edged sword. It can be
wielded as a tool of oppression by cohesively organized peoples or
nation states such as those of Western Europe, who used it to impose
their exploitative rule over many non-European nation and peoples, or
by White Americans to enslave and otherwise dominate Black Americans.
It can also be use as a tool to organize people, nation states, to best
achieve their liberation from oppression an/or to achieve sovereignty
or self-determination and to gain control of a national territory.” Dr.
Amos N. Wilson Blueprint For Black Power A Moral, Political and
Economic Imperative for the Twenty-First Century page(s) 849-50.
Once again our experiences at the hands of our
political adversaries has demonstrated the need to have practical and
workable plans of action, survival to counterbalance to the at very
least the callous and insensitive and at worst a genocidal response to
a situation like Hurricane Katrina. We must realize that this 2005
disaster mirrors the 1927 response of whites towards Africans in
Americans who were caught and devastated by the inundating floods of
1927 in the Mississippi Delta region. Images of trapped citizens of New
Orleans who are too poor, too sick with no means of transportation, no
social support networks or the wherewithal to escape the impending
floods and the anemic response of the Bu$h administration to their
plight begs the question, can we depend upon the government for our
survival in a time of need? On my Internet radio program The Digital
Underground which airs live Sundays on www.Harambeeradio.com From
12 Noon to 2 PM Eastern time (forgive the shameless plug) I had two non
mainstream journalists as guests: Henry DeBarnardo and Saeed
Shabazz. Brother DeBernardo is the publisher of The Black Star
Newspaper out of Philadelphia Pa. and Brother Shabazz is the UN
Correspondent for The Final Call Newspaper. We discussed Hurricane
Kartina, the ample and detailed warnings of a storm like that, the
storm itself and aftermath in detail from a number of differing
perspectives and vantage points. However the one pertinent question
these astute brothers raised was, “what are we going to do in light of
what we have just witnessed?” That is the 64 Million Dollar
question. There is no doubt in most black folks’ minds that at
the very least the initial (and inept) response of the Bu$h
administration reflected their race and class biases towards a city
that is almost 70% African-American and who has a disproportionate
percentage of people living below the poverty line. For me Bu$h’s
secondary response, that of combat operations rather than search, and
rescue of survivors and repairing the levees and draining the flood
water demonstrates his mental myopia. I saw a photo of heavily armed
National Guardsmen riding in an armored carrier in the flooded streets
of New Orleans as bystanders watched. The caption read, “If the only
tool you have is a hammer, all the world looks like a nail.” My
concern was with the decidedly militarist tone to this operation. Why
did the recent issue of www.Armytimes.com have the banner headline,
“Combat Operation In New Orleans.” What is that about?
As the brothers on my radio program separately
asked, “What are we going to do now”? What are we going to do? We have
social, fraternal and religious organization mobilizing to help send
aid directly to the victims in the Gulf Coast and that is needed and
commendable; but what about formulating an overarching plan to insure
our survival in a racist, color and class biased culture. Quiet
as it’s kept, most of us can easily envision ourselves in the shoes of
our brethren in New Orleans regardless of our jobs, bank accounts and
salaries. There but for the grace of the CREATOR go we all! We saw
first hand just how cold-blooded and callous Bu$h and Co. are. Kanye
West was correct, Bu$h doesn’t care about black people, but this is no
major revelation. How long has Kanye been Black in AmeriKKKa?
It’s not even about Bu$h. Bu$h’s response was similar and
symptomatic of many white AmeriKKKans. Their attitudes made it easy for
the mass media to demonize the poor and the sick who were marooned in
New Orleans as undesirables, and criminals unworthy of saving. It’s not
just about the Republicans either, Bill Clinton was appraised of an
equally abhorrent ongoing condition in the waning days of his
presidency; the disproportionate incarceration rates of people of color
(Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans ). The US Sentencing
project in their landmark report raised this issue, but the man loved
and revered by the Negro elite , the man who owed his presidency to
their loyalty chose to do nothing to ameliorate this situation! This is
bi-partisan racism! This is all the more reason we must come
together to formulate strategies to empower ourselves by building
strongly ethnocentric social networks, independent economic and
educational infrastructures and cohesive political
organization. What lessons do we need to learn from
Hurricane Katrina? Where do we go from here? When will we stop
being reactionary and totally dependent on our adversaries for
sustenance and assistance and become proactive, self-determined and
self-actualizing people?
Look at our situation, where would you get food if a
major disaster or military siege/occupation like the one going in New
Orleans hit your town? Are we up to speed and in the loop as far as
civil defense and emergency management preparation are concerned in our
towns and neighborhood? If not, why not? Do we even know our neighbors
well enough to know where in their homes and apartments they or their
family members sleep in case of a fire or other emergency? Do we
have enough supplies of bottled water, first aid kits, canned or
dehydrated food to tide our neighborhood over in case our community is
condoned off or cut off from supplies? Have local churches mosques and
temples even thought of that? Will the Millions More March
address any of these questions in light of recent current events? Do we
even see the need for any of this? Questions, questions, does anyone
see the urgency or need come up with answers?
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Corporate Wealth Redistribution (Thievery)
“Delta executives declined to say how long the
airline would remain under bankruptcy protection, but it could take
years if the nearly three-year bankruptcy at United is any guide.
Problems are also looming with its pension plan. If Delta's pension
plan defaults, it would set a record, surpassing even the size of
United's pension plan collapse earlier this year, according to
estimates issued yesterday by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
Already, the agency's finances have been severely shaken by a series of
large corporate bankruptcies and pension failures. The guarantor
estimated that Delta's pension plan had promised benefits worth $17.5
billion, but had assets of only $6.9 billion, for a $10.6 billion
shortfall. The most recent estimate of United's shortfall, by contrast,
was $10.1 billion.” MICHELINE MAYNARD Bankruptcy For 2 New
York Times 09-15-05
The news two major airlines, Delta and Northwest
Airlines, have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection seemed to
shock many Wall Street investors and media business talking heads. If
they were really paying any attention to trends in the industry, they
would not be shocked. Over the last few years this has been the trend,
airlines filing for bankruptcy, defaulting on their pension obligations
to their union employees yet at the same time offering their CEO huge
compensation packages. This is a major con game. Yes, the airlines are
in financial difficulty, rising fuel prices, stiff competition from low
fare no frills carriers have cut into their profit margins. But at the
same time, the airlines like most major industries in AmeriKKKa have
shortchanged their employees by deliberately under funding their
pension contributions by billions (that’s with a b) of dollars.
According to an article in the New York Times dated 09-15-05 Delta
Airlines has a major shortfall in their company pension obligations.
“Problems are also looming with its pension plan. If Delta's pension
plan defaults, it would set a record, surpassing even the size of
United's pension plan collapse earlier this year, according to
estimates issued yesterday by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
Already, the agency's finances have been severely shaken by a series of
large corporate bankruptcies and pension failures. The guarantor
estimated that Delta's pension plan had promised benefits worth $17.5
billion, but had assets of only $6.9 billion, for a $10.6 billion
shortfall. The most recent estimate of United's shortfall, by contrast,
was $10.1 billion.” According to an article by Reuters dated 09-15-05
the pension under funding by both airlines was a major factor in
filing. “ For both Delta and Northwest, huge pension obligations are
another major issue and the main factor that separates them from
low-cost carriers, Feld said. Delta's pension plans are estimated to be
$10.6 billion underfunded according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty
Corp., the federal agency that insures private pensions. How the
airlines deal with that liability will influence the amount creditors
recover, said Fitch's Warlick. Strategists said they expect Delta and
Northwest to follow the path of U.S. Airways and United, which
terminated their defined benefit pension plans and handed them over to
the PBGC. If the carriers had to shoulder their own pension
liabilities, recovery prospects for other creditors would be hurt, they
said. First in line to be repaid will likely be lenders who provided
debtor-in-possession financing, money obtained to keep a company
operating in bankruptcy.”
Notice their strategy, pass their pension obligation
off on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. According to its own Website
the PBGC guarantees “‘basic benefits’ earned before your plan
ended, which include: Pension benefits at normal retirement age, most
early retirement benefits, annuity benefits for survivors of plan
participants and disability benefits for disabilities that occurred
before the date the plan ended ” On the surface workers at United and
Northwest Airlines could breathe a sigh of relief thinking their
pensions were protected and safe. However what the PBGC Website
doesn’t tell us is that the agency itself facing a revenue shortfall of
over $24 billion (that’s with a b) dollars! This means the very vehicle
created to be the safety net for millions of AmeriKKKan workers to
protect their hard earned pension funds is itself in financial
difficulty! It also means that the taxpayers and workers may be
forced to ante up funds to bail the PBGC out. What we are seeing
is class warfare, pillage and redistribution of wealth on a massive
scale. It’s the corporate version of the Savings and Loan scandal or
the ongoing HUD and Department of Defense fraudulence. For the most
part the corporate owned media rarely explains what is going on or how
it will impact the working class. It is part of their ongoing class
warfare against poor and working people, designed to keep the masses
ignorant of what the corporate leaders and their government cohorts and
flunkies are doing to us. Notice Bu$h never addresses major corporate
difficulties or the media will never asks probing questions that will
shed new light on the subject or embarrass their corporate ownership.
