Regime Change Lite
Today the NY Times reports that Aristide has stepped down. Odd how the same country that helped him regain his democraticaly elected position, put the screws to him. No need for large contingents of marines, just get the poor niggers to do your work for you.
Any wagers on how long until there's another coup? How long till whatever regime comes to power, fails to deliver the goods? The old saying goes, how you got the man is how you lose him.
Links
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/international/americas/29WIRE-HAIT.html?hp
(17 years of informed commentary)
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Saturday, February 28, 2004
Back on the Block
My My My. Back from my road trip to see that http://www.blackcommentator.com/79/79_email.html published an email I wrote them regearding Al Sharptons' reported laison with a Republican.
On other news, It seems the crisi in Haiti is reaching a crux. The US State Department is apparantly requesting that Aristide relinquish power in order to diffuse the crisis. A crisis that was manufactured by Agent provocatuers. There was a very brief video clip of one of the "opposition parties" where a white male with excellent english said that his group rejected the peace plan put forth by the US and I believe was agreed to by Aristide. Why is a country with an overwhelmingly black population, is a white male, with perfect english representing "the opposition?"
This is going much like the failed instigate coup in Venezuela against Chavez (Who they are still messing with) and the successful coup in Russia.
With all the looting going on in Haiti, the burning and such, it will be another high burden on the population once this particular event is over, to rebuild. Poverty is a powerful drug.
So apparently, despite being the first black country in the Western Hemisphere to throw off the Yoke of slavery, Haiti is indeed back on the auction block.
Links:
http://www.blackcommentator.com/79/79_email.html
My My My. Back from my road trip to see that http://www.blackcommentator.com/79/79_email.html published an email I wrote them regearding Al Sharptons' reported laison with a Republican.
On other news, It seems the crisi in Haiti is reaching a crux. The US State Department is apparantly requesting that Aristide relinquish power in order to diffuse the crisis. A crisis that was manufactured by Agent provocatuers. There was a very brief video clip of one of the "opposition parties" where a white male with excellent english said that his group rejected the peace plan put forth by the US and I believe was agreed to by Aristide. Why is a country with an overwhelmingly black population, is a white male, with perfect english representing "the opposition?"
This is going much like the failed instigate coup in Venezuela against Chavez (Who they are still messing with) and the successful coup in Russia.
With all the looting going on in Haiti, the burning and such, it will be another high burden on the population once this particular event is over, to rebuild. Poverty is a powerful drug.
So apparently, despite being the first black country in the Western Hemisphere to throw off the Yoke of slavery, Haiti is indeed back on the auction block.
Links:
http://www.blackcommentator.com/79/79_email.html
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Leadership in Black Communities
I'm on the road in Ohio so updates will be far and few between until I get back home
A big thing among black thinkers is the idea that black people are not in need of any single leader. Instead we needed to be individual leaders. Basically everyone is a leader. It is unfortunate that such an idea is taking root. Why is it unfortunate, because it’s not how leadership works, nor is it how social communities operate.
There’s a well worn saying here in the states: “To many chefs spoil the broth.” And “too many Chiefs and too few braves.” These two statements embody the foolishness of the idea that there should be massive numbers of leaders. Too many people with equal say in any organization leads to chaos. I do know that there are organization theories that work on consensus. Even in those types of organizations usually have popularly elected representatives that then do the “caucusing.”
What is worse about this idea is that no other people operate in this manner. Sure there is individual responsibility, but that idea would at its logical extension mean that Presidents and Prime Ministers are unnecessary. Why do the peoples of England, etc. need such leaders? If everyone in England is a leader then why the need for government?
One of the problems with American black intellectualism is it’s reactionary nature and it’s inability to think outside the realm of white domination. When I say this I mean that many American blacks have a hard time understanding nationalism and leadership in the creation and maintenance of a complex organization. Franz Fanon talked about how the middle class fails to empart a vision to the nation.
The other issue is that we fail to realize that not all people are meant to lead. Most people are meant to be followers. What we may be failing to do is to train proper followers. It was said by Carter G. Woodson that blacks fail to respect other blacks who are put into positions of authority over them. I believe this to be true. I also believe that the reason for the call for “everybody a leader” is in no small part to the idea of not wanting to submit to other black authority.
I'm on the road in Ohio so updates will be far and few between until I get back home
A big thing among black thinkers is the idea that black people are not in need of any single leader. Instead we needed to be individual leaders. Basically everyone is a leader. It is unfortunate that such an idea is taking root. Why is it unfortunate, because it’s not how leadership works, nor is it how social communities operate.
There’s a well worn saying here in the states: “To many chefs spoil the broth.” And “too many Chiefs and too few braves.” These two statements embody the foolishness of the idea that there should be massive numbers of leaders. Too many people with equal say in any organization leads to chaos. I do know that there are organization theories that work on consensus. Even in those types of organizations usually have popularly elected representatives that then do the “caucusing.”
What is worse about this idea is that no other people operate in this manner. Sure there is individual responsibility, but that idea would at its logical extension mean that Presidents and Prime Ministers are unnecessary. Why do the peoples of England, etc. need such leaders? If everyone in England is a leader then why the need for government?
One of the problems with American black intellectualism is it’s reactionary nature and it’s inability to think outside the realm of white domination. When I say this I mean that many American blacks have a hard time understanding nationalism and leadership in the creation and maintenance of a complex organization. Franz Fanon talked about how the middle class fails to empart a vision to the nation.
The other issue is that we fail to realize that not all people are meant to lead. Most people are meant to be followers. What we may be failing to do is to train proper followers. It was said by Carter G. Woodson that blacks fail to respect other blacks who are put into positions of authority over them. I believe this to be true. I also believe that the reason for the call for “everybody a leader” is in no small part to the idea of not wanting to submit to other black authority.
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Why Why Why?
this post contains some foul language
Discussing the South Carolina Primary, I said that it would be in the best interest of blacks and "liberal" whites to vote for Al Sharpton. My position was that the vote would be a symbolic gesture as to what blacks want from the Democrats or any politician. For Sharpton to come out with a "massive" showing would be a strong message indeed. However, as usual, blacks played themselves.
Cynthia Tucker wrote
But the results of Tuesday's primary tell a very different story: black voters supported John Edwards and John Kerry by much larger margins than Sharpton. Once and for all, political commentators should have learned the lesson that black voters cast their ballots for those who best represent their interests -- just as white voters do.
No, Black voters do not vote thier interests. They, as the Merovingian of The Matrix Reloaded" simply do as they are told. Ms. Tucker continues:
In the Jan. 5 Wall Street Journal, Miller proclaimed: "I'd be willing to bet a steak dinner . . . that Al Sharpton will get almost as many votes as Messrs. Edwards, Clark or Lieberman . . . The last time there was an African-American in the primaries, Jesse Jackson blew everyone away, getting 96 percent of the African-American vote in the South. . . . So get ready to start counting Rev. Sharpton's delegates."
I hope the senator knows some good steak restaurants. Sharpton received 17 percent of the African-American vote in South Carolina; Edwards and Kerry polled 37 percent and 34 percent, respectively.
Miller knew what I know. Black support of a black candidate who speaks to most if not all of thier interests, regardless of electability is important. But Blacks being generally politically naive (I hate to say it, but it is true) did the opposite of what would have been best for them. They voted overwhelmingly for candidates who are most likely going to be nominated anyway regeardless of how blacks vote. What kind of power move is giving your vote to people who don't need it without having a barganing session?
Then I ran across Earl Ofari Hutchison's article over at Alternet. I barely like this man. I've had my issues with him since I ran into his articles over at The Black World Today. As little sense as he makes he manages to get plenty of "left" press. Anyway he states:
He downplayed the racially inflammatory and polarizing issues of police abuse and affirmative action, and stressed greater funding for education and health care and labor protections, and promised to rebuild America's then crumbling industrial infrastructure. It was non-racial, moderately populist, and did not threaten whites.
Well thank you Mr. Hutchison for letting us know that we still quake in our boots when it comes to white approval or disaproval of 'our issues." Perhaps the Patriot Act would no have been passed had whites been made to face the issue of overreaching and unchecked police power. Nooooooo, that's a "black issue" and nothing to be concerned with by whites until they have to take off thier shoes in order to get on a plane.
Meanwhile, the greatest unease about Sharpton has come from Jackson. Though he is careful not to criticize Sharpton by name, he obliquely chided him before the South Carolina primary when he noted that no Democrat could be effective without a real message, money and a campaign infrastructure. Sharpton has made little apparent effort to develop any of Jackson's requisites for a successful campaign. He has built his campaign on appearances on TV talk shows, at campaign debates, at showpiece protest rallies, and by tossing out well-timed media barbs.
No doubt that Sharpton was not up to par on the Money and infastructure, but a large reason for that was running "skurd" black establishment politicians et al. It is now well known that a large portion of his funding is coming from a Republican. Sad that grassroots issues of blacks actually get's funding from white Republicans rather than black Democrats. Many people are now down on Sharpton over the Republican organizer. I say that Sharpton made the best move he could given his determination (however selfish) to put his platform out there. But then again most people never understood why Marcus Garvey met with the Grand Wizard of the KKK either.
Sharpton laid his plan out in extremely clear language:
Sharpton delivered fiery sermons and get-out-and-vote pleas at his stops. His message: Vote for me, and you leverage your vote.
"I am the one you can't lose with," Sharpton told a capacity crowd at the 8:30 a.m. service at First Baptist Church of South Richmond, where Del. Dwight Clinton Jones, D-Richmond, is senior pastor.
Five of the six remaining Democratic candidates running will not get the nomination, Sharpton said. The idea then, he said, is to win delegates so that "even if we don't win, the winner will have to deal with us."
"If we are not represented, we have no leverage," Sharpton said.
Duh.
Again, the point is so simple that it baffles me how we collectively continue to get it wrong. That Sharpton will not win the nomination is not the point. That Sharpton can representively negotiate on issues important to the national black community is the point. If and when the final candidate get's into office, should he or she..well he, fail to deliver on the promises made during "negotiations." We by using a collective voting would be able to put a serious dent into their chances for re-election. Now, the Dems can continue to say, 'Dem Niggas will always do as they're told. What else a Nigga gonna do?"
Links:
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/tucker/index.html
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031773573132&path=!news&s=1045855934842
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17778
this post contains some foul language
Discussing the South Carolina Primary, I said that it would be in the best interest of blacks and "liberal" whites to vote for Al Sharpton. My position was that the vote would be a symbolic gesture as to what blacks want from the Democrats or any politician. For Sharpton to come out with a "massive" showing would be a strong message indeed. However, as usual, blacks played themselves.
