Bono of U2: Rebranding America-Barack Obama and His Noble Peace Prize

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Rebranding America

by Bono of U2

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/opinion/18bono.html?pagewanted=1

BonoU2A FEW years ago, I accepted a Golden Globe award by barking out an expletive.

One imagines President Obama did the same when he heard about his Nobel, and not out of excitement.

When Mr. Obama takes the stage at Oslo City Hall this December, he won’t be the first sitting president to receive the peace prize, but he might be the most controversial. There’s a sense in some quarters of these not-so-United States that Norway, Europe and the World haven’t a clue about the real President Obama; instead, they fixate on a fantasy version of the president, a projection of what they hope and wish he is, and what they wish America to be.

Well, I happen to be European, and I can project with the best of them. So here’s why I think the virtual Obama is the real Obama, and why I think the man might deserve the hype. It starts with a quotation from a speech he gave at the United Nations last month:

“We will support the Millennium Development Goals, and approach next year’s summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.”

They’re not my words, they’re your president’s. If they’re not familiar, it’s because they didn’t make many headlines. But for me, these 36 words are why I believe Mr. Obama could well be a force for peace and prosperity — if the words signal action.

The millennium goals, for those of you who don’t know, are a persistent nag of a noble, global compact. They’re a set of commitments we all made nine years ago whose goal is to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Barack Obama wasn’t there in 2000, but he’s there now. Indeed he’s gone further — all the way, in fact. Halve it, he says, then end it.

Many have spoken about the need for a rebranding of America. Rebrand, restart, reboot. In my view these 36 words, alongside the administration’s approach to fighting nuclear proliferation and climate change, improving relations in the Middle East and, by the way, creating jobs and providing health care at home, are rebranding in action.

These new steps — and those 36 words — remind the world that America is not just a country but an idea, a great idea about opportunity for all and responsibility to your fellow man.

All right … I don’t speak for the rest of the world. Sometimes I think I do — but as my bandmates will quickly (and loudly) point out, I don’t even speak for one small group of four musicians. But I will venture to say that in the farthest corners of the globe, the president’s words are more than a pop song people want to hear on the radio. They are lifelines.

In dangerous, clangorous times, the idea of America rings like a bell (see King, M. L., Jr., and Dylan, Bob). It hits a high note and sustains it without wearing on your nerves. (If only we all could.) This was the melody line of the Marshall Plan and it’s resonating again. Why? Because the world sees that America might just hold the keys to solving the three greatest threats we face on this planet: extreme poverty, extreme ideology and extreme climate change. The world senses that America, with renewed global support, might be better placed to defeat this axis of extremism with a new model of foreign policy.

It is a strangely unsettling feeling to realize that the largest Navy, the fastest Air Force, the fittest strike force, cannot fully protect us from the ghost that is terrorism …. Asymmetry is the key word from Kabul to Gaza …. Might is not right.

I think back to a phone call I got a couple of years ago from Gen. James Jones. At the time, he was retiring from the top job at NATO; the idea of a President Obama was a wild flight of the imagination.

General Jones was curious about the work many of us were doing in economic development, and how smarter aid — embodied in initiatives like President George W. Bush’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief and the Millennium Challenge Corporation — was beginning to save lives and change the game for many countries. Remember, this was a moment when America couldn’t get its cigarette lighted in polite European nations like Norway; but even then, in the developing world, the United States was still seen as a positive, even transformative, presence.

The general and I also found ourselves talking about what can happen when the three extremes — poverty, ideology and climate — come together. We found ourselves discussing the stretch of land that runs across the continent of Africa, just along the creeping sands of the Sahara — an area that includes Sudan and northern Nigeria. He also agreed that many people didn’t see that the Horn of Africa — the troubled region that encompasses Somalia and Ethiopia — is a classic case of the three extremes becoming an unholy trinity (I’m paraphrasing) and threatening peace and stability around the world

The military man also offered me an equation. Stability = security + development.

In an asymmetrical war, he said, the emphasis had to be on making American foreign policy conform to that formula.

Enter Barack Obama.

If that last line still seems like a joke to you … it may not for long.

Mr. Obama has put together a team of people who believe in this equation. That includes the general himself, now at the National Security Council; the vice president, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; the Republican defense secretary; and a secretary of state, someone with a long record of championing the cause of women and girls living in poverty, who is now determined to revolutionize health and agriculture for the world’s poor. And it looks like the bipartisan coalition in Congress that accomplished so much in global development over the past eight years is still holding amid rancor on pretty much everything else. From a development perspective, you couldn’t dream up a better dream team to pursue peace in this way, to rebrand America.

The president said that he considered the peace prize a call to action. And in the fight against extreme poverty, it’s action, not intentions, that counts. That stirring sentence he uttered last month will ring hollow unless he returns to next year’s United Nations summit meeting with a meaningful, inclusive plan, one that gets results for the billion or more people living on less than $1 a day. Difficult. Very difficult. But doable.

The Nobel Peace Prize is the rest of the world saying, “Don’t blow it.”

But that’s not just directed at Mr. Obama. It’s directed at all of us. What the president promised was a “global plan,” not an American plan. The same is true on all the other issues that the Nobel committee cited, from nuclear disarmament to climate change — none of these things will yield to unilateral approaches. They’ll take international cooperation and American leadership.

The president has set himself, and the rest of us, no small task.

That’s why America shouldn’t turn up its national nose at popularity contests. In the same week that Mr. Obama won the Nobel, the United States was ranked as the most admired country in the world, leapfrogging from seventh to the top of the Nation Brands Index survey — the biggest jump any country has ever made. Like the Nobel, this can be written off as meaningless … a measure of Mr. Obama’s celebrity (and we know what people think of celebrities).

But an America that’s tired of being the world’s policeman, and is too pinched to be the world’s philanthropist, could still be the world’s partner. And you can’t do that without being, well, loved. Here come the letters to the editor, but let me just say it: Americans are like singers — we just a little bit, kind of like to be loved. The British want to be admired; the Russians, feared; the French, envied. (The Irish, we just want to be listened to.) But the idea of America, from the very start, was supposed to be contagious enough to sweep up and enthrall the world.

And it is. The world wants to believe in America again because the world needs to believe in America again. We need your ideas — your idea — at a time when the rest of the world is running out of them.

Return to Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner

Troubled Kids-Troubled Adults: The Only One Who Spoke Truth Yesterday Was 6 year Old Falcon-The Balloon Boy

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daveyd-raider2The only person who seemed to be honest during yesterday’s enthralling ‘Balloon-Gate’ scenario was 6 year old-Falcon who was at the center of it all. That little kid sat up on national television and told the world-‘We did this for the show.’ And what a show it was. It had all the ingredients; roller coaster action, teeth clenching drama, intrigue and mystery-It was all there.

On top of it, seemingly everyone was in on what appeared to be a grand exercise in mass deception. That includes the McGiverist/Inspector Gadget-like father –Richard Heene who’s ‘acting’ abilities’ were atrocious. His tears and supposed outrage had me taking notes-‘Do not take lessons from his acting coach’. There was the overly eager ‘friendly’ next door neighbor, Marc Friedland who was on every news channel seemingly going for his sot at 15 minutes of fame by extolling the virtues of what many of us were seeing as a wacky family.

But perhaps the most dishonest were the news agencies who quickly cut away from President Obama addressing folks in New Orleans about Katrina recovery and followed the runaway balloon for two hours. During those two hours news channels tripped over themselves pulling out charts and graphs to give us reports about wind currents, high altitudes, temperatures and speculation about possible lightning storms.  It was done in such a way that everyone at the airport stopped what they were doing and gathered around the TVs to watch. The deception was realized after the balloon landed and little Falcon was nowhere to be found. That’s when our favorite news channels trotted out all these balloon experts who repeated over and over, there’s no way that a craft of that shape and size could’ve carried a 6-year-old boys to such heights (10 thousand feet was one estimate) and at such speeds(85 mph was another estimate). In fact most said the balloon wouldn’t have flown at all.

We also came to find out that law enforcement agencies in Colorado had early on suspected that Falcon had either fallen out of the craft or was never on it. That vital information was communicated at least a good 15 minutes before the balloon landing but was not broadcasted. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. What ratings seeking news outlet would want to stop their coverage after drawing everyone in and getting them to watch for two hours? What news outlet in 2009 would have the courage to sit up and say  ‘Sorry folks-false alarm, we assessed this situation wrong?’

