posted by Ukulele Man at 10:19 PM
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Friday, March 30, 2007
What do we REALLY know??
Hey Folks,
We think there are things we know, but do we?Maybe we just "know" them for a while and then later we don't know them anymore.
Some years ago I wrote this spare little "poem":
Great Pyramid was built inside out, Frenchman says
By Tim Hepher Fri, Mar 30
PARIS (Reuters) - A French architect said on Friday he had cracked a 4,500-year-old mystery surrounding Egypt's Great Pyramid, saying it was built from the inside out.
Previous theories have suggested Pharaoh Khufu's tomb, the last surviving example of the seven great wonders of antiquity, was built using either a vast frontal ramp or a ramp in a corkscrew shape around the exterior to haul up the stonework.
But flouting previous wisdom, Jean-Pierre Houdin said advanced 3D technology had shown the main ramp which was used to haul the massive stones to the apex was contained 10-15 meters beneath the outer skin, tracing a pyramid within a pyramid.
"This is better than the other theories, because it is the only theory that works," Houdin told Reuters after unveiling his hypothesis in a lavish ceremony using 3D computer simulation.
To prove his case, Houdin teamed up with a French company that builds 3D models for auto and airplane design, Dassault Systemes, which put 14 engineers for 2 years on the project.
Now, an international team is being assembled to probe the pyramid using radars and heat detecting cameras supplied by a French defense firm, as long as Egyptian authorities agree.
"This goes against both main existing theories. I've been teaching them myself for 20 years but deep down I know they're wrong," Egyptologist Bob Brier told Reuters at the unveiling.
"Houdin's vision is credible, but right now this is just a theory. Everybody thinks it has got to be taken seriously," said Brier, a senior research fellow at Long Island University.
Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities was not immediately available for comment. Dassault said Brier and other Egyptologists attending the ceremony were supporters of Houdin's theory but had no financial links to him or the firm.
INTUITION
Houdin began working full-time on the riddle eight years ago after a flash of intuition passed to him by his engineer father, and five years before actually visiting the site.
He found that a frontal, mile-long ramp would have used up as much stone as the pyramid, while being too steep near the top. He believes an external ramp was used only to supply the base.
An external corkscrew ramp would have blocked the sight lines needed to build an accurate pyramid and been difficult to fix to the surface, while leaving little room to work.
"What characterized the Egyptians was their sense of perfection and economy. We talk of durable development now, but it was the Egyptians who invented it. They didn't waste a single stone. They relied purely on intelligence," Houdin said.
Houdin also claimed to have shed light on a second enigma surrounding the purpose of a Grand Gallery inside the pyramid.
The Frenchman believes its tall, narrow shape suggests it accommodated a giant counter-weight to help haul five 60-ton granite beams to their position above the King's Chamber.
He thinks that no more than 4,000 people could have built the pyramid using these techniques rather than the 100,000 or so assigned by past historians to the task of burying the pharaoh.
Houdin, 56, brushed aside concerns about the popular curse which is supposed to punish those who penetrate the secrets of the pyramids, dating back to the opening of Tutankhamun tomb.
"Why should I be worried? I'm just explaining that the people of the time were architects of genius and that Khufu was a genius to order the pyramid's construction. What could happen to me, except that Khufu would thank me?," he told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Lucien Libert of Reuters Television)
We think there are things we know, but do we?Maybe we just "know" them for a while and then later we don't know them anymore.
Some years ago I wrote this spare little "poem":
The Latest Word from Head Quarters
Life
is
a
series
of
mistaken
notions
which
consecutively
replace
one
another
as
we
age
Life
is
a
series
of
mistaken
notions
which
consecutively
replace
one
another
as
we
age
Well, the story below would seem to support this notion.
- Uke Man
Great Pyramid was built inside out, Frenchman says
By Tim Hepher Fri, Mar 30
PARIS (Reuters) - A French architect said on Friday he had cracked a 4,500-year-old mystery surrounding Egypt's Great Pyramid, saying it was built from the inside out.
Previous theories have suggested Pharaoh Khufu's tomb, the last surviving example of the seven great wonders of antiquity, was built using either a vast frontal ramp or a ramp in a corkscrew shape around the exterior to haul up the stonework.
But flouting previous wisdom, Jean-Pierre Houdin said advanced 3D technology had shown the main ramp which was used to haul the massive stones to the apex was contained 10-15 meters beneath the outer skin, tracing a pyramid within a pyramid.
"This is better than the other theories, because it is the only theory that works," Houdin told Reuters after unveiling his hypothesis in a lavish ceremony using 3D computer simulation.
To prove his case, Houdin teamed up with a French company that builds 3D models for auto and airplane design, Dassault Systemes, which put 14 engineers for 2 years on the project.
Now, an international team is being assembled to probe the pyramid using radars and heat detecting cameras supplied by a French defense firm, as long as Egyptian authorities agree.
"This goes against both main existing theories. I've been teaching them myself for 20 years but deep down I know they're wrong," Egyptologist Bob Brier told Reuters at the unveiling.
"Houdin's vision is credible, but right now this is just a theory. Everybody thinks it has got to be taken seriously," said Brier, a senior research fellow at Long Island University.
Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities was not immediately available for comment. Dassault said Brier and other Egyptologists attending the ceremony were supporters of Houdin's theory but had no financial links to him or the firm.
INTUITION
Houdin began working full-time on the riddle eight years ago after a flash of intuition passed to him by his engineer father, and five years before actually visiting the site.
He found that a frontal, mile-long ramp would have used up as much stone as the pyramid, while being too steep near the top. He believes an external ramp was used only to supply the base.
An external corkscrew ramp would have blocked the sight lines needed to build an accurate pyramid and been difficult to fix to the surface, while leaving little room to work.
"What characterized the Egyptians was their sense of perfection and economy. We talk of durable development now, but it was the Egyptians who invented it. They didn't waste a single stone. They relied purely on intelligence," Houdin said.
Houdin also claimed to have shed light on a second enigma surrounding the purpose of a Grand Gallery inside the pyramid.
The Frenchman believes its tall, narrow shape suggests it accommodated a giant counter-weight to help haul five 60-ton granite beams to their position above the King's Chamber.
He thinks that no more than 4,000 people could have built the pyramid using these techniques rather than the 100,000 or so assigned by past historians to the task of burying the pharaoh.
Houdin, 56, brushed aside concerns about the popular curse which is supposed to punish those who penetrate the secrets of the pyramids, dating back to the opening of Tutankhamun tomb.
"Why should I be worried? I'm just explaining that the people of the time were architects of genius and that Khufu was a genius to order the pyramid's construction. What could happen to me, except that Khufu would thank me?," he told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Lucien Libert of Reuters Television)
posted by Ukulele Man at 10:17 PM
1 comments
links to this post
"You've got a responsibility to die, sailor!"
Hey Folks -
Below is a story reporting on the Iranian seizure of 15 British soldiers: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070328/ap_on_re_eu/british_seized_iran )
The badly outnumbered and inferiorly armed Brits did not resist and are still alive. According to the story below, "[Tony] Blair said he believed the crew acted sensibly in not putting up a fight after being confronted by six Iranian vessels."
In a separate story it has been reported by Gwynne Dyer that the commander of the US ship paired with the British ship said, "I don't want to second-guess the British after the fact, but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude. Our boarding team's training is a little bit more toward self-preservation."
Asked whether that meant one of his boarding teams would have opened fire if it had been them in the two inflatable boats that were surrounded by Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats off the coast of Iraq, he said, "Agreed. Yes."
He goes on, ""The U.S. Navy rules of engagement say we have not only a right to self-defense but also an obligation to self-defense . . . [the British] had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, 'Why didn't your guys defend themselves?' "
The 15 Brits in two small, inflated boats and carrying small arms were surrounded by six or seven Iranian patrol boats armed with heavy machine guns. Hmmmmm . . .
If the Iranians had gone after an American boarding party, we'd have 15 more dead American kids to mourn.
According to their American commander, the kids had not only a right to attack and die, but a responsibility to attack and die. So much for looking out for the lives of our kids in uniform.
- Uke Man
Iran shows video of captured Britons
Wed Mar 28
TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian state TV showed video Wednesday of the 15 British sailors and marines who were seized last week, including a female captive who wore a white tunic and a black head scarf and said the British boats "had trespassed" in Iranian waters.
The British government protested Iran's broadcast of the captured crew as "completely unacceptable." The British military had earlier released what it called proof that its boats were in the territorial waters of
Iraq — not Iran — when they were seized.
"Obviously we trespassed into their waters," British sailor Faye Turney said on the video broadcast by Al-Alam, an Arabic-language, Iranian state-run television station that is carried across the Middle East.
"They were very friendly and very hospitable, very thoughtful, nice people. They explained to us why we've been arrested, there was no harm, no aggression," she said.
Turney, 26, was shown eating with sailors and marines. At another point, she was seen sitting in a room with a floral curtains, smoking a cigarette.
"My name is leading sailman Faye Turney. I come from England. I have served in Foxtrot 99. I've been in the navy for nine years," she said.
Turney was the only person to be shown speaking in the video.
It also showed what appeared to be a handwritten letter from Turney to her family. The letter said, in part, "I have written a letter to the Iranian people to apologize for us entering their waters."
The video also showed a brief scene of what appeared to be the British crew sitting in an Iranian boat in open waters immediately after their capture.
Before the video was broadcast, a spokesman for British Prime Minister
Tony Blair said any showing of British personnel on TV would be a breach of the Geneva Conventions.
"It's completely unacceptable for these pictures to be shown on television," the British Foreign Office said in a statement after the broadcast. "There is no doubt our personnel were seized in Iraqi territorial waters."
The statement also demanded that British diplomats be given immediate access to them as a "prelude" to their release.
Britain earlier said it was freezing most contacts with Iran until it freed all the crew members.
Britain's military said its vessels were 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi waters when Iran seized the sailors and marines on Friday after they completed a search of a civilian vessel in the Iraqi part of the Shatt al-Arab waterway. The border between Iran and Iraq has been disputed for centuries.
Vice Adm. Charles Style told reporters that the Iranians had provided a position on Sunday — a location that he said was in Iraqi waters. By Tuesday, Iranian officials had given a revised position two miles east, placing the British inside Iranian waters — a claim he said was not verified by global positioning system coordinates.
"It is hard to understand a legitimate reason for this change of coordinates," Style said.
Style gave the satellite coordinates of the British crew as 29 degrees 50.36 minutes north latitude and 048 degrees 43.08 minutes east longitude, and said it had been confirmed by an Indian-flagged merchant ship boarded by the sailors and marines.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki denied this, saying, "That's not true. It happened in Iranian territorial waters."
Mottaki also told The Associated Press in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that Turney would be released Wednesday or Thursday, and he suggested that the British vessels' alleged entry into Iranian waters may have been a mistake.
"This is a violation that just happened. It could be natural. They did not resist," he told the AP.
"Today or tomorrow, the lady will be released," Mottaki said Wednesday on the sidelines of an Arab summit in the Saudi capital, referring to Turney, the only woman among the 15.
The Iranian Embassy in London also said: "We are confident that Iranian and British governments are capable of resolving this security case through their close contacts and cooperation."
Britain's military said its vessels were 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi waters when Iran seized the sailors and marines on Friday.
Vice Adm. Charles Style told reporters that the Iranians had provided a position on Sunday — a location that he said was in Iraqi waters. By Tuesday, Iranian officials had given a revised position two miles east, placing the British inside Iranian waters — a claim he said was not verified by global positioning system coordinates.
"It is hard to understand a legitimate reason for this change of coordinates," Style said.
Style gave the satellite coordinates of the British crew as 29 degrees 50.36 minutes north latitude and 048 degrees 43.08 minutes east longitude, and said it had been confirmed by an Indian-flagged merchant ship boarded by the sailors and marines.
Mottaki denied this, saying, "That's not true. It happened in Iranian territorial waters."
Britain and the United States have said the crew was intercepted after completing a search of a civilian vessel in the Iraqi part of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, where the border between Iran and Iraq has been disputed for centuries.
Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons that "there was no justification whatever ... for their detention, it was completely unacceptable, wrong and illegal."
"We had hoped to see their immediate release; this has not happened. It is now time to ratchet up the diplomatic and international pressure in order to make sure the Iranian government understands its total isolation on this issue," Blair said.
Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said she had suspended bilateral talks on all other issues with Tehran until the 15 were released. Visits by officials will be stopped, issuing visas to Iranian officials suspended and British support for events such as trade missions put on hold, her office said.
"No one should be in any doubt about the seriousness with which we regard these events," Beckett told the House of Commons.
Beckett said Britain had now begun a "new phase of diplomatic activity," following Iran's failure to release the sailors and marines, or allow British officials access.
Secretary of State
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal had offered support, Beckett said.
Blair said he believed the crew acted sensibly in not putting up a fight after being confronted by six Iranian vessels.
"If they had engaged in military combat at that stage, there would have undoubtedly been severe loss of life. I think they took the right decision and did what was entirely sensible," Blair said.
In Iran, the announcement by a newscaster on Al-Alam satellite TV on the planned broadcast of the video of the captives did not specify when it would be shown. Al-Alam is an Arabic-language, Iranian state-run television station that is carried across the Middle East.
Iran had promised British officials in talks that it would not show the sailors on television as it did with a group captured in 2004 — a senior British foreign office diplomat said earlier Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with British government rules.
Iran has said the 15 were being treated well, but refused to say where they were being held, or rule out the possibility that they could be brought to trial for allegedly entering Iranian waters.
In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said the Britons were being treated well.
"They are in completely good health. Rest assured that they have been treated with humanitarian and moral behavior," Hosseini told the AP.
In talks with Mottaki, Beckett demanded that British diplomats be allowed to meet with the crew to make their own assessment.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Iran's behavior was "fully unacceptable" and assured Britain of its full support in negotiations to win their release.
"The EU finds it fully unacceptable that 15 British troops have been captured and detained by Iran. We extend our absolute support and solidarity with Britain on this issue," Merkel told the European Parliament
___
Associated Press Writer Slobodan Lekic contributed to this report from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Below is a story reporting on the Iranian seizure of 15 British soldiers: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070328/ap_on_re_eu/british_seized_iran )
The badly outnumbered and inferiorly armed Brits did not resist and are still alive. According to the story below, "[Tony] Blair said he believed the crew acted sensibly in not putting up a fight after being confronted by six Iranian vessels."
In a separate story it has been reported by Gwynne Dyer that the commander of the US ship paired with the British ship said, "I don't want to second-guess the British after the fact, but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude. Our boarding team's training is a little bit more toward self-preservation."
Asked whether that meant one of his boarding teams would have opened fire if it had been them in the two inflatable boats that were surrounded by Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats off the coast of Iraq, he said, "Agreed. Yes."
He goes on, ""The U.S. Navy rules of engagement say we have not only a right to self-defense but also an obligation to self-defense . . . [the British] had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, 'Why didn't your guys defend themselves?' "
The 15 Brits in two small, inflated boats and carrying small arms were surrounded by six or seven Iranian patrol boats armed with heavy machine guns. Hmmmmm . . .
If the Iranians had gone after an American boarding party, we'd have 15 more dead American kids to mourn.
According to their American commander, the kids had not only a right to attack and die, but a responsibility to attack and die. So much for looking out for the lives of our kids in uniform.
- Uke Man
Iran shows video of captured Britons
Wed Mar 28
TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian state TV showed video Wednesday of the 15 British sailors and marines who were seized last week, including a female captive who wore a white tunic and a black head scarf and said the British boats "had trespassed" in Iranian waters.
The British government protested Iran's broadcast of the captured crew as "completely unacceptable." The British military had earlier released what it called proof that its boats were in the territorial waters of
Iraq — not Iran — when they were seized.
"Obviously we trespassed into their waters," British sailor Faye Turney said on the video broadcast by Al-Alam, an Arabic-language, Iranian state-run television station that is carried across the Middle East.
"They were very friendly and very hospitable, very thoughtful, nice people. They explained to us why we've been arrested, there was no harm, no aggression," she said.
Turney, 26, was shown eating with sailors and marines. At another point, she was seen sitting in a room with a floral curtains, smoking a cigarette.
"My name is leading sailman Faye Turney. I come from England. I have served in Foxtrot 99. I've been in the navy for nine years," she said.
Turney was the only person to be shown speaking in the video.
It also showed what appeared to be a handwritten letter from Turney to her family. The letter said, in part, "I have written a letter to the Iranian people to apologize for us entering their waters."
The video also showed a brief scene of what appeared to be the British crew sitting in an Iranian boat in open waters immediately after their capture.
Before the video was broadcast, a spokesman for British Prime Minister
Tony Blair said any showing of British personnel on TV would be a breach of the Geneva Conventions.
"It's completely unacceptable for these pictures to be shown on television," the British Foreign Office said in a statement after the broadcast. "There is no doubt our personnel were seized in Iraqi territorial waters."
The statement also demanded that British diplomats be given immediate access to them as a "prelude" to their release.
Britain earlier said it was freezing most contacts with Iran until it freed all the crew members.
Britain's military said its vessels were 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi waters when Iran seized the sailors and marines on Friday after they completed a search of a civilian vessel in the Iraqi part of the Shatt al-Arab waterway. The border between Iran and Iraq has been disputed for centuries.
Vice Adm. Charles Style told reporters that the Iranians had provided a position on Sunday — a location that he said was in Iraqi waters. By Tuesday, Iranian officials had given a revised position two miles east, placing the British inside Iranian waters — a claim he said was not verified by global positioning system coordinates.
"It is hard to understand a legitimate reason for this change of coordinates," Style said.
Style gave the satellite coordinates of the British crew as 29 degrees 50.36 minutes north latitude and 048 degrees 43.08 minutes east longitude, and said it had been confirmed by an Indian-flagged merchant ship boarded by the sailors and marines.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki denied this, saying, "That's not true. It happened in Iranian territorial waters."
Mottaki also told The Associated Press in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that Turney would be released Wednesday or Thursday, and he suggested that the British vessels' alleged entry into Iranian waters may have been a mistake.
"This is a violation that just happened. It could be natural. They did not resist," he told the AP.
"Today or tomorrow, the lady will be released," Mottaki said Wednesday on the sidelines of an Arab summit in the Saudi capital, referring to Turney, the only woman among the 15.
The Iranian Embassy in London also said: "We are confident that Iranian and British governments are capable of resolving this security case through their close contacts and cooperation."
Britain's military said its vessels were 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi waters when Iran seized the sailors and marines on Friday.
Vice Adm. Charles Style told reporters that the Iranians had provided a position on Sunday — a location that he said was in Iraqi waters. By Tuesday, Iranian officials had given a revised position two miles east, placing the British inside Iranian waters — a claim he said was not verified by global positioning system coordinates.
"It is hard to understand a legitimate reason for this change of coordinates," Style said.
Style gave the satellite coordinates of the British crew as 29 degrees 50.36 minutes north latitude and 048 degrees 43.08 minutes east longitude, and said it had been confirmed by an Indian-flagged merchant ship boarded by the sailors and marines.
Mottaki denied this, saying, "That's not true. It happened in Iranian territorial waters."
Britain and the United States have said the crew was intercepted after completing a search of a civilian vessel in the Iraqi part of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, where the border between Iran and Iraq has been disputed for centuries.
Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons that "there was no justification whatever ... for their detention, it was completely unacceptable, wrong and illegal."
"We had hoped to see their immediate release; this has not happened. It is now time to ratchet up the diplomatic and international pressure in order to make sure the Iranian government understands its total isolation on this issue," Blair said.
Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said she had suspended bilateral talks on all other issues with Tehran until the 15 were released. Visits by officials will be stopped, issuing visas to Iranian officials suspended and British support for events such as trade missions put on hold, her office said.
"No one should be in any doubt about the seriousness with which we regard these events," Beckett told the House of Commons.
Beckett said Britain had now begun a "new phase of diplomatic activity," following Iran's failure to release the sailors and marines, or allow British officials access.
Secretary of State
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal had offered support, Beckett said.
Blair said he believed the crew acted sensibly in not putting up a fight after being confronted by six Iranian vessels.
"If they had engaged in military combat at that stage, there would have undoubtedly been severe loss of life. I think they took the right decision and did what was entirely sensible," Blair said.
In Iran, the announcement by a newscaster on Al-Alam satellite TV on the planned broadcast of the video of the captives did not specify when it would be shown. Al-Alam is an Arabic-language, Iranian state-run television station that is carried across the Middle East.
Iran had promised British officials in talks that it would not show the sailors on television as it did with a group captured in 2004 — a senior British foreign office diplomat said earlier Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with British government rules.
Iran has said the 15 were being treated well, but refused to say where they were being held, or rule out the possibility that they could be brought to trial for allegedly entering Iranian waters.
In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said the Britons were being treated well.
"They are in completely good health. Rest assured that they have been treated with humanitarian and moral behavior," Hosseini told the AP.
In talks with Mottaki, Beckett demanded that British diplomats be allowed to meet with the crew to make their own assessment.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Iran's behavior was "fully unacceptable" and assured Britain of its full support in negotiations to win their release.
"The EU finds it fully unacceptable that 15 British troops have been captured and detained by Iran. We extend our absolute support and solidarity with Britain on this issue," Merkel told the European Parliament
___
Associated Press Writer Slobodan Lekic contributed to this report from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
posted by Ukulele Man at 6:43 AM
0 comments
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Thursday, March 29, 2007
"Is that Kkkarl Rove or the Pilsbury Dough Boy?"
posted by Ukulele Man at 9:31 AM
0 comments
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Reality Vultures Coming Home to Roost !!
Hey Folks,
Remember Ron Suskind quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Well, the reality vultures are coming home to roost. Bush & Co. made it pretty far with their imperious lies, but even an emperor can walk around naked only so long before the people see his ass.
- Uke Man
March 26, 2007
Emerging Republican Minority
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Remember how the 2004 election was supposed to have demonstrated, once and for all, that conservatism was the future of American politics? I do: early in 2005, some colleagues in the news media urged me, in effect, to give up. “The election settled some things,” I was told.
But at this point 2004 looks like an aberration, an election won with fear-and-smear tactics that have passed their sell-by date. Republicans no longer have a perceived edge over Democrats on national security — and without that edge, they stand revealed as ideologues out of step with an increasingly liberal American public.
Right now the talk of the political chattering classes is a report from the Pew Research Center showing a precipitous decline in Republican support. In 2002 equal numbers of Americans identified themselves as Republicans and Democrats, but since then the Democrats have opened up a 15-point advantage.
Part of the Republican collapse surely reflects public disgust with the Bush administration. The gap between the parties will probably get even wider when — not if — more and worse tales of corruption and abuse of power emerge.
But polling data on the issues, from Pew and elsewhere, suggest that the G.O.P.’s problems lie as much with its ideology as with one man’s disastrous reign.
For the conservatives who run today’s Republican Party are devoted, above all, to the proposition that government is always the problem, never the solution. For a while the American people seemed to agree; but lately they’ve concluded that sometimes government is the solution, after all, and they’d like to see more of it.
Consider, for example, the question of whether the government should provide fewer services in order to cut spending, or provide more services even if this requires higher spending. According to the American National Election Studies, in 1994, the year the Republicans began their 12-year control of Congress, those who favored smaller government had the edge, by 36 to 27. By 2004, however, those in favor of bigger government had a 43-to-20 lead.
And public opinion seems to have taken a particularly strong turn in favor of universal health care. Gallup reports that 69 percent of the public believes that “it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage,” up from 59 percent in 2000.
The main force driving this shift to the left is probably rising income inequality. According to Pew, there has recently been a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans who agree with the statement that “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” Interestingly, the big increase in disgruntlement over rising inequality has come among the relatively well off — those making more than $75,000 a year.
Indeed, even the relatively well off have good reason to feel left behind in today’s economy, because the big income gains have been going to a tiny, super-rich minority. It’s not surprising, under those circumstances, that most people favor a stronger safety net — which they might need — even at the expense of higher taxes, much of which could be paid by the ever-richer elite.
And in the case of health care, there’s also the fact that the traditional system of employer-based coverage is gradually disintegrating. It’s no wonder, then, that a bit of socialized medicine is looking good to most Americans.
So what does this say about the political outlook? It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. But at this point it looks as if we’re seeing an emerging Republican minority.
After all, Democratic priorities — in particular, on health care, where John Edwards has set the standard for all the candidates with a specific proposal to finance universal coverage with higher taxes on the rich — seem to be more or less in line with what the public wants.
Republicans, on the other hand, are still wallowing in nostalgia — nostalgia for the days when people thought they were heroic terrorism-fighters, nostalgia for the days when lots of Americans hated Big Government.
Many Republicans still imagine that what their party needs is a return to the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan. It will probably take quite a while in the political wilderness before they take on board the message of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comeback in California — which is that what they really need is a return to the moderate legacy of Dwight Eisenhower.
Remember Ron Suskind quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Well, the reality vultures are coming home to roost. Bush & Co. made it pretty far with their imperious lies, but even an emperor can walk around naked only so long before the people see his ass.
- Uke Man
March 26, 2007
Emerging Republican Minority
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Remember how the 2004 election was supposed to have demonstrated, once and for all, that conservatism was the future of American politics? I do: early in 2005, some colleagues in the news media urged me, in effect, to give up. “The election settled some things,” I was told.
But at this point 2004 looks like an aberration, an election won with fear-and-smear tactics that have passed their sell-by date. Republicans no longer have a perceived edge over Democrats on national security — and without that edge, they stand revealed as ideologues out of step with an increasingly liberal American public.
Right now the talk of the political chattering classes is a report from the Pew Research Center showing a precipitous decline in Republican support. In 2002 equal numbers of Americans identified themselves as Republicans and Democrats, but since then the Democrats have opened up a 15-point advantage.
Part of the Republican collapse surely reflects public disgust with the Bush administration. The gap between the parties will probably get even wider when — not if — more and worse tales of corruption and abuse of power emerge.
But polling data on the issues, from Pew and elsewhere, suggest that the G.O.P.’s problems lie as much with its ideology as with one man’s disastrous reign.
For the conservatives who run today’s Republican Party are devoted, above all, to the proposition that government is always the problem, never the solution. For a while the American people seemed to agree; but lately they’ve concluded that sometimes government is the solution, after all, and they’d like to see more of it.
Consider, for example, the question of whether the government should provide fewer services in order to cut spending, or provide more services even if this requires higher spending. According to the American National Election Studies, in 1994, the year the Republicans began their 12-year control of Congress, those who favored smaller government had the edge, by 36 to 27. By 2004, however, those in favor of bigger government had a 43-to-20 lead.
And public opinion seems to have taken a particularly strong turn in favor of universal health care. Gallup reports that 69 percent of the public believes that “it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage,” up from 59 percent in 2000.
The main force driving this shift to the left is probably rising income inequality. According to Pew, there has recently been a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans who agree with the statement that “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” Interestingly, the big increase in disgruntlement over rising inequality has come among the relatively well off — those making more than $75,000 a year.
Indeed, even the relatively well off have good reason to feel left behind in today’s economy, because the big income gains have been going to a tiny, super-rich minority. It’s not surprising, under those circumstances, that most people favor a stronger safety net — which they might need — even at the expense of higher taxes, much of which could be paid by the ever-richer elite.
And in the case of health care, there’s also the fact that the traditional system of employer-based coverage is gradually disintegrating. It’s no wonder, then, that a bit of socialized medicine is looking good to most Americans.
So what does this say about the political outlook? It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. But at this point it looks as if we’re seeing an emerging Republican minority.
After all, Democratic priorities — in particular, on health care, where John Edwards has set the standard for all the candidates with a specific proposal to finance universal coverage with higher taxes on the rich — seem to be more or less in line with what the public wants.
Republicans, on the other hand, are still wallowing in nostalgia — nostalgia for the days when people thought they were heroic terrorism-fighters, nostalgia for the days when lots of Americans hated Big Government.
Many Republicans still imagine that what their party needs is a return to the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan. It will probably take quite a while in the political wilderness before they take on board the message of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comeback in California — which is that what they really need is a return to the moderate legacy of Dwight Eisenhower.
posted by Ukulele Man at 9:00 AM
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Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The Gipper & the Quipper
Hey Folks -
Krugman better get a bodyguard.
The right wingnuts LOVE Ronnie (or is it Bonzo? or does it matter?). Worse, they LOVE him for the reasons Krugman disses him. Ronnie was the Massa o' the Plantation, kept the fieldhands in their place.
The patrician fascists have demanded his likeness be put on Mt. Rushmore. That won't happen (not enough stone left there).
But, there's plenty of space left on Stone Mountain, and even I think it would be appropriate to chisel the Gipper up there beside Lee, Jackson, and Davis.
- Uke Man
March 19, 2007
Don’t Cry for Reagan
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
As the Bush administration sinks deeper into its multiple quagmires, the personality cult the G.O.P. once built around President Bush has given way to nostalgia for the good old days. The current cover of Time magazine shows a weeping Ronald Reagan, and declares that Republicans “need to reclaim the Reagan legacy.”
But Republicans shouldn’t cry for Ronald Reagan; the truth is, he never left them. There’s no need to reclaim the Reagan legacy: Mr. Bush is what Mr. Reagan would have been given the opportunity.
In 1993 Jonathan Cohn — the author, by the way, of a terrific new book on our dysfunctional health care system — published an article in The American Prospect describing the dire state of the federal government. Changing just a few words in that article makes it read as if it were written in 2007.
Thus, Mr. Cohn described how the Interior Department had been packed with opponents of environmental protection, who “presided over a massive sell-off of federal lands to industry and developers” that “deprived the department of several billion dollars in annual revenue.” Oil leases, anyone?
Meanwhile, privatization had run amok, because “the ranks of public officials necessary to supervise contractors have been so thinned that the putative gains of contracting out have evaporated. Agencies have been left with the worst of both worlds — demoralized and disorganized public officials and unaccountable private contractors.” Holy Halliburton!
Not mentioned in Mr. Cohn’s article, but equally reminiscent of current events, was the state of the Justice Department under Ed Meese, a man who gives Alberto Gonzales and John Mitchell serious competition for the title of worst attorney general ever. The politicization of Justice got so bad that in 1988 six senior officials, all Republicans, including the deputy attorney general and the chief of the criminal division, resigned in protest.
Why is there such a strong family resemblance between the Reagan years and recent events? Mr. Reagan’s administration, like Mr. Bush’s, was run by movement conservatives — people who built their careers by serving the alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. And both cronyism and abuse of power are part of the movement conservative package.
In part this is because people whose ideology says that government is always the problem, never the solution, see no point in governing well. So they use political power to reward their friends, rather than find people who will actually do their jobs.
If expertise is irrelevant, who gets the jobs? No problem: the interlocking, lavishly financed institutions of movement conservatism, which range from K Street to Fox News, create a vast class of apparatchiks who can be counted on to be “loyal Bushies.”
The movement’s apparatchik culture, in turn, explains much of its contempt for the rule of law. Someone who has risen through the ranks of a movement that prizes political loyalty above all isn’t likely to balk at, say, using bogus claims of voter fraud to disenfranchise Democrats, or suppressing potentially damaging investigations of Republicans. As Franklin Foer of The New Republic has pointed out, in College Republican elections, dirty tricks and double crosses are considered acceptable, even praiseworthy.
Still, Mr. Reagan’s misgovernment never went as far as Mr. Bush’s. As a result, he managed to leave office with an approval rating about as high as that of Bill Clinton, who, as we now realize with the benefit of hindsight, governed very well. But the key to Reagan’s relative success, I believe, is that he was lucky in his limitations.
Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Reagan never controlled both houses of Congress — and the pre-Gingrich Republican Party still contained moderates who imposed limits on his ability to govern badly. Also, there was no Reagan-era equivalent of the rush, after 9/11, to give the Bush administration whatever it wanted in the name of fighting terrorism.
Mr. Reagan may even have been helped, perversely, by the fact that in the 1980s there were still two superpowers. This helped prevent the hubris, the delusions of grandeur, that led the Bush administration to believe that a splendid little war in Iraq was just the thing to secure its position.
But what this tells us is that Mr. Bush, not Mr. Reagan, is the true representative of what modern conservatism is all about. And it’s the movement, not just one man, that has failed
Krugman better get a bodyguard.
The right wingnuts LOVE Ronnie (or is it Bonzo? or does it matter?). Worse, they LOVE him for the reasons Krugman disses him. Ronnie was the Massa o' the Plantation, kept the fieldhands in their place.
The patrician fascists have demanded his likeness be put on Mt. Rushmore. That won't happen (not enough stone left there).
But, there's plenty of space left on Stone Mountain, and even I think it would be appropriate to chisel the Gipper up there beside Lee, Jackson, and Davis.
- Uke Man
March 19, 2007
Don’t Cry for Reagan
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
As the Bush administration sinks deeper into its multiple quagmires, the personality cult the G.O.P. once built around President Bush has given way to nostalgia for the good old days. The current cover of Time magazine shows a weeping Ronald Reagan, and declares that Republicans “need to reclaim the Reagan legacy.”
But Republicans shouldn’t cry for Ronald Reagan; the truth is, he never left them. There’s no need to reclaim the Reagan legacy: Mr. Bush is what Mr. Reagan would have been given the opportunity.
In 1993 Jonathan Cohn — the author, by the way, of a terrific new book on our dysfunctional health care system — published an article in The American Prospect describing the dire state of the federal government. Changing just a few words in that article makes it read as if it were written in 2007.
Thus, Mr. Cohn described how the Interior Department had been packed with opponents of environmental protection, who “presided over a massive sell-off of federal lands to industry and developers” that “deprived the department of several billion dollars in annual revenue.” Oil leases, anyone?
Meanwhile, privatization had run amok, because “the ranks of public officials necessary to supervise contractors have been so thinned that the putative gains of contracting out have evaporated. Agencies have been left with the worst of both worlds — demoralized and disorganized public officials and unaccountable private contractors.” Holy Halliburton!
Not mentioned in Mr. Cohn’s article, but equally reminiscent of current events, was the state of the Justice Department under Ed Meese, a man who gives Alberto Gonzales and John Mitchell serious competition for the title of worst attorney general ever. The politicization of Justice got so bad that in 1988 six senior officials, all Republicans, including the deputy attorney general and the chief of the criminal division, resigned in protest.
Why is there such a strong family resemblance between the Reagan years and recent events? Mr. Reagan’s administration, like Mr. Bush’s, was run by movement conservatives — people who built their careers by serving the alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. And both cronyism and abuse of power are part of the movement conservative package.
In part this is because people whose ideology says that government is always the problem, never the solution, see no point in governing well. So they use political power to reward their friends, rather than find people who will actually do their jobs.
If expertise is irrelevant, who gets the jobs? No problem: the interlocking, lavishly financed institutions of movement conservatism, which range from K Street to Fox News, create a vast class of apparatchiks who can be counted on to be “loyal Bushies.”
The movement’s apparatchik culture, in turn, explains much of its contempt for the rule of law. Someone who has risen through the ranks of a movement that prizes political loyalty above all isn’t likely to balk at, say, using bogus claims of voter fraud to disenfranchise Democrats, or suppressing potentially damaging investigations of Republicans. As Franklin Foer of The New Republic has pointed out, in College Republican elections, dirty tricks and double crosses are considered acceptable, even praiseworthy.
Still, Mr. Reagan’s misgovernment never went as far as Mr. Bush’s. As a result, he managed to leave office with an approval rating about as high as that of Bill Clinton, who, as we now realize with the benefit of hindsight, governed very well. But the key to Reagan’s relative success, I believe, is that he was lucky in his limitations.
Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Reagan never controlled both houses of Congress — and the pre-Gingrich Republican Party still contained moderates who imposed limits on his ability to govern badly. Also, there was no Reagan-era equivalent of the rush, after 9/11, to give the Bush administration whatever it wanted in the name of fighting terrorism.
Mr. Reagan may even have been helped, perversely, by the fact that in the 1980s there were still two superpowers. This helped prevent the hubris, the delusions of grandeur, that led the Bush administration to believe that a splendid little war in Iraq was just the thing to secure its position.
But what this tells us is that Mr. Bush, not Mr. Reagan, is the true representative of what modern conservatism is all about. And it’s the movement, not just one man, that has failed
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:16 AM
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007
All Animals are Equal, but Some are More Equal than Others
posted by Ukulele Man at 10:52 AM
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The Class (warfare) of 2007
Hey Folks -
Last week the local newspaper the Columbus Dispatch ran a series on the ten-year argument over the state's funding of public schools. The reporters did a pretty good job of presenting many of the facts of the case, but the piece didn't come down on either side of the question: "School funding: Is it fixed?"
Part of the exposition did show how those presently privileged and their political poodles felt about it: it's fixed; everything's fine; it's over. They weren't bothered by any of the facts; they never have been. This whole lengthy exercise in futility has been a story of class, one standard for the elite; another for everyone else.
Somehow the Ohio Supreme Court determined to rule honestly on the facts, and from that first decision ten years ago, the Republican legislature and governor ( not to mention patrician rags like the Columbus Dispatch) have been telling the court and the people to go fuck themselves; it will be a cold day in hell before the unwashed have a say.
Anyway, I felt the need to write my friends at the newspaper. What I shared with them is below.
- Uke Man
To the Editor,
After reading the week-long series on school funding, a few things are clear. In the ten years since the original DeRolph ruling not much has changed regarding the disparity between wealthy and poor school districts.
The wealthy and their political spokesmen claim “it’s been fixed,” and many of them actually believe it has. The general path of their rationalization is something like this:
The high-spending, wealthy schools are good enough for the children of the wealthy, and the low-spending, poor schools are good enough for the children of the poor. End of discussion.
At the same time, they never express their view that the low-spending, poor schools are not good enough for their own children. That would encourage the poor to call for “throwing money” at low-funded schools, and “money isn’t the answer.”
Neither do they explain why the well-off “throw” so much extra money at their own children’s schools. They do argue, as did Adam B. Schaeffer in a recent Dispatch column, that charter schools can educate poor children for $5,000 instead of $10,000, but never think to explain why high-tax-and-spend suburban public schools aren’t being run out of business by these marvelous, taxpayer-friendly charter enterprises.
In our Declaration of Independence it is claimed that “all men are created equal.” Maybe so, but the children of some men are clearly more equal than others.
Tom Harker
Last week the local newspaper the Columbus Dispatch ran a series on the ten-year argument over the state's funding of public schools. The reporters did a pretty good job of presenting many of the facts of the case, but the piece didn't come down on either side of the question: "School funding: Is it fixed?"
Part of the exposition did show how those presently privileged and their political poodles felt about it: it's fixed; everything's fine; it's over. They weren't bothered by any of the facts; they never have been. This whole lengthy exercise in futility has been a story of class, one standard for the elite; another for everyone else.
Somehow the Ohio Supreme Court determined to rule honestly on the facts, and from that first decision ten years ago, the Republican legislature and governor ( not to mention patrician rags like the Columbus Dispatch) have been telling the court and the people to go fuck themselves; it will be a cold day in hell before the unwashed have a say.
Anyway, I felt the need to write my friends at the newspaper. What I shared with them is below.
- Uke Man
To the Editor,
After reading the week-long series on school funding, a few things are clear. In the ten years since the original DeRolph ruling not much has changed regarding the disparity between wealthy and poor school districts.
The wealthy and their political spokesmen claim “it’s been fixed,” and many of them actually believe it has. The general path of their rationalization is something like this:
The high-spending, wealthy schools are good enough for the children of the wealthy, and the low-spending, poor schools are good enough for the children of the poor. End of discussion.
At the same time, they never express their view that the low-spending, poor schools are not good enough for their own children. That would encourage the poor to call for “throwing money” at low-funded schools, and “money isn’t the answer.”
Neither do they explain why the well-off “throw” so much extra money at their own children’s schools. They do argue, as did Adam B. Schaeffer in a recent Dispatch column, that charter schools can educate poor children for $5,000 instead of $10,000, but never think to explain why high-tax-and-spend suburban public schools aren’t being run out of business by these marvelous, taxpayer-friendly charter enterprises.
In our Declaration of Independence it is claimed that “all men are created equal.” Maybe so, but the children of some men are clearly more equal than others.
Tom Harker
posted by Ukulele Man at 10:00 AM
1 comments
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Monday, March 26, 2007
Supporting our troops . . .
Hey Folks,
My friend Sondra is reading Gore Vidal's memoir and shared with me that Vidal often referred to the USA as "the United States of Amnesia." How apt (although I don't think the amnesia applies only to this country).
Although the story below reports on a contemporary tragedy, it is an old, old story applicable to every war this country has ever fought. All the lies and deception, rah! rah! patriotism, ulterior motives, profiteering, horrors, atrocities, and neglect of the troop' safety and health that are coming to light now so late in the game were predictable (indeed, predicted) before the war. And for anyone who missed the prediction, the facts were identifiable much earlier-on than after the 2006 elections.
Yet, here we are.
Somehow, "amnesia" doesn't seem strong enough.
- Uke Man
March 19, 2007
Death of a Marine
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Jeffrey Lucey was 18 when he signed up for the Marine Reserves in December 1999. His parents, Kevin and Joyce Lucey of Belchertown, Mass., were not happy. They had hoped their son would go to college.
Jeffrey himself was ambivalent.
“The recruiter was a very smooth talker and very, very persistent,” Ms. Lucey told me in a call from Orlando, Fla., where she was on vacation with her husband and their two grown daughters last week. The conversation was difficult. Ms. Lucey would talk for a while, and then her husband would get on the phone.
“We see him everywhere,” Ms. Lucey said. “Every little dark-haired boy you see, it looks like Jeff. If we see a parent reprimanding a child, it’s like you want to go up and say, ‘Oh, don’t do that, because you don’t know how long you’re going to have him.’ ”
The war in Iraq began four years ago today. Fans at sporting events around the U.S. greeted the war and its early “shock and awe” bombing campaign with chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
Jeffrey Lucey, who turned 22 the day before the war began, had a different perspective. He had no illusions about the glory or glamour of warfare. His unit had been activated and he was part of the first wave of troops to head into the combat zone.
A diary entry noted the explosion of a Scud missile near his unit: “The noise was just short of blowing out your eardrums. Everyone’s heart truly skipped a beat. ... Nerves are on edge.”
By the time he came home, Jeffrey Lucey was a mess. He had gruesome stories to tell. They could not all be verified, but there was no doubt that this once-healthy young man had been shattered by his experiences.
He had nightmares. He drank furiously. He withdrew from his friends. He wrecked his parents’ car. He began to hallucinate.
In a moment of deep despair on the Christmas Eve after his return from Iraq, Jeffrey hurled his dogtags at his sister Debra and cried out, “Don’t you know your brother’s a murderer?”
Jeffrey exhibited all the signs of deep depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Wars do that to people. They rip apart the mind and the soul in the same way that bullets and bombs mutilate the body. The war in Iraq is inflicting a much greater emotional toll on U.S. troops than most Americans realize.
The Luceys tried desperately to get help for Jeffrey, but neither the military nor the Veterans Administration is equipped to cope with the war’s mounting emotional and psychological casualties.
On the evening of June 22, 2004, Kevin Lucey came home and called out to Jeffrey. There was no answer. He noticed that the door leading to the basement was open and that the light in the basement was on. He did not see the two notes that Jeffrey had left on the first floor for his parents:
“It’s 4:35 p.m. and I am near completing my death.”
“Dad, please don’t look. Mom, just call the police — Love, Jeff.”
The first thing Mr. Lucey saw as he walked down to the basement was that Jeff had set up an arrangement of photos. There was a picture of his platoon, and photos of his sisters, Debra and Kelly, his parents, the family dog and himself.
“Then I could see, through the corner of my eye, Jeff,” said Mr. Lucey. “And he was, I thought, standing there. Then I noticed the hose around his neck.”
The Luceys hope that in talking about their family’s tragedy they will bring more attention to the awful struggle faced by so many troops suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other emotional illnesses. “We hear of so many suicides,” said Mr. Lucey.
Ms. Lucey added, “We thought that if we told other people about Jeffrey they might see their loved ones mirrored in him, and maybe they would be more aggressive, or do something different than we did. We didn’t feel we had the knowledge we needed and we lost our child.”
The Luceys are more than just concerned and grief-stricken. They’re angry. They’ve joined an antiwar organization, Military Families Speak Out, and they want the war in Iraq brought to an end. “That’s the only way to prevent further Jeffreys from happening,” Ms. Lucey said.
Mr. Lucey made no effort to hide his bitterness over the government’s failure to address many of the critical needs of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. His voice quivered as he said, “When we hear anybody in the administration get up and say that they support the troops, it sickens us.”
My friend Sondra is reading Gore Vidal's memoir and shared with me that Vidal often referred to the USA as "the United States of Amnesia." How apt (although I don't think the amnesia applies only to this country).
Although the story below reports on a contemporary tragedy, it is an old, old story applicable to every war this country has ever fought. All the lies and deception, rah! rah! patriotism, ulterior motives, profiteering, horrors, atrocities, and neglect of the troop' safety and health that are coming to light now so late in the game were predictable (indeed, predicted) before the war. And for anyone who missed the prediction, the facts were identifiable much earlier-on than after the 2006 elections.
Yet, here we are.
Somehow, "amnesia" doesn't seem strong enough.
- Uke Man
March 19, 2007
Death of a Marine
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Jeffrey Lucey was 18 when he signed up for the Marine Reserves in December 1999. His parents, Kevin and Joyce Lucey of Belchertown, Mass., were not happy. They had hoped their son would go to college.
Jeffrey himself was ambivalent.
“The recruiter was a very smooth talker and very, very persistent,” Ms. Lucey told me in a call from Orlando, Fla., where she was on vacation with her husband and their two grown daughters last week. The conversation was difficult. Ms. Lucey would talk for a while, and then her husband would get on the phone.
“We see him everywhere,” Ms. Lucey said. “Every little dark-haired boy you see, it looks like Jeff. If we see a parent reprimanding a child, it’s like you want to go up and say, ‘Oh, don’t do that, because you don’t know how long you’re going to have him.’ ”
The war in Iraq began four years ago today. Fans at sporting events around the U.S. greeted the war and its early “shock and awe” bombing campaign with chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
Jeffrey Lucey, who turned 22 the day before the war began, had a different perspective. He had no illusions about the glory or glamour of warfare. His unit had been activated and he was part of the first wave of troops to head into the combat zone.
A diary entry noted the explosion of a Scud missile near his unit: “The noise was just short of blowing out your eardrums. Everyone’s heart truly skipped a beat. ... Nerves are on edge.”
By the time he came home, Jeffrey Lucey was a mess. He had gruesome stories to tell. They could not all be verified, but there was no doubt that this once-healthy young man had been shattered by his experiences.
He had nightmares. He drank furiously. He withdrew from his friends. He wrecked his parents’ car. He began to hallucinate.
In a moment of deep despair on the Christmas Eve after his return from Iraq, Jeffrey hurled his dogtags at his sister Debra and cried out, “Don’t you know your brother’s a murderer?”
Jeffrey exhibited all the signs of deep depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Wars do that to people. They rip apart the mind and the soul in the same way that bullets and bombs mutilate the body. The war in Iraq is inflicting a much greater emotional toll on U.S. troops than most Americans realize.
The Luceys tried desperately to get help for Jeffrey, but neither the military nor the Veterans Administration is equipped to cope with the war’s mounting emotional and psychological casualties.
On the evening of June 22, 2004, Kevin Lucey came home and called out to Jeffrey. There was no answer. He noticed that the door leading to the basement was open and that the light in the basement was on. He did not see the two notes that Jeffrey had left on the first floor for his parents:
“It’s 4:35 p.m. and I am near completing my death.”
“Dad, please don’t look. Mom, just call the police — Love, Jeff.”
The first thing Mr. Lucey saw as he walked down to the basement was that Jeff had set up an arrangement of photos. There was a picture of his platoon, and photos of his sisters, Debra and Kelly, his parents, the family dog and himself.
“Then I could see, through the corner of my eye, Jeff,” said Mr. Lucey. “And he was, I thought, standing there. Then I noticed the hose around his neck.”
The Luceys hope that in talking about their family’s tragedy they will bring more attention to the awful struggle faced by so many troops suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other emotional illnesses. “We hear of so many suicides,” said Mr. Lucey.
Ms. Lucey added, “We thought that if we told other people about Jeffrey they might see their loved ones mirrored in him, and maybe they would be more aggressive, or do something different than we did. We didn’t feel we had the knowledge we needed and we lost our child.”
The Luceys are more than just concerned and grief-stricken. They’re angry. They’ve joined an antiwar organization, Military Families Speak Out, and they want the war in Iraq brought to an end. “That’s the only way to prevent further Jeffreys from happening,” Ms. Lucey said.
Mr. Lucey made no effort to hide his bitterness over the government’s failure to address many of the critical needs of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. His voice quivered as he said, “When we hear anybody in the administration get up and say that they support the troops, it sickens us.”
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:16 AM
1 comments
links to this post
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Hey Folks,
You may remember that the "conflict in Lebanon" mysteriously dragged on and accomplished nothing - actually making things worse for everyone involved. It turns out that Moron-Man John Bolton is "Damned proud" of that.
Israel lost 116 soldiers and 43 civilians; 1000 Lebanese civilians and an unknown number of Hezbollah fighters were killed; and much of the Lebanese infrastructure was mangled or destroyed.
For nothing.
John Bolton is "Damned proud" of that.
- Uke Man
Bolton admits Lebanon truce block
BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6479377.stm
A former top American diplomat says the US deliberately resisted calls for a immediate ceasefire during the conflict in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the BBC that before any ceasefire Washington wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah's military capability.
Mr Bolton said an early ceasefire would have been "dangerous and misguided".
He said the US decided to join efforts to end the conflict only when it was clear Israel's campaign wasn't working.
The former envoy, who stepped down in December 2006, was interviewed for a BBC radio documentary, The Summer War in Lebanon, to be broadcast in April.
Mr Bolton said the US was deeply disappointed at Israel's failure to remove the threat from Hezbollah and the subsequent lack of any attempt to disarm its forces.
Britain joined the US in refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire.
'Damn proud'
The war began when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, but it quickly escalated into a full-scale conflict.
BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall says the US-UK refusal to join calls for a ceasefire was one of the most controversial aspects of the diplomacy.
At the time US officials argued a ceasefire was insufficient and agreement was needed to address the underlying tensions and balance of power in the region.
Mr Bolton now describes it as "perfectly legitimate... and good politics" for the Israelis to seek to defeat their enemy militarily, especially as Hezbollah had attacked Israel first and it was acting "in its own self-defence".
Mr Bolton, a controversial and blunt-speaking figure, said he was "damned proud of what we did" to prevent an early ceasefire.
Also in the BBC programme, several key players claim that, privately, there were Arab leaders who also wanted Israel to destroy Hezbollah.
"There were many not - how should I put it - resistant to the thought that the Israelis should thoroughly defeat Hezbollah, who... increasingly by Arab states were seen as an Iranian proxy," said UN special envoy Terje Roed Larsen.
More than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and an unknown number of Hezbollah fighters were killed in the conflict.
Israel lost 116 soldiers in the fighting, while 43 of its civilians were killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.
The UK, US and Israeli were alone in resisting an early ceasefire
You may remember that the "conflict in Lebanon" mysteriously dragged on and accomplished nothing - actually making things worse for everyone involved. It turns out that Moron-Man John Bolton is "Damned proud" of that.
Israel lost 116 soldiers and 43 civilians; 1000 Lebanese civilians and an unknown number of Hezbollah fighters were killed; and much of the Lebanese infrastructure was mangled or destroyed.
For nothing.
John Bolton is "Damned proud" of that.
- Uke Man
Bolton admits Lebanon truce block
BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6479377.stm
A former top American diplomat says the US deliberately resisted calls for a immediate ceasefire during the conflict in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the BBC that before any ceasefire Washington wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah's military capability.
Mr Bolton said an early ceasefire would have been "dangerous and misguided".
He said the US decided to join efforts to end the conflict only when it was clear Israel's campaign wasn't working.
The former envoy, who stepped down in December 2006, was interviewed for a BBC radio documentary, The Summer War in Lebanon, to be broadcast in April.
Mr Bolton said the US was deeply disappointed at Israel's failure to remove the threat from Hezbollah and the subsequent lack of any attempt to disarm its forces.
Britain joined the US in refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire.
'Damn proud'
The war began when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, but it quickly escalated into a full-scale conflict.
BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall says the US-UK refusal to join calls for a ceasefire was one of the most controversial aspects of the diplomacy.
At the time US officials argued a ceasefire was insufficient and agreement was needed to address the underlying tensions and balance of power in the region.
Mr Bolton now describes it as "perfectly legitimate... and good politics" for the Israelis to seek to defeat their enemy militarily, especially as Hezbollah had attacked Israel first and it was acting "in its own self-defence".
Mr Bolton, a controversial and blunt-speaking figure, said he was "damned proud of what we did" to prevent an early ceasefire.
Also in the BBC programme, several key players claim that, privately, there were Arab leaders who also wanted Israel to destroy Hezbollah.
"There were many not - how should I put it - resistant to the thought that the Israelis should thoroughly defeat Hezbollah, who... increasingly by Arab states were seen as an Iranian proxy," said UN special envoy Terje Roed Larsen.
More than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and an unknown number of Hezbollah fighters were killed in the conflict.
Israel lost 116 soldiers in the fighting, while 43 of its civilians were killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.
The UK, US and Israeli were alone in resisting an early ceasefire
posted by Ukulele Man at 12:11 PM
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The US, UK, and Israel were alonein resisting an early ceasefire
posted by Ukulele Man at 12:09 PM
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Friday, March 23, 2007
John Bolton: 0ne crumby cookie !!!
Hey Folks,
Recently on the Daily Show; John Bolton, the mustachioed anus, was interviewed by John Stewart. Bolton was Mr. Know-it-all, and Stewart was "wrong" about everything:
Go to:
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/celebrity_interviews/index.jhtml?sitrackingid=6405479&kw=dailyshowguests
Then click on the Bolton interview.
The next evening Stewart calls historian Doris Kearns Goodwin for her expert opinion - Bolton gets facked by the facts.
Go to:
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=84160&ml_collection=&ml_gateway=&ml_gateway_id=&ml_comedian=&ml_runtime=&ml_context=show&ml_origin_url=%2F&ml_playlist=&lnk=&is_large=true
Then scroll down to "Doris Kearns Goodwin."
Enjoy !!
- Uke Man
Recently on the Daily Show; John Bolton, the mustachioed anus, was interviewed by John Stewart. Bolton was Mr. Know-it-all, and Stewart was "wrong" about everything:
Go to:
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/celebrity_interviews/index.jhtml?sitrackingid=6405479&kw=dailyshowguests
Then click on the Bolton interview.
The next evening Stewart calls historian Doris Kearns Goodwin for her expert opinion - Bolton gets facked by the facts.
Go to:
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=84160&ml_collection=&ml_gateway=&ml_gateway_id=&ml_comedian=&ml_runtime=&ml_context=show&ml_origin_url=%2F&ml_playlist=&lnk=&is_large=true
Then scroll down to "Doris Kearns Goodwin."
Enjoy !!
- Uke Man
posted by Ukulele Man at 9:36 PM
0 comments
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The Law is an Ass
Hey Folks,
Here we have yet another example of how the political interests of those running things trumps common sense and the good of regular people.
In Ireland bishops have tried to force pregnant pre-teens to stay pregnant. In the middle east people have been killed because the tread on their sandals' soles (made from tires) could be construed to spell "Allah" in Arabic.
Most people find these things to be insane. Yet, here, in the "greatest country in the world," our highest level of government sees sense in depriving a dying woman of her only relief. I guess they are afraid marijuana might harm her health.
- Uke Man
Dying woman loses marijuana appeal
By DAVID KRAVETS, Associated Press
Wed Mar 14
SAN FRANCISCO - A California woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive is not immune from federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The case was brought by Angel Raich, an Oakland mother of two who suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments. On her doctor's advice, she eats or smokes marijuana every couple of hours to ease her pain and bolster a nonexistent appetite as conventional drugs did not work.
The Supreme Court ruled against Raich two years ago, saying that medical marijuana users and their suppliers could be prosecuted for breaching federal drug laws even if they lived in a state such as California where medical pot is legal.
Because of that ruling, the issue before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was narrowed to the so-called right to life theory: that marijuana should be allowed if it is the only viable option to keep a patient alive.
Raich, 41, began sobbing when she was told of the decision and said she would continue using the drug.
"I'm sure not going to let them kill me," she said. "Oh my God."
Here we have yet another example of how the political interests of those running things trumps common sense and the good of regular people.
In Ireland bishops have tried to force pregnant pre-teens to stay pregnant. In the middle east people have been killed because the tread on their sandals' soles (made from tires) could be construed to spell "Allah" in Arabic.
Most people find these things to be insane. Yet, here, in the "greatest country in the world," our highest level of government sees sense in depriving a dying woman of her only relief. I guess they are afraid marijuana might harm her health.
- Uke Man
Dying woman loses marijuana appeal
By DAVID KRAVETS, Associated Press
Wed Mar 14
SAN FRANCISCO - A California woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive is not immune from federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The case was brought by Angel Raich, an Oakland mother of two who suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments. On her doctor's advice, she eats or smokes marijuana every couple of hours to ease her pain and bolster a nonexistent appetite as conventional drugs did not work.
The Supreme Court ruled against Raich two years ago, saying that medical marijuana users and their suppliers could be prosecuted for breaching federal drug laws even if they lived in a state such as California where medical pot is legal.
Because of that ruling, the issue before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was narrowed to the so-called right to life theory: that marijuana should be allowed if it is the only viable option to keep a patient alive.
Raich, 41, began sobbing when she was told of the decision and said she would continue using the drug.
"I'm sure not going to let them kill me," she said. "Oh my God."
posted by Ukulele Man at 7:49 AM
0 comments
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Thursday, March 22, 2007
Hey Folks –
They’re saying we have a constitutional crisis, a confrontation, a Nixonian question of “Executive Privilege.” The Congress wants Bush’s people to testify before their committees under oath. The Boy President says he’ll let them speak in private and with no transcript and NOT under oath.
The President’s plan won’t accomplish anything – unless you think Rove, Gonzales, & Co. are truthful little boy scouts. The Congressional plan would spill Bush’s Half-Baked Beans; so, forget that. Unless a compromise is reached, it looks like the matter will go to court, postponing a reckoning for quite some time. No likely solution has presented itself.
Until now.
Folks, the ol’ Uke Man has the sword to cut the Gordian Knot:
Congress should immediately agree to allow testimony from the President’s helpers without their being sworn in, knowing full well from the start that they can then say anything they want without the threat of facing perjury charges.
The Congress should further agree to keep no record beyond what notes individual congressmen can manage to jot down.
Thus, the President’s demands are met.
For his part, the President need only agree that those who are called to testify may be "tortured."
Well, not exactly tortured; just made subject to those techniques recently employed by CIA and military interrogators (e.g. “water boarding” and “sleep deprivation”) techniques officially ruled by the Bush administration NOT to be torture but actually humane methods of seeking truth.
Obviously the President would accept these terms. He trusts his people to tell the truth – even without being sworn. He believes them to be competent, intelligent advisors who have consistently advocated wise and judicious policies. There is no way, then, that he would shrink from their being placed under the very policies they helped establish.
Yes, some Democratic congressmen might object since they are on record claiming that what they insist on calling “torture” doesn’t actually discover truth but simply elicits whatever the so-called “victim” thinks the interrogator wants to hear.
Nevertheless, while it can be argued that the testimony may be inaccurate and misleading regardless of which approach is employed, MY proposal undeniably guarantees every Democrat in the country limitless personal gratification, and that will win the day.
- Uke Man
They’re saying we have a constitutional crisis, a confrontation, a Nixonian question of “Executive Privilege.” The Congress wants Bush’s people to testify before their committees under oath. The Boy President says he’ll let them speak in private and with no transcript and NOT under oath.
The President’s plan won’t accomplish anything – unless you think Rove, Gonzales, & Co. are truthful little boy scouts. The Congressional plan would spill Bush’s Half-Baked Beans; so, forget that. Unless a compromise is reached, it looks like the matter will go to court, postponing a reckoning for quite some time. No likely solution has presented itself.
Until now.
Folks, the ol’ Uke Man has the sword to cut the Gordian Knot:
Congress should immediately agree to allow testimony from the President’s helpers without their being sworn in, knowing full well from the start that they can then say anything they want without the threat of facing perjury charges.
The Congress should further agree to keep no record beyond what notes individual congressmen can manage to jot down.
Thus, the President’s demands are met.
For his part, the President need only agree that those who are called to testify may be "tortured."
Well, not exactly tortured; just made subject to those techniques recently employed by CIA and military interrogators (e.g. “water boarding” and “sleep deprivation”) techniques officially ruled by the Bush administration NOT to be torture but actually humane methods of seeking truth.
Obviously the President would accept these terms. He trusts his people to tell the truth – even without being sworn. He believes them to be competent, intelligent advisors who have consistently advocated wise and judicious policies. There is no way, then, that he would shrink from their being placed under the very policies they helped establish.
Yes, some Democratic congressmen might object since they are on record claiming that what they insist on calling “torture” doesn’t actually discover truth but simply elicits whatever the so-called “victim” thinks the interrogator wants to hear.
Nevertheless, while it can be argued that the testimony may be inaccurate and misleading regardless of which approach is employed, MY proposal undeniably guarantees every Democrat in the country limitless personal gratification, and that will win the day.
- Uke Man
posted by Ukulele Man at 10:57 AM
1 comments
links to this post
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Dopey Woman Giggles Her Analysis
Hey Folks -
Recently Duhbya visited Latin America and was rudely received by the people there.
NPR reported on this, interviewing Jennifer Sieg from The Council on Foreign Relations, which is billed by Wikipedia as "an influential and independent, nonpartisan foreign policy membership organization."
But what did I say in an ealier posting about everything coming from the perspective of the people on top? Yeah, "independent, nonpartisan"; what does THAT mean? Look who's a member:
Alcoa
American International Group
Bank of America
Bloomberg
Boeing
BP
Chevron
Citigroup
ExxonMobil
Ford Motor
General Electric
Goldman Sachs
Halliburton
IBM
JP Morgan Chase
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
Lehman Brothers
Lockheed Martin
McGraw-Hill
McKinsey
Merck
Merrill Lynch
News Corporation
Shell Oil
Time Warner
Toyota
AND
Dick Cheney
Condoleezza Rice
Paul Wolfowitz
Robert M. Gates
John D. Negroponte
Richard Perle
Leslie Gelb
Colin Powell
Alice Rivlin
Madeleine Albright
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Henry Kissinger
Jack Welch
Alan Greenspan
Paul Volcker
Vernon Jordan
John C. Whitehead
George Soros
Brent Scowcroft
George Shultz
James Woolsey
Jimmy Carter
Warren Christopher
James D. Wolfensohn
Steven Weinberg
Edgar Bronfman
Lawrence Eagleburger
David Rockefeller, Jr.
