I am not a great fan of Medea Benjamin as a general rule, but she certainly got this one right at the Correspondents Dinner! Medea Benjamin on hand to love former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
I mentioned in my last post that I’d had a visceral negative reaction to Sedona — undeniably one of the most beautiful places on earth — which surprised and dismayed me. I had a vague sense that I was offended by the opulence and pseudo-spiritualism of the place, but that didn’t completely explain my snarky attitude which, I’ve come to understand, usually masks a deeper response to perceived injustice or dashed hopes.
I found an answer in the form of a book I happened to pull from my brother’s bookshelf: An American Child Supreme — the education of a liberation ecologist, by John Nichols. It’s a memoir of sorts, and tries to decipher how any of us — born into a culture that very nearly ensures that we become bigots, greedy consumers, warmongers, and environmental parasites — develops a social conscience.
John Nichols tells of the life-changing — often seemingly innocuous — events, people and books that transformed him from a product of a privileged upbringing and Mayflower pedigree to a liberation ecologist (as opposed to naturalist or environmentalist), a more radical superstratum of social ecology.
I won’t go into any of that, although it was fascinating to me. I’ll just write the words that I scratched frantically into my little notebook so I’d not lose them or allow myself to forget them. I wasn’t sure how they related to Sedona, but somehow they did.
Myself, I do not have the courage or the fanaticism that motivated Diana Oughton (of the Weather Underground) to build bombs, but I cannot envision the changes we need without some sort of apocalyptic reaction against the current levels of violence generated by the daily economic activities of the multinationals that feed and clothe us.
Territorial shooting wars are only a small fraction of the greater (and more horrific) violence of a world market that levels forests, pollutes the oceans, impoverishes people and toxifies topsoil in order to bring us our hamburgers, polyester golf slacks, and Marlboro cigarettes. “The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret,” writes Eduard Galeano. “Every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode over communities that have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth. This systemic violence is not apparent but is real and constantly increasing: its holocausts are not made known in the sensational press but in Food and Agricultural Organization statistics.”
Environmental collapse is now universally caused by monopoly capital plundering earth’s biological and human resources for profit. The profit is generated by the labor of those underdogs, whose energy is thus co-opted to destroy the environment. This means that our most destructive environmental problems are tied to their inequality. . . . That inequality is causing a downward social spiral on earth and eco-devastation. Profit requires demolition. The racism that deforms our nation (and the globe) is a tool used by a capitalist society to maintain class divisions for profit-making reasons, so racism is also a main component of biosystem toxicity.
John Nichols sums up the philosophy of a liberation ecologist when he quotes Tom Athanasiou’s book Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor, whose words are directed at environmentalists:
“The time for such political innocence is over. . . .it is past time for environmentalists to face their own history, in which they have too often stood not for justice and freedom, or even for realism, but merely for the comforts and aesthetics of affluent nature lovers. They have no choice. History will judge greens by whether they stand with the world’s poor.”
That must be it. I distrusted Sedona because it quite obviously doesn’t stand with the world’s poor, nor even the nation’s middle class. It is an enclave for affluent nature lovers whose social consciences are buried in crystals and energy forces, $4 iced teas and expensive gauzy skirts.
Sedona seems to care not a whit about social or economic justice nor — I’d wager a guess — about wreaking environmental havoc in Utah and New Mexico to keep its own little slice of Eden energized and enflowered. There is no need for Sedona to worry about the larger world, neither liberation for its people nor the sustainability of its global environment. Sedona exists unto itself and its wealthy denizens — to be owned, developed and distributed and enjoyed at their directive.
I’d envisioned myself hiking alone in Sedona for three magical days, vortexed into a frenzied energy, taken by wizened hippies to a hillside lair for impromptu meditation. Instead, in spite of the brazenly gorgeous Sedona landscape, I felt the whole place to be a pseudo-spiritual, wildly affluent, corporate-run and supremely phony tourist trap. I was slightly horrified to feel this way about such a beautiful place, and tried to lecture myself into giving further consideration, but to no avail. I got the hell out of Nirvana Dodge after a single (albeit lovely) hike.
