FieldLeaks....

Sorry, nothing to leak. Although I know plenty. Still, my profession and actual line of work does not allow me to reveal things that I have heard or know about my clients or people I come in contact with while working my 9-5. There are things that I will take to my grave that could have made me a wealthy man while I was alive. (What are they paying for great movie scripts these days?)

Anyway, A-merry-ca is being gripped by Wikimania, all because some state department employee (or employees) decided to do like Diana Ross and sing to Julian Assange .(To some, the worst Australian since....well, that other bad Australian, Uncle Rupert.) Now his O ness and his peeps are threatening lawsuits and criminal action because of the nature of some of the leaks. I guess it's not cool to embarrass diplomats. Apparently they talk about each other in very unflattering ways, and it's going to make it that much harder to solve the world's problems when they meet face to face.

Honestly, I have yet to make up my mind about this whole Wiki Leaks thing. I want an open government, and I want hard nosed aggressive journalist doing their job, but I also understand the issue of national security; as well as the need to keep certain things from the public. I am just not sure where we are with these latest leaks.

Of course, right on cue with their nuttiness; here comes the wingnuts:

"Long Island Congressman Peter King took his condemnation even further and urged that WikiLeaks be declared a “foreign terrorist organization,” putting it in the same arena as al-Qaida. The Republican also wants WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange prosecuted under the Espionage Act. “They are engaged in terrorist activity. What they’re doing is clearly aiding and abetting terrorist groups,” King, the incoming chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, told MyFox New York."

They always make it so easy for me to choose sides these wingnuts. (Did O'Reilly really call for Assange's execution? Yes, I think he did.)

Oh wait, and let's not forget to politicize this latest scandal. We can never let the chance to take a shot at his O ness go to waste:

"Sarah Palin blasted out a dispatch to her Facebook supporters Monday, taking aim at the Obama administration's handling of the latest WikiLeaks document drop and criticizing the White House's "incompetent handling of this whole fiasco." The former Alaska governor also seemingly encouraged the hunting of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with "the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders."

In her Facebook post, Palin questions the timing of Obama's recent steps to try to patch intelligence holes that have allowed repeated leaks of classified information:
The White House has now issued orders to federal departments and agencies asking them to take immediate steps to ensure that no more leaks like this happen again. It's of course important that we do all we can to prevent similar massive document leaks in the future. But why did the White House not publish these orders after the first leak back in July? What explains this strange lack of urgency on their part?

Palin also takes a shot at the failure to capture or stop Assange, an ineffectiveness that she appears to characterize as a lack of effort or caring by the Obama administration:"

Yes, we must get our priorities right. We have yet to capture OBL, but we must capture the founder of WikiLeaks.

Annelie Botes: "I Don’t Like Black People"

IOL News
November 30, 2010 (8am)

Annelie Botes

Remarks made by a prominent Afrikaans author have opened a debate about race in South Africa.

Author and columnist Annelie Botes told Rapport newspaper in an interview last week she did not like black people. 

People have since either hailed Botes as “brave” or called for her to leave the country. 

Asked in the Rapport interview which people she did not like, Botes paused before she answered that she would be honest despite knowing her answer would shock. 

“I don’t like black people.” 

She continued: “I don’t understand them! ... I know they are people just like me. I know they have the same rights as me. But I do not understand them. And then I do not like them. I avoid them because I am scared of them ... My neighbour was brutally murdered. For what? 

“If black people are hungry, why don’t they, like in the old days, break in, steal the fridge and walk away? I know where their anger comes from. It has f**k all to do with apartheid. They are angry because of their own incompetence.” 

Botes had since told Rapport this weekend she was not a racist and should have instead said she did not like “all black people”. 

Her publishing company, NB Publishing, had distanced itself from her comments. 

A number of people have tweeted their feelings, left messages on Facebook and commented on the Rapport’s website. 

Zimo2 tweeted: “Why don’t you relocate you ugly minded? Are you beautiful by any chance?”

Zena wrote on the Rapport website: “I agree 100 percent with her. Too many people out there are false.” 

Pierre de Vos, constitutional law expert at UCT, wrote on his blog Constitutionally Speaking that Botes’ comments were an indication of the feelings of other South Africans. “We all know now that this is not an aberration. These sentiments are rife and are supported either tacitly or more loudly by many white South Africans.”- Cape Times 

See comments at IOL on this story.

***********

Comment: Most white South Africans harbour resentment toward blacks in general.  The same is true for a large portion of the coloured and Indian populations as well.

What makes the white case unique is the manner in which victimization has become so central to white South African identity or whiteness.

Over the years I have talked about crime and race here.  The simple truth is that whites are not uniquely victimized by crime.  In fact, white men are more likely to die from suicide than at the hands of a black criminal.

Whiteness will deny this reality.  Whites in the post-apartheid era need to feel victimized to verify their existence inside of whiteness.  

Whiteness in post-colonial terms is, after all, a vain attempt to hold onto to the fading reality of racial centrality and control.

Annelie Botes is just saying what most whites believe and need to believe to exist in post-apartheid South Africa.

She should not be heralded as being truthful or even applauded for opening up yet another space for race dialogue aimed at contrived reconciliation.

Botes' is merely signifying the existential anxiety/angst that is white South African identity 16 years after the end of apartheid.

Nothing more.

Onward! 

Some folks aren't in the holiday spirit.

The holidays are winding down and I am getting ready to head back to the plantation. I am looking forward to my TSA experience tomorrow. (You folks have been a joy)

I am trying to relax and enjoy the down time but I can't. -Mrs. Field has this thing all figured out. She spends her days reading that damn LilKim or Kindle or whatever the hell they call those things and looking for shopping deals for the holidays. Me, not so much.

I am still busy watching and reading the news, and every cable news show, while I lament over the fate of A-merry-ca.

Some Somalian kid decides to live out his Osama bin Laden fantasy up in the great Northwest, and A-merry-cans, who are sick and tired of his kind; decide to torch his Mosque. Nice. A word to my Muslim friends up in Portland: you might want to consider a change of scenery.

And then there is the story coming out of Michigan. Three little boys missing and their daddy tried to hang himself. But wait, it gets better-or worse:

"Authorities said John Skelton claimed that he gave the boys to a female friend before he attempted suicide, but officers haven't been able to confirm whether the woman exists.
The boys were last seen Thursday and reported missing the next day by their mother, Tanya Skelton, Weeks said. A family friend said the boys were with their father as part of court-ordered visitation and their parents were going through a divorce. " [Article]

Sadly, I am guessing that this woman only exists in the sick mind of this father. As someone who is somewhat familiar with family law and how the family court system works, I find this story to have a familiar ring to it. The little man in my head is telling me that there is going to be a very upset officer of the court who wrote that visitation and custody order for the Skeltons.

Finally, I swear some of you Negroes take this religion thing to the extreme. Did this Negro really blame god for dropping a crucial pass on Sunday?

