The Largest Minority

October 24th, 2009 @ 1:25am by Guest

Imagine, if you will, a small, predominantly white city with growing poverty and crime in a small, highly segregated black section of its South East side.

Imagine that a black university professor in the city warns the local newspaper that “a black man will be killed this summer by a local police officer, probably under unclear circumstances.” The professor also predicts that the town’s “citizens will be insufficiently enraged” by the shooting.

Later in the same year, on a warm evening near the end of July, an older white university custodian has too much to drink at a tavern near the city’s central business district. As he and his wife leave the bar, the custodian spies a drunken 26-year-old black man fumbling with some bottles in a parking lot across the street. The black man is one of the city’s many homeless people who collect cans and bottles for recycling at five cents per container.

The 63-year-old facilities worker crosses the street to verbally harass and physically assault the young black man for spilling some bottles. As a different university professor (this one white) will note later, the white janitor appears to think that he has been specially “deputized to monitor inebriated young black guys and make sure - using physical force if necessary - they clean up their littler.”

The custodian insists on forcing a confrontation with the black man despite his wife yelling at him to leave. A bloody commotion ensues. After the white man begins his attack, the black man pulls out a short pocketknife and stabs the white man in self-defense.

A deputy with the local county sheriff’s department happens upon the scene. The deputy is a white male, 45 years old. He specializes in evictions, not violent altercations. Still, he carries a deadly .40 Glock pistol as he rushes from his car.

The officer displays his badge, identifies himself as a deputy, and points his gun at the black man. He orders the two men to separate. The janitor violates the order, knocking the black man to the ground with a single shot to the head. Keeping his Glock pointed at the black man, the officer tells the white man to “run away.” The janitor screams at the officer, telling him to shoot the black man.

The officer tells the black man to stay down on the ground. When the drunken black man staggers to his feat and allegedly “lurches” toward the officer, the deputy blows him away with a single fatal shot. The black man dies in a matter of minutes.

The white janitor is taken to the hospital to be treated for his pocket- knife wound. He is never charged with assault or anything else. His blood alcohol is not tested. His role in provoking the terrible incident goes uninvestigated.

The local city police department tells the local newspaper that the shooting was justifiable. The killing resulted, the paper dutifully reports, from a terrible assault on a local “citizen” by a menacing “transient.” The official police statement, repeated by the local press, reads as follows: “The deputy confronted the knife-wielding transient. The transient ignored the deputy’s repeated commands to drop the knife… Instead, the armed transient advanced threateningly toward the already injured city resident and was shot by the deputy.” There is no mention of how the white custodian disobeyed the officer’s orders and continued to assault the black man.

But a very dissimilar take on the killing appears within days on the front page of a different newspaper, based in a larger municipality thirty miles north. Here are ten paragraphs from a story based on the testimony of two telecommunications workers (who I shall call “Telcom A” and “Telcom B”) who witnessed the shooting from inside a car parked in direct proximity to the incident:

“‘There was no knife, there was no lunging,’ Telcom A said. ‘I saw a cop shoot a guy in cold blood.’ Telcom Worker B, 22, and Telcom Worker A, 40, who both work for a [local] telecommunications company, got off work at 7 p.m. Friday and drove with another co-worker to [a local bar] to have a drink. As their vehicle was coming out of the alley next to City Electric, which was blocked by bags of cans and bottles and some broken glass, they saw the episode unfolding to their left and turned off the radio so they could hear what was going on.”

“A skinny black man was lying on the pavement with his head against the tire of a car about 40 feet away. He was missing teeth, his clothes were dirty and he had blood on his torso.”
“The deputy, wearing civilian clothes, had a gun pointed at the man, and a third man — whose side was covered in blood [that would be the custodian] — was standing next to the deputy telling him to shoot, Telcom A and B said.”

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October 19th, 2009 @ 7:36pm by Guest

If Obama was awarded the Nobel for winning the elections in a racist society despite his being African American, Evo deserves it for winning them in his country despite his being a native and his having delivered on his promises.

For the first time, in both countries a member of their respective ethnic groups has won the presidency.

I had said several times that Obama is a smart and cultivated man in a social and political system he believes in. He wishes to bring healthcare to nearly 50 million Americans, to rescue the economy from its profound crisis and to improve the US image which has deteriorated as a result of genocidal wars and torture. He neither conceives nor wishes to change his country’s political and economic system; nor could he do it.

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to three American presidents, one former president and one candidate to the presidency.

The first one was Theodore Roosevelt elected in 1901. He was one of the Rough Riders who landed in Cuba with his riders but with no horses in the wake of the US intervention in 1898 aimed at preventing the independence of our homeland.

The second was Thomas Woodrow Wilson who dragged the United States to the first war for the distribution of the world. The extremely severe conditions he imposed on a vanquished Germany, through the Versailles Treaty, set the foundations for the emergence of fascism and the breakout of World War II.

The third has been Barack Obama.