But that’s par for the course in fascist AmeriKKKa.
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
The New New Orleans
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
By Michael McGough, Post-Gazette National Bureau WASHINGTON -- The U.S.
Supreme Court yesterday refused to reconsider one of its most
controversial rulings of the 2004-05 term: a 5-4 decision upholding a
Connecticut city's use of eminent domain to acquire private property
for a redevelopment plan anchored by a private business. The order
denying a rehearing did not come as a surprise because the court seldom
reconsiders one of its decisions. But few rulings have provoked such
public outrage as the court's June 23 decision in Kelo v. New London.
In that case, the court held that New London, which had been designated
a distressed municipality, could acquire the property of Susette Kelo
and eight other residents of the city's Fort Trumbull neighborhood and
use the land for an elaborate development surrounding a $300 million
Pfizer pharmaceutical company research facility.
I watched the US Supreme Court decision in Kelo v
New London with great interest because as a borough councilman in a
small historically African-American incorporated self governing town we
are facing opposition to a proposed redevelopment plan ourselves. I
must admit at first I was surprised by the 5-4 decision. However after
thinking about it, given the influence of corporatism in contemporary
AmeriKKKa, I’m not shocked. After all, this is the same right wing
leaning court that awarded the presidency to George W Bush in the
infamous Gore v Bush decision of 2000. Contrary to the propaganda
we learned in Civics 101, the US Supreme Court is not concerned about
justice. In it’s long and infamous history the US Supreme court has
demonstrated that it is really an arbitrator of last resort, not for
justice but for maintaining a status quo favoring the interests of the
ruling elites. In this case the taking of private property for economic
development rather than public projects like roads, schools or reducing
blight is consistent with recent rulings and the corporatist (fascist)
drift of AmeriKKKa . The reason I say I’m not surprised is because I
see the Kelo v New London decision as the linchpin for the taking of
private property in New Orleans that will eventually alter the
socio-economic landscape of that beleaguered city. The Kelo v New
London ruling will set the stage for a massive land grab or as Justice
Sandra Day O’Conner called it, “a reverse Robin Hood, stealing from the
poor to give to the rich”, which will pave the way for a
re-gentrified New Orleans. Unlike the project we are attempting in our
town where any land owned by citizens would be amply compensated for,
the use of Kelo v New London will be used in New Orleans to take
advantage of poor black home owners (although most of the people
stranded by Hurricane Katrina were not home owners). The devastated
and hard pressed homeowners will probably accept any offer made
by the developers who are salivating at the opportunity to build a new
city minus all the poor and black residents Katrina and FEMA
dislocated. It is highly unlikely the residents who were whisked off
without telling them where they were being taken, who have been
relocated in shelters and “resettlement” (concentration?) camps, who
lacked the wherewithal to even evacuate New Orleans on their own during
an impending catastrophe, will have the wherewithal to return to the
city to start over.
I have seen numerous articles on the Internet
suggesting Hurricane Katrina allowed the Bu$h administration and FEMA
to practice ethnic cleansing on the QT. When the levees were
mysteriously breeched (it is has now been ascertained the rising
waters of the storm did not compromise the New Orleans levee
structures) the low-lying areas of a city built below were inundated
with flood water. The flooding wiped out many homes and the owners have
lost everything. However, many of the residents lived in public housing
because black home ownership in New Orleans is relatively low on a per
capita basis, as one would expect in a city with a high poverty rate
and almost seventy per cent black inhabitants! The residents who
lost everything and who have also been displaced, will not be factors
in the new New Orleans! Those planning to rebuild New Orleans
don’t want or need them because they offer little in the
way of skills, entrepreneurship (other than the underground economy) or
economic potential. The working class homeowners unfortunate enough not
to have their deeds, adequate flood or home owners’ insurance can
easily be swindled out of their property by unscrupulous city,
insurance and mortgage officials. The ruling elites of New Orleans
understand the importance of the city as a tourist center and one of
the most strategic ports in the world, so they definitely plan to
rebuild the city. Only poor blacks will not be welcome. They don’t plan
on bringing back the poor blacks who lived there prior to the hurricane.
FEMA did its part by displacing and relocating
folks hundreds and in some cases thousands of miles away from the city.
The fact most of those who were relocated are not homeowners, makes it
easier for them not to make it back to the city. The homeowners
cannot look to the federal government or the courts for support now
that the US Supreme Court has rendered the Kelo v New London decision.
The head of the legal team who filed suit on behalf of Susette Kelo
admitted he wasn’t surprised the Supreme Court refused to reconsider
its ruling. In an article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette dated 09-23-05
Scott G. Bullock of the Justice Institute stated, “Considering that the
court in over 50 years has not reconsidered a ruling in these
circumstances, it's not a huge surprise. It does make it crystal clear
that the Supreme Court won't protect small businesses and homeowners,
and that they will have to go to their state legislatures.” According
to Bullock relief will be sought in the state legislatures and courts.
As we all know, the poor people of New Orleans unlike Halliburton and
Bechtel who will make billions rebuilding the city, do not have access
to the legislature or the courts. In a document published by The
Committee for a Better New Orleans in their Housing and Neighborhood
task force entitled Blueprint For A Better New Orleans stated, “
Vacant and blighted properties are public safety hazards, eyesores and
barriers to neighborhood revitalization. Eliminating these
pervasive problem properties from New Orleans is essential to
reclaiming and maintaining the City's unique neighborhoods.
Reclaim neighborhoods by reducing the
number of blighted properties (lots and vacant buildings) through
renovation and redevelopment, with demolition as a last resort.
2.Neighborhood revitalization.
Nothing defines New Orleans' character
so much as its rich variety of neighborhoods. To maintain these
treasures, the citizens themselves must be in charge of preserving
their heritage and charting their future, and must have the
information, tools and resources to take on this responsibility.
Strengthen the capacity of our citizens to define, develop and maintain
attractive and vibrant neighborhoods.
3.Increasing the rate of home ownership.
In that it gives people both a much
larger stake in the future of their neighborhoods as well as a platform
for their own economic advancement, home ownership is widely considered
a key to community health and revitalization. New Orleans must
increase dramatically its rate of home ownership.”
Significantly increase the rate of home
ownership for low to middle income residents through a combination of
public and private initiatives addressing home finance and education,
as well as livable and affordable supply of housing stock.
4.0 Affordable rental housing.
Renters will always be part of the
housing equation. As the City aims to reduce residential density
in the housing developments, additional rental properties will be
needed in neighborhoods throughout New Orleans. A particular
pitfall to avoid in this process is clustering of low-income
renters. Low to moderate income residents, the elderly and the
homeless are specific populations with particular rental needs.
Increase the supply of affordable rental
housing by increasing resources and removing barriers for low to
moderate income housing (including special needs populations) in mixed
income areas. ” All this sounds good and looks good on paper but how
were they planning to accomplish all this in New Orleans as poor and
corrupt as that city was? It seems to me Hurricane Katrina, FEMA and
Bu$h helped them solve a major part of their problem.
| | |
| From The Ramparts Junious Ricardo Stanton
Big Brother Police State One step Closer
“REAL ID goes
way beyond that. It's a huge power-grab by the federal government over
the states' systems for issuing driver's licenses. REAL ID doesn't go
into effect until three years after it becomes law, but I expect things
to be much worse by then. One of my fears is that this new uniform
driver's license will bring a new level of "show me your papers" checks
by the government. Already you can't fly without an ID, even though no
one has ever explained how that ID check makes airplane terrorism any
harder. I have previously written about Secure Flight, another lousy
security system that tries to match airline passengers against
terrorist watch lists. I've already heard rumblings about requiring
states to check identities against "government databases" before
issuing driver's licenses. I'm sure Secure Flight will be used for
cruise ships, trains, and possibly even subways. Combine REAL ID with
Secure Flight and you have an unprecedented system for broad
surveillance of the population. Is there anyone who would feel safer
under this kind of police state?”- Bruce Schneier 05-0805
The cowards in the US Senate recently passed an $82
billion dollar military emergency appropriations bill that contained an
attachment establishing what amounts to a National ID card. The
plutocrats have been attempting to force surveillance and ID measures
on the public for quite some time. Now using 9-11 as a rouse has given
them the pretext under claims of “national security” to implement wide
ranging means of spying on, intruding upon and interfering with the
everyday lives of the AmeriKKKan public. The PATRIOT Act I and II were
merely pieces on a larger puzzle to usher in a totalitarian police
state under the guise of protecting the sheep from the big bad wolves
of foreign terrorists. The 9-11 Whitewash Commission offered
recommendations along these lines and the US congress did their part by
passing it as a stand alone bill (HR 418) by a vote of 261-161 last
February. Later the fascists realized they might have some trouble
passing a stand alone bill in the Senate so they adroitly attached it
to a military appropriations bill no one was going to oppose. If
national security requires a national ID why didn’t they present it as
a stand alone bill debate it and vote up or down on its merits? They
didn’t do that because the legislation is totally bogus. There is no
need for a national ID. The fact they snuck it by shows their
disingenuousness. Most AmeriKKKans don’t even know what was going on
because the corporate media distracted the public with disproportionate
coverage of the Michael Jackson saga or the disappearing fiancee
stories that have taken up so much time and space in all the media
lately. The bill is called the Real ID Act, it mandates the states
modify their respective driver’s license to follow national uniform ID
standards to be established by the Department of Homeland Security. The
rationale was to make it difficult for illegal aliens to get driver’s
licenses. But establishing a national ID will not solve that problem.