John D. Rockefeller, IV
Now, do you think these corporations and politicians aren't "partisan"??
Yeah, right. They care about Americans' interests - rich Americans' interests !!
So listen to Ms. Seig giggle about how Boy George knows so much better than Chavez concerning what's good for Latin America: "When Washington today says [it is promoting] 'trade and democracy,' Latin Americans hear 'oligarchy and imperialism,' and he's - I think - trying to show that we're about more than that. [good luck!!]"
She says, because of Chavez's efforts within Latin America, Bush wants to show that he "gets" it. The interviewer asks, " So, is Chavez right? Does he understand the economics of Latin America better than the Americans?"
She laughs like a monkey. Check out her "deep" analysis of the situation. Then as the interview progresses, listen as she compares Latin America to countries on a Risk gameboard and points out which ones "we" still "have." She points out the "good news" that the leadership and the elites of the countries where the masses don't like the U.S.A. are still on "our" side.
Surprise, surprise!!! (they don't want to have to move to Miami).
I'm accustomed to the regular distortion of reality in the media, but even so, the naive, childish behavior of this young woman blathering on, ignorant that her comments were so deeply revealing, was striking.
See what you think - at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7779849
Give a listen.
- Uke Man
Recently Duhbya visited Latin America and was rudely received by the people there.
NPR reported on this, interviewing Jennifer Sieg from The Council on Foreign Relations, which is billed by Wikipedia as "an influential and independent, nonpartisan foreign policy membership organization."
But what did I say in an ealier posting about everything coming from the perspective of the people on top? Yeah, "independent, nonpartisan"; what does THAT mean? Look who's a member:
Alcoa
American International Group
Bank of America
Bloomberg
Boeing
BP
Chevron
Citigroup
ExxonMobil
Ford Motor
General Electric
Goldman Sachs
Halliburton
IBM
JP Morgan Chase
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
Lehman Brothers
Lockheed Martin
McGraw-Hill
McKinsey
Merck
Merrill Lynch
News Corporation
Shell Oil
Time Warner
Toyota
AND
Dick Cheney
Condoleezza Rice
Paul Wolfowitz
Robert M. Gates
John D. Negroponte
Richard Perle
Leslie Gelb
Colin Powell
Alice Rivlin
Madeleine Albright
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Henry Kissinger
Jack Welch
Alan Greenspan
Paul Volcker
Vernon Jordan
John C. Whitehead
George Soros
Brent Scowcroft
George Shultz
James Woolsey
Jimmy Carter
Warren Christopher
James D. Wolfensohn
Steven Weinberg
Edgar Bronfman
Lawrence Eagleburger
David Rockefeller, Jr.
John D. Rockefeller, IV
Now, do you think these corporations and politicians aren't "partisan"??
Yeah, right. They care about Americans' interests - rich Americans' interests !!
So listen to Ms. Seig giggle about how Boy George knows so much better than Chavez concerning what's good for Latin America: "When Washington today says [it is promoting] 'trade and democracy,' Latin Americans hear 'oligarchy and imperialism,' and he's - I think - trying to show that we're about more than that. [good luck!!]"
She says, because of Chavez's efforts within Latin America, Bush wants to show that he "gets" it. The interviewer asks, " So, is Chavez right? Does he understand the economics of Latin America better than the Americans?"
She laughs like a monkey. Check out her "deep" analysis of the situation. Then as the interview progresses, listen as she compares Latin America to countries on a Risk gameboard and points out which ones "we" still "have." She points out the "good news" that the leadership and the elites of the countries where the masses don't like the U.S.A. are still on "our" side.
Surprise, surprise!!! (they don't want to have to move to Miami).
I'm accustomed to the regular distortion of reality in the media, but even so, the naive, childish behavior of this young woman blathering on, ignorant that her comments were so deeply revealing, was striking.
See what you think - at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7779849
Give a listen.
- Uke Man
posted by Ukulele Man at 4:15 AM
0 comments
links to this post
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
the Noblesse Oblige - of Rats
Hey Folks,
If you want to have a rational understanding of standard news reports, whether on foreign or domestic policy, you need to realize that it is always slanted from the perspective of the privileged (and I'm not referring only to Foxxx News - even the good ol' AP is guilty). The story below makes this perfectly clear.
I've commented in blue where needed.
- Uke Man
Rich Venezuelans heading to Florida
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ, AP Hispanic Affairs Writer
Sat Mar 3
DORAL, Fla. - They call it "Plan B."
As Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez further tightens control of the South American country's economy, wealthy Venezuelans who once thought they could live with his socialist edicts are turning to their backup plan (if one checks the facts, "Plan A" wasn't "living with his socialist edicts"; first it was a failed coup and then a failed attempt to intimidate Chavez with well-dressed street demonstrations - which larger demonstrations by Chavez's impoverished supporters overwhelmed) — flight to the United States, particularly Florida.
Venezuelans have long gobbled up condos and pre-construction deals in Florida as investments, but the latest buyers want homes where they can live and business properties that will help them earn a green card. These are the people who resent Chavez "bribing" the slum-dwellers with bricks for houses and milk for their children - I am NOT making that up!!!
"First the people who come are the businessmen in the highest circles [Duh!!], then the losing politicians [Duh!!], then the military [Duh!!] and then the professionals [Duh!!]," said Miami-based immigration attorney Oscar Levin. "You're beginning to see the (Venezuelan) professionals." The last rats leaving the plantation (under the old regime, 8o% were impoverished; 20% were well off - the ones heading toward Miami to join the ex-Cuban aristocrats).
This latest and largest potential group of emigrants say they fear the effect Chavez's socialist policies will have on the economy (yeah, it ran really smoothly for the elite 20% and the foreign corporations - now the elite are moving to Miami - a few to maybe even work for a living) and on proposed educational reforms that could mirror the ideologically imbued education of Chavez ally and mentor, Cuba's Fidel Castro. As if the present educational system doesn't short the impoverished 80% and doesn't indoctrinate the populace on the wisdom of oligarchy. In a democracy the betterment of 80% of the population should be reason for celebration!!
"There is so much insecurity [for the elite], political insecurity [for the elite], economic insecurity [for the elite]," said Venezuelan Miguel Medina, a business executive [an elite] who moved to the Miami in August. "You don't know if a contract you signed today will be honored by the government in the future....This was definitely my plan B, but it was time to do the plan B." Until recently, the People knew the social contract would NOT be honored by the government of, by, and for the 20%.
Between 2000 — a year after Chavez took office — and 2005, the number of Venezuelans living in the U.S. doubled to about 160,000, according to the latest U.S. Census numbers. Nearly half live in Florida.
But those numbers are deceptive.
In 2005, 10,645 Venezuelans received their green cards allowing them to live in the United States, almost doubling the 6,222 who received them in 2004, according to the latest Department of Homeland Security statistics. And another 400,000 Venezuelans came to the United States in 2005 on business and tourism visas. It is unclear how many stayed.
Colombia, with nearly twice Venezuela's roughly 27 million residents, sent the same number that year.
Anecdotal evidence suggests even more are seeking to come here since Chavez's recent nationalization of Venezuela's largest telecommunications company and the electricity sector. The Venezuelan Congress also recently gave him special powers to decree laws for 18 months, and Chavez is threatening to expropriate supermarkets, stores and other businesses caught hoarding food or speculating on prices (What a bad guy!! - that would never happen here - even at gas stations) .
Medina said six family members visited him in the last two months seeking ways to relocate to the U.S. Unlike previous cycles, those seeking to leave and bring their money ("their" money??)to the U.S. now are coming from around Venezuela, not just from Caracas, said Medina, an account executive for the credit group ExpoCredit.
Meanwhile Ralph Gomez, who heads the Miami area Tower Investments group and has long specialized in real estate for South American clients, said he's received more than two dozen calls since the year began from people interested in coming to the U.S. Other agents report a similar spike.
Upper-class (Duh!!) Venezuelans and their money (Duh!!) flowed out of the country (Duh!!) after Chavez was elected in 1998 and again when he quashed an unsuccessful coup against his government in 2002, but many professionals still hoped the climate would remain friendly to business. Then came the latest nationalizations. (I guess they figure that if business isn't in control of the people's interests, that's "unfriendly") Chavez still pledges to maintain a business-friendly climate, and analysts say the government has paid fair market prices to nationalize the electric and phone companies.
Yet, with 17 percent inflation pushing the Bolivar to more than 4,000 per dollar on the black market, compared to the official rate of 2,150 Bolivars per dollar, many Venezuelans are looking to move their businesses to the U.S. or to set up a new one here. How many of these do you figure come from the 80% part of Venezuela that is impoverished?
Those who can afford it often opt for business visas that require a minimum of a $500,000 investment in a company that creates jobs in an underdeveloped area in the U.S. These folks aren't impoverished.
About 33,000 Venezuelans received some kind of work visa to come to the U.S. in 2005 — nearly a quarter of all such visas for South Americans — compared to about 17,000 in 1999.
Those who come are received with open arms in Miami (Duh!!), where their money is welcome (Duh!!) and the Cuban exile community of cry-baby displaced exploiters views Chavez as the next Fidel Castro (Duh!!). As of 2004, Venezuelans tied with Germans and Canadians as the second biggest group of foreigners purchasing homes in Florida, according to the National Association of Realtors. Only the British bought more Florida homes. Yeah, but the Germans, Canadians, and Brits weren't run out of their respective countries.
But moving to the U.S., even for the wealthy, isn't simple. Medina moved his family to the Miami three years ago, but it took him until last summer to tie up financial ends, obtain a visa and a job in Florida.
"I would travel back and forth when I could," he said. "It was hard, but I know I am among the lucky ones."
And while Venezuelan emigrants cite the political and economic instability of the country as their main reasons for leaving, many also talk of rampant and random violence. Try living in an impoverished slum, Pal, and then talk about rampant and random violence.
Marbelia Font, 47, and her husband landed in Miami in September from Caracas to close on a newly built investment property. They thought their two daughters would enjoy the brief vacation.
But when two friends were fatally shot back home in Venezuela, Marbelia and her 13- and 8-year-old daughters stayed. Her husband returned to Venezuela, hoping to earn a visa by moving his manufacturing and construction business to the U.S. Font said he has struggled to obtain necessary legal documents from the Chavez government. And the majority of his countrymen struggle to stay alive with some bit of dignity.
She now lives in the half-furnished home they'd planned to rent in Doral, just west of Miami. It is decorated only with a picture of her husband and the girls. She and her daughters struggle with loneliness, and she is unable to work as she waits for the family's visas to come through.
"It is so hard because the girls were very close to their father, and now they only see him once every three months," she said. Before Chavez, things would have been easy, not hard, for her - things would have been hard for OTHER Venezuelans - but that's different.
- Uke Man
If you want to have a rational understanding of standard news reports, whether on foreign or domestic policy, you need to realize that it is always slanted from the perspective of the privileged (and I'm not referring only to Foxxx News - even the good ol' AP is guilty). The story below makes this perfectly clear.
I've commented in blue where needed.
- Uke Man
Rich Venezuelans heading to Florida
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ, AP Hispanic Affairs Writer
Sat Mar 3
DORAL, Fla. - They call it "Plan B."
As Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez further tightens control of the South American country's economy, wealthy Venezuelans who once thought they could live with his socialist edicts are turning to their backup plan (if one checks the facts, "Plan A" wasn't "living with his socialist edicts"; first it was a failed coup and then a failed attempt to intimidate Chavez with well-dressed street demonstrations - which larger demonstrations by Chavez's impoverished supporters overwhelmed) — flight to the United States, particularly Florida.
Venezuelans have long gobbled up condos and pre-construction deals in Florida as investments, but the latest buyers want homes where they can live and business properties that will help them earn a green card. These are the people who resent Chavez "bribing" the slum-dwellers with bricks for houses and milk for their children - I am NOT making that up!!!
"First the people who come are the businessmen in the highest circles [Duh!!], then the losing politicians [Duh!!], then the military [Duh!!] and then the professionals [Duh!!]," said Miami-based immigration attorney Oscar Levin. "You're beginning to see the (Venezuelan) professionals." The last rats leaving the plantation (under the old regime, 8o% were impoverished; 20% were well off - the ones heading toward Miami to join the ex-Cuban aristocrats).
This latest and largest potential group of emigrants say they fear the effect Chavez's socialist policies will have on the economy (yeah, it ran really smoothly for the elite 20% and the foreign corporations - now the elite are moving to Miami - a few to maybe even work for a living) and on proposed educational reforms that could mirror the ideologically imbued education of Chavez ally and mentor, Cuba's Fidel Castro. As if the present educational system doesn't short the impoverished 80% and doesn't indoctrinate the populace on the wisdom of oligarchy. In a democracy the betterment of 80% of the population should be reason for celebration!!
"There is so much insecurity [for the elite], political insecurity [for the elite], economic insecurity [for the elite]," said Venezuelan Miguel Medina, a business executive [an elite] who moved to the Miami in August. "You don't know if a contract you signed today will be honored by the government in the future....This was definitely my plan B, but it was time to do the plan B." Until recently, the People knew the social contract would NOT be honored by the government of, by, and for the 20%.
Between 2000 — a year after Chavez took office — and 2005, the number of Venezuelans living in the U.S. doubled to about 160,000, according to the latest U.S. Census numbers. Nearly half live in Florida.
But those numbers are deceptive.
In 2005, 10,645 Venezuelans received their green cards allowing them to live in the United States, almost doubling the 6,222 who received them in 2004, according to the latest Department of Homeland Security statistics. And another 400,000 Venezuelans came to the United States in 2005 on business and tourism visas. It is unclear how many stayed.
Colombia, with nearly twice Venezuela's roughly 27 million residents, sent the same number that year.
Anecdotal evidence suggests even more are seeking to come here since Chavez's recent nationalization of Venezuela's largest telecommunications company and the electricity sector. The Venezuelan Congress also recently gave him special powers to decree laws for 18 months, and Chavez is threatening to expropriate supermarkets, stores and other businesses caught hoarding food or speculating on prices (What a bad guy!! - that would never happen here - even at gas stations) .
Medina said six family members visited him in the last two months seeking ways to relocate to the U.S. Unlike previous cycles, those seeking to leave and bring their money ("their" money??)to the U.S. now are coming from around Venezuela, not just from Caracas, said Medina, an account executive for the credit group ExpoCredit.
Meanwhile Ralph Gomez, who heads the Miami area Tower Investments group and has long specialized in real estate for South American clients, said he's received more than two dozen calls since the year began from people interested in coming to the U.S. Other agents report a similar spike.
Upper-class (Duh!!) Venezuelans and their money (Duh!!) flowed out of the country (Duh!!) after Chavez was elected in 1998 and again when he quashed an unsuccessful coup against his government in 2002, but many professionals still hoped the climate would remain friendly to business. Then came the latest nationalizations. (I guess they figure that if business isn't in control of the people's interests, that's "unfriendly") Chavez still pledges to maintain a business-friendly climate, and analysts say the government has paid fair market prices to nationalize the electric and phone companies.
Yet, with 17 percent inflation pushing the Bolivar to more than 4,000 per dollar on the black market, compared to the official rate of 2,150 Bolivars per dollar, many Venezuelans are looking to move their businesses to the U.S. or to set up a new one here. How many of these do you figure come from the 80% part of Venezuela that is impoverished?
Those who can afford it often opt for business visas that require a minimum of a $500,000 investment in a company that creates jobs in an underdeveloped area in the U.S. These folks aren't impoverished.
About 33,000 Venezuelans received some kind of work visa to come to the U.S. in 2005 — nearly a quarter of all such visas for South Americans — compared to about 17,000 in 1999.
Those who come are received with open arms in Miami (Duh!!), where their money is welcome (Duh!!) and the Cuban exile community of cry-baby displaced exploiters views Chavez as the next Fidel Castro (Duh!!). As of 2004, Venezuelans tied with Germans and Canadians as the second biggest group of foreigners purchasing homes in Florida, according to the National Association of Realtors. Only the British bought more Florida homes. Yeah, but the Germans, Canadians, and Brits weren't run out of their respective countries.
But moving to the U.S., even for the wealthy, isn't simple. Medina moved his family to the Miami three years ago, but it took him until last summer to tie up financial ends, obtain a visa and a job in Florida.
"I would travel back and forth when I could," he said. "It was hard, but I know I am among the lucky ones."
And while Venezuelan emigrants cite the political and economic instability of the country as their main reasons for leaving, many also talk of rampant and random violence. Try living in an impoverished slum, Pal, and then talk about rampant and random violence.
Marbelia Font, 47, and her husband landed in Miami in September from Caracas to close on a newly built investment property. They thought their two daughters would enjoy the brief vacation.
But when two friends were fatally shot back home in Venezuela, Marbelia and her 13- and 8-year-old daughters stayed. Her husband returned to Venezuela, hoping to earn a visa by moving his manufacturing and construction business to the U.S. Font said he has struggled to obtain necessary legal documents from the Chavez government. And the majority of his countrymen struggle to stay alive with some bit of dignity.
She now lives in the half-furnished home they'd planned to rent in Doral, just west of Miami. It is decorated only with a picture of her husband and the girls. She and her daughters struggle with loneliness, and she is unable to work as she waits for the family's visas to come through.
"It is so hard because the girls were very close to their father, and now they only see him once every three months," she said. Before Chavez, things would have been easy, not hard, for her - things would have been hard for OTHER Venezuelans - but that's different.
- Uke Man
posted by Ukulele Man at 2:38 PM
0 comments
links to this post
Monday, March 19, 2007
He's not the only one, either
Hey Folks,
Do you think Chavez' charge (below) that the Bush regime is out to kill him is "over the top," unbelievable, ridiculous ? Do you think he's slandering "dedicated" diplomat John Negroponte? Well, think again.
It is historical fact that the Kennedy government tried to assasinate Fidel Castro (exploding cigars and Mafia hitmen, to name a few approaches). The Nixon government ordered a CIA-directed military coup that ended in the death of a democratically elected Chilean President, Salvador Allende. The Reagan government tried to assassinate Muammar Khadafi (missile attack on his palace). The present Bush government has already eliminated a head of state they wanted rid of, Saddam Hussein.
So, if you thought Chavez was a little nutty, think again.
As for Negroponte, here is a 2004 description of his activities reported by A World to Win news service and printed in Revolution: http://rwor.org/a/1240/awtwiraq.htm
Bremer himself will go home. Instead of an "administrator," as Bremer is called, his replacement will be called the U.S. Ambassador. What he will really be is the new boss of Iraq.
That ambassador will be John Negroponte. Negroponte is such a well-known war criminal that United Nations staff members staged a highly unusual symbolic strike when he was appointed U.S. ambassador to the UN on the eve of the Iraq invasion. Negroponte started out working for the U.S. in Vietnam. In the 1980s, when Nicaraguans got the idea they could have a government Washington didn't like, the U.S. launched a proxy war against them through the mercenary organization known as the Contras. He helped direct that war as U.S. ambassador to neighboring Honduras in 1981-85. During those years, U.S. military "aid" to Honduras went up by almost 20 times, and its army became an American army. Negroponte also oversaw Honduras's Battalion 3-16, trained and equipped by the CIA to carry out torture, murder and kidnapping. (For details, see maryknoll.org , a site by the Catholic religious order which holds this man responsible, at a minimum, for covering up the deaths of many nuns and religious women from El Salvador suspected of siding with opponents of U.S. interests.) His last job, before the UN, was on-the-scene organizer of the occupation troops in Afghanistan.
Chavez calls envoy 'professional killer'
By ELIZABETH M. NUNEZ, Associated Press
CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez on Sunday said he believes enemies including the CIA are out to kill him, and called U.S. diplomat John Negroponte a "professional killer."
Chavez said Venezuelan officials have intelligence that associates of jailed Cuban anti-communist militant Luis Posada Carriles also are involved in plotting to assassinate him.
He said the death plot idea has "gained weight" due to various factors, including the recent appointment of Negroponte, the former director of national intelligence, as deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"Who did they swear in ... there at the White House as deputy secretary of state? A professional killer: John Negroponte," Chavez said.
Chavez did not elaborate, but his government has previously accused Negroponte of playing a key role in the Contra war against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua when he served as ambassador to Honduras — a haven for clandestine Contra bases — from 1981 to 1985.
U.S. Embassy officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but they have denied Chavez's repeated accusations that they are plotting to oust him.
Chavez was asked about reports of assassination plots during a televised interview.
"They have assigned special units of the CIA, true assassins, who go around not only here in Venezuela, in Central America, in South America," Chavez said, without elaborating.
He added that while Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative, remains jailed in the U.S. on immigration charges, "Posada Carriles' people are very active in Central America and searching for contacts in Venezuela ... They are going around searching for explosives in large quantities, thinking about a sort of car bombing or searching for ground-to-air missiles, thinking about the presidential plane."
Chavez did not give details. His government has demanded that the U.S. extradite Posada Carriles, a naturalized Venezuelan, to stand trial for allegedly masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.
Posada Carriles denies involvement in that incident.
Do you think Chavez' charge (below) that the Bush regime is out to kill him is "over the top," unbelievable, ridiculous ? Do you think he's slandering "dedicated" diplomat John Negroponte? Well, think again.
It is historical fact that the Kennedy government tried to assasinate Fidel Castro (exploding cigars and Mafia hitmen, to name a few approaches). The Nixon government ordered a CIA-directed military coup that ended in the death of a democratically elected Chilean President, Salvador Allende. The Reagan government tried to assassinate Muammar Khadafi (missile attack on his palace). The present Bush government has already eliminated a head of state they wanted rid of, Saddam Hussein.
So, if you thought Chavez was a little nutty, think again.
As for Negroponte, here is a 2004 description of his activities reported by A World to Win news service and printed in Revolution: http://rwor.org/a/1240/awtwiraq.htm
Bremer himself will go home. Instead of an "administrator," as Bremer is called, his replacement will be called the U.S. Ambassador. What he will really be is the new boss of Iraq.
That ambassador will be John Negroponte. Negroponte is such a well-known war criminal that United Nations staff members staged a highly unusual symbolic strike when he was appointed U.S. ambassador to the UN on the eve of the Iraq invasion. Negroponte started out working for the U.S. in Vietnam. In the 1980s, when Nicaraguans got the idea they could have a government Washington didn't like, the U.S. launched a proxy war against them through the mercenary organization known as the Contras. He helped direct that war as U.S. ambassador to neighboring Honduras in 1981-85. During those years, U.S. military "aid" to Honduras went up by almost 20 times, and its army became an American army. Negroponte also oversaw Honduras's Battalion 3-16, trained and equipped by the CIA to carry out torture, murder and kidnapping. (For details, see maryknoll.org , a site by the Catholic religious order which holds this man responsible, at a minimum, for covering up the deaths of many nuns and religious women from El Salvador suspected of siding with opponents of U.S. interests.) His last job, before the UN, was on-the-scene organizer of the occupation troops in Afghanistan.
As I said in the previous posting, "the 'good guy' spin is what we always get from our government and the media regarding an overthrown oppressive minority, one that had played ball with us by abusing their own countrymen." That was the case whith the Cuban revolution, and the same dynamic is in play with Venezuela. We tried to kill Castro, suspecting a similar attempt against Chavez is rational.
And John Negroponte, by any objective standard, is not the patriotic boy scout some would have us believe.
- Uke ManChavez calls envoy 'professional killer'
By ELIZABETH M. NUNEZ, Associated Press
CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez on Sunday said he believes enemies including the CIA are out to kill him, and called U.S. diplomat John Negroponte a "professional killer."
Chavez said Venezuelan officials have intelligence that associates of jailed Cuban anti-communist militant Luis Posada Carriles also are involved in plotting to assassinate him.
He said the death plot idea has "gained weight" due to various factors, including the recent appointment of Negroponte, the former director of national intelligence, as deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"Who did they swear in ... there at the White House as deputy secretary of state? A professional killer: John Negroponte," Chavez said.
Chavez did not elaborate, but his government has previously accused Negroponte of playing a key role in the Contra war against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua when he served as ambassador to Honduras — a haven for clandestine Contra bases — from 1981 to 1985.
U.S. Embassy officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but they have denied Chavez's repeated accusations that they are plotting to oust him.
Chavez was asked about reports of assassination plots during a televised interview.
"They have assigned special units of the CIA, true assassins, who go around not only here in Venezuela, in Central America, in South America," Chavez said, without elaborating.
He added that while Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative, remains jailed in the U.S. on immigration charges, "Posada Carriles' people are very active in Central America and searching for contacts in Venezuela ... They are going around searching for explosives in large quantities, thinking about a sort of car bombing or searching for ground-to-air missiles, thinking about the presidential plane."
Chavez did not give details. His government has demanded that the U.S. extradite Posada Carriles, a naturalized Venezuelan, to stand trial for allegedly masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.
Posada Carriles denies involvement in that incident.
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:04 AM
1 comments
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Sunday, March 18, 2007
Hiding under a T-shirt
Hey Folks,
I wote up the posting below some time ago (when the vultures were slobbering over the "imminent" death of Fidel Castro - hasn't happened yet). The original focus was on the hypocrisy of celebrating a person's death while pretending to celebrate something else, apparently so the city government won't get too much flack for footing the bill.
A number of things have happened since January that lead me to make an additional point relevant to several future postings:
We've been led to see these folks who fled Cuba for Miami as the "good guys" fleeing the evil dictator. We've been led to take for granted comments such as one exile's claim, "He [Castro] represents everything bad that has happened to the people of Cuba for 48 years."
That, of course, is utter crap. If it read "He represents everything bad that has happened to the people who fled Cuba," he'd be largely correct, since it was the privileged - the ones who had abused the majority of Cubans - who had to flee and lost their special status. But certainly the US government's embargo has caused immeasurable suffering for actual Cubans, astronomically more than Castro has caused former Cubans or the minority of actual Cubans longing for the "good old days" of imperialism and the Mafia.
But the "good guy" spin is what we always get from our government and the media regarding an overthrown oppressive minority, one that had played ball with us by abusing their own countrymen.
In future posts you'll see how this Miami Cuban / "good guys" thing plays out in a more recent context.
- Uke Man
Hey Folks,
I understand why the formerly privileged and the descendents of formerly privileged Cubans living in Miami would rejoice at Fidel Castro's death - he forced them to work for a living. I understand the urge to piss on someone's grave - Ronald Reagan's for one and Milton Friedman's for another.
Although I have no sympathy for the Miami celebrants - since I think they got what they richly deserved - I do understand their animosity toward their "enemy." What I don't understand is their hypocrisy.
It seems clear from the article that they want the city of Miami to sponsor a "Piss on Dead Fidel" party but don't have the guts to admit it. They are bursting with the prospect of it, but are having difficulty figuring out what slogan to put on their commemorative T-shirts to officially state the "theme."
Apparently the problem is to coin a phrase that says "Come let's dance on Castro's grave," but sounds like "Come smack the funny pinata!!"
Somehow, I don't think the T-shirt - whatever it ends up saying - will fool anyone but the fools wearing them.
- Uke Man
LITTLE HAVANA
When Cuban leader dies, Miami wants a big party
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Michael Vasquez
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
MIAMI — One day, very possibly one day soon, ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro will die — and a committee sponsored by the city of Miami wants to be ready.
So it’s planning a party.
The event, still in the very early planning stage, would be held in Little Havana’s Orange Bowl stadium — and might include commemorative Tshirts, a catchy slogan and bands that will make your hips shake.
The stadium is a bittersweet landmark in South Florida’s Cuban-American experience. After the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, more than 35,000 exiles gathered there to hear President John F. Kennedy promise a free Cuba.
Decades later, the bowl served as a camp for refugees after the Mariel boatlift.
City Commissioner Tomas Regalado, a Cuban-American, came up with the idea of using the venue for an event timed to Castro’s demise.
"He represents everything bad that has happened to the people of Cuba for 48 years," Regalado said of Castro. "There is something to celebrate,
regardless of what happens next. ... We get rid of the guy."
Despite that statement, Regalado, along with other organizers, prefers to think of it as a celebration of the end of communism — whether or not that is triggered by Castro’s death — as opposed to a largescale tap-dancing session on someone’s grave. Regalado compares it to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The city created the citizens committee that is planning the event this month. When the still-unnamed panel met for the first time last week, Castro’s death was nowhere to be found on the meeting agenda. The meeting was officially — and ambiguously — advertised under the title, "Committee Meeting for an Event at the Orange Bowl."
Its purpose, according to the city’s Web site: "Discuss an event at the Orange Bowl in case expected events occur in Cuba."
At that meeting, committee member and former state Rep. Luis Morse stressed the need for an uplifting, forward-looking theme for the party — one not preoccupied with a human being’s passing. The committee discussed including such a theme on T-shirts that would be made by private vendors for the event.
Plenty of details have to be sorted out: What musicians would perform? The city hopes entertainers will donate their services. How long will the event last? Hours? Days? And how much will it cost?
Performance stages require time to be set up, and a security guard company has already told Miami officials it requires 24 hours’ notice before being able to work the stadium. A gap of a day or two between Castro’s death and the Orange Bowl event is possible.
And before printing themed T-shirts, Miami has to actually decide what the theme is. It’s still working on that one.
"That has to be done with a lot of sensitivity," Morse said. "Somebody needs to be a very good wordsmith."
The stadium plan, though in its infancy, already has drawn criticism from callers on Spanish-language radio who complain Miami is dictating to Cuban Americans where they should experience one of the most intensely dramatic moments of their lives.
Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the Miami-based Democracy Movement organization, worries about how a party would be perceived by those outside the exile community. He stressed that Castro’s death will prompt a whole range of emotions among Cubans — not just joy.
I wote up the posting below some time ago (when the vultures were slobbering over the "imminent" death of Fidel Castro - hasn't happened yet). The original focus was on the hypocrisy of celebrating a person's death while pretending to celebrate something else, apparently so the city government won't get too much flack for footing the bill.
A number of things have happened since January that lead me to make an additional point relevant to several future postings:
We've been led to see these folks who fled Cuba for Miami as the "good guys" fleeing the evil dictator. We've been led to take for granted comments such as one exile's claim, "He [Castro] represents everything bad that has happened to the people of Cuba for 48 years."
That, of course, is utter crap. If it read "He represents everything bad that has happened to the people who fled Cuba," he'd be largely correct, since it was the privileged - the ones who had abused the majority of Cubans - who had to flee and lost their special status. But certainly the US government's embargo has caused immeasurable suffering for actual Cubans, astronomically more than Castro has caused former Cubans or the minority of actual Cubans longing for the "good old days" of imperialism and the Mafia.
But the "good guy" spin is what we always get from our government and the media regarding an overthrown oppressive minority, one that had played ball with us by abusing their own countrymen.
In future posts you'll see how this Miami Cuban / "good guys" thing plays out in a more recent context.
- Uke Man
Hey Folks,
I understand why the formerly privileged and the descendents of formerly privileged Cubans living in Miami would rejoice at Fidel Castro's death - he forced them to work for a living. I understand the urge to piss on someone's grave - Ronald Reagan's for one and Milton Friedman's for another.