That was yesterday. Today I headed north out of Flagstaff on Highway 89 with no particular plan. Shortly after the city faded from the rearview and I was facing the open road, I turned on the radio and heard “You’re listening to Indian Public Radio.” This heralded a perfect Tony Hillerman-esque adventure, I was sure of it, and I was flooded with good cheer.
From the radio came gentle Indian flute sounds, haunting-dancing-with-wolves-vision-quest sounds, which had the hair on my arms standing instantly at attention. Within thirty seconds, however, a techno track and a Navajo-accented rapper barged into the song, resulting in a somewhat bizarre Eminem/Kokopelli kind of thing. I was enthralled.
A retrospective about Harold Drake’s radio show “The Church in Your Hogan” was next, followed by a short discussion of cultural taboos associated with Indian suicide, and an admonition to speak openly about such things. Fleetwood Mac, Peter Frampton, and then this song by some sweet-voiced Hopi girls:
Hey, Cousin! Nice to see you again!
Do you have any duck tape, Cousin? Because my muffler fell off again.
Duck tape. Sigh. Indian glue.
I was becoming giddy.
I took the Navajo Trail (Highway 160) east onto the Navajo reservation and soon came upon Tuba City, a dusty little town of 8,000 residents and seemingly little else. I drove down Main Street and saw house after house boarded up and nothing but dry dusty fields all around. I don’t know where the actual people live, but the town seems reserved for ghosts. In front of the elementary school, at two in the afternoon, were twenty long yellow school buses awaiting what couldn’t possibly be that many kids. In fact I didn’t see any kids, yet one after another the buses pulled slowly away from the curb. Maybe each rural denizen has his or her own bus.
I went into the trading post/interactive Navajo museum ($9)/internet café hoping to find authentic Indian crafts. The store had some very nice moccasins which, on closer inspection, were made by Minnetonka Moccasins — a big corporation headquartered in Minnesota. I tried on a cute black straw cowboy hat made by some beachwear company in Oregon. Then I spied a truly adorable backpack purse of Indian-patterned wool and leather, manufactured — big sigh — by Pendleton, the company responsible for the boiled wool jackets of my Junior League days.
I couldn’t find anything else to do in Tuba City, so I ate some trail mix in the car, drank some warm water from my CamelBack, and did some research on Tuba City. Here are some fun facts:
1. It is the Navajo Nation’s largest community.
2. It was founded by the Mormons in 1872.
3. It was a uranium boom town in the fifties, and regional headquarters for the Atomic Energy Commission.
4. Songwriter-musician Glenn Danzig got his ass kicked in a Tuba City nightclub. It was caught on tape and can be seen on YouTube.
5. SPC Lori Piestewa of Tuba City was the first woman killed in the current war against Iraq. She died in the same ambush that injured her best friend, Jessica Lynch.
While visiting Washington DC in March, I found it interesting to note the edifices closest to the White House.
EAST, WEST
The neighbor to the immediate East of the Obama’s White House is the Department of the Treasury. Is that any surprise? Of course not, but how bourgeois! I could imagine Scrooge McDuck sneaking across the White House garden twice a day to check his reserves. To the West is what we now call the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It’s the site of the suspicious office fires which may or may not have masked a recent vice-president’s misdeeds. The edifice looks straight out of A Series of Unfortunate Events, and check out the plaque which commemorates what the building used to be called:
Probably that should be no surprise as well: the White house sandwiched between Treasury and War. “State, War and Navy.” How so much less duplicitous than the “Department of Defense.”
SOUTHWEST
Behind the former War offices, to the Southwest of the White House, lies the war memorial to end all war memorials. It’s the WWI Memorial, of considerably diminutive size compared to those commemorations of subsequent wars which have spilled unto the Mall, but its form followed the convention of the typical Great War monuments erected throughout Europe among the nations who had participated.