They simply will do what a lot of folks already do, drive with no
license, insurance or registration! The Senate voted to pass it on May
10 without discussion or debate and of course George W
“Freedom is on the march”Bush has indicated he will sign it.
The bill mandates states, at their own expense,
(which means the local taxpayers will absorb the costs) will collect
data on each person that show s proof of citizenship upon applying for
a driver’s license; and the states must switch to a uniform and
standardized driver’s license that can be swiped through computer
scanners. (Where are the state’s rights advocates when you really need
them?) The bill does not provide for federal funding to pay for the
changes which will cause additional fiscal hardship for cash strapped
states. Of course if the federal government bribes them with money more
states may be willing to go along with the okey-doke. The new
standardized license will contain encoded data that could be accessible
through storage and sharing in a humongous national data base. (What
would happen if hackers got into that data base?) Homeland
Security has already gone on record as supporting Radio Frequency ID
(RFID) chips that could be implanted on our person, in ID cards or on
license plates. More radical supporters of a police state are calling
for IDs based upon fingerprints, retina scans or DNA. How will any of
this provide protection from or stop a terrorist or terrorists
from doing harm if he or she is so motivated? Even the FBI admits
they don’t really know the real identities of the 19 “high-jackers” who
allegedly commandeered the four planes on 9-11 because their IDs were
fake. This bill is just a rouse, another a step in bringing
George Orwell’s Big Brother into reality. Wake up AmeriKKKa don’t
allow the fascists to frighten us into accenting to a totalitarian
police state! Over 600 organizations are opposed to the
legislation including the ACLU. Don’t be surprised if some legal
challenges surface before the bill goes into effect in 2008. Pass the
word, join the fight to save your privacy and freedom!
We already endure long lines and inconvenience at
airports, this new law will create the same situation at local DMV
sites and state offices where applications for driver’s licences are
taken, and for what? So some hacker or corrupt bureaucrat can steal our
identity or sell our information? One reason so many people who knew
about it opposed this bill, is because they lack coincidence in the
government to maintain the data securely. An article by Lisa Vaas on
www.eweek.com dated May 6, 2005 pointed out “Security experts have
expressed dismay about new legislation that will usher in the nation's
first national ID system—citing a lack of confidence in the
government's ability to employ the technology in such a way as to
prevent citizens from being preyed upon by identity thieves...
‘Gathering that information and putting it into state DMVs with a
skyrocketing incident rate of identity thefts is a really bad idea,’
said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center in Washington, an organization which has long
opposed the idea of national Ids. It's not that the database
information can't be encrypted, security experts point out—it's that
the government has proven untrustworthy in doing so.” There have been a
rash of hacks and computer thefts from DMVs in Nevada and Florida.
Almost daily hackers and identify thieves break into government as well
as private company data bases and steal information. The federal
government is not immune and a national data base would be a prime
target for hackers! Couple this with the potential for invasion of
privacy and tracking of individuals abuses makes the bill bad news.
When you consider the bill was passed in the US Senate without
discussion or debate, it makes you wonder whose side they are on?
POSITIVELY BLACK Junious Ricardo Stanton
Trying To Find Ways To Heal Ourselves
“Although the concept of multiple personality has
never been applied to population groups as a mean of explaining
abnormal and often bizarre group personality behavioral traits, it
might prove useful in explaining some aspects of behavior in African
Americans and Spanish speaking Americans. Both groups have been the
victims of intense and unprecedented torture, abuse and sadism for over
300 years. Both have exhibited unique, negative behavioral traits
during the 300 year onslaught. No other plausible explanation of their
respective group disorganization has proven satisfactory... Further I
contend that the group disorder can only be solved by a kind of group
hypnosis where the victims care retrogressed beyond and then through
slavery and induced to reclaim the fragmented knowledge of their
glorious African life before slavery. A similar remedy should be
applied to Spanish speaking communities in the United States.” Dr.
Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Monsour Betrayal By Any Other Name
page 716
If we are able to pause and think independently
looking at our situation and condition for a moment, we would logically
and rationally conclude that it is not natural to be enamored of our
oppressors more than we love ourselves, or to docilely and passively
acquiesce in our own dehumanization via self-destructive ideation,
emotions and behavior. As Africans in AmeriKKKa we are caught in a
matrix of mental discombobulation, deceit and disorganization. We have
been through a trans-generational inferno of white supremacist race and
color based oppression (the habitual and culturally sanctioned stifling
of our innate potential and systemic denial of opportunities) that
continues to this day. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the
ruling elites have brainwashed the dominant culture to believe
AmeriKKKa is a color blind, free and open society. Much like their
pathological delusion that the AmeriKKKan racial caste system
(euphemistically called segregation) was based upon the notion of
“Separate and Equal”, today's racists maintain the masses of
Africans in AmeriKKKa are on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder
because we are lazy, lack ambition and gumption. Or, they think because
a few people like Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey or some professional
athletes and entertainers are well off, all is well. One of
the definitions of power is: the ability to compel obedience. In that
regard whites exerted power over Africans by virtue of physical force
and psychological abuse, conditioning and manipulation. We were taught
to despise ourselves, to believe we were sub-human, that Africans had
contributed nothing to the ebb and flow of human civilization. Every
institution of Euro-AmeriKKKan culture was used to reinforce the notion
of African inferiority and European right to be in control. Of course
we resisted and we still resist, but the oppressor is pathologically
relentless in developing new methods and means to maintain his hegemony
not just over us but the rest of humanity.
We know the deal. The question is, what are we going
to do about it, how will be free our minds and bodies from the clutches
of global white supremacist menticide (the deliberate destruction of
another's or groups mind). African psychologists and psychiatrists such
as the late Dr. Bobby Wright, Dr Francis Cress Welsing, Dr. Amos Wilson
realized the wholesale negative impact white supremacist mental
programming had and still has on African people to this day. In his
book Betrayal By Any Other Name Dr Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Monsour
posited Africans in America suffer from group multiple personality
disorder, the result of our psychic and physical trauma experienced in
this country. Citing two famous cases Dr. Al Monsour, who is an
attorney and philosopher, believes the same therapies used to assist
the individual sufferers of multiple personality disorder could be
modified to collectively treat African-American victims of
culturally induced mental and emotional disorders. Of course such a
radical idea would be scoffed at by whites who are in denial about the
nature and scope of their barbarism towards Africans in AmeriKKKa.
Nevertheless Dr. Al-Monsour asserts non-conventional therapists and
healers could use collective hypnotism (hypnotic rituals similar to the
trance of some traditional West African religions and intense group
interaction) and guided group interaction techniques to deprogram
Africans suffering from the ongoing and chronic trauma of living in a
racist, anti-life, aspiritual culture. He says, “The patient must be
continually feed a balanced diet of spiritual, biological, mental and
emotional nutrients in order to establish the values necessary to
survive and prosper in the short term.” Later in the book he
acknowledges the insidious effect of television and the media on our
minds, however his solution is at that point (the book was published in
1993) is to regulate and monitor our media consumption.
All is not lost, there are viable solutions. We can
create our own media and content. We now have the ability to create our
own movies, videos and offer them to our people directly via mediums
like the Internet and direct to consumer distribution. In fact a brand
new subscription product; Digital Video Magazine 21st Century
Underground Railroad a collaborative effort by the MATAH Network,
COMPROTAX, Dudley Products produced by Teamwork International
Productions LLC is being introduced as you read this. It is an exciting
new way to inform educate and entertain by offering content that is
racially redemptive, images that are positive and a message that
uplifts and exhorts our people to do and be their best. For more
information about the 21 Century Underground Railroad call (336)
373-1695. MEE Productions, a media research and production company is
now producing direct to consumer motion pictures. Their films offer
positive, socially relevant messages aimed at our young people. A slew
of conscious African centered Internet Websites offering self-affirming
and empowering content are now available and more are coming online all
the time. Sure they are few and far between compared to the
myriad Websites out there, but this is a start. When I first started
doing Internet talk radio there were only two black Internet stations
featuring a talk format. Now there are several. We can make this
technology work for us! We know what must be done, we must also support
vehicles attempting to heal and restore us to sanity, wellness and
wholeness. Our destiny is in our own hands, let's take full advantage
of the opportunities.
