Am I not Human? Blog Campaign: The Untouchables in India

Although this story is about one of the most aggregious forms of human-against-human abuse ingrained into a long-established social system, it also brings one of the most moving triumphs over such oppression.

Oppression and discrimination are almost set in stone, it seems, for the lowest group in the Hindu caste system in India, the Untouchables. Considered as if less than human, even though such caste discrimination is now illegal in India (per the Untouchability Act of 1955), their plight is unimaginable in every way. From simple things like being able to obtain water from a well - they are considered to "unclean" and cannot touch the pump, but must wait until a higher caste woman takes pity on them to pump water for them - to social punishment for success - such as happened to a leatherworker whose business and financial success led to his family being beaten, his home burned down, and tractor stolen by a gang from a higher caste for "rising above" - it is really the human soul and dignity that they aim to destroy. The reality of this caste system is so horrific as to be almost unfathomable.

To be born a Hindu in India is to enter the caste system, one of the world's longest surviving forms of social stratification. Embedded in Indian culture for the past 1,500 years, the caste system follows a basic precept: All men are created unequal. The ranks in Hindu society come from a legend in which the main groupings, or varnas, emerge from a primordial being. From the mouth come the Brahmans—the priests and teachers. From the arms come the Kshatriyas—the rulers and soldiers. From the thighs come the Vaisyas—merchants and traders. From the feet come the Sudras—laborers. Each varna in turn contains hundreds of hereditary castes and subcastes with their own pecking orders.

A fifth group describes the people who are achuta, or untouchable. The primordial being does not claim them. Untouchables are outcasts—people considered too impure, too polluted, to rank as worthy beings. Prejudice defines their lives, particularly in the rural areas, where nearly three-quarters of India's people live. Untouchables are shunned, insulted, banned from temples and higher caste homes, made to eat and drink from separate utensils in public places, and, in extreme but not uncommon cases, are raped, burned, lynched, and gunned down.

They are also called "Dalit":

Dalit, a term that has become synonymous with Untouchable, is the name that many Untouchables, especially politically aware individuals, have chosen for themselves. The name means "oppressed" and highlights the persecution and discrimination India's 160 million Untouchables face regularly. First used in the context of caste oppression in the 19th century, it was popularized in the 1970s by Untouchable writers and members of the revolutionary Dalit Panthers (the name was inspired by the Black Panthers of the United States). Dalit has largely come to replace Harijan, the name given to Untouchables by Gandhi, much like the Black Power movement in the United States led to the replacement of the labels colored and Negro with black. For some activists, Dalit is used to refer to all of India's oppressed peoples whether Hindus, Muslims, Christians, tribal minorities, or women.

In 1997, K.R. Narayanan, an Untouchable, was sworn in as President of India, marking progress in the banning of discrimination against Dalits. In cities, that is. But in the rural areas, that prejudice is being largely practiced, due to ignorance and poverty.

One of the most inspiring stories about conquering that discrimination, which shows a path toward fighting oppression and ignorance in the most effective and miraculous way possible - using, of all things, health care - is here - in the story of Untouchable women selected by a group called Jamkhed to be health workers for their respective communities in rural India. Their transformation from outcasts to respected community leaders, performing most of the functions of doctors and to some extent city (or should I say village) planners, from "stones without a soul" to vibrant, life-saving and heroic human beings and role models is truly amazing.

This excerpt lets the miracle-workers speak for themselves:

The real benefits, the women say, cannot be measured in rupees. "When I started, I had no support from anyone, no education, no money," said Sathe. "I was like a stone with no soul. When I came here they gave me shape, life. I learned courage and boldness. I became a human being."
In 2005 Babai Sathe, Untouchable, was elected the sarpanch—village leader—of Jawalke.

(Jawalke is her village.) Even the most heart-rending tragedies can have a transformative, compassionate, uplifting ending - if we work together on it. If India can conquer their long-standing institutionalized oppression, certainly the rest of the world can learn from that, too. But there is much left to be done in India, too, of course. At least this is a start.

Darfur: Is It About "Arabs" Killing "Black Africans"? Or Is This View Racist?

Everyone is sickened by the tragedy in Darfur. But who is responsible, really? Is it a case of racist Arabs slaughtering black Africans? Or is there more to it?

In this incisive article, Carina Ray asks the question, Are "Arabs" killing "Black Africans" in Darfur? The usual take on this needs a closer look. Her view is that the commonly held view on Darfur is "racialized" and the situation is more complex. Much more complex. And its solutions will not be reached if we don't deal with the reality on the ground.

African newspapers have followed the war in Darfur closely over the last several years. Yet, much of the reportage casts the violence as a race war perpetrated by “Arabs” against “Black Africans”. This racialised language clouds, rather than clarifies, the complicated nature of this deadly conflict, in which a brutal government counterinsurgency strategy has mobilised Arabised African nomads in its fight against a just armed uprising by Darfur’s settled population.

After a survey of over 1500 articles on the subject in African newspapers - not to mention Western newspapers! - these were her remarks:

As I surveyed the articles, I was struck by the fact that most African newspapers posited race as the primary causal factor of the obscene violence in Darfur. The war was regularly described in oversimplified racialised terms that reveal an anti-Arab bias and construct Darfur’s so-called Arabs as foreigners. Indeed the complex identity politics involved in the conflict have been largely reduced to a narrative of “good versus evil” or “African versus Arab”. Strikingly, the racial labels that have been used to demarcate the fault lines in this conflict are often the same as those used by the Western media.

Of course, the "Western media" has its own agenda, promoting the Global War on Terror, which is well served by demonizing Arabs. But in fact, the issues on the ground are more complex, and it is always better to deal with issues with facts and practical steps, taking the balance of power(s) into the equation, than to go full-force into ideological rants, as the West has done, and maybe Africa in some way has followed suit.

Given the absence of any other explanatory tools for understanding the multiple sources of the violence, and most especially the central government’s longstanding practices of marginalisation, underdevelopment, repression and neglect of its “peripheries”, the reader is left to conclude that what is occurring in Darfur is a race war perpetrated by “Arabs” against “black Africans”. Racial antipathy is therefore posited as the reason why groups that historically lived, traded, intermarried, and interacted with one another, for the most part, in a synergistic fashion, are now in the midst of a deadly war in which the obscene imbalance of power between a well-armed brutal government and its ruthless militias on the one hand, and the Darfurian rebels on the other, has led to the unconscionable deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Darfurian civilians and the displacement of millions more.

She doesn't try to minimize the conflict, only the "racism" factor in it, going so far as to suggest that the media created the impression that the cause of this conflict is merely racism, while it is more complex. As she says,

there still emerged the sense that many perceive the conflict in Darfur as being primarily motivated by anti-African racism, on the part of “Arabs”. But who are these so-called Arabs? Are they not also Africans? Ironically, this false dichotomy, which implicitly relies on the old trope of a geographically-cum-racially divided North and Sub-Saharan Africa, is being used to describe a conflict in the African country that perhaps best defies, indeed obliterates, the idea of two distinct Africas.

Or in other words,

The idea that Sudan’s “Arabs” are not “Africans” and that its “Africans” are not also, in many cases, “Arab” is what is in need of being rewritten.

Although there is racism, certainly, involved, on the part of those who identify as "Arab" in Sudan, blaming the conflict on this alone doesn't help.

Accordingly, instead of being held responsible for empowering and financing the Janjawid to do its bidding in Darfur, the government is simply accused of not doing enough to reign in the renegade Janjawid. Indicative of this is the fact that the government’s use of its own officially recognised troops and military equipment in perpetrating the violence is rarely mentioned. In short, the de facto reliance on “Arab versus Black African” as the basis for understanding the fault lines of the conflict is reflective of the profoundly reductive nature of much of the reportage on Darfur and what amounts to an almost willful denial of the historical relationships and overlaps between Darfur’s so-called Arabs and Africans.

