Can’t Hold My Tongue

Elisabeth Hasselback, the young white woman in the video, does a great job in illustrating the problems of the white worldview as it attempts to relate to race. At a point in the video she states that we, Black and white people, all live in the same world. This, I believe, is what most white people see the racial reality as in the USA. And it is this misunderstanding of reality that is the largest obstacle to reconciliation and racial progress.

Whoopi Goldberg, the Black woman with the dreads, does a decent job of wading through the many ignorant statements made by Hasselback and grabbing the key statement and focusing on it. If we are to ever reach a point where race and its history in the US are dealt with in a progressive fashion, we as a country, must have something of a common narrative.

I think Elisabeth Hasselback’s opinion represents the worldview of most whites on this issue. This idea, that everyone lives in the same world is a more socially acceptable way of saying that racism does not exist. If racism is about power, about which groups have the power to affect/control the lives of people in other racial groups, then we can’t all be living in the same world. The statement is as akin to the stupidity of a prison guard asserting that he lives in the same world as a prisoner. It’s all about power and control. In a country 232 years old that has had nothing but rich white men as presidents it either the height of stupidity or the height of rank arrogance to make a statement as ignorant as Hasselback’s is. But like I said, her statement represents the thinking of most of white America. If we can figure out a way to affect change in the backwards thinking of whites in this country regarding racial reality, then we can begin to make racial progress.

This is not a small task. And it is, not incidentally, a major factor in the aspirations of the possible first non-white president in the history of this country. Barack Obama, although considered Black, repeats the keywords and catchphrases of whites who think like Hasselback. Obama has repeated, in other rhetorical arrangements, the same toxic ignorance that Hasselback gave us in the video. Obama has stated that there is no Black America. When he says this, he means what Hasselback says, that we all live in the same world, that there are no major differences. Barack Obama has also said that Black people are 90 percent of the way to equality, another way of saying that we all live in the same world (90 percent is close to 100 percent parity, right?). So the candidacy of Barack Obama, while it may have some positive psychological effect in that white America will see a Black face in the highest (political) place, it will also serve to reinforce the wayward thinking of the tens of millions of Hasselbacks across the country who think that Blacks and whites and everyone that is a legal citizen in this country (they definitely don’t include folks who don’t have papers in their thinking) is operating, living on the same economic, social and judicial plane. Although this view isn’t supported by anything but imagination, it is believed by most whites. It is the national delusion that created New Orleans after Katrina. It is the delusion that is responsible for the burnt out urban centers across the nation. This delusion fuels racial division on every front in this country. Divisions that have deep and important political ramifications. Like the fact that people haven’t been able to struggle to get good public mass transit, or universal healthcare, or universal secondary education (free college), or stronger labor laws and higher wages for workers. These are all things that require a unified front as working people struggle against our rich landlords everywhere. In a country with a solid third (if not more) being non-white, the racial divisions fueled by Hasselback thinking none of the aforementioned things are possible to get. We’re too divided. Racial divisions are why we still don’t have universal healthcare. So we all, Black, white, brown, red and yellow, all suffer. Hasselback thinking is killing us all.

If nothing else, debates over Black people being allowed to say and write nigga (that is what the debate is about; whites know they better not use it) allow us to dig a little deeper into what the real racial problems are in this country. So if nothing else, I say let’s keep the word around (hehe…for Black use only) just for that.

The ’situation’ framed as Iran posing a nuclear threat makes no sense outside of the framework of global white supremacy.  With pressure being applied from Western (read: white) nations, the world looks on cynically.  Folks inside the US, for the most part seem torn on whether or not they are willing to go to war with Iran with feelings on the issue, like most issues in this country, falling roughly along racial lines.  Most whites deem a war necessary if Iran won’t give up its nuclear program while almost all non-whites, along with antiwar whites, polled are against the idea.  The underlying and unspoken premise of whether or not to go to war with Iran is the notion, the racist notion, that Iran shouldn’t be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

The conventional rationales given for this is that Iran (or any Arab or Muslim country for that issue) can’t be trusted with nukes.  Obviously racist.  Then there is the more liberal rationale that states the need to prevent said countries’ extremists from getting a hold of the nukes.  That’s why the country shouldn’t be able to develop nukes.  The crazies might get them.  The real reason is much more straightforward than even those simplistic lies.

The white global powers, for centuries have exploited, through invasion, occupation and colonization, the Black, brown, red and yellow countries of the Earth.  Nukes are a deterrent to white military power.  This is why Iran, and no non-white country that doesn’t already have them, cannot have a nuke.  If Iraq had actually been able to develop a nuke, there never would have been a discussion about WMDs.  The white powers simply would have let Iraq into the club and talked with that country.  Because they knew Iraq didn’t have WMDs, and thus no way to hit them back, they invaded.  That is how it works, if you DON’T have WMDs you get your ass rocked and your citizens get wiped out.  If you can manage to get a nuke, you are acknowledged as a global power and are welcomed into the club.  That is why for non-white countries, the big picture of development, long term, dictates that acquiring nuclear weapon capability is as important as any other single factor.

Nuclear war would suck.  But conventional war sucks too.  Non-white leaders of countries around the world, if you don’t wanna get your asses kicked by the American and British Nazis, I suggest you start spinning those centrifuges overtime and develop some enriched uranium.  Or you’re likely to end up in a spider hole with a CNN camera shoved in your face and a M-16 up your ass.  The only thing white countries understand is force.  Get a nuke and you’re safe.  Acquiesce and they will say you have a nuke anyway and come take your oil (diamonds, natural gas, or whatever you have of value).