"New York–It wasn’t his own hands or the Pittsburgh secondary Sunday that foiled Buffalo Bills wide receiver Steve Johnson from hauling in what should have been the game-winning TD catch in the end zone.
It was God.
“I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!!” the 24-year-old tweeted from his iPad at around 5:15 Sunday after the Steelers’ 19-16 overtime victory. “AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO…”
Johnson had a perfect pass in his hands that would have given his team an overtime victory over the heavily favored Steelers.

Instead of walking off the field the hero, however, he dropped it."

Yes, you dropped it. But don't blame god, he put you in the position to make the catch.

Still, you play for the Bills, so you might want to blame him for that.

I'm out.

Not so "Fresh Air".

Damn it! My birds just caught a beat down in Chi town. Lovie had his boys ready to play.
We are still tied for first so Iwon't trip.

So anyway, some folks are calling out NPR's Terry Gross and drawing Juan Williams comparisons after her recent Jay Z interview. I will give you a cut and paste job as an example:

"Let’s begin with the premise that no people, culture, religious, racial or ethnic group is by definition immoral. Not acknowledging this, at the core, is the problem with Juan Williams’ gross generalization about Muslims that recently got him fired from National Public Radio (NPR). But if NPR’s “Fresh Air” interview last week with the rapper Jay-Z about his new book Decoded is any indication, it’s a message still lost on Terry Gross.

To be sure, Juan Williams revealed his bias by openly expressing his personal opinion. Terry Gross didn’t do that. Instead the bias is more subtle and insidious and lurks in the line of questioning.

While not as shocking as the obvious blanket condemnation Juan Williams advanced, the Terry Gross/ Jay-Z interview is even more problematic because it illuminates a tendency pervasive in today’s news media. This is a moment in which Blacks can be embraced and promoted at the same time that their humanity is dismantled—all in a 30-second sound bite.

Throughout her interview with Jay-Z, Gross kept returning the discussion to those places that reinforce the idea of Black culture as immoral and Black people as corrupt and/or corruptible. Such anti-Black arguments that once lived primarily in conservative public policy debates have now worked their way into national culture (especially in film, television, news media and politics) to the degree that these views are now widely accepted as the norm.

In short, racial disparities in education, unemployment, criminal justice, wealth-building, and more are rooted in Black cultural failing alone. As this logic prevails, it’s impossible to gain traction on any targeted policy solutions regarding the problems disproportionately facing Blacks.

President Obama realizes this. Hence his colorblind politics, a policy approach that anti-racist activist Tim Wise documents in detail in his new book, Colorblind. However, one wonders to what extent even liberal journalists like Terry Gross realize they are collaborators.

To grasp the full extent to which Gross emboldens conservative ideas about race, one should listen to the entire 45-minute interview. For now, let this brief exchange illustrate the point,

GROSS: Your father left when you were very young. And you say that most of your friends’ fathers had left. You say, “Our fathers were gone, usually because they just bounced. But we took their old records and used them to build something fresh.” That’s really interesting that one of your things that your father leaves behind that you can use is his records.

JAY-Z: Yeah, I guess there’s a bright side to everything right?

GROSS: Yeah, well, that’s one way of looking at it.

Any great interviewer—and Gross is at the top of her game—knows the role he or she plays in the outcome. Part of the science is in framing the questions.

The advancing of conservative rhetoric about Blacks persists, whether Gross is bluntly asking Jay about crimes he committed 15 years ago (crack sales and assault), or inquiring about his mother’s parental decisions: “You ended up selling crack and helping your mother, as a single mother, support the family. Did she know that’s how you were making the money?”

What’s the takeaway message? That Jay’s mom was a single parent that made poor choices, let her teenage son sell drugs and is unprincipled because she knows the money he’s using to support the family comes from drug sales. It’s a narrative we’ve heard from the Republican Revolution of 1994 to the recent well-financed media blitz that resulted in the mid-term shellacking of the Democrats.

And Terry Gross never goes off message. In a nearly hour long interview with a self-made record executive mogul and entrepreneur worth at least half a billion, on the occasion of the publication of a book he deems a coming of age story for his generation, the most pressing questions on the table range from insight into drug dealing to why rappers grab their crotches? "[More]

In a way, I understand what my friend Bakari is saying. But isn't Jay Z the wrong subject to use to make this point? Jay Z is a rapper who made his bones glorifying his street cred from his "hard knock" beginnings. Terry Gross couldn't totally ignore who the rapper is. Still, I found myself agreeing with the author' general point about liberals and about A-merry-can journalist in general.

Terry Gross doesn't get a pass, because I know where she is coming from, and believe me, it isn't a good place.

Fighting back.

His Oness better start trying to learn a non- contact sport, we can't have our commander in chief catching stitches from aggressive b-ballers. If he isn't careful he will kill himself before folks like this can make good on their threats. ( BTW, I am starting to see a trend here.)

I see Sarah is fighting back. She is a feisty one that Sarah:

"Even on Thanksgiving Day, Sarah Palin found time to lash out at her political foes -- in this case the media for blowing out of proportion her gaffe on the Korean crisis.

In a Facebook posting, the combative Palin addressed a Thanksgiving message to "57 states" -- mocking a mistake President Obama made in his 2008 campaign as a way of arguing that the news uses a double standard. "If you can't remember hearing about them [Obama slip-ups), that's because for the most part the media didn't consider them newsworthy," she wrote, according to ABC News. "I have no complaint about that. Everybody makes the occasional verbal gaffe -- even news anchors."


She is a fighter that Sarah. You gotta love her.

I can't blame her for being cocky, though. A-merry-ca has had her magic Negro moment, and they don't need the black guy anymore. It looks like he has cleaned up enough of the previous mess and we can move on now. Thank you O, we hardly knew you.

More Than a Third of South African Men Admit to Rape: Study

Times Live
November 27, 2010

More than a third of South African men in a new survey admitted to committing rape at some point in their lives, says the study's authors. 

The survey, by the government-funded Medical Research Council and non-profit organisation Gender Links, found that 37.4 percent of men in the north-central province of Gauteng admitted to committing rape at some point in their lives, while 25.3 percent of women said they had been victims of rape.

It follows up on a national survey carried out last year that found that more than one in four South African men admitted to having raped a woman or girl.

"The previous level was so high that we didn't expect it to be even higher," Rachel Jewkes, a researcher at the Medical Research Council, told AFP.

Researchers surveyed 487 men and 511 women in Gauteng, the country's second-most populous province, which is home to Pretoria, the capital, and Johannesburg, the largest city.

The study group was 90 percent black and 10 percent white, reflecting the province's demographics, authors said.

Over half the women surveyed said they had experienced some form of violence -- emotional, economic, physical or sexual -- in their lifetimes, and 78.3 percent of men admitted to perpetrating some form of violence against women.

South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of reported rape, with 36,190 cases -- 99 per day -- reported to police in 2007, but experts say that only a small number of attacks are actually reported.
The MRC study found that only one in 25 rapes had been reported to the police.