Carter was the ex-president who received the Nobel Prize a few years after leaving office. He was certainly one of the few presidents of that country who would not order the murder of an adversary, as others did. He returned the Panama Canal, opened the US Interests Section in Havana and prevented large budget deficits as well as the squandering of money to the benefit of the military-industrial complex, as Reagan did.

The candidate was Al Gore -when he already was vicepresident. He was the best informed American politician on the dreadful consequences of climate change. As a candidate to the presidency, he was the victim of an electoral fraud and stripped of his victory by W. Bush.

The views have been deeply divided with regards to the choice for this award. Many people question ethical concepts or perceive obvious contradictions in the unexpected decision.

They would have rather seen the Prize given for an accomplished task. The Nobel Peace Prize has not always been presented to people deserving that distinction. On occasions it has been received by resentful and arrogant persons, or even worse. Upon hearing the news, Lech Walesa scornfully said: “Who, Obama? It’s too soon. He has not had time to do anything.”

In our press and in CubaDebate, honest revolutionary comrades have expressed their criticism. One of them wrote: “The same week in which Obama was granted the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Senate passed the largest military budget in its history: 626 billion dollars.” Another journalist commented during the TV News: “What has Obama done to deserve that award?” And still another asked: “And what about the Afghan war and the increased number of bombings?” These views are based on reality.

In Rome, film maker Michael Moore made a scathing comment: “Congratulations, President Obama, for the Nobel Peace Prize; now, please, earn it.”

I am sure that Obama agrees with Moore’s phrase. He is clever enough to understand the circumstances around this case. He knows he has not earned that award yet. That day in the morning he said that he was under the impression that he did not deserve to be in the company of so many inspiring personalities who have been honored with that prize.

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October 13th, 2009 @ 1:30am by Manila Ryce

I suppose we should not begrudge Barack Obama his Nobel Peace Prize, though it represents a radical break in tradition, since he’s only had slightly less than nine months to discharge his imperial duties, most concretely through the agency of high explosives in the Hindu Kush whereas laureates like Henry Kissinger had been diligently slaughtering people across the world for years.

Woodrow Wilson, the liberal imperialist with whom Obama bears some marked affinities, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, having brought America into the carnage of the First World War. The peace laureate president who preceded him was Teddy Roosevelt, who got the prize in 1906 as reward for sponsorship of the Spanish-American war and ardent bloodletting in the Philippines. Senator George Hoar’s famous denunciation of Roosevelt on the floor of the US Senate in May of 1902 was probably what alerted the Nobel Committee to Roosevelt’s eligibility for the Peace Prize:

“You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives—the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture.”

TR was given the peace prize not long after he’d displayed his boundless compassion for humanity by sponsoring an exhibition of Filipino “monkey men” in the 1904 St Louis World Fair as “the missing link” in the evolution of Man from ape to Aryan, and thus in sore need of assimilation, forcible if necessary, to the American way. On receipt of the prize, Roosevelt promptly dispatched the Great White Fleet (sixteen U.S. Navy ships of the Atlantic Fleet including four battleships) on a worldwide tour to display Uncle Sam’s imperial credentials, anticipating by scarce more than a century, Obama’s award, as he prepares to impose Pax Americana on the Hindukush and portions of Pakistan.

People marvel at the idiocy of these Nobel awards, but there’s method in the madness, since in the end they train people to accept without demur or protest absurdity as part and parcel of the human condition, which they should accept as representing the considered opinion of rational men, albeit Norwegian. It’s a twist on the Alger myth, inspiring to youth: you too can get to murder Filipinos, or Palestinians, or Vietnamese or Afghans and still win a Peace Prize. That’s the audacity of hope at full stretch.

It’s dawning even on those predisposed to like the guy that when it comes to burning issues the first black president of the United States truly hates to come down on one side or the other. He dreads making powerful people mad. He won’t stand up for his own people when they’re being savaged by the nutball right, edges them out, then has his press secretary claim that they jumped of their own accord. This may impress the peaceniks of Oslo, but from the American perspective he’s looking like a wimp.

Obama’s Afghan policy evolved on the campaign trail last year as a one-liner designed to deflect charges that he was a peacenik on Iraq. Not so, he cried. The Global War on Terror was being fought in the wrong place. His pledge was to hunt down and “kill” Osama bin Laden.

Once ensconced in the Oval Office Obama, invoking “bipartiship”, instantly nailed a white flag to the mast by keeping on Robert Gates, Bush’s secretary of defense.

He formed a foreign policy team mostly composed of Clinton-era neo-liberal hawks, headed by Hilary Clinton and Richard Holbrook. His next step was to eject the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, and install Gen. Stanley McChrystal, best known for running the assassination wing of the military’s joint special-operations command. (JSOC). Then he ordered 17,000 new US troops to be deployed to Afghanistan.