Cynthia Tucker wrote
But the results of Tuesday's primary tell a very different story: black voters supported John Edwards and John Kerry by much larger margins than Sharpton. Once and for all, political commentators should have learned the lesson that black voters cast their ballots for those who best represent their interests -- just as white voters do.
No, Black voters do not vote thier interests. They, as the Merovingian of The Matrix Reloaded" simply do as they are told. Ms. Tucker continues:
In the Jan. 5 Wall Street Journal, Miller proclaimed: "I'd be willing to bet a steak dinner . . . that Al Sharpton will get almost as many votes as Messrs. Edwards, Clark or Lieberman . . . The last time there was an African-American in the primaries, Jesse Jackson blew everyone away, getting 96 percent of the African-American vote in the South. . . . So get ready to start counting Rev. Sharpton's delegates."
I hope the senator knows some good steak restaurants. Sharpton received 17 percent of the African-American vote in South Carolina; Edwards and Kerry polled 37 percent and 34 percent, respectively.
Miller knew what I know. Black support of a black candidate who speaks to most if not all of thier interests, regardless of electability is important. But Blacks being generally politically naive (I hate to say it, but it is true) did the opposite of what would have been best for them. They voted overwhelmingly for candidates who are most likely going to be nominated anyway regeardless of how blacks vote. What kind of power move is giving your vote to people who don't need it without having a barganing session?
Then I ran across Earl Ofari Hutchison's article over at Alternet. I barely like this man. I've had my issues with him since I ran into his articles over at The Black World Today. As little sense as he makes he manages to get plenty of "left" press. Anyway he states:
He downplayed the racially inflammatory and polarizing issues of police abuse and affirmative action, and stressed greater funding for education and health care and labor protections, and promised to rebuild America's then crumbling industrial infrastructure. It was non-racial, moderately populist, and did not threaten whites.
Well thank you Mr. Hutchison for letting us know that we still quake in our boots when it comes to white approval or disaproval of 'our issues." Perhaps the Patriot Act would no have been passed had whites been made to face the issue of overreaching and unchecked police power. Nooooooo, that's a "black issue" and nothing to be concerned with by whites until they have to take off thier shoes in order to get on a plane.
Meanwhile, the greatest unease about Sharpton has come from Jackson. Though he is careful not to criticize Sharpton by name, he obliquely chided him before the South Carolina primary when he noted that no Democrat could be effective without a real message, money and a campaign infrastructure. Sharpton has made little apparent effort to develop any of Jackson's requisites for a successful campaign. He has built his campaign on appearances on TV talk shows, at campaign debates, at showpiece protest rallies, and by tossing out well-timed media barbs.
No doubt that Sharpton was not up to par on the Money and infastructure, but a large reason for that was running "skurd" black establishment politicians et al. It is now well known that a large portion of his funding is coming from a Republican. Sad that grassroots issues of blacks actually get's funding from white Republicans rather than black Democrats. Many people are now down on Sharpton over the Republican organizer. I say that Sharpton made the best move he could given his determination (however selfish) to put his platform out there. But then again most people never understood why Marcus Garvey met with the Grand Wizard of the KKK either.
Sharpton laid his plan out in extremely clear language:
Sharpton delivered fiery sermons and get-out-and-vote pleas at his stops. His message: Vote for me, and you leverage your vote.
"I am the one you can't lose with," Sharpton told a capacity crowd at the 8:30 a.m. service at First Baptist Church of South Richmond, where Del. Dwight Clinton Jones, D-Richmond, is senior pastor.
Five of the six remaining Democratic candidates running will not get the nomination, Sharpton said. The idea then, he said, is to win delegates so that "even if we don't win, the winner will have to deal with us."
"If we are not represented, we have no leverage," Sharpton said.
Duh.
Again, the point is so simple that it baffles me how we collectively continue to get it wrong. That Sharpton will not win the nomination is not the point. That Sharpton can representively negotiate on issues important to the national black community is the point. If and when the final candidate get's into office, should he or she..well he, fail to deliver on the promises made during "negotiations." We by using a collective voting would be able to put a serious dent into their chances for re-election. Now, the Dems can continue to say, 'Dem Niggas will always do as they're told. What else a Nigga gonna do?"
Links:
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/tucker/index.html
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031773573132&path=!news&s=1045855934842
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17778
Saturday, February 07, 2004
How Jews Run This
A must read article here:
http://www.sfbayview.com/020404/cynthiamckinney020404.shtml
quotes:
hile there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution, at least not yet, that demands of our members of Congress that they swear their fidelity to Israel, there is considerable evidence that such a requirement does, in fact, exist. San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Whip, and therefore the party’s most powerful member in the lower house, set what was, perhaps, a new standard for such subservience when she pledged her “unshakable” bond to Israel at least a dozen times in a speech in Washington last April to 5,000 members of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at the organization’s annual convention.
AIPAC is Israel’s officially registered lobby with headquarters in the nation’s capital and branch offices throughout the country. To give the reader a good idea of how deeply Israel has penetrated our political system, AIPAC representatives, uniquely, do not have to register as agents of a foreign government.....
This time around, Hilliard was the first to go. The mainstream Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz found his defeat significant, citing it as one reason for President Bush’s newfound affection for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Here is how Akiva Eldar, a Ha’aretz columnist, described it:
“It’s worth taking a look at the Web site of the U.S. Federal Election Commission. Look for contributors to Artur Davis, a Black lawyer who won the Democratic primaries in the 7th Congressional District in Alabama …. Davis beat his rival, the 60-year-old, five-term Earl Hilliard, who is also Black, by a 56-44 percent vote. Here are some of the names from the first pages of the list of his contributors: there were 10 Cohens from New York and New Jersey, but before one gets to the Cohens, there were Abrams, Ackerman, Adler, Amir, Asher, Baruch, Basok, Berger, Berman, Bergman, Bernstein and Blumenthal. All from the East Coast, Chicago and Los Angeles. It’s highly unlikely any of them have ever visited Alabama, let alone the 7th Congressional District. (Now recall what happened when Savage named names like that.)
“What do the Adlers and Bergmans have to do with an unknown lawyer running for a Congressional seat from Alabama. Why should Jews from all over the United States send hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign coffers, which reached $781,000 - compared to the $85,000 he had in his coffers the last time he ran, and lost? The answer can be found in the AIPAC index of pro-Israel congressmen. Hilliard, who once visited Libya, is paying (with) his Congressional seat for a number of votes the Jewish lobbyists didn’t like.
Question: can any of the individuals who sent checks fro NY, LA etc, VOTE in the elections in AL or GA? No. Yet they had a huuuuuuuge influence. Wake up folks.
Links:
http://www.sfbayview.com/020404/cynthiamckinney020404.shtml
A must read article here:
http://www.sfbayview.com/020404/cynthiamckinney020404.shtml
quotes:
hile there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution, at least not yet, that demands of our members of Congress that they swear their fidelity to Israel, there is considerable evidence that such a requirement does, in fact, exist. San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Whip, and therefore the party’s most powerful member in the lower house, set what was, perhaps, a new standard for such subservience when she pledged her “unshakable” bond to Israel at least a dozen times in a speech in Washington last April to 5,000 members of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at the organization’s annual convention.
AIPAC is Israel’s officially registered lobby with headquarters in the nation’s capital and branch offices throughout the country. To give the reader a good idea of how deeply Israel has penetrated our political system, AIPAC representatives, uniquely, do not have to register as agents of a foreign government.....
This time around, Hilliard was the first to go. The mainstream Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz found his defeat significant, citing it as one reason for President Bush’s newfound affection for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Here is how Akiva Eldar, a Ha’aretz columnist, described it:
“It’s worth taking a look at the Web site of the U.S. Federal Election Commission. Look for contributors to Artur Davis, a Black lawyer who won the Democratic primaries in the 7th Congressional District in Alabama …. Davis beat his rival, the 60-year-old, five-term Earl Hilliard, who is also Black, by a 56-44 percent vote. Here are some of the names from the first pages of the list of his contributors: there were 10 Cohens from New York and New Jersey, but before one gets to the Cohens, there were Abrams, Ackerman, Adler, Amir, Asher, Baruch, Basok, Berger, Berman, Bergman, Bernstein and Blumenthal. All from the East Coast, Chicago and Los Angeles. It’s highly unlikely any of them have ever visited Alabama, let alone the 7th Congressional District. (Now recall what happened when Savage named names like that.)
“What do the Adlers and Bergmans have to do with an unknown lawyer running for a Congressional seat from Alabama. Why should Jews from all over the United States send hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign coffers, which reached $781,000 - compared to the $85,000 he had in his coffers the last time he ran, and lost? The answer can be found in the AIPAC index of pro-Israel congressmen. Hilliard, who once visited Libya, is paying (with) his Congressional seat for a number of votes the Jewish lobbyists didn’t like.
Question: can any of the individuals who sent checks fro NY, LA etc, VOTE in the elections in AL or GA? No. Yet they had a huuuuuuuge influence. Wake up folks.
Links:
http://www.sfbayview.com/020404/cynthiamckinney020404.shtml
Cash Money and Voting
quick note: The comment feature seems to be down. if it continues I will have to find another comment service. As a result the blog may be slow to load.
I've been hammering home my voting issues for a wee bit of time now and posting articles that cement my argument that blacks had better wise up and look elsewhere for political influence in America. This article discusses the issue of money and politics.
quote:
During the 2003 state election cycle, the 34,321 adult residents of Morristown contributed $410,894 to candidates. That number is more than the sum donated by the 338,415 residents of the 29 New Jersey towns and cities with the highest African-American populations.
( The 138 adult residents -- all but one non-Hispanic whites -- of the Oldwick section of Tewkesbury, one of the wealthiest communities in the state, donated the highest average in the state, $77 in state elections and $1,400 in federal races.
( In the 24 state zip codes with the highest African-American populations, the average state election campaign contribution is less than $1.
( Nine out of 10 ZIP codes where Latinos comprise the majority also gave an average donation of less than $1 to state candidates.
The numbers speak for themselves. A lot of people gave Booker T. Washington grief over his "Atlanta compromise" speech. Booker T. Washington was no fool. He understood America in a way that Dubois could not. We have plenty of talented tenths, we have few economic bases.