South Africa has the highest number of HIV infections in the world, compounding the trauma rape victims face.

In the 2009 study, one in five confessed rapists tested positive for HIV.

******************* 

Comment: I can't imagine that any South African reading this article is entirely shocked by the prevalence of rape in our country.  Perhaps some may be shocked by the sheer number of men who admit to rape.

Rape is an endemic problem in South Africa because we are, in large part, a rude, violent, and drunk nation.  I have said this here before and my position has not changed.

Violence is at the core of who we are and no matter what stream of blame (causation) is pointed to it hardly brings any hope that the course of violence against women, in particular, will be altered.

Alcohol abuse, like violence, is rife and it cuts across the demographic lines of race, ethnicity, class, gender, or religion for that matter.

In the too early hours of this morning I waited to board a South African Airways flight from Nairobi to Johannesburg in an enclosed area where many South Africans of all stripes and persuasions were gathered. 

Despite the hour it was not a quiet and sleep deprived crowd in a typical sense.  Somewhere in the middle was a group of about eight to ten middle aged men and women who were just loud and obnoxious.

I found their behaviour unbecoming.

When I was finally seated in the back of the plane a very pleasant young man in his twenties started chatting about his week-long visit to Nairobi.  He explained that he was part of a delegation from the Gauteng legislature.

I asked him if he had fun in Nairobi and he answered: "Not as much fun as my colleagues who are still drunk from the partying they did right up to the time we departed for the airport at 4am."

As we continued to chat I watched the same group of middle-aged buffoons make their tipsy way in recurring waves to the toilets just behind us.

How can this be right?  Should they not know better than to be drunk in public? 

If the members/staff of the legislature of the most powerful province in South Africa see nothing wrong with being drunk and loud in public it does not bode well for the rest of society.

I wondered about message they were sending and it made me recall a question a Kenyan taxi driver posed to me on Friday during a long drive back to my hotel.

He asked: "Why are South Africans so violent even now that your country is free?"

I mumbled some answer to which he replied: "The South Africans I have met have not been very friendly.  Black and white it does not matter.  Kenyans will tell you that they do not like the South Africans even though they admire Mr. Mandela," he said with a smile and laugh.

"Yeah I can understand that.  I try to avoid most South Africans just about anywhere.  Even in South Africa," I replied with a smile.

"Give me hope Joanna"

Onward!

PS: If any peer/supervisor from the Gauteng legislature happens to be reading here and wants to check in on the drunk delegation see the travel details for South African Airways flight 183; November 27; departure 7:05am from Nairobi to Joburg.

I am not smiling with Sarah.

I am out of my element, so posting has been hard for me. I traveled over the holiday weekend, and, as I expected, the experience was quite pleasant. The TSA folks couldn't have been nicer.

Anyway, I haven't been watching too much news, but it looks like this Korean conflict is heating up. Still, as this crisis continues to escalate, I am sure that many of you are thankful that Sarah Palin is not next in line to hold the most powerful position in the world. I hate to beat a dead...OK, that's a lie, I actually enjoy beating up on Sarah, but can you imagine her calling Kim Jong il and telling him not to worry because A-merry-ca has his back? Don't laugh. I really believe that she does think he is a friend. But that's what I believe. Even if you agree with Mitchell Bard who wrote a great article for the Huffington Post, (excerpt below) you have to acknowledge how dangerous Sarah Palin truly is.

I know that folks on the right and all of her fans are going to call it a simple slip of the tongue, but this latest verbal faux pas goes to much deeper issues with Sarah.

"The real story, though, isn't that Palin said "North" instead of "South." Let's be honest: Vice President Joe Biden could have just as easily blown a line like that.

No, the real story is that Palin was discussing a complex, precarious, highly dangerous issue as if she were an expert, even though she clearly isn't.

Does anyone outside of Palin's relatively small group of smitten followers honestly believe that she is competent to act as an expert on Korean policy? That she knows the intricacies and risks of engaging with the North Koreans? That she understands the possible leadership struggle going on there? Do you think she has the first clue about the history of Korea over the last century? Do you think she's ever heard of Syngman Rhee, the Bodo League massacre, the Battle of Inchon, or National Security Council Report 68, or that she knows about the decades of Japanese rule in Korea? Do you think she's ever read about the role the propaganda efforts of the post-Stalin Soviet government played in the eventual armistice that ended the fighting?" [Article]


Of course we don't, and there in lies the problem: She is a intellectual lightweight who has been elevated to a status by her followers that she cannot live up to. And,of course, she knows this, she has to be aware of her limitations. But it's too late for her to come clean now. She is like a grifter who is too deep into the con to reveal her true self.


Let' s hope that the con doesn't last until November, 2012.

Pudgy Indian Reviews "Reel Injuns"

by Eugene Johnson of Pudgy Indian 3 blog
November 24, 2010

Shusli, Redwillow, and I went to see the movie "Reel Injun," a documentary produced by Neil Diamond (no not that one) about the Hollywood perception of Indians and the images it has created
Neil interviews many interesting folks such as: John Trudell, Sacheen Littlefeather, Robbie Robertson, Chris Eyre, Clint Eastwood, and many others.

The film documents how Hollywood has viewed Indians throughout the decades since its birth in the late 19th century. He explains how Indians were portrayed as fellow human beings into the 1920's, but during the Depression, the Indians as "uncivilized savage" came into vogue.

That is where the Indian speak started: Ugh, Me heapum big indin cheef!"

As a kid, I always felt uncomfortable about Bugs Bunny (my favorite as a kid) was killing Indians and making a joke out of it. What the f**k?

See Eugene's full review here.

***************

Or is it a taste for racism?

Comment: Eugene sent me an email heads-up on "Reel Injuns" and suggested (not playfully) that I work on getting the Spur restaurant franchise to screen the documentary during dinner.

Those of you who live in South Africa know all to well that the Spur Steak Ranches uses an Indian mascot to sell steaks (Spur is in Nairobi doing the same).

I have wondered how many South Africans boycott Spur or Chrysler for using stereotypical Indian mascots and reductive names (Grand Cherokee).

Not too many is my thinking.

Sadly, I do not expect "Reel Injuns" to make it to any cinema anywhere in South Africa.

Nonetheless, I am going to send an email to the executive owner of Spur, Allen Ambor, to tell him that Eugene, a real Indian in Oregon, suggests he screen "Reel Injuns" for schooling (anti-racist) purposes.

And yeah I think it racist to trade off Indian stereotypes/images especially since Allen Ambor has repeatedly refused to drop the Indian mascot trademark.

Do you think he will reply?

If anyone knows whether "Reel Injuns" will be screened in South Africa please let us know.

For an academic treatment of Indian stereotypes and racism, popular culture, and Hollywood, see Ward Churchill's excellent collection of essays entitled "Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema, and the Colonization of American Indians" (1998).

Onward!

"Threadjack" me.

*

I wanted to blog about this Scottsboro Boys musical playing on Broadway, (*see pic) and John McWhorter's recent comments about it, but I really don't have time------ I am in the middle of my holiday travels.