From The Ramparts Junious Ricardo Stanton
Food For Thought
“Many Americans
are familiar with the filibuster conducted by Jimmy Stewart, playing
Senator Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra's film Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington, but there have been some famous filibusters in the
real-life Senate as well. During the 1930s, Senator Huey P. Long
effectively used the filibuster against bills that he thought favored
the rich over the poor. The Louisiana senator frustrated his colleagues
while entertaining spectators with his recitations of Shakespeare and
his reading of recipes for "pot-likkers." Long once held the Senate
floor for fifteen hours. The record for the longest individual speech
goes to South Carolina's J. Strom Thurmond who filibustered for 24
hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.”
www.US Senate.gov/artandhistory
We’ve heard so much about the nuclear option with
regard to the recent brouhaha concerning the Republican efforts to push
their fascist agenda by confirming Bush’ judicial nominees. I find it
interesting so called progressives and opponents of these right wing
nominees were forced to resort to threatening a US Senate filibuster to
delay and discourage the confirmation process. It’s ironic because
during the hey day of the Civil Rights era, Southern Democrats would
always threaten to filibuster any legislation attempting to destroy
AmeriKKKa’s virulent racial cast system. Following the successes of the
Civil Rights movement ( the ruling elites’ concessions to partially
dismantle the apartheid laws under pressure from direct action civil
disobedience, demonstrations and boycotts was done not out of good will
but primarily as a propaganda ploy to clean up AmeriKKKa’s tattered
image around the world). After the passage of the Civil Rights bills of
the mid 1960's, whites abandoned the Democratic Party in doves
throughout the South and jumped on Alabama Governor George Wallace’s
presidential bandwagon. When the ruling elites eliminated Wallace via
attempted assassination, they joined Richard Nixon’s successful right
wing “Law and Order” 1968 presidential campaign. Of course in those
days the term “Law and Order” was used by racists like Wallace and
Nixon as a euphemism for maintaining the status quo” and keeping the
darkies in their place. As a result Nixon militarized many local
police departments throughout the nation and stepped up the efforts of
the FBI’s COINTELPRO and the CIA’s Operation CHAOS to quell all dissent
and opposition to the imperialist wars in Southeast Asia and domestic
oppression. The irony is in 2005 the Republicans are the ones
threatening to change the Senate rules to prevent the Democrats from
employing a filibuster to hold up right wing nominees for the federal
bench.
*
*
*
It’s been three weeks since the London Times
published a top secret internal memo from a member of British
Parliament written eight months before the invasion of Iraq detailing
how Bush and Co. were cooking intelligence to justify regime change
knowing full well Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United
States nor any of his immediate neighbors including Israel. The
only place you see any discussion of the memo or its implications (this
proves Bush lied about his reasons for invading another sovereign
nation) is on the Internet. Where is the outrage and clamoring for
Bush’s impeachment for treason and high crimes, let alone for war crime
resulting in the death of thousands of innocent Iraqis?! The irony of
this is the people who hounded Clinton for his immorality claimed
morality as their motive! Where is the Christian Right on this issue?
Where are the Bible thumpers demanding Bush be held accountable for his
lies and war crimes? Alas the beat goes on, AmeriKKKa remains in
a media induced stupor. None of the hypocrisy, none of the scandals
about the missing Iraq reconstruction money, the detainee and human
rights abuses, the horrific, heavy handed and senseless destruction
wrought by US forces seems to faze the masses of AmeriKKKans. Most
AmeriKKKans are too busy on their treadmill lives to think for
themselves. The economy is doing well for the owners and CEOs but
things are not so good for Joe and Jane Sixpack. But the corporate
owned media rarely chronicles this reality just like they suppressed
and ignored the London Times memo about the invasion of Iraq. To the
rest of the world AmeriKKKa looks like a rabid ravaging wolf
threatening to attack anyone and anything that comes within its preview
especially if they have oil or natural gas or if attacking them will
somehow serve the interests of Israel. When will AmeriKKKa wake
up?
*
*
The Bush administration is still trying to convince
AmeriKKKa to piratize oops I mean privatize Social Security by claiming
the system is in crisis and about to go broke. This is their MO govern
via fear and deceit.Well the system is not in the type of crisis Bush
claims. Nor is it in as bad shape as the federal government of which
Bush and his cronies now control. In fact tying the system to the stock
market may bring on even more woes and disaster than the system is
experiencing now thus compounding the situation. But that’s mere
speculation. What we know for sure is, Bush’s scheme will require even
more borrowing by a tapped out US of A government. What most
AmeriKKKans don’t realize is because of Bush and the NeoConmen’s
recklessness, AmeriKKKa is seen around the world as a down on its luck
gambler the loan sharks don’t want to lend money to even though they
know they will easily profit from the loan due to the exorbitant
interest they charge or the collateral they extract. They say ignorance
is bliss, given what is going on in AmeriKKKa and the ignorance of the
AmeriKKKan public, I’m not so sure. | | |
| The Struggle Intensifies
POSITIVELY BLACK Junious Ricardo Stanton
The Struggle Intensifies
Posted by on 2 May 2005 06:39 PM
“The
federal government has announced a $1 million bounty for the capture of
fugitive JoAnne Chesimard, who is widely known as Assata Shakur.
Assata, who is also Tupac’s godmother, has lived in Cuba nearly 30
years after escaping a maximum security jail. Today [May 2] represents
the 32nd anniversary of a notorious clash between members of the Black
Liberation Army and the New Jersey state troopers. At the end of the
conflict, two were dead and two were incarcerated, including Assata.
Rappers like Paris and Common have written sympathetic, reflective
songs about Assata, Assataâs Song and A Song For Assataâ respectively”. www.MOBfiggaz.net
The
US government has rachet up their reactionary COINTELPRO on liberation
fighters, dissidents to send a message and serve as an example to deter
resistence against their increasingly fascist agenda. COINTELPRO was
a wide ranging federal program targeting the left and people of color
during the tumultuous times of rising black consciousness/black power
movements, opposition to the Vietnam War, grass roots labor organizing,
the American Indian Movement and the emerging Chicano and Latino
activism. The government dropped all pretense of democracy and freedom
and morphed into a police state, they funded and facilitated local
police departments becoming increasingly militarized and aggressive in
their assaults on people of color. As part of their plan the government
initiated sophisticated surveillance, disruption techniques and
campaigns to smear and discredit all forms of opposition to its immoral
policies at home and abroad. Most people are familiar with COINTELPRO
the brain child of FBI director J Edgar Hoover who fancied himself the
keeper of the fascist and racist status quo. Hoover in his dementia
blamed all dissent on “communism”, the boggy man of his day. However
Hoover’s COINTELPRO was just one of many reactionary programs the
government employed to further their agenda to undermine resistence to
their imperial wars and domestic oppression. The CIA in direct
violation of its charter initiated
OPERATION CHAOS in conjunction with COLINTELPRO to spy on, discredit
and disrupt the anti-war movement which was raging across the nation.
These two programs illegally spied on ordinary AmeriKKKan citizens and
organizations, they initiated smear campaigns to sully and defame
people who voiced opposition to the war, the US racial cast system and
economic exploitation. They used the police and court system to frame a
wide range of dissents like Leonard Peltier, Geronamo Pratt, Mumia Abu
Jamal, they infiltrated trade unions, grass roots community and
political organizations and assassinated and eliminated those they
could not co-opt, bribe, coerce or intimidate. The police state was out
of control. When concerned lawmakers moved to put them in check, the
ruling elites working through the CIA moved on them. US Senator Frank
Church who as a member of the Select Committee of Government
Intelligence Activities investigated CIA abuses was targeted and
defeated by those who resented his efforts to clean up the agency.
We
must understand we are in an ongoing war, a war for the minds, soul and
very lives of African people. Every chance the fascist get they target
Africans who have stood up against their anti human anti- life agenda,
which explains why they went after activists and community builder
Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin formerly known as H Rap Brown and why the US
government recently put a one million dollar bounty on the head of
Assata ShaKur a soldier in the Black Panther Party and African
Liberation Army now living in Cuba. The feds in addition to the bounty
(in a display of blatant hypocrisy) have placed Assata Shakur on their
most wanted domestic terrorist list. Shakur who changed her named from
JoAnne Chesimard was charged with killing a
New Jersey state police officer in 1973. In what probably was a case of
routine racial profiling gone bad; one trooper and her brother in law
James Costan were killed. Shakur and the ALA embarrassed the state by
helping her escape from a New Jersey maximum security women’s facility
following her conviction on murder charges in 1977. Just as the federal
and state governments framed so many other
dissidents or used the courts, the “legal” system and state sanctioned
murder to undermine any challenges to the status quo in the ‘60's and
‘70's, New Jack fascists want to make sure there are no examples or
models of resistence and revolution remaining to spark renewed
opposition to their agenda of domestic oligarchy and global domination.