Apparently none of our ‘trusted’ new sources. Instead giving us the full scope of what was taking place, what we got was a breath taking narrative that had us all at the edge of our seats as we watched the balloon make a soft landing and an undercover officer heroically dash out to make sure it didn’t take off again. Poor guy, I don’t think anyone had the heart to tell him there was no kid in the balloon because dude was running like there was no tomorrow.

Little 6 year old Falcon spoke the truth yesterday

Little 6 year old Falcon spoke the truth yesterday

As for the throngs of people watching intensely at Oakland Airport, they seemed relieved, I heard a few claps, and even saw a couple of high fives as the wall to wall coverage concluded and damage control procedures of reframing the discussion kicked in. It started with news anchors acting like they were just as shocked as we were to discover the little boy was missing…As we say back home ‘Negro Please’-translation-Please spare me the drama.

I wasn’t alone in my assessment as the twitter world was abuzz with folks pissed off that they were duped. One tweet summed it up best by noting the balloon escapade was phony and he wondered how many country’s were bombed while we watched this unfold. He noted that perhaps a bill was secretly signed reinstating slavery while we watched the balloon coverage…

What caught my attention in the aftermath was the instant psychological analysis that was quickly attributed to the little boy, especially after it was discovered he was hiding in the attic. These experts kept noting that ‘Little Falcon’ is a smart, precocious young man who may have been seeking attention.  I heard words like  ‘warm’, ‘loving’ and even ‘little genius’ being used to describe him. We heard police officers boldly assert that it’s not unusual for young kids to go hide in attics when people are looking for them after they caused a big mess. Empathy and understanding were the marching orders of the day and the themes directed at Falcon. And should they not? After all, he’s six years old and shouldn’t we see all six year olds with such loving gazes?

It’s hard not to think how the narrative would’ve been played out had it been ‘Lil Darnel’ or Lil Jesus from the inner city who caused this commotion. Would we have been as sympathetic and understanding or would we have seen him as a young uncouth troublemaker? Would the Nancy Graces and Gloria Allreds of the world been on TV calling for this child to be removed from the home and there be widespread condemnation of the entire community for the actions of one?

Before people get too bent out of shape and start rolling their eyes and mumbling ‘Oh brother here we go again’, keep in mind it was just a year ago that we had a spate of arrests and handcuffed placed on  5, 6 and 7 year olds all over the country for acts far less disruptive and costly then the ones caused by ‘cute, precocious’ Falcon. We even had one infamous incident in Pittsburgh, Pa where an officer saw fit to pull a gun and point it at the head of a 7 year old girl-Joshaly Lawton who wouldn’t stop crying when her mom was pulled over for a traffic violation. The mother Pamela Lawton was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct when she objected to the officer pulling a gun on her child.

Am I the only one who recalls the handcuffing and arrest of 7 year old Gerard Mungo Jr. in Baltimore for riding a moped on a sidewalk? Am I the only one who recalls school officials in St Petersburgh, Florida calling the police who then handcuffed 5 year Jiyisha Scott who they said was throwing a temper tantrum?  Weren’t there similar incidents in places like Chicago and a couple of other cities that escape my mind?  Am i the only one who recalls some of the same news outlets that encouraged empathy and understanding toward Falcon were justifying the arrest of these little Black kids who I guess weren’t seen as cute and precocious?

There’s many ways to look at what took place yesterday and attributed to larger societal problems. Lack of parental oversight, kids having access to too much, our society just getting more and more out of control are a few of the isms and schisms that can be conjured up.

Our kids are crying out and we keep failing them. We fail them with our less than stellar policies that suggest we won’t leave them behind, but in reality we do. We fail them when we require more and more in the workplace from overworked and underpaid parents, take away resources for support and then blame them for not being as responsible and ‘there for their kids as much as we would like them. We fail them when we grandstand and utter lofty phrases like ‘It takes a Village to raise a child’ and yet we don’t actively participate in the raising process by setting good examples for the young kids we say we’re raising to follow. In fact we don’t even take steps to childproof this proverbial village we like to talk about.

Sadly many of us can’t even tell when our kids are crying out for help.  Was Little Falcon crying out for help yesterday when he hopped in the balloon, hopped out and hid in the attic while a massive manhunt kicked into gear looking for him? Most people including the newscasters who participated in this exercise of deception kept suggesting that Falcon’s actions were troubling and he needed help-and that’s probably true.

But lemme close by restating my initial remarks. The only person who seemed to be honest during yesterday’s enthralling ‘Balloon-Gate’ scenario was 6 year old-Falcon. Yesterday in front of a nationwide audience we heard him cry out for help and unfortunately I think it was ignored. So let me repeat his cry for help. Falcon said  ‘We did this for the show.’ That was his cry for help.

Ladies and gentlemen our kids are not fodder for over-the-top dramatic news coverage, rating boosters for reality shows or poster children for fake ass politicians who use them as convenient backdrops while trying to push forth an agenda.  Our kids are not show material. They are real, tangible beings who we all better be responsible for and I do mean all of us…

A troubled six year old today who’s issues aren’t adequately and lovingly address will one day  grow up to be a troubled adult who will go to do things like shoot unarmed men in the back of the head at an Oakland BART station, look us in the eye and lie to us about weapons of mass destruction that don’t exist and send us off to war or violate our trust by raiding our banking system, tanking the economy and leaving all us in economic ruin.

A troubled kid one day becomes a troubled adult who will go on to do things like plow drugs and alcohol on an unsuspecting 13 year old, rape her, flee the country before doing jail time and will act incredulous and shocked when finally caught and forced to answer for his misdeeds. His equally troubled friends will actually defend him and claim he did nothing wrong. Troubled kids become troubled adults who lose all sense of civility and compassion and become hardened to the point of seeing no need for justice for those who have been egregiously wronged

A troubled six year old who is not fully cared for will one day grow up and become a troubled adult who will inappropriately use his kids to put on a good show…

something to ponder.

-Davey D-

Return to Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner

Lou Dobbs: Racist, Out of Touch-Stuck in the Past

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Racist is what many think when they see or hear the name of Texas born CNN host Lou Dobbs. His constant immigrant bashing and anti-Latino rhetoric has raised serious concerns

Racist is what many think when they see or hear the name of Texas born CNN host Lou Dobbs. His constant immigrant bashing and anti-Latino rhetoric has raised serious concerns

In many circles around the country when you mention the name Lou Dobbs, you think racist and anti-Latino before you think longtime and once upon a time revered CNN figurehead who helped launched the 24 hour news network . This Texas born son fancies himself as an ‘independent populist’ who uses that moniker as cover for his over the top xenophobic expressions. He’s been pimping the Latino community for the past few years by espousing racially biased remarks that have helped create a climate where fellow citizens are made to feel uncomfortable because of their ethnicity and there’s been a rise in Hate crimes.

Dobbs started out with CNN in 1980 as an economic correspondent. He later went on to found CNN fn (CNN Financial News). He left the network for a spell and then returned in 2001 and started hosting his own show Lou Dobbs tonight in 2003. It was on this show that Dobbs started out focusing on economic issues, but soon concluded that many of this country’s financial woes were due in large part to undocumented immigrants. He then used his talk show to be a central hub for all things anti-immigrant. If you was Minuteman or Texas Border Watcher than Dobbs had a home for you. If you were a person who held a different perspective that might explain the larger economic and political conditions that lead to people crossing over the ‘border in droves’ than Lou Dobbs’ show was the place where you would find yourself being ridiculed and abolished.
If you were a person who expressed concern about the rise in Hate crimes thanks to anti-immigrant rhetoric in broadcast spaces or if you had issues about how land was stolen from indigenous people or how treaties weren’t honored than Lou Dobbs show was the place where your assertions would be considered factually inaccurate and not worthy of serious news time. If you expressed concern about an increase in police brutality or the mistreatment of entire families because of overzealous and often racially biased law enforcement than Lou Dobbs would be the guy to scoff at such concerns.
Yes, this is the same Lou Dobbs who would put down other perspectives to the immigration debate , while at the same time seriously debating and in some instances leading the charge that President Obama is not a US citizen, a charge that has been repeatedly and comprehensivally refuted. Lou Dobbs might as well have been president of the so called Birther movement. Over the years Lou Dobbs has been allowed to gain notoriety and increased popularity by bashing immigrants in particular Brown ones.
Well it seems like many in the Latino community have had enough and have been mounting a campaign to have CNN dump Lou Dobbs. Its called ‘Basta Dobbs’ (www.BastaDobbs.com) Below is a video outlining some of the sentiments many are feeling.
-Davey D-

——————————————————————————-

It’s time to give Lou Dobbs the boot:

Add your name to AlterNet and CREDO’s petition, and send him to the sidelines.

http://www.alternet.org/story/142940/is_lou_dobbs,_cnn’s_resident_bigot,_on_his_way_out?page=entire

The heat on CNN to dump right-wing nativist news host Lou Dobbs has reached a boiling point.