All the while, of course, claiming that this or that country will make the world less safe for democracy.

Jimmy Kimmel says, “There’s a weird reverse racism going on. You can’t joke about him because he’s half-white. It’s silly.”  It’s silly.  The New York Times has a two page web writeup explaining the dilemma of an all-white late night comedy lineup that won’t/can’t joke about Obama lest they be charged with racism.  This theme of false racism charges is some toxic shit.

The problem, of course, is that hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Bill Maher, they are racist.  And now they’re miffed that the limitations of liberalism won’t allow them to do what they want to do.  Even still, Maher and the New York Times slips one in as they write about how it is improper and impossible to do it on television.  Maher says, “There’s been this question about whether he’s black enough.  I have this joke: What does he have to do? Dunk?”  But then they wonder why they can’t make jokes about him.  It’s because they can’t do it without resorting to racism.  Racism is so deeply embedded in their minds and in the general public imagination that these comics, and most white citizens, can’t joke about Black people without joking that we are Black.  This seems natural to many whites and thus some kind of affront when they aren’t allowed to engage in the practice.  But imagine how tasteless their usually smiling white audiences would find it if almost every joke about GW and McCain was about how they are white.  The jokes might get a few laughs the first time but they would wear thin quickly.  This is because the white population of the US while accustomed to critiqueing the culture and character of non-whites via comedy, they are less than keen to engage or have a comic engage in the same dynamic when it comes to their white brothers and sisters.

Continuing on Kimmel’s reverse racism theme, the Times reveals that Black comedians are making Obama jokes.  But not on late night comedy since there are no Black late night comics on major shows.  The fact that they, Black comedians, are writing and saying the jokes white comics won’t or can’t is used as subtle implication that whites are the victims of discrimination.  I’m not feelin their pain…at all.

IndyMac denies that it’s close to collapse.  That’s July 1st 2008.  Ten days later IndyMac closes it’s doors.  While this closure may not yet be emblematic of most banks, the underlying fundamentals on display in this instance have been the model for the US economy for a long time now. Even with the ‘credit crisis’ in 5th gear it is not yet chic to speak the truth about ‘our economy’.  That being that our economy isn’t really ours at all but theirs.  And their economy is less than a house of cards.  A house, even if it’s made of cards, is a real thing.  You might say that the US economy has been chugging along on speculative fumes for a long time now.  But even fumes are real.  There is nothing real about the financial world of make-believe that we call ‘the economy’ here in the US.  .

Confidence Is What’s Needed Now

Ben Bernanke - Free Market High Priest

When you hear so-called analysts explain that what we are facing here is a crisis of confidence–that should raise a flag.  A real economy has nothing to do with confidence.  Though the word has become near synonymous with US, and now global, economic problems, it is really still only a gambling term.  Having drank the Kool-Aid for such a long time now, you’ll hear this word thrown around, even on serious financial news programs.  The assumption, that belief and psychology of people are as legitimate as the value of real and actual work done by people, runs deep now and suggestions to the contrary produce blank stares from most.  And from a growing minority, the suggestion creates hostility.  Like an avid lottery player waking up from a dream in which he has finally won.  Coming to, he realizes his winnings were never real.  He would rather lie back down and close his eyes.  Attempt to kickstart his dream, interrupted.  Visibly unhappy with whatever sound woke him to begin with, he ignores it initially.  If the sounds won’t go away, he becomes angry.  This sound isn’t going away anytime soon.  The pitter patter of feet into banks.  Investors realizing the dream is winding down, desperate to not be the last one to wake.  Casinos aren’t economies.  They only manufacture dreams, hope, confidence.  If the marks don’t trust the dealer, the casino folds.  The confidence is almost gone.

Bailouts-They Can’t Work

Upstanding member of his community

As investors wake up and banks fold, followed by the corporations that rely on the casinos to keep them afloat with constant loans, people that actually work will be the ones that actually get fucked with rent due, hungry mouths, empty gas tanks, cold feet and no job.  The rulers are attempting to head off the popular backlash that will come from all of this with fake nationalisation plans that won’t work.  The rich are too afraid of what will happen, even with fake nationalisation, if the government (the poor) begins to even think it controls institutions like banks instead of the market (the rich) running things.  Not that the poor control the government.  Of course not.  But it is a lot more responsive than the market.  So many banks being under government control would be bad for the rich.  But since nothing else will save them at this point, they’ve gotta be slicker than ever in how they do this. It’s the morning of Tuesday the 15th of July 2008.  Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s stocks are down 20% on rumor mill that they are going to be taken over, by the US gov’t.  The broader problem exemplified here is that attempts by the rich to save their own asses using gov’t welfare have them caught in a Catch-22.  Corporate welfare bailouts save the money on a specific craps table but simultaneously undermines confidence in the integrity of the casino as a whole.  They can’t get out of this one with more of the same.  Something fundamentally different is going to have to happen.  The fundamentals of the casino economy have reached their limits.  The word is out that the casino can’t really pay.  The rich criminals need to cash out so that they can skip town now before the rabble outside the building figure out what’s goin down.

• Here is an explanation of how Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae/Farmer Mac were designed to work and what is happening to them right now.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

This is amusing but the aftertaste disappoints. The problem of course with bashing Bush and the Republicans is that the unstated implication is completely false, that the Democrats (and specifically Obama) will be better. Obama won’t be better. And beyond flowery rhetoric, Obama doesn’t even promise, with any specificity, to be better. Only different.