Except the American version is dedicated to the “Expeditionary Forces” which I just love. That’s what WWI was about for the US. The trenches of Europe were no place Americans needed to defend their freedom. The troops we sent, to relieve France and England, represented a foreign expedition, exactly that. More precisely, our troops were an R&D expedition for our blustering capitalists.
(This may be no time or place to note that history books do not link America’s WWI experience with the Influenza outbreak of 1917-18, which began in the barracks of US soldiers being mobilized for war. American soldiers took their flu to Europe and ultimately killed 50 million people. Those were not the days before we knew better to stay home to prevent infecting others.)
The US entry into WWI was bitterly opposed by a peace movement which the war-opportunist-profiteers maligned as isolationist. Selfish globalization-denying isolationism has been the slander ever since, used against anyone who tries to block military interventions in all their guises.
Ultimately WWI was no affair of ours, had the Huns emerged victorious, American foreign affairs would hardly have changed. Our foreign trading partners would have numbered more Germans, that’s all. But it’s useless to compare alternative outcomes of WWI, all things staying constant, because America participated and profited wildly.
If American investors had not jumped in Over There, the greatest business opportunities of blossoming industrialism would have been missed. The opportunities offered by the Europeans fighting amongst themselves, proved to have been momentous.
And here was the monument to those lost American lives, sacrificed so that American industrial might, in particular the new banking monopolists, could seize the European spheres of influence throughout the world. Of course the lost lives of the American Expeditionary Force were remembered thus:
“…WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE WORLD WAR THAT LIBERTY AND THE IDEALS OF OUR COUNTRY MIGHT ENDURE”
It would take another World War for the US to appropriate the colonies and oil fields by means of contracts and loans, with the leverage of coming to their aid again, this time armed with lend-lease bills.
SOUTHEAST
To the Southeast of the White House, across the back lawn, lies the monument antecedent to the Great War. It’s the Civil War Memorial, atop which rides the triumphant General William Tecumseh Sherman. (Who, to be fair, presided over the War Department for a long stretch after the Civil War, actually this nation’s longest peacetime period.)
Curious that I chose to crop his personage from my pictures, but my eyes were drawn to the lesser figures around the base of the monument, in particular, a half naked woman.
The memorial seemed to include various uniformed Civil War participants. How egalitarian to include a woman. But this woman was no French Revolutionary with breast bared oblivious as she rallied her comrades to victory. This delicate woman was unarmed and stripped to the waist, her children in tattered rags at her feet.
Could this statue be offering another conceit to the reality of war, to Sherman’s March to the sea, to the burning of Atlanta, to the shameful destruction he visited on the secessionist South? Was this a nod to the real role given to Women in war, their sons and husbands taken from them, a non-combatant left helpless to defend her children or herself. Did the shirt torn from her body confess to the woman’s rape?
More probably the feminine likeness personified man’s attraction to war, a soldier’s predilection for her beauty. How many war monuments memorialize as they also beacon?
Much of the terrain around the White House grounds is blocked off by secondary and tertiary security perimeters. But for the arrival of bus unloadng its visitors to see it, the Civil War Monument is normally cordoned off. When I had passed it earlier, a balaclava-clad guard was blocking the only entrance.
SOUTH
The grassy expanse immediately South of the White House, permitting the First Family an uninterrupted view of the National Mall, has actually been given over to parking permits. The loop of asphalt across the lawn, with cars strewn diagonally along the edges, gives the unfortunate impression of overflow event parking. In any other neighborhood, the crowd of cars would be a dead giveaway that someone on the block was having a party.
Poor Michael the Savage can’t cross borders now without being hunted down like an animal! That just seems so totally unfair, Michael. Who will these Commie authoritarian British thugs go after next? Lou Dobbs? Rush Limbaugh? Tom Tancredo?
Your volk may soon have to float across the English Channel on inflated inner tubes, perhaps, Michael…. all for just a lovely vacation where your language is spoken. Life plays such cruel tricks don’t it?