Several grassroots and Internet campaigns urging CNN to drop Dobbs in response to his relentless hate-talk are gathering momentum and tens of thousands of signatures. Will Dobbs finally be stopped from using his on-air bully pulpit to bash immigrants and spread misleading and inaccurate information?

One major anti-Dobbs campaign, Basta Dobbs.com, calls Dobbs the “most dangerous man for Latinos in America.”

Just how dangerous is Dobbs? According to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, “The rise in hate crimes against Latinos coincides almost exactly with the time Dobbs has been propagating false conspiracy theories about Latinos on the air. He’s not urging people to go hurt and kill — but that is the effect of what he does.”

A recent poll of the top 100 Latino leaders, including members of Congress and business leaders, conducted by Bendixen and Associates for Democricia Ahora, showed that 89 percent had a negative opinion of Dobbs. Many believe him to be a racist and question his journalistic credentials. Seventy percent of those polled thought that a campaign aimed at ousting Dobbs was a good idea.

John Santore of Media Matters explains the position of DropDobbs.com, another coalition of groups, which include the National Council of La Raza, LULAC and the Southern Poverty Law Center, working for Dobbs’ ouster:

For years, Lou Dobbs has been one of the most dangerous hosts on cable news. He benefits enormously from the legitimacy of the CNN brand, which provides him with an unparalleled platform from which to mainstream the hate-speech and racially charged conspiracy theories normally relegated to Fox News and other conservative news outlets.

Dobbs calls himself an “advocacy journalist,” but he doesn’t even live up to that ambiguous standard. Good journalism enhances the discussion of serious topics, but Dobbs helps to undermine and debase that discussion, routinely infusing it with misinformation and fear.

Meanwhile, Dobbs has become even more unhinged.

In a rambling, bizarre attack on one of his critics, Roberto Lovato, a key leader in the BastaDobbs.com campaign, Dobbs resorted to juvenile name calling, going so far as to call Lovato a “flea” and a “bozo.”

Dobbs was set off by an AlterNet article in which Lovato chargedthat Dobbs postures as “the victimized defender of American virtue” in order to spread his bile.

A Big Problem

The intensity of the protests against Dobbs have made the news host a “big problem” for the network, sources inside CNN report. Closed-door discussions on Dobbs’ fate appear to be under way.

CNN executives have a lot to talk about. The cable channel is losing market share, and Dobbs is leading the way in the drop in viewers. Raw Story reports that after harping on the Obama birth certificate story, Dobbs’ ratings fell 15 percent — in two weeks.

Long-term, big-picture audience demographics should also figure in CNN’s decision. The Latino market in the U.S is exploding. Naturally, CNN has much invested in its Spanish-speaking audience, and it is well aware that Latinos are not happy with the anti-immigrant Dobbs.

The more Dobbs viciously attacks Latino immigrants, the more he alienates the very audience that CNN is trying to woo. One insider said off the record that they think Dobbs will probably be gone by year’s end.

CNN’s Big Contradiction: Marketing to Latinos While Dobbs Alienates Them

The message aimed at CNN by the drop-Dobbs campaigns is, “How can you seemingly embrace your Latino audience with marketing and special programming
on the one hand, while allowing Dobbs to spread hate with the other?”

The BastaDobbs campaign is spearheaded by Lovato, as part of Presente.com, an online organizing effort affiliated with the Color of Change. CoC is the group credited with getting more than 60 advertisers to drop Fox’s Glenn Beck Show.

I spoke with Lovato on Sept. 27, and he said this about the nationwide campaign against Dobbs’ hate:

For many years, Latinos throughout the United States have organized local street protests and press conferences denouncing Dobbs’ dangerous rhetoric. Think tanks have produced numerous reports proving the falsehoods and fakery that passes for “news” on Lou Dobbs Tonight. Yet, all we get are more silly outbursts from Dobbs — and silence from CNN.

But now, Latinos and others come to realize Dobbs is not going to change. So it’s time for us to take our fight to the real source of the problem, CNN itself.

We are going to make Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN, one of the most famous TV execs in America [Klein is responsible for management oversight of all programming, editorial tone and strategic direction of the network].

I’m encountering this disposition to fight in the 25 cities our campaign is organized in, and on the Internet. Dobbs and CNN are bringing unprecedented alignment and agreement between working-class and elite Latinos.

I asked Lovato about his approach to pressuring CNN and the economics of the Latino audience. Lovato said:

CNN’s moves to capture a segment of what many in media consider the “mission critical” Latino market are no secret. Latinos understand why we’re seeing more of Rick Sanchez and other Latinos on CNN. We take note of the inclusion of Latino analysts, including Alex Castellanos and Leslie Sanchez; and we are curious about how CNN will treat us in its upcoming Latino in America series.

And we wonder why CNN isn’t translating Lou Dobbs in Spanish for inclusion on CNN Espanol, which, by the way, is quite popular with Latinos at this point. But to watch sunny Soledad O’Brien singing the praises of Latino contributors to American society, while just a time slot away the dark, dour Lou Dobbs continues infecting the airwaves with deadly misinformation about “criminal illegal aliens” is just too much hypocrisy.

Regardless of CNN’s big-money efforts to target the Latino market, the continuation of Dobbs’ program guarantees that, for Latinos, the name “CNN” is synonymous with “anti-Latino hatred.”

Ultimately, Dobbs’ vicious attacks on immigrants — often combined with bizarre red-baiting — is not doing great things for the CNN brand. In fact, Dobbs’ antics harshly distort its tag line: “The most trusted name in news.”

For example, take a look at Dobbs’ response to the national protest day, “A day without Immigrants” in 2006, here described by Daphne Eviatar, writing in The Nation:

… on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, it was a different story: “Hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and their supporters today failed in their attempt to shut down most of our cities to support amnesty for all illegal aliens,” the network’s 6 p.m. news anchor reported that evening.

Dobbs elaborated in his online column: “It is no accident that they chose May 1 as their day of demonstration and boycott. It is the worldwide day of commemorative demonstrations by various socialist, communist and even anarchic organizations. … No matter which flag demonstrators and protesters carry today, their leadership is showing its true colors to all who will see.

You might expect that sort of McCarthyesque description from Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh or some other famously right-wing provocateur on Fox or talk radio. But Lou Dobbs, on CNN? These days, the network once pilloried by conservatives as a leading voice of the “liberal media” is offering an expansive platform to the nation’s leading spokesman for anti-immigration hard-liners.

There are countless other critiques of Dobbs, dating back more than three years. The charges, listed by the DropDobbs campaign, and documented by Media Matters, include:

  • Dobbs spreads leprosy falsehood in claiming “invasion of illegal aliens” threatening Americans’ “health.”
  • Dobbs has close ties to “hate group” Federation for American Immigration Reform.
  • Dobbs smeared U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce as “interested in the export of American capital and production to Mexico, and Mexico’s export of drugs and illegal aliens.”
  • Dobbs advanced racially charged conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth certificate.
  • Dobbs said Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination was “absolute pandering to the Hispanics.” Dobbs declared “Mexico has become our enemy.”

A more thorough listof Dobbs’ hate speech can be found on the DropDobbs site.

It’s time to give Lou Dobbs the boot:

Add your name to AlterNet and CREDO’s petition and send him to the sidelines.