Anyway, go ahead and jack this thread. You can comment on that McWhorter article if you like, and you can tell me what you are thankful for this turkey season.

I know what I am thankful for: Folks like you who come to the fields to read what a very opinionated brotha has to say. I learn from each and every one of you, and I always appreciate the company.

Have a happy holiday and don't eat too much. Remember, spring is just around the corner. :)

Tuesday in A-merry-ca!

Poor Velma Hart. I know she was tired of defending Obama, so now, at least, maybe the poor lady can finally get some well deserved rest. It Seems that she has been laid off from her veteran services gig. Bummer.

Watch out Obama, if you run against my girl Sarah in 2012 you better check those voting machines. It seems that the Palins are making a dry run. Seriously, Dancing With The Stars? Watch, A-merry-cans will be all glued to the finals when the North Koreans decide to strike us.

This stuff in the Korean Peninsula is getting serious. I sure hope that the funny looking little man with the f*&^%d up haircut and ugly suits doesn't have any nukes. But I digress. Back to the 2012 election: "O" I think Sarah is rounding up her grass roots supporters. You might want to consider doing the same.

Hey, I thought that you folks in the Naaath were supposed to be the enlightened ones? (h/t to Ebony for this article)

"A party for black Harvard and Yale alums at a Boston club this weekend was shut down just after 11pm. Why? The club owner was concerned that a long line of black people outside would make the club look bad.

A group of recent graduates had sold tickets in advance for a party at a new Boston club, Cure, to follow Saturday's Harvard-Yale game. By 10:30pm, though, club management freaked out and claimed it had seen "local gang bangers" around, despite the strict guest-list policy implemented by organizers. At first they demanded that guests show student ID — not exactly practical given the fact that it was a party aimed at alums — and then eventually shut down the entire club.

"We were perceived as a threat because of our skin color," wrote one organizer, Michael Beal, in the email below. "I am further dismayed that after having spent the last few hours with the club owner, I do not believe him to be a racist; which only adds to my consternation around what this event says about race relations in our country."

It echoed a firestorm three years ago, on the other side of the Charles River. In May 2007, called by other students, Harvard University Police asked students at a gathering of black Harvard student organizations on a campus green to show ID. That sparked an independent review and a police restructuring. [Source]

Haaavaaad!? Noooo! You mean my man R won't even leave the edu-macated Negroes alone?
Damn! Maybe Skippy Gates was on to something.

Finally, I think the republic will survive the evil TSA men and women:

"ATLANTA – Despite tough talk on the Internet, there was little if any indication of a passenger revolt at many major U.S. airports, with very few people declining the X-ray scan that can peer through their clothes. Those who refuse the machines are subject to a pat-down search that includes the crotch and chest.

Many travelers said that the scans and the pat-down were not much of an inconvenience, and that the stepped-up measures made them feel safer and were, in any case, unavoidable.

"Whatever keeps the country safe, I just don't have a problem with," Leah Martin, 50, of Houston, said as she waited Monday to go through security at the Atlanta airport.

At New York's LaGuardia Airport early Tuesday, Jeannine St. Amand got a pat-down in front of her husband and two children. The 45-year-old from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, figured she got one because the underwire of her bra tripped the metal detector.

"It's hard to remember all the restrictions. Next time, I'll wear a different bra," she said.

She opted to have the pat-down in public rather than private and said it was professional and done by a female agent." [Article]

Yes, but Ms. St. Amand, you are Canadian, you don't understand privacy.

In Memory Of Chalmers Johnson 1931 - 2010

The excerpt below is taken from an article Professor Emeritus Chalmers Johnson wrote for The Nation in 2001.  The article is entitled "Blowback":

The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did not "attack America," as our political leaders and the news media like to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy. Employing the strategy of the weak, they killed innocent bystanders who then became enemies only because they had already become victims. Terrorism by definition strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable. The United States deploys such overwhelming military force globally that for its militarized opponents only an "asymmetric strategy," in the jargon of the Pentagon, has any chance of success. When it does succeed, as it did spectacularly on September 11, it renders our massive military machine worthless: The terrorists offer it no targets. On the day of the disaster, President George W. Bush told the American people that we were attacked because we are "a beacon for freedom" and because the attackers were "evil." In his address to Congress on September 20, he said, "This is civilization's fight." This attempt to define difficult-to-grasp events as only a conflict over abstract values--as a "clash of civilizations," in current post-cold war American jargon--is not only disingenuous but also a way of evading responsibility for the "blowback" that America's imperial projects have generated.

"Blowback" is a CIA term first used in March 1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the US government's international activities that have been kept secret from the American people.

Comment: Chalmers died three days ago on November 20 in California.  He was 79 and a no-flies intellectual who supported the Vietnam War and Cold War but then grew into a fierce critic of American imperialism.

His 'tell it like it is' style will be sorely missed.

For more of his incisive deconstruction of US imperialism see his "Can we end the American empire before it ends us" (2007) here.

His fourth, and last book, on American Imperialism is entitled "Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope" (August 2010). 

May he rest in peace.

Onward!

Picture Credit

SOFTY!

In typical A-merry-can fashion the hysteria over the TSA searches have hit record levels. Fake stories on wingnut sites, and urban (or rural) legends are everywhere. (BTW, that shirtless boy story is not quite the way the wingnuts portrayed it.) You would think the government s going to insert secret radio chips in every person who goes through one of these new screeners. There is even concerns about low levels of radiation emitting from these new devices. Yeah, right. This from a nation of people who damn near live with cell phones on their ears. Give me a break!

I am going to be getting a close up experience with one of these new devices as I start my holiday travel, and I am more concerned about the idiots staging a protest and holding up the checkpoint lines than the damn TSA employees and their machines. Anyway, I hope you all know where this is heading. Be careful of right wing hysteria, it never ends well.

Finally, speaking of right wing hysteria: Sometimes it's best to let you just read for yourselves and draw your own conclusions. Check out the latest from some clown from a group who calls themselves The American Family Association:

"The Medal of Honor will be awarded this afternoon to Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta for his heroism in Afghanistan, and deservedly so. He took a bullet in his protective vest as he pulled one soldier to safety, and then rescued the sergeant who was walking point and had been taken captive by two Taliban, whom Sgt. Giunta shot to free his comrade-in-arms.

This is just the eighth Medal of Honor awarded during our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Sgt. Giunta is the only one who lived long enough to receive his medal in person.

But I have noticed a disturbing trend in the awarding of these medals, which few others seem to have recognized.

We have feminized the Medal of Honor.

According to Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, every Medal of Honor awarded during these two conflicts has been awarded for saving life. Not one has been awarded for inflicting casualties on the enemy. Not one.

Gen. George Patton once famously said, "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his."

When we think of heroism in battle, we used the think of our boys storming the beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe do Hoc while enemy soldiers fired straight down on them, and tossing grenades into pill boxes to take out gun emplacements.