Assata Shakur is 57 years old living in exile in Cuba under political
asylum. The Sistah is well respected in the conscious African
community. Hence the fascists are afraid her continued existence will
serve as an encouragement to freedom fighters all over the world to
defy the blatant racism, oppression, militarism and imperialism of the
AMeriKKKan empire. So while this bounty is symbolic, it will also offer
additional incentive for some red neck to attempt to capture her. Since
Fidel Castro granted her asylum, he will probably increase her
protection and security. The lesson here is, the fascists never give up. Neither should we. The struggle intensifies.
POSITIVELY BLACK Junious Ricardo Stanton
Bush Lied, Now You Know What Are you Going To Do About It?
“Nobody
wants to go to war. We trust our leaders to shed blood in our name only
when absolutely necessary. Two years after the start of the Iraq War,
on March 20, 2003, Americans are just learning that our government was
dead set on taking our nation to war, even while it claimed to be
pursuing diplomacy. The Downing Street Memo, recently leaked, reveals
that President George W. Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein in summer 2002 and—determined to ensure that U.S.
intelligence data supported his policies—"fixed" the intelligence and
facts relevent to WMD. What has come to be known as the Downing Street
"Memo" is actually a document containing meeting minutes transcribed
during the British Prime Minister's meeting on July 23, 2002. This
meeting was held a full 8 months PRIOR to the invasion of Iraq on March
20, 2003. The Times of London printed the text of this document on
Sunday, May 1, 2005. When asked about the document's validity, "British
officials did not dispute the document's authenticity." The contents of
the memo are shocking. The minutes detail how our government did not
believe Iraq was a greater threat than other nations; how intelligence
was manipulated to sell the case for war to the American public; and
how all the talk of "war as a last resort" was mere hollow pretense.
Regardless of politics, all Americans should ask themselves: Was I
misled? Did President Bush tell me the truth when he said he would not
take us to war unless absolutely necessary?” - www.downingstreetmemo.com
The
cat as they say is out of the bag, what many have known or suspected
for over two years has been verified by an article recently published
in the London Times claiming the Bush administration fixed
the facts to bolster its intent to go to war to oust Saddam Hussein.
The newspaper published a secret internal memo dated July 23, 2002 to
the British Prime Minister and copied to the Defense Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney General, Sir
Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan
Powell, Sally Morgan, and Alastair Campbell. In it the whole scheme of
Bush wanting to invade Iraq and execute regime change is laid out eight
full months before the US and Britain invaded. However the most damning
points in the memo point out the Bush administration was indeed cooking
the intelligence books, jacking up the threat level and rationales for
war but more importantly the memo states, “C reported on his recent
talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude.
Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove
Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of
terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed
around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no
enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There
was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military
action.” Note the part about there being little discussion of the
aftermath of military action! This is why there is no exit strategy;
they don’t plan leaving Iraq any time soon. So not only did Bush and Co
lie about the how and why they invaded Iraq, in the midst of a
bourgeoning liberation campaign the warmongers gave no thought to post
invasion issues. This memo was published in the London Times has been
seen all over the world but here in the good ol’ US of A the corporate
owned media has suppressed and downplayed the piece. What’s up with
that? Why aren’t the cable channels and major networks hounding and
dogging Bush to explain this? Keep in mind there have been no denials
from the Blair government and several “unnamed sources” in the US have
verified the memo is accurate.
Do
you realize what this means? The president of the United States of
AmeriKKKa and his closest cabinet officials all knowingly and
deliberately lied to get this country to invade a nation that was not a
military threat to the US or its immediate neighbors (although Saddam
Hussein’s shift to the Euro as his oil exchange currency posed a serious economic threat to
the US) that had nothing to do with 9-11 or Osama bin- Laden. This is
an impeachable offense! How is it the NeoCon and the religious right
can wail and howl about William Jefferson Clinton’s immoral behavior
(and it was) but remain silent about the covetousness, massive loss of
life and disgrace Bush and Co have wrought on this country?! There
is something very morally wrong with that. More and more AmeriKKKans
are realizing and admitting to themselves and the public opinion
pollsters Bush and Co lied to them about the reasons for the Iraq
invasion. Perhaps they originally felt the invasion would result in
plentiful and cheap oil? Alas the AmeriKKKan treasury is being sapped
and looted based upon Bush’s lies. The US is facing record federal
deficits yet all requests for war funds get approved while vital social
services are being cut!? Over 1,600 US military personnel have been
killed in Iraq and thousands have been maimed and traumatized beyond
repair. The US is seen around the world as a rogue nation, a bully and
a ravaging wolf. Thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed and
injured, cities have been leveled and destroyed, where is the hue and
cry for justice for them or the demand Bush and the NeoConmen be tried
as war criminals? Could it be AmeriKKKa has
become a New Jack Nazi Germany or Boer South Africa in its depravity
and madness? So called progressives wring their hands and peck at their
keyboards but little is being done to systemically derail the fascism
that is taking AmeriKKKa over the abyss into total psychopathy and
damnation. We should expect nothing less from men and women who in
their depravity join organizations Skull and Bones or engage in devil
worship and Satanic practices at their retreats in Bohemian Grove but
what of the regular folks, Joe and Jane Sixpack? Why aren’t the soccer
moms up in arms about the carnage and killing on both sides? Does this mean the AmeriKKKan legacy of genocide, rapine; dehumanization and oppression are still alive and well!
POSITIVELY BLACK Junious Ricardo Stanton
Surprise Surprise Look Who’s Heading The Iraq Oil Ministry
“WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Iraq's choice of Ahmad Chalabi as acting oil minister has
raised concerns that he is not the best person for the job because he
has little energy experience and was once convicted of bank fraud, U.S.
energy experts said on Thursday.” 04-28-05 Reuters News Article
The
Bushites must be smiling from ear to ear after having to wait out all
that haggling over who was going to be what in the Iraqi government to
see their boy ( although he was kicked to the curb in t false flag move
last year) Ahmed Chalabi emerge and the new acting oil minister. In a
Reuters article dated April 28, 2005 US energy spokespersons feigned
alarm Chalabi was chosen. “‘You are to some extent, from the
perceptions of many Iraqis, putting a fox in charge of the henhouse,’
said Anthony Cordesman, referring to Chalabi. Cordesman is a Middle
East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies based
in Washington.
Chalabi
is taking over the ministry at a critical time. It must make decisions
on which companies get preference for oil sales, which contracts are
honored and which will be renegotiated. The ministry also faces
frequent sabotage against its oil pipelines. ‘(Chalabi) is going to
make it extremely easy for people to make charges about corruption and
raise questions on how the oil money is distributed,’ said Cordesman.” True
Chalabi has no expertise in oil, oil drilling engineering or
management, however he has connections. At one point Chalabi who was
the source of much of the Bush administrations delusional justification
for the invasion of Iraq in the first place has been a long time
recipient of front money supplied by the influential Rendon Group to
Calabi’s bogus Iraqi National Congress. In 1992 Chalabi was tapped to
head the INC. Chalabi is a native Iraqi who was raised abroad in
Jordan, Lebanon, England and the US. He has an interesting past one
that is easily found via a good Web browser. The fact he was charged
and convicted in absentia of banking fraud
and embezzlement in Jordan when the Jordanian government seized his
bank Petra in 1977 and pumped millions into it to avoid financial
collapse makes him a good role player in the NeoConmen soap opera of
perpetual war. This sort of personal
history makes Calabi an excellent ally for the Bushites (see Savings
and Loan and Harken scandals for a better idea of how the Bush family
rolls.) Chalabi is cunning and ambitious, just the type the US would
use to further their own aims in the region.
In
fact once the green light was given to invade Iraq the NeoConmen in the
Bush administration picked Chalabi to be their boy running the show
following the toppling of Saddam Hussein, despite the fact both he and
the INC had lost credibility with the CIA and serious intelligence
agents. Chalabi and his phony INC Iraqi exiles were flown in and given
prominent media play as a precursor to setting him up as Bush’s puppet
in Baghdad. Unfortunately for Chalabi a hustler and con man who told
Bush and Co what they wanted to hear, US invaders would be welcomed as
liberators with roses and cheers, a fierce struggle to liberate Iraq
from AmeriKKKan occupation caught the Bush administration totally
unprepared, and when no WMD were found Chalabi was totally exposed as a
fraud. But needing a man they could use they mounted a campaign to
seemingly distance Chalabi from the Bush administration so the
indigenous Iraqis would think he wasn’t still on the US payroll.