Return to the Southern Shift

Jasiri X: What is Peace? (Not Another Hate Letter to Obama)

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“What’s Peace?”-This Week With Jasiri X-Episode 21 is commentary about the meaning of peace and the audacity of giving out a “Peace Prize” in a world so violent. This Episode was Produced Pittsburgh’s own legendary super producer Black Czer and Directed by X-Clan’s Paradise the Arkitech



The Audacity of the Peace Prize

by Jasiri X
twitter/jasirix
Jasiri-225This isn’t another hate article about how President Obama doesn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, in fact the Republican Party just reinforced how even the slightest success from Barack drives them completely crazy. But I do have to say that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama is….ironic. Even he looked kinda embarrassed accepting it.
I mean the Brother’s first act after his celebratory weekend was to order 13,000 additional troops to Afghanistan . And if that wasn’t ironic enough he received the Peace Prize on the weekend where all over America there were celebrations and parades, dedicated to one of the most violent men that ever lived, Christopher Columbus. Which begs the question can America even exist without following through on her founding principles of murder, rape and genocide?
Also ironic is the President’s adopted home town of Chicago is arguably the most violent city in the United States, as witnessed by the brutal beating of Derrion Albert, one of the many young black children that have been murdered far to prematurely. And we haven’t even mentioned police brutality or how this countries corporate corruption has lead to intense poverty and the lack of health care reform which lead to even more violent deaths.
But of course none of these problems are strictly American- nor caused by President Obama, the entire world is a cruel wicked place were violence, corruption and evil dominate. So to even award a Peace Prize when the world isn’t getting better (it’s getting worse) to me is crazy. It’s like giving a movie an Oscar before it’s even finished casting.
Now, I know why they gave it to President Obama and I appreciate it, because I feel the same way. Like us they want to see hope and change turn into concrete policies that can produce well…hope and change. Really we all need to get more active in pushing our President towards REAL change. It’s like we thought because he won the presidency so easily and convincingly he would do the same when it came to reforming the government.
Yes, it was cool to see President Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize, but ultimately it’s symbolic. Real peace means mobilizing against powerful lobbys to prevent a impending war with Iran and further escalating one in Afghanistan. It also means organizing in our communities to prevent our children from shedding each others blood. Until we can stop the tide of rising violence worldwide, nobody deserves a Peace Prize.

Here’s a Commonly held Belief About Columbus-They Claim Native Americans Can’t lay Claim to America

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DaveyD-leather-225As we sit back and ‘celebrate’  Columbus Day I think one should keep in mind that more than a few people had the gall to ask why I reprinted the essay put forth by Professor Ward Churchillwho laid down the facts about Columbus Day. Some felt by putting it out we were being divisive.  They felt we were making things too racial and living in the past. Really? BS.. Here’s the reason why I put posted the Churchill article.  You can read the article here: http://bit.ly/2z0E5v

All this morning, I heard newscast after newscast especially on the east coast where Columbus was touted as this revered explorer who led the way to the New World. Not one mention of the genocide he ushered in. Not one mention of him getting lost. It was all praises for a drunken sailor.

I couple that particular narrative of Columbus being a hero who sailed the ocean blue with the changes being advocated in Texas by members of its state board of education in history and social studies books where there’s a huge push to remove the already short mentions of iconic figures like United Farm Workers founder and Civil Rights activist Cesar Chavez and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall who successfully argued for the elimination of school segregation in the historic Brown vs the Board of Education. Marshall did this as a lawyer for the NAACP, before being appointed to the Supreme Court.  The push is to replace Chavez and Marshall with the accomplishments of far right conservative icons Reverend Jerry Falwell and Newt Gingrich.

Now many of y’all reading this are saying to yourselves ‘Who care’s? After all, it’s a typical scenario one might imagine to happen in a state like Texas right? Wrong.  Next time you open up one of your kids elementary school books, be sure to make note that Texas specializes in selling school books. It’s the country’s biggest exporter.  So you could be in a far off place like New York, California or West Virginia and be reading revisionist history…

Topping all this off is ridiculous column that was passed along to me this morning. Read it,  laugh and then take note. Wars are won by controlling the thinking of your opponent. People to the far political right clearly understand the importance of reaching impressionable minds early on and in controlled environments like school.  If you don’t believe me, look at the crazy protests our racist far right friends held in Burlington, New Jersey this morning to protest elementary school kids singing a song praising President Obama during a Black History month celebration this past February. http://www.wtop.com/?nid=316&sid=1771576

 Something to think about

-Davey D-

Joe McQuaid: Unlike Halloween in Manchester, Columbus is feted on actual holiday

by Joe McQuaid

Source: http://bit.ly/2MhpZQ

christopher_columbusIn fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue

Happy Columbus Day. It was never a day off when I was going to school. And, yes, Columbus had long gone by then, so just forget the thought that when I was in school it was too soon to recognize the event’s importance.

This is one of those weird years when the day is actually observed on the date — unless you live in Manchester and we are talking about Halloween. Here, unlike in the rest of the free world, Halloween will not be celebrated on Saturday, Oct. 31.

As for today’s anniversary, it is generally believed to have been on or about Oct. 12 when Columbus and crew, aboard the Nina, the Pinta and the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, reached the Americas. Okay, I’m just kidding about the name of the last ship.

Although we didn’t get the day off from school when I was growing up, Columbus and the Santa Maria and the whole king and queen of Spain thing were a big deal. Editorial cartoons of the day were more likely to have an Indian looking at the white guys coming ashore and saying, “There goes the neighborhood,” than painting Columbus as a pillager and enslaver.

Some revisionist historians seriously hold that the Europeans were all bad guys who ruined the Americas, imported smallpox, stole gold and forced the savages to stop being savages and to share their smokes. The revise guys also like to speak of the “native Americans,” in reference to the folks Columbus ran into.

But those peoples’ ancestors had also come from elsewhere, and their claims to being here first are a bit like Columbus’ partisans saying he was the first white discoverer, which leaves no room for Leif Erikson or St. Brendan or Lord knows who else.

It is what it is. Nature abhors a vacuum, much as I abhor a vacuum cleaner, and the big wide world was not going to lie vacant for very long after sailors and explorers used their God-given brains and took the calculated risk that they would not fall off the edge of the earth or be devoured by sea monsters if they sailed west in order to get east.

There’s a line from the “Seinfeld” show that has Jerry and George arguing about their favorite explorer. George says DeSoto, for discovering the Mississippi River.

“Oh,” sneers Jerry, “like they weren’t going to find that anyway.”

Someone would have “found” the Americas, too. But Columbus is the guy who did it big time, without a GPS and even without Twitter or a Facebook page to spread the word.

Write to Joe McQuaid at publisher@unionleader.com.

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Why We Should Re-Consider Honoring Columbus-Legacy of genocide in the ‘New World’

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 Columbus and the Beginning of Genocide in the “New World”

by Ward Churchill

Ward Churchill

Ward Churchill

It has been contended by those who would celebrate Columbus that
accusations concerning his perpetration of genocide are distortive
“revisions” of history. Whatever the process unleashed by his
“discovery” of the “New World,” it is said, the discoverer
himself cannot be blamed. Whatever his defects and offenses, they are
surpassed by the luster of his achievements; however “tragic” or
“unfortunate” certain dimensions of his legacy may be, they are
more than offset by the benefits even for the victims of the resulting
blossoming of a “superior civilization” in the
Americas. Essentially the same arguments might be advanced with regard
to Adolf Hitler: Hitler caused the Volkswagen to be created, after
all, and the autobahn. His leadership of Germany led to jet
propulsion, significant advances in rocket telemetry, laid the
foundation for genetic engineering. Why not celebrate his bona fide
accomplishments on behalf of humanity rather than “dwelling” so
persistently on the genocidal by-products of his policies?

To be fair, Columbus was never a head of state. Comparisons of
him to Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler, rather than Hitler, are
therefore more accurate and appropriate. It is time to delve into the
substance of the defendants’ assertion that Columbus and Himmler, Nazi
Lebensraumpolitik (conquest of “living space” in eastern Europe) and
the “settlement of the New World” bear more than casual
resemblance to one another. This has nothing to do with the Columbian
“discovery,” not that this in itself is completely
irrelevant. Columbus did not sally forth upon the Atlantic for reasons
of “neutral science” or altruism. He went, as his own diaries,
reports, and letters make clear, fully expecting to encounter wealth
belonging to others. It was his stated purpose to seize this wealth,
by whatever means necessary and available, in order to enrich both his
sponsors and himself. Plainly, he pre-figured, both in design and by
intent, what came next. To this extent, he not only symbolizes the
process of conquest and genocide which eventually consumed the
indigenous peoples of America, but bears the personal responsibility
of having participated in it. Still, if this were all there was to it,
the defendants would be inclined to dismiss him as a mere thug along
the lines of Al Capone rather than viewing him as a counterpart to
Himmler.