The white press was tripping over each other to run the BS stories about Kanye at Bonnaroo.  Stating that he didn’t perform on time and that he was rude.  And of course they offered no apologies for their behavior as the truth came out that Pearl Jam ran an hour into Kanye’s time and Bonnaroo logistical snafus made a mess of Kanye’s crew setting up his stage.

I post a lot about white double standards and racial mind games and other psychological manipulations played out by the establishment.  Here is another funny one.  It’s funny how white folks won’t comment on the site but email me directly with their complaints.  I mean, what is that all about???  Anyway, here is another one.

Amy Crackhouse punching her fans in the face while singing at Glastonbury. Watch the vid then come back.

Close your eyes and try to imagine Kanye doing Flashing Lights while punching fans in the face.  That negro would be in Guantanamo Bay before the instrumental for that short ass song was even over.

But the white media completely ignores the white girl that everyone knows is on crack when she punches her fans in the face???  This is why, whether it be reporting on the depressed US economy, WMDs or Kanye West, no one but naive white people trust the US mainstream media.

They are a part of the system and the system is a pathological liar.

It took a while.

The US imperial military stormed in and destroyed one of the oldest civilizations on the planet.  Whenever it was called a war for oil the political pundits–all the mainstream political pundits–made the charge sound incredible.  Usually framing it with credibility draining phrases like Bush’s critics say and anti-war campaigners  claim.  Maybe it’s more credible now that London’s Financial Times is saying the same thing that regular people were saying more than five years ago.

The oil is being stolen.

The US population could give two shits?  They just wanna be able to drive their cars to water parks all summer without having to stop by the bank for a second mortgage.  Eyes have been turned toward Iran and the so-called push to stop the next war.  Meanwhile the imperial viceroys of the US distribute the resources belonging to the people of Iraq.

The Spoils of War

I mean if this wasn’t going to happen what really would have been the point to all of this?  Nation-building? Don’t you love to hear that term?  It’s a part of the vocabulary of the schizoid-pathological lying-white American.  The notion that this country that has killed so many people for so many of their resources, the notion that the psychopaths that do and that have from the beginning, run this country would actually have any real concern with the peoples of the world (beyond taking what they can from them) requires a person to have no critical thinking skills whatsoever.  A description which fits most citizens of the USA, particularly its citizens that can be identified as white.  Being that the ability to think critically about anything of significance has been destroyed, smash and grabs like the one perpetrated on the people of Iraq can be executed with little fanfare and without most folks inside the empire being able to identify what is even happening.

The graphic to the right can be found on the Financial Times website along with a poll of the readers as to whether this day should be deemed a national holiday in the US and UK.  While theft of the resources of Black and brown people usually does not merit particular celebration beyond the typical trappings, Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, etc.  This day in history, the armed robbery of Iraq by the white imperial powers surely justifies some kind of commemoration. Yes?  The readers must decide.

The graphic, with circles identifying the most rich fields, is quite well done and represents the level of care and concern and import to be associated by responsible people, with this moment.  This is 21st century capitalism in all its glory.

Iran, Venezuela and other resource rich states…take note.  If you wanna see your hometown get famous on a graph like this of your own, keep playing around with the UN and their games.  If you don’t wanna be immortalized in this way, do what others before you have done and get the only protection plan you can count on.

I’m no longer interested in listing the various extralegal activities one can get away with if his/her skin lacks melanin.  The list is too long.  I’d like to see a new list compiled of things white people cannot get away with.  That seems more realistic.  Particularly after reading this story.  I mean…come on, now.

Try to imagine a Black man impersonating a federal agent for months.  Kicking in white folks doors and, for months, locking white folks up on drug charges.  If you’re white, nothing is impossible it doesn’t seem.

And look at the way the New York Times chooses to portray the whites caught with drugs.  As innocent pet-owners.  Uh..yeah.

This article is the latest sewage to flow from the front pages of the web edition of the New York Times.  The sycophantic guttercrows aka New York Times journalists are not qualified to speak or write about the political problems in Zimbabwe or anywhere on the continent of Africa.

They should shut up.

It is the morning of June 27th and if you visit the Times website you will be met by the aforementioned article by Celia Dugger and Barry Beawak in which they continue the white campaign of attempting to marshall international public opinion against Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, this time by pressuring Mbeki of South Africa, who confuses Dugger and Beawak by his refusal to kiss white ass and openly condemn Mugabe.  This is a good time to state that what is going on in Zimbabwe is very f*cked up.  Democratic participation by the people is openly being subverted and part of that subversion is open state violence and state sanctioned vigilante violence against supporters of Mugabe’s political opposition.   This violence and undemocratic electoral games should be condemned, mediated and ceased.

But not by the United States.

Here’s why.  Zimbabwe.  An African country brutalized under white colonial rule and occupation for more than a hundred years (1888-1980).  The United States of America.  An white controlled country its entire existence, is currently two hundred thirty-two years old.  Black folks in this country just got the legally enforced right to vote 43 years ago!  After almost 200 years of political existence within this country.  One hundred eighty-nine hears after so-called American independence Black Americans obtained the legally enforced right to vote.  Zimbabwe has been independent for twenty-eight years.

Twenty-eight years.
One hundred eighty-nine years.