Hey I like that pimp look you do so well, Mike. US ‘hate list’ DJ to sue Britain
The Evangelicals love the authoritarian structures of the US military! It’s seen as a command structure coming down almost directly from the authority of Jesus Christ himself. Never mind the torture on the ground at Bagram Air Base nor the bombing and murder of innocents from up on high. There is a soft side of Jesus, too, if you just buy it? Or, at least that seems to be the message? Now let us bow our heads in prayer and check out this video of Military Evangelism at work…
04 MAY 09- US troops urged to share faith in Afghanistan
In about 3 weeks we will be in South America! Anybody I tell that I will be taking my 12 year old with me to Colombia looks at me a little weird like??? That being the case I will let Bart Simpson explain just why we are doing what we are doing? Keep in mind, too, that my daughter goes to District 11 Schools Colorado Springs, which is quite a bit like Bart’s school, Springfield Elementary, Jack. Now check out Bart Dances the Cumbia for some real music and dancing!
Scary what those African rhythms can do to you, eh? I’m looking forward to hearing some good music on this home schooling education-vacation! It’ll be good to get away some from all these Right Wing American twits we have to put up with in our daily lives!
Wouldn’t you think it bad form for Israeli militants to behave like Nazis, while immunizing themselves with the self-righteous indignation that any criticism of their actions can simply be dismissed as “anti-Semitic?” Photographs and confessions emerging from the IDF’s atrocities in Gaza just beg comparison the German Einsatzgruppen in Poland. Earlier this year UC Santa Barbara professor William Robinson forwarded an email photo essay to a UCSB listserv, the already much-circulated side by side comparison to the WWII atrocities. Two students complained, plagiarizing stock IDF lingo. Now the Anti-Defamation League wants Robinson to recant. With IDF propagandists pouring on the bullshit, let’s revisit the documents.
As has already been noted, Professor Robinson is a harsh critic of US foreign policy, and already a likely target for the goon squad enforcers of Western Capitalism. Not many of America’s actions are defensible, so Robinson has to be attacked by desperate means. Lucky for the lackey-jackals, Robinson chose to criticize Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians of Gaza. Bingo!
The Israeli propaganda machine has armed aspiring Israel-defenders with a blanket rebuttal: just yell “ANTI-SEMITISM!” And what a load of crap that is. Much turns on the definition of “anti-Semitism.” It packs the punch of meaning someone who hates Jews, but the advocates of Zionism have expanded the definition into 3-D! Zionist apologist Nathan Sharansky has coined the 3D definition of ant-Semitism: demonization of Israel, double standards, and delegitimization. You don’t have to look closely to note that those points outline all the rebuttals of criticisms of Israel and any question of the legitimacy of the Zionist usurpation of Palestine.
The criticisms posed by those concerned for the fate of Gaza are the same expressed by a large portion of the Israeli Jewish population as well. But the US Israeli lobby, militantly Zionist, has the complicity of the US war-mongering corporate media, thus the IDF Megaphone protestations get traction. These are the same cheap shots leveled against Ward Churchill. By flooding the internet to create the sensation that the indignation was shared, the IDF spammers have been successful in slandering these dissenting academics.
Since we’re seeing this technique being slopped unto our comment forums, let’s examine the statement for which Robinson is being attacked. First we’ll present Robinson’s email. The next post will feature the ensuing letters of complaint, two from UCSB students, and third from the ADL.
Original Email
Here is Professor Robinson’s original email, including his attachment of the Judith Stone article. This accompanied the aforementioned photo essay he forwarded.
Subject: [socforum] parallel images of Nazis and Israelis
From: “William I. Robinson” …
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:00:05
…If Martin Luther King were alive on this day of January 19, 2009, there is no doubt that he would be condemning the Israeli aggression against Gaza along with U.S. military and political support for Israeli war crimes, or that he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians. I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Perhaps the most frightening are not those providing a graphic depiction of the carnage but that which shows Israeli children writing “with love” on a bomb that will tear apart Palestinian children.
Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw – a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease and despair, nearly two years before their subjection to the quick death of Israeli bombs. We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide (Websters: “the systematic killing of, or a program of action intended to destroy, a whole national or ethnic group”), a process whose objective is not so much to physically eliminate each and every Palestinian than to eliminate the Palestinians as a people in any meaningful sense of the notion of people-hood.
The Israeli army is the fifth most potent military machine in the world and one that is backed by a propaganda machine that rivals and may well surpass that of the U.S., a machine that dares to make the ludicrous and obnoxious claim that opposition to the policies and practices of the Israeli state is anti-Semitism. It should be no surprise that a state founded on the negation of a people was one of the principal backers of the apartheid South African state not to mention of the Latin American military dictatorships until those regimes collapsed under mass protest, and today arms, trains, and advises military and paramilitary forces in Colombia, one of the world’s worst human rights violators.
Below is an article written by a U.S. Jew and sent to a Jewish newspaper. The editor of the paper was fired for publishing it.
Quest for Justice
By Judith Stone
I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine. It was the right thing to do.
I’ve heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a small child. I’ve visited the memorials in Washington, DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I’ve cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking.
Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against the survivors of Hitler’s holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity.
“Never again” as a motto, rings hollow when it means “never again to us alone.” My generation was raised being led to believe that the biblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished Palestinians living with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these desert dwellers. Golda Mier even assured us that there “is no Palestinian problem.”
We know now this picture wasn’t as it was painted. Palestine was a land filled with people who called it home. There were thriving towns and villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews, Christians and Muslims. In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a mere 7 percent of the population and owned 3 percent of the land.
Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocity perpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive to the suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to be ordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into the night to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The people who displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means to watch your home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your heart at a moment’s notice. Bulldozers leveled hundreds of villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the old and the young. This was nothing new to the world.
Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final resting place of the massacred Palestinian people. A short distance from the memorial to the Jewish children lost to the holocaust in Europe there is a leveled parking lot. Under this parking lot is what’s left of a once flourishing village and the bodies of men, women and children whose only crime was taking up needed space and not leaving graciously. This particular burial marker reads: “Public Parking”.
I’ve talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who hasn’t lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a Palestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditions in an Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for human rights violations to no avail. On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the refugee camps inhabited by a people who have waited 52 years in these ‘temporary’ camps to go home. Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of their village, their street, and where the olive trees were planted. Their grandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you where their great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood. The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. But, the victims who rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes. Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is a terrorist.
Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate sprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in their new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was not adequate water to drink and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry. University professor Moshe Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (April 30, 1995), “The Jewish children of Hebron are just like Hitler’s youth.”
We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation for homes, land, slave labor and back wages in Europe. Am I a traitor of a Jew for supporting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?
The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurion said, “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves…politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves…The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country…”
Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of its people. It’s cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated and replaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the first thing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the indigenous people has been all but eradicated as though they never existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a miraculous act of G-d. We must recognize that Israel’s existence is not even a question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait accompli realized through the use of force while supported by the Western powers. The UN missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have thus far been futile.
In Hertzl’s “The Jewish State,” the father of Zionism said, “…We must investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means of every modern expedient.” I guess I agree with Ehud Barak (3 June 1998) when he said, “If I were a Palestinian, I’d also join a terror group.” I’d go a step further perhaps. Rather than throwing little stones in desperation, I’d hurtle a boulder.
Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this was no war; that this was not G-d’s restitution of the holy land to it’s rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and continues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn’t come up with the arms and money to defend themselves against the western powers bent upon their demise as a people.
We cannot continue to say, “But what were we to do?” Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right of return of the Palestinian people.