The 1492 “voyage of discovery” is, however, hardly all that is
at issue. In 1493 Columbus returned with an invasion force of
seventeen ships, appointed at his own request by the Spanish Crown to
install himself as “viceroy and governor of [the Caribbean islands]
and the mainland” of America, a position he held until
1500. Setting up shop on the large island he called Espa–ola (today
Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he promptly instituted policies of
slavery (encomiendo) and systematic extermination against the native
Taino population. Columbus’s programs reduced Taino numbers from as
many as eight million at the outset of his regime to about three
million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of the
governor’s departure. His policies, however, remained, with the
result that by 1514 the Spanish census of the island showed barely
22,000 Indians remaining alive. In 1542, only two hundred were
recorded. Thereafter, they were considered extinct, as were Indians
throughout the Caribbean Basin, an aggregate population which totaled
more than fifteen million at the point of first contact with the
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, as Columbus was known.

This, to be sure, constitutes an attrition of population in
real numbers every bit as great as the toll of twelve to fifteen
million about half of them Jewish most commonly attributed to
Himmler’s slaughter mills. Moreover, the proportion of indigenous
Caribbean population destroyed by the Spanish in a single generation
is, no matter how the figures are twisted, far greater than the
seventy-five percent of European Jews usually said to have been
exterminated by the Nazis. Worst of all, these data apply only to the
Caribbean Basin; the process of genocide in the Americas was only just
beginning at the point such statistics become operant, not ending, as
they did upon the fall of the Third Reich. All told, it is probable
that more than one hundred million native people were “eliminated” in
the course of Europe’s ongoing “civilization” of the Western
Hemisphere.

It has long been asserted by “responsible scholars” that this
decimation of American Indians which accompanied the European invasion
resulted primarily from disease rather than direct killing or
conscious policy. There is a certain truth to this, although
starvation may have proven just as lethal in the end. It must be borne
in mind when considering such facts that a considerable portion of
those who perished in the Nazi death camps died, not as the victims of
bullets and gas, but from starvation, as well as epidemics of typhus,
dysentery, and the like. Their keepers, who could not be said to have
killed these people directly, were nonetheless found to have been
culpable in their deaths by way of deliberately imposing the
conditions which led to the proliferation of starvation and disease
among them. Certainly, the same can be said of Columbus’s regime,
under which the original residents were, as a first order of business,
permanently dispossessed of their abundant cultivated fields while
being converted into chattel, ultimately to be worked to death for the
wealth and “glory” of Spain.

Nor should more direct means of extermination be relegated to
incidental status. As the matter is put by Kirkpatrick Sale in his
recent book, Conquest of Paradise,

The tribute system, instituted by the Governor sometime in 1495, was a
simple and brutal way of fulfilling the Spanish lust for gold while
acknowledging the Spanish distaste for labor. Every Taino over the age
of fourteen had to supply the rulers with a hawk’s bell of gold every
three months (or in gold-deficient areas, twenty-five pounds of spun
cotton); those who did were given a token to wear around their necks
as proof that they had made their payment; those who did not were, as
[Columbus’s brother, Fernando] says discreetly “punished”-by having
their hands cut off, as [the priest, BartolomŽ de] las Casas says
less discreetly, and left to bleed to death.

It is entirely likely that upwards of 10,000 Indians were
killed in this fashion alone, on Espa–ola alone, as a matter of
policy, during Columbus’s tenure as governor. Las Casas’
Brev’sima relaci—n, among other contemporaneous sources, is also
replete with accounts of Spanish colonists (hidalgos) hanging Tainos
en masse, roasting them on spits or burning them at the stake (often a
dozen or more at a time), hacking their children into pieces to be
used as dog feed and so forth, all of it to instill in the natives a
“proper attitude of respect” toward their Spanish “superiors.”

[The Spaniards] made bets as to who would slit a man in two, or cut
off his head at one blow; or they opened up his bowels. They tore the
babes from their mother’s breast by their feet and dashed their heads
against the rocks…They spitted the bodies of other babes, together
with their mothers and all who were before them, on their swords.

No SS trooper could be expected to comport himself with a more
unrelenting viciousness. And there is more. All of this was coupled to
wholesale and persistent massacres:

A Spaniard…suddenly drew his sword. Then the whole hundred drew
theirs and began to rip open the bellies, to cut and kill [a group of
Tainos assembled for this purpose] men, women, children and old folk,
all of whom were seated, off guard and frightened…And within two
credos, not a man of them there remains alive. The Spaniards enter the
large house nearby, for this was happening at its door, and in the
same way, with cuts and stabs, began to kill as many as were found
there, so that a stream of blood was running, as if a great number of
cows had perished.

Elsewhere, las Casas went on to recount how

in this time, the greatest outrages and slaughterings of people were
perpetrated, whole villages being depopulated…The Indians saw that
without any offense on their part they were despoiled of their
kingdoms, their lands and liberties and of their lives, their wives,
and homes. As they saw themselves each day perishing by the cruel and
inhuman treatment of the Spaniards, crushed to earth by the horses,
cut in pieces by swords, eaten and torn by dogs, many buried alive and
suffering all kinds of exquisite tortures… [many surrendered to
their fate, while the survivors] fled to the mountains [to starve].

Such descriptions correspond almost perfectly to those of
systematic Nazi atrocities in the western USSR offered by William
Shirer in Chapter 27 of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. But,
unlike the Nazi extermination campaigns of World War II the Columbian
butchery on Espa–ola continued until there were no Tainos left to
butcher.

Evolution of the Columbian Legacy

Nor was this by any means the end of it. The genocidal model
for conquest and colonization established by Columbus was to a large
extent replicated by others such as Cortez (in Mexico) a Pizarro (in
Peru) during the following half-century. During the same period,
expeditions such as those of Ponce de Leon in 1513, Coronado in 1540,
and de Soto during the same year were launched with an eye towards
effecting the same pattern on the North American continent proper. In
the latter sphere the Spanish example was followed and in certain ways
intensified by the British, beginning at Roanoake in 1607 and Plymouth
in 1620. Overall the process of English colonization along the
Atlantic Coast was marked by a series of massacres of native people as
relentless and devastating as any perpetrated by the Spaniards. One of
the best known illustrations drawn from among hundreds was the
slaughter of some 800 Pequots at present-day Mystic, Connecticut, on
the night of May 26, 1637.

During the latter portion of the seventeenth century, and
throughout most of the eighteenth, Great Britain battled France for
colonial primacy in North America. The resulting sequence of four
“French and Indian Wars” greatly accelerated the liquidation of
indigenous people as far west as the Ohio River Valley. During the
last of these, concluded in 1763 history’s first documentable case of
biological warfare occurred against Pontiac’s Algonkian
Confederacy, a powerful military alliance aligned with the French.

Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of the British forces…wrote
in a postscript of a letter to Bouquet [a subordinate] that smallpox
be sent among the disaffected tribes. Bouquet replied, also in a
postscript, “I will try to [contaminate] them…with some blankets
that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease
myself.”…To Bouquet’s postscript Amherst replied, “You will do
well to [infect] the Indians by means of blankets as well as to try
every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable
race.” On June 24, Captain Ecuyer, of the Royal Americans, noted in
his journal: “…we gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out
of the smallpox hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.”

It did. Over the next few months, the disease spread like
wildfire among the Mingo, Delaware, Shawnee, and other Ohio River
nations, killing perhaps 100,000 people. The example of Amherst’s
action does much to dispel the myth that the post contact attrition of
Indian people through disease; introduced by Europeans was necessarily
unintentional and unavoidable. There are a number earlier instances in
which native people felt disease, had been deliberately inculcated
among them. For example, the so-called “King Philip’s War” of
1675-76 was fought largely because the Wampanoag and Narragansett
nations believed English traders had consciously contaminated certain
of their villages with smallpox. Such tactics were also continued by
the United States after the American Revolution. At Fort Clark on the
upper Missouri River, for instance, the U.S. Army distributed
smallpox-laden blankets as gifts among the Mandan. The blankets had
been gathered from a military infirmary in St. Louis where troops
infected with the disease were quarantined. Although the medical
practice of the day required the precise opposite procedure, army
doctors ordered the Mandans to disperse once they exhibited symptoms
of infection. The result was a pandemic among the Plains Indian
nations who claimed at least 125,000 lives, and may have reached a
toll several times that number.