Only within the borders of this sick country can you witness such insane demonstrations of psychotic hypocrisy.  And so sick are the vast majority of ‘Americans’ that the insanity of the New York Times and other white media outlets goes almost completely unnoticed.  Recently, a friend and political ally asked me what I thought about the situation in Zimbabwe.

I think that the situation needs to be dealt with by the people of Zimbabwe and perhaps the rest of the African continent along with the diaspora. This hot summer the Imperial United States of White Hypocritical America should put down its pens, step away from all microphones, cameras and word processors and relax with a tall, cool glass of shut the hell up.

For the record, I don’t give a care about Kanye or multimillion dollar entertainers, generally (with a few exceptions for actually talented folk like Prince and Ndegeocello). I look at these stories cuz they tell a socio-cultural story about where people’s minds are. The white space for music in middle Tennessee also known as Bonnaroo this year had a lineup including Kanye West, a Black artist in the midst of a sea of almost all white artists and even whiter fans.

Kanye was scheduled to go on to perform at 2:45am Sunday morning.  Major white media outlets are reporting here, here and here that Kanye was an hour and twenty minutes late getting started.  Most white outlets are running the AP piece by Jake Coyle, who only finds it fitting to parenthetically mention that the act before Kanye, a white band, Pearl Jam, went over their allotted time by a full hour.  That delay by Pearl Jam, combined with unspecific technical difficulties configuring Kanye’s performance rig are the reason that Kanye was late coming out.  The focus, however, of the white media is Kanye’s supposed refusal to kiss the collective asses of the white fans at Bonnaroo.  Kanye is probably an asshole.  Most millionaires are.  But the white media is again showing their unforgivable whiteness in their biased treatment of millionaires with melanin which is a part of a larger campaign, whether intentional or not, that conditions white America to think and therefore treat Black people as a whole, differently.  And that’s differently as in worse than others are treated.  By constantly sending out negative signals about high profile rich Blacks as well as the required national and local daily broadcasts of poor Black people in handcuffs and orange jumpsuits standing in front of usually white judge (but in their fav cases, the judge will be Black, too), white media conditions white media consumers to think and thus act unfavorably towards their Black countrywomen and men.

White folks will claim that this conspiracy is ludicrous.  I don’t care what you call it.  Conspiracy, assholes engaging in shoddy reporting; it is little consequence to me how motive is rationalized.  The effects are the same, the perpetuation of racist ideas, stereotypes and ultimately actions.  I understand the impulse to recoil from anything even remotely smacking of ‘conspiracy’.  The media, particularly white media but not only them, certainly do execute an ongoing campaign to disparage any kind of talk that describes, charges or analyzes conspiratorial actions unless it is a conspiracy white media owners are amenable to labeling as such.  White media contributors and editors are keenly aware of their influence on public opinion and ultimately public actions, leading them to not publicize all kinds of things that they claim might incite undue fear in the public.  Such as information about chemicals in food, the claims of the dangers of nuclear power and other things.  The point is that they understand fully, the role they play in setting the mental and psychological agenda of the white masses.  So when they regularly pull this kind of shit on millionaires with melanin it’s difficult for me to let them off the hook as it being incidental and random when there are far mor white millionaires that are engaged in all kinds of drug use and other mischieviousness that white media either ignores or frames very differently than when the same actions are pulled by Blacks with money.

White media is simpy the psychological control and manipulation arm of white business that enslaves us all, white and Black.  Blacks and non-whites generally, tend to see and understand this at far greater rates than our melanin-lacking brothers and sisters.  Which gets to the crux of the problem.  White people need to wake up and realize what the fuck is actually going on in the world and stop blaming non-whites for the world they have, in their ignorance, created.  Racism and global colonialism, environmentally degradating consumerism, starvation in the so-called Third World…these are all problems created and sustained by white folks.  But only together can we end them.  Stop watching corporate media white people so that you all might begin the journey to reclaim your minds and your humanity.  Turn off the mind control boxes and start listening to your brothers and sisters of color.  There is a lot for you all to learn and a long way for all of us to travel together.

Barack Obama has claimed the Dem Party nomination for POTUS and folks that have been backing his candidacy, like Black Commentator and of particular interest, Bill Fletcher, are encouraging support of him but not uncritical support. This sounds like a reasonable course of action based on the logic of the hegemonic mainstream US political system which frowns upon any of what it calls extremism. Which in this case would be opposing the nomination and success of a Black candidate like Obama. How could any progressive person do that? But Fletcher’s own words betray the so-called logic of his strategic suggestion.

I do think that there is a VERY significant different between Senators Obama and McCain. This is not a tweedle-dee/tweedle-dumb juxtaposition, even given my differences with Senator Obama. Senator McCain wishes to continue the direction of George Bush and to advance the process of the consolidation of a neo-liberal authoritarian state. Senator Obama is looking for a politically liberal solution to the current crisis. I do not think that such a solution exists…

Fletcher claims Obama and McCain are not tweedledee and dum because, unlike reactionary McCain, Obama seeks a solution that does not even exist! He then suggests progressives must push Obama beyond Liberalism. So if conservatism isn’t the answer and the liberalism Obama represents doesn’t exist as a solution, Fletcher must be implying that Obama represents the possibility for some kind of revolutionary opening. This nonsense is the point where the logic disassembles itself. Can Obama, the corporate candidate be pushed further to the Right by what goes for a progressive movement in the United States, presently? That is the real question and everyone thinking understands the answer is ‘no’. Movements are needed to transform in a revolutionary, not reform, this society.