Do you have an uneasy sense that someone’s trying to pull the wool over your eyes? Does the hullabaloo over a looming swine flu pandemic seem a bit overblown? The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the pandemic alert level (a 6-point scale) to 4 and is considering moving it to 5 today, with only 7 confirmed deaths worldwide! Keep in mind that seasonal flu kills 40,000 every year in the US alone, so why the sudden grave concern?
I don’t claim to understand all the factors at play here, but one thing I do know: I am FAR more concerned that my government will use manufactured fear somehow to my detriment — likely another lost civil liberty or two and large profits or other benefits to a chosen few — than I am about contracting the demon swine flu.
A few facts to bolster your immune-to-bullshit system:
–Thus far, only 97 cases of so-called swine flu have been definitively identified worldwide, mostly in Mexico (26 confirmed, 7 deaths) and the U.S. (64 confirmed, no deaths). About 1600 suspected cases, including 159 deaths, are reported in Mexico. Sad as this is, it does not add up to a pandemic swine flu outbreak. We love to make this shit up for some reason. Remember the one million Americans who were supposed to die of swine flu in 1976? WHO has forgotten about them, I suppose, because they refused to become cooperative statistics.
–The virus at issue has nothing to do with swine. In fact, it hasn’t been seen in a single animal. And you can’t possibly get it from eating pork which I see as an unfortunate truth, because a good reason to stop eating pork would be a welcome silver lining to this “worldwide health crisis.”
–No existing vaccines can prevent this new flu strain. So no matter what you hear – even if it comes from your doctor – don’t get a regular flu shot. They rarely work against seasonal flu and certainly can’t offer protection from a never-before-seen strain.
–Speaking of this strain, it doesn’t seem to have come on naturally. According to the World Health Organization, this particular strain has never before been seen in pigs or people. And according to Reuters, the strain is a ‘genetic mix’ of swine, avian and human flu. Was it created in a lab? We don’t know yet, and I doubt we’ll find out anytime soon.
–The drug companies are getting excited, and that’s never a good thing. According to the Associated Press at least one financial analyst estimates up to $388 million worth of Tamiflu sales in the near future – and that’s without a pandemic outbreak. Imagine the payday when everyone begins to flip out!
–Let’s not forget that Tamiflu comes with its own problems, including side effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, fatigue, cough — the very symptoms it purports to relieve! But, oh well, at least the drug company benefits financially from Tamiflu sales. No one benefits if we don’t take it, which makes the whole pandemic thing seem like a wasted opportunity.
–Vaccines for this flu strain won’t have to jump through all those annoying hurdles like clinical trials for safety and effectiveness (which, if you know anything about the FDA, are usually a waste of time anyway). That won’t, however, stop the government from mandating the vaccine for all of us – a very likely scenario. And if the vaccines are actually harmful — killing people, for example, which they certainly will be — the vaccine makers will be immune from lawsuits. D’ya suppose they could bottle up some of that fail-safe immunity for the rest of us?
“Swine flu” is endemic to a sick system created by pigs. Your best defense against swine flu – your only real defense in any manufactured health crisis situation – is a bullshit-proof immune system.
In Israel, the Health Minister somehow is all upset at the name ‘Swine Flu’, so he renamed it the ‘Mexican flu’. See Making swine flu kosher: A symptom of the disease of Israeli politics by Benjamin L. Hartman/ Haaretz.
I found this portion of the article to be most of interest…
‘Such is the system that produces a government where a party representing a community whose media cannot print the word sex, airbrushes women out of photos, and binds them into a strict second-class status, can be put in charge of the Health Ministry, a ministry legally bound to protect the well-being of all Israelis, regardless of gender, race or religion. It also brings up the issue putting a man who can?t say the word “vagina” in charge of a ministry that supervises gynecological issues. How can a man whose usage of the Hebrew language is governed by his own interpretation of Jewish law deal with issues like teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, or post-natal care for women?’
Don’t you just love it when any of these religious fellows takes charge anywhere, whether he be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu? They all have such a great sense of humor, too!