Contemporaneously with the events at Fort Clark, the U.S. was
also engaged in a policy of wholesale “removal” of indigenous nations
east of the Mississippi River, “clearing” the land of its native
population so that it might be “settled” by “racially
superior” Anglo-Saxon “pioneers.” This resulted in a series
of extended forced marches some more than a thousand miles in length
in which entire peoples were walked at bayonet-point to locations west
of the Mississippi. Rations and medical attention were poor, shelter
at times all but nonexistent. Attrition among the victims was
correspondingly high. As many as fifty-five percent of all Cherokees,
for example, are known to have died during or as an immediate result
of that people’s “Trail of Tears.” The Creeks and Seminoles also
lost about half their existing populations as a direct consequence of
being “removed.” It was the example of nineteenth-century
U.S. Indian Removal policy upon which Adolf Hitler relied for a
practical model when articulating and implementing his
Lebensraumpolitik during the 1930s and ’40s.

By the 1850s, U.S. policymakers had adopted a popular
philosophy called “Manifest Destiny” by which they imagined themselves
enjoying a divinely ordained right to possess all native property,
including everything west of the Mississippi. This was coupled to what
has been termed a “rhetoric of extermination” by which
governmental and corporate leaders sought to shape public sentiment to
embrace the eradication of American Indians. The professed goal of
this physical reduction of “inferior” indigenous populations was
to open up land for “superior” Euro-American “pioneers.”
One outcome of this dual articulation was a series of general
massacres perpetrated by the United States military.

A bare sampling of some of the worst must include the 1854 massacre of
perhaps 150 Lakotas at Blue River (Nebraska), the 1863 Bear River
(Idaho) Massacre of some 500 Western Shoshones, the 1864 Sand Creek
(Colorado) Massacre of as many as 250 Cheyennes and Arapahoes, the
1868 massacre of another 300 Cheyennes at the Washita River
(Oklahoma), the 1875 massacre of about 75 Cheyennes along the Sappa
Creek (Kansas), the 1878 massacre of still another 100 Cheyennes at
Camp Robinson (Nebraska), and the 1890 massacre of more than 300
Lakotas at Wounded Knee (South Dakota).

Related phenomena included the army’s internment of the bulk
of all Navajos for four years (1864-68) under abysmal conditions at
the Bosque Redondo, during which upwards of a third of the population
of this nation is known to have perished of starvation and
disease. Even worse in some ways was the unleashing of Euro-American
civilians to kill Indians at whim, and sometimes for profit. In Texas,
for example, an official bounty on native scalps any native scalps was
maintained until well into the 1870s. The result was that the
indigenous population of this state, once the densest in all of North
America, had been reduced to near zero by 1880. As it has been put
elsewhere, “The facts of history are plain: Most Texas Indians were
exterminated or brought to the brink of oblivion by [civilians] who
often had no more regard for the life of an Indian than they had for
that of a dog, sometimes less.” Similarly, in California, “the
enormous decrease [in indigenous population] from about a
quarter-million [in 1800] to less than 20,000 is due chiefly to the
cruelties and wholesale massacres perpetrated by miners and early
settlers.”

Much of the killing in California and southern Oregon Territory
resulted, directly and indirectly, from the discovery of gold in 1849
and the subsequent influx of miners and settlers. Newspaper accounts
document the atrocities, as do oral histories of the California
Indians today. It was not uncommon for small groups or villages to be
attacked by immigrants…and virtually wiped out overnight.

All told, the North American Indian population within the area
of the forty-eight contiguous states of the United States, an
aggregate group which had probably numbered in excess of twelve
million in the year 1500, was reduced by official estimates to barely
more than 237,000 four centuries later. This vast genocide
historically paralleled in its magnitude and degree only by that which
occurred in the Caribbean Basin is the most sustained on
record. Corresponding almost perfectly with this
upper-ninetieth-percentile erosion of indigenous population by 1900
was the expropriation of about 97.5 percent of native land by
1920. The situation in Canada was/is entirely comparable. Plainly, the
Nazi-esque dynamics set in motion by Columbus in 1492 continued, and
were not ultimately consummated until the present century.

The Columbian Legacy in the United States

While it is arguable that the worst of the genocidal programs
directed against Native North America had ended by the twentieth
century, it seems undeniable that several continue into the
present. One obvious illustration is the massive compulsory transfer
of American Indian children from their families, communities, and
societies to Euro-American families and institutions, a policy which
is quite blatant in its disregard for Article l(e) of the 1948
Convention. Effected through such mechanisms as the U.S. Bureau of
Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding school system, and a pervasive policy of
placing Indian children for adoption (including “blind” adoption) with
non-Indians, such circumstances have been visited upon more than
three-quarters of indigenous youth in some generations after 1900. The
stated goal of such policies has been to bring about the
“assimilation” of native people into the value orientations and
belief system of their conquerors. Rephrased, the objective has been
to bring about the disappearance of indigenous societies as such, a
patent violation of the terms, provisions, and intent of the Genocide
Convention (Article I(c)).

An even clearer example is a program of involuntary
sterilization of American Indian women by the BIA’s Indian Health
Service (IHS) during the 1970s. The federal government announced that
the program had been terminated, and acknowledged having performed
several thousand such sterilizations. Independent researchers have
concluded that as many as forty-two percent of all native women of
childbearing age in the United States had been sterilized by that
point. That the program represents a rather stark¾and very
recent¾violation of Article I(d) of the 1948 Convention seems
beyond all reasonable doubt.

More broadly, implications of genocide are quite apparent in
the federal government’s self-assigned exercise of “plenary power” and
concomitant “trust” prerogatives over the residual Indian land
base pursuant to the Lonewolf v. Hitchcock case (187
U.S. 553(1903)). This has worked, with rather predictable results, to
systematically deny native people the benefit of their remaining
material assets. At present, the approximately 1.6 million Indians
recognized by the government as residing within the U.S., when divided
into the fifty-million-odd acres nominally reserved for their use and
occupancy, remain the continent’s largest landholders on a per
capita basis. Moreover, the reservation lands have proven to be
extraordinarily resource rich, holding an estimated two-thirds of all
U.S. “domestic” uranium reserves, about a quarter of the readily
accessible low-sulfur coal, as much as a fifth of the oil and natural
gas, as well as substantial deposits of copper, iron, gold, and
zeolites. By any rational definition, the U.S. Indian population
should thus be one of the wealthiest if not the richest population
sectors in North America.

Instead, by the federal government’s own statistics, they
comprise far and away the poorest. As of 1980, American Indians
experienced, by a decided margin, the lowest annual and lifetime
incomes on a per capita basis of any ethnic or racial group on the
continent. Correlated to this are all the standard indices of extreme
poverty: the highest rates of infant mortality, death by exposure and
malnutrition, incidence of tuberculosis and other plague
disease. Indians experience the highest level of unemployment, year
after year, and the lowest level of educational attainment. The
overall quality of life is so dismal that alcoholism and other forms
of substance abuse are endemic; the rate of teen suicide is also
several times that of the nation as a whole. The average life
expectancy of a reservation-based Native American male is less than 45
years; that of a reservation-based female less than three years
longer.