Left movements must do that no matter who the POTUS is. An Obama presidency, due to the liberal veneer it will have will make that journey more, not less, difficult due to the many allies who will inevitably be coerced into uncritically supporting/defending Obama from predictable conservative attacks of racism-something we watched happen in the Primary. Get ready for more of that which will work to negate progressive movement change.

What I find most instructive about this video interview of right wing nutjob (redundant, I know) Don Schweitzer is how it reveals the extreme right wing nature of US political television ‘programming’. Without hostility or degradation, O’Reilly makes the guy look completely ridiculous. O’Reilly reveals the complete lack of any actual logical or moral underpinning to the argument against gay marriage. And this isn’t some chump but a head honcho family law attorney. Well, he is a chump too, but the point is that O’Reilly easily pwns him with a few calm, rational but direct questions.

As a thought experiment, imagine if there was someone allowed to do this kind of thing night after night on a national network. If, instead of the usual fluff or the softball questions if someone were allowed to pose rational, even-handed questions to the right-wing what would this country look like in six months? And that isn’t a thought experiment that asks what if a Leftists were allowed to do this. But only if someone approximately centrists were allowed to do so.

This video demonstrates very clearly, with its starkness of its rational tone, just how accustomed we as a viewing nation have become to far right discourse dominating and marginalizing not the Left but Center thought. Fascism doesn’t start with jackboots goose-stepping their pencil mustaches into our living rooms but with the normalizing of extreme ideas and concepts, something fascists have already achieved in the United States. And the evidence is right in front of you. Occasional glimpses of Centrists rationality, like this video, that shock our well-indoctrinated and ever closing minds.

Why does this stuff even merit as news?  It goes like this.  Political apparatchik works inside the Bush regime.  Lies, deceives, goes along and/or devises all manner of criminal and immoral political chicanery.  Apparatchik then leaves the administration only to come back to the spotlight a year or so later with a ‘tell all‘.

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.

Scott McClellan, suck my dick.  And that goes double for those pundits, forums, bloggers and websites that push his book garbage around without an accompanying complete discrediting of the BS.  Why do we continue to put ourselves through this cycle?  This continual perpetuation of obvious lies and of an obvious fictional framework as a container for the lies.  Is Scott McClellan not a part of the ruling class?  Is he not one of their representatives?  Of course he knew what he was doing.  Along with the ideological payoff of continual mystifying reality for the dumb and dumber, SM just wants to get paid and in today’s climate you can’t do that by backing up what the administration is saying but there is hella money in pretending to rake them over the coals as liars and cheats.

For participating in a genocidal war and then trying to make money off your role, fuck you Scott McClellan.

The most ridiculous story to come out this month greets us almost as the month comes to a close.  Supposedly the super secret international terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda is having its publicist do an interview with the NYTimes.

Take a look.

I am tempted to dismiss this kind of story as silly but I fear it is too important to simply dismiss.  It is being run on or near the front page of the New York Times, the ‘paper of record’ or so they claim.  True or not, millions of people are digesting this tripe.  This ridiculous notion that a serious terrorist organization publicly recruits in this fashion and then has its recruiter do interviews with the enemy’s leading print press.  So what actually gives?  Is this woman serious?  Is she part of some European or US intelligence apparatus?  Who can say.  But could it be, is it even vaguely possible that the Times’ version of events is real in this case?

No war fought by the US thus far has benefited Black people in the US, or anywhere for that matter.  Therefore, what stake do Black people have in the celebration of Memorial Day in the USA?  A day devoted to honoring the fallen military officers and enlisted of US wars.  White nationalist wars of conquest that always attempted, and were usually successful at securing land and/or resources for white use and development.  Over the years, concessions combined with Black struggle have allowed a few Blacks to scramble for a pittance of the crumbs of white empire.  But for the most part, the wars of conquest fought by the United States of America have benefited white US citizens.  So, besides attempts at fitting in with the hope of getting a few more crumbs, what stake do Black people have in celebrating this, one of sickest US hol(y)days.  A day when the soldiers of the empire, an empire that has snuffed out the lives of (literally) millions of non-combatant men, women and children, an empire that has used the spoils of its many wars to disproportionately contribute to the degradation and destruction of the natural environment, an empire that oppresses Black, brown, yellow and red men, women and children the planet over, this is a day to celebrate the mostly white men that have died for the cause of genocidal empire-building.

Someone tell me, please(!!) why should any person even vaguely in touch with his/her humanity be interested in a freakish celebration of this magnitude?  Why would anyone of any ethnicity?  But the question is posed most particularly to non-whites and even more particularly to Black people killed by the tens of millions by this country and Red native men, women and children who were almost made extinct by this country’s military apparatus.

This so-called patriotism is sickening.  And while sickening for anyone to participate in, it is beyond delusional for non-whites to involve themselves in this macabre display.  History will remember this day and similar celebrations as relics from an age of racial barbarism on the part of the Western world and the USA in particular.  We, Black people, and oppressed ethnic minorities generally, should step aside and allow whites who have no problem with these celebrations rejoice alone in the blood of the many, many millions who have died in the face of Amerikkkan barbarism.  This is their day.  Not ours.

When it comes to professional sports and race, white fans are like pre-speech toddlers attempting to deliver a lecture on physics. Dave Zirin, whom I don’t always agree with, is one of the only non-Black sportswriters in this country who has a clue.

Professional sports is the national sociological paint canvas upon which racial-psychological politics are metaphorically drawn. Being on the outs in this society, Black folks see this clearly. White folks, rarely actually having to think about race, when called to speak on it, always astonish us with their arrogance but far more often with their extreme ignorance and foolish statements.