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September 28th, 2009 @ 2:55am by Manila Ryce

It’s really amazing how everything Hitchens writes becomes about him. How many chips can one man have on his shoulder? Take the following excerpt from Cheap Laughs:

Long before the Weekly Standard crew disembarked at Anchorage for its now-historic call upon the lady governor, I myself once sat on a cruise-ship entertainment panel—sponsored off the imposing shores of Alaska by The Nation magazine—with Betty Friedan and Al Franken. In the spontaneous-humor stakes, I seem to remember outpointing Betty with relative ease, but I nonetheless noticed with slight envy that some “progressive” women in the front row would start laughing uncontrollably as soon as it was Franken’s turn to speak and, indeed, often before he had even opened his mouth.

Fascinating. Do tell me more. Did you finally best Franken? What other famous people do you know and why are you better than them?

As predicted, Hitchens then goes on to tell us why he’s smarter than Franken. The article starts with the un-shocking revelation that Jon Stewart has polled as “America’s most trusted newscaster,” which launches Hitchens into a tirade about comedians having hubris and not being funny enough (in his objective opinion).

Isn’t the real problem that journalists such as himself are not doing their jobs well enough to reclaim that title from lowly comedians? Why not attack them for losing the public trust rather than Stewart - a comedian - for gaining it? That’s just bad sportsmanship Chris.

It’s clear Hitchens is butt-hurt that satirists have beaten journalists at their own profession, hence, he tries to beat them at theirs by becoming a parody of himself. The irony is lost on Hitchens, whose own fame has been due largely to the entertainment value his bitchiness provides rather than the intellectual honesty that people like Twain, Murrow, Cronkite, and yes even Stewart have.

Whether Stewart is a good comedian is beside the point. He’s not on trial. You and your colleagues are, Chris. Ego-driven articles like this don’t help you any.

h/t Allison Kilkenny via twitter

September 26th, 2009 @ 3:04pm by Manila Ryce

Intimidation tactics used against citizens peacefully assembling is a form of state terrorism. Protesters are treated the same around the world, whether we’re talking about Honduras, Iran, or America. That shouldn’t be surprising. We’re all fighting the same capitalist enemy.

By the way, how badass is that dude with the Captain America shield?

September 25th, 2009 @ 5:03pm by Manila Ryce

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Stephen Colbert has giant brass balls. Can we all agree that by now the Right has left no doubt to anyone that they are unabashedly racist?

I sympathize with people whose legitimate criticisms of President Obama are derided as racist, just as my criticisms of Israel have been derided as anti-Semitic. Still, it is important to draw a distinction between opposition from the Left and opposition from the Right. The arguments coming from the Right are simply not legitimate. They’re more like temper tantrums from angry and irrational children.

For example, calling Obama a Socialist (as if that’s a bad thing) is more than just hilariously inaccurate. It’s seeded in the deep fear that black people steal from hard-working white Americans. The president has done nothing to indicate he’s anything more than a corporate capitalist, yet the Right immediately links a black man to Socialism because they think both are synonymous with theft. That is the base of their “criticism”, and it really ought to be called out for what it is.

h/t RaceWire

September 25th, 2009 @ 4:14am by Manila Ryce

SPREAD THIS VIDEO! This is what happens to dissenters in the USA.

Didn’t President Obama denounce the same types of kidnappings and general repression when they were taking place in Iran? It’s interesting to note that the unauthorized street protests which he defended in Tehran are actually considered illegal in the “Home of the Free”. And thank God for that. Cracking Commie skulls is an American tradition!

If the men kidnapping the youth are indeed military, as their uniforms suggest, they’re clearly violating the Posse Comitatus Act, which states that the federal government can not use the military for law enforcement (except in Iraq and Afghanistan of course).

Not to worry though, Obama is different. I have faith that the kid in this video won’t be getting roughed up and held on trumped-up political charges. Most likely he’s just been selected to attend a Beer Summit with the G-20 leaders to work out their differences.

video description below the fold

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September 23rd, 2009 @ 1:39pm by Manila Ryce

Sometimes I think Greenpeace just isn’t radical enough, but every so often they do some cool shit like this to remind me why I’m a member.

Greenpeace activists are hanging off a Pittsburgh bridge with a massive banner displaying our message to G20 leaders gathering for tomorrow’s summit. The banner takes the form of stylized “road sign” that warns of the political maneuvering and delay that have put a international climate treaty in jeopardy as the world enters the final stretch on the road to Copenhagen.

We’re hanging banners off of bridges surrounding the area where these leaders will be meeting tomorrow.

The messages we’re sending are:

* “Warning: G20 Climate Talks Ahead. Danger of Falling Expectations”
* “Caution: Climate Disaster Zone. G20 in Session. Expect Delays.”
* “Danger: Climate Destruction Ahead. Reduce CO2 Emissions Now.”

We’re sending these messages to world leaders, because instead of rolling up their sleeves and working on a constructive solution to global warming, they’re heading down a dangerous road of destruction. All signs ahead point to a lack of leadership.