It’s not that reservation resources are not being exploited,
or profits accrued. To the contrary, virtually all uranium mining and
milling occurred on or immediately adjacent to reservation land during
the life of the Atomic Energy Commission’s ore-buying program,
1952-81. The largest remaining enclave of traditional Indians in North
America is currently undergoing forced relocation in order that coal
may be mined on the Navajo Reservation. Alaska native peoples are
being converted into landless “village corporations” in order that the
oil under their territories can be tapped; and so on. Rather, the BIA
has utilized its plenary and trust capacities to negotiate contracts
with major mining corporations “in behalf of” its “Indian
wards” which pay pennies on the dollar of the conventional mineral
royalty rates. Further, the BIA has typically exempted such
corporations from an obligation to reclaim whatever reservation lands
have been mined, or even to perform basic environmental cleanup of
nuclear and other forms of waste. One outcome has been that the
National Institute for Science has recommended that the two locales
within the U.S. most heavily populated by native people¾the Four
Corners Region and the Black Hills Region¾be designated as
“National Sacrifice Areas.” Indians have responded that this
would mean their being converted into “national sacrifice
peoples”

Even such seemingly innocuous federal policies as those
concerning Indian identification criteria carry with them an evident
genocidal potential. In clinging insistently to a variation of a
eugenics formulation dubbed “blood-quantum” ushered in by the 1887
General Allotment Act, while implementing such policies as the Federal
Indian Relocation Program (1956-1982), the government has set the
stage for a “statistical extermination” of the indigenous
population within its borders. As the noted western historian,
Patricia Nelson Limerick, has observed: “Set the blood-quantum at
one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians, let
intermarriage proceed…and eventually Indians will be defined out of
existence. When that happens, the federal government will finally be
freed from its persistent ‘Indian problem’.” Ultimately, there is
precious little difference, other than matters of style, between this
and what was once called the “Final Solution of the Jewish
Problem.”

The above article is an excerpt of a legal brief from Ward Churchill’s
book Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America
(Common Courage Press, 1994). The defendants in the brief are leaders
of the American Indian Movement, who were charged for stopping a
Columbus Day celebratory parade near the Colorado State Capitol
Building in Denver, Colorado on October 12, 1991.

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What is the State of the Black World?-The Killing of Derrion Albert

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JasiriX-OneHood-225Whenever we witness horrific tragedies like the cold-hearted murder of our brother Derrion Albert, this society seeks to assign blame, instead of accessing the problem. Therefore much of the discussion after watching Derrion’s shockingly brutal beating was whose fault was it. So we all begin to search for scapegoats, whether we say it’s the parents for failing to raise them right, the schools for failing to teach them right, the religious institutions for not doing enough to reach out to them, or rap music for promoting sex and violence. Some have even called for the National Guard, anything to absolve ourselves of any work or responsibility.

But the late great Michael Jackson said it best in the song, “Man in the Mirror”, “who am I to be blind pretending not to see their needs”. We know many parents are struggling, whether it’s with employment, single parent households, drug abuse, or being teen parents. We know the schools are getting worse especially after Bush took a wrecking ball to them called “No Child Left Behind”. We know religious institutions in a large part are getting older and out of touch with today’s youth. And we damn sure know that a majority of what passes as rap music and ends up on the radio is violent and misogynistic.

Chicago Beating Death VigilIf anything Derrion Albert’s death should show us that we can’t just keep our head in the sand and think just because we’re personally doing OK that the suffering of the masses of our people won’t touch us. Derrion was a honor roll student who loved school, attended church and couldn’t wait to go to college, but because his environment didn’t foster these same ideals he fell victim to the mean streets of the “hood”. Just a few days earlier a 5 year old was shot and killed here in Pittsburgh. What did he do to instigate his death? I remember vividly the last time I visited Chicago (my hometown by the way) I received a frantic call that one of my cousins was shot, he had just graduated high school and like Derrion was eagerly awaiting college. He was on his way home from his job when he was caught in the crossfire of two rival gangs. It is only by the grace of God he’s still alive, and needless to say he wants to stay at school rather than come back home to Chicago.

What I’m saying is that all of us are to blame. We know the problems and many of us do little to nothing to help. If we start with the “Man in the Mirror” we can all do so much more to effect a positive change in our communities. But we truly must start now because our lives and the very lives of our children may depend on it.

As soon as I finished writing this I came across this link that sadly further proves my point

13 year old shot and killed by a 16 year old

 

This Week With Jasiri X-Episode 20, examines who’s really to blame for the death of Derrion Albert and the innocent victims of our violent communities. “What’s the State of the Black World?” was produced by Religion and Directed by Paradise the Arkitech

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Michael Moore: Congratulations President Obama on the Nobel Peace Prize — Now Please Earn it!

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Michael Moore may have made his best film to date with Capitalism: A Love Story

Michael Moore may have made his best film to date with Capitalism: A Love Story

Dear President Obama,

How outstanding that you’ve been recognized today as a man of peace. Your swift, early pronouncements — you will close Guantanamo, you will bring the troops home from Iraq, you want a nuclear weapon-free world, you admitted to the Iranians that we overthrew their democratically-elected president in 1953, you made that great speech to the Islamic world in Cairo, you’ve eliminated that useless term “The War on Terror,” you’ve put an end to torture — these have all made us and the rest of the world feel a bit more safe considering the disaster of the past eight years. In eight months you have done an about face and taken this country in a much more sane direction.

But…

The irony that you have been awarded this prize on the 2nd day of the ninth year of what is quickly becoming your War in Afghanistan is not lost on anyone. You are truly at a crossroads now. You can listen to the generals and expand the war (only to result in a far-too-predictable defeat) or you can declare Bush’s Wars over, and bring all the troops home. Now. That’s what a true man of peace would do.

There is nothing wrong with you doing what the last guy failed to do — capture the man or men responsible for the mass murder of 3,000 people on 9/11. BUT YOU CANNOT DO THAT WITH TANKS AND TROOPS. You are pursuing a criminal, not an army. You do not use a stick of dynamite to get rid of a mouse.

The Taliban is another matter. That is a problem for the people of Afghanistan to resolve — just as we did in 1776, the French did in 1789, the Cubans did in 1959, the Nicaraguans did in 1979 and the people of East Berlin did in 1989. One thing is certain through all revolutions by people who wish to be free — they ultimately have to bring about that freedom themselves. Others can be supportive, but freedom can not be delivered from the front seat of someone else’s Humvee.

You have to end our involvement in Afghanistan now. If you don’t, you’ll have no choice but to return the prize to Oslo.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Your opposition has spent the morning attacking you for bringing such good will to this country. Why do they hate America so much? I get the feeling that if you found the cure for cancer this afternoon they’d be denouncing you for destroying free enterprise because cancer centers would have to close. There are those who say you’ve done nothing yet to deserve this award. As far as I’m concerned, the very fact that you’ve offered to walk into the minefield of hate and try to undo the irreparable damage the last president did is not only appreciated by me and millions of others, it is also an act of true bravery. That’s why you got the prize. The whole world is depending on the U.S. — and you — to literally save this planet. Let’s not let them down.

Source: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/congratulations-president-obama-nobel-peace-prize-now-please-earn-it

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25 Joints to Get u Thru the Day: Rise of the Brown Emcee pt 1&2

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25 Joints to get U thru the Day #14

Rise of the Brown Emcee pt 1 (Celebrating Latin Hip Hop)

Listen to pt1 by clicking the link below:

http://odeo.com/episodes/25247787-25-Joints-Rise-of-the-Latin-Emcee-pt1

A few months ago I sat on a panel at Harvard where we discussed the global impact of Hip Hop. There was lots of discussion about what folks are doing in Japan and Australia. We talked a bit about the major inroads made in places like Germany and France. Hip Hop on the continent of Africa was discussed. There was no denying just how widespread this culture born in the ravaged ghettos of the South Bronx had become.

During the discussion I noted that for us in the United States, while it was great to know about Hip Hop icons halfway across the world, in order to really appreciate the global reach of this culture perhaps we should start knowing about our Brown skinned neighbors next door and to the south of us in Mexico and throughout South America. I had always found it troubling that a professed Hip Hop head knew about artists in Canada but couldn’t name one from Mexico which has way more people.

I was always surprised that people knew about Snoop, Game and Dr Dre in Cali, but didn’t know about the equally large Hip Hop scene amongst Chicanos.

People know about Paul Wall, Chamillionaire and UGK in Texas, but many didn’t realize there has long been a Hip Hop exchange amongst Texans and heads in Monterey.

As Afrika Bambaataa likes to point out, those who hold up the mantlepiece of Hip Hop in corporate America have done us a disservice because they have segregated the music and in their quest to ‘do business’ they have distorted and omitted major parts that have been important to its build up. People like to say Hip Hop is worldwide in their radio station sales pitches but never reflect that variety and vibrancy on its day to day playlists.

When we talk about Hip Hop one of the key architects are those who see themselves as Latino. From day one our Brown brothers and sisters were on the ground floor plugging away and helping elevate the culture.-From grafitti to deejaying to dancing to emceeing Latinos have made an indeligible mark in Hip Hop that many have built upon. It may have been folks like Prince Whipper Whip of Fantastic Romantic 5 busting serious flows during Hip Hop’s pioneering days. It might have been DJ Charlie Chase or Disco Wiz holding it down on the turntables or pioneering figures like JoJo, Crazy Legs or Popmaster Fable wrecking shop on the dance floor.