Links:
http://www.nj.com/news/expresstimes/nj/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1076063715143780.xml
quick note: The comment feature seems to be down. if it continues I will have to find another comment service. As a result the blog may be slow to load.
I've been hammering home my voting issues for a wee bit of time now and posting articles that cement my argument that blacks had better wise up and look elsewhere for political influence in America. This article discusses the issue of money and politics.
quote:
During the 2003 state election cycle, the 34,321 adult residents of Morristown contributed $410,894 to candidates. That number is more than the sum donated by the 338,415 residents of the 29 New Jersey towns and cities with the highest African-American populations.
( The 138 adult residents -- all but one non-Hispanic whites -- of the Oldwick section of Tewkesbury, one of the wealthiest communities in the state, donated the highest average in the state, $77 in state elections and $1,400 in federal races.
( In the 24 state zip codes with the highest African-American populations, the average state election campaign contribution is less than $1.
( Nine out of 10 ZIP codes where Latinos comprise the majority also gave an average donation of less than $1 to state candidates.
The numbers speak for themselves. A lot of people gave Booker T. Washington grief over his "Atlanta compromise" speech. Booker T. Washington was no fool. He understood America in a way that Dubois could not. We have plenty of talented tenths, we have few economic bases.
Links:
http://www.nj.com/news/expresstimes/nj/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1076063715143780.xml
Thursday, February 05, 2004
The Best Tenet Can Do?
As expected George Tenet gave his "rebut" Kay's charges of dubius intelligence from the CIA.
But it was a weak rebut.
quote:
"Let me be clear: analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs, and those debates were spelled out in the estimate.
"They never said there was an imminent threat.
So much for Powel's UN speech.
But after that Tenet offered this Piece of old garbage.
quote:
Mr. Tenet went on to say the analysts reached their conclusions through "three streams of information, none perfect, but important."
He said everyone knew that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons in the 1980's and 1990's and that Mr. Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran and his own people "on at least 10 different occasions." Mr. Hussein also launched missiles against Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel, Mr. Tenet noted.
And in the early 1990's "we saw that Iraq was just a few years away from a nuclear weapon."
"This was not a theoretical program," he added. "It turned out that we and other intelligence services of the world had significantly underestimated his progress," referring to Saddam Hussein.
Only the deaf, dumb and blind would think this is news. We know where are how Hussein got his chemical weapons to use against both Iran and the Kurds. So exactly what kind of "surprise" is he talking about? As for the Scud misiles. We know these are North Korean designs so again...what is new here? Iraq had no real home grown weapons programs. everything they had they bought somewhere. As for the Nuclear "program" with Israel flying in and bombing any nuclear facility Iraq tried to build, exactly what real nuclear program is he talking about? The even found his "nuclear material" which was looted by the locals (who should be dying of radiation poisoning soon). The only nuclear program Iraq could have is what it could afford to buy. These folks must think we're all stupid...yes they do.
Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/international/middleeast/05CND-INTE.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1076002734-qiqvU2aWM0f0vUhouSMm4A
As expected George Tenet gave his "rebut" Kay's charges of dubius intelligence from the CIA.
But it was a weak rebut.
quote:
"Let me be clear: analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs, and those debates were spelled out in the estimate.
"They never said there was an imminent threat.
So much for Powel's UN speech.
But after that Tenet offered this Piece of old garbage.
quote:
Mr. Tenet went on to say the analysts reached their conclusions through "three streams of information, none perfect, but important."
He said everyone knew that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons in the 1980's and 1990's and that Mr. Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran and his own people "on at least 10 different occasions." Mr. Hussein also launched missiles against Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel, Mr. Tenet noted.
And in the early 1990's "we saw that Iraq was just a few years away from a nuclear weapon."
"This was not a theoretical program," he added. "It turned out that we and other intelligence services of the world had significantly underestimated his progress," referring to Saddam Hussein.
Only the deaf, dumb and blind would think this is news. We know where are how Hussein got his chemical weapons to use against both Iran and the Kurds. So exactly what kind of "surprise" is he talking about? As for the Scud misiles. We know these are North Korean designs so again...what is new here? Iraq had no real home grown weapons programs. everything they had they bought somewhere. As for the Nuclear "program" with Israel flying in and bombing any nuclear facility Iraq tried to build, exactly what real nuclear program is he talking about? The even found his "nuclear material" which was looted by the locals (who should be dying of radiation poisoning soon). The only nuclear program Iraq could have is what it could afford to buy. These folks must think we're all stupid...yes they do.
Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/international/middleeast/05CND-INTE.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1076002734-qiqvU2aWM0f0vUhouSMm4A
Tim Wise And The Nature Of Preference
I am always suspect of white "friends in struggle." it's not that they are inherently untrustworthy but rather that they, like all other whites can fall to white privilege. This can happen even when they have nothing but pure motivations. The more their livelihood is dependent on race talk, the more suspect I usually become. Like their black counterparts, there is a line that the "anti-racist" must toe. For many of the people who are their primary audiences, these lines seem to be quite spectacular. Indeed relative to most people, these persons are quite revolutionary and indeed deserve a modicum of applause for their efforts. However; the issue I have is that ultimately they are dependent on their own ideas of what should and should not become real. And these ideas are ultimately bound by the limits of their own consciousness. Before we continue with Tim, let me go back to a few other well known "anti-racists" which would be known as "anti-abolitionist" in their day.
Some time ago I was moved by the spirit to pick up a book by Lloyd William Garrison. He is the famous abolitionist that ran with Frederick Douglass. If one looks at Mr. Garrison's writing on the issue of slavery you will note a strong dislike of traditional African culture. All throughout the writings and publications of many abolitionists are statements about bringing the light of Christianity and civilization to "the dark continent". All of the writings about freeing "the slaves" were couched in terms of the "civilizing" mission of Europeans. Even the African Colonisation Society (ACS) was rife with such terms. Liberia would not only allow for freedmen and women to built their own society, they would also civilize the native African and bring him to the light of the true religion.
Even the great Jim Brown, often sited as a prime example of white cooperation with blacks, made derogatory statements about African culture. Mind you, I'm sure that many Africans were interested in many things that Europeans brought with them, but I'm not entirely convinced that on the whole Africans felt that their own culture was inferior to anyone else. Yet this train of thought among largely Christian abolitionists, both black and white, became bedrock in the ideologies of "anti-racists" up to the modern day.
There has indeed been other factors that are specific to the situation of African-Americans. Being a small minority of the general population in the United States, Blacks here have developed in a fashion far less "African" than their brethren in other parts of the diaspora where the black population tended to be larger than the white ones. Jim Crow and other means were used to mentally train blacks into thinking in certain ways. This being Black History Month, I would suggest that all readers of this essay take an opportunity to visit or revisit The Mis-education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson.
It has been demonstrated that when asked their opinions on certain racial issues both blacks and whites will at times "adjust" their answers to fit some preconceived or implanted ideas of racial harmony. Blacks especially will have negative opinions of anything perceived as "discriminatory" even if it isn't in reality. Any black person , at least in the US, knows of the 'hushed tones" and such that occurs when the topic of race comes up in "mixed company" or other situations in which they feel that their ability to maintain employment could be threatened. For this reason alone, I'm not willing to trust the statements of someone who is not white when they presume to state with certainty what black people "want" or "believe." Simply put, many blacks with the experience and knowledge to have thought out such things are unlikely to even bother with answering certain questions.
One such hot topic would be school desegregation. Publicly blacks have put on the face of "we are for school integration." Many of these blacks themselves went to "segregated" schools and while they may have deplored the lack of modern equipment and the like, I've yet to meet one black person who went to a segregated school who spoke of the experience as inherently "bad" or that they felt cheated by the mere absence of white students. And be sure, when the discussion of segregation or separation it is almost always put in black and white terms. This is due to the fact that blacks are always seen as people that need to be "looked after" and experimented on. As thousands of blacks who go to HBCU's illustrate, being separate is not necessarily a bad thing. It has been reported in various black academic journals that even the teachers in such overwhelmingly black schools do not mind the demographics. What they object to is the school funding.
In residential spaces as similar phenomenon plays out. removing the issue of poverty and the material wants produced by such a condition, blacks who live in predominantly black neighborhoods, such as South Jamaica, Queens NYC, like living around mostly black people. They like having patty stores here and there. They like being able to meet neighbors from the same countries they or their parents may have come from. They like the common culture shared among the residents. They also like the idea that their neighborhood may provide suitable mates for their children who can pass on their culture to their grandchildren. Oddly enough, many of the blacks that move away from such "hoods" find themselves returning for the cultural things they cannot get while living in other 'more integrated" neighborhoods. many blacks in 'suburbs" surrounded by whites find that they need to find others "black like them" in order for their children to not be culturally isolated from other people "like them."
With those things covered lets examine this article by Tim Wise. Wise quotes a White Nationalist by the name of Jared Taylor:
I can't say I disagree with Jared on this point. Note that Jared does not state anything about disliking ones neighbor or burning crosses on ones neighbor or any other negative activity. Wise counters with the fact that such racial divisions are artificial due to some plot of the racists. Wise points out that little children when put into play areas will not separate themselves out by color, the usual euphemism for race. Says Wise:
While this is true, wise fails to ask or address the other glaring issue that children do form cliques. Though these may not be "based on" race, the fact that they can decide that certain children are "not nice" or whatever basis they use to form lesser bonds with some other child, is the basis for later "preferences." A similar position was put forth at a conference I attended. They found that when children were given common group tasks, "racial" differences were put aside for the "greater good." I asked if when competing against a different team if such hostile stereotypes and other hallmarks of "racism" were evident. They affirmed that it did indeed happen between groups.
Here lies my problem with "child' examples. As the Christian Bible points out. Jesus is claimed to have said when I was a child I thought and spake as a child." Children are more or less blank slates, the same thing that makes them ideal examples of "how things should be" is the same thing that disqualifies them from being such examples.
If we were to eliminate race from the equation, what would we be left with. Culture. within every racial group are ethnic groups. Why are Igbos and Yorubas different? Why do they speak a different language? Why do they call the Supreme being different things? No one really knows for sure, but I would suggest that it had a large part to do with behavior. My position is that groups such as the Yoruba and Igbo developed because individuals in these groups liked each others ideas and behaviors and decided to create and live in communities where they could develop that which would be their culture. Though they may still interact with other groups that developed among their own lines, they still preferred to live among themselves. If this theory is correct then "separation" is indeed endemic to the human condition and "racism" merely became another behaviour that persons gravitated around. This would also make Jared correct in his statement. I may not care for the ideology of white nationalists, but I'm not about to claim anything they say is invalid simply because I don't like their group ideology. But Wise tips his hand when he points out "negative conditioning." Are all conditionings negative? What qualifies as negative conditioning?