The Bonds debacle is all about race. To understand this you have to first understand something political. So if you don’t have the patience to think about things, move along and keep being ignorant cuz you’ll never understand the Barry Bonds saga if you don’t get that this, the United States, is an empire. Like Rome and other empires before, we rule internationally with an unelected, authoritarian iron fist. Domestically, like Rome, we do a lot of jawwing about democracy. Of course the domestic population gets screwed just like the foreign black and brown and yellow people around the globe. In order to keep all of this moving, the US does what so-called democratic empires always do, it provides a circus to turn the population into spectators of spectacles while the rulers do the heavy lifting on stuff that actually matters in the real world (which is not sports). Because the US’, as Rev Wright put it, birth defect of having been born enslaving a large sector of its working class, the US’ circus of choice has always been race. Ostensibly the circus is the big pro sports. But actually, the circus is race.

The biggest pro sports in the US are football, basketball and baseball. The NFL and NBA are largely Black sports and thus tend to not be as reactionary as other sports dominated by whites because the Black population of the country is generally left wing while whites generally numerically are right wing in a political/ideological sense.

Black people dominate football and basketball overtly. Unlike the NFL and NBA, MLB is only 8% Black and thus it is the most reactionary of the big 3 major sports. Though Blacks aren’t represented much in the composition of MLB, still the most coveted mark in all of baseball is held by a Black citizen. This presents a grand opportunity for the white power structure (and regardless of whether or not you believe it is a good thing or not, no one can deny that there is a white power structure; this is an observable fact. The MLB teams and corporations that provide ad revenue are owned almost 100 percent by white males. This is a fact, not opinion)…so the white power structure takes advantage of its largely white MLB audience to use baseball as a stage to play psych games with the minds of Americans as well as to do what circuses do–distract people. In our case, distractions are designed to keep us from paying attention to politics and the rest of real life.

A quick thought experiment makes this clear. Of course, thought experiments are only as effective as the mind of the person attempting to perform the experiment. And as I mentioned before regarding whites thoughts about race, not so impressive. But anyways, imagine if Barry Bonds was instead named Dale Murphy. Nothing and I mean nothing save him being caught in a photograph–no, a video–shaking hands–no, making a bomb–with Osama Bin Laden would keep him off a team or out of the HOF. White players in the big three pro sports are just about impenetrable when they are superstars. Even Clemens, who has far more evidence against him, isn’t being handled the way that Bonds was/is handled. Bonds, who hasn’t been convicted of anything and who wasn’t even being investigated til it was simply decided that he would be. But the thought experiment. Imagine Dale Murphy had broken Hammerin Hank’s record of long balls. The steroid thing would never have come up. Anyone who is honest knows that this is true. We would be discussing building Dale Murphy skyscrapers, naming ballparks after him and sending him around the world as a diplomat for world peace or something. When white players achieve the highest heights only convictions and getting caught red-handed will get them in hot water. And as evidenced by Pete Rose, even when caught red-handed, the punishment has temporal limitations. When Black players f/k up, they’re done. They either go to prison never again to see any kind of contract or even positive publicity, or they are just erased from memory. There are more examples of this than I care to take time to cite. But just look at the behavior of a very white sports like tennis or cycling and the kid gloves deployed to respond to it.
Jenifer Capriati - was on crack but now hailed as comeback kid
Martina Hingis - also caught doing crack; gets to keep all her titles and no bad publicity circus
Lance Armstrong - lots of testimony from people close to him that he used cocaine cocktails and steroids to enhance his performance yet he still gets big endorsement deals and commentators ignore the same kind of hearsay they have virtually convicted Bonds with. Actually the Lance Armstrong hearsay they ignore is much worse than Bonds. But anyways. You get the picture, I hope.

The racial double standard in pro sports is undeniable by anyone that can put two brain cells together for a thought or two. But the Barry Bonds hearsay attack saga rolls on unabated. Meanwhile, over a million Iraqi kids are dead due to a military conflict ordered by white CEOs and their political representatives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Millions more suffer torture in US prison gulags for petty drug charges and tens of millions die slowly because white CEOs won’t allow them or their kids to see a physician until it is too late to do much to help them. All these things happen day in, day out and the same whites that will spend all afternoon coming up with cute remarks to make about Barry Bonds’ lack of a moral code ride around with facist yellow ribbons on their cars and trucks. Right underneath the “W” or “Kerry/Edwards” sticker. They worship those killers while taking a stand on Barry and his behavior in the clubhouse. You people aren’t hypocrites. You all are psychopaths.

If there was a God (which there isn’t) I wish she’d transform this country into something with humanity.

Marietta bar owner Mike Norman is selling a t-shirt depicting former Harvard Law Review president and now US Presidential candidate Barack Obama as a monkey.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting on the incident with a hands off attitude typical of the corporate press whenever whites are accused of racism. The AJC headline reads, ‘Group protests Cobb bar, calls Obama T-shirts racist’. Note, the T-shirt isn’t racist. A group is calling the shirt racist. This is how corporate papers communicate with their white readership while maintaining what they claim is a kind of neutrality. But is it neutral to not take a side when a store owner calls a black man a monkey? The AJC, with its largely white racist readership, believes so. This, unfortunately comes as no surprise. The paper’s history is one of racist story after racist story after homophobic story after…you get the picture.