That kind of heroism has apparently become passe when it comes to awarding the Medal of Honor. We now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.

So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night?

I would suggest our culture has become so feminized that we have become squeamish at the thought of the valor that is expressed in killing enemy soldiers through acts of bravery. We know instinctively that we should honor courage, but shy away from honoring courage if it results in the taking of life rather than in just the saving of life. So we find it safe to honor those who throw themselves on a grenade to save their buddies.

Jesus, in words often cited in ceremonies such as the one which will take place this afternoon, said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). So it is entirely right that we honor this kind of bravery and self-sacrifice, which is surely an imitation of the Lord of lords and King of kings.

However, Jesus’ act of self-sacrifice would ultimately have been meaningless - yes, meaningless - if he had not inflicted a mortal wound on the enemy while giving up his own life.

The significance of the cross is not just that Jesus laid down his life for us, but that he defeated the enemy of our souls in the process. It was on the cross that he crushed the head of the serpent. It was on the cross that “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15).

The cross represented a cosmic showdown between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, and our commanding general claimed the ultimate prize by defeating our unseen enemy and liberating an entire planet from his bondage.

We rightly honor those who give up their lives to save their comrades. It’s about time we started also honoring those who kill bad guys." ['Article]

Okaaay. "Honoring those who kills bad guys." Let me give you the CliffsNotes version of what my man just wrote:

We do not want to glorify men who are brave when they save the lives of others, only those who kill others in battle. In other words, the Medal of Honor has been "feminized."

I guess that's what happens when you have a wimpy president like Obama. Where is Reagan when you need him?

Bill Clinton: Haiti’s Neo-Colonial Overlord

by Ashley Smith
Black Agenda Report
November 11, 2010

The corporate media portrays former President Bill Clinton as a great humanitarian friend of Haiti. The truth could not be more different. He has always supported policies in the interests of multinational corporations and the Haitian ruling class at the expense of the country’s workers, urban poor and peasantry.

Clinton and Bush with US army General 
Ken Keen in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

After the 1991 coup that toppled Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, Clinton as President did maintain relatively ineffective sanctions. But he violated his campaign promise and continued George Bush Sr.’s policy of jailing Haitian refugees in Guantanamo. He also pressured Aristide to adopt free market economic policies as the condition of restoring him to power in 1994.

Clinton succeeded in getting Aristide to moderate his program of social reform and drop tariffs on rice to the advantage of U.S. Agribusiness. He then compelled Aristide’s successor, Rene Preval, to further deregulate the economy successfully turning Haiti into the most free market economy in the Western Hemisphere, and consequently its poorest.

Confronted with this evidence, he recently apologized for impoverishing the lives of peasant farmers in Haiti. But as always with Clinton, his rhetoric could not be more different than his policies. After the second U.S.-backed coup against Aristide in 2004, Clinton has worked with former World Bank employee Paul Collier, multinational corporations and the Haitian elite to impose another free-market plan on Haiti. While U.N. troops have occupied Haiti since 2004, Clinton and Collier toured the country promoting sweatshops, tourism, and export-oriented agriculture.

After the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Port au Prince, Clinton became co-chair of Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. He is now the country’s neo-colonial overlord. He has betrayed all his humanitarian promises and failed to collect even a fraction of the promised $10 billion for reconstruction. And his reconstruction plan is the same free market plan he has been touting since 2004. He is putting Haiti up for sale to multinational capital.

The last thing Haiti needs is more “help” from Bill Clinton and the U.S. Instead, the U.S. and other imperial powers including the U.N. should get out of Haiti and pay reparations so that Haitians can rebuild their country in their own interests.

Ashley Smith (was) a featured speaker at a “Day of Outrage in Harlem” rally and march in support of the people of Haiti, on November 20. The theme of the protest is, “U.S. Out of Haiti – Clinton Out of Harlem.”

Picture Credit

Trying to figure out our young people and Obama with one post.

Remind me not to go partying in "The Atl" anytime soon. What's wrong with you young bucks? I know it's hard to respect another human's life when you do not value your own, but this cycle of depraved violence has got to stop. In fact, all of the ignorant and inexplicable s&^t that we do from time to time has got to stop. Crack in a toddler's shoe? WTF?

Still, I won't lay all of the blame at the feet of these young bucks. They live in a very f^%$#d up society where black is white and white is black, and where there is all kinds of gray in between. It's easy to rationalize away morality when you see politicians on the take and everything around you is driven by shallow consumerism and a live for the moment ethos. We glorify the very rich regardless of how they accumulated their wealth and we wonder why these kids have no morals. Joseph Kennedy was an alleged bootlegger and his son went on to become the president. Many wealthy A-merry-can families built their fortune on the backs of enslaved human beings. ,and we think nothing of it. The depravity we are seeing from some of those in our society should not be so surprising. I know that I am not. I talk and interact with enough of these kids to see just how messed up their heads are and why the think the way they do. Many of the tings I outlined mirror what they spit back at me when I try to lecture them about getting their lives on the straight and narrow. Live for the moment, that's all they do. In their minds the future is now. There is no wife, kids, and a picket fence anywhere in their dreams. Just joining their home boys upstate or hoping that their mother's don't cry too much at their funerals.

Anyway, sorry for the brief reality check. Now back to politics:

Lately I have been more pro O than usual. I am not a huge fan, but I am not a hater like some people. I think the guy has done a decent job, and, more importantly, he did pretty much what he said he was going to do. I expected what I am getting now, so I am not like some of those Obamaholics who are feeling this great disappointment because their boy didn't walk on water and feed every A-merry-can with one happy meal.

He is what he is. And, he is better than the last guy. I actually read an article recently that kind of crystallized my position. The author was speaking for me:

"Nowadays, the political stage has become America’s communal fun house, and nobody looks stranger than Barack Obama.

The president’s critics on the right deride him as a radical socialist seething with anti-American rage. To them, he’s a frightening success who has transformed the federal government, ruined the economy, and undermined national security. To the left, Obama is a tragic failure who squandered his chance for dramatic change: no single-payer health-care plan, no heated battle against Wall Street, and endless war in Afghanistan. If the president is struggling these days, the critics say, it’s perhaps because he’s out of touch with Americans, and even at odds with his own principles.

Yet Obama is doing exactly what he said he would do. Perhaps the critics should read—or reread—the president’s own books. Dreams From My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006) are the most substantial works written by anyone elected president since Woodrow Wilson (who wrote several books before he won election in 1912). In laying out his philosophy, Obama contrasts the GOP’s excessive individualism with the ideal of “ordered liberty” and the rich traditions of civic engagement typical of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. He also criticizes orthodox...

...Almost everything you need to know about Obama is there on the printed page. In contrast to the charges coming now from right and left, Obama is neither a rigid ideologue nor a spineless wimp. The Obama who wrote Dreams and Audacity stands in a long tradition of American reform, wary of absolutes....