Wise points out:
This indeed is true: But that would not explain why people in South Jamaica Queens choose to live in largely black neighborhoods. Clearly the above stereotype does not apply to whites. The fact that the stereotype does not apply to whites would also explain Wises next statement:
Historically in the US as well as in the Caribbean, non-black "people of color" have been designated by the white power structure as being more desirable, more evolved and of a higher culture than blacks. Indeed many Latinos are in fact whites (Europeans) with Spanish names. Indeed I stumbled into an "Asian" internet board where many Asians were discussing, with disgust I might add, the propensity, as they saw it for Asian women to go after white men when the opportunity arises. If such a phenomenon is accurate and the discussion that I saw was correct, then Mr. Wise would be possibly painting a false picture of the rates of intermarriage among these groups.
Another area where Mr. Wise fails to portray an accurate picture of AA thought is in "staying with their own kind":
While blacks may be reporting low incidences of "stick with your kind" tendencies, in action blacks, particularly black women, are the least likely group to marry outside of their race. So why the discrepancy between reported attitudes and actual actions? I take us right back to my position earlier that blacks basically lie to poll takers in order to seem to fit the common conceptions of "racial harmony." But you'd need to be in the group to know this since we operate on a "ask but don't tell" policy. It is an odd statistic that persons who want to live in 50-50 neighborhoods (No Asians I guess) also exhibit the lowest amount of interracial family creation. I guess then that Blacks like to pair up with each other and then be the spot in the neighborhood.
Wise attempts to retroactively apply his theory to the contact between colonizers and Africans. He states:
I disagree with this statement. I believe that history shows that Africans indeed realized that whites were "other." What Africans did NOT have was the idea that a person could be someones material property. They were more than happy, unfortunately, to make "others" out of different ethnic groups or religious groups etc. . The African lacked the culture of anything for profit and private ownership.
Tim Wise gets a lot of things right. I like him for that. What I do disagree with him on is when he trots out statistics to show what blacks "want." I do not like it when boot licking blacks do that, and I dislike it coming from white man and women. No matter how non-racist he may be, he is not black and therefore, in my opinion should not attempt to state with any certainty as to what blacks want or don't want. As it regards this particular piece I'm not convinced that the dissenters in this case actually meant that racism, as commonly defined (but not adhered to here on this blog) was natural. I wasn't there so I could be wrong. Group separation is a natural social occurrence exhibited in each and every human society on earth and is not a necessarily bad thing. Furthermore, Natural does not necessarily mean inborn instinct sometimes it means natural progression.
Links:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-01/21wise.cfm
I am always suspect of white "friends in struggle." it's not that they are inherently untrustworthy but rather that they, like all other whites can fall to white privilege. This can happen even when they have nothing but pure motivations. The more their livelihood is dependent on race talk, the more suspect I usually become. Like their black counterparts, there is a line that the "anti-racist" must toe. For many of the people who are their primary audiences, these lines seem to be quite spectacular. Indeed relative to most people, these persons are quite revolutionary and indeed deserve a modicum of applause for their efforts. However; the issue I have is that ultimately they are dependent on their own ideas of what should and should not become real. And these ideas are ultimately bound by the limits of their own consciousness. Before we continue with Tim, let me go back to a few other well known "anti-racists" which would be known as "anti-abolitionist" in their day.
Some time ago I was moved by the spirit to pick up a book by Lloyd William Garrison. He is the famous abolitionist that ran with Frederick Douglass. If one looks at Mr. Garrison's writing on the issue of slavery you will note a strong dislike of traditional African culture. All throughout the writings and publications of many abolitionists are statements about bringing the light of Christianity and civilization to "the dark continent". All of the writings about freeing "the slaves" were couched in terms of the "civilizing" mission of Europeans. Even the African Colonisation Society (ACS) was rife with such terms. Liberia would not only allow for freedmen and women to built their own society, they would also civilize the native African and bring him to the light of the true religion.
Even the great Jim Brown, often sited as a prime example of white cooperation with blacks, made derogatory statements about African culture. Mind you, I'm sure that many Africans were interested in many things that Europeans brought with them, but I'm not entirely convinced that on the whole Africans felt that their own culture was inferior to anyone else. Yet this train of thought among largely Christian abolitionists, both black and white, became bedrock in the ideologies of "anti-racists" up to the modern day.
There has indeed been other factors that are specific to the situation of African-Americans. Being a small minority of the general population in the United States, Blacks here have developed in a fashion far less "African" than their brethren in other parts of the diaspora where the black population tended to be larger than the white ones. Jim Crow and other means were used to mentally train blacks into thinking in certain ways. This being Black History Month, I would suggest that all readers of this essay take an opportunity to visit or revisit The Mis-education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson.
It has been demonstrated that when asked their opinions on certain racial issues both blacks and whites will at times "adjust" their answers to fit some preconceived or implanted ideas of racial harmony. Blacks especially will have negative opinions of anything perceived as "discriminatory" even if it isn't in reality. Any black person , at least in the US, knows of the 'hushed tones" and such that occurs when the topic of race comes up in "mixed company" or other situations in which they feel that their ability to maintain employment could be threatened. For this reason alone, I'm not willing to trust the statements of someone who is not white when they presume to state with certainty what black people "want" or "believe." Simply put, many blacks with the experience and knowledge to have thought out such things are unlikely to even bother with answering certain questions.
One such hot topic would be school desegregation. Publicly blacks have put on the face of "we are for school integration." Many of these blacks themselves went to "segregated" schools and while they may have deplored the lack of modern equipment and the like, I've yet to meet one black person who went to a segregated school who spoke of the experience as inherently "bad" or that they felt cheated by the mere absence of white students. And be sure, when the discussion of segregation or separation it is almost always put in black and white terms. This is due to the fact that blacks are always seen as people that need to be "looked after" and experimented on. As thousands of blacks who go to HBCU's illustrate, being separate is not necessarily a bad thing. It has been reported in various black academic journals that even the teachers in such overwhelmingly black schools do not mind the demographics. What they object to is the school funding.
In residential spaces as similar phenomenon plays out. removing the issue of poverty and the material wants produced by such a condition, blacks who live in predominantly black neighborhoods, such as South Jamaica, Queens NYC, like living around mostly black people. They like having patty stores here and there. They like being able to meet neighbors from the same countries they or their parents may have come from. They like the common culture shared among the residents. They also like the idea that their neighborhood may provide suitable mates for their children who can pass on their culture to their grandchildren. Oddly enough, many of the blacks that move away from such "hoods" find themselves returning for the cultural things they cannot get while living in other 'more integrated" neighborhoods. many blacks in 'suburbs" surrounded by whites find that they need to find others "black like them" in order for their children to not be culturally isolated from other people "like them."
With those things covered lets examine this article by Tim Wise. Wise quotes a White Nationalist by the name of Jared Taylor:
As white nationalist Jared Taylor put it during our debate at Vanderbilt University last year, “Preferring members of one’s own race is no different than having a preference for one’s own children as opposed to those of one’s neighbor.”
I can't say I disagree with Jared on this point. Note that Jared does not state anything about disliking ones neighbor or burning crosses on ones neighbor or any other negative activity. Wise counters with the fact that such racial divisions are artificial due to some plot of the racists. Wise points out that little children when put into play areas will not separate themselves out by color, the usual euphemism for race. Says Wise:
Put two-year olds of different “races” in a room with an assortment of toys and you’ll see what I mean. Although certain kids will get along better with some of the rest of the group than others, their emerging affiliations will rarely if ever break down along racial lines, even if the children have never been around “other” race kids before.
Although children that age can discern differences in skin color, they are too young to have typically ascribed value to such a thing; as such they don’t naturally fear those who look different, or cleave to those who look similar.
Children encountering other children (at least if they do so before being exposed to too much media imagery or other negative conditioning) naturally gravitate to a common and recognizable humanity. They realize instinctively what grown-ups too readily forget, or have been taught to ignore: namely, that in biological and genetic terms, there is no meaningful difference between so-called racial groups.
While this is true, wise fails to ask or address the other glaring issue that children do form cliques. Though these may not be "based on" race, the fact that they can decide that certain children are "not nice" or whatever basis they use to form lesser bonds with some other child, is the basis for later "preferences." A similar position was put forth at a conference I attended. They found that when children were given common group tasks, "racial" differences were put aside for the "greater good." I asked if when competing against a different team if such hostile stereotypes and other hallmarks of "racism" were evident. They affirmed that it did indeed happen between groups.
Here lies my problem with "child' examples. As the Christian Bible points out. Jesus is claimed to have said when I was a child I thought and spake as a child." Children are more or less blank slates, the same thing that makes them ideal examples of "how things should be" is the same thing that disqualifies them from being such examples.
If we were to eliminate race from the equation, what would we be left with. Culture. within every racial group are ethnic groups. Why are Igbos and Yorubas different? Why do they speak a different language? Why do they call the Supreme being different things? No one really knows for sure, but I would suggest that it had a large part to do with behavior. My position is that groups such as the Yoruba and Igbo developed because individuals in these groups liked each others ideas and behaviors and decided to create and live in communities where they could develop that which would be their culture. Though they may still interact with other groups that developed among their own lines, they still preferred to live among themselves. If this theory is correct then "separation" is indeed endemic to the human condition and "racism" merely became another behaviour that persons gravitated around. This would also make Jared correct in his statement. I may not care for the ideology of white nationalists, but I'm not about to claim anything they say is invalid simply because I don't like their group ideology. But Wise tips his hand when he points out "negative conditioning." Are all conditionings negative? What qualifies as negative conditioning?
Wise points out:
>Far from natural, racial bias stems from propaganda. If people are told repeatedly that certain folks make bad neighbors, drive down property values, or bring crime to a neighborhood, they will likely come to believe these things, with or without first-hand evidence for such beliefs.
This indeed is true: But that would not explain why people in South Jamaica Queens choose to live in largely black neighborhoods. Clearly the above stereotype does not apply to whites. The fact that the stereotype does not apply to whites would also explain Wises next statement:
Asian Pacific Islanders and Latinos too have high rates of intermarriage with whites, and rarely seek to avoid whites the way whites seek to avoid being around “too many” people of color.