And the "racist" issue is confusing, too.

Indeed, “Arab” and “African” are falsely constructed as mutually exclusive categories – once someone is labelled “Arab” he/she ceases to be African and vice versa. Based on this formulation there is, moreover, almost no recognition of “Arab” indigenity; rather those who are defined as “Arab” are conceptually relegated to being permanent outsiders and usurpers of the land, while those labelled “African” are conceptually defined by a static and timeless rendering of history in which their ties to the land are primordial rather than shaped by patterns of migration, state-building, and ecological change. One need only look at photos of the so-called Arab Janjawid and the so-called Black African rebels to see how these categories cloud rather than clarify our understanding of how identity factors into the war in Darfur. The deceptive power of these labels is simultaneously made possible by the fallacy of race and the steadfastness with which people invest in racial categories as explanatory tools.

She does recognize the part played by racism with the Sudanses government.

Yet, we must also acknowledge the very real role that local actors have played in the internal racialisation of this conflict. The Al Bashir government in Khartoum has both invoked and evoked Arab supremacy in its efforts to garner regional support and to mobilise the Janjawid to carry out its dirty war. Members of the Janjawid, despite their African ancestry, have willingly bought into this ideology as a means of securing their own interests in a time of increased competition over diminishing resources.

So too has the Africanisation of Darfurian identities among the rebel movements and their citizenry emerged as a powerful means of coalition building within Sudan, especially among the SPLM/A and its broad base of supporters. It has also been an effective strategy for eliciting support within Africa and from the international community in the context of the current conflict. Beyond this, however, we must ask about the wider political agendas that are being promoted through the constant deployment of such problematic and obfuscating categories as the primary lens through which the violence is explained.

This eye-opening article might help others to work to reach a nore practical solution than war. And start by laying the blame on the real perpetrators of this genocide: the Sudanese government.

Ecuadorean Brothers Victims of Hate Crime

NYT reported this hate crime:

The two brothers from Ecuador had attended a church party and had stopped at a bar afterward. They may have been a bit tipsy as they walked home in the dead of night, arm-in-arm, leaning close to each other, a common tableau of men in Latino cultures, but one easily misinterpreted by the biased mind.

Suddenly a car drew up. It was 3:30 a.m. Sunday, and the intersection of Bushwick Avenue and Kossuth Place in Bushwick, Brooklyn, a half-block from the brothers’ apartment, was nearly deserted — but not quite. Witnesses, the police said, heard some of what happened next.

Three men came out of the car shouting at the brothers, Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay — something ugly, anti-gay and anti-Latino. Vulgarisms against Hispanics and gay men were heard by witnesses, the police said. One man approached Jose Sucuzhanay, 31, the owner of a real estate agency who has been in New York a decade, and broke a beer bottle over the back of his head. He went down hard.

Romel Sucuzhanay, 38, who is visiting from Ecuador on a two-month visa, bounded over a parked car and ran as the man with the broken bottle came at him. A distance away, he looked back and saw a second assailant beating his prone brother with an aluminum baseball bat, striking him repeatedly on the head and body. The man with the broken bottle turned back and joined the beating and kicking.

“They used a baseball bat,” said Diego Sucuzhanay, another brother. “I guess the goal was to kill him.”

At least five calls were made to 911. As police sirens wailed in the distance, the assailants, described only as black men by the police, jumped into their maroon or red-orange Honda sport utility vehicle and sped away. Jose Sucuzhanay was listed on Monday in very critical condition at Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he was on life support systems and in a coma after an operation for skull fractures and extensive brain damage.

These guys were a conservative's dream, proving a conservative weakness: open condemnation of gays and Latinos leads to criminal behavior targeting them, even when they espouse your values. The men were good citizens, doing everything right and legal. Note that, Pat Buchanan. Their crime was physical display of affection, which in this culture is sexualized. And that means, "only between a man and a woman." YOu don't see them protesting nearly-nude displays of heterosexual "affection". The sexualization of physical affection is a total disaster for the human psyche, and you can see it in the sterility of emotions contrasted with the richness of lust in much of what passes for entertainment.

It brings up another point: victims of injustice, such as African-Americans, can sometimes become perpetrators in a sort of "revenge". Same goes for some folks in Israel who see nothing wrong with walling off a native population from sources of food, gas and survival in a show of power without compassion. Hey, didn't they learn something back in the 40's? After how bad it was? Where is the compassion?

And these two perpetrators above displayed pointless violence expressing hate. Why?
I hope they are found, prosecuted, and punished. But beyond that, how can we prevent this from becoming a pattern?

Am I Not Human? When Security Trumps Compassion

In considering human rights abuse for the "Am I Not Human?" campaign, instead of focusing on one group, I will explore a number of examples of a pattern that appears in such abuse, and one America, as well as other powerful nations, must come to grips with: the conflict between security and compassion, between looking at others outside one's "group" as fellow human beings, or as threats.

One of the most obvious cases where this conflict is played out is in the War on Terror. It's easy to simplify the War on Terror as a conflict between Good - us, people who believe and claim they love democracy and freedom - vs. Evil - them, people we claim hate democracy and freedom, aka, the "terrorists".

But if one examines this issue more closely, it's obvious that there's more to it than that. In my last post for this blog campaign, I examined the inhumane treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government, and also by those countries who ignore the plight of the Palestinians, especially in Gaza. But many argue that the Palestinians support and foster terrorism, attacks on civilians by suicide bombers in peacetime situations, such as markets or theaters or, famously, the Olympics. The Israelis' treatment of Palestinians, they argue, is directly a consequence of those terrorist acts, which Israel must defend itself and its people against. It's a security issue. The apartheid wall, the collective punishment of entire families in Gaza for the acts of a few, the constant checkpoints, the deprivation of jobs, income, or basic food and other supplies, are all explained as necessary security measures.

The War on Terror was begun after 9/11 as a security measure. Suddenly we were attacked, unexpectedly, by Islamic terrorists, in the most horrific way. To defend ourselves and our country, Bush initiated a war against terror - with a huge backing of popular and congressional support. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the surveillance of all communications coming in & out of the country (as much as that is possible, and with certain perimeters), allowing the torture of terror suspects, the establishment of military tribunals and a detention center at Guantanamo Bay, detaining terror suspects indeterminately without legal recourse, extraordinary rendition, prison ships, the invasion of Afghanistan and ultimately the invasion of Iraq, Somalia and other lesser-known places - all these measures, now widely criticized as violating people's basic human rights, were enacted in the name of security.

Air strikes on targets that may include civilians - not just mistakes, but knowingly - are also allowed in the various battlefields in the war on terror. This is a deliberate calculation to gain the greater "good" - victory in war and then they hope enactment of "higher goals" such as democracy or access to oil - at the expense of the value of human life.

These air strikes have many strategic reasons - such as minimizing the risk to U.S. soldiers. That is all well and good. But it doesn't necessarily remove the "sin" of taking innocent lives. We're talking about children, women, families. These people did not ask the U.S. to invade. They do not understand exactly what's going on. And their support for the U.S. "mission" is shaken every time civilians are killed. Of course, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are killing civilians, too. Their concern for humanity, is touted as the reason for their war. They say the U.S. and Israel kill Muslim women and children, and so these extremist groups justify their attacks as a "defense" of "their people" against the American "aggressors". It's a matter, to them, of "security".