...Throughout his career, Obama has refused to demonize his opponents. Instead, he has sought them out and listened to them. He has tried to understand how they think and why they see the world as they do. His mother encouraged this sense of empathy, and it’s a lesson Obama learned well. Since January 2009, Obama has watched his efforts at reconciliation, experimentation, and -consensus--building bounce off the hard surfaces of political self-interest and entrenched partisanship, but there is no reason to think he will abandon that strategy now. He knows that disagreement is a vital part of the American fabric, and that our differences are neither shallow nor trivial......

....Although Obama’s reform agenda echoes aspects of those advanced by many Democrats over the last century, he has admitted—and this is the decisive point in understanding his outlook—that his opponents hold principles rooted as deeply in American history as his own. “I am obligated to try to see the world through George Bush’s eyes, no matter how much I may disagree with him,” he wrote in Audacity. “That’s what empathy does—it calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal … We are all shaken out of our complacency.” Obama rejects dogma, embraces uncertainty, and dismisses the fables that often pass for history among partisans on both sides who need heroes and villains, and who resist more-nuanced understandings of the past and the present." [Article]

My sentiments, exactly.

Uncle Ruckus On Black Women

Comment: I read on Wikipedia that the name Uncle Ruckus "is an amalgam of Uncle Tom and Amos Rucker, the latter being an African-American United Confederate Veterans member, who allegedly wanted to stay a slave after the Civil War."

Don't know how true this is but it is quite clever nonetheless.

I was thinking that the Uncle Ruckus character crudely exemplifies W.E.B. DuBois' theory of "double-consciousness". Dubois wrote in his book "The Souls of Black Folk" (1903) that the Negro lives in:

"... a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."  (See Chapter One entitled "Of Our Spiritual Strivings")

I am a big fan of the Uncle Ruckus character and would like to see more of him on The Boondocks, perhaps even a spin-off ;)

Uncle Ruckus' thoughts above reminded me of a graduate school moment in 1997 when a particularly opinionated African American fellow student showed up at an after-class get together with his very attractive white wife who was a lawyer.

The professor, a brilliant and leading African American scholar in Black Studies, turned to me and said sarcastically,"She must really hate her parents."

Professor Uncle Ruckus?  Not really.  He was playing with what is testy terrain.  Still.

Onward!

Robert Fisk: An American Bribe That Stinks of Appeasement

The Independent
November 20, 2010

In any other country, the current American bribe to Israel, and the latter's reluctance to accept it, in return for even a temporary end to the theft of somebody else's property would be regarded as preposterous. Three billion dollars' worth of fighter bombers in return for a temporary freeze in West Bank colonization for a mere 90 days? Not including East Jerusalem - so goodbye to the last chance of the east of the holy city for a Palestinian capital - and, if Benjamin Netanyahu so wishes, a rip-roaring continuation of settlement on Arab land. In the ordinary sane world in which we think we live, there is only one word for Barack Obama's offer: appeasement. Usually, our lords and masters use that word with disdain and disgust.

Anyone who panders to injustice by one people against another people is called an appeaser. Anyone who prefers peace at any price, let alone a $3bn bribe to the guilty party - is an appeaser. Anyone who will not risk the consequences of standing up for international morality against territorial greed is an appeaser. Those of us who did not want to invade Afghanistan were condemned as appeasers. Those of us who did not want to invade Iraq were vilified as appeasers. Yet that is precisely what Obama has done in his pathetic, unbelievable effort to plead with Netanyahu for just 90 days of submission to international law. Obama is an appeaser.

The fact that the West and its political and journalistic elites - I include the ever more disreputable New York Times - take this tomfoolery at face value, as if it can seriously be regarded as another "step" in the "peace process", to put this mystical nonsense "back on track", is a measure of the degree to which we have taken leave of our senses in the Middle East.

It is a sign of just how far America (and, through our failure to condemn this insanity, Europe) has allowed its fear of Israel - and how far Obama has allowed his fear of Israeli supporters in Congress and the Senate - to go.

Three billion dollars for three months is one billion dollars a month to stop Israel's colonization. That's half a billion dollars a fortnight. That's $500m a week. That's $71,428,571 a day, or $2,976,190 an hour, or $49,603 a minute. And as well as this pot of gold, Washington will continue to veto any resolutions critical of Israel in the UN and prevent "Palestine" from declaring itself a state. It's worth invading anyone to get that much cash to stage a military withdrawal, let alone the gracious gesture of not building more illegal colonies for only 90 days while furiously continuing illegal construction in Jerusalem at the same time.

Read the rest here.

"Throw some D's on that B%#@t"

It's nice to finally know why the FAKE NEWS NETWORK is so popular here in A-merry-ca. I wonder how this mentally ill thing breaks down by region? It shouldn't be too hard to find out. All we would have to do is find out which region watches the most FAKE NEWS, and, bingo, that would be your region with the highest concentration of mentally ill people right there.

Speaking of ill people, the cat who killed and dismembered those folks in Ohio is one sick dude. (He stuck their body parts in a tree? WTF?)

"MOUNT VERNON, Ohio – Two women and an 11-year-old boy were stabbed to death and dismembered before their remains were put in garbage bags and lowered into a hollow tree, a coroner said Saturday, the latest gruesome details of the murders that have stunned this tiny town.

Preliminary autopsy reports show that Tina Herrmann, her son, Kody Maynard, and her friend Stephanie Sprang were stabbed multiple times with a knife in the back and chest Nov. 10, Knox County Coroner Jennifer Ogle said.

"They were then placed inside large plastic garbage bags and later lowered into the hollow of a large tree," Ogle said in a statement. It's unclear exactly when they died or when their remains were put in the tree. There were no signs of sexual assault.

The remains of the family dog — a miniature pinscher named Tanner — were found in the tree with the bodies, said Joe Pejsa, a family friend.

The victims disappeared Nov. 10 along with Herrmann's daughter, 13-year-old Sarah Maynard, who was found bound and gagged several days later in the basement of an unemployed tree-cutter, Matthew Hoffman. Hoffman is accused of kidnapping the girl and keeping her in the basement of his home in Mount Vernon, about 10 miles west of Howard in central Ohio..."

Damn! Dude [allegedly] killed the family and the dog. I wonder why he didn't kill the daughter? Maybe he had a crush on her. My man, the next time you want to impress a young lady, may I suggest that you just send her some flowers?

Finally, you folks here in A-merry-ca just will not leave O alone. So now you are ripping the guy because he is rolling in a tricked out caddy over in Europe. I know I know, leave it to the black president to ride in a big gas guzzling caddy. But come on, he is the president. And a Cadillac is as A-merry-can as it gets.

"LISBON (AFP) – The Portuguese hosts of Friday's NATO summit hoped to use the event to promote clean-energy and electric cars, but all eyes were on US President Barack Obama's diesel-guzzling "Beast" instead.

As is usual when he travels, Obama's eight-tonne armoured behemoth of a limousine was flown out to Lisbon before the US leader's arrival, and it ferried him from the airport tarmac to his first meetings of the weekend.