Historically in the US as well as in the Caribbean, non-black "people of color" have been designated by the white power structure as being more desirable, more evolved and of a higher culture than blacks. Indeed many Latinos are in fact whites (Europeans) with Spanish names. Indeed I stumbled into an "Asian" internet board where many Asians were discussing, with disgust I might add, the propensity, as they saw it for Asian women to go after white men when the opportunity arises. If such a phenomenon is accurate and the discussion that I saw was correct, then Mr. Wise would be possibly painting a false picture of the rates of intermarriage among these groups.
Another area where Mr. Wise fails to portray an accurate picture of AA thought is in "staying with their own kind":
Most whites, on the other hand, say they prefer no more than 10 percent people of color in their neighborhoods. Likewise, when asked by pollsters, whites are 45 percent more likely than blacks to say that it’s best for people to “stick with their own kind” in the racial sense.
While blacks may be reporting low incidences of "stick with your kind" tendencies, in action blacks, particularly black women, are the least likely group to marry outside of their race. So why the discrepancy between reported attitudes and actual actions? I take us right back to my position earlier that blacks basically lie to poll takers in order to seem to fit the common conceptions of "racial harmony." But you'd need to be in the group to know this since we operate on a "ask but don't tell" policy. It is an odd statistic that persons who want to live in 50-50 neighborhoods (No Asians I guess) also exhibit the lowest amount of interracial family creation. I guess then that Blacks like to pair up with each other and then be the spot in the neighborhood.
Wise attempts to retroactively apply his theory to the contact between colonizers and Africans. He states:
Indeed, it was in part the openness of African and indigenous American cultures, and their relative lack of racial “consciousness” that rendered them vulnerable to conquest, enslavement and colonization. In other words, some folks appear more likely to engage in racial “othering,” and those most susceptible (at least in the U.S.) are white.
I disagree with this statement. I believe that history shows that Africans indeed realized that whites were "other." What Africans did NOT have was the idea that a person could be someones material property. They were more than happy, unfortunately, to make "others" out of different ethnic groups or religious groups etc. . The African lacked the culture of anything for profit and private ownership.
Tim Wise gets a lot of things right. I like him for that. What I do disagree with him on is when he trots out statistics to show what blacks "want." I do not like it when boot licking blacks do that, and I dislike it coming from white man and women. No matter how non-racist he may be, he is not black and therefore, in my opinion should not attempt to state with any certainty as to what blacks want or don't want. As it regards this particular piece I'm not convinced that the dissenters in this case actually meant that racism, as commonly defined (but not adhered to here on this blog) was natural. I wasn't there so I could be wrong. Group separation is a natural social occurrence exhibited in each and every human society on earth and is not a necessarily bad thing. Furthermore, Natural does not necessarily mean inborn instinct sometimes it means natural progression.
Links:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-01/21wise.cfm
Monday, February 02, 2004
Impact of Big Media
I wont say much of anything about This article. I think that of all of it the following post is the most important:
As a result, none of the candidates is very well known or very well organized here, and momentum counts for more than any other factor, including candidates' policy positions.
"In my judgment," said John Petrocik, a political scientist at the University of Missouri, "most people will do what the information flow tells them to do. They've been forming their views when television and the newspapers have been dominated by stories about Kerry winning, Dean stumbling and running into money and managerial problems, and the rest not doing much."
So far, the polls suggest that Professor Petrocik is right.
Basically if you'r rich you can afford adverts in big media. If you can afford ads in big media then you can get votes. If big media doesn't care for you, you gets nowhere.
Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/politics/campaign/02MISS.html?hp
I wont say much of anything about This article. I think that of all of it the following post is the most important:
As a result, none of the candidates is very well known or very well organized here, and momentum counts for more than any other factor, including candidates' policy positions.
"In my judgment," said John Petrocik, a political scientist at the University of Missouri, "most people will do what the information flow tells them to do. They've been forming their views when television and the newspapers have been dominated by stories about Kerry winning, Dean stumbling and running into money and managerial problems, and the rest not doing much."
So far, the polls suggest that Professor Petrocik is right.
Basically if you'r rich you can afford adverts in big media. If you can afford ads in big media then you can get votes. If big media doesn't care for you, you gets nowhere.
Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/politics/campaign/02MISS.html?hp
Till You Walk In Their Shoes
A friend of mine forwarded an article about the stereotypes held by Africans of Africa about African-Americans. I might add that simlar stereotypes exist in other black groups such as those from the Caribbean. In the interest of disclosure, I was born here, of jamaican parents and run with an African name. Every now and then I don some West African clothing and go about my business. So long as I do not open my mouth, I can "pass" enough to be approached by "native" Africans in whatever native tongue or I can be rudely treated by an African-American who has a "sold us into slavery" chip on their shoulder.
I'm not stupid enough to take these things personally as i know that in many cases there is an educational deficiency on the part of the party's involved. It goes without saying that there are great cultural differences between newly arrived Africans and those of us who have been here a few hundred years. What I say to the newly arrived is that your kids and grandchildren will by and large identify with the "ex-slave." It would be in the interests of all involved to understand that globally, we look like jackasses when we discriminate against each other in ways that haven't been done to us by others in decades. Yes there are African-Americans whom the sterotypes fit. There are also Nigerians, Congolese, Kenyans, etc. who fit stereotypes too. The negative stereotype game only causes more negative stereotyping.
There's one other thing I must say about the article. The author wrote:
Nevertheless, it would take me more years, and hours of watching "Oprah," to comprehend the black experience in America. As Oprah interviewed proud and successful black American women—Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Condoleezza Rice—who wore their blackness like empresses, I began to feel racial pride
Condoleeza Rice, though black in genetics, is no black person to be proud of. One of the "racial games" all of us need to learn quick is that doing the evil of white men and women is not success for us. Dr. Rice does not honor Dr. King in her capacity as National Security Advisor. Yes she is bright, Educated, but she is far from the moraland historical standard set by those like Amy Jaques Garvey, Sojourner Truth, Betty Shabbaz, and countless other black women who stood against the kind of imperialism that Dr. Rice stands for (however thinly veiled). Further comment on this will be reserved for an upcoming piece on Leadership.
Links:
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-essay05feb01,1,2022770.story?coll=la-headlines-magazine
A friend of mine forwarded an article about the stereotypes held by Africans of Africa about African-Americans. I might add that simlar stereotypes exist in other black groups such as those from the Caribbean. In the interest of disclosure, I was born here, of jamaican parents and run with an African name. Every now and then I don some West African clothing and go about my business. So long as I do not open my mouth, I can "pass" enough to be approached by "native" Africans in whatever native tongue or I can be rudely treated by an African-American who has a "sold us into slavery" chip on their shoulder.
I'm not stupid enough to take these things personally as i know that in many cases there is an educational deficiency on the part of the party's involved. It goes without saying that there are great cultural differences between newly arrived Africans and those of us who have been here a few hundred years. What I say to the newly arrived is that your kids and grandchildren will by and large identify with the "ex-slave." It would be in the interests of all involved to understand that globally, we look like jackasses when we discriminate against each other in ways that haven't been done to us by others in decades. Yes there are African-Americans whom the sterotypes fit. There are also Nigerians, Congolese, Kenyans, etc. who fit stereotypes too. The negative stereotype game only causes more negative stereotyping.
There's one other thing I must say about the article. The author wrote:
Nevertheless, it would take me more years, and hours of watching "Oprah," to comprehend the black experience in America. As Oprah interviewed proud and successful black American women—Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Condoleezza Rice—who wore their blackness like empresses, I began to feel racial pride
Condoleeza Rice, though black in genetics, is no black person to be proud of. One of the "racial games" all of us need to learn quick is that doing the evil of white men and women is not success for us. Dr. Rice does not honor Dr. King in her capacity as National Security Advisor. Yes she is bright, Educated, but she is far from the moraland historical standard set by those like Amy Jaques Garvey, Sojourner Truth, Betty Shabbaz, and countless other black women who stood against the kind of imperialism that Dr. Rice stands for (however thinly veiled). Further comment on this will be reserved for an upcoming piece on Leadership.
Links:
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-essay05feb01,1,2022770.story?coll=la-headlines-magazine
Thursday, January 29, 2004
So what is 512 Tonnes of WMD?
Last night Ted Koppel gave a rather kind interview of David Kay. In the lead in they had audio clips of President Bush giving an "accounting" of Iraqi WMD's. In one instance he claimed that there were 512 tonnes of biological and or chemical agents. Recenlty David Kay, among others have back tracked and said that Iraq didn't have these things or the they've been sent to Syria. Remember now that the US had a enforced no fly zone over Iraq for 10 years which meant that there was only a small passage across Iraq in which 512 tonnes of material could be smuggled out of the country. The way Bush and co. made it sound, Iraq had these 512 tonnes of material right up until before the invasion. As I have asked before, how did spy satelies miss the donkeys carrying 512 tonnes of material? Maybe we don't really understand why 512 tonnes is. a small car such as a Toyota Tercell is easily 1 ton (2000 lbs = 1 short ton). If you imaging 512 Toyota Tercelles lined up or stacked up you'd get the picture of what 512 tonnes of chemical agent would be like. This stuff just up and disapeared without a trace? More perspective: Some time after the fall of Bagdhad there was a find of a so called 'Mobile lab." Clearly if this was a mobile lab it could be taken as the average size of Iraq's mobile lab capability. These were small trailers which means 512 of them were supposedly "out there." yet not one was found and what's worse of the one found it didn't even have chemical residue. For a country that was ready to spray American troops with chemicals and cells they were quite able to clean these "labs" to the point of leaving no forensic evidence of there ever being chemicals in use on or around the cart. Now THAT is a feat.
What I'm wondering is why the CIA and whatever other organizations responsible for gathering intelligence is allowing itself to be characterized as basic idiots. They are allowing thier world wide reputation get ripped apart and not even fighting back. That does not sound like the same CIA that some months ago was demanding to know who leaked info about thier operative. Nor does it sound like the CIA that repeatedly told us that certain information being given out by the Bush White House was wrong. Somebody is being protected in a big way.