Saudi Arabia is extremely security-conscious. They are run by a sort of "benevolent" Mafia, the Saudi royal family, including thousands of princes, who get the lion's share of the country's substantion income from oil revenues. They use religion to maintain the loyalty of their citizen-subjects, and try to "modernize" their country in order to keep people happy and obedient. But women in Saudi Arabia, as showcased by the case of the girl from Qatif who was sentenced to whipping for being gang-raped, supposedly because she was with a man who was not her husband or brother. Only public outcry caused the King to ultimately pardon her, but without such publicity she would have had to endure punishment for being the victim of a heinous crime.

This is because in Saudi Arabia, women are still largely considered the "property" of their husbands or male relatives, and have few rights, not even the right to drive a car (unlike some other Muslim gulf states, for example). They are not allowed to appear in public except when covered completely from head to foot in black robes. Although many justify this as "Islamic", many more Muslims would disagree. There's nothing in and of itself wrong with head-covering - as long as it's voluntary. But morality-police enforce these laws, and women are severely restricted in their movements, ability to work or do much of anything outside the home, since they must always have a male relative escort. Many women in Saudi Arabia are huge Oprah Winfrey fans, as she discusses issues that women face in a compassionate way, helping some of these women deal with their lives and feel they have a purpose. Sometimes, under these conditions, women wonder if men believe they are in fact human.

Men in Saudi Arabia justify this attitude with what amounts to another security issue. They want to protect their privileged position in society and their ego-pumping "superiority" without the bother of "uppity" women, who pose a huge security risk for such men. Apparently the men do not think compassion for women involves consideration for their personal needs and pride, or just the ability to support themselves in the event their male relatives should die.

From Hitler's unspeakable atrocities which were justified by a need for security and "superiority", to slavery in the U.S., also justified by the need for "security" and prosperity in the agricultural South, to racist behavior around the world, often justified by the need to "protect" the supposedly "superior" group from some imagined destruction, invasion or "adulteration" by the "other", "inferior" groups, to the latest fear of "terrorists" which title is frequently applied to anyone Muslim... all these represent choices in favor of security and self-protection over compassion and consideration of the rights of others.

Even on a lesser scale, whenever security trumps consideration for the human element, oppression begins, and oppression is the greatest obstacle to true democracy and free society.

First, a free society cannot be created, maintained, inspired or made by force. That means war is out as a means of achieving it. Therefore, the War on Terror is doomed to failure, if its goal is making the world safe for democracy. War cannot make the world safe for anything except war.

Second, excessive infringement on human liberty cannot promote security, if it only acts on rigid, written laws and doesn't have the flexibility to act on the ground in a human way between human beings.

Here's an example of this in Dahr Jamail's lates article as he describes the situation he saw at an airport:

TSA is one of several security gifts from the Bush administration, or rather, from the twisted conjunction of corporate business and state power that oversees and safeguards our "freedom" and "democracy" through an elaborate system of control mechanisms.

Immediately in front of me, an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair was trying to reason with the security guard who was asking him to take off his sandals. "What do you want me to do? I didn't wear socks so you could see my feet since I'm unable to bend over and take off my sandals."

"Sir, you must comply with policy," the guard said in a raised voice, as three other TSA agents moved in behind him, arms folded ominously across their chests, and surrounded the elderly man in the wheelchair who requested their assistance, doing what he could to "comply." None of the guards stepped forward to take off his sandals for him in order to check his feet.

In exasperation he shouted, "I'm asking for help, and you won't do it, so what do you want me to do? What the Hell am I supposed to do? What are you afraid of? I'm an old man in a wheelchair! Are you afraid of my sandals?"

The guards would not allow him through the x-ray until he eventually lowered his voice. We must never upset the status quo, because that is an important pillar of a system that holds change in dread. Do not rock the boat, and don't you dare speak up, lest it indicate that something is wrong.

It requires no crystal ball to see that we are embedded in a system that has no qualms about harassing old men in wheelchairs or making pregnant women walk through x-ray machines. It is the same system that is killing scores of Iraqi and Afghan civilians daily, and killing the planet systemically. It is a system that requires us to be sleepwalkers, rather than alert and sensitive humans.

Sometimes the security-frenzy can taint people on the ground who act as vigilantes, as in this attack by Israeli settlers against Palestinians:

Last night 40 Jewish settlers went on a rampage in the long-suffering Palestinian city of Hebron, throwing rocks, smashing windows and slashing tires. One Palestinian resident reports:

“The stone-throwing tonight was not rioting, it was with intent to kill … Settlers threw stones at us from the fifth floor. I picked one up and it weighed at least a kilo…

“We’re eight families, 60 people in all, and we are constantly threatened … Yesterday huge stones just barely missed two of my cousins. If they had been hit they would have been killed.”

Why not turn to the IDF for protection?

“He claims his family had asked Border Guard officers to form a separation between them and the settlers, but that the latter had continued throwing stones indiscriminately at both parties.

Al-Jabri went on to say that after a settler had threatened to slaughter his entire family he complained to IDF soldiers, but they didn’t respond. “He took out his gun, put it to his mouth, and said, ‘Deir Yasin, Deir Yasin’, referring to the massacre in the village of Deir Yasin in 1948,” he said.

“I was shocked to hear a soldier tell me, ‘There’s nothing I can do, and there’s no use complaining, the settlers and we are one,” al-Jabri added.”

And, indeed, none of the pogromists have been arrested so far, despite many of them undoubtedly being repeated offenders.

In this latter case, the police (enforcers, protectors) and vigilantes unite against the "other" group, who have been branded as a threat, and hence, in security terms, fair game.

It's telling that Israel refuses to attend the U.N conference on racism, where they reasonably expect they would be castigated for their human rights violations against the Palestinians. But others make a valid point that this is not the only case of racism or denying human rights and should not somehow be showcased to the detriment of help for other oppressed people, such as those in, for example, Myanmar, or even North Korea, both of which nations seek a high degree of security and power concentrated in the hands of a very few.

It seems that militarism often clashes with compassion, and it is that very conflict which played out in the 2008 election, where Barack Obama's election signified to many a mandate for compassion instead of hyper-securityism or militarism that the GOP ended up signifying after the Bush administrations many misadventures. Let's hope this really does become Obama's legacy: the triumph of compassion over fear, which is the only true road to lasting security.

The World Embraces President Obama, Mississippi Censors Him

This from Electronic Village:

Did you see where school officials down in Mississippi threatened children with expulsion from busses and classrooms if they uttered the word, "Obama"?

and mentions

I imagine that there are still some folks who will have difficult time dealing with a Black president. I imagine it will hurt some of the officials and judges that run federal buildings and federal courtrooms when they have to place a portrait photo of the incoming president on the walls.

From the original:

On Thursday, the Pearl Schools superintendent said that a school bus driver and a coach were disciplined for allegedly telling students not to say President-elect Barack Obama’s name.

Guess some people, like the little newspaper in TX that didn't even print the news of Obama's election (apparently they didn't know Texas was part of the United States?), think we are still in the late 1800's, there isn't a recession, and they weren't descended from Adam or Eve in Africa. And why does any African heritage automatically cause a person to be "black" but any European heritage doesn't cause them to be in any sense "white" or even "multi-racial"??? Obviously, being "black" is much stronger than being "white". And preferable. Otherwise, why would you want the numbers of "black" to increase? Because it's a matter of survival of the fittest, and being "black" must mean more "fit" - except those in Mississippi are in denial of the confusion in their own actions. Maybe like Sarah Palin, they think Africa is a nation, somewhere between Fiji and India. Isn't that where the Indians come from?