On this special 2 part 25 Joints to Get U through the Day we decided to go digging in the crates and turn you on to some Hip Hop’s dopest emcees who just happen to come from the Brownside of town..

01-DJ Negro ‘Mega Mix’

02-Vicky MC ‘Victoria o Derrota’

03-Boca Floca ‘Mi Gente’

04-Rebel Diaz ‘Dem Dayz’

05-Immortal Technique ‘Internally Bleeding’

06-Cihualt Ce ‘Dreamah’

07-Nina Dioz ‘Cuando Cuando’

08-Brwn Bflo ‘My People, Mi Gente’

09-Rico Pabon ‘It Ain’t Real’

10-Fat Joe ‘I’m Trying to Tell ‘Em’

11-Rosa Clemente “Tired of Protesting’ (Justice System Flava’

12-Aztlan Nation ‘Serpent & Eagle’

13-Mexicano 777 ‘Arrepentido’

14-LSOB ‘Check It Out’

15-Tha Mexakanz ‘Confessions’

16-Apakalips ‘Mind Right’

17-Educated Chicana‘LA Immigrant Rally’ -Low Rider madness mix

18-Nina Dioz ‘Prefiero El Asfalto’

19-2Mex “Graffiti Kings’

20-Maria Isa w/ Lolita ‘Die Not Kill’

21-Jenro ‘Hate or Love It’

22-Deuce Eclipse ‘Last Hope’

23-Deuce Eclipse ‘Can’t Break Me Down’

24-Azeem ‘Latin Revenge’

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25 Joints to get U thru the Day #15

Rise of the Brown Emcee pt2 (the Indians Are Coming back)

Listen by clicking here:

http://odeo.com/episodes/25259306-25-joints-15-Rise-of-the-Brown-Emcee-pt2

We continue with our musical journey celebrating the Rise of today’s Brown emcees. We cover alot of ground especially with those who reflect Indegenous traditions in their music. Folks like Quese IMC, Omeca, 2Mex and Kiawiti hit the mark. We also celebrate those who have have crossed over into the mainstream but still kick flava like Omar Cruz, SPM and Malvadre to name a few.

Enjoy pt2

01-Quese IMC ‘Orrolope Muccusepen’

02-Olmeca, Victor E of EL Vuh ‘Toltec’

03-Filthee Immigrants ‘Libertad’ (Raul Salinas mix)

04-Majesty ‘Pain Music’

05-Immortal Technique w/ Maya Acuzema ‘Crimes of the Heart’

06-Mala Rodriguez ‘Titar Afila El Colmillo’

07-MIS (Mexican Institute of Sound) ‘HipHopno Pares’

08-Rebel Diaz ‘Golpe’

09-Bocafloca ‘Suenos Rotos’

10-La Krudas ‘Eres Bella Siendo Tu’

11-Orisha w/ Tony Touch ‘Represent’

12-Malvadre w/ Tony Touch & Sondoobie ‘Pachanga’

13-Kiawitl ‘Una California’

14-Chino XL, Sinfull & Pitbull ‘Latinos Stand Up’

15-Omar Cruz w/ Farnkie J ‘To the Top’

16-Jimmy Roses ‘Hug Real Tight’

17-JenRo ‘Internal Segregation’

18-B-Real & Malvadre ‘Tiempo Perdido’

19-SPM ‘Mexican Heaven’

20-Cihuatl Ce ‘Rise Above’

21-Mala Rodriguez ‘Tambelea’

22-Cihuatl Ce ‘La Otra Resistencia’

23- La Krudas ‘Vencer La Dificultad’

24-2Mex & Sick Jacken & Xololanxin ‘Doctors, Drums & Danger’

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President Obama Wins Noble Peace Prize-Will It Give Him Political Cover?

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With Obama winning the Noble Peace Prize perhaps he can patch things up with Rev Wright

With Obama winning the Noble Peace Prize perhaps he can patch things up with Rev Wright

Congratulations President Barack Obama just won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said..If that’s the case,  I hope he pulls out of Afghanistan, helps Free Palestine, ends the blockade w/ Cuba and puts an end to AFROCOM…That will give this prize richer meaning… It’ll move him in the direction of Martin Luther King who won this award 45 years ago.  I have my reservations and disappointments with Obama and him waffling on key issues, many have said it was due to politics and the pressure put on him by organized powerful forces, while many of us on the left have kind of left it up to him to do right by us. Perhaps this Noble Prize will give him the political cover to do the right thing and buffer him from war hawk critics.

 It’s either that or Obama who is now the ‘Peace president’ will have to look us in the eye and tell us that ‘War is the answer’ which will then underscore the devaluing of this award which the right is already spinning… In anycase the President winning the Noble Prize will put the fact that ‘he didn’t win’ the Olympics for Chicago..It will also ironically give him political cover when he doesn’t respond angrily or aggressively to right wing nuts who seem to be all up in his grill all the the time..

 -Davey D-

 Well deserved: President Obama won Nobel Peace Prize

http://carlosqc.blogspot.com/2009/10/well-deserved-president-obama-is-2009.html

by Carlos in DC

President Barack Obama deserves well the Nobel Peace Prize.

This award is not about what he has accomplished –or not- within the U.S. during his first eight months in office, but what his election as the first Black president of the United States has meant for this country and the entire world.

As the first African descendant leader of the most powerful and richest nation in human history, a country built for centuries with the work of African and Native American slaves, Barack Obama has broken many barriers with his election and directly promoted equality, respect for diversity, social justice, and change all around the planet.

This is a well deserved prize, and it represents also the hope of hundreds of millions of oppressed people in the world struggling against racism, including the over 180 million Afro descendants in the Americas, with leaders like Piedad Cordova, the Afro Colombian Senator who was also a favorite and front runner for this award.

This prize is also well timed as president Obama is close to decide on the fate of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the current conflicts are getting more complicated and a military solution seems less probable in both cases.

 The U.S. has over 1,000 military bases in the world, and president Obama needs the most support to make the right decisions to spread more peace, and less wars. His current efforts to strength the U.S. presence in the United Nations is a sign that he will be focusing in peaceful diplomacy in the near future.
 President Obama will receive the Nobel Prize 45 years after Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded in 1964:

  Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize  

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/10/200910984730747202.html 

 The Nobel Committee on Friday said that Obama had made “extraordinary efforts in international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples.”

 Barack Obama, the US president, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009, less than a year after taking office.

The announcement was made in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, recognising Obama’s attempts to foster international peace and create a world without nuclear weapons.

 Obama, 48, wins the award while still being the commander-in-chief of US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the committee, said.

“His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

“Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics.

“Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.”

‘Midst of engagement’

The prize is worth $1.4m, which will be handed over on December 10.

 The only US presidents to have won the award while in office were Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919. 

 Kristian Berg Harpviken, from the International Peace Research Institute, told Al Jazeera: “I was very surprised … On the other hand what I did expect this year was a daring prize.

“I mean by daring is a prize that went to somebody who is not only rewarded for past achievements but who actually stands in the midst of a historical engagement.

“In other words, I was expecting the committee to want to use the political weight of the prize to make a difference in the world. To award it to somebody who could take that political capital and run with it.

Harpviken said that Obama is yet to achieve any of his major objectives on the global stage but added “what Obama has done is to give a breath of fresh air to international diplomacy and to multilateral collaboration.”

“He has done that but he has yet to prove that he can deliver. And on many of the concrete issues where he has made tall commitments and has high ambitions it is clear that the wind is not blowing his way and that it is going to be very difficult.”

Governments and world players began reacting to the announcement of the award on Friday.

The Taliban condemned the decision saying that Obama has “not taken a single step towards peace in Afghanistan”.

However, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, congratulated Obama, calling the announcement “appropriate”.

An aide to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, said that the award should prompt Obama to begin to end injustice in the world.

“We hope that this gives him the incentive to walk in the path of bringing justice to the world order,” Ali Akbar Javanfekr, Ahmadinejad’s media aide, said.

“We are not upset and we hope that by receiving this prize he will start taking practical steps to remove injustice in the world.”

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