Doubtless he didn't intend the Beast's roar to drown out his hosts' green message, but a US presidential motorcade and its attendant escort of Secret Service SUVs do attract attention, even at the most elite gatherings.

[Related: Obama and the bulletproof suit]

Earlier, Prime Minister Jose Socrates and his fellow Portuguese, the president of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso, had arrived at the summit in quiet, zero-emission electric cars.

"I'd like to underline the priority both our countries assign to renewable energy and electric vehicles," Socrates said, after meeting Obama, amid amused sniping from the Portuguese press at the mixed messages." [Article]

I know damn good and well that you all didn't expect the president to roll into Lisbon in a plug in Fiat? "Quiet, zero-emission electric cars" are fine, but I am guessing that they aren't very good for protecting very important people. O's caddy comes with all the trimmings needed to protect the most important person in the world. Everything needed for communication is right at his finger tips, and the "Beast" can withstand an attack from a rocket launcher. So yes, go ahead and trick O's ride. Let the haters hate. Hey, at least it didn't break down in the middle of Rome like Bush's ride. Now that would have been really embarrassing.

Friday Rant.

It's Friday evening and I have so much to say and so little time.

Let's see, where do I begin? I think I will start with our future president, Sarah Palin. Girlfriend is calling the first lady a racist in her new book:

"Washington (HuffPo)– In passages leaked from her forthcoming book America by Heart, Sarah Palin — the erstwhile quitter governor of Alaska, who now, by all indications, fancies herself as President of the United States — has taken another cheap shot at First Lady Michelle Obama.

In a passage on perceptions of racial inequality in the United States, Palin slams President Barack Obama, who, she asserts, “seems to believe” that “America — at least America as it currently exists — is a fundamentally unjust and unequal country.”

Certainly his wife expressed this view when she said during the 2008 campaign that she had never felt proud of her country until her husband started winning elections. In retrospect, I guess this shouldn’t surprise us, since both of them spent almost two decades in the pews of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church listening to his rants against America and white people."

OKaaayy....let's move on. I won't even comment on this one. Now if Michelle wants to kick off her heels, pull out her earrings, and have a real girl fight with Palin; she will get my undivided attention. Anything short of seeing Sarah catch a beat down is not really worthy of my time. Sarah, it must be really hard to be a hater. Especially when Michelle keeps getting love like this.

I am actually going to leave the Big R alone tonight, although I could go there. He is still in full effect. From Kansas to right here in my hometown, the Big R is flexing his muscles and daring me to catch him. But I am not going to chase tonight. It's Friday, I am trying to relax. I will come out and play some other time.

It looks like the folks over at Radio Rwanda are taking their O jones to a whole different level. Now they are criticising O's children's book. Yep, his children's book. It seems they have some issues with him showing some love to Sitting Bull.

"It is not common for Fox News to take issue with something President Obama does. In fact, it seems to take issue with everything he does. Now the network is attacking him for a new children's book he wrote.

On Wednesday, "Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters" hits bookstores. It is a book that highlights 13 Americans "whose traits he sees in his own children" according to a USA Today story about the book.

When listing those people, the article mentions almost in passing "His most controversial choice may be Sitting Bull, who defeated Custer at Little Bighorn."

Obama writes of Sitting Bull:

(He) was a medicine man who healed broken hearts and broken promises. It is fine that we are different. (He) spoke out and led his people against many policies of the United States government. He is most famous for his stunning victory in 1876 over Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Fox News certainly wasn't to let that pass, running an article on its web site titled "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed U.S. General." It was later corrected to "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Defeated U.S. General" for "historical accuracy," which is Fox's way of saying it made a mistake without really saying it made a mistake.

The brief article itself doesn't say anything else critical, but the headline said it all.

"If President Obama patted a child on the head, Fox News would probably accuse him of assault," Indiana University historian Ed Linenthal said. [Source]

Actually, Mr. Linenthal, they would accuse him of rape.

Finally, I see that Uncle Sam is sending Wesley Snipes to the slammer for three years. Sorry Wesley, you have to render unto Uncle Sam....but three years? "White Men Can't Jump, but they can sure put the hammer on a brotha.

Homecoming for Stark Record of Apartheid

by Celia W. Dugger
The New York Times
November 17, 2010

JOHANNESBURG — When he was only in his 20s Ernest Cole, a black photographer who stood barely five feet tall, created one of the most harrowing pictorial records of what it was like to be black in apartheid South Africa. He went into exile in 1966, and the next year his work was published in the United States in a book, “House of Bondage,” but his photographs were banned in his homeland where he and his work have remained little known.

The Ernest Cole Family Trust/Hasselblad Foundation Collection

“School Class” by Ernest Cole. More Photos »

The Ernest Cole Family Trust/Hasselblad Foundation Collection

“Boy in School” by Ernest Cole. More Photos »

 

In exile Mr. Cole’s life crumbled. For much of the late 1970s and 1980s he was homeless in New York, bereft of even his cameras. “His life had become a shadow,” a friend later said. Mr. Cole died at 49 in 1990, just a week after Nelson Mandela walked free. His sister flew back to South Africa with his ashes on her lap.

Mr. Cole is at last having another kind of homecoming. The largest retrospective of his work ever mounted is now on display at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, built in the neo-Classical style almost a century ago in an era when South Africa’s great mining fortunes were being made on the backs of black labor. It is a collection of images that still possesses the power to shock and anger.

“How could white people do this to us?” asked Lebogang Malebana, 14, as he stood before a photograph of nude gold-mine recruits who had been herded into a grimy room for examination. “How could they put naked black men on display like that?”

Mr. Cole conceived the idea of his own portrait of black life after seeing Henri Cartier-Bresson’s book “People of Moscow.” He got this particular picture by sneaking his camera into the mine in his lunch bag, under sandwiches and an apple, Struan Robertson, who shared a studio and darkroom with Mr. Cole, recounted in an essay for the book that accompanies the exhibition, “Ernest Cole: Photographer.”

On a recent Saturday afternoon at the museum here in a crime-ridden downtown that long ago emptied of white people, three visitors wandered through cavernous galleries lined with Mr. Cole’s work. Lebogang, an eighth grader, had drifted in from a nearby single-room apartment that he shares with his mother, who is a maid, and his younger brother. His father is in jail. “It’s very sad,” he said as he lingered over the black-and-white images.

Jimmy Phindi Tjege, 27, who like many young black South Africans has never held a job in a society still scarred by apartheid, had come to the exhibition with his girlfriend, Nomthandazo Patience Chazo, 26, who works for the government and has a car. They had driven from their black township, Daveyton, about 30 miles away.

Ms. Chazo was struck by a photograph of four hungry children scraping porridge from a single pot set on a concrete floor. Mr. Tjege singled out another picture, one of a serious boy squatting on the floor of an unfurnished schoolroom, clutching a chalkboard, with two tears of sweat running down the side of his face.

“I feel angry,” Mr. Tjege said, as he gestured to the rest of the gallery with a sweep of his hand. “This room is full of anger.”