What better role model for all students could there be than Barack Obama - and his family?

Good news about the racists, though. They are shrinking, vastly outnumbered by everybody else. There has never been such an outpouring of admiration and excitement as leaders and people all over the world embrace the name, and the man, Barack Obama.

"Murder Obama" Graffitti in P'Cola "No Credible Threat", Sign of Times

When great change is about to roll over, the roaches crawl out. In flaming red (neck) Pensacola, as in other places (where even more abominable acts have been committed) - such as yesterday's busted Neo-Nazi assassination plot, more racist, violence-edged action reared its ugly head. This time, a CSX (train) bridge in Pensacola, Florida was spray-paintedwith "MURDER OBAMA" grafitti - and quickly painted over on Monday evening.

It was linked in spirit, if not in actual connections, to the skinhead plot to kill Barack Obama - a cameraderie of the cockroach? no, that's unfair to cockroaches - in a kind of union of hate-mongers and racists. Is that all the John McCain has left? Not exactly, but...

All the lies and rumors do affect and influence the minds of the ignorant. Just check out the comments to the above-linked extremely brief article. But rebuttals to the ignorant are there in the same comments, showing that for every redneck, there's an equal and opposite blueneck. Or, if the polls mean anything, about ten equal and opposite bluenecks.

Fortunately, the all-wise Pensacola Police Department's Chip Simmons says

"We don't deem it as a credible threat to a presidential candidate," Simmons said. "We will forward the information to the Secret Service."

And now some of my registered-independent family members are being bombarded by non-McCain endorsed lies, published in dark blacks and browns, with sinister threats associated with Obama:
"He'll take your money away and spread it around" - "He's gonna take your guns away" - "He's gonna cut-n-run in Iraq" - "He's got bad friends..." - with pictures of Ayers, Wright, and, in a featured pamphlet all by himself, Tony Rezko, who is pictured as doing a quid-pro-quo for Obama, presumably to counter the Ted Stevens thing. But at least in this neck of the woods, it's not swaying anyone but those whose conspiracy theories run in the evangelical vein, those who feel that Sarah Palin was "chosen by God to save America", and who believe Obama is Muslim and about to take over America and give it to "Islam" - whatever, wherever and whoever that may be. All they need to know is Palin says "we're" in "America" and "they" are in that "liberal Islamic evil empire" that is definitely out of the loop when it comes to The Rapture.

And if these are his "constituents", with many thinking Republicans jumping ship, what does that say about an America he would supposedly "lead"? It would be a fringe, ignorant, fearful, emotionally-volatile, violence-prone, frozen-in-time nation that makes the 1984 "nation" look at least civil. If the scare tactics aren't working with McCain's bid for highest office, they are working to incite those at the lowest level. Gives even right-wing thinkers pause as to where he would "lead" the country.

Ltr to Liebermann's Rabbis: Tell McCain to Stop the Hate

Just an excerpt from Jesse Kornbluth's letter to Joe Lieberman's Rabbis:

I often think about Kristallnacht, that terrible night in Germany when it became unmistakably clear what the Nazis intended for the Jews. Almost a hundred Jews murdered, tens of thousands deported, windows smashed, businesses seized -- and hundreds of synagogues burned. Quite the "November surprise," if you will. But even after this horrific orgy of violence in 1938, there were many German Jews who didn't get it, who thought they were safe, who thought this was where it ended.

Now we know better. We say "Never again." But look around you, gentlemen. History does repeat, and in this case, with spooky echoes of Germany's darkest decade. A bad economy. A search for someone who can be dehumanized and blamed. The cries for "justice". And then....?

How would we recognize Kristallnacht if it happened today?

My fear: It's on the horizon, and coming closer every day.

Today "The Other" is Barack Obama. At a McCain-Palin rally the other day, there was a cry from a yahoo in the crowd: "Off with his head!" John McCain and Sarah Palin have not condemned that man. Indeed, they promise to ratchet up their "questions" about Obama in the final weeks of the campaign. At this point, it seems, they'd find nothing upsetting if the audiences at their rallies showed up with torches and pitchforks.

Jews, above all others, should fear this kind of hate speech. It may start with the demonization of one black man. Then it will move on to greedy Wall Streeters and "Jewish bankers" and a "liberal media" owned and controlled by Jews. [It's already happening: The Anti-Defamation League reports "a dramatic upsurge in anti-Semitic statements" on financial message boards on the Web. ] And then -- it sounds crazy, but it sounded crazy to many Jews in Germany -- the mob will come for us. Because that's where this goes. It's where it always goes. No matter where it starts, it ends with the Jews -- we're the ultimate "Other."

Well, they may go for Muslims this time around instead. But the point is made. Can anybody move McCain to compassion?

Slavery Alive and Well at Prison Plantations in South - Right Now!

As if it weren't enough that America, under the guiding hand of George W. Bush, is opening more prisons for both criminals and civil "offenders" (aka immigrants sans papers - ooooh, dangerous...) than ever before, or torturing "detainees" openly and without remorse for the first time in America's history, or maintaining prison ships, island prisons (Gitmo, Diego Garcia), we now have slave labor at former slave plantations in the south! Yes, that's right, slaves in plantations are back!

On an expanse of 18,000 acres of farmland, 59 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, long rows of men, mostly African-American, till the fields under the hot Louisiana sun. The men pick cotton, wheat, soybeans and corn. They work for pennies, literally. Armed guards, mostly white, ride up and down the rows on horseback, keeping watch. At the end of a long workweek, a bad disciplinary report from a guard - whether true or false - could mean a weekend toiling in the fields. The farm is called Angola, after the homeland of the slaves who first worked its soil.

This scene is not a glimpse of plantation days long gone by. It's the present-day reality of thousands of prisoners at the maximum security Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola. The block of land on which the prison sits is a composite of several slave plantations, bought up in the decades following the Civil War. Acre-wise, it is the largest prison in the United States. Eighty percent of its prisoners are African-American.

"Angola is disturbing every time I go there," Tory Pegram, who coordinates the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3, told Truthout. "It's not even really a metaphor for slavery. Slavery is what's going on."

Mwalimu Johnson, who spent 15 years as a prisoner at the penitentiary and now works as executive secretary of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, concurred.

"I would truthfully say that Angola prison is a sophisticated plantation," Johnson told Truthout. "'Cotton is King' still applies when it come to Angola."

Angola is not alone. Sixteen percent of Louisiana prisoners are compelled to perform farm labor, as are 17 percent of Texas prisoners and a full 40 percent of Arkansas prisoners, according to the 2002 Corrections Yearbook, compiled by the Criminal Justice Institute. They are paid little to nothing for planting and picking the same crops harvested by slaves 150 years ago.

In Louisiana, prisoner-slaves pick cotton for a whopping 4 cents an hour. That's right, it's 2008 and yes... 4 cents an hour. How did they arrive at this figure?

Many prison farms, Angola included, have gruesome post-bellum histories. In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, Angola made news with a host of assaults - and killings - of inmates by guards. In 1952, a group of Angola prisoners found their work conditions so oppressive that they resorted to cutting their Achilles' tendons in protest. At Mississippi's Parchman Farm, another plantation-to-prison convert, prisoners were routinely subjected to near-death whippings and even shootings for the first half of the 20th century. Cummins Farm, in Arkansas, sported a "prison hospital" that doubled as a torture chamber until a federal investigation exposed it in 1970. And Texas's Jester State Prison Farm, formerly Harlem Prison Farm, garnered its claim to fame from eight prisoners who suffocated to death after being sealed into a tiny cell and abandoned by guards.

But this stuff is gone now, right? Well, not exactly...