So when the owner of Mulligan’s Bar and Grill in Cobb County, Georgia decides that in 2008 it would be a good marketing tool to sell images of a Black presidential candidate as a monkey, the AJC and most white Georgians hardly miss a beat. Contextualize this kind of thing with the uproar of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The AJC saw no reason to feign neutrality in that instance. Not to imply that the cases are on parity with each other. Wright accused the USA of having a foreign policy that is quite in line with the agreed upon historical record. His sin was having the temerity to speak the truth publicly to white folks. On the other hand, white supremacist restaurant owner, Mike Norman is peddling a racist idea long debunked, that a Black man is sub-human, a monkey. In the first case, the AJC joins the national corporate press in attack mode against Rev. Wright and Black political thought more generally. In the latter instance, and in a classic example of 21st century corporate press white supremacist reporting, the AJC, remains ‘neutral’.

As a side note, more than 1 in 3 AJC readers think there is nothing wrong with the Obama is a monkey shirt, according to the online voting module that the AJC thought a good idea to put up on their site.

Sex aside, nothing sells more in the US than racism.

Black Teens Feel the ‘Bilingual Preferred’ Summer Job Blues

We Black folks really need to be thoughtful about this. As a Black male living in Atlanta where immigration is occurring at a brisk pace and seeing unemployment amongst Black youth consistently at high levels, I can understand the frustrations of a young Black person in this predicament.

The solution is not to side with reactionary Americans who are attacking immigrants with English only rhetoric and other threats. Since immigration IS happening and will continue to happen, siding with reactionary segments of the population that are overwhelmingly white is the completely wrong action to take.

Black citizens know that whites in the US have not been and are not friendly to us. This means we need to side with brown and black immigrants, not the whites that have made life hard for Black people for centuries. This is a critical moment. Can we afford to be stupid?

Use common sense here. I’m not saying that this will be easy. But it is possible. Whereas, trying to convince whites to give us a fair shake has been a centuries long project that has left us very little to show for it. Everything Black people have attained in this country we’ve won with blood, sweat and tears. Whites have opposed ALL OUR GAINS.

What does all of this mean practically? Blacks in the US need to get active in our elementary school system school boards. We need to run grassroots campaigns for the boards, win positions and implement Spanish courses in elementary school, not high school. This is crucial. In high school, it is too late for kids to become fluent in the way that is needed for articulation on a job. Spanish courses in elementary school should be our priority.

The predictable windfalls of this plan will be:
1) Black youth will be competitive in the job market along with immigrants and those whites willing to get with the program instead of playing the fear game they’ve stuck with for hundreds of years.

2) Blacks and spanish speaking immigrants will forge closer cultural and social bonds if they can communicate more fluidly. This enhanced closeness due to shared languages will be valuable on a political level as these kids become adults who need to form political coalitions.

3) It has been long understood that being bilingual at an early age facilitates better mental faculty in other areas of study. Simply put, learning a second and third language helps you think better in your other courses.

We need to prioritize getting Spanish courses in Black elementary schools. This should be part of a plan for a Black/Brown future in the United States. Don’t be tricked by the white nativists who are currently attacking our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Know your friends! Know your enemies! Be smart!

The cyclone that hit Burma and now the earthquake that hit China both remind me of another one of those weird global rules. If you pay attention to all disasters, you’ll notice that there are grades of victims. Without a doubt, one can perceive the difference in coverage and therefore treatment of white Floridians whenever a hurricane hits the coast. That’s easy to see. And, considering the history and contemporary manifestation of white supremacy in the United States one would expect there to be significant differences in how white victims and black victims inside the US are covered by US corporate media. More interesting to me is how non-US victims of a disaster are covered and subsequently treated as opposed to black US victims of disasters. And before I go any further, I should make it clear that I understand that the US gov’t doesn’t really significantly contribute to any disaster fund. It’s mostly rhetorical blather. I know. But rhetoric repeated on 24 ‘news’ services has psychological and therefore eventual material effects that can and often do determine life and death for vulnerable economically and socially vulnerable people. But about the non-US vs US black victim coverage. I don’t believe the US gov’t cares at all about the Burmese people. But this tragedy provides an opportunity for them to get in psychological propaganda shots at a gov’t, the Burmese gov’t, that isn’t being as obedient to the US gov’t as they’d like for it to be. Therefore, the people of Burma are presented as in the most dire straits and in need of vital aid, which the Burma gov’t is denying them by keeping out US planes full of food (and let’s face it, who knows what else is on the planes) and supplies. By contrast, because the US gov’t has the US Black population in such a subjugated position and has so little to gain by exposing the plight of threatened US Black populations, they get no press. And none of this even begins to address what is and what is not a disaster. 50%+ unemployment and ridiculously high murder rates are the norm in many Black communities. While these circumstances would merit all order of emergency intervention, aid and supplies if the communities were white this status of a Black community is, by white supremacist definition, not an emergency at all.

What does this mean on the ground for regular folks who ‘want to help’ people? The racial situation inside the US is dire. It is understood to always be the elephant in the room. Even by whites, although white folks, with historic consistency, underestimate the size of the elephant and overestimate the volume of the room. Guilt with white liberals and angst ridden backlash with white conservatives and many liberals are just a small part of the white psychological cost of multigenerational denial and ignoring of the US’ problems. Here Burma and, to a lesser extent, China serve a function very valuable to the American empire. Whites, on several psychological levels, understanding that they unjustly enjoy the good life, savor these opportunities to reach out and help melanin endowed people in a tight spot. This is where white volunteerism and charity best fulfill their 21st century imperial role. They provide a psychological salve to whites in the US and Europe that understand that they are the beneficiaries of global rule by force by allowing them to ‘do good works’ in a situation that they can almost justifiably feel they had nothing to do with. I emphasize almost because of most black, brown, yellow and red people around the world weren’t still resisting or trying to recover from the economic and cultural dislocation of hundreds of years of white colonial rule they would be better able to fend for themselves in the face of natural disasters. Another post, though.