Last night Ted Koppel gave a rather kind interview of David Kay. In the lead in they had audio clips of President Bush giving an "accounting" of Iraqi WMD's. In one instance he claimed that there were 512 tonnes of biological and or chemical agents. Recenlty David Kay, among others have back tracked and said that Iraq didn't have these things or the they've been sent to Syria. Remember now that the US had a enforced no fly zone over Iraq for 10 years which meant that there was only a small passage across Iraq in which 512 tonnes of material could be smuggled out of the country. The way Bush and co. made it sound, Iraq had these 512 tonnes of material right up until before the invasion. As I have asked before, how did spy satelies miss the donkeys carrying 512 tonnes of material? Maybe we don't really understand why 512 tonnes is. a small car such as a Toyota Tercell is easily 1 ton (2000 lbs = 1 short ton). If you imaging 512 Toyota Tercelles lined up or stacked up you'd get the picture of what 512 tonnes of chemical agent would be like. This stuff just up and disapeared without a trace? More perspective: Some time after the fall of Bagdhad there was a find of a so called 'Mobile lab." Clearly if this was a mobile lab it could be taken as the average size of Iraq's mobile lab capability. These were small trailers which means 512 of them were supposedly "out there." yet not one was found and what's worse of the one found it didn't even have chemical residue. For a country that was ready to spray American troops with chemicals and cells they were quite able to clean these "labs" to the point of leaving no forensic evidence of there ever being chemicals in use on or around the cart. Now THAT is a feat.
What I'm wondering is why the CIA and whatever other organizations responsible for gathering intelligence is allowing itself to be characterized as basic idiots. They are allowing thier world wide reputation get ripped apart and not even fighting back. That does not sound like the same CIA that some months ago was demanding to know who leaked info about thier operative. Nor does it sound like the CIA that repeatedly told us that certain information being given out by the Bush White House was wrong. Somebody is being protected in a big way.
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
David Kay, Fall Guy
The NY Times has an article with more David kay talking about the intelligence on "pre-war" Iraq being wrong.
Quote:
"I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated," he said. "And never, not in a single case, was the explanation, `I was pressured to do this.' "
"Almost in a perverse way," he added, "I wish it had been undue influence, because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who in fact were exercising that. The fact that it wasn't tells me that we've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong."
This strikes me as odd because there hasn't been a peep about this from the president other than his State of The Union speech. I think Kay is going to be the fall guy for the administration. They can say that the person responsible for misinforming the president has been dealt with. Tony Blair also gets his "get out of jail free" card because all he has to claim, as he has been, is that he believed that the information he got was good. If it isn't then he acted in the best interest based on the info he had. Tony Blair has already gotten a pass on the Dr. Kelly scandal.
Links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3434661.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/28/international/middleeast/28CND-WEAP.html?hp
The NY Times has an article with more David kay talking about the intelligence on "pre-war" Iraq being wrong.
Quote:
"I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated," he said. "And never, not in a single case, was the explanation, `I was pressured to do this.' "
"Almost in a perverse way," he added, "I wish it had been undue influence, because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who in fact were exercising that. The fact that it wasn't tells me that we've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong."
This strikes me as odd because there hasn't been a peep about this from the president other than his State of The Union speech. I think Kay is going to be the fall guy for the administration. They can say that the person responsible for misinforming the president has been dealt with. Tony Blair also gets his "get out of jail free" card because all he has to claim, as he has been, is that he believed that the information he got was good. If it isn't then he acted in the best interest based on the info he had. Tony Blair has already gotten a pass on the Dr. Kelly scandal.
Links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3434661.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/28/international/middleeast/28CND-WEAP.html?hp
What's Up With That Powel Trip?
The NYTimes ran an article recently about Colin Powel's trip to Russia (He should be in hiding after the lies he told the UN and has been busted in the mainstream media for. of course we knew better before the mainstream had a clue.). It contained the following statement:
More problematic, however, is the American military presence on the southern border of Russia, particularly in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, where the United States has access to Soviet-era bases it refurbished to support the war in Afghanistan. There is also a small American military contingent in Georgia to conduct counterterrorism training, but Mr. Powell promised this week that this limited force would soon depart.
now the significance of this is important to realize. D-sekou pointed me to an article over at Counterpunch that would explain the trip to Russia:
quote:
The establishment of Khanbad, along with other bases in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, enabled the American government to achieve three major strategic goals. In addition to providing a center from which the American military could pursue the Taliban in Afghanistan, the bases more importantly, improved "American access to Kazakh and Turkmen oil and gas," and extended "US influence to a region hitherto dominated by Russia and of constant concern to China (4)." The bases in essence paved the way for America to gain a foothold in a globally strategic region thereby putting it in a better position to compete with Russia and China for the great oil treasures of the Caspian Sea.
In addition to being the world's largest lake, the Caspian sea is believed to hold vast oil reserves comparable to those of the Middle East. Yet, unlike the Middle East, transport of the extracted black gold from the landlocked lake to the open sea is a major hurdle. Therefore, the primary issue guiding the politics of the region revolve around not ownership of oil, rather control of the proposed pipelines by which the oil is transported5. It is within this context that Uzbekistan has emerged as "the key strategic state in the area (5)."
Uzbekistan's cooperation with Washington has not gone unrewarded. In March 2002, Messrs Bush and Karimov formally met for 45 minutes in the White House. The meeting produced a five point strategic partnership between the two countries. Among other things, in exchange for continued use of Khanbad, the agreement granted Uzbekistan $500 million in aid and credit guarantees (6), $25 million for military assistance, $18 million for "border security assistance", and $1 million in policing assistance (7). These concessions were made to one of America's "foremost partners in the fight against terrorism (8)" despite the State Department's own declaration that, "Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with a very poor human rights record (9)."
for the Geographically challenged look at this map and this map and see where Uzbekistan and Georgia are in relation to the Caspian Sea and Afghanistan.
If you take all of this information you see that the point of war in Afghanistan is NOT to get Osama, but to maintain control of that area along with the Gergia and Uzbekistan. Pakistan is also useful which is why it hasn't recieved the Iraq treatement even though it is known that so called terrorists are in fact in the country and being protected by sympathisers.
Now if you check this piece
you'll find the following:
quote:
Citing low oil prices, concerns over Osama bin Laden, and pressure from women's groups, Unocal withdraws from Afghan pipeline consortium. Unocal also announces a 40 percent drop in capital spending for 1999 because of low oil prices.
1999
January
Turkmenistan's foreign minister visits Pakistan; says pipeline project still alive.
February
Carlos Bulgheroni, co-chairman of Bridas, visits Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia for talks with leaders.
March
Turkmenistan's Foreign Minister Sheikh Muradov meets with Mullah Omar in Kandahar to discuss pipeline.
April
Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Taliban sign agreement to revive pipeline project.
May
Taliban delegation signs agreements with Turkmenistan to buy gas and electricity.
Fast forward and read on CNN that Mullah Omar is being hunted down by the US
Why I guess that Mullah Omar has more than Bin-Ladin that the US wants. It would seem that the Taliban had the legal documents needed to move oil from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean across Afghanistan.
As Angie Stone put it:
What you dyin for?
Links:
http://nytimes.com/2004/01/28/international/europe/28POWE.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/kassim01172004.html
http://www.maps.com/reference/phypol/atlas/political/asia.html
http://www.maps.com/reference/phypol/atlas/political/europe.htm
http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/pipeline_timeline.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/central/03/12/eye.on.three/
The NYTimes ran an article recently about Colin Powel's trip to Russia (He should be in hiding after the lies he told the UN and has been busted in the mainstream media for. of course we knew better before the mainstream had a clue.). It contained the following statement:
More problematic, however, is the American military presence on the southern border of Russia, particularly in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, where the United States has access to Soviet-era bases it refurbished to support the war in Afghanistan. There is also a small American military contingent in Georgia to conduct counterterrorism training, but Mr. Powell promised this week that this limited force would soon depart.
now the significance of this is important to realize. D-sekou pointed me to an article over at Counterpunch that would explain the trip to Russia:
quote:
The establishment of Khanbad, along with other bases in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, enabled the American government to achieve three major strategic goals. In addition to providing a center from which the American military could pursue the Taliban in Afghanistan, the bases more importantly, improved "American access to Kazakh and Turkmen oil and gas," and extended "US influence to a region hitherto dominated by Russia and of constant concern to China (4)." The bases in essence paved the way for America to gain a foothold in a globally strategic region thereby putting it in a better position to compete with Russia and China for the great oil treasures of the Caspian Sea.
In addition to being the world's largest lake, the Caspian sea is believed to hold vast oil reserves comparable to those of the Middle East. Yet, unlike the Middle East, transport of the extracted black gold from the landlocked lake to the open sea is a major hurdle. Therefore, the primary issue guiding the politics of the region revolve around not ownership of oil, rather control of the proposed pipelines by which the oil is transported5. It is within this context that Uzbekistan has emerged as "the key strategic state in the area (5)."
Uzbekistan's cooperation with Washington has not gone unrewarded. In March 2002, Messrs Bush and Karimov formally met for 45 minutes in the White House. The meeting produced a five point strategic partnership between the two countries. Among other things, in exchange for continued use of Khanbad, the agreement granted Uzbekistan $500 million in aid and credit guarantees (6), $25 million for military assistance, $18 million for "border security assistance", and $1 million in policing assistance (7). These concessions were made to one of America's "foremost partners in the fight against terrorism (8)" despite the State Department's own declaration that, "Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with a very poor human rights record (9)."
for the Geographically challenged look at this map and this map and see where Uzbekistan and Georgia are in relation to the Caspian Sea and Afghanistan.
If you take all of this information you see that the point of war in Afghanistan is NOT to get Osama, but to maintain control of that area along with the Gergia and Uzbekistan. Pakistan is also useful which is why it hasn't recieved the Iraq treatement even though it is known that so called terrorists are in fact in the country and being protected by sympathisers.
Now if you check this piece
you'll find the following:
quote:
Citing low oil prices, concerns over Osama bin Laden, and pressure from women's groups, Unocal withdraws from Afghan pipeline consortium. Unocal also announces a 40 percent drop in capital spending for 1999 because of low oil prices.
1999
January
Turkmenistan's foreign minister visits Pakistan; says pipeline project still alive.
February
Carlos Bulgheroni, co-chairman of Bridas, visits Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia for talks with leaders.
March
Turkmenistan's Foreign Minister Sheikh Muradov meets with Mullah Omar in Kandahar to discuss pipeline.
April
Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Taliban sign agreement to revive pipeline project.
May
Taliban delegation signs agreements with Turkmenistan to buy gas and electricity.