Since a wave of activism forced prison farm brutalities into the spotlight in the 1970s, some reforms have taken place: At Angola, for example, prison violence has been significantly reduced. But to a large extent, the official stories have been repackaged. State correctional departments now portray prison farm labor as educational or vocational opportunities, as opposed to involuntary servitude. The Alabama Department of Corrections web site, for example, states that its "Agriculture Program" "allows inmates to be trained in work habits and allows them to develop marketable skills in the areas of: Farming, Animal Husbandry, Vegetable, meat, and milk processing."

According to Angola's web site, "massive reform" has transformed the prison into a "stable, safe and constitutional" environment. A host of new faith-based programs at Angola have gotten a lot of media play, including features in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor.

Cathy Fontenot, Angola's assistant warden, told Truthout that the penitentiary is now widely known as an "innovative and progressive prison."

"The warden says it takes good food, good medicine, good prayin' and good playin' to have a good prison," Fontenot said, referring to the head warden, Burl Cain. "Angola has all these."

However, the makeover has been markedly incomplete, according to prisoners and their advocates.

"Most of the changes are cosmetic," said Johnson, who was released from Angola in 1992 and, in his new capacity as a prison rights advocate, stays in contact with Angola prisoners. "In the conventional plantations, slaves were given just enough food, clothing and shelter to be a financial asset to the owner. The same is true for the Louisiana prison system."

Wages for agricultural and industrial prison labor are still almost nonexistent compared with the federal minimum wage. Angola prisoners are paid anywhere from four to twenty cents per hour, according to Fontenot. Agricultural laborers fall on the lowest end of the pay scale.

What's more, prisoners may keep only half the money they make, according to Johnson, who notes that the other half is placed in an account for prisoners to use to "set themselves up" after they're released.

Besides the fact that two cents an hour may not accumulate much of a start-up fund, there is one glaring peculiarity about this arrangement: due to some of the harshest sentencing practices in the country, most Angola prisoners are never released. Ninety-seven percent will die in prison, according to Fontenot.

(Ironically, the "progressive" label may well apply to Angola, relative to some locations: In Texas, Arkansas and Georgia, most prison farms pay nothing at all.)

Angola prisoners technically work eight-hour days. However, since extra work can be mandated as a punishment for "bad behavior," hours may pile up well over that limit, former prisoner Robert King told Truthout.

Did they just say 2 cents an hour??? Right now? Where is the outrage?
And yes, we just heard 97% of Angola prisoners die in prison. What kind of justice system is this? Yes, this is America, now, and nobody even has the slightest idea.

"Prisoners worked out in the field, sometimes 17 hours straight, rain or shine," remembered King, who spent 29 years in solitary confinement at Angola, until he was released in 2001 after proving his innocence of the crime for which he was incarcerated.

It's common for Angola prisoners to work 65 hours a week after disciplinary reports have been filed, according to Johnson. Yet, those reports don't necessarily indicate that a prisoner has violated any rules. Johnson describes guards writing out reports well before the weekend, fabricating incident citations, then filling in prisoners' names on Friday, sometimes at random. Those prisoners would then spend their weekend in the cotton fields.

Although mechanical cotton pickers are almost universally used on modern-day farms, Angola prisoners must harvest by hand, echoing the exact ritual that characterized the plantation before emancipation.

According to King, these practices are undergirded by entrenched notions of race-based authority.

"Guards talked to prisoners like slaves," King told Truthout. "They'd tell you the officer was always right, no matter what."

Is this not slavery? Or shall we re-define slavery like the GOP and Dick Cheney redefined torture??

During the 1970s, prisoners were routinely beaten or "dungeonized" without cause, King said. Now, guards' power abuses are more expertly concealed, but they persist, fed by racist assumptions, according to King.

Johnson described some of the white guards burning crosses on prison lawns.

Much of this overt racism stems from the way the basic system - and even the basic population - of Angola and its environs have remained static since the days of slavery, according to Pegram. After the plantation was converted to a prison, former plantation overseers and their descendants kept their general roles, becoming prison officials and guards. This white overseer community, called B-Line, is located on the farm's grounds, both close to the prisoners and completely separate from them. In addition to their prison labor, Angola's inmates do free work for B-Line residents, from cutting their grass to trimming their hair to cleaning up Prison View Golf Course, the only course in the country where players can watch prisoners laboring as they golf.

Let's run by that one again: watching black prisoners/slaves work at hard labor while the "white folks" can take time off from their golf games to watch??? Is this amusement for modern racists?

Michael Moore made a mistake on Larry King when he said no one will not vote for Barack Obama because he is black. Obviously, he did not hear about those white golfin' & watchin' the slaves folks.

Another landmark of the town, the Angola Prison Museum, is also run by multi-generation Angola residents. The museum exhibits "Old Sparky," the solid oak electric chair used for executions at Angola until 1991. Visitors can purchase shirts that read, "Angola: A Gated Community."

Despite its antebellum MO, Angola's labor system does not break the law. In fact, it is explicitly authorized by the Constitution. The 13th Amendment, which prohibits forced labor, contains a caveat. It reads, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States."

That clause has a history of being manipulated, according to Fordham Law Professor Robert Kaczorowski, who has written extensively on civil rights and the Constitution. Directly after the 13th Amendment was enacted, it began to be utilized to justify slavery-like practices, according to Kaczorowski. Throughout the South, former slaves were arrested for trivial crimes (vagrancy, for example), fined, and imprisoned when they could not pay their fines. Then, landowners could supply the fine in exchange for the prisoner's labor, essentially perpetuating slavery.

Although such close reproductions of private enslavement were phased out, the 13th Amendment still permits involuntary servitude.

"Prisoners can be forced to work for the government against their will, and this is true in every state," Kaczorowski told Truthout.

Ah, so this is the new weapon used, especially by the GOP but not exclusively by them, to oppress and remove the rights of Americans these days: commit a crime, or be convicted of one, and you lose all rights, even the right not to be enslaved. And, not coincidentally, African Americans are by far the most likely to be forced into this type of slave labor.

In recent years, activists have begun to focus on the 13th Amendment's exception for prisoners, according to Pegram. African-Americans are disproportionately incarcerated; one in three black men has been in prison at some point in his life. Therefore, African-Americans are much more likely to be subject to involuntary servitude.

"I would have more faith in that amendment if it weren't so clear that our criminal justice system is racially biased in a really obvious way," Pegram said.

Prison activists like Johnson believe that ultimately, permanently changing the status quo at places like Angola may mean changing the Constitution - amending the 13th Amendment to abolish involuntary servitude for all.

"I don't have any illusions that this is a simple process," Johnson said. "Many people are apathetic about what happens in prisons. It would be very difficult, but I would not suggest it would be impossible."

Even without a constitutional overhaul, some states have done away with prison farms of their own accord. In Connecticut, where the farms were prevalent before the 1970s, the farms have been phased out, partially due to the perceived slavery connection. "Many black inmates viewed farm work under these circumstances as too close to slavery to want to participate," according to a 1995 report to the Connecticut General Assembly.

For now, though, the prison farm is alive and well in Louisiana. And at Angola, many prisoners can expect to be buried on the land they till. Two cemeteries, Point Lookout 1 and 2, lie on the prison grounds. No one knows exactly how many prisoners are interred in the former, since, after a flood washed away the first Angola cemetery in 1927, the bodies were reburied in a large common grave.

Point Lookout 1 is now full, and with the vast majority of Angola's prisoners destined to die in prison, Point Lookout 2 is well on its way, according to King.

"Angola is pretty huge," King said. "They've got a lot of land to bury a lot of prisoners."