Chalabi became the subject of a raid on his office and charges he was
in cahoots with Iran. Voila, Chalabi is instantly tainted and not seen as a stooge for the US. Through it all, Chalabi’s
ambitions kept him in the hunt. Not being seen as too close to the
AmeriKKKans he was able to weasel his way into negotiations once the
Iraqi clerics pressured Bush to allow general elections, something Bush
and Co. never wanted in the first place. Chalabi inserted himself into
the mix and now has emerged with a position in the fledgling Iraqi
government as acting oil minister. The question becomes, is this a
testament to Chalabi’s cunning and skills or is this due to clandestine
machinations by the Bush administration to get another one of their
boys into a key position in an Iraqi government Washington knows will
be pressured by Iraqi citizens to kick AmeriKKKa out of their country
ASAP? Many folks believe the US invaded Iraq for the oil, what better
way for Chalabi to ingratiate himself to AmeriKKKa than by being the
one who doles out the contracts and sets the agenda for which oil
companies get first crack at Iraq’s oil? It just seems so rigged to me.
Sort of like CIA asset and former Unocal oil company advisor Hamid
Karzai just happening to be appointed interim president of Afghanistan
after the US bombed the Taliban out of office. Karzai was subsequently “elected”
president of Afghanistan with serious US backing in that country’s sham
elections. One of his first acts was to get the stalled trans-Afghani
pipeline up and running. Surprise, surprise! Democracy at work to hear
the Bush administration tell it. Of course they don’t tell us
Afghanistan along with the other countries AmeriKKKa has “liberated”
like Haiti and Iraq are in shambles but what’s a small detail like that
got to do with the Bush Bizzarro world realities? The
last thing in the world the AmeriKKKan empire wants is true
self-determination and self-rule in Iraq. So they work behind the
scenes to get their guys in place to do their bidding. In many ways
Chalabi resurfacing as a key player in the role of acting oil minister is no surprise at all.
POSITIVELY BLACK Junious Ricardo Stanton
Malcolm X vs. US Imperialism
“I
could see that America itself is a society where there is no
brotherhood, and that this society is controlled primarily by racists
and segregationists. And from Washington,
D.C., they exercise the same forms of brutal oppression against
dark-skinned people in South and North Vietnam, or in the Congo, or in
Cuba, or in any other place on this earth where they’re trying to
exploit and oppress. This is a society whose government doesn’t
hesitate to inflict the most brutal form of punishment and oppression
upon dark-skinned people all over the world.”-Malcolm X
As
we pause to honor and celebrate the life and legacy of the man many of
us knew as Malcolm X, let us do so in the African tradition. Let us
hold him up as a model to be emulated not merely for his personal
transformation from drug user, street hustler and crook to an upright family man but also an active and engaged leader who dedicated his life to the liberation of his people. The
road Malcolm traveled was fraught with danger, scorn, misunderstanding
but also much respect both open and secret. Even though many Negroes
were frightened by Malcolm X both during his time in the Nation of Islam and upon his break from that organization, just as many loved and respected him! Malcolm
X was not murdered because he called white people devils (others had
done that) or because he had a public falling out with Elijah Muhammad,
(although the US government through its COINTELPRO used that situation
to promote his “neutralization”) Malcolm X was murdered because he had
the courage boldness and audacity to attempt to bring the United States
of AmeriKKKa before the United Nations’ World Court for its crimes of
genocide, human rights violations and its racist imperialist foreign
policies.
Like
Paul Robeson before him Malcolm knew the only way the ruling elites
would alter their systemic brutality and oppression against Africans in
America was would be through adverse world opinion. He knew moral
suasion and social demonstrations alone were not enough to bring US brutality at home and abroad to an end. Malcolm
was astute enough to realize Martin Luther King’s push for civil rights
wasn’t sweeping enough nor was it designed to bring attention to
AmeriKKKa’s role as a vicious imperialistic power. Malcolm
understood the propaganda implications of the “Cold War” and Western
Neo-Colonialism as the United States attempted to bring newly
“independent” nations of Africa and Asia under their hegemony and keep
them from aligning with the Soviet Union or China. Malcolm saw through
the hypocrisy of AmeriKKKan rhetoric about peace, freedom and democracy
and focused on AmeriKKKa’s criminal behavior around the world. As part
of his plan he made frequent visits to Africa and Arabia meeting with
heads of state who shared his anti-imperialism and anti Neocolonialism
concerns. Malcolm X was received by world leaders like: Gamel Abdel
Nasser of Egypt, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Julius Nyere of Tanzania,
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sekou Toure of Guinea Conakry. He kept his
position in racial and nationalist focus courting the African, Asian and
Arab leaders to win sympathy for his move to charge the US with
egregious human rights violations. The last thing the AmeriKKKan elites
wanted was their racist attitudes, behavior and agenda exposed for the
whole world to see. Malcolm X had an uncanny way of deriding white
AmeriKKKa’s self-delusion it was a civilized society. He was so
effective unnerving and struck so much fear in the ruling elites, they
sent agents to trail him who attempted to poison him during one of his
trips to Africa. Malcolm X (like Martin Luther King would do years
later) put the Afro-American struggle in global terms. Malcolm clearly
understood AmeriKKKa was the new torch barer for four centuries of Western imperialism.
Malcolm chided
the US for its hypocrisy. “America is just as much a colonial power as
England ever was. America is just as much a colonial power as France or
Portugal ever was but she is more so because she is a hypocritical
colonial power at that.” Malcolm understood
world history and current trends was relentless in his focus and
refused to be dissuaded. He meant to embarrass AmeriKKKa before the
world. In many ways the US oligarchy had
moved to reduce their liabilities from the negative PR around the world
by superficially embracing Martin Luther King’s non-violent Civil
Rights struggle. The very idea that Malcolm X was seriously going to
indict and prove AmeriKKKa guilty before the world (because AmeriKKKa
was and still is guilty) meant the psychopaths running this country had
to kill him. Several years later, Martin Luther King Jr. linked the
struggle for human rights here with the struggle against US global
imperialism and the need to redistribute wealth
in AMeriKKKa which resulted in his assassination also. Things have not
changed much. In fact AmeriKKKa today is more repressive and fascist
than when Malcolm and Martin waged their struggle o raise consciousness
and affect change. The world still labors under the yoke of AmeriKKKan
psychopathy. Let us learn from history, instead of having a single
leader the ruling elites can cut down let us develop an empowered mass
of conscious and catalytic activist/change agents to resist AmeriKKKan
fascism and global domination, by every means necessary!
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Tolbert is back!  Where have I been? Between the day job, family, photography assignments and rewriting parts of my book, I have, at times, been completely mesmerized by the behavior of these right-wing lunatics. They have no shame...but I like em!!! They are exactly the kind of enemy I would rather face-someone who expresses their desire to kill you and then shows you how they are going to do it! Since they have upped the game by openly declaring genocide on the human race, I feel it is my duty to critically analyze them in the harshest of terms. However, I find it difficult to express myself in anything other than the harshest of vocabulary. It may seem offensive but they are offensive and I am finished negotiating with evil. For example, unlike many commentators, I do not hold the American public as the fair-minded and hardworking people they are said to be. If they were fair-minded and about justice, George Bush and the rest of the right wing would have never been allowed to get away with this final destruction of the United States. Second, these American citizens are the decedents of the same lazy bastards that imported Black people over here in the first place. The fact that you have a people, basically 41 years out of slavery, still at fringes of society in the 21st century is a testament to the evil and wickedness in this society. No, the American people ain't s.....t.