Fast forward and read on CNN that Mullah Omar is being hunted down by the US
Why I guess that Mullah Omar has more than Bin-Ladin that the US wants. It would seem that the Taliban had the legal documents needed to move oil from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean across Afghanistan.
As Angie Stone put it:
What you dyin for?
Links:
http://nytimes.com/2004/01/28/international/europe/28POWE.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/kassim01172004.html
http://www.maps.com/reference/phypol/atlas/political/asia.html
http://www.maps.com/reference/phypol/atlas/political/europe.htm
http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/pipeline_timeline.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/central/03/12/eye.on.three/
More Sharpton Analysis
MSNBC has exit polls from the NH caucuses. I perused the stats and found some interesting notes:
1) Though there were no exit pollers, male or female that indicated that they voted for Sharpton, when gender and race were deconstructed 2 non-white males claimed to have voted for Sharpton. So this means that these two people either lied or the pollsters never accounted for the 2 votes.
2)When broken up by age groups, no age group admitted to voting for Sharpton. So again we either have liars or the pollsters simply "goofed."
3) Now even though 2 "non-white" males claimed to vote for Sharpton, when asked thier self designated "race" Sharpton recieved no votes from any category which included "black."
4) These phantom voters also claimed to have earned under $15,000 and $100,000+ in total family income.
5) One of the phantom voters had done some postgraduate study
6) One of these cats, Presumably the one with 15,000 or less income ( my assumption) has served in the military
7) One of these individuals attends Church Weekly. One is Catholic and the other Protestant
8) One believes that the Bush Tax cuts should be repealed across the board
9) One indicated a strong approval for the war. No doubt the person who is in the military. Here's the odd thing. If they agree with the war, and supposably the reasons for the war, then Sharpton is not their man. Why did they even vote for him.
10) One of the people claimed that Taxes was their most important issue.
I contest that this was a phantom voters. or voters who said something in order to throw off pollsters.
Links:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3762821&p1=0
MSNBC has exit polls from the NH caucuses. I perused the stats and found some interesting notes:
1) Though there were no exit pollers, male or female that indicated that they voted for Sharpton, when gender and race were deconstructed 2 non-white males claimed to have voted for Sharpton. So this means that these two people either lied or the pollsters never accounted for the 2 votes.
2)When broken up by age groups, no age group admitted to voting for Sharpton. So again we either have liars or the pollsters simply "goofed."
3) Now even though 2 "non-white" males claimed to vote for Sharpton, when asked thier self designated "race" Sharpton recieved no votes from any category which included "black."
4) These phantom voters also claimed to have earned under $15,000 and $100,000+ in total family income.
5) One of the phantom voters had done some postgraduate study
6) One of these cats, Presumably the one with 15,000 or less income ( my assumption) has served in the military
7) One of these individuals attends Church Weekly. One is Catholic and the other Protestant
8) One believes that the Bush Tax cuts should be repealed across the board
9) One indicated a strong approval for the war. No doubt the person who is in the military. Here's the odd thing. If they agree with the war, and supposably the reasons for the war, then Sharpton is not their man. Why did they even vote for him.
10) One of the people claimed that Taxes was their most important issue.
I contest that this was a phantom voters. or voters who said something in order to throw off pollsters.
Links:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3762821&p1=0
Sharpton And South Carolina
As regulars know. I don't do the vote thing. If you do the vote thing and live in South Carolina then you need to listen up. In the South Blacks make up near majority voting populations in various states. If there were a depressed white vote among republicans (unlikely) Blacks could provide a majority vote. In SC the black population can send a strong message to Democratice party of what kind of issues they expect to be dealt with. It will simultaneously send a message to republicans that courting the black vote will mean more than "faces in places." In order to do this the blacks of South Carolina must vote for Sharpton. This is not a vote to mean you believe Sharpton can win, it is a vote to affirm that Sharpton's message had better be heeded by whomever the Democrats run in the general election. It will also be a test of liberal whites. If they have black interests at heart they too would vote Sharpton. They want to vote Dean or Kerry, because they are caught up in electibility ( or something else). But true anti-war, anti-imperialism and "anti-racist" whites have to see that sending that message is better sent by a vote for Sharpton than for any of the other candidates. It gives Sharpton the ability to broker votes and possible concessions from the Democratic establishment.
On the other hand. I haven't heard any of Sharpton's speeches but i wish that he would lay out concrete and specific plans ( as is possible) for what the president of the US should do in the situations that face the US. Since Sharpton won't win regeardless of his policy statements, he should put them out there in order to get the populance thinking of what alternative plans there are. I don't think it's going to be enough to be Anti- this and Anti that. I believe you don't win by saying what you won't do but what you will do. I think a part of the bush aura and indeed the reason why conservatives are doing so well in American politics (besides money) is that they are willing to take affirmative stands on an issue. For instance if you believe in taking the troops out of Iraq, then what happens next? explain that to the voters. What about North Korea and the Axis of Evil quagmire that the US has gotten itself into? What alternative plan for the Palestinian issue is there? Put it out there and make the other candidates follow the lead. Sharpton should not let the fact that he is the black candidate allow him to be pigeonholed into talking about "black" issues. We know he can speak on black issues with authority. He needs to show the rest of America that he can talk the big issues , the wider issues like any other candidate. Remember that Garvey wasn't just talking black social issues he was talking about and acting on global issues of government and economics.
The secret here is to be both the Black presidential candidate as well as the presidential candidate that "happens to be black." hard rope to walk but possible and neccessary to get around the latent racism in even liberal whites.
{edited 9:13 PM}
Over at Slate they say the same thing I have been saying about black voting power:
quote:
What about African-Americans, a key Democratic constituency? Even after the Great Migration northward, the South continues to harbor a majority of the nation's blacks. Unfortunately for Democrats, though, they're outnumbered by a white majority that prefers Republicans. Ironically, Schaller notes, this problem is compounded by the Voting Rights Act because the creation of overwhelmingly black congressional districts gives less-politically committed black voters little incentive to maintain the habit of going to the polls. (It would be different if black incumbents faced a serious risk of being unseated by white challengers.) "Low turnout may not threaten the election of black legislators," Schaller observes, "but it severely damages the chances of Democrats running for statewide offices and for president." Democrats do much better seeking black votes in places like Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, where they can be combined with the votes of white and Latino Democrats. [my emphasis]
i"m reminded of the old cereal comercial where two kids decide to let "mikey" test out the cereal because he is reputed to eat anything placed in front of him. I figure the reason Mikey would eat anything is that they usually didn't feed him so he was so hungrey that anything looked good enough to eat.
As regulars know. I don't do the vote thing. If you do the vote thing and live in South Carolina then you need to listen up. In the South Blacks make up near majority voting populations in various states. If there were a depressed white vote among republicans (unlikely) Blacks could provide a majority vote. In SC the black population can send a strong message to Democratice party of what kind of issues they expect to be dealt with. It will simultaneously send a message to republicans that courting the black vote will mean more than "faces in places." In order to do this the blacks of South Carolina must vote for Sharpton. This is not a vote to mean you believe Sharpton can win, it is a vote to affirm that Sharpton's message had better be heeded by whomever the Democrats run in the general election. It will also be a test of liberal whites. If they have black interests at heart they too would vote Sharpton. They want to vote Dean or Kerry, because they are caught up in electibility ( or something else). But true anti-war, anti-imperialism and "anti-racist" whites have to see that sending that message is better sent by a vote for Sharpton than for any of the other candidates. It gives Sharpton the ability to broker votes and possible concessions from the Democratic establishment.
On the other hand. I haven't heard any of Sharpton's speeches but i wish that he would lay out concrete and specific plans ( as is possible) for what the president of the US should do in the situations that face the US. Since Sharpton won't win regeardless of his policy statements, he should put them out there in order to get the populance thinking of what alternative plans there are. I don't think it's going to be enough to be Anti- this and Anti that. I believe you don't win by saying what you won't do but what you will do. I think a part of the bush aura and indeed the reason why conservatives are doing so well in American politics (besides money) is that they are willing to take affirmative stands on an issue. For instance if you believe in taking the troops out of Iraq, then what happens next? explain that to the voters. What about North Korea and the Axis of Evil quagmire that the US has gotten itself into? What alternative plan for the Palestinian issue is there? Put it out there and make the other candidates follow the lead. Sharpton should not let the fact that he is the black candidate allow him to be pigeonholed into talking about "black" issues. We know he can speak on black issues with authority. He needs to show the rest of America that he can talk the big issues , the wider issues like any other candidate. Remember that Garvey wasn't just talking black social issues he was talking about and acting on global issues of government and economics.
The secret here is to be both the Black presidential candidate as well as the presidential candidate that "happens to be black." hard rope to walk but possible and neccessary to get around the latent racism in even liberal whites.
{edited 9:13 PM}
Over at Slate they say the same thing I have been saying about black voting power:
quote:
What about African-Americans, a key Democratic constituency? Even after the Great Migration northward, the South continues to harbor a majority of the nation's blacks. Unfortunately for Democrats, though, they're outnumbered by a white majority that prefers Republicans. Ironically, Schaller notes, this problem is compounded by the Voting Rights Act because the creation of overwhelmingly black congressional districts gives less-politically committed black voters little incentive to maintain the habit of going to the polls. (It would be different if black incumbents faced a serious risk of being unseated by white challengers.) "Low turnout may not threaten the election of black legislators," Schaller observes, "but it severely damages the chances of Democrats running for statewide offices and for president." Democrats do much better seeking black votes in places like Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, where they can be combined with the votes of white and Latino Democrats. [my emphasis]
i"m reminded of the old cereal comercial where two kids decide to let "mikey" test out the cereal because he is reputed to eat anything placed in front of him. I figure the reason Mikey would eat anything is that they usually didn't feed him so he was so hungrey that anything looked good enough to eat.
Monday, January 26, 2004
Revenge Of The Justices...maybe
I just read in the NY Times about a part of the Patriot Act being ruled unconstitutional. This particular piece references a portion of the Patriot Act that forbade "expert advice or assistance" to groups designated by the US government as terrorists or a terrorist organization. I suspect, however flawed my basis may be, that the recent judical oversite pushed by congress, which pissed off much of the judiciary, is coming now to bite the Bush administration in the arse. What better way to get back at Bush than to legally pick apart his pet legislation? Either way, the ruling is correct and I hope to see more of the Patriot Act tossed out. This should make for some interesting debates now that Dean can probably hit Kerry for voting for something (if he did) that was found to be unconsitutional and was said to be so before it was pushed through congress.