No one knows how many of the prisoners kept in involuntary servitude at Angola are innocent. But at least one who has proven his innocence in court, overturning his conviction, is still behind bars.

Where's the outcry? Where's the outrage? Where's the media? Busy in Hollywood, where supposedly the money is. Or... is it just where they feel safe?

McCain campaign apologizes to ousted reporter: End of Story? Hardly...

In an attempt to quell the controversy over McCain's ousting of Stephen Pricethe sole black reporter at a rally in Tallahassee, especially after Keith Olberman's coverage, the McCain campaign apologized to Stephen Price in a phone call. Here's one version:

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers called Price on Tuesday evening and apologized on behalf of the campaign.

Rogers said "We feel terrible about it," according to Price.

"I accept the apology," Price said. "I definitely wish I was never singled out. I came up there to do a story. That's all I wanted to do is write a story."

Rogers told Price that McCain would call him in the next few days.

OK, so this is supposed to be the end of the story, right? Especially since John McCain HIMSELF would "call him in the next few days." And what could Mr. Price do except graciously accept this direct apology?

And McCain, of course, is giving himself time before making that call. Presumably, to see how it blows up. As expressed here,

I would think he could have squeezed in a phone call by now — five days and counting later — but I guess it takes a story being spotlighted on the national cable news shows before it begins to sink in on Gramps.

And anyway, McCain’s been so busy. We’ve seen him cavorting with the bikers at their rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, and egging his wife on to compete in the topless biker babe contest. Who has three minutes for a phone call?

But the story won't go away. The questions have not been answered, or even addressed. It's just "sorry", "forgive & forget", without the explanation, without acknowledging even sorry for what exactly...

Is it "sorry" for being racist? Is it "sorry" for giving the appearance of being racist? Is it "sorry" for adding another "incident" to the list of suspicious-looking racial-bias indicators in the McCain camp? Is it "sorry" for this incident becoming a possible drag on the McCain campaign? Is it "sorry" - "now please go away"? Is it "sorry from the bottom of my heart" - ("damn incompetent staff")?? Is it simply "sorry we kicked you out for no good reason" ... "inadvertently"? "by mistake"?

Was there a policy of separating "local" from "national" reporters? NO. Was there some kind of security threat? NO. Did Mr. Price present proper credentials? YES. So what's up with that? If it's not racial profiling, JUST TELL US what it IS.
Then did they issue a similar apology to the mysterious unnamed "other reporter" who was also kicked out when she defended Mr. Price? And then what, pray tell, are they sorry for in that case? Sorry our inept operatives kicked off any possible whistle-blowers/troublemakers? Sorry the public has to be an eyewitness to our inept operatives?

The point and bottom line is: there IS no explanation. There WAS no reason given. It was an abbreviation. A full stop. A one-word, one-thought period, they hope, at the end of an awkward, but revealing, sentence. A sentence that suggests "we represent the party of the Great White Hope, the party of Old Values where patriotism is embodied in a flag decal/pin, and where familiar WASP faces will always be sitting on the seats of power." Did they apologize for that suggestion? To whom?

McCain needs to explain himself to the American public. The story, the bigger story behind this incident, just won't go away.

Is the Anti-Immigration Movement Really a New Racist Movement?? Looks like a Resounding "YES"

This incident says it all: A Minuteman on the front lines of the anti-immigration movement, a republican phenom, saying "Fuck You, Brown Boy!"...

As Kyle de Beausset said in his report on the crowd outside where Obama was giving a speech in San Diego at the annual National Council of La Raza (NCLR) conference where the incident took place (from one of the San Diego Minutemen, an anti-immigration group),

Just as I was about to turn away from filming a man holding a sign of a boy urinating on the phrase "La Raza", I heard him begin to chant, "Fuck You Brown Boy. Fuck You Brown Boy. Fuck You Brown Boy." The San Diego Minuteman supporter was walking up a ramp to the convention center and was speaking to another full-grown man that looked to be of latino descent to me.

They were supposedly "protesting" La Raza's "racism" using racist epithets...!?!

Some will see the above incident as the fault of a fringe lunatic, who supports a fringe organization, but as anyone who blogs about migration can attest, hateful rhetoric like this has poisoned almost every online forum that takes up the subject. Any newspaper article that dares even suggest that unauthorized migrants are human quickly fills up with hate like this in the comment section. Even the mainstream progressive blogosphere is filled with hate like this. Look no further than Alternet's special immigration section for evidence of that.

This hate is degrading the U.S.'s democracy, and preventing the U.S. from arriving at a meaningful solution to the issues associated with migration. I live and breathe the U.S. migration debate. And even for someone like myself, who is very familiar with the U.S.'s history oppression, I find myself living in disbelief over the suffering of that millions of authorized and unauthorized migrants have to live through every day in the United States.

And as we all know from even W.'s attempt at Immigration reform, the racism and fear provides a lot of right-wing steam attacking this amorphous non-WASP "threat" that is undermining their livelihood and that of Lou Dobbs, who has solved all the economic problems facing the nation with the simple, symbolic concept of building a huge, impenetrable Wall against the Other.

Problems begin when that very wall and all it symbolizes undermines what America has always symbolized: democracy, freedom, and compassion. So much for those dreams - hate is much more compelling for an apparently vocal, mostly Republican, "interest group".

The 'Mortgage Meltdown' Was No Accident

You gotta read this!
Subtitle: How the mortgage industry stole black America's hard-won wealth.

Small excerpt:

But the disaster is depressingly man-made. And this neighborhood reveals a deeply troubling dimension of it, one that will echo long past the recovery everyone hopes will soon come: for black America, the "mortgage meltdown" looks less like a market hiccup than a massive strip mining of hard-won wealth, a devastating loss that will betray the promise of class mobility for tens of thousands of black families.

And get this:

First-time homebuyers have originated less than a tenth of all subprime loans since 1998, according to a 2007 Center for Responsible Lending analysis. As recently as 2006, just over half of all subprime loans were refinances of existing home loans. The expected foreclosure toll from these loans will outpace the ownership gains by nearly a million families, the center estimates.

That's particularly true in established black neighborhoods like Westwood, where banks and brokers targeted vulnerable longtime homeowners and lured them into needless and rapidly recurring mortgages they clearly couldn't afford and from which they never stood to gain. More than half of all refinance loans made to African-Americans in 2006 were subprime, according to an analysis by the advocacy group ACORN. That's nearly twice the rate among white borrowers. Among low-income black borrowers, 62 percent of refinance loans were subprime, more than twice the rate among low-income whites.

And it gets worse:

It's a loss black America can scarcely afford, because black wealth has long been enormously dependent on home equity. In 1967, the year before the Mitchells bought their house, homes accounted for 67 percent of black wealth, compared with 40 percent of white wealth. The disparity has only grown, pushed by the turn-of-the-millennium stock market boom. Without counting home equity, black net worth in 2004 was just 1 percent of that for whites, according to research by New York University economics professor Edward Wolff.

Now with the current tragic situation, the all-important home base for many families, people who lived in these homes for years, is being taken from them by predatory lenders. One might argue that this is not racist, that they are just victims of a housing/lending crisis that hit all lower-income people. But a look at the history of home ownership and lending in America tells us that's letting them off the hook.

The nation's first homeownership boom came after World War II, when the government used the Federal Housing Administration's (FHA) mortgage insurance to lower the cost of buying. Banks extended credit lines to middle-class borrowers in ways that encouraged long-term ownership -- thirty-year mortgages covering 80 percent to 90 percent of the buyer's costs with interest rates of about 6 percent. By 1960, the American homeownership rate had shot up from less than half before the war to nearly 65 percent, where it remained until the modern housing market took off.