The most intense media focus on ‘international’ disasters work to raise the profile of these tragedies to a point where they are immediately identifiable by anyone not residing under a rock. Then the charity framework is deployed as a psychological weapon against whites, allowing them to discharge their guilt and angst into international assistance endeavors that contribute significantly to them not dealing with the man-made domestic catastrophes in US urban centers. Catastrophes that these same whites played a good part in creating. If not for the psychological displacement effect of these international efforts, whites might be more prepared to understand and admit to the destruction they continue to be a part of not thousands of miles but merely thousands of feet from their very homes. It is understood that the framework of international aid and charity serve a vital material as well as psychological function in hamstringing domestic resistance and thus maintaining the US’ imperial stranglehold on so much of the world.

The suffering of Burmese and Chinese people is, of course, horribly real. If only they could see a true international community response as opposed to the political dog and pony show the US and Europe engage in whenever misfortune strikes a vulnerable population of a developing nation. And if only US whites could break out of the mental gridlock of guilt and angsty backlash and both embrace whate remains of as well as rebuild their humanity, we might all be able to look forward to brighter days.

Finally. The delusion of white Amerikkka is becoming obvious for even the most intellectually stubborn spectators, whites, to see and understand. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, one of the top rated Black preachers amongst Blacks in the US is laying bare, the repulsively deluded reality of race neutral politics as it is practiced by Obama or by anyone. The corporate press reflects and conditions white notions of reality as they pertain to race. The corporate press has villified and demonized Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In doing so, they have made a caricature of the views he extolls and represents in his speeches and sermons. Those views are the views of many if not most of Black America.

The campaign against Rev. Wright is therefore serving the same purpose, in this regard, as the Barack Obama presidential campaign. It stands to discredit the very legitimate political perspective and expression of Black people in the United States. This is not a new project. For decades, conservative and liberal forces have colluded towards the end of delegitimizing Black protest and Black oriented struggle by using slogans that Obama has decided to base his campaign on. Things like, there is only one America and as Obama specifically put it, “there is no white America, there is no black America”. Of course this is bullshit. Bullshit stated and repeated to appeal not to Blacks but whites.

Because of the legitimate struggle combined with the concessions made during the 60s by the establishment, whites can no longer en masse simply kill or torture large groups of unimprisoned Black people in this country when we make political grievances. Whites used to do just that when Black folks had the temerity to be so uppity as to protest or try to organize against the force of establishment white supremacy aligned against us. They still torture and kill those of us imprisoned. And on occassion they do the same to ‘free’ Blacks but no longer can they do it en masse as they used to. Therefore, the battle is fought on another plane. Since they cannot kill us, full spectrum informational and ideological white supremacy is deployed in the attempt to remove all legitimacy from claims firmly rooted in statistics and historical facts that aren’t disputed. The Barack Obama presidential candidacy and the Rev. Wright electronic lynching, specifically, are the latest installments of a decades long campaign that makes George Orwell look embarrassingly conservative. Not content with rewriting history but with the likes of the NYTimes, FoxNews, CNN and crazy local media across the country, this campaign doesn’t wait for history to happen but creates reality in real time.

The mass delusion currently afflicting white America encourages and craves the lies of Barack Obama and cannot accept the portrait painted by a Jeremiah Wright. Not even a Wright backed up by millions of real Blacks in this country. But that is the nature of delusion. It, and they, denies reality to the end.

Many Black folks rejected the candidacy of Barack Obama from the beginning, citing the common sense logic that he was brought unto the national stage by corporatists inside the Democratic Party and therefore would be controlled by corporatists and bound to corporate (read: white) logic. The minority of Black voices saying and writing this were hard to hear underneath the cheers of Black and guilty, liberal white voices. That was years ago. Now time has become short and the the corporate (read: white) logic of Barack Obama has come full circle and for lack of a better title, the endgame can be called Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Corporate (read: white) political logic employed by a aesthetically Black candidate can never end up anywhere but where we are now, the rejection of the reality of Black political opinion in this country. Race neutrality, colorblindness and whatever else one might call the rhetorical game that has become the politically acceptable expression of white supremacy and not surprisingly, the main pillar of the Barack Obama campaign, is a dead end for Black people. If it wasn’t obvious in the beginning of the campaign, it can’t be denied now.

I understand the hopes and dreams of the millions of Black folks with Obama dolls under their pillows. I do. But it was a raw deal from the get-go, people. And at this point, the deal has really turned. Maggots are all over it. In his acting performance of angrily denouncing Obama (and all of us) to the cheers of white people, Barack Obama, after dragging Black people all the way to the convention, is pulling off his mask. With only ever having one foot on the reservation to begin with, he has completely, and quite predictably left it. But don’t get mad. And don’t be depressed. That is what the plan was from the beginning. Take a look at a strong, Black woman that isn’t owned by the corporatists and tells all the truths Obama cannot.

We’ll never win playing the corporate game of Democrat and Republican. We must fight outside that entire paradigm. We can win. We must.