Although I have no sympathy for the Miami celebrants - since I think they got what they richly deserved - I do understand their animosity toward their "enemy." What I don't understand is their hypocrisy.
It seems clear from the article that they want the city of Miami to sponsor a "Piss on Dead Fidel" party but don't have the guts to admit it. They are bursting with the prospect of it, but are having difficulty figuring out what slogan to put on their commemorative T-shirts to officially state the "theme."
Apparently the problem is to coin a phrase that says "Come let's dance on Castro's grave," but sounds like "Come smack the funny pinata!!"
Somehow, I don't think the T-shirt - whatever it ends up saying - will fool anyone but the fools wearing them.
- Uke Man
LITTLE HAVANA
When Cuban leader dies, Miami wants a big party
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Michael Vasquez
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
MIAMI — One day, very possibly one day soon, ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro will die — and a committee sponsored by the city of Miami wants to be ready.
So it’s planning a party.
The event, still in the very early planning stage, would be held in Little Havana’s Orange Bowl stadium — and might include commemorative Tshirts, a catchy slogan and bands that will make your hips shake.
The stadium is a bittersweet landmark in South Florida’s Cuban-American experience. After the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, more than 35,000 exiles gathered there to hear President John F. Kennedy promise a free Cuba.
Decades later, the bowl served as a camp for refugees after the Mariel boatlift.
City Commissioner Tomas Regalado, a Cuban-American, came up with the idea of using the venue for an event timed to Castro’s demise.
"He represents everything bad that has happened to the people of Cuba for 48 years," Regalado said of Castro. "There is something to celebrate,
regardless of what happens next. ... We get rid of the guy."
Despite that statement, Regalado, along with other organizers, prefers to think of it as a celebration of the end of communism — whether or not that is triggered by Castro’s death — as opposed to a largescale tap-dancing session on someone’s grave. Regalado compares it to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The city created the citizens committee that is planning the event this month. When the still-unnamed panel met for the first time last week, Castro’s death was nowhere to be found on the meeting agenda. The meeting was officially — and ambiguously — advertised under the title, "Committee Meeting for an Event at the Orange Bowl."
Its purpose, according to the city’s Web site: "Discuss an event at the Orange Bowl in case expected events occur in Cuba."
At that meeting, committee member and former state Rep. Luis Morse stressed the need for an uplifting, forward-looking theme for the party — one not preoccupied with a human being’s passing. The committee discussed including such a theme on T-shirts that would be made by private vendors for the event.
Plenty of details have to be sorted out: What musicians would perform? The city hopes entertainers will donate their services. How long will the event last? Hours? Days? And how much will it cost?
Performance stages require time to be set up, and a security guard company has already told Miami officials it requires 24 hours’ notice before being able to work the stadium. A gap of a day or two between Castro’s death and the Orange Bowl event is possible.
And before printing themed T-shirts, Miami has to actually decide what the theme is. It’s still working on that one.
"That has to be done with a lot of sensitivity," Morse said. "Somebody needs to be a very good wordsmith."
The stadium plan, though in its infancy, already has drawn criticism from callers on Spanish-language radio who complain Miami is dictating to Cuban Americans where they should experience one of the most intensely dramatic moments of their lives.
Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the Miami-based Democracy Movement organization, worries about how a party would be perceived by those outside the exile community. He stressed that Castro’s death will prompt a whole range of emotions among Cubans — not just joy.
posted by Ukulele Man at 11:03 AM
1 comments
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Friday, March 16, 2007
Saturday Protest / Sunday @ Little Brothers
Hey Folks,
Saturday, March 17, protests are going on everywhere - including Washington D.C. and Columbus, Ohio - to protest the War on its anniversary date.
For Columbus: gather at the Broad & High Streets corner of the State House between noon and 1:00 (parking under the State House if St. Patrick doesn't fill it up with shamrocks first).
At 1:00 the march of several blocks north up High Street to the Federal Building begins.
Come march, protest, and register your opposition.
If you can't do that, try to drive by and honk your support.
END THIS WAR !!!
On Sunday, March 18 at Little Brothers (1100 N. High St.) from noon until 9:00 there will be a fund raiser for World Can't Wait (Drive Out the Bush Regime) - $5.00. There will be Speakers and Music:
I'll play a 40 minute set around 6:00, followed by Dan Dougan's Wahoos. Bob Fitrakis will speak.
Other acts include Mas Bagua, Johnny G, Brian Griffin, Victoria Parks, Johnathan Samos, Chris Stentz, Dream Maker, Cultural Relativity, & Baby Lindy and the Drug Mothers.
See you there!!
- Uke Man
Saturday, March 17, protests are going on everywhere - including Washington D.C. and Columbus, Ohio - to protest the War on its anniversary date.
For Columbus: gather at the Broad & High Streets corner of the State House between noon and 1:00 (parking under the State House if St. Patrick doesn't fill it up with shamrocks first).
At 1:00 the march of several blocks north up High Street to the Federal Building begins.
Come march, protest, and register your opposition.
If you can't do that, try to drive by and honk your support.
END THIS WAR !!!
On Sunday, March 18 at Little Brothers (1100 N. High St.) from noon until 9:00 there will be a fund raiser for World Can't Wait (Drive Out the Bush Regime) - $5.00. There will be Speakers and Music:
I'll play a 40 minute set around 6:00, followed by Dan Dougan's Wahoos. Bob Fitrakis will speak.
Other acts include Mas Bagua, Johnny G, Brian Griffin, Victoria Parks, Johnathan Samos, Chris Stentz, Dream Maker, Cultural Relativity, & Baby Lindy and the Drug Mothers.
See you there!!
- Uke Man
posted by Ukulele Man at 11:35 PM
1 comments
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David Brooks, Father of Neo-Lunacy
Hey Folks -
David Brooks is so pathetic, but he does provide a good example of how this world is run and how the ginks on top think that way of running it is as it should be. He rattles on in fond, approving, even loving tones about Neoliberalism as the guiding principle of the Democratic party, mourning its demise.
You may know something about “Neoconservatism” but probably don’t know much about Neoliberalism (the latter is by design). Reading Brooks, you’d think it was a wonderful way for the Dems to run a party (I’ve highlighted all the positive references in his screed in blue and commented in red). It might be difficult to think otherwise, what with the general public ignorance regarding Neoliberalism.
As an antidote, I’ve presented directly below the first part of a 1999 description of Neoliberalism by Robert McChesney. Read that, and then read Brooks. The pathetic character of Brooks deluded, patrician view should be obvious. One hint: Neoliberalism is associated with the policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
For those who are interested, I have added the remainder of McChesney’s essay at the end.
- Uke Man
From: http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/econ/chmsky99.htm
Noam Chomsky and the Struggle Against Neoliberalism
By Robert W McChesney
Monthly Review April 1, 1999
Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, neoliberalism has for the past two decades been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center, much of the traditional left, and the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations.
Aside from some academics and members of the business community, the term neoliberalism is largely unknown and unused by the public at large, especially in the United States. There, to the contrary, neoliberal initiatives are characterized as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic, and parasitic government, which can never do good (even when well intentioned, which it rarely is). A generation of corporate-financed public relations efforts has given these terms and ideas a near-sacred aura. As a result, these phrases and the claims they imply rarely require empirical defense, and are invoked to rationalize anything from lowering taxes on the wealthy and scrapping environmental regulations to dismantling public education and social welfare programs. Indeed, any activity that might interfere with corporate domination of society is automatically suspect because it would impede the workings of the free market, which is advanced as the only rational, fair, and democratic allocator of goods and services. At their most eloquent, proponents of neoliberalism sound as if they are doing poor people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few.
The economic consequences of these policies have been the same just about everywhere, and exactly what one would expect: a massive increase in social and economic inequality, a marked increase in severe deprivation for the poorest nations and peoples of the world, a disastrous global environment, an unstable global economy, and an unprecedented bonanza for the wealthy. Confronted with these facts, defenders of the neoliberal order claim that the spoils of the good life will invariably spread to the broad mass of the population - as long as the neoliberal policies that exacerbated these problems are not interfered with by anyone!
In the end, proponents of neoliberalism cannot and do not offer an empirical defense for the world they are making. To the contrary, they offer - no, demand - a religious faith in the infallibility of the unregulated market, drawing upon nineteenth century theories that have little connection to the actual world.
The Vanishing Neoliberal
By DAVID BROOKS
March 11, 2007
On July 25, 1981, Michael Kinsley published an essay in The New Republiccalled “The Shame of the Democrats.” The Democratic Party, the young Kinsley wrote, is viewed “with growing indifference.” It is run “by lawyer-operators with no commitment to any particular political values.” Unlike the Republicans who DO have political values, but not human values. It is filled “with politicians who - like the Republican party - will do or say anything for a word or a dollar of support.” It represents “a dwindling collection of specialinterest groups whose interests are less and less those of either the general populous or the tired and poor.” - In other words, they are becoming more and more like the Republicans have been for decades - In short, Kinsley wrote, “theDemocratic Party has collapsed not just politically but morally.” The Republicans give lip-service to Evangelicals but HAVE no morality - they can't even follow Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment.
And so began the era of neoliberalism, a movement which, at least temporarily, remade the Democratic Party, redefined American journalism (clearly he sees this as a "good" thing) and didn’t really die until now.
In the early days (those days must be the 80's because in the 60's The New Republic was a left-leaning magazine. With neolibiberalism, it moved to the right, apparently a good thing in Brooks' view) the neoliberals coalesced around two small magazines,The New Republic and The Washington Monthly. They represented, first of all, a change in intellectual tone. While the old liberals could be earnest and self-righteous, the neoliberals were sprightly and lampooning (and cute and brilliant, I'm sure; maybe like Tucker Carlson). While the old liberals valued solidarity, the neoliberals loved to argue among themselves, - leave the solidarity to the Republicans - showing off the rhetorical skills many had honed in Harvard dining halls (Wow!!! just like in the Middle School cafeteria - so cool!!!).
On policy matters, the neoliberals were liberal but not too liberal. They rejected (Democratic) interest-group politics and were suspicious of brain-dead unions.They tended to be hawkish on foreign policy, positive about capitalism,reformist when it came to the welfare state (all Republican interests), and urbane but not militant on feminism and other social issues (does the word "cavalier" come to mind?).
The neoliberal movement begat politicians like Paul Tsongas, Al Gore (the 1980s and ’90s version) and Bill Clinton (Nixon was more liberal, and can you see why many claim there is little difference between R's & D's? Think: Joe Lieberman). It also set the tone for mainstream American journalism. Today, you can’t swing an ax in a major American newsroom without hitting six people who used to work at The NewRepublic or The Washington Monthly. Influenced by their sensibility, many major news organizations became neoliberal institutions (remember, these are the left-leaning guys who hate unions), whether they knew it or not (yeah, there's your infamous "liberal" control of the media).
Neoliberals often have an air of perpetual youthfulness (yeah!! like Tucker Carlson!!) about them, but they are now in their 40s, 50s and even their 60s, and a younger generation of bloggers set off a backlash. (I'm in my 60's - and a blogger) If you surf the Web these days, for example, you find that a horde of thousands have declared war on the Time magazine columnist Joe Klein
Kevin Drum (see: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_03/010854.php . I buy Drum's criticism of Klein, but - being of Klein's generation - don't buy the excuses for Klein he offers. Klein is either a sell-out or a "never-really-was." As Drum points out, Klein's "centrist" perspective denigrates the Lefty past but condones the Righty present - Sorry. Doesn't make it.), who is actually older than most bloggers, says the difference is generational. Klein’s mind-set, he says, was formed in the 1970s and 1980s, but “like most lefty bloggers, I only started following politics in a serious way in the late ’90s.” Drum says he’s reacting to Ken Starr, the Florida ballot fight, the Bush tax cuts, the K Street Project and the war in Iraq.
Drum and his cohort don’t want a neoliberal movement that moderates and reforms (i.e. that rolls over and takes it). They want a Democratic Party that fights. Their tone is much more confrontational. They want to read articles that affirm their anger (just like Republicans have always been able to do). They are also further to the left (er ... he means "are not as centrist"), driven there by Iraq on foreign policy matters and by wage stagnation on economic matters.
For the past few years, The New Republic has tried to keep the neoliberal flame alive, under editors like Peter Beinart. But there is no longer a readership for that. The longtime owner, Marty Peretz, has sold his remaining interests and, starting this month, the magazine will go biweekly.
The new format is partly a response to the Web. The forthcoming issue has a lot of good, long, nonideological reports. (Ryan Lizza has a fascinating piece on Barack Obama’s Chicago years.) But it’s also a shift leftward. As the new editor, Frank Foer, says, there’s a generation gap within the magazine, with young interns further to the left. That’s where the future lies. Foer is hiring the Ph.D. neopopulist Thomas Frank to write essays on the presidential campaign. Recent editorials have called for tax increases to finance universal health care (OH, MY GOD!!! And they call themselves Democrats???). The magazine now habitually calls on Democrats to take bold action on things like the war and global warming, but it’s still a little fuzzy on what that bold action should be.
Over all, what’s happening is this: The left, which has the momentum, is growing more uniform and coming to look more like its old, pre-neoliberal self. The right is growing more fractious. And many of those who were semi-affiliated with one party or another are drifting off to independent-land. (The Economist, their magazine, now has over 500,000 American readers — more than all the major liberal magazines combined.)
Neoliberalism had a good, interesting run — while it lasted Good riddance!!
McChesney continued:
From: http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/econ/chmsky99.htm
The ultimate trump card for the defenders of neoliberalism, however, is that there is no alternative. Communist societies, social democracies, and even modest social welfare states like the United States have all failed, the neoliberals proclaim, and their citizens have accepted neoliberalism as the only feasible course. It may well be imperfect, but it is the only economic system possible.
Earlier in the twentieth century some critics called fascism "capitalism with the gloves off," meaning that fascism was pure capitalism without democratic rights and organizations. In fact, we know that fascism is vastly more complex than that. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is indeed "capitalism with the gloves off." It represents an era in which business forces are stronger and more aggressive, and face less organized opposition than ever before. In this political climate they attempt to codify their political power and enact their vision on every possible front. As a result, business is increasingly difficult to challenge, and civil society (nonmarket, noncommercial, and democratic forces) barely exists at all.
It is precisely in its oppression of nonmarket forces that we see how neoliberalism operates - not only as an economic system, but as a political and cultural system as well. Here the differences with fascism, with its contempt for formal democracy and highly mobilized social movements based upon racism and nationalism, are striking. Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision-making. As neoliberal guru Milton Friedman put it in Capitalism and Freedom, because profitmaking is the essence of democracy, any government that pursues antimarket policies is being antidemocratic, no matter how much informed popular support they might enjoy. Therefore it is best to restrict governments to the job of protecting private property and enforcing contracts, and to limit political debate to minor issues. (The real matters of resource production and distribution and social organization should be determined by market forces.)
Equipped with this perverse understanding of democracy, neoliberals like Friedman had no qualms over the military overthrow of Chile's democratically elected Allende government in 1973, because Allende was interfering with business control of Chilean society. After fifteen years of often brutal and savage dictatorship - all in the name of the democratic free market - formal democracy was restored in 1989 with a constitution that made it vastly more difficult (if not impossible) for the citizenry to challenge the business-military domination of Chilean society. That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; i.e., so long as it isn't democracy.
Neoliberal democracy therefore has an important and necessary byproduct - a depoliticized citizenry marked by apathy and cynicism. If electoral democracy affects little of social life, it is irrational to devote much attention to it; in the United States, the spawning ground of neoliberal democracy, voter turnout in the 1998 congressional elections was a record low, with just one-third of eligible voters going to the polls. Although occasionally generating concern from those established parties like the U.S. Democratic Party that tend to attract the votes of the dispossessed, low voter turnout tends to be accepted and encouraged by the powers that be as a very good thing since nonvoters are, not surprisingly, disproportionately found among the poor and working class. Policies that quickly could increase voter interest and participation rates are stymied before ever getting into the public arena. In the United States, for example, the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the corporate community, have refused to reform laws - some of which they put on the boos - making it virtually impossible to create new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competition and free choice have little meaning. In some respects, the caliber of debate and choice in neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of a genuine democracy.
But this barely indicates neoliberalism's pernicious implications for a civic-centered political culture. On one hand, the social inequality generated by neoliberal policies undermines any effort to realize the legal equality necessary to make democracy credible. Large corporations have resources to influence media and overwhelm the political process, and do so accordingly. In U.S. electoral politics, for just one example, the richest one-quarter of one percent of Americans make 80 percent of all individual political contributions and corporations outspend labor by a margin of ten to one. Under neoliberalism this all makes sense; elections then reflect market principles, with contributions being equated with investments. As a result, it reinforces the irrelevance of electoral politics to most people and assures the maintenance of unquestioned corporate rule.
On the other hand, to be effective, democracy requires that people feel a connection to their fellow citizens, and that this connection manifests itself though a variety of nonmarket organizations and institutions. A vibrant political culture needs community groups, libraries, public schools, neighborhood organizations, cooperatives, public meeting places, voluntary associations, and trade unions to provide ways for citizens to meet, communicate, and interact with their fellow citizens. Neoliberal democracy, with its notion of the market uber alles, takes dead aim at this sector. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.
In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.
It is fitting that Noam Chomsky is the leading intellectual figure in the world today in the battle for democracy and against neoliberalism. In the 1960s, Chomsky was a prominent U.S. critic of the Vietnam war and, more broadly, became perhaps the most trenchant analyst of the ways U.S. foreign policy undermines democracy, quashes human rights, and promotes the interests of the wealthy few. In the 1970s, Chomsky (along with his co-author Edward S. Herman) began researching the ways the U.S. news media serve elite interests and undermine the capacity of the citizenry to actually rule their lives in a democratic fashion. Their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent, remains the starting point for any serious inquiry into news media performance.
Throughout these years Chomsky, who could be characterized as an anarchist or, perhaps more accurately, a libertarian socialist, was a vocal, principled, and consistent democratic opponent and critic of Communist and Leninist political states and parties. He educated countless people, including myself, that democracy was a non-negotiable cornerstone of any postcapitalist society worth living in or fighting for. At the same time, he has demonstrated the absurdity of equating capitalism with democracy, or thinking that capitalist societies, even under the best of circumstances, will ever open access to information or decision-making beyond the most narrow and controlled possibilities. I doubt any author, aside from perhaps George Orwell, has approached Chomsky in systematically skewering the hypocrisy of rulers and ideologues in both Communist and capitalist societies as they claim that theirs is the only form of true democracy available to humanity.
In the 1990s, all these strands of Chomsky's political work - from anti-imperialism and critical media analysis to writings on democracy and the labor movement - have come together, culminating in work like Profit Over People, about democracy and the neoliberal threat. Chomsky has done much to reinvigorate an understanding of the social requirements for democracy, drawing upon the ancient Greeks as well as the leading thinkers of democratic revolutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As he makes clear, it is impossible to be a proponent of participatory democracy and at the same time a champion of capitalism or any other class-divided society. In assessing the real historical struggles for democracy, Chomsky also reveals that neoliberalism is hardly a new thing; it is merely the current version of the battle for the wealthy few to circumscribe the political rights and civic powers of the many.
Chomsky may also be the leading critic of the mythology of the natural "free" market, that cheery hymn that is pounded into our heads about how the economy is competitive, rational, efficient, and fair. As Chomsky points out, markets are almost never competitive. Most of the economy is dominated by massive corporations with tremendous control over their markets and which therefore face precious little competition of the sort described in economics textbooks and politicians' speeches. Moreover, corporations themselves are effectively totalitarian organizations, operating along nondemocratic lines. That our economy is centered around such institutions severely compromises our ability to have a democratic society.
The mythology of the free market also submits that governments are inefficient institutions that should be limited, so as not to hurt the magic of the natural laissez faire market. In fact, as Chomsky emphasizes, governments are central to the modern capitalist system. They lavishly subsidize corporations and work to advance corporate interests on numerous fronts. The same corporations that exult in neoliberal ideology are in fact often hypocritical: they want and expect governments to funnel tax dollars to them, and to protect their markets from competition for them, but they want to be assured that governments will not tax them or work supportively on behalf of non-business interests, especially the poor and working class. Governments are bigger than ever, but under neoliberalism they have far less pretense to addressing non-corporate interests.
Nowhere is the centrality of governments and policymaking more apparent than in the emergence of the global market economy. What is presented by pro-business ideologues as the natural expansion of free markets across borders is, in fact, quite the opposite. Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world's people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations. Nowhere is the process more apparent than in the creation of the World Trade Organization in the early 1990s and, now, in the secret deliberations on behalf of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI).
Indeed, it is the inability to have honest and candid discussions and debates about neoliberalism in the United States and elsewhere that is one of its most striking features. Chomsky's critique of the neoliberal order is effectively off-limits to mainstream analysis despite its empirical strength and because of its commitment to democratic values. Here, Chomsky's analysis of the doctrinal system in capitalist democracies is useful. The corporate news media, the PR industry, the academic ideologues, and the intellectual culture writ large play the central role of providing the "necessary illusions" to make this unpalatable situation appear rational, benevolent, and necessary (if not necessarily desirable). As Chomsky hastens to point out, this is no formal conspiracy by powerful interests; it doesn't have to be. Through a variety of institutional mechanisms, signals are sent to intellectuals, pundits, and journalists, pushing toward seeing the status quo as the best of all possible worlds, and away from challenging those who benefit from that status quo. Chomsky's work is a direct call for democratic activists to remake our media system so it can be opened up to anticorporate, antineoliberal perspectives and inquiry. It is also a challenge to all intellectuals, or at least those who express a commitment to democracy, to take a long, hard look in the mirror and to ask themselves in whose interests, and for what values, do they do their work.
Chomsky's description of the neoliberal/corporate hold over our economy, polity, journalism, and culture is so powerful and overwhelming that for some readers it can produce a sense of resignation. In our demoralized political times, a few may go a step further and conclude that we are enmeshed in this regressive system because, alas, humanity is simply incapable of creating a more humane, egalitarian, and democratic social order.
In fact, Chomsky's greatest contribution may well be his insistence upon the fundamental democratic inclinations of the world's peoples, and the revolutionary potential implicit in those impulses. The best evidence of this possibility is the extent to which corporate forces go to prevent genuine political democracy from being established. The world's rulers understand implicitly that theirs is a system established to suit the needs of the few, not the many, and that the many therefore cannot ever be permitted to question and alter corporate rule. Even in the hobbled democracies that do exist, the corporate community works incessantly to see that important issues like the MAI are never publicly debated. And the business community spends a fortune bankrolling a PR apparatus to convince Americans that this is the best of all possible worlds. The time to worry about the possibility of social change for the better, by this logic, will be when the corporate community abandons PR and buying elections, permits a representative media, and is comfortable establishing a genuinely egalitarian participatory democracy because it no longer fears the power of the many. But there is no reason to think that day will ever come.
Neoliberalism's loudest message is that there is no alternative to the status quo, and that humanity has reached its highest level. Chomsky points out that there have been several other periods designated as the "end of history" in the past. In the 1920s and 1950s, for example, U.S. elites claimed that the system was working and that mass quiescence reflected widespread satisfaction with the status quo. Events shortly thereafter highlighted the silliness of those beliefs. I suspect that as soon as democratic forces record a few tangible victories the blood will return to their veins, and talk of no possible hope for change will go the same route as all previous elite fantasies about their glorious rule being enshrined for a millennium.
The notion that no superior alternative to the status quo exists is more farfetched today than ever, in this era when there are mind-boggling technologies for bettering the human condition. It is true that it remains unclear how we might establish a viable, free, and humane post-capitalist order; the very notion has a utopian air about it. But every advance in history, from ending slavery and establishing democracy to ending formal colonialism, has at some point had to conquer the notion that it was impossible to do because it had never been done before. As Chomsky points out, organized political activism is responsible for the degree of democracy we have today, for universal adult suffrage, for women's rights, for trade unions, for civil rights, for the freedoms we do enjoy. Even if the notion of a post-capitalist society seems unattainable, we know that human political activity can make the world we live in vastly more humane. As we get to that point, perhaps we will again be able to think in terms of building a political economy based on principles of cooperation, equality, self-government, and individual freedom.
Until then, the struggle for social change is not a hypothetical issue. The current neoliberal order has generated massive political and economic crises from east Asia to eastern Europe and Latin America. The quality of life in the developed nations of Europe, Japan, and North America is fragile and the societies are in considerable turmoil. Tremendous upheaval is in the cards for the coming years and decades. There is considerable doubt about the outcome of that upheaval, however, and little reason to think it will lead automatically to a democratic and humane resolution. That will be determined by how we, the people, organize, respond, and act. As Chomsky says, if you act like there is no possibility of change for the better, you guarantee that there will be no change for the better. The choice is ours, the choice is yours.
Robert W. McChesney teaches communication at the University of Illinois. His newest book is Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999). This article first appeared as the introduction to Noam Chomsky's Profit Over People (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999).
David Brooks is so pathetic, but he does provide a good example of how this world is run and how the ginks on top think that way of running it is as it should be. He rattles on in fond, approving, even loving tones about Neoliberalism as the guiding principle of the Democratic party, mourning its demise.
You may know something about “Neoconservatism” but probably don’t know much about Neoliberalism (the latter is by design). Reading Brooks, you’d think it was a wonderful way for the Dems to run a party (I’ve highlighted all the positive references in his screed in blue and commented in red). It might be difficult to think otherwise, what with the general public ignorance regarding Neoliberalism.
As an antidote, I’ve presented directly below the first part of a 1999 description of Neoliberalism by Robert McChesney. Read that, and then read Brooks. The pathetic character of Brooks deluded, patrician view should be obvious. One hint: Neoliberalism is associated with the policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
For those who are interested, I have added the remainder of McChesney’s essay at the end.
- Uke Man
From: http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/econ/chmsky99.htm
Noam Chomsky and the Struggle Against Neoliberalism
By Robert W McChesney
Monthly Review April 1, 1999
Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, neoliberalism has for the past two decades been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center, much of the traditional left, and the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations.
Aside from some academics and members of the business community, the term neoliberalism is largely unknown and unused by the public at large, especially in the United States. There, to the contrary, neoliberal initiatives are characterized as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic, and parasitic government, which can never do good (even when well intentioned, which it rarely is). A generation of corporate-financed public relations efforts has given these terms and ideas a near-sacred aura. As a result, these phrases and the claims they imply rarely require empirical defense, and are invoked to rationalize anything from lowering taxes on the wealthy and scrapping environmental regulations to dismantling public education and social welfare programs. Indeed, any activity that might interfere with corporate domination of society is automatically suspect because it would impede the workings of the free market, which is advanced as the only rational, fair, and democratic allocator of goods and services. At their most eloquent, proponents of neoliberalism sound as if they are doing poor people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few.
The economic consequences of these policies have been the same just about everywhere, and exactly what one would expect: a massive increase in social and economic inequality, a marked increase in severe deprivation for the poorest nations and peoples of the world, a disastrous global environment, an unstable global economy, and an unprecedented bonanza for the wealthy. Confronted with these facts, defenders of the neoliberal order claim that the spoils of the good life will invariably spread to the broad mass of the population - as long as the neoliberal policies that exacerbated these problems are not interfered with by anyone!
In the end, proponents of neoliberalism cannot and do not offer an empirical defense for the world they are making. To the contrary, they offer - no, demand - a religious faith in the infallibility of the unregulated market, drawing upon nineteenth century theories that have little connection to the actual world.
The Vanishing Neoliberal
By DAVID BROOKS
March 11, 2007
On July 25, 1981, Michael Kinsley published an essay in The New Republiccalled “The Shame of the Democrats.” The Democratic Party, the young Kinsley wrote, is viewed “with growing indifference.” It is run “by lawyer-operators with no commitment to any particular political values.” Unlike the Republicans who DO have political values, but not human values. It is filled “with politicians who - like the Republican party - will do or say anything for a word or a dollar of support.” It represents “a dwindling collection of specialinterest groups whose interests are less and less those of either the general populous or the tired and poor.” - In other words, they are becoming more and more like the Republicans have been for decades - In short, Kinsley wrote, “theDemocratic Party has collapsed not just politically but morally.” The Republicans give lip-service to Evangelicals but HAVE no morality - they can't even follow Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment.
And so began the era of neoliberalism, a movement which, at least temporarily, remade the Democratic Party, redefined American journalism (clearly he sees this as a "good" thing) and didn’t really die until now.
In the early days (those days must be the 80's because in the 60's The New Republic was a left-leaning magazine. With neolibiberalism, it moved to the right, apparently a good thing in Brooks' view) the neoliberals coalesced around two small magazines,The New Republic and The Washington Monthly. They represented, first of all, a change in intellectual tone. While the old liberals could be earnest and self-righteous, the neoliberals were sprightly and lampooning (and cute and brilliant, I'm sure; maybe like Tucker Carlson). While the old liberals valued solidarity, the neoliberals loved to argue among themselves, - leave the solidarity to the Republicans - showing off the rhetorical skills many had honed in Harvard dining halls (Wow!!! just like in the Middle School cafeteria - so cool!!!).
On policy matters, the neoliberals were liberal but not too liberal. They rejected (Democratic) interest-group politics and were suspicious of brain-dead unions.They tended to be hawkish on foreign policy, positive about capitalism,reformist when it came to the welfare state (all Republican interests), and urbane but not militant on feminism and other social issues (does the word "cavalier" come to mind?).
The neoliberal movement begat politicians like Paul Tsongas, Al Gore (the 1980s and ’90s version) and Bill Clinton (Nixon was more liberal, and can you see why many claim there is little difference between R's & D's? Think: Joe Lieberman). It also set the tone for mainstream American journalism. Today, you can’t swing an ax in a major American newsroom without hitting six people who used to work at The NewRepublic or The Washington Monthly. Influenced by their sensibility, many major news organizations became neoliberal institutions (remember, these are the left-leaning guys who hate unions), whether they knew it or not (yeah, there's your infamous "liberal" control of the media).
Neoliberals often have an air of perpetual youthfulness (yeah!! like Tucker Carlson!!) about them, but they are now in their 40s, 50s and even their 60s, and a younger generation of bloggers set off a backlash. (I'm in my 60's - and a blogger) If you surf the Web these days, for example, you find that a horde of thousands have declared war on the Time magazine columnist Joe Klein
Kevin Drum (see: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_03/010854.php . I buy Drum's criticism of Klein, but - being of Klein's generation - don't buy the excuses for Klein he offers. Klein is either a sell-out or a "never-really-was." As Drum points out, Klein's "centrist" perspective denigrates the Lefty past but condones the Righty present - Sorry. Doesn't make it.), who is actually older than most bloggers, says the difference is generational. Klein’s mind-set, he says, was formed in the 1970s and 1980s, but “like most lefty bloggers, I only started following politics in a serious way in the late ’90s.” Drum says he’s reacting to Ken Starr, the Florida ballot fight, the Bush tax cuts, the K Street Project and the war in Iraq.
Drum and his cohort don’t want a neoliberal movement that moderates and reforms (i.e. that rolls over and takes it). They want a Democratic Party that fights. Their tone is much more confrontational. They want to read articles that affirm their anger (just like Republicans have always been able to do). They are also further to the left (er ... he means "are not as centrist"), driven there by Iraq on foreign policy matters and by wage stagnation on economic matters.
For the past few years, The New Republic has tried to keep the neoliberal flame alive, under editors like Peter Beinart. But there is no longer a readership for that. The longtime owner, Marty Peretz, has sold his remaining interests and, starting this month, the magazine will go biweekly.