Black communities were excluded from this rising tide. The FHA's underwriting manual guaranteed insurance for segregated white neighborhoods only, until a series of court cases between 1948 and 1953 struck down the rule. Even then, the policy changed in word alone: 98 percent of the 10 million homes federal money had backed by 1965 went to whites, and banks' redlining of black neighborhoods went on for years thereafter. As a result, the black-white disparity in homeownership hasn't dropped below 20 percentage points since 1940; it was at 25 percentage points in 2007.

Read more to see exactly how predatory, and I mean predatory, those lenders became after lifting the usury laws so they could open up their shady business to everyone and even force loans on people who didn't understand what they were doing.

Supreme Court OKs Racial Profiling

Either racial profiling is odious and unconstitutional, with personal and social consequences for communities of color — or it’s not.

On April 23, the U.S. Supreme Court, without any dissent, decided that it was not. The ruling obliquely, but forcefully, slammed the courthouse door on any attempts to challenge this widespread law enforcement practice.

... Read more ...

Telling Wright from Wrong

It's Official: America is a religion! And criticizing America per se is blasphemy. And blasphemy, although not registered as a crime - yet - is certainly right up there with murder, corruption, outright lying, torture, and pollution. Oh, and it is far worse than eliminating and disrespecting the First Amendment to the Constitution. That is, if one acts as if America is merely a word, a statue, a flag, a uniform, and a set of rhetorical rules. And in this religion-heavy world, Obama consorted with a Blasphemer, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, aka Mr. Wrong. (Click image at right for full size.)

America, according to the Majority Media view of the Majority American, is no longer a set of ideals, principles, such as, say, democracy. Otherwise, why would Bush be a patriot and Rev. Wright be an "America-hater"? Who brought the country to war over a lie and killed its best and most loyal for that lie in a foreign country which is now a spawning ground for the seeds of terror and hate, and has made the U.S. the most hated nation in the world, bar none? Who lied about his so-called "military service" and orchestrated, along with his adoring "patriotic" fans of "America" luvvers, the removal of a seasoned journalist over the mere mention of his possibly even conceivably fudging on that all-important rite-of-passage-to-patriotism, military service? Rev. Wright? McCain hobnobs with Bush and Cheney, torture-mongers, liars, people who gutted the economy and ruined jobs for millions of white-collar working class white Americans in Pennsylvania and Indiana and other hard-core white states, and no one taunts Mr. McCain with his association with those destroyers of America and its values in every respect, those Constitution-flaunters.

No one asks Ms. HRC about her association with Whitewater or Vince Foster, or some papers left on the dining room table in the white house, and why didn't she "quit years earlier" on such matters, as she claims, saintly robes in tow, to have disowned a man she and Bill previously had as an honored guest at the White House. Maybe to enjoy his rights of free speech which she now conveniently disowns.

Ms. HRC is no proponent of the First Amendment, of detente, of talking instead of bombing, of thinking twice before jumping on the avalanche of war, of debate instead of war, of open and free discussion between human beings instead of attacks between opponents and mud-slingers. She is a huge proponent of winning elections, but she can't win on her reputation as a hard-line conservative, which she isn't, or as a woman of integrity, which she isn't, or as an experienced negotiator, which she isn't, or as a person who will stand against the tide of wrong-headedness on behalf of the downtrodden or the unpopular but right side, the moral side. She's all about being expedient. So she looked at Rev. Wright out of the corner of her eye and said "I would have disowned him long ago." And so she would have disowned anyone who speaks his/her mind against the political winds of hard-headed O'Reilly-fueled hatred, war-mongering, bomb-brained protoplasm. Ah, but now saying "damn America", unlike "damn Yankees", means "hate-filled church" and that most sacrilegious thing of all, anti-Americanism, something the late J. Edgar Hoover was, like HRC, firmly against.

Democracy Now! brought this issue in debate where Adolph Reed Jr., Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania (author of several books, including Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene and Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era who makes a case against voting for Sen. Obama in the latest issue of The Progressive magazine), argues

Obama opened himself to this by leaning to—on the premise that he can
appeal to Republicans and to conservatives and by parading his personal faith
around.

and

...we’ve seen a number—a significant segment of white voters who sort of like the idea, like to savor the idea in their heads, like the sound of it in their mouths, that they’re prepared to vote for a black candidate, the closer it comes to the election of a black candidate being a reality, the more likely you’re going to find people finding ostensibly nonracial reasons to bail and to find him unlikable. And I think that’s—frankly, I think that’s—from the standpoint of the national political race, I think that’s the most significant aspect of the Wright contrast now.

Plus, regarding Wright, whom Reed believes to be honestly expressing truths,

...Obama couldn’t embrace him, couldn’t do anything except distance himself from that largely astute analysis of American power and other contradictions of the governing regime of both parties, because of the warrants of trying to win
an election in which the discursive center of gravity is much farther to the
right.

So therefore, he concludes Obama couldn't win, and he claims, neither could Hillary ... and so we vote for a "winner", then? McCain? We cave to the perception that Americans are mere protoplasm? Even if they are, even if Americans care about nothing whatsoever except maintaining their own creature comforts today, not tomorrow, it is conceivable that someone, somewhere could inspire us to higher ground.

If Obama is not that person, who on this scorched, pollution-threatened earth is? Why does everybody keep saying "Impossible!"??? What if secretly, in the hearts of most Americans, lies a soul that hopes, dreams, thinks that democracy really does mean "government by the people, for the people" and thinks "the people" is pretty damn inclusive? What if most of them actually fear bleeding democracy to death in useless, pointless, doomed wars overseas? What if they are just hoping to find someone to inspire them out of this video-game mind-numbing business of chasing celebrities while the whole country, its earth, sky, water, and people - not to mention the economy - goes to hell in a flag-draped, patriotic, rhetorically-sterile coffin?

Is it "hate" to condemn America for its racism and war-mongering? Or is it "hate" to refuse to condemn its sins and to whitewash it in red, white and blue meaningless doubletalk, and then condemn those who dare say what they really think? Are Americans really mindless protoplasm? Or do even working people, among whom I count myself, really on a higher plane than most pundits realize? Is Obama electable? Even after Wright?

Only the hopeful, optimistic, democracy-lovers who believe democracy actually could work think that way.

David Horowitz Celebrates Racism: Margaret Kimberly Offers a Balance

I wanted to write much about the $15 million Horowitz-Coulter Fascist Let's-Make-More-Racists LuvFest promoting our New Gestapo Empire under the guise of demonizing Islam, but I ran into this great columnist...
and here's her column:

Christian/Jewish Fascism Awareness Week
by Margaret Kimberley (source: Black Agenda Report)
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Right wing propagandist David Horowitz has declared October 22nd through October 26th Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. Horowitz is one of the biggest beneficiaries of right wing welfare, mostly from the hands of ultra-conservative foundations run by the Scaife and Bradley families. He has received more than $15 million in handouts to promote a white supremacist, pro-war agenda.
The current Horowitz obsession is focused on Islam and on keeping Americans whipped into a frenzy of fear and hatred against all Muslims. The very term Islamo-Fascism is a cynical creation of neoconservatives, designed to insure blind adherence to the Bush war on terror scheme.

The biggest perpetrators of terrorist acts are and always have been governments, not individuals of any religion. When the United States refers to "state sponsored" terror, it must be looking in the mirror. War is the very worst act of terror that can be practiced, giving governments permission to kill and commit brutal atrocities that would be loudly condemned if committed by individuals.