Tolbert
POSITIVELY BLACK Uncle Sam’s Desperation Junious Ricardo Stanton
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army, stung by recruiting shortfalls caused by the Iraq war, has raised the maximum age for new recruits for the part-time Army Reserve and National Guard by five years to 39, officials said on Monday. The Army said the move, a three-year experiment, will add about 22 million people to the pool of those eligible to serve, from about 60 million now. Physical standards will not be relaxed for older recruits, who the Army said were valued for their maturity and patriotism. The Pentagon has relied heavily on part-time Army Reserve and Army National Guard soldiers summoned from civilian life to maintain troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan. Roughly 45 percent of U.S. troops currently deployed for those wars are reservists. At home, the all-volunteer Army has labored to coax potential recruits to volunteer for the Guard and Reserve as well as for active-duty, and to persuade current soldiers to re-enlist when their volunteer commitment ends.” Reuters News Service 03-21-05 The AmeriKKKan Empire is desperate. It needs cannon fodder for the endless wars, “interventions” and crusades the ruling elites have in store for the masses but due to its bungling of the Iraq war and occupation, chumps , I mean recruits are getting harder and harder to come by. Black folks, long a good supply of soldiers because the military offered better options and opportunities than the class, race and color biased general society have now abandoned it to the tune of a 41% drop in enlistments during Bush’s crusade for oil and empire. Things are so bad the U.S. Army is going to extend the maximum age for new recruits five years from 354 to 39 years old. The move will theoretically add more people to the potential pool of recruits. However if things keep going for Uncle Sam like they have been going in Iraq and in a more limited way in Afghanistan they will have to either raise extend the age limit even higher or reinstate the draft. While to most politicians the idea of restoring the draft at least publicly is anathema, this option is being seriously considered. For politicians, the decision to reinstate the draft is so touchy; it has overtaken Social Security as the proverbial third rail of politics! They are fearful of rousing the sleeping giant of anti-war, anti-draft mass protests and resistance that thwarted the military/ politician axis from continuing the feckless Viet Nam disaster that so polarized the nation during the late ‘60's and early ‘70's. While the politicians are loath to cast the vote to revitalize an inequitable system that tramples the freedom and career choices of young people sending them to die in another unpopular example of imperial over reach, the imperial army needs more man power. Quietly behind the scenes think tanks and policy makers are grappling with ways to shore up the military so our bungling emperor has more grist for his imperial mill and activists are ponder ways to circumvent what they see is the inevitability of a reinstated draft. In a though provoking article in the March issue of Washington Monthly by Phillip Carter and Paul Glastris entitled The Case For The Draft they lay out the how and why AmeriKKKa faces a shortfall in its imperialist military forces and offer several scenarios how to remedy the situation. Reinstatement of the draft is one of them. In an extensive article on the Website Counter Punch (www.CounterPunch.com ) Tom Reeves offers a compelling argument why some form of draft or universal service/conscription will be forth coming and what peace, anti-draft and anti-war activists must do to prepare to get ahead of the curve. Reeve acknowledges the drop in African-American recruits but also notes that the Iraq War is a class war, drawing its’ cannon fodder more from the ranks of poor and working class whites than people of color. He speculates but does not prove there is a movement afoot to whiten the military, ostensibly to prevent what happened during the Viet Nam debacle where black soldiers revolted refusing to kill people who looked like them. “So what's going on? Is the army in the field whitening again? Is there an unwritten policy to cleanse some parts of the military of Blacks and other minorities--whether to satisfy Black feelings that they are bearing too much of the burden, or to avoid a return to the Vietnam situation where so many Black soldiers resisted and rebelled against an unjust war where they felt they had to kill people of their own or a similar race? A close look at the military reveals a very major racial shift since the Gulf War--and one that has not yet been widely acknowledged. Charles Moskos says military recruiting is now much more aggressive in rural areas than in urban ghettos. The result is clear in the make-up of the military. While general enlistment of Blacks has now fallen from 30% (at its height in the late 1990s) to about 13% today, the re-enlistment level for Blacks has remained far greater than that of whites. This is especially true for those in non-combat units, especially communications and unit administration. Moskos says that of the 45,586 combat infantry in the army in 2003, 10.6% were black; of the 12,000 air force pilots, 2%; and of the Green Berets, 5%. ‘The U.S. forces fighting the wars today are disproportionately white,’ said experts quoted in USA Today (1/20/03). Moskos told me (email correspondence, February 2004), ‘The portion of Blacks in combat units has been shrinking for two decades. Special Forces are almost all white now. The high black numbers are in supporting roles. Even Black enlistment over all has been declining for the past two years--perhaps due to anti-Iraq and anti-Bush feelings among Blacks.’ (Counter Punch 03-19-05). The fact articles like the ones in Was hington Monthly and Counter Punch are openly discussing the situation means it is a severe problem for the empire; one the hiring of more contract employees ( a.k.a. mercenaries the stock and trade of all empires past and present) will never solve. As the problem (from the warmonger’s perspective) becomes more acute, look for a reinstatement of some form of universal conscription/service/skills draft.
POSITIVELY BLACK Reasons To Celebrate African History Junious Ricardo Stanton
“Scientists have determined that human fossils found in Ethiopia in 1967 are 195,000 years old, 65,000 years older than first thought.” The revised date, they said, makes the skulls and bones the earliest known remains of modern Homo Sapiens.” John Noble Wilford New York Times News Service 02-17-05 Amidst the cacophonous clamor of disinformation, Orwellian spin and outright lies, a piece caught my eye in the local newspaper. It was from the New York Times News Service and it told of a recent announcement of findings by a group of scientists geologists, paleoanthropologists, biomolecular researchers and anatomists who have concluded the bones found by Richard E. Leakey along the Omo River in southern Ethiopia in 1967 were about 130,000 years old. However a settlement discovered in northern Ethiopia two years ago at the village of Herto pushed the fossil evidence of humanity back to 160,000 years ago. At this point researchers are convinced of a common maternal human ancestor from Africa dating back between 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. So here we are the people with the longest most prolonged history on the planet, the descendants of the original humans celebrating African American or Black History during the shortest and coldest month of the year. Does that make any sense? Even Europeans the very antitheses of an African admit they are descendants of Africans, that Africans were the first Homo Sapien Spaiens and the continent of Africa, was the birth place of all humanity. What does this information mean for us, what implications does it have for Africans in America at this time and place? It means we have the basis for refashioning our self-image, our personal and collective self-esteem from one of being culturally conditioned to being ashamed of who we are, where we came from and our ancestry to being proud, excited and enthusiastic about our history, possibilities and potential. These finding are revolutionary! It means that contrary to Eurocentric white supremacist propaganda Africans not only were the source of all humanity but our ancestors created the social institutions and paradigms to facilitate the survival of the human race! In order to survive our ancestors had to develop ways to interact with each other to insure their mutual survival and well being. They created divisions of labor, gender and age responsibilities, interpersonal relationships and governance techniques. To their credit they developed a kinship based communal paradigm where cooperation, collectivism and mutual aid were fundamental. This paradigm proved successful whether they were in the nomadic food gathering, hunting or more sedentary agricultural stages of development. It appears also that because of their awe of the birth process, females were venerated in African society. These early humans did not have the dog eat dog predatory mentality that permeates the behavioral and cultural patterns of their later mutant offshoots who had dispersed (or were banished) to other parts of the planet namely the Caucasus regions of Eurasia. There is no indication these early Africans practiced the abhorrent behaviors like autocratic male patriarchy and female infanticide that developed in the Caucasus. The implications for us are also that we rethink our ideas about honoring ourselves and the accomplishments of our ancestors. For without their ingenuity, resourcefulness, perseverance, resilience and grit we would not be here today! These same traits and qualities reside within each one of us. Our challenge is to recognize these traits within ourselves and express them. We may never know the what those ancient Africans called themselves, we can see by their tools they were a resourceful people. So are we. Let us acknowledge our innate and indwelling resourcefulness and demonstrate our genius beyond the spheres of sports and entertainment. Let us demonstrate the same resiliency and genius that motivated our ancestors to evolve from gatherers and hunters to create the complex and opulent civilizations of the Nile, Indus and Mesopotamia Valleys which history records were created by black skinned people of African origin. This same capability resides in us. We can not allow the enemies of the world to program us to deny and denigrate our greatness. As hey say “apples don’t fall far from the tree”. We are a great people, just our being here despite all we have been through at the ands of our enemies validates this fact. We can not relegate our vast and storied history to one month a year, the shortest month of the year at that! Let’s celebrate and honor ourselves every day! Let us carry on our ancestors’ tradition and make history every day! Let’s, make history, not excuses. POSITIVELY BLACK Junious Ricardo Stanton Effects of Regime Change In Haiti
“WASHINGTON -- The State Department warned Americans Friday that the situation in Haiti is sill volatile and urged them to take precautions while traveling there. In a statement issued in Washington, the department said that although non-emergency staff and family members of U.S. Embassy personnel have been allowed to return, the security situation in Haiti remains shaky. ‘Americans are reminded of the potential for spontaneous demonstrations and violent confrontations between armed groups,’ the department said. The travel warning also urged U.S. visitors and residents in Haiti to remain vigilant because of the absence of an effective police force in much of the country and the potential for random violent crime. Some areas are off-limits to the U.S. Embassy staff, including downtown Port-au-Prince after dark. The embassy has imposed a curfew from 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., which could change periodically. Staff members must remain in their homes or in U.S. government facilities during these hours, the State Department said.” United Press International 03-11-05
Uncle Sam is like an advance hit man or goon he ( his CIA, Marines, Special Forces or military) invades a country setting the stage for it to be ravaged, pillaged and the life sucked out of it by the corporate or multinational conglomerates that prompted the invasion in the first place. We see the corporate media sycophants trying to spin the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a morality play with AmeriKKKa being the good guys while actively suppressing all the evidence to the contrary. George W Bush is merely the latest in a long line of warmongering puppets whose hands are awash in the blood of humanity doing the bidding of the ruling plutocracy while uttering sanctimonious but hollow verbiage about freedom, democracy and “national interests”. It’s just that under Bush so much blood has been shed and so much chaos has been caused in such a short period of time! He barely botches an invasion and occupation in one country and he’s off carrying on the Aryan tradition of plunder and pillage, a sort of hi-tech Vandal or Goth. In the four years since he stole the presidency in 2000, he almost started confrontations with China and North Korea and he has invaded and brazenly toppled the governments of Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti. Now the boy emperor emboldened by his recent theft of the 2004 election, is threatening to go after Iran and Syria.