The new format is partly a response to the Web. The forthcoming issue has a lot of good, long, nonideological reports. (Ryan Lizza has a fascinating piece on Barack Obama’s Chicago years.) But it’s also a shift leftward. As the new editor, Frank Foer, says, there’s a generation gap within the magazine, with young interns further to the left. That’s where the future lies. Foer is hiring the Ph.D. neopopulist Thomas Frank to write essays on the presidential campaign. Recent editorials have called for tax increases to finance universal health care (OH, MY GOD!!! And they call themselves Democrats???). The magazine now habitually calls on Democrats to take bold action on things like the war and global warming, but it’s still a little fuzzy on what that bold action should be.
Over all, what’s happening is this: The left, which has the momentum, is growing more uniform and coming to look more like its old, pre-neoliberal self. The right is growing more fractious. And many of those who were semi-affiliated with one party or another are drifting off to independent-land. (The Economist, their magazine, now has over 500,000 American readers — more than all the major liberal magazines combined.)
Neoliberalism had a good, interesting run — while it lasted Good riddance!!
McChesney continued:
From: http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/econ/chmsky99.htm
The ultimate trump card for the defenders of neoliberalism, however, is that there is no alternative. Communist societies, social democracies, and even modest social welfare states like the United States have all failed, the neoliberals proclaim, and their citizens have accepted neoliberalism as the only feasible course. It may well be imperfect, but it is the only economic system possible.
Earlier in the twentieth century some critics called fascism "capitalism with the gloves off," meaning that fascism was pure capitalism without democratic rights and organizations. In fact, we know that fascism is vastly more complex than that. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is indeed "capitalism with the gloves off." It represents an era in which business forces are stronger and more aggressive, and face less organized opposition than ever before. In this political climate they attempt to codify their political power and enact their vision on every possible front. As a result, business is increasingly difficult to challenge, and civil society (nonmarket, noncommercial, and democratic forces) barely exists at all.
It is precisely in its oppression of nonmarket forces that we see how neoliberalism operates - not only as an economic system, but as a political and cultural system as well. Here the differences with fascism, with its contempt for formal democracy and highly mobilized social movements based upon racism and nationalism, are striking. Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision-making. As neoliberal guru Milton Friedman put it in Capitalism and Freedom, because profitmaking is the essence of democracy, any government that pursues antimarket policies is being antidemocratic, no matter how much informed popular support they might enjoy. Therefore it is best to restrict governments to the job of protecting private property and enforcing contracts, and to limit political debate to minor issues. (The real matters of resource production and distribution and social organization should be determined by market forces.)
Equipped with this perverse understanding of democracy, neoliberals like Friedman had no qualms over the military overthrow of Chile's democratically elected Allende government in 1973, because Allende was interfering with business control of Chilean society. After fifteen years of often brutal and savage dictatorship - all in the name of the democratic free market - formal democracy was restored in 1989 with a constitution that made it vastly more difficult (if not impossible) for the citizenry to challenge the business-military domination of Chilean society. That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; i.e., so long as it isn't democracy.
Neoliberal democracy therefore has an important and necessary byproduct - a depoliticized citizenry marked by apathy and cynicism. If electoral democracy affects little of social life, it is irrational to devote much attention to it; in the United States, the spawning ground of neoliberal democracy, voter turnout in the 1998 congressional elections was a record low, with just one-third of eligible voters going to the polls. Although occasionally generating concern from those established parties like the U.S. Democratic Party that tend to attract the votes of the dispossessed, low voter turnout tends to be accepted and encouraged by the powers that be as a very good thing since nonvoters are, not surprisingly, disproportionately found among the poor and working class. Policies that quickly could increase voter interest and participation rates are stymied before ever getting into the public arena. In the United States, for example, the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the corporate community, have refused to reform laws - some of which they put on the boos - making it virtually impossible to create new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competition and free choice have little meaning. In some respects, the caliber of debate and choice in neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of a genuine democracy.
But this barely indicates neoliberalism's pernicious implications for a civic-centered political culture. On one hand, the social inequality generated by neoliberal policies undermines any effort to realize the legal equality necessary to make democracy credible. Large corporations have resources to influence media and overwhelm the political process, and do so accordingly. In U.S. electoral politics, for just one example, the richest one-quarter of one percent of Americans make 80 percent of all individual political contributions and corporations outspend labor by a margin of ten to one. Under neoliberalism this all makes sense; elections then reflect market principles, with contributions being equated with investments. As a result, it reinforces the irrelevance of electoral politics to most people and assures the maintenance of unquestioned corporate rule.
On the other hand, to be effective, democracy requires that people feel a connection to their fellow citizens, and that this connection manifests itself though a variety of nonmarket organizations and institutions. A vibrant political culture needs community groups, libraries, public schools, neighborhood organizations, cooperatives, public meeting places, voluntary associations, and trade unions to provide ways for citizens to meet, communicate, and interact with their fellow citizens. Neoliberal democracy, with its notion of the market uber alles, takes dead aim at this sector. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.
In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.
It is fitting that Noam Chomsky is the leading intellectual figure in the world today in the battle for democracy and against neoliberalism. In the 1960s, Chomsky was a prominent U.S. critic of the Vietnam war and, more broadly, became perhaps the most trenchant analyst of the ways U.S. foreign policy undermines democracy, quashes human rights, and promotes the interests of the wealthy few. In the 1970s, Chomsky (along with his co-author Edward S. Herman) began researching the ways the U.S. news media serve elite interests and undermine the capacity of the citizenry to actually rule their lives in a democratic fashion. Their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent, remains the starting point for any serious inquiry into news media performance.
Throughout these years Chomsky, who could be characterized as an anarchist or, perhaps more accurately, a libertarian socialist, was a vocal, principled, and consistent democratic opponent and critic of Communist and Leninist political states and parties. He educated countless people, including myself, that democracy was a non-negotiable cornerstone of any postcapitalist society worth living in or fighting for. At the same time, he has demonstrated the absurdity of equating capitalism with democracy, or thinking that capitalist societies, even under the best of circumstances, will ever open access to information or decision-making beyond the most narrow and controlled possibilities. I doubt any author, aside from perhaps George Orwell, has approached Chomsky in systematically skewering the hypocrisy of rulers and ideologues in both Communist and capitalist societies as they claim that theirs is the only form of true democracy available to humanity.
In the 1990s, all these strands of Chomsky's political work - from anti-imperialism and critical media analysis to writings on democracy and the labor movement - have come together, culminating in work like Profit Over People, about democracy and the neoliberal threat. Chomsky has done much to reinvigorate an understanding of the social requirements for democracy, drawing upon the ancient Greeks as well as the leading thinkers of democratic revolutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As he makes clear, it is impossible to be a proponent of participatory democracy and at the same time a champion of capitalism or any other class-divided society. In assessing the real historical struggles for democracy, Chomsky also reveals that neoliberalism is hardly a new thing; it is merely the current version of the battle for the wealthy few to circumscribe the political rights and civic powers of the many.
Chomsky may also be the leading critic of the mythology of the natural "free" market, that cheery hymn that is pounded into our heads about how the economy is competitive, rational, efficient, and fair. As Chomsky points out, markets are almost never competitive. Most of the economy is dominated by massive corporations with tremendous control over their markets and which therefore face precious little competition of the sort described in economics textbooks and politicians' speeches. Moreover, corporations themselves are effectively totalitarian organizations, operating along nondemocratic lines. That our economy is centered around such institutions severely compromises our ability to have a democratic society.
The mythology of the free market also submits that governments are inefficient institutions that should be limited, so as not to hurt the magic of the natural laissez faire market. In fact, as Chomsky emphasizes, governments are central to the modern capitalist system. They lavishly subsidize corporations and work to advance corporate interests on numerous fronts. The same corporations that exult in neoliberal ideology are in fact often hypocritical: they want and expect governments to funnel tax dollars to them, and to protect their markets from competition for them, but they want to be assured that governments will not tax them or work supportively on behalf of non-business interests, especially the poor and working class. Governments are bigger than ever, but under neoliberalism they have far less pretense to addressing non-corporate interests.
Nowhere is the centrality of governments and policymaking more apparent than in the emergence of the global market economy. What is presented by pro-business ideologues as the natural expansion of free markets across borders is, in fact, quite the opposite. Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world's people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations. Nowhere is the process more apparent than in the creation of the World Trade Organization in the early 1990s and, now, in the secret deliberations on behalf of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI).
Indeed, it is the inability to have honest and candid discussions and debates about neoliberalism in the United States and elsewhere that is one of its most striking features. Chomsky's critique of the neoliberal order is effectively off-limits to mainstream analysis despite its empirical strength and because of its commitment to democratic values. Here, Chomsky's analysis of the doctrinal system in capitalist democracies is useful. The corporate news media, the PR industry, the academic ideologues, and the intellectual culture writ large play the central role of providing the "necessary illusions" to make this unpalatable situation appear rational, benevolent, and necessary (if not necessarily desirable). As Chomsky hastens to point out, this is no formal conspiracy by powerful interests; it doesn't have to be. Through a variety of institutional mechanisms, signals are sent to intellectuals, pundits, and journalists, pushing toward seeing the status quo as the best of all possible worlds, and away from challenging those who benefit from that status quo. Chomsky's work is a direct call for democratic activists to remake our media system so it can be opened up to anticorporate, antineoliberal perspectives and inquiry. It is also a challenge to all intellectuals, or at least those who express a commitment to democracy, to take a long, hard look in the mirror and to ask themselves in whose interests, and for what values, do they do their work.
Chomsky's description of the neoliberal/corporate hold over our economy, polity, journalism, and culture is so powerful and overwhelming that for some readers it can produce a sense of resignation. In our demoralized political times, a few may go a step further and conclude that we are enmeshed in this regressive system because, alas, humanity is simply incapable of creating a more humane, egalitarian, and democratic social order.
In fact, Chomsky's greatest contribution may well be his insistence upon the fundamental democratic inclinations of the world's peoples, and the revolutionary potential implicit in those impulses. The best evidence of this possibility is the extent to which corporate forces go to prevent genuine political democracy from being established. The world's rulers understand implicitly that theirs is a system established to suit the needs of the few, not the many, and that the many therefore cannot ever be permitted to question and alter corporate rule. Even in the hobbled democracies that do exist, the corporate community works incessantly to see that important issues like the MAI are never publicly debated. And the business community spends a fortune bankrolling a PR apparatus to convince Americans that this is the best of all possible worlds. The time to worry about the possibility of social change for the better, by this logic, will be when the corporate community abandons PR and buying elections, permits a representative media, and is comfortable establishing a genuinely egalitarian participatory democracy because it no longer fears the power of the many. But there is no reason to think that day will ever come.
Neoliberalism's loudest message is that there is no alternative to the status quo, and that humanity has reached its highest level. Chomsky points out that there have been several other periods designated as the "end of history" in the past. In the 1920s and 1950s, for example, U.S. elites claimed that the system was working and that mass quiescence reflected widespread satisfaction with the status quo. Events shortly thereafter highlighted the silliness of those beliefs. I suspect that as soon as democratic forces record a few tangible victories the blood will return to their veins, and talk of no possible hope for change will go the same route as all previous elite fantasies about their glorious rule being enshrined for a millennium.
The notion that no superior alternative to the status quo exists is more farfetched today than ever, in this era when there are mind-boggling technologies for bettering the human condition. It is true that it remains unclear how we might establish a viable, free, and humane post-capitalist order; the very notion has a utopian air about it. But every advance in history, from ending slavery and establishing democracy to ending formal colonialism, has at some point had to conquer the notion that it was impossible to do because it had never been done before. As Chomsky points out, organized political activism is responsible for the degree of democracy we have today, for universal adult suffrage, for women's rights, for trade unions, for civil rights, for the freedoms we do enjoy. Even if the notion of a post-capitalist society seems unattainable, we know that human political activity can make the world we live in vastly more humane. As we get to that point, perhaps we will again be able to think in terms of building a political economy based on principles of cooperation, equality, self-government, and individual freedom.
Until then, the struggle for social change is not a hypothetical issue. The current neoliberal order has generated massive political and economic crises from east Asia to eastern Europe and Latin America. The quality of life in the developed nations of Europe, Japan, and North America is fragile and the societies are in considerable turmoil. Tremendous upheaval is in the cards for the coming years and decades. There is considerable doubt about the outcome of that upheaval, however, and little reason to think it will lead automatically to a democratic and humane resolution. That will be determined by how we, the people, organize, respond, and act. As Chomsky says, if you act like there is no possibility of change for the better, you guarantee that there will be no change for the better. The choice is ours, the choice is yours.
Robert W. McChesney teaches communication at the University of Illinois. His newest book is Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999). This article first appeared as the introduction to Noam Chomsky's Profit Over People (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999).
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:07 AM
1 comments
links to this post
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Think I'm Kidding about Slavery? - Part 2
Hey Folks,
On March first as part of a posting about our nation turning toward the suppression of workers, pushing ever more towards making a buck by enslaving the people, I shared a letter to the local paper's editor in which I made a modest proposal.
To the Editor,
In the editorial “Putting politics first” you reported that by avoiding “prevailing wage” standards, one area school had saved $500,000 by taking it out of the workers’ pockets. That got me to thinking. Even more money could be saved using indentured servants brought in from poor countries as is done in Saudi Arabia. The use of prison labor would increase the savings even further.
As the editorial pointed out, under the invisible hand of the Market, contractors didn’t have to hire experienced people; neither did they have to pay into employee medical and retirement plans. Under the Indentured Servant plan, no one would have experience and contractors could simply send sick or aging workers back to their own country.
Now, of course, some might argue that indentured servants would put millions of Americans out of work, and the resulting poverty would cause a tremendous increase in crime. Well, sure. But, no problem.
The increase in crime would lead to an expanded prison population which, in turn, would provide a larger prison workforce to help reduce taxpayer expense and advance commerce. Once all working Americans are in prison, the ultimate savings will have been achieved, with labor costs approaching zero.
And the cost of imprisoning all working Americans could be covered by severely taxing the income of the indentured servants. Perhaps – as in Haiti– this would finally free the wealthy of all taxation.
What a great plan! The only possible improvement might be the reinstitution of slavery. This time based on class rather than race.
Yours – Tom Harker
entire posting: http://www.ukuleleman.net/2007/03/think-im-kidding-about-slavery.html
Then!!!! Bob Herbert shows that I'm a day late and a dollar short. Crafty entrepreneurs have already implemented my idea.
Damn!!
- Uke Man
March 12, 2007
Indentured Servants in America
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
A must-read for anyone who favors an expansion of guest worker programs in the U.S. is a stunning new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center that details the widespread abuse of highly vulnerable, poverty-stricken workers in programs that already exist.
The report is titled “Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States.” It will be formally released today at a press conference in Washington.
Workers recruited from Mexico, South America, Asia and elsewhere to work in American hotels and in such labor-intensive industries as forestry, seafood processing and construction are often ruthlessly exploited.
They are routinely cheated out of their wages, which are low to begin with. They are bound like indentured servants to the middlemen and employers who arrange their work tours in the U.S. And they are virtual hostages of the American companies that employ them.
The law does not allow these “guests” to change jobs while they’re here. If a particular employer is unscrupulous, as is very often the case, the worker has little or no recourse.
One of the guest workers profiled in the report was a psychology student recruited in the Dominican Republic to work at a hotel in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The woman had taken on $4,000 in debt to cover “fees” and other expenses that were required for her to get a desk job that paid $6 an hour.
But after a month, her hours were steadily reduced until she was working only 15 or 20 hours a week. That left her with barely enough money to survive, and with no way of paying off her crushing debt.
The woman and her fellow guest workers had hardly enough money for food. “We would just buy Chinese food because it was the cheapest,” she said. “We would buy one plate a day and share it between two or three people.” She told the authors of the report: “I felt like an animal without claws — defenseless. It is the same as slavery.”
Steven Greenhouse of The Times recently reported on a waiter from Indonesia who took on $6,000 in debt to become a guest worker. He arrived in North Carolina expecting to do farm work but found that there was no job for him at all.
The report focused primarily on the 120,000 foreign workers who are allowed into the U.S. each year to work on farms or at other low-skilled jobs. In most cases the guest workers take on a heavy debt load to participate in the program, anywhere from $500 to more than $10,000. Worried about the welfare of their families back home, and with the huge debt hanging over their heads, the workers are most often docile, even in the face of the most egregious treatment.
The result, said the report, is that they are “systematically exploited and abused.”
Some of the worst abuses occur in the forestry industry. The report said, “Virtually every forestry company that the Southern Poverty Law Center has encountered provides workers with pay stubs showing that they have worked substantially fewer hours than they actually worked.”
A favorite (and extremely cruel) tactic of employers is the seizure of guest workers’ identity documents, such as passports and Social Security cards. That leaves the workers incredibly vulnerable.
“Numerous employers have refused to return these documents even when the worker simply wanted to return to his home country,” the report said. “The Southern Poverty Law Center also has encountered numerous incidents where employers destroyed passports or visas in order to convert workers into undocumented status.”
Without their papers the workers live in abject fear of encountering the authorities, who will treat them as illegals. They are completely at the mercy of the employers.
President Bush has been relentless in his push to greatly expand guest worker programs as part of his effort to revise the nation’s immigration laws. To expand these programs without looking closely at the gruesome abuses already taking place would be both tragic and ridiculous.
“This is not a situation where there are just a few bad-apple employers,” said Mary Bauer, director of the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has initiated a number of lawsuits on behalf of abused workers. “Our experience is that it’s the very structure of the program that lends itself to abuse.”
On March first as part of a posting about our nation turning toward the suppression of workers, pushing ever more towards making a buck by enslaving the people, I shared a letter to the local paper's editor in which I made a modest proposal.
To the Editor,
In the editorial “Putting politics first” you reported that by avoiding “prevailing wage” standards, one area school had saved $500,000 by taking it out of the workers’ pockets. That got me to thinking. Even more money could be saved using indentured servants brought in from poor countries as is done in Saudi Arabia. The use of prison labor would increase the savings even further.
As the editorial pointed out, under the invisible hand of the Market, contractors didn’t have to hire experienced people; neither did they have to pay into employee medical and retirement plans. Under the Indentured Servant plan, no one would have experience and contractors could simply send sick or aging workers back to their own country.
Now, of course, some might argue that indentured servants would put millions of Americans out of work, and the resulting poverty would cause a tremendous increase in crime. Well, sure. But, no problem.
The increase in crime would lead to an expanded prison population which, in turn, would provide a larger prison workforce to help reduce taxpayer expense and advance commerce. Once all working Americans are in prison, the ultimate savings will have been achieved, with labor costs approaching zero.
And the cost of imprisoning all working Americans could be covered by severely taxing the income of the indentured servants. Perhaps – as in Haiti– this would finally free the wealthy of all taxation.
What a great plan! The only possible improvement might be the reinstitution of slavery. This time based on class rather than race.
Yours – Tom Harker
entire posting: http://www.ukuleleman.net/2007/03/think-im-kidding-about-slavery.html
Then!!!! Bob Herbert shows that I'm a day late and a dollar short. Crafty entrepreneurs have already implemented my idea.
Damn!!
- Uke Man
March 12, 2007
Indentured Servants in America
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
A must-read for anyone who favors an expansion of guest worker programs in the U.S. is a stunning new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center that details the widespread abuse of highly vulnerable, poverty-stricken workers in programs that already exist.
The report is titled “Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States.” It will be formally released today at a press conference in Washington.
Workers recruited from Mexico, South America, Asia and elsewhere to work in American hotels and in such labor-intensive industries as forestry, seafood processing and construction are often ruthlessly exploited.
They are routinely cheated out of their wages, which are low to begin with. They are bound like indentured servants to the middlemen and employers who arrange their work tours in the U.S. And they are virtual hostages of the American companies that employ them.
The law does not allow these “guests” to change jobs while they’re here. If a particular employer is unscrupulous, as is very often the case, the worker has little or no recourse.
One of the guest workers profiled in the report was a psychology student recruited in the Dominican Republic to work at a hotel in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The woman had taken on $4,000 in debt to cover “fees” and other expenses that were required for her to get a desk job that paid $6 an hour.
But after a month, her hours were steadily reduced until she was working only 15 or 20 hours a week. That left her with barely enough money to survive, and with no way of paying off her crushing debt.
The woman and her fellow guest workers had hardly enough money for food. “We would just buy Chinese food because it was the cheapest,” she said. “We would buy one plate a day and share it between two or three people.” She told the authors of the report: “I felt like an animal without claws — defenseless. It is the same as slavery.”
Steven Greenhouse of The Times recently reported on a waiter from Indonesia who took on $6,000 in debt to become a guest worker. He arrived in North Carolina expecting to do farm work but found that there was no job for him at all.
The report focused primarily on the 120,000 foreign workers who are allowed into the U.S. each year to work on farms or at other low-skilled jobs. In most cases the guest workers take on a heavy debt load to participate in the program, anywhere from $500 to more than $10,000. Worried about the welfare of their families back home, and with the huge debt hanging over their heads, the workers are most often docile, even in the face of the most egregious treatment.
The result, said the report, is that they are “systematically exploited and abused.”
Some of the worst abuses occur in the forestry industry. The report said, “Virtually every forestry company that the Southern Poverty Law Center has encountered provides workers with pay stubs showing that they have worked substantially fewer hours than they actually worked.”
A favorite (and extremely cruel) tactic of employers is the seizure of guest workers’ identity documents, such as passports and Social Security cards. That leaves the workers incredibly vulnerable.
“Numerous employers have refused to return these documents even when the worker simply wanted to return to his home country,” the report said. “The Southern Poverty Law Center also has encountered numerous incidents where employers destroyed passports or visas in order to convert workers into undocumented status.”
Without their papers the workers live in abject fear of encountering the authorities, who will treat them as illegals. They are completely at the mercy of the employers.
President Bush has been relentless in his push to greatly expand guest worker programs as part of his effort to revise the nation’s immigration laws. To expand these programs without looking closely at the gruesome abuses already taking place would be both tragic and ridiculous.
“This is not a situation where there are just a few bad-apple employers,” said Mary Bauer, director of the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has initiated a number of lawsuits on behalf of abused workers. “Our experience is that it’s the very structure of the program that lends itself to abuse.”
posted by Ukulele Man at 6:22 PM
0 comments
links to this post
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
if anyone Googling this picture wants to know why it's here, see: 
http://www.ukuleleman.net/2007/03/adiphobia.html
http://www.ukuleleman.net/2007/03/adiphobia.html
posted by Ukulele Man at 4:00 PM
0 comments
links to this post
Adiphobia
Hey Folks,
Below is a posting from May 19, 2006. I'm re-posting it because I received the following comment from an anonymous reader regarding the picture directly above:
"please remove this horrific picture. it shouldnt be up here."
Since this recent comment refers to a posting almost a year old, I'm guessing the author came across the picture a few days ago while Googling "Karen Carpenter." A lot of hits on this blog come from people checking the graphics.
If that's the case, the author probably didn't read the commentary under the picture which explains the point of it all.
Having been fat much of my life, I'm sensitive to our society's distorted "values" regarding "obesity" (negative) and "thinness" (positive). Much psychological and physical damage is visited on millions of people every day because of our demented notions of proper body dimensions.
The posting below deals with this reality. The "phatties" celebrate themselves. If everyone did, maybe Karen Carpenter would not have died from the terrible disease of anorexia. And while I can understand one being repulsed by the gruesome picture of the singer, pretending it never happened won't help keep it from happening again.
- Uke Man
Hey Folks,
In the May 18 Dispatch was an article, based on a Yale survey, titled “What would you give up to be thin?”
It seems that people would do almost ANYTHING to be thin, at least the ones surveyed by Yale (home of “Skull & Bones” [what could be thinner?].
Besides the severe and lengthy suffering integral to a myriad of fad and “serious” diets, the survey-ees reportedly were willing to trade decades of their lives for skinniness. They would trade an arm or a leg to avoid poundage. Some would rather be blind.
The article goes on: “Thirty per cent of respondents said they would rather be divorced than obese; 25 per cent said they would prefer not being able to have children; 15 per cent said they would rather be severely depressed. Slightly fewer said they would rather be an alcoholic (14 per cent).
But it wasn't simply personal sacrifices that people said they would be willing to make; 10 per cent said they would rather have an anorexic child than an obese one. Eight per cent said they would prefer their child to have learning disability.”
I was amazed !! It was hard to believe; so, I surfed the net for possible illumination. By chance, I came across (and have included below) an article from “The Adipose Quarterly,” the collegiate periodical of “Fatties United Conscientiously at Kentucky University” (FUC-KU), which I hope sheds some light on the matter.
- Uke Man
. . . The Follow-Up Survey
Fellow Phatties,
I’m sure you have been made aware of the recent Yale survey : “What would you give up to be thin?”
Well, the leadership here at FUC-KU have not been idle !! In fact, we have completed a follow-up survey of the same skinny people polled by Yale, using questions left off the original inquiry. The results are below.
The Majority of respondents claimed:
1. They would consider Zen gardening only if Buddha slimmed down.
2. Peter Paul Rubens is either a candy bar or Pee Wee Herman.
3. Tooth-whitening does NOT ameliorate obesity.
4. The new Pope should consider selective liposuction.
5. Money DOES ameliorate obesity.
6. John Belushi and Chris Farley weren't fat.
7. Renoir and R. Crumb don’t know “sexy.”
8. They would rather be uglier than fat.
9. Karen Carpenter was a Goddess.
10. They don't think the joke: “Want t’lose 10 lbs. of ugly fat? Cut off your head!!" is a funny rejoinder.
11. They loved Britney before she got fat.
12 Tom Cruise and Scientology rule !!
As you can see, the majority of respondents were extremely faithful to their mantra: “One can never be too thin or shallow.”
There were only a few departures from their solid front:
Seven out of ten would NOT give up their cell phones to avoid poundage. Nine out of ten would rather be fat than have Jay Leno’s chin!
Finally, in the “Comments” section, the most frequent entry was:“Do these pants make my ass look big?”
. . .Well, Phatties, that's it! Until the next issue of Adipose Quarterly, don’t take any shit from emaciated Yalies or other adipophobes.
Just give ‘em the “Fatties United Conscientiously – KU” cheer
....................Be phat,
.............................Joe “Mama” Rotundo, Pres.
Below is a posting from May 19, 2006. I'm re-posting it because I received the following comment from an anonymous reader regarding the picture directly above:
"please remove this horrific picture. it shouldnt be up here."
Since this recent comment refers to a posting almost a year old, I'm guessing the author came across the picture a few days ago while Googling "Karen Carpenter." A lot of hits on this blog come from people checking the graphics.
If that's the case, the author probably didn't read the commentary under the picture which explains the point of it all.
Having been fat much of my life, I'm sensitive to our society's distorted "values" regarding "obesity" (negative) and "thinness" (positive). Much psychological and physical damage is visited on millions of people every day because of our demented notions of proper body dimensions.
The posting below deals with this reality. The "phatties" celebrate themselves. If everyone did, maybe Karen Carpenter would not have died from the terrible disease of anorexia. And while I can understand one being repulsed by the gruesome picture of the singer, pretending it never happened won't help keep it from happening again.
- Uke Man
Hey Folks,
In the May 18 Dispatch was an article, based on a Yale survey, titled “What would you give up to be thin?”
It seems that people would do almost ANYTHING to be thin, at least the ones surveyed by Yale (home of “Skull & Bones” [what could be thinner?].
Besides the severe and lengthy suffering integral to a myriad of fad and “serious” diets, the survey-ees reportedly were willing to trade decades of their lives for skinniness. They would trade an arm or a leg to avoid poundage. Some would rather be blind.
The article goes on: “Thirty per cent of respondents said they would rather be divorced than obese; 25 per cent said they would prefer not being able to have children; 15 per cent said they would rather be severely depressed. Slightly fewer said they would rather be an alcoholic (14 per cent).
But it wasn't simply personal sacrifices that people said they would be willing to make; 10 per cent said they would rather have an anorexic child than an obese one. Eight per cent said they would prefer their child to have learning disability.”
I was amazed !! It was hard to believe; so, I surfed the net for possible illumination. By chance, I came across (and have included below) an article from “The Adipose Quarterly,” the collegiate periodical of “Fatties United Conscientiously at Kentucky University” (FUC-KU), which I hope sheds some light on the matter.
- Uke Man
. . . The Follow-Up Survey
Fellow Phatties,
I’m sure you have been made aware of the recent Yale survey : “What would you give up to be thin?”
Well, the leadership here at FUC-KU have not been idle !! In fact, we have completed a follow-up survey of the same skinny people polled by Yale, using questions left off the original inquiry. The results are below.
The Majority of respondents claimed:
1. They would consider Zen gardening only if Buddha slimmed down.
2. Peter Paul Rubens is either a candy bar or Pee Wee Herman.
3. Tooth-whitening does NOT ameliorate obesity.
4. The new Pope should consider selective liposuction.
5. Money DOES ameliorate obesity.
6. John Belushi and Chris Farley weren't fat.
7. Renoir and R. Crumb don’t know “sexy.”
8. They would rather be uglier than fat.
9. Karen Carpenter was a Goddess.
10. They don't think the joke: “Want t’lose 10 lbs. of ugly fat? Cut off your head!!" is a funny rejoinder.
11. They loved Britney before she got fat.
12 Tom Cruise and Scientology rule !!
As you can see, the majority of respondents were extremely faithful to their mantra: “One can never be too thin or shallow.”
There were only a few departures from their solid front:
Seven out of ten would NOT give up their cell phones to avoid poundage. Nine out of ten would rather be fat than have Jay Leno’s chin!
Finally, in the “Comments” section, the most frequent entry was:“Do these pants make my ass look big?”
. . .Well, Phatties, that's it! Until the next issue of Adipose Quarterly, don’t take any shit from emaciated Yalies or other adipophobes.
Just give ‘em the “Fatties United Conscientiously – KU” cheer
....................Be phat,
.............................Joe “Mama” Rotundo, Pres.
posted by Ukulele Man at 9:31 AM
0 comments
links to this post
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Pardon Scooter
(he's too cute for prison)
posted by Ukulele Man at 9:24 PM
0 comments
links to this post
How funny!!!
Hey Folks,
After complaining in a recent column that “Scooter” Libby got a raw deal, Thomas Sowell said:
“More important, how are we to expect highly qualified people, with far better options than a government job, to risk being put through the Washington meat grinder because of politics, media hype and special prosecutors …?”
That made me laugh.
If the treatment of Libby by the “Washington meat grinder” will put an end to the kind of “highly qualified people” presently running things, then we should be operating that grinder around the clock!!
These hypocrites drag their old chestnut out of their ditty bag whenever "one of theirs" gets in a bind (it's inoperative should the bindee be their opponent). But the humor of its use arises from a deeper reality still:
Almost all of the scum that rises to the top "leadership" of any country is not the "best and brightest" among us; they are not the "most qualified" for the job - unless the "job" is to abuse the people for the good of a relative few.
What a joke!! Translated into reality-based English, what scum like Sowell are actually saying is, "Don't punish that crooked, lying, selfish monster!! If you do, we might end up with good, honest people in charge!!"
Now, if that doesn't make you cry, you have to laugh!
- Uke Man
After complaining in a recent column that “Scooter” Libby got a raw deal, Thomas Sowell said:
“More important, how are we to expect highly qualified people, with far better options than a government job, to risk being put through the Washington meat grinder because of politics, media hype and special prosecutors …?”