If the world's major religions are compared in terms of body count, it is clear that Islam should not be seen as the enemy. The two nations now in the fifth year of a plan to commit wars of aggression in the Middle East are Israel and the United States. If there should be warnings about particular religions and allegations of fascist connections, the perpetrators are Christianity and Judaism, not Islam.

It is manifestly unfair to label entire groups based on the behavior of a few. The Israeli lobby actively promotes war, but it can't be said that all American Jews are themselves pro-war. Around the world Bush is seen as the bogeyman representative of American Christianity. Many Christians may resent the verdict of guilt by association, but they would do well to remember that Muslims are also entitled to make their own pleas of individual innocence.

Instead Muslims are called upon to denounce any act of brutality committed by another Muslim, and to defend their religion from slanderous attacks. What is good for the Muslim goose, should also be good for the Christian and Jewish ganders. Therefore, October 22nd to October 26th in the year 2007 should also be known as Christian/Jewish Fascism Awareness Week.

The lawyers who wrote memos defending torture are all Jews and Christians, so are the members of Congress who advocate for endless warfare. All of the neocons who spent years plotting the occupation of Iraq and now the destruction of Iran are Christians or Jews. None are Muslim, nor are they atheist, agnostic, Baha'i, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Hindu, or practitioners of Voodoo. All attend churches and synagogues and in fact brag about their religious piety.
Norman Podhoretz, father of neocondom, said of the prospect of bombing Iran, "I hope and pray we will...." Crackpot preacher Rev. John Hagee founded Christians United for Israel, whose sole reason for existing is to guarantee the killing of thousands of Iranians. Hagee wants war and wants Bush to start it whenever he feels like it. "We do not have a declaration of war for Iraq, and neither does the president need one to expand it into Iran." Giving political leaders permission to kill as they please is Fascism 101.

Horowitz and his gang have carried out a very sinister plan. They fit the description of fascists to a T. They believe in endless wars of aggression, the destruction of the last vestiges of civil liberties, and subservience to a corporate power. Yet they have succeeded in wielding the epithet of fascism because of Democratic party treason to Bush, a corporate media that deliberately withholds information from the public, and the apathy and confusion that dominate American life.

Americans do need to be aware of a fascist threat, a threat that comes straight from the White House, Wall Street, and the halls of Congress. It can only be fought if its presence is acknowledged and if citizens know that they still have the power to stop it.

Politicians will be of no help in this struggle. Looking to them for salvation is useless when they are in fact the source of the problem. The Democratic congressional victory is nearly one year old and has yielded nothing but one victory after another for the Bush regime.

In a little more than a year, November 4, 2008, a new president will be elected. Another Fascism Awareness Week should be declared at that time. It should be declared to remind us that the fight to maintain democracy will not end with George W. Bush. That is the awareness we really need now.

(Ms. Kimberley' maintains an edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com. More of her work is also available at her Black Agenda Report archive page.)

Bigger Towers, Bigger Crimes: Dubai a "model" for the Mideast?

"Utopia II: Built by Slaves, Enjoyed by Businessmen"

Bridgethought of the Day: Just when you think you're getting somewhere, someone has to go and tell everybody how you got there. Another good reason to watch your step...

Human Rights Watch has come out with a report on the abuse of workers who build the famous towers in Dubai that is downright horrifying. At the same time, Dubai is having something of a "coming out" party, both as a potential high tech business mecca and tax shelter, according to an article by Michael Kanellos, editor at large at CNET News.com. Although Mr. Kanellos' source, Ghazi Benothman, a Senior Associate with Crosslink Capital, says "there's almost no poverty," the Human Rights Watch report, as discussed in a piece by Rafia Zakaria, tells a shocking and very different story:

"Workers in the Gulf States face some of the most horrendous work environments on the planet. Forced to work sixteen- to twenty-hour days in debilitating heat, without any vacation for years and with compensation withheld for months on end, the Dubai construction workers eke out an existence devoid of any dignity or freedom. Living at the mercy of the employers, who literally "own" their employment visas and hence their freedom of movement, these modern day slaves are unable to leave any employer for fear of deportation.

The employers, on the other hand, can, like the Pharoanic rulers of Egypt, easily trade them for cheaper workers or sell them via trading their employment contracts to other companies."

But it gets worse ...

"In addition to the restricted freedom of movement, companies in the UAE, both large and small, often refuse to pay these workers since few legal enforcement mechanisms exist to force them to do so. According to the Report, Al-Hamed Development and Construction, a company worth over $300 million dollars and one of the fastest growing construction companies in the world, failed to pay 7000 of its construction workers in 2005-2006. The smaller companies are also notorious for absconding or simply closing up shop without paying their workers.The fact that the construction workers are "guests" without equivalent legal rights that would enable to contest such actions without fears of reprisals, further entrenches their status as slaves in a society that surely treats them as such. In addition, most workers still owe debts to their handlers and so cannot return without wages to pay them off; so they are caught in a vicious circle of persecution."

Most of the workers are Pakistani, Indian, Sri-Lankan and Bangladeshi, and other Asian nationalities. The Arabs of Dubai behave in a way that reveals their totally un-Islamic racism . These workers are treated as human chattel, slaves. It reminds me of the attitude of Sudanese Arabs in Darfur. This ugly side of Sunni Muslims must be faced-down - by other Sunni Muslims, those with a conscience. Those with no allegiance to corrupt governments, such as the Saudi government.

Their "mainstream" position certainly doesn't look deserved from a human rights standpoint. What message are they trying to convey? Did they never hear that superiority is not attained by hubris or fantasy? And on the flip side, what are the "rebels" trying to say that can only be written in the blood of the unguilty? When did al-Qaeda ever unseat a dictator? Well, at least they are egalitarian - Asians welcome alongside Arabs...

On the other hand, while Dubai is showcased as a "model" for Middle Eastern "development" and "cooperation", this is all greased by plenty of liquor and, of course, prostitution and oil money splurged by "fun-starved Saudis" and Kuwaitis for their "entertainment" on the abuse of children as jockeys and the abuse of young women, many of them Russian, as prostitutes. Although much of this is in fact illegal (with the exception of alcohol), enforcement is slim to rare, probably mostly for appearances.

This only feeds into the constant refrain that the so-called "war" between the West & Islam is actually a cultural war between those who drink alcohol and engage in non-marital sex and "show some skin", to those nasty Islamists who emphatically do not, and are willing to fight for a world where these things are kept to a minimum. The "West" sees it as a war between "backward" ways, always using the example of cutting off hands as a punishment for theft, stoning to death for adulterers (not common, since even in the strictest sense, it requires 4 uninvolved male - or 8 female - eyewitnesses), wearing head coverings for women, and of course, that favorite one about "jihad", wildly & widely thought to mean "cutting off heads of infidels NOW". Even Christiane Amanpour went to great lengths to show how difficult and disturbing it can be to wear those head-coverings, while in fact, it could take about 10 seconds to pull on a "Taliban-strength" hijab, much less time than the most perfunctory hairdo.

Both sides exaggerate the nefarious intent of the other, and when they attempt to bridge the gap, you get people from the Islamic world falling all over themselves to baptize themselves in buckets of corruption and imitation Westernism meeting slick-looking but basically unaware businessmen from the West with dollar signs in their brains more than willing to overlook the side effects of this awkward version of cultural detente. After all, human oppression, be it in China or the Middle East, is all in a day's work. And somewhere in the thick of it all, ominously, lies the long shadow of Halliburton and its godfather, Dick Cheney.

But Divine intervention may be on the way. They say very tall buildings may actually cause or trigger earthquakes in places where none were before. So how long is this history's tallest manmade structure going to last? And what do you think it symbolizes?