Before we go for the okey-doke about Iran, Syria or North Korea we need to look at what Bush and Co have wrought on the tiny island inhabited by defendants of enslaved Africans who had the audacity to defeat one of Europe’s mightiest empires and create the second democratic republic in the Western hemisphere. In 2004 in a move prompted and sanctioned by the Bush administration a band of exiled conspirators armed, fed and supplied by the US invaded Haiti from neighboring Dominican Republic rampaging, burning looting and killing in a move to further destabilize an already tenuous situation in Haiti. The elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide was set up by the US. His mulatto enemies were armed, supplied and given the green light to wreck havoc on the island to force Aristide out. Some of the same conspirators who participated in the 1991 coup, Guy Phillippe, along with convicted murderers Louis Jordel Chamlain and Jean Pierre Baptiste who went into exile when the Clinton administration returned Aristide to the presidency in 1994 returned to the island in 2004 to do him in again. Prior to the armed coup, the US set Aristide up in a myriad of ways. One way was to train dissidents to work against him. A 2004 article in Mother Jones Magazine by Joshua Kurlantzick revealed US front organizations trained opponents of Aristide to return to the island to stir up trouble. “But did the rebellion really spring from nowhere? Maybe not. Several leaders of the demonstrations -- some of whom also had links to the armed rebels -- had been getting organizational help and training from a U.S. government-financed organization. The group, the International Republican Institute (IRI), is supposed to focus on nonpartisan, grassroots democratization efforts overseas. But in Haiti and other countries, such as Venezuela and Cambodia, the institute -- which, though not formally affiliated with the GOP, is run by prominent Republicans and staffed by party insiders -- has increasingly sided with groups seeking the overthrow of elected but flawed leaders who are disliked in Washington. In 2002 and 2003, IRI used funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to organize numerous political training sessions in the Dominican Republic and Miami for some 600 Haitian leaders. Though IRI’s work is supposed to be nonpartisan -- it is official U.S. policy not to interfere in foreign elections -- a former U.S. diplomat says organizers of the workshops selected only opponents of Aristide and attempted to mold them into a political force.” Another way they set him up was to delay promised economic aid to the poorest country in the hemisphere and to have the multinational conglomerates oppose Aristide’s push to raise the minimum wage for impoverished Haitian workers. Aristide was besieged with unrest on all sides especially following the controversial elections that secured another term for him his enemies used to discredit him and brand him as a demagogue
While Bush and Co. were fomenting unrest inside Haiti they were also arming and supplying the rebels who launched their revolt from across the border in neighboring Dominican Republic. Guy Phillippe and his band of thugs and killers ravaged the island threatening to march on the capital. Aristide who had further earned the hatred of the mulattos when he disbanded the army had no security force to protect the people and the rebels easily overwhelmed them despite valiant resistance on the part of Aristide’s supporters. The US stood passively by and blamed the worsening situation on Aristide thereby sending a clear signal to the international community they were not going to intervene on Aristide’s behalf. George W Bush, boy emperor got his wish, when the US military swooped in and “rescued” Aristide from certain death at the hands of rampaging hooligans, people like Chamblain, Phillippe and Baptiste who had run the death squads in Haiti prior to their ouster in 1994. Now one year later, after post US invasion and occupation, Haiti, like Afghanistan and Iraq, is in worse shape than before the change! Leaders like the Taliban, Aristide and Saddam Hussein the US plutocrats opposed have been toppled but things have not turned out as Bush and his advisors planned. In September of 2004 Haiti suffered devastating tropical storms which have exacerbated already grinding conditions of poverty in the island nation. The US offered a shamefully minuscule sums for humanitarian relief. The devastation from the storms is just one of Prime Minister Gerard Lutortue’s problems. He is hampered by the perception he is a puppet of US France and island mulatto interests. CARICOM a confederation of fourteen Caribbean nations will have nothing to do with the US and France backed Lutorue government. The island is still unstable and the ineffective UN Peacekeeping Force is unable to quell the ongoing violence, Luttorue also lacks a domestic security force to protect his people. (This is by design the populous can be better manipulated through fear and terrorism.) The IMF World Bank and USAID have been slow extending financial support and any “aid” they offer will come with stings and conditions attached that will not benefit the longsuffering Haitian people who have been mired in US imperialistic oppression for over a century. Looking at the situation in Haiti from a global perspective, if the situations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti are indications of what US imposed regime change brings, things do not bode well for Iran or Syria despite what the NeoCon and Zionist controlled media says. Words to the wise, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again with the same people expecting things to turn out differently!
POSITIVELY BLACK
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Getting Dizzy From The Spin
“WASHINGTON – Handicapped by a long, bloody conflict in Iraq and lousy weather and a good economy in this country, Marine Corps recruiters are having an unusually hard time finding enough young people who want to be one of ‘the few, the proud.’ The Marines fell slightly short of a key recruiting goal in January and February, breaking a 10-year string of meeting their quotas for signing up prospective Marines, Lt. Gen. Jan Huly said Thursday. But they are ahead of the more important quota for sending enough recruits to boot camp in San Diego or Parris Island, S.C., the Marine general added. ” Otto Kreisher San Diego Union Tribune 03-10-05
“Job recovery still lags far behind Payroll jobs are now 332,000, or 0.3%, greater than at the start of the recession 47 months ago (March 2001). However, private-sector jobs are still down by 477,000, a contraction of 0.4%. The 809,000 jobs created in the government sector in this time explain the difference between growth in total payroll and private-sector jobs. Overall, this level of creation represents the worst job performance since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting monthly jobs data in 1939 (at the end of the Great Depression). In the three downturns since the early 1970s, the economy had not only recovered all the jobs lost during the recession but had also generated 6.0% more jobs (6.1% more private-sector jobs) than existed at the start of the recession. If this historical standard had prevailed in the private sector, the economy would have 7,282,000 more private-sector jobs today.”- Job Watch Economic Policy Institute
The Bush administration and the US military, forced to admit enlistments are decreasing in the all volunteer army especially for the Active and Reserve US Army and US Marines who are taking the brunt of casualties in the ill conceived US invasion and occupation of Iraq, are now spinning the situation not as AmeriKKKan’s unwillingness to die for a lie but due to a “good economy”. The fact of the matter is the economy is not all that good. Yes corporations are raking in record profits and the economy is up slightly, but we are in the midst of the longest “jobless recovery” on record. This means the owner/investor class is getting rich by shipping jobs overseas, paying sweat shop wages and no benefits while here in the good old US of A more and more people remain jobless. We should not be surprised by the Bush administration’s tactic to spin the declining military enlistments in more favorable terms. After all Bush and Co. lied about WMD to go to war, their invasion was swift and met with little resistence but now the occupation is now bogged down and even the political situation in Iraq is not turning out the way they planned. Bush initially wanted a pliant puppet namely Ahmed Chalabi inserted to run Iraq just like their other CIA asset Hamid Karzai is doing in Afghanistan. Alas just like Afghanistan Iraq is in shambles despite the much touted elections. In Afghanistan the US was able to control the elections and get their boy Karzai elected and in position to initiate the trans-Afghanistan pipe lines to ship natural gas and crude oil from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean ports for market. This was the real reason the US invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taleban! In Iraq they had to topple Saddam Hussein because in 2000 he switched from the US dollar to the Euro as his medium of exchange for Iraqi oil. If other OPEC nations (like Iran and Venezuela) had followed suit (as they threatened to do) the US Empire would be stick a fork in it, turn it over done. Obviously the ruling elites weren’t having that and by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, the Zionists further their plans to reshape the “Middle East”. Thus far over 1,500 US soldiers have been sacrificed on Bush’s altar of oil and empire.
Young people see what’s happening and are refusing to enter the military. This is a very conscious decision on their part. They are not going for the okey-doke and the economy has nothing to do with it. In fact for most young people the economy offers few viable alternatives. College tuition is increasing, high school and college graduates are unable to find work; so the reason they are not enlisting is not because the economy is so great. According to the Economic Policy Institute’s Job Watch, the economy is not producing enough jobs to meet the needs and expectations of potential employees. “Another reflection of the labor market's prolonged weakness is that employment has not grown relative to the working-age population over the last year, failing to close any of the jobs deficit that developed in the recession. For instance, 64.3% of the working-age population was employed at the recession's start in March 2001, whereas in February 2005 only 62.3% was employed—a deficit of 4.5 million jobs. Moreover, this employment gap does not even take into account the normal expectation of growth in the employment-to-population rate each year. Even last year's job growth was insufficient to increase the employment-to-population rate, suggesting that this recovery will not close the jobs deficit anytime soon. This failure to increase the employment rate over the last year and relative to March 2001 is particularly interesting when examining these trends by gender and race.” ( Job Watch Bulletin March 2005) Of course we know unemployment for African Americans is always twice the rate for Euro-Americans. That is why a career in the military offered a feasible option for blacks. Not anymore. Getting killed, crippled or maimed for a lie offers less and less enticement to blacks, whites and Latinos. Rather than admit their lies created this situation, the Bush administration continues to spin this in their Orwellian/ Bizarro world fashion where perpetual war is peace, occupation is liberation and dying for lies is honorable! If Bush were Pinochio, by now his nose would be as long and the WTC Twin Towers put end to end.
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