See the The New York Times' slide collection of Cole's stirring photographs and read the full article here.

********************

See more of Cole's photographs (below) at the Hasselblad Foundation here.

A "Whites Only" bench in Johannesburg (Ernest Cole)

Servants are not forbidden to love. Woman holding 
child said, "I love this child, though she’ll grow up
to treat me just like her mother does.
Now she is innocent." (Ernest Cole)

A picnic on the grass with everyone in their Sunday best (Ernest Cole)

Guess who won't be coming to dinner.

I see the republi-clowns have their swag back. They basically told O to take his little kumbaya summit and shove it. We will meet with you on our time nigg...I mean Mr. President. We shellacked you, remember? Rather than sit down with O, their leaders met with those federalist society folks. How is that bi-partisan thing working out for ya? I say it's time to double down O, you can only play nice for so long. This is getting old. It seems like every few months the field has to tell you the same thing, but you won't learn. You still believe that these folks will play ball with your beige behind. News flash! It. Is. Never. Going. To. Happen.

"Thursday’s much-anticipated meeting until after Thanksgiving to accommodate their schedule, not his. The first post-election meeting between Obama and congressional leaders, billed by Obama as the fundamental first step in the post-election reconciliation process, will now take place Nov. 30 .."

Don't hold your breath for that November 30th meeting. Repubs are full of themselves right about now, they are not in a mood to sit down and talk. The leader of their own version of Der Angriff, all but called O a Socialist. And, these folks are so emboldened, one of their senators is holding up the START Treaty with the Russians to score cheap political points. Senator Kyl, Mr. Ahmadinejad thanks you. Dope!

But enough about the O haters; tonight I want to thank the folks over at WPHT here in my hometown for dumping Glenn Beckkk and the fat fat drug addict from their programing lineup. Philly has enough trash, we don't need these two adding to the problem. Now let's hope that other stations in A-merry-ca start wising up as well.

And finally, was it just me or was that display by Charlie Rangel today seem beyond pathetic?
And the way he dragged John Lewis out there to defend his actions. *shaking head*
Sorry Charlie, I agree with the ethics committee and their recommendation on this one. You deserved what you got.

Still, it was hard watching that republi-clown senator from Alabama (of all places) grand- standing (pun intended with that "grand" word) while poor Charlie begged for mercy. I agree with everything Steve Kornacki wrote in Salon.com:

"As noted above, by the time Bonner spoke, Rangel had already been found guilty and it was already clear what his punishment would -- and wouldn't -- be. So it has to be asked: Why was Bonner so intent on rubbing it in? Certainly, simple partisan politics -- highlighting the ethical lapses of a prominent member of the other party -- had something to do with it. But it's also worth considering how the spectacle of their congressman lashing out at Rangel -- who in some ways is the face of black urban politics in America -- is likely to play with Bonner's constituents back home.

This is where things get a little troubling, because Bonner's 1st District was ground zero for the South's race-based transformation from Democratic stronghold to Republican bastion. I wrote about this evolution -- which was largely set in motion by the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- earlier this week. The South had been a uniformly Democratic region since Reconstruction, but the GOP's decision to nominate Barry Goldwater, who had joined segregationist Southern Democrats in their futile effort to block the Civil Rights law, prompted mass defections to the GOP in the fall of '64. Even as Goldwater racked up just 38 percent of the national popular vote, he carried five Southern states -- some by absurd margins (87 percent in Mississippi).." [Article]

See what you did, Charlie? You allowed Mr. Bonner to put you in your place, once again. He said he was born in Selma, and he was glad you and those other Northern Negroes came down and marched with Dr. King. Don't believe it. He has been waiting for this day for a very long time.

"Sadly, Madam Chairman,"...it is my unwavering view that the actions, decisions and behavior of our colleague from New York can no longer reflect either honor or integrity."

Oh just STFU!

Land of the Food Insecure: Record Rates of Hunger in US

Published on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 by BBC News
Republished by Common Dreams on November 18, 2010

Almost 15% of US households experienced a food shortage at some point in 2009, a government report has found.

Drew Everhart, a homeless man, sits at the Urban Ministry soup kitchen in Charlotte, North Carolina, November 16, 2009. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

US authorities say that figure is the highest they have seen since they began collecting data in the 1990s, and a slight increase over 2008 levels.

Single mothers are among the hardest hit: About 3.5 million said they were at times unable to put sufficient food on the table.

Hispanics and African Americans also suffer disproportionately.

The food security report is the result of an annual survey conducted by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Households deemed "food insecure" experienced a period of inadequate food supply as a result of their economic situation, but did not necessarily remain without sufficient food for the entire year.

Read the rest of this article here.

Comment: I am finding it hard to wrap my head around this reality.  It is a damn shame that the richest and most developed country in the history of the world has 15% of its total population hungry at one point or the other.

I am hardly surprised, nonetheless, that the hardest hit are single mothers, Latinos, and African Americans. 

Indians are as usual not counted in these types of federal statistics.

Onward!

Bleeping Willow.

Will you Negroes stop it with the Brandy "was robbed" talk. Look, there is already one of you Negroes in the Dancing With The Stars finals. A-merry-ca has met her Negro quota. So relax, it could have been worse. Besides this is Sarah Palin's daughter we are talking about. The possible future first daughter of these divided states. What else did you expect?

And speaking of Palin's daughters, it looks like one of her other daughters, Willow, went a little nuts on Facebook recently.

"Willow Palin, the 16-year-old daughter of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, wrote multiple Facebook posts containing homophobic slurs such as "faggot" on Sunday night, according to TMZ.

The web site reports that Palin's teenage daughter wrote the comments on Sunday night, when her mother's television show "Sarah Palin's Alaska" premiered on TLC. According to TMZ, a classmate of one of Palin's children published a Facebook update claiming that the show "is failing so hard right now."

Willow Palin reportedly unloaded on the student, calling him "so gay" and "such a faggot." She later demanded that the student "quit talkin shit about my family." According to screenshots obtained by TMZ, the 16-year-old called another commenter on the Facebook thread a "low life loser" and lashed out at multiple others, writing, "Sorry that all you guys are jealous of my families success and you guys aren't goin to go anywhere with your lives." [Article]

Classy folks those Palins. "Oh field, leave her alone, the child is only 16, this is what kids do."
Yes, but ask yourself this question: had this been one of the president's daughters what do you think the reaction would be? Just think about that one for awhile.

Finally, you have got to love these wingnuts. They give a whole new meaning to the word hypocrite. I give you representative Andy Harris of Maryland as my exhibit A. Seems my man ran on repealing "Obamacare", but now is demanding to get his government health coverage without having to wait 28 days. God forbid he goes without health coverage for 28 days!

"He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care," a congressional staffer present at a freshman orientation session told Politico of Harris's reaction to news that his health care benefits wouldn't go into effect until nearly a month after his swearing in."

Now do you understand why I am going to enjoy the next two years? There is just so much material for a blogger these days.