Links:
http://nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Patriot-Act.html?hp
I just read in the NY Times about a part of the Patriot Act being ruled unconstitutional. This particular piece references a portion of the Patriot Act that forbade "expert advice or assistance" to groups designated by the US government as terrorists or a terrorist organization. I suspect, however flawed my basis may be, that the recent judical oversite pushed by congress, which pissed off much of the judiciary, is coming now to bite the Bush administration in the arse. What better way to get back at Bush than to legally pick apart his pet legislation? Either way, the ruling is correct and I hope to see more of the Patriot Act tossed out. This should make for some interesting debates now that Dean can probably hit Kerry for voting for something (if he did) that was found to be unconsitutional and was said to be so before it was pushed through congress.
Links:
http://nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Patriot-Act.html?hp
Stay Focused
Needing to maintain some semblance of credibility, the Telegraph of England quotes Kay saying:
Quote:
"But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved"
of course that would seem significant had that statement not be preceeded by:
quote:
We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons,"
So there was some mad rush to take WMD's to Syria but that it wasn't that much. And these "small amounts" of weapons of MASS destruction were carted off to syria (pulled by innocent looking donkeys no less), between the time the UN inspectors were removed and the US came into Iraq. After all if it happened before then, why didn't all those spy planes not note the train [of highly disguised donkeys] headed towards Syria? And if these WMD? were IN Iraq prior to the ousting of the UN inspection team why could they not find them. Perhaps the secret service donkeys were sitting on them.
And please do notice how the discussion has turned from actual WMD to WMD programmes. Catch that? Now Kay, Powell and Bush want us to fret about some computer logs and scientist notebooks. Before, the suspected production of WMD's was enough to invoke an invasion. How long until simply having some textbooks on how it's done can be enough to have a regime pack up it's donkeys? nonsense you say? Ask anybody with the misfortune to have borrowed the wrong book from the library if such a thing is possible.
{edited 9:09 PM}
A regular commentor D-sekou: posted the following in the comments. I felt it should be on front street so I'm putting up here. Not that his other stuff isn't worthy.
Quote:
But Condoleeza said last week that it is unlikely that any wmd went to Syria...
and to that , add this :
"Kay's comments echoed those of dozens of Iraqi scientists who, in recent interviews with The Associated Press, claimed they had not seen or worked on weapons of mass destruction in years. {/b]
Only a handful of Iraqi scientists who worked in former bioweapons and missile programs remained in custody by the time Kay left Iraq in December. Some of the detained scientists have been held since April and Kay's conclusions were likely to raise their hopes for release.
Kay said he resigned Friday because the Pentagon began peeling away his staff of weapons-searchers as the military struggled to put down the Iraqi insurgency last fall. "
( AP, Jan 26 )
{/edit}
Links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/25/ixnewstop.html
Needing to maintain some semblance of credibility, the Telegraph of England quotes Kay saying:
Quote:
"But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved"
of course that would seem significant had that statement not be preceeded by:
quote:
We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons,"
So there was some mad rush to take WMD's to Syria but that it wasn't that much. And these "small amounts" of weapons of MASS destruction were carted off to syria (pulled by innocent looking donkeys no less), between the time the UN inspectors were removed and the US came into Iraq. After all if it happened before then, why didn't all those spy planes not note the train [of highly disguised donkeys] headed towards Syria? And if these WMD? were IN Iraq prior to the ousting of the UN inspection team why could they not find them. Perhaps the secret service donkeys were sitting on them.
And please do notice how the discussion has turned from actual WMD to WMD programmes. Catch that? Now Kay, Powell and Bush want us to fret about some computer logs and scientist notebooks. Before, the suspected production of WMD's was enough to invoke an invasion. How long until simply having some textbooks on how it's done can be enough to have a regime pack up it's donkeys? nonsense you say? Ask anybody with the misfortune to have borrowed the wrong book from the library if such a thing is possible.
{edited 9:09 PM}
A regular commentor D-sekou: posted the following in the comments. I felt it should be on front street so I'm putting up here. Not that his other stuff isn't worthy.
Quote:
But Condoleeza said last week that it is unlikely that any wmd went to Syria...
and to that , add this :
"Kay's comments echoed those of dozens of Iraqi scientists who, in recent interviews with The Associated Press, claimed they had not seen or worked on weapons of mass destruction in years. {/b]
Only a handful of Iraqi scientists who worked in former bioweapons and missile programs remained in custody by the time Kay left Iraq in December. Some of the detained scientists have been held since April and Kay's conclusions were likely to raise their hopes for release.
Kay said he resigned Friday because the Pentagon began peeling away his staff of weapons-searchers as the military struggled to put down the Iraqi insurgency last fall. "
( AP, Jan 26 )
{/edit}
Links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/25/ixnewstop.html
Sources
Over a ZNet I found This article dealing with the World Social Forum.
What struck me about this article was how it paralells my discussion of the situation in Haiti that I commented on back on Tuesday, January 13, 2004. There I stated:
Maybe Aristide has become out of touch with the ordinary Haitian. Maybe Aristide, having been thrust on the international stage and learning that running a country is not like running a church has had to deal with issues that the average Haitian has no clue about. The man is in his second year of his five-year term. The parliament is supposedly now defunct and he is ruling by decree. a dictatorship? Probably, but given that Haiti's problems started long before he was put into office and before this defunct parliament, how much different was the "democracy" before it?
The ZNet article seems to have the same view. It states:
quote:
Extraordinary, charismatic men, giants in Opposition, when they seize power and become Heads of State, they become powerless on the global stage. I'm thinking here of President Lula of Brazil. Lula was the hero of the World Social Forum last year. This year he's busy implementing IMF guidelines, reducing pension benefits and purging radicals from the Workers' Party. I'm thinking also of ex-President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Within two years of taking office in 1994, his government genuflected with hardly a caveat to the Market God. It instituted a massive programme of privatisation and structural adjustment, which has left millions of people homeless, jobless and without water and electricity.
But the moment they cross the floor from the Opposition into Government they become hostage to a spectrum of threats - most malevolent among them the threat of capital flight, which can destroy any government overnight. To imagine that a leader's personal charisma and a c.v. of struggle will dent the Corporate Cartel is to have no understanding of how Capitalism works, or for that matter, how power works. Radical change will not be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people.
Exactly my point. Some people tell me that I've mellowed out in my older age. I tell them that I merely have a view that was not available to me in my earlier days. It's a view that broke Garvey's heart as Liberia capitulated to Firestone Corp. There are some other potent ideas in that article, go read it.
Links:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=4873
Over a ZNet I found This article dealing with the World Social Forum.
What struck me about this article was how it paralells my discussion of the situation in Haiti that I commented on back on Tuesday, January 13, 2004. There I stated:
Maybe Aristide has become out of touch with the ordinary Haitian. Maybe Aristide, having been thrust on the international stage and learning that running a country is not like running a church has had to deal with issues that the average Haitian has no clue about. The man is in his second year of his five-year term. The parliament is supposedly now defunct and he is ruling by decree. a dictatorship? Probably, but given that Haiti's problems started long before he was put into office and before this defunct parliament, how much different was the "democracy" before it?
The ZNet article seems to have the same view. It states:
quote:
Extraordinary, charismatic men, giants in Opposition, when they seize power and become Heads of State, they become powerless on the global stage. I'm thinking here of President Lula of Brazil. Lula was the hero of the World Social Forum last year. This year he's busy implementing IMF guidelines, reducing pension benefits and purging radicals from the Workers' Party. I'm thinking also of ex-President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Within two years of taking office in 1994, his government genuflected with hardly a caveat to the Market God. It instituted a massive programme of privatisation and structural adjustment, which has left millions of people homeless, jobless and without water and electricity.
But the moment they cross the floor from the Opposition into Government they become hostage to a spectrum of threats - most malevolent among them the threat of capital flight, which can destroy any government overnight. To imagine that a leader's personal charisma and a c.v. of struggle will dent the Corporate Cartel is to have no understanding of how Capitalism works, or for that matter, how power works. Radical change will not be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people.
Exactly my point. Some people tell me that I've mellowed out in my older age. I tell them that I merely have a view that was not available to me in my earlier days. It's a view that broke Garvey's heart as Liberia capitulated to Firestone Corp. There are some other potent ideas in that article, go read it.
Links:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=4873
Sunday, January 25, 2004
More Bush Lies Fallout
Well now that the Bush administration is backpedaling on the WMD "intelligence" we find the Prime Minister Tony Blair is feeling more heat over his position.
See the BBC for details
Links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3427151.stm
Well now that the Bush administration is backpedaling on the WMD "intelligence" we find the Prime Minister Tony Blair is feeling more heat over his position.
See the BBC for details
Links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3427151.stm
Saturday, January 24, 2004
Oops, My Bad
How foolish Secretary of State Colin Powel must feel. After sitting in front of the UN holding up "show and tell" pictures for the world to see how dangerous Saddam Hussein is, he now has to own up to there not really being any WMD in Iraq. Says the BBC:
Quote:
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has conceded that Iraq may not have possessed any stocks of weapons of mass destruction before the war last year.
His comments came after the former head of the US weapons inspection team, David Kay, said he did not believe there were any weapons stockpiles.
Mr Powell was speaking on his way to the former Soviet republic of Georgia
This is sharp contrast to Dick Cheney who still insists that there were/are weapons in Iraq. Clearly somebody is telling a fib on the obvious level as " I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
Except this time 500+ US troops are paying with thier lives for this lie. Where oh where are the "independent" prosecutors when you need them.
Links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3426703.stm
How foolish Secretary of State Colin Powel must feel. After sitting in front of the UN holding up "show and tell" pictures for the world to see how dangerous Saddam Hussein is, he now has to own up to there not really being any WMD in Iraq. Says the BBC:
Quote:
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has conceded that Iraq may not have possessed any stocks of weapons of mass destruction before the war last year.
His comments came after the former head of the US weapons inspection team, David Kay, said he did not believe there were any weapons stockpiles.
Mr Powell was speaking on his way to the former Soviet republic of Georgia
This is sharp contrast to Dick Cheney who still insists that there were/are weapons in Iraq. Clearly somebody is telling a fib on the obvious level as " I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
Except this time 500+ US troops are paying with thier lives for this lie. Where oh where are the "independent" prosecutors when you need them.
Links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3426703.stm
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