That made me laugh.
If the treatment of Libby by the “Washington meat grinder” will put an end to the kind of “highly qualified people” presently running things, then we should be operating that grinder around the clock!!
These hypocrites drag their old chestnut out of their ditty bag whenever "one of theirs" gets in a bind (it's inoperative should the bindee be their opponent). But the humor of its use arises from a deeper reality still:
Almost all of the scum that rises to the top "leadership" of any country is not the "best and brightest" among us; they are not the "most qualified" for the job - unless the "job" is to abuse the people for the good of a relative few.
What a joke!! Translated into reality-based English, what scum like Sowell are actually saying is, "Don't punish that crooked, lying, selfish monster!! If you do, we might end up with good, honest people in charge!!"
Now, if that doesn't make you cry, you have to laugh!
- Uke Man
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:01 PM
0 comments
links to this post
Monday, March 12, 2007
Time to stand up !!!
Hey Folks,
Some people disapprove of talk like what you'll find below, but not because they have good reason to. Some people just want only happy talk - don't want to be frightened by scary talk - don't want their assumptions challenged by facts. Like the frog in the slowly heating kettle of water, they'd rather relax and be boiled than get excited and jump out.
Well, rest your frog legs too long, and someone will eat them.
- Uke Man
Capitol Hill Blue
Turn off the life support: America is dead
Friday, 09 March 2007
By DOUG THOMPSON
Maybe, just maybe, it's time to pull the plug on this failed democratic republic called The United States of America.
Turn off the life support. Disconnect the IVs. Bring in the priest for last rites. The US of A is brain dead with no chance for revival.
Some 40 years ago, I lost friends in the heat and squalor of Vietnam. They died in a war that never needed to be fought, supporting a cause that didn't exist for a government that lied to justify the fight.
A few years later, as a young reporter, I wrote about the attempts of Richard Milhous Nixon to destroy the Constitution of the United States. He failed because the system worked and both Congress and the Supreme Court exercised their powers in our system of checks and balances to restore order to a faltering nation.
"The lessons of Vietnam and Watergate provide a roadmap for the future," I wrote at the time. "With luck, our leaders can use that roadmap to avoid the mistakes of the past."
Now, 33-and-a-half years after the Vietnam War came to an end without resolution and Nixon left office without honor, I'm losing family of friends in the heat and squalor of Iraq. They die in a war that never needed to be fought, supporting a cause that doesn't exist for a government that lied to justify their sacrifices.
Another despot occupies the Presidency, an evil man whose lust for power surpasses Nixon and who poses a far greater danger to the Constitution. This time, however, the system is failing to protect America from despots. George W. Bush rides roughshod over a compliant Congress. The Supreme Court, packed with knee-jerk right-wingers who helped put Bush in office in 2000, abdicated its role long ago.
For a moment - a brief one to be sure - we held out hope that the voice of the voters might be heard after the November midterm elections. But turning out the corrupt Republican leadership of Congress was not enough. Democrats who control the House lack the balls to take Bush on and the razor-thin majority in the Senate can't even get a vote together on a non-binding resolution.
Democrats Thursday unveiled a plan to bring troops home by the end of 2008 but Bush is already threatening a veto if the bill gets out of Congress, which is probably won't.
In the meantime, we've learned that Bush lied about both the size and cost of his "troop surge" that he claims will bring peace and stability to Iraq. Not only are we sending more troops in than he said, at a cost far higher than he projected, his own general on the ground says they will have to stay longer than he told the American people earlier this year.
Over at the U.S. Department of Justice, an contradiction of terms if we over heard one, the FBI has lied repeatedly about its use, and abuse, of the rights-robbing USA Patriot Act to obtain information on U.S. citizens. I find it disturbing that in all their rhetoric about restoring America to the people, the new Democratic leadership of Congress doesn't say a damn thing about repealing the USA Patriot Act, an ill-conceived bill crafted by former attorney general John Ashcroft, and hastily voted into law after 9/11 by shell-shocked representatives and Senators who later admitted they hadn't even read it.
Today we learn that the federal government, at the direction of the White House, routinely ignores the Freedom of Information Act and hides more and more government documents under a cloak of secrecy.
Both Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid joined with Republicans to vote not only for original passage of the USA Patriot Act but also to reauthorize it. Bush has used the act to justify spying on Americans, wiretapping without warrants and strip away the last protections of the Constitution.
While Congress slept and the Supreme Court looked the other way, the Bush administration has gone on its merry way seizing absolute control of the United States government. He fired independent thinking U.S. attorneys, replacing them with lockstep right-wingers who share his view of totalitarian control of government. He ignores the laws of Congress, issuing "signing statements" that give him the power to do whatever he wants. When the federal courts declared his wiretapping of Americans illegal, he ignored the ruling and appointed an in-house review panel that declared the program "legal."
It doesn't matter who controls Congress. Congress is a dead institution, ruled by timid legislators who no longer exercise any real role in the governing of this nation.
It doesn't matter what the Supreme Court may or may not do. The President of the United States has declared himself a "war time President" and granted himself dictatorial rights that no one in Congress or the Court appears able to successfully challenge him.
The America we used to cherish is dead, replaced by a ruthless dictator. The America that more than 3,100 men and women died for in Iraq no longer exists. We might as well pull the sheet over Uncle Sam's head and prepare for the funeral.
Or can we, as a people, regain control of our government? Perhaps, but doing so will require drastic measures. I'm not talking about kicking out one party of political hacks and replacing it with another: Been there, done that, witnessed the failure.
We need to rethink this experiment called America. Maybe we need to start with a clean sheet of paper. Maybe it's time to recognize that our present America is a rotting corpse, devoured from within by the cancer of politics, corruption, greed and a lust for power.
Maybe it's time for a new American Revolution. After all, the last one started because another guy named George tried to destroy our way of life.
Some people disapprove of talk like what you'll find below, but not because they have good reason to. Some people just want only happy talk - don't want to be frightened by scary talk - don't want their assumptions challenged by facts. Like the frog in the slowly heating kettle of water, they'd rather relax and be boiled than get excited and jump out.
Well, rest your frog legs too long, and someone will eat them.
- Uke Man
Capitol Hill Blue
Turn off the life support: America is dead
Friday, 09 March 2007
By DOUG THOMPSON
Maybe, just maybe, it's time to pull the plug on this failed democratic republic called The United States of America.
Turn off the life support. Disconnect the IVs. Bring in the priest for last rites. The US of A is brain dead with no chance for revival.
Some 40 years ago, I lost friends in the heat and squalor of Vietnam. They died in a war that never needed to be fought, supporting a cause that didn't exist for a government that lied to justify the fight.
A few years later, as a young reporter, I wrote about the attempts of Richard Milhous Nixon to destroy the Constitution of the United States. He failed because the system worked and both Congress and the Supreme Court exercised their powers in our system of checks and balances to restore order to a faltering nation.
"The lessons of Vietnam and Watergate provide a roadmap for the future," I wrote at the time. "With luck, our leaders can use that roadmap to avoid the mistakes of the past."
Now, 33-and-a-half years after the Vietnam War came to an end without resolution and Nixon left office without honor, I'm losing family of friends in the heat and squalor of Iraq. They die in a war that never needed to be fought, supporting a cause that doesn't exist for a government that lied to justify their sacrifices.
Another despot occupies the Presidency, an evil man whose lust for power surpasses Nixon and who poses a far greater danger to the Constitution. This time, however, the system is failing to protect America from despots. George W. Bush rides roughshod over a compliant Congress. The Supreme Court, packed with knee-jerk right-wingers who helped put Bush in office in 2000, abdicated its role long ago.
For a moment - a brief one to be sure - we held out hope that the voice of the voters might be heard after the November midterm elections. But turning out the corrupt Republican leadership of Congress was not enough. Democrats who control the House lack the balls to take Bush on and the razor-thin majority in the Senate can't even get a vote together on a non-binding resolution.
Democrats Thursday unveiled a plan to bring troops home by the end of 2008 but Bush is already threatening a veto if the bill gets out of Congress, which is probably won't.
In the meantime, we've learned that Bush lied about both the size and cost of his "troop surge" that he claims will bring peace and stability to Iraq. Not only are we sending more troops in than he said, at a cost far higher than he projected, his own general on the ground says they will have to stay longer than he told the American people earlier this year.
Over at the U.S. Department of Justice, an contradiction of terms if we over heard one, the FBI has lied repeatedly about its use, and abuse, of the rights-robbing USA Patriot Act to obtain information on U.S. citizens. I find it disturbing that in all their rhetoric about restoring America to the people, the new Democratic leadership of Congress doesn't say a damn thing about repealing the USA Patriot Act, an ill-conceived bill crafted by former attorney general John Ashcroft, and hastily voted into law after 9/11 by shell-shocked representatives and Senators who later admitted they hadn't even read it.
Today we learn that the federal government, at the direction of the White House, routinely ignores the Freedom of Information Act and hides more and more government documents under a cloak of secrecy.
Both Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid joined with Republicans to vote not only for original passage of the USA Patriot Act but also to reauthorize it. Bush has used the act to justify spying on Americans, wiretapping without warrants and strip away the last protections of the Constitution.
While Congress slept and the Supreme Court looked the other way, the Bush administration has gone on its merry way seizing absolute control of the United States government. He fired independent thinking U.S. attorneys, replacing them with lockstep right-wingers who share his view of totalitarian control of government. He ignores the laws of Congress, issuing "signing statements" that give him the power to do whatever he wants. When the federal courts declared his wiretapping of Americans illegal, he ignored the ruling and appointed an in-house review panel that declared the program "legal."
It doesn't matter who controls Congress. Congress is a dead institution, ruled by timid legislators who no longer exercise any real role in the governing of this nation.
It doesn't matter what the Supreme Court may or may not do. The President of the United States has declared himself a "war time President" and granted himself dictatorial rights that no one in Congress or the Court appears able to successfully challenge him.
The America we used to cherish is dead, replaced by a ruthless dictator. The America that more than 3,100 men and women died for in Iraq no longer exists. We might as well pull the sheet over Uncle Sam's head and prepare for the funeral.
Or can we, as a people, regain control of our government? Perhaps, but doing so will require drastic measures. I'm not talking about kicking out one party of political hacks and replacing it with another: Been there, done that, witnessed the failure.
We need to rethink this experiment called America. Maybe we need to start with a clean sheet of paper. Maybe it's time to recognize that our present America is a rotting corpse, devoured from within by the cancer of politics, corruption, greed and a lust for power.
Maybe it's time for a new American Revolution. After all, the last one started because another guy named George tried to destroy our way of life.
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:34 PM
0 comments
links to this post
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Courage
Hey Folks,
I've been waiting a while on posting this one, too. Closer to her death a lot was written honoring our lost champion, Molly Ivins. I'm glad to honor her again by sharing Krugman's piece and by commenting myself.
Molly was heroic, and Krugman points us to the quality that made her so: courage.
"So Molly Ivins — who didn’t mingle with the great and famous, didn’t have sources high in the administration, and never claimed special expertise on national security or the Middle East — got almost everything right . . . was Molly smarter than all the experts? No, she was just braver.
The administration’s exploitation of 9/11 created an environment in which it took a lot of courage to see and say the obvious. Molly had that courage; not enough others can say the same."
I once heard a speaker say that when Gandhi was asked how to "find God," he didn't suggest piety, prayer, good works, or adherance to doctrine and commandments. Surprisingly he suggested courage.
It seems to me that he is right. We all have the ability to know what is right (if by nothing else than by "doing unto others as we would have them do unto us"). The problem in doing what we should is not in knowing what to do but in having the courage to do it.
Molly Ivins had that courage.
- Uke Man
February 2, 2007
Missing Molly Ivins
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Molly Ivins, the Texas columnist, died of breast cancer on Wednesday. I first met her more than three years ago, when our book tours crossed. She was, as she wrote, “a card-carrying member of The Great Liberal Backlash of 2003, one of the half-dozen or so writers now schlepping around the country promoting books that do not speak kindly of Our Leader’s record.”
I can’t claim to have known her well. But I spent enough time with her, and paid enough attention to her work, to know that obituaries that mostly stressed her satirical gifts missed the main point. Yes, she liked to poke fun at the powerful, and was very good at it. But her satire was only the means to an end: holding the powerful accountable.
She explained her philosophy in a stinging 1995 article in Mother Jones magazine about Rush Limbaugh. “Satire ... has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful,” she wrote. “When you use satire against powerless people ... it is like kicking a cripple.”
Molly never lost sight of two eternal truths: rulers lie, and the times when people are most afraid to challenge authority are also the times when it’s most important to do just that. And the fact that she remembered these truths explains something I haven’t seen pointed out in any of the tributes: her extraordinary prescience on the central political issue of our time.
I’ve been going through Molly’s columns from 2002 and 2003, the period when most of the wise men of the press cheered as Our Leader took us to war on false pretenses, then dismissed as “Bush haters” anyone who complained about the absence of W.M.D. or warned that the victory celebrations were premature. Here are a few selections:
Nov. 19, 2002: “The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? ... There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now.”
Jan. 16, 2003: “I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, ‘Horrible three-way civil war?’ ”
July 14, 2003: “I opposed the war in Iraq because I thought it would lead to the peace from hell, but I’d rather not see my prediction come true and I don’t think we have much time left to avert it. That the occupation is not going well is apparent to everyone but Donald Rumsfeld. ... We don’t need people with credentials as right-wing ideologues and corporate privatizers — we need people who know how to fix water and power plants.”
Oct. 7, 2003: “Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire. ...
“I’ve got an even-money bet out that says more Americans will be killed in the peace than in the war, and more Iraqis will be killed by Americans in the peace than in the war. Not the first time I’ve had a bet out that I hoped I’d lose.”
So Molly Ivins — who didn’t mingle with the great and famous, didn’t have sources high in the administration, and never claimed special expertise on national security or the Middle East — got almost everything right. Meanwhile, how did those who did have all those credentials do?
With very few exceptions, they got everything wrong. They bought the obviously cooked case for war — or found their own reasons to endorse the invasion. They didn’t see the folly of the venture, which was almost as obvious in prospect as it is with the benefit of hindsight. And they took years to realize that everything we were being told about progress in Iraq was a lie.
Was Molly smarter than all the experts? No, she was just braver. The administration’s exploitation of 9/11 created an environment in which it took a lot of courage to see and say the obvious.
Molly had that courage; not enough others can say the same.
And it’s not over. Many of those who failed the big test in 2002 and 2003 are now making excuses for the “surge.” Meanwhile, the same techniques of allegation and innuendo that were used to promote war with Iraq are being used to ratchet up tensions with Iran.
Now, more than ever, we need people who will stand up against the follies and lies of the powerful. And Molly Ivins, who devoted her life to questioning authority, will be sorely missed.
I've been waiting a while on posting this one, too. Closer to her death a lot was written honoring our lost champion, Molly Ivins. I'm glad to honor her again by sharing Krugman's piece and by commenting myself.
Molly was heroic, and Krugman points us to the quality that made her so: courage.
"So Molly Ivins — who didn’t mingle with the great and famous, didn’t have sources high in the administration, and never claimed special expertise on national security or the Middle East — got almost everything right . . . was Molly smarter than all the experts? No, she was just braver.
The administration’s exploitation of 9/11 created an environment in which it took a lot of courage to see and say the obvious. Molly had that courage; not enough others can say the same."
I once heard a speaker say that when Gandhi was asked how to "find God," he didn't suggest piety, prayer, good works, or adherance to doctrine and commandments. Surprisingly he suggested courage.
It seems to me that he is right. We all have the ability to know what is right (if by nothing else than by "doing unto others as we would have them do unto us"). The problem in doing what we should is not in knowing what to do but in having the courage to do it.
Molly Ivins had that courage.
- Uke Man
February 2, 2007
Missing Molly Ivins
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Molly Ivins, the Texas columnist, died of breast cancer on Wednesday. I first met her more than three years ago, when our book tours crossed. She was, as she wrote, “a card-carrying member of The Great Liberal Backlash of 2003, one of the half-dozen or so writers now schlepping around the country promoting books that do not speak kindly of Our Leader’s record.”
I can’t claim to have known her well. But I spent enough time with her, and paid enough attention to her work, to know that obituaries that mostly stressed her satirical gifts missed the main point. Yes, she liked to poke fun at the powerful, and was very good at it. But her satire was only the means to an end: holding the powerful accountable.
She explained her philosophy in a stinging 1995 article in Mother Jones magazine about Rush Limbaugh. “Satire ... has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful,” she wrote. “When you use satire against powerless people ... it is like kicking a cripple.”
Molly never lost sight of two eternal truths: rulers lie, and the times when people are most afraid to challenge authority are also the times when it’s most important to do just that. And the fact that she remembered these truths explains something I haven’t seen pointed out in any of the tributes: her extraordinary prescience on the central political issue of our time.
I’ve been going through Molly’s columns from 2002 and 2003, the period when most of the wise men of the press cheered as Our Leader took us to war on false pretenses, then dismissed as “Bush haters” anyone who complained about the absence of W.M.D. or warned that the victory celebrations were premature. Here are a few selections:
Nov. 19, 2002: “The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? ... There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now.”
Jan. 16, 2003: “I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, ‘Horrible three-way civil war?’ ”
July 14, 2003: “I opposed the war in Iraq because I thought it would lead to the peace from hell, but I’d rather not see my prediction come true and I don’t think we have much time left to avert it. That the occupation is not going well is apparent to everyone but Donald Rumsfeld. ... We don’t need people with credentials as right-wing ideologues and corporate privatizers — we need people who know how to fix water and power plants.”
Oct. 7, 2003: “Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire. ...
“I’ve got an even-money bet out that says more Americans will be killed in the peace than in the war, and more Iraqis will be killed by Americans in the peace than in the war. Not the first time I’ve had a bet out that I hoped I’d lose.”
So Molly Ivins — who didn’t mingle with the great and famous, didn’t have sources high in the administration, and never claimed special expertise on national security or the Middle East — got almost everything right. Meanwhile, how did those who did have all those credentials do?
With very few exceptions, they got everything wrong. They bought the obviously cooked case for war — or found their own reasons to endorse the invasion. They didn’t see the folly of the venture, which was almost as obvious in prospect as it is with the benefit of hindsight. And they took years to realize that everything we were being told about progress in Iraq was a lie.
Was Molly smarter than all the experts? No, she was just braver. The administration’s exploitation of 9/11 created an environment in which it took a lot of courage to see and say the obvious.
Molly had that courage; not enough others can say the same.
And it’s not over. Many of those who failed the big test in 2002 and 2003 are now making excuses for the “surge.” Meanwhile, the same techniques of allegation and innuendo that were used to promote war with Iraq are being used to ratchet up tensions with Iran.
Now, more than ever, we need people who will stand up against the follies and lies of the powerful. And Molly Ivins, who devoted her life to questioning authority, will be sorely missed.
posted by Ukulele Man at 6:45 PM
1 comments
links to this post
Saturday, March 10, 2007
More Spitting: Don't cry for Joshua, Argentina; and don't take any wooden nickels
Hey Folks,
This trooper is no Boy Scout!!
- Uke Man
Spitting Image
by digby
So the dirty, long haired hippies spit on wounded veterans yesterday. Isn't it just like them...
"There were a few tense moments, however, including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling, who was not scheduled to speak, addressed the counterprotesters to voice his support for the administration's policies in Iraq.
Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back."
How awful. And it turns out that poor PFC Sparling has been treated terribly by these DFH's time and time again. Michele Malkin reported on another awful incident back in December:
"Lots of readers watched Fox & Friends this morning and e-mailed about the disgusting greeting card a wounded soldier received while hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Thanks to reader Shari for taking these cell phone camera shots of the card displayed by co-host Brian Kilmeade:
The card front, decorated with patriotic and holiday stamps, was deceptively innocuous. But take a look at what was inside:Yes, that's right. It says "P.S. DIE" in the lower right-hand corner.
According to Kilmeade, who visited Walter Reed on Friday, a US Army soldier named Joshua Sparling received the death wish while recovering from a gunshot wound he received in Ramadi, Iraq. It's the only Christmas card he received. Fox & Friends is urging you to counter the hate by sending your thanks and good wishes to Sparling:
Joshua Sparlingc/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center6900 Georgia Avenue N.W.Washington, D.C. 20307-5001."
Shameful!
Sean Hannity took up his case too and gave Sparling an iPod. (I wonder what neat loot he'll get for being spit upon!)
He has become such a famous victim that he and his parents even went to the State of the Union address at the invitation of Dennis Hastert.
Some might find it odd that such terrible treatment would befall the same man --- first he gets a terrible Christmas card (Christmas!) that tells him to "go die." Then, he was spat upon by protestors --- a myth of the 1960's come to life right before our very eyes. What are the odds?
Luckily the New York Times, which obviously reported his spitting incident without even the most cursory google search on his name, is helping to perpetuate this story for a new generation. From now on, any search of "spitting on Iraq veterans" will turn up this incident to back up the inevitable future claims by wingnuts that they were mistreated by the dirty hippies of 2007. Good job NY Times. That's why they call it the paper of record.
I wonder if they would consider doing a profile of poor put-upon Sparling. Surely, all these awful incidents should be compiled and also put in the paper of record. One poor 24 year old soldier appears to be bearing the brunt of the entire vicious hippie movement. Seems like there's a story there.
Update: Sparling had trouble at an airport too:
"We arrived at the airport at 4:30 pm for a 5:10 flight. When we arrived there was no wheel chair, no one at the SPIRIT counter and no security. I looked for a SPIRIT employee for ten minutes. Joshua said, “Dad I’m going to miss my flight, just get me to the gate and they can help us there.” Northwest gave us a wheel chair, but we still had no security. Security would not let us through because we had no boarding pass. We informed them that SPIRIT had our boarding pass and asked that he please let us go to the gate with him and he could verify it, or get someone from SPIRIT and they could give it to him. The security guard said, “You are no different than any other passenger with no boarding pass - no go.”
My son started to cry uncontrollably and told the guard to go to hell. Another lady spoke up and said, “That’s what you get for fighting in a war we have no business in.” Madder and very emotional I asked, “Can’t you remember 9-11?” She responded that was just our excuse to be in Iraq when we should not be there and we deserved whatever we got. That is when my son really lost it. Three WWII vets were coming off flights into DC, gave my son a hug, and stood up to the lady and security guard. They stayed with my son until he flew out."
Thank goodness. It's hell out there for this veteran everywhere he goes.
Update II: Thanks to Julia for alerting me to this. Sparling has been in the news since 2005 when the army used him for PR purposes. Interesting.
It also seems that Sparling's horrible Christmas card was actually sent by a white supremecist nutcase named Michael Crook. (Or at least he took credit for it.) (This was noted by Malkin at the time.)
Sparling appears to be some sort of US Army Zelig with ties to white supremecists who is becoming the poster boy for veterans who feel beseiged by dirty hippies.
One wonders if John O'Neill has taken this young fellow under his wing.
This trooper is no Boy Scout!!
- Uke Man
Spitting Image
by digby
So the dirty, long haired hippies spit on wounded veterans yesterday. Isn't it just like them...
"There were a few tense moments, however, including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling, who was not scheduled to speak, addressed the counterprotesters to voice his support for the administration's policies in Iraq.
Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back."
How awful. And it turns out that poor PFC Sparling has been treated terribly by these DFH's time and time again. Michele Malkin reported on another awful incident back in December:
"Lots of readers watched Fox & Friends this morning and e-mailed about the disgusting greeting card a wounded soldier received while hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Thanks to reader Shari for taking these cell phone camera shots of the card displayed by co-host Brian Kilmeade:
The card front, decorated with patriotic and holiday stamps, was deceptively innocuous. But take a look at what was inside:Yes, that's right. It says "P.S. DIE" in the lower right-hand corner.
According to Kilmeade, who visited Walter Reed on Friday, a US Army soldier named Joshua Sparling received the death wish while recovering from a gunshot wound he received in Ramadi, Iraq. It's the only Christmas card he received. Fox & Friends is urging you to counter the hate by sending your thanks and good wishes to Sparling:
Joshua Sparlingc/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center6900 Georgia Avenue N.W.Washington, D.C. 20307-5001."
Shameful!
Sean Hannity took up his case too and gave Sparling an iPod. (I wonder what neat loot he'll get for being spit upon!)
He has become such a famous victim that he and his parents even went to the State of the Union address at the invitation of Dennis Hastert.
Some might find it odd that such terrible treatment would befall the same man --- first he gets a terrible Christmas card (Christmas!) that tells him to "go die." Then, he was spat upon by protestors --- a myth of the 1960's come to life right before our very eyes. What are the odds?
Luckily the New York Times, which obviously reported his spitting incident without even the most cursory google search on his name, is helping to perpetuate this story for a new generation. From now on, any search of "spitting on Iraq veterans" will turn up this incident to back up the inevitable future claims by wingnuts that they were mistreated by the dirty hippies of 2007. Good job NY Times. That's why they call it the paper of record.
I wonder if they would consider doing a profile of poor put-upon Sparling. Surely, all these awful incidents should be compiled and also put in the paper of record. One poor 24 year old soldier appears to be bearing the brunt of the entire vicious hippie movement. Seems like there's a story there.
Update: Sparling had trouble at an airport too:
"We arrived at the airport at 4:30 pm for a 5:10 flight. When we arrived there was no wheel chair, no one at the SPIRIT counter and no security. I looked for a SPIRIT employee for ten minutes. Joshua said, “Dad I’m going to miss my flight, just get me to the gate and they can help us there.” Northwest gave us a wheel chair, but we still had no security. Security would not let us through because we had no boarding pass. We informed them that SPIRIT had our boarding pass and asked that he please let us go to the gate with him and he could verify it, or get someone from SPIRIT and they could give it to him. The security guard said, “You are no different than any other passenger with no boarding pass - no go.”
My son started to cry uncontrollably and told the guard to go to hell. Another lady spoke up and said, “That’s what you get for fighting in a war we have no business in.” Madder and very emotional I asked, “Can’t you remember 9-11?” She responded that was just our excuse to be in Iraq when we should not be there and we deserved whatever we got. That is when my son really lost it. Three WWII vets were coming off flights into DC, gave my son a hug, and stood up to the lady and security guard. They stayed with my son until he flew out."
Thank goodness. It's hell out there for this veteran everywhere he goes.
Update II: Thanks to Julia for alerting me to this. Sparling has been in the news since 2005 when the army used him for PR purposes. Interesting.
It also seems that Sparling's horrible Christmas card was actually sent by a white supremecist nutcase named Michael Crook. (Or at least he took credit for it.) (This was noted by Malkin at the time.)
Sparling appears to be some sort of US Army Zelig with ties to white supremecists who is becoming the poster boy for veterans who feel beseiged by dirty hippies.
One wonders if John O'Neill has taken this young fellow under his wing.
posted by Ukulele Man at 7:10 PM
0 comments
links to this post
Friday, March 09, 2007
Phantom Expectoration
Hey Folks,
It's probably Jane Fonda's fault.
- Uke Man
p.s. I've had this posting in the file for a while, but I think it is timeless. Now, with the conviction of "Scooter" for lying to cover up the lies and dirt Cheney stirred up for political gain, is a good time to share this example of lies for political gain in support of a war.
If this bit doesn't impress you, wait for the next spitting report.
Newsweek Perpetuates a Lie
by MissLaura
Daily Kos
Sat Jan 27, 2007
In a story about Chuck Hagel and John McCain's friendship and differing views on Iraq, Newsweek says of the Vietnam era:
(Returning GIs were sometimes jeered and even spat upon in airports; they learned to change quickly into civilian clothes.)
There's a small problem with that: Despite the widespread belief these days that troops returning from Vietname were spat on, there's not a shred of evidence from that time period that this ever happened. In his book The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, the sociologist Jerry Lembcke looked for evidence of episodes of spitting. As he wrote in a 2005 Boston Globe op-ed:
STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. It's hard to say where they come from. For a book I wrote in 1998 I looked back to the time when the spit was supposedly flying, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I found nothing. No news reports or even claims that someone was being spat on.
What I did find is that around 1980, scores of Vietnam-generation men were saying they were greeted by spitters when they came home from Vietnam. There is an element of urban legend in the stories in that their point of origin in time and place is obscure, and, yet, they have very similar details. The story told by the man who spat on Jane Fonda at a book signing in Kansas City recently is typical. Michael Smith said he came back through Los Angeles airport where ''people were lined up to spit on us."
Like many stories of the spat-upon veteran genre, Smith's lacks credulity. GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports, and protesters could not have gotten onto the bases and anywhere near deplaning troops. There may have been exceptions, of course, but in those cases how would protesters have known in advance that a plane was being diverted to a civilian site? And even then, returnees would have been immediately bused to nearby military installations and processed for reassignment or discharge.
Lembcke goes on to cite a 1971 poll finding that more than 90% of Vietnam veterans said they had met a friendly homecoming. Unless someone can step up with some actual evidence, reporting from the time the spitting was supposedly happening, not unsubstantiated rumors, supposedly reputable media outlets like Newsweek need to avoid making these misrepresentations and retract the ones they've already engaged in.
It's probably Jane Fonda's fault.
- Uke Man
p.s. I've had this posting in the file for a while, but I think it is timeless. Now, with the conviction of "Scooter" for lying to cover up the lies and dirt Cheney stirred up for political gain, is a good time to share this example of lies for political gain in support of a war.
If this bit doesn't impress you, wait for the next spitting report.
Newsweek Perpetuates a Lie
by MissLaura
Daily Kos
Sat Jan 27, 2007
In a story about Chuck Hagel and John McCain's friendship and differing views on Iraq, Newsweek says of the Vietnam era:
(Returning GIs were sometimes jeered and even spat upon in airports; they learned to change quickly into civilian clothes.)
There's a small problem with that: Despite the widespread belief these days that troops returning from Vietname were spat on, there's not a shred of evidence from that time period that this ever happened. In his book The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, the sociologist Jerry Lembcke looked for evidence of episodes of spitting. As he wrote in a 2005 Boston Globe op-ed:
STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. It's hard to say where they come from. For a book I wrote in 1998 I looked back to the time when the spit was supposedly flying, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I found nothing. No news reports or even claims that someone was being spat on.
What I did find is that around 1980, scores of Vietnam-generation men were saying they were greeted by spitters when they came home from Vietnam. There is an element of urban legend in the stories in that their point of origin in time and place is obscure, and, yet, they have very similar details. The story told by the man who spat on Jane Fonda at a book signing in Kansas City recently is typical. Michael Smith said he came back through Los Angeles airport where ''people were lined up to spit on us."
Like many stories of the spat-upon veteran genre, Smith's lacks credulity. GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports, and protesters could not have gotten onto the bases and anywhere near deplaning troops. There may have been exceptions, of course, but in those cases how would protesters have known in advance that a plane was being diverted to a civilian site? And even then, returnees would have been immediately bused to nearby military installations and processed for reassignment or discharge.
Lembcke goes on to cite a 1971 poll finding that more than 90% of Vietnam veterans said they had met a friendly homecoming. Unless someone can step up with some actual evidence, reporting from the time the spitting was supposedly happening, not unsubstantiated rumors, supposedly reputable media outlets like Newsweek need to avoid making these misrepresentations and retract the ones they've already engaged in.
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:23 PM
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"Sophisticated Meat Machines doomed to make the same mistakes over and over"
Hey Folks,
Looks like maybe we are just meatheads after all.
- Uke Man
March 8, 2007
Lift the Curtain
By BOB HERBERT
Neglect, incompetence, indifference, lies.
Why in the world is anyone surprised that the Bush administration has not been taking good care of wounded and disabled American troops?
Real-life human needs have never been a priority of this administration. The evidence is everywhere — from the mind-bending encounter with the apocalypse in Baghdad, to the ruined residential neighborhoods in New Orleans, to the anxious families in homes across America who are offering tearful goodbyes to loved ones heading off to yet another pointless tour in Iraq.
The trial and conviction of Scooter Libby opened the window wide on the twisted values and priorities of the hawkish operation in the vice president’s office. No worry about the troops there.
And President Bush has always given the impression that he is more interested in riding his bicycle at the ranch in Texas than in taking care of his life and death responsibilities around the world.
That whistling sound you hear is the wind blowing across the emptiness of the administration’s moral landscape.
U.S. troops have been treated like trash since the beginning of Mr. Bush’s catastrophic adventure in Iraq. Have we already forgotten that soldier from the Tennessee National Guard who dared to ask Donald Rumsfeld why the troops had to go scrounging in landfills for “hillbilly armor” — scrap metal — to protect their vehicles from roadside bombs?
Fellow soldiers cheered when the question was raised, and others asked why they were being sent into combat with antiquated equipment. The defense secretary was not amused. “You go to war with the Army you have,” he callously replied, “not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Have we forgotten that while most Americans have sacrificed zilch for this war, the mostly uncomplaining soldiers and marines are being sent into the combat zones for two, three and four tours? Multiple combat tours are an unconscionable form of Russian roulette that heightens the chances of a warrior being killed or maimed.
In the old days, these troops would have been referred to as cannon fodder. However you want to characterize them now, their casually unfair treatment is an expression of the belief that they are expendable.
The Washington Post has performed an important public service by shining a spotlight on the contemptible treatment that some soldiers received as outpatients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
The series has already prompted Congressional hearings, and the president climbed off his bicycle long enough to appoint the requisite commission. The question is whether Congress and the public can be roused to take action on behalf of the troops.
It’s not just the indifference and incompetence of the administration that are causing the troops so much unnecessary suffering. The simple truth is that the Bush crowd, busy trying to hide the costs of the president’s $2 trillion tragedy in Iraq, can’t find the money to pay for all the care that’s needed by the legions of wounded and mentally disabled troops who are coming home. The outpatient fiasco at Walter Reed is just one aspect of a vast superstructure of suffering.
The military is overextended and falling apart. Equipment worn out or destroyed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has to be replaced. The perennial, all-consuming appetite of the military-industrial complex has to be satisfied. And now, here comes that endless line of wounded men and women, some of them disabled for life.
How is all of this to be paid for?
The administration has tried its best to keep the reality of the war away from the public at large, to keep as much of the carnage as possible behind the scenes. No pictures of the coffins coming home. Limited media access to Walter Reed.
That protective curtain needs to be stripped away, exposing the enormity of this catastrophe for all to see.
I remember walking the quiet, manicured grounds of Walter Reed on an unauthorized visit and seeing the young men and women moving about in wheelchairs or on crutches. Some were missing two and three limbs. All had suffered grievously.
There is something profoundly evil about a country encouraging young men and women to go off and fight its wars and then shortchanging them on medical care and other forms of assistance when they come back with wounds that will haunt them forever.
That’s something most Americans never thought their country would do.
Looks like maybe we are just meatheads after all.
- Uke Man
March 8, 2007
Lift the Curtain
By BOB HERBERT
Neglect, incompetence, indifference, lies.
Why in the world is anyone surprised that the Bush administration has not been taking good care of wounded and disabled American troops?
Real-life human needs have never been a priority of this administration. The evidence is everywhere — from the mind-bending encounter with the apocalypse in Baghdad, to the ruined residential neighborhoods in New Orleans, to the anxious families in homes across America who are offering tearful goodbyes to loved ones heading off to yet another pointless tour in Iraq.
The trial and conviction of Scooter Libby opened the window wide on the twisted values and priorities of the hawkish operation in the vice president’s office. No worry about the troops there.
And President Bush has always given the impression that he is more interested in riding his bicycle at the ranch in Texas than in taking care of his life and death responsibilities around the world.
That whistling sound you hear is the wind blowing across the emptiness of the administration’s moral landscape.
U.S. troops have been treated like trash since the beginning of Mr. Bush’s catastrophic adventure in Iraq. Have we already forgotten that soldier from the Tennessee National Guard who dared to ask Donald Rumsfeld why the troops had to go scrounging in landfills for “hillbilly armor” — scrap metal — to protect their vehicles from roadside bombs?
Fellow soldiers cheered when the question was raised, and others asked why they were being sent into combat with antiquated equipment. The defense secretary was not amused. “You go to war with the Army you have,” he callously replied, “not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Have we forgotten that while most Americans have sacrificed zilch for this war, the mostly uncomplaining soldiers and marines are being sent into the combat zones for two, three and four tours? Multiple combat tours are an unconscionable form of Russian roulette that heightens the chances of a warrior being killed or maimed.
In the old days, these troops would have been referred to as cannon fodder. However you want to characterize them now, their casually unfair treatment is an expression of the belief that they are expendable.
The Washington Post has performed an important public service by shining a spotlight on the contemptible treatment that some soldiers received as outpatients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
The series has already prompted Congressional hearings, and the president climbed off his bicycle long enough to appoint the requisite commission. The question is whether Congress and the public can be roused to take action on behalf of the troops.
It’s not just the indifference and incompetence of the administration that are causing the troops so much unnecessary suffering. The simple truth is that the Bush crowd, busy trying to hide the costs of the president’s $2 trillion tragedy in Iraq, can’t find the money to pay for all the care that’s needed by the legions of wounded and mentally disabled troops who are coming home. The outpatient fiasco at Walter Reed is just one aspect of a vast superstructure of suffering.
The military is overextended and falling apart. Equipment worn out or destroyed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has to be replaced. The perennial, all-consuming appetite of the military-industrial complex has to be satisfied. And now, here comes that endless line of wounded men and women, some of them disabled for life.
How is all of this to be paid for?
The administration has tried its best to keep the reality of the war away from the public at large, to keep as much of the carnage as possible behind the scenes. No pictures of the coffins coming home. Limited media access to Walter Reed.
That protective curtain needs to be stripped away, exposing the enormity of this catastrophe for all to see.
I remember walking the quiet, manicured grounds of Walter Reed on an unauthorized visit and seeing the young men and women moving about in wheelchairs or on crutches. Some were missing two and three limbs. All had suffered grievously.
There is something profoundly evil about a country encouraging young men and women to go off and fight its wars and then shortchanging them on medical care and other forms of assistance when they come back with wounds that will haunt them forever.
That’s something most Americans never thought their country would do.
posted by Ukulele Man at 12:01 AM
1 comments
links to this post
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Kant & Hegel at the Funny Bone 'til Friday
posted by Ukulele Man at 12:05 AM
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Maureen - Two Treats in One
Hey Folks,
The column below says a few things philosophical as well as political. The politics are contemporary; the philosophical question is ancient: Do we have free will? Or are things predetermined? Are we in charge? Or are we like "a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.”
This has always been a vexing question for me and a seriously important one. The whole notion of freedom rests upon it. Finding purpose in life rests heavily upon it. Hope for a better future world rises or falls on this question.
If everything is predetermined, all our supposedly free actions are imaginary; we're just shadow figures cast on the wall by some controlling god-magician. I see no reason to believe that, however. I don't believe in god, but even those who do - as far as I know - don't say God wrote the entire script and just has us reading lines.
But perhaps free will is just self-delusion; we have reason to believe in it. As Dowd reports:
William James wrote in 1890 that the whole “sting and excitement” of life comes from “our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.”
But as someone else has said, "Wishing doesn't make it so." Feeling good by thinking it doesn't make it true.
The notion of a monkey riding a subconscious tiger and making up stories that he is in control seems more likely and a bigger threat to our claim of freedom. Even without recent experiments, it seems obvious that monkey-humanity rides that tiger and never hesitates to tell stories of control.
To the extent this occurs, we are not free. Rather we are the helpless, self-deluded puppets, not of a god-magician, but of our own unexamined subconscious. Under this scenario, as Dowd reports:
we are, as one philosopher put it,“nothing more than sophisticated meat machines,” doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over
Under this scenario, consciousness is a dead end. That is, if one knows that one is doomed, what hope is there? what motivation to keep on keeping on? The only possible sancuary is ignorance or skill in self delusion and denial.
Judging from the incidence of these defense mechanisms most of the world falls easily into this category. Religion is everywhere; it saves us from the threatening perception of reality - it allows us to feel we are free by giving up our freedom.
Ignorance is everywhere; it is propagated and nurtured by the culture in order to maintain the culture; we need to freely believe and value what the culture wants us to believe, even while that belief enslaves us.
For me, as I said, this is a vexing consideration. As a young man I had faith that humanity was "free." As I've aged, that position has become more and more untenable. I can no longer hear that Santayana quotation (roughly: "Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them")without wretching. More and more it seems obvious that all our mistakes will be repeated forever.
I still have a sliver of hope that freedom is possible. Perhaps some of us can become aware of the tiger we ride and consciously begin to tame it. To whatever extent we are successful in that I think it can be claimed that - at least in some small way - we are free.
- Uke Man
January 6, 2007
Monkey on a Tiger
By MAUREEN DOWD
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Washington - There was a touch of parody to the giddy Democrat takeover this week:Nancy Pelosi indulging her inner Haight-Ashbury and dipping the Capitol in tie-dye, sashaying around with the Grateful Dead, Wyclef Jean, CaroleKing, Richard Gere, feminists and a swarm of well-connected urchins.
The first act of House Democrats who promised to govern with bipartisan comity was imperiously banishing Republicans from participating in the initial round of lawmaking. Even if Republicans were brutes during their reign, Democrats should have shown more class, letting the whiny minority party offer some stupid amendments that would lose.
Perhaps the Democrats’ power-shift into overdrive is a neurological disorder, or neuropolitical disorder.
If free will is an illusion — if we are, as one philosopher put it,“nothing more than sophisticated meat machines,” doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over — that would explain a lot about the latest trend in which everyone is reverting to type.
William James wrote in 1890 that the whole “sting and excitement” of life comes from “our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.”
But in Science Times this week, Dennis Overbye advised Dr. James to “get over it,” observing that “a bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.”
As Mark Hallett of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke told Mr. Overbye, “Free will does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. ... The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it.”
That would explain why, after voters insisted that the president wrap it up in Iraq, he made a big show of pretending to listen, then decided to do a war do-over.
Is this just the baked-in stubbornness of one man, or is W.’s behavior evidence that he has no free will? Is the Decider freely choosing another huge blunder or is he taking instructions from his genetic and political coding, fearing that if he admits what a foul hash he’s made of Iraq, he’ll be labeled a wimp, as his dad was?
If W. is trapped on a tiger, he’s not the only one.
John McCain can’t get beyond seeing himself as a maverick now that he’s become a nonmaverick, a right-wing Republican urging an escalation of a hopeless war, even though he’s already lived through an escalation of a hopeless war.
“There are two keys to any surge in U.S. troops,” Senator McCain told an appreciative audience at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday. “It must be substantial, and it must be sustained.”
With the letter she and Harry Reid wrote to the president yesterday, warning him that “we are well past the point of more troops for Iraq,” Speaker Pelosi tried to exert her free will to stop the Surge. But the Democrats aren’t willing to take real action and cut off money for the Surge. They’re predetermined to want to have it both ways: not to be blamed for the war and not to be blamed for pulling the plug on the war.
Iraq has become a snake pit of factions failing to escape fate. Shiites and Sunnis have been fighting and killing each other for about 1,400 years over who was the rightful heir to Muhammad, and yet the entire American high command was somehow taken aback that Shiites and Sunnis can’t muster the free will to keep their country from disintegrating.
Could it have been kismet that there were Shiites taunting Saddam at his hanging? Maybe it was preordained back in the days when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and the British diplomat Gertrude Bell drew the boundaries of the modern Iraq that a security guy with a cell phone would capture the spectacle.
Despite all the talk back in the 2000 campaign about a robustly experienced foreign-policy dream team, it may have been destined that the Bush administration would be asleep in the run-up to the insurgency, just as it was asleep in the run-up to 9/11, to Katrina, to the occupation and to the refugee crisis in Iraq. Either all that was predetermined, or the administration was preternaturally negligent.
Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher who said a man can do what he wants but cannot will what he wants, would have understood W.’s nonsensical urge to Surge.We don’t know if human beings have free will. We just know that human beings in Washington appear not to.
The column below says a few things philosophical as well as political. The politics are contemporary; the philosophical question is ancient: Do we have free will? Or are things predetermined? Are we in charge? Or are we like "a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.”
This has always been a vexing question for me and a seriously important one. The whole notion of freedom rests upon it. Finding purpose in life rests heavily upon it. Hope for a better future world rises or falls on this question.
If everything is predetermined, all our supposedly free actions are imaginary; we're just shadow figures cast on the wall by some controlling god-magician. I see no reason to believe that, however. I don't believe in god, but even those who do - as far as I know - don't say God wrote the entire script and just has us reading lines.
But perhaps free will is just self-delusion; we have reason to believe in it. As Dowd reports:
William James wrote in 1890 that the whole “sting and excitement” of life comes from “our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.”
But as someone else has said, "Wishing doesn't make it so." Feeling good by thinking it doesn't make it true.
The notion of a monkey riding a subconscious tiger and making up stories that he is in control seems more likely and a bigger threat to our claim of freedom. Even without recent experiments, it seems obvious that monkey-humanity rides that tiger and never hesitates to tell stories of control.
To the extent this occurs, we are not free. Rather we are the helpless, self-deluded puppets, not of a god-magician, but of our own unexamined subconscious. Under this scenario, as Dowd reports:
we are, as one philosopher put it,“nothing more than sophisticated meat machines,” doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over
Under this scenario, consciousness is a dead end. That is, if one knows that one is doomed, what hope is there? what motivation to keep on keeping on? The only possible sancuary is ignorance or skill in self delusion and denial.
Judging from the incidence of these defense mechanisms most of the world falls easily into this category. Religion is everywhere; it saves us from the threatening perception of reality - it allows us to feel we are free by giving up our freedom.
Ignorance is everywhere; it is propagated and nurtured by the culture in order to maintain the culture; we need to freely believe and value what the culture wants us to believe, even while that belief enslaves us.
For me, as I said, this is a vexing consideration. As a young man I had faith that humanity was "free." As I've aged, that position has become more and more untenable. I can no longer hear that Santayana quotation (roughly: "Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them")without wretching. More and more it seems obvious that all our mistakes will be repeated forever.
I still have a sliver of hope that freedom is possible. Perhaps some of us can become aware of the tiger we ride and consciously begin to tame it. To whatever extent we are successful in that I think it can be claimed that - at least in some small way - we are free.
- Uke Man
January 6, 2007
Monkey on a Tiger
By MAUREEN DOWD
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Washington - There was a touch of parody to the giddy Democrat takeover this week:Nancy Pelosi indulging her inner Haight-Ashbury and dipping the Capitol in tie-dye, sashaying around with the Grateful Dead, Wyclef Jean, CaroleKing, Richard Gere, feminists and a swarm of well-connected urchins.
The first act of House Democrats who promised to govern with bipartisan comity was imperiously banishing Republicans from participating in the initial round of lawmaking. Even if Republicans were brutes during their reign, Democrats should have shown more class, letting the whiny minority party offer some stupid amendments that would lose.
Perhaps the Democrats’ power-shift into overdrive is a neurological disorder, or neuropolitical disorder.
If free will is an illusion — if we are, as one philosopher put it,“nothing more than sophisticated meat machines,” doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over — that would explain a lot about the latest trend in which everyone is reverting to type.
William James wrote in 1890 that the whole “sting and excitement” of life comes from “our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.”
But in Science Times this week, Dennis Overbye advised Dr. James to “get over it,” observing that “a bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.”
As Mark Hallett of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke told Mr. Overbye, “Free will does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. ... The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it.”
That would explain why, after voters insisted that the president wrap it up in Iraq, he made a big show of pretending to listen, then decided to do a war do-over.
Is this just the baked-in stubbornness of one man, or is W.’s behavior evidence that he has no free will? Is the Decider freely choosing another huge blunder or is he taking instructions from his genetic and political coding, fearing that if he admits what a foul hash he’s made of Iraq, he’ll be labeled a wimp, as his dad was?
If W. is trapped on a tiger, he’s not the only one.
John McCain can’t get beyond seeing himself as a maverick now that he’s become a nonmaverick, a right-wing Republican urging an escalation of a hopeless war, even though he’s already lived through an escalation of a hopeless war.
“There are two keys to any surge in U.S. troops,” Senator McCain told an appreciative audience at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday. “It must be substantial, and it must be sustained.”
With the letter she and Harry Reid wrote to the president yesterday, warning him that “we are well past the point of more troops for Iraq,” Speaker Pelosi tried to exert her free will to stop the Surge. But the Democrats aren’t willing to take real action and cut off money for the Surge. They’re predetermined to want to have it both ways: not to be blamed for the war and not to be blamed for pulling the plug on the war.
Iraq has become a snake pit of factions failing to escape fate. Shiites and Sunnis have been fighting and killing each other for about 1,400 years over who was the rightful heir to Muhammad, and yet the entire American high command was somehow taken aback that Shiites and Sunnis can’t muster the free will to keep their country from disintegrating.
Could it have been kismet that there were Shiites taunting Saddam at his hanging? Maybe it was preordained back in the days when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and the British diplomat Gertrude Bell drew the boundaries of the modern Iraq that a security guy with a cell phone would capture the spectacle.
Despite all the talk back in the 2000 campaign about a robustly experienced foreign-policy dream team, it may have been destined that the Bush administration would be asleep in the run-up to the insurgency, just as it was asleep in the run-up to 9/11, to Katrina, to the occupation and to the refugee crisis in Iraq. Either all that was predetermined, or the administration was preternaturally negligent.
Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher who said a man can do what he wants but cannot will what he wants, would have understood W.’s nonsensical urge to Surge.We don’t know if human beings have free will. We just know that human beings in Washington appear not to.
posted by Ukulele Man at 12:01 AM
0 comments
links to this post
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
More on Slavery
Hey Folks,
Here's another article on slavery, and it overlaps the earlier Bob Herbert column, but hits hard on how willing we are to deceive ourselves in the face of inconvenient, unwelcome truths.
Pitts correctly describes our reluctance to face facts regarding historical slavery. I believe that we are just as reluctant to consider our own steady descent into the new, for the United States at least, class-based slavery.
We'd better wake up or learn to ask, "How high?"
- Uke Man
The whip of slavery still is being felt
Monday, March 05, 2007
LEONARD PITTS JR.
Somewhere, the gods of irony are laughing.
Can you blame them? Last week came news that ancestry.com, a genealogical Web site, had documented a startling link between two very unalike men. It turns out an ancestor of the late South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond once owned an ancestor of the Rev. Al Sharpton. Two icons of 20 th-century racial politics — the one a strident foe of integration, the other regarded by some as a boogeyman of racial activism — linked by ownership.
Somewhere, the gods are amused.
Sharpton is not. He has pronounced himself torn by conflicting emotion: humiliation, anger, pride, and, above all, shock.
The reaction from Thurmond’s family, meanwhile, has been characterized by that curious shrug of shoulders, that ambivalence and eagerness to change the subject, one often finds in white people when slavery gets personal.
"I don’t feel one way or the other," Thurmond’s 74-year-old niece, Doris Strom Costner, told The Washington Post.
"I have no comment," Paul Thurmond, the senator’s youngest son, told the New York Daily News.
And then there’s Essie Mae Washington-Williams, product of a liaison Thurmond had with a 16-yearold black maid when he was in his 20s. She says Sharpton is guilty of "overreaction" about her father. "In spite of being a segregationist, he did many wonderful things for black people," she said.
Too bad those wonderful things did not include renouncing his hateful views or publicly acknowledging his black daughter.
William Faulkner was right: "The past is not dead. It’s not even past."
It’s a truth from which many of us instinctively recoil where slavery is concerned. We reject anything that threatens to bring us in too close or make too plain the connections between then and now, that and this.
A man asked me just the other day how much longer I intend to make "excuses" for the problems of black kids. Racial oppression is in the past, he said. We’ve been pumping money into "minority programs" for more than 40 years, he said. Where’s the progress, he said.
And I’m thinking to myself, Lord, give me strength.
Surely I have not been derelict in pointing out the failures of and the need for the black community to be active and proactive in its own salvation. But if it’s true that black folk have work to do, it’s also true that the need for that work did not spring from nowhere but, rather, from a 350-year epoch of physical and — this is important — emotional brutalization. And some of us are impatient that 40 years of mostly half-hearted attempts at a remedy have not made things hunkydory? Oh, please.
Of course, by this point, maybe he has stopped listening. Maybe you have, too. Mention of that 350 years tends to have that effect.
Hence the ambivalence — "nervous chuckles," reported the Orlando Sentinel of a visit to Thurmond’s hometown — that greeted last week’s news in some quarters. Small wonder. It removed the shield of abstraction. It put a face on the thing. And the danger is that if we can imagine that face, we can imagine others.
Condoleezza Rice purchased as breeding stock.
Oprah Winfrey raped on a nightly basis.
Will Smith, his back split open by a whip.
Sen. Barack Obama living with the same rights under the law, the same expectation of dignity, as a horse or a chair.
We spend a lot of time running from this. But we never escape. That’s the lesson of Sharpton’s experience, the reason for nervous chuckles and ambivalent shrugs. It’s an unwelcome reminder that some stains don’t wash out, some dead things do not rest.
And we live in the presence of the past.
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
lpitts@herald.com
Here's another article on slavery, and it overlaps the earlier Bob Herbert column, but hits hard on how willing we are to deceive ourselves in the face of inconvenient, unwelcome truths.
Pitts correctly describes our reluctance to face facts regarding historical slavery. I believe that we are just as reluctant to consider our own steady descent into the new, for the United States at least, class-based slavery.
We'd better wake up or learn to ask, "How high?"
- Uke Man
The whip of slavery still is being felt
Monday, March 05, 2007
LEONARD PITTS JR.
Somewhere, the gods of irony are laughing.
Can you blame them? Last week came news that ancestry.com, a genealogical Web site, had documented a startling link between two very unalike men. It turns out an ancestor of the late South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond once owned an ancestor of the Rev. Al Sharpton. Two icons of 20 th-century racial politics — the one a strident foe of integration, the other regarded by some as a boogeyman of racial activism — linked by ownership.
Somewhere, the gods are amused.
Sharpton is not. He has pronounced himself torn by conflicting emotion: humiliation, anger, pride, and, above all, shock.
The reaction from Thurmond’s family, meanwhile, has been characterized by that curious shrug of shoulders, that ambivalence and eagerness to change the subject, one often finds in white people when slavery gets personal.
"I don’t feel one way or the other," Thurmond’s 74-year-old niece, Doris Strom Costner, told The Washington Post.
"I have no comment," Paul Thurmond, the senator’s youngest son, told the New York Daily News.
And then there’s Essie Mae Washington-Williams, product of a liaison Thurmond had with a 16-yearold black maid when he was in his 20s. She says Sharpton is guilty of "overreaction" about her father. "In spite of being a segregationist, he did many wonderful things for black people," she said.
Too bad those wonderful things did not include renouncing his hateful views or publicly acknowledging his black daughter.
William Faulkner was right: "The past is not dead. It’s not even past."
It’s a truth from which many of us instinctively recoil where slavery is concerned. We reject anything that threatens to bring us in too close or make too plain the connections between then and now, that and this.
A man asked me just the other day how much longer I intend to make "excuses" for the problems of black kids. Racial oppression is in the past, he said. We’ve been pumping money into "minority programs" for more than 40 years, he said. Where’s the progress, he said.
And I’m thinking to myself, Lord, give me strength.
Surely I have not been derelict in pointing out the failures of and the need for the black community to be active and proactive in its own salvation. But if it’s true that black folk have work to do, it’s also true that the need for that work did not spring from nowhere but, rather, from a 350-year epoch of physical and — this is important — emotional brutalization. And some of us are impatient that 40 years of mostly half-hearted attempts at a remedy have not made things hunkydory? Oh, please.
Of course, by this point, maybe he has stopped listening. Maybe you have, too. Mention of that 350 years tends to have that effect.
Hence the ambivalence — "nervous chuckles," reported the Orlando Sentinel of a visit to Thurmond’s hometown — that greeted last week’s news in some quarters. Small wonder. It removed the shield of abstraction. It put a face on the thing. And the danger is that if we can imagine that face, we can imagine others.
Condoleezza Rice purchased as breeding stock.
Oprah Winfrey raped on a nightly basis.
Will Smith, his back split open by a whip.
Sen. Barack Obama living with the same rights under the law, the same expectation of dignity, as a horse or a chair.
We spend a lot of time running from this. But we never escape. That’s the lesson of Sharpton’s experience, the reason for nervous chuckles and ambivalent shrugs. It’s an unwelcome reminder that some stains don’t wash out, some dead things do not rest.
And we live in the presence of the past.
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
lpitts@herald.com
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:12 PM
1 comments
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Tom Paxton "George W. Told the Nation"
Hey Folks,
Give a listen to Tom Paxton's updated version of "Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation."
http://www.tompaxton.com/audio/george_w_told_the_nation.mp3
- Uke Man
Give a listen to Tom Paxton's updated version of "Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation."
http://www.tompaxton.com/audio/george_w_told_the_nation.mp3
- Uke Man
posted by Ukulele Man at 11:37 AM
3 comments
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Monday, March 05, 2007
John Cleese "Letter to the USA"
Hey Folks,
This could be a good thing!!! At least Blair won't be saying, "Nookyouler."
- Uke Man
Letter to the USA - from John Cleese
To the citizens of the United States of America
In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.
Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (except Kansas , which she does not fancy), as from Monday next.
Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Then look up "aluminium," and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell doughnut without skipping half the letters, and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise."
3. You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra'; you may elect to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you find you simply can't cope with correct pronunciation.
4. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up "vocabulary"). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.
5.There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."
6. You will relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).
7. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. January 29th will be a new national holiday, but to be celebrated only in England . It will be called "Come-Uppance Day."
8. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns,lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.
9. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
10. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
11. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time,you will go metric immediately and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
12. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling "gasoline") - roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.
13. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut,fried in animal fat, and dressed not with mayonnaise but with vinegar.
14. Waiters and waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.
15. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is notactually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." American brands will be referred to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine," so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
16. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.
17. You will cease playing American "football." There is only one kind of proper football; you call it "soccer". Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full Kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).
18. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the "World Series" for a game which is not played outside of America . Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.
19. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.
20. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty'sGovernment will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due backdated to 1776.
Thank you for your co-operation.
Cheers
John Cleese
This could be a good thing!!! At least Blair won't be saying, "Nookyouler."
- Uke Man
Letter to the USA - from John Cleese
To the citizens of the United States of America
In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.
Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (except Kansas , which she does not fancy), as from Monday next.
Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Then look up "aluminium," and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell doughnut without skipping half the letters, and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise."
3. You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra'; you may elect to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you find you simply can't cope with correct pronunciation.
4. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up "vocabulary"). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.
5.There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."
6. You will relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).
7. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. January 29th will be a new national holiday, but to be celebrated only in England . It will be called "Come-Uppance Day."
8. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns,lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.
9. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
10. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
11. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time,you will go metric immediately and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
12. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling "gasoline") - roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.
13. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut,fried in animal fat, and dressed not with mayonnaise but with vinegar.
14. Waiters and waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.
15. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is notactually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." American brands will be referred to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine," so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
16. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.
17. You will cease playing American "football." There is only one kind of proper football; you call it "soccer". Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full Kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).
18. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the "World Series" for a game which is not played outside of America . Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.
19. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.
20. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty'sGovernment will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due backdated to 1776.
Thank you for your co-operation.
Cheers
John Cleese
posted by Ukulele Man at 4:05 PM
2 comments
links to this post
Sunday, March 04, 2007
THIS is the "Bob Marvin" Brooks should have been listening to !!
posted by Ukulele Man at 9:00 PM
1 comments
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The Rich Man's Burden
Hey Folks,
Below, David Brooks goes on about education as if he knows something, as if his views aren't totally informed and shaped by his patrician assumptions of humanity and his class's place in it. At least the moron did climb out of the usual aristocratic sewer and into the gutter.
Sure, as he says, "the relationships children have outside school shape their performance inside the school." Duh!!! The Tories in the UK he mentions and our own Scumbag Politicians have ALWAYS known that (Brooks just figured it out). Daring to state that fact IS an improvement -but not much of one.
Previously the pontificators simply blamed schools and, particularly, teachers. Look at "No Child Left Behind" - nothing but a command (with punishments waiting) that teachers teach "right" and make all students perform at the same (arbitrarily determined) high level.
The slander was that if only the second-rate clods who teach would care enough to do it "right," every Joan and Johnny would be zooming.
Zoom, zoom, zoom!!!
Brooks, however, has moved the finger-pointing to a higher level. Now it's the parents, especially those half-witted single mothers, who keep their kids from "grow[ing] up to become more productive workers" or "human capital" as Brooks calls the little tykes (since, in Brooks' world, they WILL be owned by the corporations and the money barons - the owners of capital - the owners of those who labor).
At least the dull-eyed, plodder didn't directly suggest "Family Values" as the way to "fix" the problem. He did mention single parents, divorce, not controlling impulses, emotional instability, and insecurity. But to his credit, he suggests that government should play a role in addressing these things (as opposed to suggesting prayer in school, covenant marriages, Jesus, etc. as the answer).
An improvement, indeed, but pathetic nevertheless.
The punative "No Child" approach was created as - at best - a quick-fix/low-cost effort to get smarter low-paid workers on the cheap. It hasn't worked (as all magical schemes are doomed to failure). This new Brooksian dream is only slightly more expensive, and may be beneficial to some kids and families, but it will utterly fail to achieve its quixotic goal of producing better educated, stable, focused, impulse-controlling, productive human cogs in the elite's money-making machinery.
It is doomed to fail not because Brooks is wrong about all those previously ignored factors truly critical to a child's robust education - he's right about them.
Where he's wrong is in thinking that the paltry, small effort he suggests can address the problem (ironically, he even warns "not to get carried away,") . The problem is the economic system that insures the existence of poorly-paid, undervalued, poorly-housed, neglected, and desperate millions; but also expects these millions to behave as if they had lived all their lives in upper middle class suburbs. Brooks' penny investment won't bring such grandiose returns.
The problem is that Brooks' plan, while a bit better than earlier ones, still does not put responsibility where it belongs; he still blames the victim. He's looked away from the schools, but now he's blaming the impoverished parents.
The problem, dear Brooksey, is not in the parents but in yourself and in your greedy,human-capital-monger brethren.
Create a just society, and you will eradicate the cause of the problem.
Zoom, zoom, zoom!!!
- Uke Man
Below, David Brooks goes on about education as if he knows something, as if his views aren't totally informed and shaped by his patrician assumptions of humanity and his class's place in it. At least the moron did climb out of the usual aristocratic sewer and into the gutter.
Sure, as he says, "the relationships children have outside school shape their performance inside the school." Duh!!! The Tories in the UK he mentions and our own Scumbag Politicians have ALWAYS known that (Brooks just figured it out). Daring to state that fact IS an improvement -but not much of one.
Previously the pontificators simply blamed schools and, particularly, teachers. Look at "No Child Left Behind" - nothing but a command (with punishments waiting) that teachers teach "right" and make all students perform at the same (arbitrarily determined) high level.
The slander was that if only the second-rate clods who teach would care enough to do it "right," every Joan and Johnny would be zooming.
Zoom, zoom, zoom!!!
Brooks, however, has moved the finger-pointing to a higher level. Now it's the parents, especially those half-witted single mothers, who keep their kids from "grow[ing] up to become more productive workers" or "human capital" as Brooks calls the little tykes (since, in Brooks' world, they WILL be owned by the corporations and the money barons - the owners of capital - the owners of those who labor).
At least the dull-eyed, plodder didn't directly suggest "Family Values" as the way to "fix" the problem. He did mention single parents, divorce, not controlling impulses, emotional instability, and insecurity. But to his credit, he suggests that government should play a role in addressing these things (as opposed to suggesting prayer in school, covenant marriages, Jesus, etc. as the answer).
An improvement, indeed, but pathetic nevertheless.
The punative "No Child" approach was created as - at best - a quick-fix/low-cost effort to get smarter low-paid workers on the cheap. It hasn't worked (as all magical schemes are doomed to failure). This new Brooksian dream is only slightly more expensive, and may be beneficial to some kids and families, but it will utterly fail to achieve its quixotic goal of producing better educated, stable, focused, impulse-controlling, productive human cogs in the elite's money-making machinery.
It is doomed to fail not because Brooks is wrong about all those previously ignored factors truly critical to a child's robust education - he's right about them.
Where he's wrong is in thinking that the paltry, small effort he suggests can address the problem (ironically, he even warns "not to get carried away,") . The problem is the economic system that insures the existence of poorly-paid, undervalued, poorly-housed, neglected, and desperate millions; but also expects these millions to behave as if they had lived all their lives in upper middle class suburbs. Brooks' penny investment won't bring such grandiose returns.
The problem is that Brooks' plan, while a bit better than earlier ones, still does not put responsibility where it belongs; he still blames the victim. He's looked away from the schools, but now he's blaming the impoverished parents.
The problem, dear Brooksey, is not in the parents but in yourself and in your greedy,human-capital-monger brethren.
Create a just society, and you will eradicate the cause of the problem.
Zoom, zoom, zoom!!!
- Uke Man
p.s. and what a pompous title for his essay!!
March 1, 2007
A Critique of Pure Reason
By DAVID BROOKS
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
All the presidential candidates this year will talk about education. The conventional ones will talk about improving the schools. The creative ones will talk about improving the lives of students.
The conventional ones, though they don’t know it, are prisoners of the dead husk of behaviorism. They will speak of education as if children were blank slates waiting to have ideas inputted into their brains with some efficient delivery mechanism.
The creative ones will finally absorb the truth found in decades of research: the relationships children have outside school shape their performance inside the school.
The conventional candidates will give the same old education reform speeches, trumpeting this or that bureaucratic reshuffle. The creative ones will give speeches like the one David Cameron, who is reviving the British Tory party, gave last month. They will talk, as Cameron did, about the mushy things, like love and attachment, and will say, as Cameron did, “Family relationships matter more than anything else.”
They will understand that schools filled with students who can’t control their impulses, who can’t focus their attention and who can’t regulate their emotions will not succeed, no matter how many reforms are made by governors, superintendents or presidents.
These candidates will emphasize that education is a cumulative process that begins at the dawn of life and builds early in life as children learn how to learn. These candidates will point out that powerful social trends — the doubling of single-parent families over the past generation, the rise of divorce rates — mean that government has to rethink its role. They’ll note that if we want to have successful human capital policies, we have to get over the definition of education as something that takes place in schools between the hours of 8 and 3, between the months of
September and June, and between the ages of 5 and 18.
As Bob Marvin of the University of Virginia points out, there is a mountain of evidence demonstrating that early childhood attachments shape lifelong learning competence.
Children do have inborn temperaments and intelligence. Nevertheless, students make the most of their natural dispositions when they have a secure emotional base from which to explore, and even the brightest children stumble when there is chaos inside.
Research over the past few decades impressively shows that children who emerge from attentive, attuned parental relationships do better in school and beyond. They tend to choose friends wisely. They handle frustration better. They’re more resilient in the face of setbacks. They grow up to become more productive workers.
On the other hand, as Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania has found, students who do not feel emotionally safe tend not to develop good memories (which is consistent with cortisol experiments in animals). Students from less stimulating environments have worse language skills.
The question, of course, is, What can government do about any of this? The answer is that there are programs that do work to help young and stressed mothers establish healthier attachments. These programs usually involve having nurses or mature women make a series of home visits to give young mothers the sort of cajoling and practical wisdom that in other times would have been delivered by grandmothers or elders.
The Circle of Security program has measurably improved attachments and enhanced social skills. The Nurse-Family Partnerships program, founded by David Olds, has produced rigorously examined, impressive results. Children who have been in this program had 59 percent fewer arrests at age 15. (Presidential candidates are commanded to read Katherine Boo’s Feb. 6, 2006, New Yorker article to get a feel for how these programs work.)
It’s important not to get carried away. “Enhancing Early Attachments,” a review of the literature edited by Lisa Berlin and others, is filled with phrases like “marginal success” and “modest but significant benefits.” But these programs can be expanded.
And one thing is clear: It’s crazy to have educational policies that, in effect, chop up children’s brains into the rational cortex, which the government ministers to in schools, and the emotional limbic system, which the government ignores. In nature there is no neat division. Emotional engagement is the essence of information processing and learning.
In Britain, where both David Cameron and Gordon Brown have grappled with this reality, policy is catching up with the research. In the United States, we are forever behind. But that won’t last. This year, some smart presidential candidate will help us catch up.
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:54 PM
0 comments
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Birthday Party
Hey Folks,
A while back I attended a birthday party for Maxine and Hanna, daughters of R0-Z Mendelson. A great time was had by all.
We also celebrated the Chinese New Year (the Year of the Pig - so I ate too much).
Here are some pictures.
- Uke Man
A while back I attended a birthday party for Maxine and Hanna, daughters of R0-Z Mendelson. A great time was had by all.
We also celebrated the Chinese New Year (the Year of the Pig - so I ate too much).
Here are some pictures.
- Uke Man
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:46 AM
0 comments
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Saturday, March 03, 2007
Friday, March 02, 2007
I wasn't kidding about Slavery
Hey Folks,
No one should be surprised by anything Herbert reports here. That so many are surprised, and that so many would try to deny much of it, supports my point about the re-enslavement of the American people - this time on the basis of class.
Racism is not based on skin color. Racism is an economic phenomenon. In the "New World" color was simply a convenient marker, easier to deal with and manage than was ethnicity or class.
The economic greed that enslaved Africans still exists; as Herbert points out, it's not dead; it's not even past. It's still directed disproportionately at people of color, but Whitey is joining the party.
- Uke Man
March 1, 2007
Slavery Is Not Dead. It’s Not Even Past.
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
The Rev. Al Sharpton seemed subdued, quiet, reflective — which was unusual.
Just when we thought the news couldn’t get any weirder, we learned this week, via The Daily News, that Mr. Sharpton’s great-grandfather was a slave who was owned by relatives of Senator Strom Thurmond, the longtime archsegregationist who ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948.
“There’s not enough troops in the Army,” Mr. Thurmond told a screaming crowd during that campaign, “to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our schools and into our homes.”
Mr. Sharpton seemed a little shaken by the revelation. “You’re always kind of thinking that your ancestors were slaves,” he said. “But this was my grandfather’s father. I knew my grandfather. It’s eerie when it becomes so personal.”
The days of slavery are closer than we tend to think, and they were crueler than we tend to realize. Mr. Sharpton’s great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was sent with his wife and two children from South Carolina to Florida so a woman named Julia Thurmond Sharpton could send them out as laborers to pay off debts left by her late husband.
Julia Sharpton was a first cousin, twice removed, of Strom Thurmond.
“They were sent there solely for that reason,” Mr. Sharpton said. “To make money to pay her debt. It was just so clear that they were nothing but property. The complete dehumanization — I don’t think I fully understood it until this hit home.”
There’s a great deal that Americans don’t fully understand about slavery. It’s such an uncomfortable subject that the temptation is to relegate it to the distant past and move on. But the long tentacles of that evil institution are still with us. Slavery was the foundation of the thriving consumer society that we have today and the wellspring of the racism that still poisons so many white attitudes and black lives.
The sheer size of the phenomenon of slavery, which was woven into the very being of the early Americas, is not well known today. The historian David Brion Davis, in his book “Inhuman Bondage,” tells us:
“By 1820 nearly 8.7 million slaves had departed from Africa for the New World, as opposed to only 2.6 million whites, many of them convicts or indentured servants, who had left Europe. Thus by 1820 African slaves constituted almost 77 percent of the enormous population that had sailed toward the Americas, and from 1760 to 1820 this emigrating flow included 5.6 African slaves for every European.”
For most of the time between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, the United States was governed by presidents who owned slaves.
One of the points Mr. Davis stressed was that the commodities produced in such tremendous volume by slaves — sugar, tobacco, coffee, chocolate, cotton — were crucial to the formation of the world’s first global mass market.
“From the very beginnings,” wrote Mr. Davis, “America was part black, and indebted to the appalling sacrifices of millions of individual blacks who cleared the forests and tilled the soil. Yet even the ardent opponents of slaveholding could seldom if ever acknowledge this basic fact.”
Instead of reaping rewards for this seminal role in the creation of a rich and powerful nation, blacks have been relentlessly vilified by a profoundly racist society and frozen out of most of the nation’s bounty. Consigned to the bottom of the caste heap after emancipation, and denied some of the most basic human rights, blacks became the convenient depository of whatever blame and negative stereotypes whites chose to cast their way.
The abject state ruthlessly imposed upon blacks for so long became, perversely, proof of their inferiority. Blacks gave whites of all classes someone to look down upon.
Slavery, like the past, as Faulkner reminded us, is not dead. It’s not even past. It’s not something that you can wish away.
The other night Reverend Sharpton flew into Miami to attend a conference. At the airport someone asked for his autograph.
“It was the first time in my life that I thought about why my name is Sharpton,” he said. “I mean this whole thing is as personal as why your name is what it is. You’re named after someone who owned your great-grandparents.”
No one should be surprised by anything Herbert reports here. That so many are surprised, and that so many would try to deny much of it, supports my point about the re-enslavement of the American people - this time on the basis of class.
Racism is not based on skin color. Racism is an economic phenomenon. In the "New World" color was simply a convenient marker, easier to deal with and manage than was ethnicity or class.
The economic greed that enslaved Africans still exists; as Herbert points out, it's not dead; it's not even past. It's still directed disproportionately at people of color, but Whitey is joining the party.
- Uke Man
March 1, 2007
Slavery Is Not Dead. It’s Not Even Past.
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
The Rev. Al Sharpton seemed subdued, quiet, reflective — which was unusual.
Just when we thought the news couldn’t get any weirder, we learned this week, via The Daily News, that Mr. Sharpton’s great-grandfather was a slave who was owned by relatives of Senator Strom Thurmond, the longtime archsegregationist who ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948.
“There’s not enough troops in the Army,” Mr. Thurmond told a screaming crowd during that campaign, “to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our schools and into our homes.”
Mr. Sharpton seemed a little shaken by the revelation. “You’re always kind of thinking that your ancestors were slaves,” he said. “But this was my grandfather’s father. I knew my grandfather. It’s eerie when it becomes so personal.”
The days of slavery are closer than we tend to think, and they were crueler than we tend to realize. Mr. Sharpton’s great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was sent with his wife and two children from South Carolina to Florida so a woman named Julia Thurmond Sharpton could send them out as laborers to pay off debts left by her late husband.
Julia Sharpton was a first cousin, twice removed, of Strom Thurmond.
“They were sent there solely for that reason,” Mr. Sharpton said. “To make money to pay her debt. It was just so clear that they were nothing but property. The complete dehumanization — I don’t think I fully understood it until this hit home.”
There’s a great deal that Americans don’t fully understand about slavery. It’s such an uncomfortable subject that the temptation is to relegate it to the distant past and move on. But the long tentacles of that evil institution are still with us. Slavery was the foundation of the thriving consumer society that we have today and the wellspring of the racism that still poisons so many white attitudes and black lives.
The sheer size of the phenomenon of slavery, which was woven into the very being of the early Americas, is not well known today. The historian David Brion Davis, in his book “Inhuman Bondage,” tells us:
“By 1820 nearly 8.7 million slaves had departed from Africa for the New World, as opposed to only 2.6 million whites, many of them convicts or indentured servants, who had left Europe. Thus by 1820 African slaves constituted almost 77 percent of the enormous population that had sailed toward the Americas, and from 1760 to 1820 this emigrating flow included 5.6 African slaves for every European.”
For most of the time between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, the United States was governed by presidents who owned slaves.
One of the points Mr. Davis stressed was that the commodities produced in such tremendous volume by slaves — sugar, tobacco, coffee, chocolate, cotton — were crucial to the formation of the world’s first global mass market.
“From the very beginnings,” wrote Mr. Davis, “America was part black, and indebted to the appalling sacrifices of millions of individual blacks who cleared the forests and tilled the soil. Yet even the ardent opponents of slaveholding could seldom if ever acknowledge this basic fact.”
Instead of reaping rewards for this seminal role in the creation of a rich and powerful nation, blacks have been relentlessly vilified by a profoundly racist society and frozen out of most of the nation’s bounty. Consigned to the bottom of the caste heap after emancipation, and denied some of the most basic human rights, blacks became the convenient depository of whatever blame and negative stereotypes whites chose to cast their way.
The abject state ruthlessly imposed upon blacks for so long became, perversely, proof of their inferiority. Blacks gave whites of all classes someone to look down upon.
Slavery, like the past, as Faulkner reminded us, is not dead. It’s not even past. It’s not something that you can wish away.
The other night Reverend Sharpton flew into Miami to attend a conference. At the airport someone asked for his autograph.
“It was the first time in my life that I thought about why my name is Sharpton,” he said. “I mean this whole thing is as personal as why your name is what it is. You’re named after someone who owned your great-grandparents.”
posted by Ukulele Man at 10:46 AM
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Mr. Integrity
Hey Folks,
When this is the quality of character we have running for office, it's no wonder the nation is going to hell.
Suck up to everyone, get elected, then screw over everybody but the power-meisters.
Praise Cheeses!!!
- Uke Man
February 24, 2007
Cat Without Whiskers
By MAUREEN DOWD
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
SEATTLE - So some guy stands up after John McCain’s luncheon speech here yesterdayto a group of business types and asks him a question.
“I’ve seen in the press where in your run for the presidency, you’ve been sucking up to the religious right,” the man said, adding: “I was just wondering how soon do you predict a Republican candidate for president will start sucking up to the old Rockefeller wing of the RepublicanParty?”
Mr. McCain listened with his eyes downcast, then looked the man in theeye, smiled and replied: “I’m probably going to get in trouble, but what’s wrong with sucking up to everybody?” It was a flash of the old McCain, and the audience laughed.
Certainly, the senator has tried to worm his way into the affections of W. and the religious right: the Discovery Institute, a group that tries to derail Darwinism and promote the teaching of Intelligent Design, helped present the lunch, dismaying liberal bloggers who have tracked Mr.McCain’s devolution on evolution.
A reporter asked the senator if his pandering on Roe v. Wade had made him“the darling and candidate of the ultra right wing?” ( In South Carolina earlier this week, he tried to get more evangelical street cred by advocating upending Roe v. Wade.) “I dispute that assertion,” he replied.“I believe that it was Dr. Dobson recently who said that he prayed that Iwould not receive the Republican nomination. I was just over at Starbucks this morning. ... I talk everywhere, and I try to reach out to everyone.”
But there’s one huge group that he’s not pandering to: Americans.
Most Americans are sick and tired of watching things go hideously backward in Iraq and Afghanistan, and want someone to show them the way out. Mr.McCain is stuck on the bridge of a sinking policy with W. and Dick Cheney,who showed again this week that there is no bottom to his lunacy. The senator supported a war that didn’t need to be fought and is a cheerleader for a surge that won’t work.
It has left Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, once the most spontaneous of campaigners, off balance. He’s like a cat without its whiskers. When the moderator broached the subject of Iraq after lunch, Mr. McCain grimaced, stuck out his tongue a little and said sarcastically, “Thanks.”
Defending his stance, he sounds like a Bill Gates robot prototype,repeating in a monotone: “I believe we’ve got a new strategy. ... It can succeed. I can’t guarantee success. But I do believe firmly that if we get out now we risk chaos and genocide in the region.”
He was asked about Britain’s decision to withdraw 1,600 troops from Iraq.“Tony Blair, the prime minister, has shown great political courage,” Mr.McCain said. “He has literally sacrificed his political career because of Iraq, my friends,” because he thought “it was the right thing to do.”
He said he worried that Iranian-backed Shiites were taking more and more control of southern Iraq. (That was probably because the Brits kept peace in southern Iraq all along by giving Iranian-backed Shiites more and more control.) And he noted that the British are sending more troops toAfghanistan, “which is very necessary because we’re going to have a very hot spring in Afghanistan.”
But then he got back to Tony Blair sacrificing his political career, and it was clear that he was also talking about himself. When a reporter later asked him if Iraq might consume his candidacy, he replied evenly: “Sure.”
I asked him if he got discouraged when he reads stories like the one in The Wall Street Journal yesterday about Ahmad Chalabi, the man who helped goad and trick the U.S. into war, who got “a position inside the Iraqi government that could help determine whether the Bush administration’s new push to secure Baghdad succeeds.”
Or the New York Times article yesterday about a couple of Iraqi policemen who joined American forces on searches in Baghdad, but then turned quisling, running ahead to warn residents to hide their weapons and other incriminating evidence.
He nodded. “I think one of the big question marks is how the Maliki government will step up to the plate,” he said.
And how, I asked him, can Dick Cheney tell ABC News that British troops getting out is “an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well,” while he says that Democrats who push to get America out would “validate the Al Qaeda strategy.” Isn’t that a nutty?
But Senator McCain was back on his robo-loop: “I can only express my gratitude for the enormous help that the British have given us.”
Sometimes I miss John McCain, even when I’m with him.
When this is the quality of character we have running for office, it's no wonder the nation is going to hell.
Suck up to everyone, get elected, then screw over everybody but the power-meisters.
Praise Cheeses!!!
- Uke Man
February 24, 2007
Cat Without Whiskers
By MAUREEN DOWD
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
SEATTLE - So some guy stands up after John McCain’s luncheon speech here yesterdayto a group of business types and asks him a question.
“I’ve seen in the press where in your run for the presidency, you’ve been sucking up to the religious right,” the man said, adding: “I was just wondering how soon do you predict a Republican candidate for president will start sucking up to the old Rockefeller wing of the RepublicanParty?”
Mr. McCain listened with his eyes downcast, then looked the man in theeye, smiled and replied: “I’m probably going to get in trouble, but what’s wrong with sucking up to everybody?” It was a flash of the old McCain, and the audience laughed.
Certainly, the senator has tried to worm his way into the affections of W. and the religious right: the Discovery Institute, a group that tries to derail Darwinism and promote the teaching of Intelligent Design, helped present the lunch, dismaying liberal bloggers who have tracked Mr.McCain’s devolution on evolution.
A reporter asked the senator if his pandering on Roe v. Wade had made him“the darling and candidate of the ultra right wing?” ( In South Carolina earlier this week, he tried to get more evangelical street cred by advocating upending Roe v. Wade.) “I dispute that assertion,” he replied.“I believe that it was Dr. Dobson recently who said that he prayed that Iwould not receive the Republican nomination. I was just over at Starbucks this morning. ... I talk everywhere, and I try to reach out to everyone.”
But there’s one huge group that he’s not pandering to: Americans.
Most Americans are sick and tired of watching things go hideously backward in Iraq and Afghanistan, and want someone to show them the way out. Mr.McCain is stuck on the bridge of a sinking policy with W. and Dick Cheney,who showed again this week that there is no bottom to his lunacy. The senator supported a war that didn’t need to be fought and is a cheerleader for a surge that won’t work.
It has left Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, once the most spontaneous of campaigners, off balance. He’s like a cat without its whiskers. When the moderator broached the subject of Iraq after lunch, Mr. McCain grimaced, stuck out his tongue a little and said sarcastically, “Thanks.”
Defending his stance, he sounds like a Bill Gates robot prototype,repeating in a monotone: “I believe we’ve got a new strategy. ... It can succeed. I can’t guarantee success. But I do believe firmly that if we get out now we risk chaos and genocide in the region.”
He was asked about Britain’s decision to withdraw 1,600 troops from Iraq.“Tony Blair, the prime minister, has shown great political courage,” Mr.McCain said. “He has literally sacrificed his political career because of Iraq, my friends,” because he thought “it was the right thing to do.”
He said he worried that Iranian-backed Shiites were taking more and more control of southern Iraq. (That was probably because the Brits kept peace in southern Iraq all along by giving Iranian-backed Shiites more and more control.) And he noted that the British are sending more troops toAfghanistan, “which is very necessary because we’re going to have a very hot spring in Afghanistan.”
But then he got back to Tony Blair sacrificing his political career, and it was clear that he was also talking about himself. When a reporter later asked him if Iraq might consume his candidacy, he replied evenly: “Sure.”
I asked him if he got discouraged when he reads stories like the one in The Wall Street Journal yesterday about Ahmad Chalabi, the man who helped goad and trick the U.S. into war, who got “a position inside the Iraqi government that could help determine whether the Bush administration’s new push to secure Baghdad succeeds.”
Or the New York Times article yesterday about a couple of Iraqi policemen who joined American forces on searches in Baghdad, but then turned quisling, running ahead to warn residents to hide their weapons and other incriminating evidence.
He nodded. “I think one of the big question marks is how the Maliki government will step up to the plate,” he said.
And how, I asked him, can Dick Cheney tell ABC News that British troops getting out is “an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well,” while he says that Democrats who push to get America out would “validate the Al Qaeda strategy.” Isn’t that a nutty?
But Senator McCain was back on his robo-loop: “I can only express my gratitude for the enormous help that the British have given us.”
Sometimes I miss John McCain, even when I’m with him.
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:12 AM
2 comments
links to this post
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Think I'm kidding about slavery?
Hey Folks,
In the last posting you saw that hell hath no fury like rich fucks kept from squeezing the last drop of blood out of the people. Well, that was in Brazil; we're a little behind the curve here, but we're trying.
What is presented as a Newspaper in Columbus, Ohio has already started the reaction to the new Democratic governor. Before he was elected, a generation of Republican Vampires had steadily advanced The Plan to reduce Ohio's work force to penury - with the goal of increasing profits for the elite few. They've made good progress, as demonstrated by the increasing poverty rate and the increasing incidence of flight by our young people.
This was accomplished by a state government fully owned by business interests and the wealthy, a fact demonstrated by the legislature's refusal to uphold the constitution by following four rulings by the Ohio Supreme Court that the method of school funding unconstitutionally favored the rich over the working class.
When it comes to the constitution v class privilege, there's no contest.
So it isn't surpising that as soon as the new governor acted to better enable working people to pay their disproportionally heavy taxes, the forces of reaction (the Dispatch in the forefront) should spring angrily into action.
The paper, after consistently supporting the legislature's refusal to follow the court rulings to improve schools, has the gall to call picking workers' pockets "Ohio’s most successful effort to boost public schools." For Christ's sake, it only dealt with building projects, and that's the best Ohio can do?
The editorial is directly below, and is followed by my response.
- Uke Man
Putting politics first
Favoring union labor will raise cost of school-building program
Columbus Dispatch editorial
Monday, February 26, 2007
In tossing a juicy bone to his political supporters, Gov. Ted Strickland may diminish Ohio’s most successful effort to boost public schools.
Allowing inflated labor costs for companies that participate in the state-funded school-building program means that taxpayers’ money won’t go as far as it could to replace decrepit school buildings with new ones.
The program, overseen by the Ohio School Facilities Commission, has drawn praise for the efficiency with which it has contributed to the construction or rehabilitation of more than 480 school buildings, worth more than $5 billion.
A major reason for that success was the General Assembly’s decision, when the commission was formed in 1997, to exempt schools from the 1931 law requiring publicly funded construction projects to pay union-scale wages, referred to as prevailing wage, even when hiring nonunion workers.
The commission took that a step further, adopting a policy that forbade school districts from requiring contractors to pay prevailing wage on commission-funded projects.
Strickland has undone that by appointing union-friendly members to the commission, which voted this month to lift the rule against requiring prevailing-wage labor. It also adopted a policy that requires contractors to use experienced personnel and to pay into employee medical and retirement plans.
Up to now, allowing the market to set wages, instead of adhering to artificially inflated ones, has saved taxpayers money and put more children in safe, modern school buildings.
The Dispatch in 2001 spelled out the typical savings. The Olentangy Local School District had spent $7 million to build an elementary school while the prevailing-wage law still applied to school districts.
After the 1997 law freed school districts from the requirement, Olentangy built another, similar elementary and saved about $500,000 in labor costs.
But Strickland has supporters in organized labor to reward, and their time apparently has come.
School districts should bear in mind that the commission’s new policy does not require the use of prevailing-wage labor. They should honor their fiduciary duty to use taxpayers’ money as wisely as possible, and choose contractors who offer taxpayers the best price — not those with the right political connections.
To the Editor,
In the editorial “Putting politics first” you reported that by avoiding “prevailing wage” standards, one area school had saved $500,000 by taking it out of the workers’ pockets. That got me to thinking. Even more money could be saved using indentured servants brought in from poor countries as is done in Saudi Arabia. The use of prison labor would increase the savings even further.
As the editorial pointed out, under the invisible hand of the Market contractors didn’t have to hire experienced people; neither did they have to pay into employee medical and retirement plans. Under the Indentured Servant plan, no one would have experience and contractors could simply send sick or aging workers back to their own country.
Now, of course, some might argue that indentured servants would put millions of Americans out of work, and the resulting poverty would cause a tremendous increase in crime. Well, sure. But, no problem.
The increase in crime would lead to an expanded prison population which, in turn, would provide a larger prison workforce to help reduce taxpayer expense and advance commerce. Once all working Americans are in prison, the ultimate savings will have been achieved, with labor costs approaching zero.
And the cost of imprisoning all working Americans could be covered by severely taxing the income of the indentured servants. Perhaps – as in Haiti– this would finally free the wealthy of all taxation.
What a great plan! The only possible improvement might be the reinstitution of slavery. This time based on class rather than race.
Yours – Tom Harker
In the last posting you saw that hell hath no fury like rich fucks kept from squeezing the last drop of blood out of the people. Well, that was in Brazil; we're a little behind the curve here, but we're trying.
What is presented as a Newspaper in Columbus, Ohio has already started the reaction to the new Democratic governor. Before he was elected, a generation of Republican Vampires had steadily advanced The Plan to reduce Ohio's work force to penury - with the goal of increasing profits for the elite few. They've made good progress, as demonstrated by the increasing poverty rate and the increasing incidence of flight by our young people.
This was accomplished by a state government fully owned by business interests and the wealthy, a fact demonstrated by the legislature's refusal to uphold the constitution by following four rulings by the Ohio Supreme Court that the method of school funding unconstitutionally favored the rich over the working class.
When it comes to the constitution v class privilege, there's no contest.
So it isn't surpising that as soon as the new governor acted to better enable working people to pay their disproportionally heavy taxes, the forces of reaction (the Dispatch in the forefront) should spring angrily into action.
The paper, after consistently supporting the legislature's refusal to follow the court rulings to improve schools, has the gall to call picking workers' pockets "Ohio’s most successful effort to boost public schools." For Christ's sake, it only dealt with building projects, and that's the best Ohio can do?
The editorial is directly below, and is followed by my response.
- Uke Man
Putting politics first
Favoring union labor will raise cost of school-building program
Columbus Dispatch editorial
Monday, February 26, 2007
In tossing a juicy bone to his political supporters, Gov. Ted Strickland may diminish Ohio’s most successful effort to boost public schools.
Allowing inflated labor costs for companies that participate in the state-funded school-building program means that taxpayers’ money won’t go as far as it could to replace decrepit school buildings with new ones.
The program, overseen by the Ohio School Facilities Commission, has drawn praise for the efficiency with which it has contributed to the construction or rehabilitation of more than 480 school buildings, worth more than $5 billion.
A major reason for that success was the General Assembly’s decision, when the commission was formed in 1997, to exempt schools from the 1931 law requiring publicly funded construction projects to pay union-scale wages, referred to as prevailing wage, even when hiring nonunion workers.
The commission took that a step further, adopting a policy that forbade school districts from requiring contractors to pay prevailing wage on commission-funded projects.
Strickland has undone that by appointing union-friendly members to the commission, which voted this month to lift the rule against requiring prevailing-wage labor. It also adopted a policy that requires contractors to use experienced personnel and to pay into employee medical and retirement plans.
Up to now, allowing the market to set wages, instead of adhering to artificially inflated ones, has saved taxpayers money and put more children in safe, modern school buildings.
The Dispatch in 2001 spelled out the typical savings. The Olentangy Local School District had spent $7 million to build an elementary school while the prevailing-wage law still applied to school districts.
After the 1997 law freed school districts from the requirement, Olentangy built another, similar elementary and saved about $500,000 in labor costs.
But Strickland has supporters in organized labor to reward, and their time apparently has come.
School districts should bear in mind that the commission’s new policy does not require the use of prevailing-wage labor. They should honor their fiduciary duty to use taxpayers’ money as wisely as possible, and choose contractors who offer taxpayers the best price — not those with the right political connections.
To the Editor,
In the editorial “Putting politics first” you reported that by avoiding “prevailing wage” standards, one area school had saved $500,000 by taking it out of the workers’ pockets. That got me to thinking. Even more money could be saved using indentured servants brought in from poor countries as is done in Saudi Arabia. The use of prison labor would increase the savings even further.
As the editorial pointed out, under the invisible hand of the Market contractors didn’t have to hire experienced people; neither did they have to pay into employee medical and retirement plans. Under the Indentured Servant plan, no one would have experience and contractors could simply send sick or aging workers back to their own country.
Now, of course, some might argue that indentured servants would put millions of Americans out of work, and the resulting poverty would cause a tremendous increase in crime. Well, sure. But, no problem.
The increase in crime would lead to an expanded prison population which, in turn, would provide a larger prison workforce to help reduce taxpayer expense and advance commerce. Once all working Americans are in prison, the ultimate savings will have been achieved, with labor costs approaching zero.
And the cost of imprisoning all working Americans could be covered by severely taxing the income of the indentured servants. Perhaps – as in Haiti– this would finally free the wealthy of all taxation.
What a great plan! The only possible improvement might be the reinstitution of slavery. This time based on class rather than race.
Yours – Tom Harker
posted by Ukulele Man at 8:27 AM
1 comments
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About Me
- Name: Tom Harker
- Location: Circleville, Ohio, United States
Music and Politics, Politics and Music!!! * * * Everything is political. We’re admonished, “Never discuss religion or politics.” Follow that advice, and we’ll have to quit talking altogether. * * * Well, the Uke Man speaks! * * * Keep track here of my musical shenanigans, my political ruminations, and - from time to time - some other interesting eruptions.
Previous Posts
- Graduation Day
- Ukulele Man Songs for the May 27 Kilbourne Concert...
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