At last we have a copy of the full text of the Iranian President’s speech at the Durban Review Conference on racism and now we can examine just how it has been misrepresented as vile, ugly, and racist by vile ugly racists. The fact is that the main point of the speech actually has next to nothing to do directly with Israel or Jewish people at all, but rather is an attack on the war-like and imperialist United Nation Security Council and the undemocratic nature of this US controlled organization.
He essentially calls for its abolishment in the summary of his remarks and it is this Call that actually is the cause of the Made-In-US boycott and subsequent walkout from the anti-racism conference, and not anything else Ahmadinejad said.
President Ahmadinejad….
‘Secondly, mindful of the inefficiency of the current international political, economic and security systems, it is necessary to focus on divine and humanitarian values by referring to the true definition of human beings based upon justice and respect for the rights of all people in all parts of the world and by acknowledging the past wrong doings in the past dominant management of the world, and to undertake collective measures to reform the existing structures.
In this respect, it is crucially important to rapidly reform the structure of the Security Council, including the elimination of the discriminatory veto right and to change the current world financial and monetary systems.
It is evident that lack of understanding of the urgency for change is equivalent to the much heavier costs of delay.’
There is absolutely nothing anti-Jewish in any of his remarks, and the world has had enough of the United Nation Security Council and its constant war making. Many will also champion Ahmadinejad’s call for its abolishment.
FULL TEXT:
(Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the Durban Review Conference on racism in Geneva on April 20, 2009.)
Mr. Chairman, honorable secretary general of the United Nations, honorable United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Ladies and gentleman:
We have gathered in the follow-up to the Durban conference against racism and racial discrimination to work out practical mechanisms for our holy and humanitarian campaigns.
Over the last centuries, humanity has gone through great sufferings and pains. In the Medieval Ages, thinkers and scientists were sentenced to death. It was then followed by a period of slavery and slave trade. Innocent people were taken captive in their millions and separated from their families and loved ones to be taken to Europe and America under the worst conditions. A dark period that also experienced occupation, lootings and massacres of innocent people.
Many years passed by before nations rose up and fought for their liberty and freedom and they paid a high price for it. They lost millions of lives to expel the occupiers and establish independent and national governments. However, it did not take long before power grabbers imposed two wars in Europe which also plagued a part of Asia and Africa. Those horrific wars claimed about a hundred million lives and left behind massive devastation. Had lessons been learnt from the occupations, horrors and crimes of those wars, there would have been a ray of hope for the future.
The victorious powers called themselves the conquerors of the world while ignoring or down treading upon rights of other nations by the imposition of oppressive laws and international arrangements.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us take a look at the UN Security Council which is one of the legacies of World War I and World War II. What was the logic behind their granting themselves the veto right? How can such logic comply with humanitarian or spiritual values? Would it not be inconformity with the recognized principles of justice, equality before the law, love and human dignity? Would it not be discrimination, injustice, violations of human rights or humiliation of the majority of nations and countries?
The council is the highest decision-making world body for safeguarding international peace and security. How can we expect the realization of justice and peace when discrimination is legalized and the origin of the law is dominated by coercion and force rather than by justice and the rights?
Coercion and arrogance is the origin of oppression and wars. Although today many proponents of racism condemn racial discrimination in their words and their slogans, a number of powerful countries have been authorized to decide for other nations based on their own interests and at their own discretion and they can easily violate all laws and humanitarian values as they have done so.
Following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering and they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in occupied Palestine. And, in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine.
The Security Council helped stabilize the occupying regime and supported it in the past 60 years giving them a free hand to commit all sorts of atrocities. It is all the more regrettable that a number of Western governments and the United States have committed themselves to defending those racist perpetrators of genocide while the awakened-conscience and free-minded people of the world condemn aggression, brutalities and the bombardment of civilians in Gaza. The supporters of Israel have always been either supportive or silent against the crimes.
Dear friends, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. What are the root causes of the US attacks against Iraq or the invasion of Afghanistan?
Was the motive behind the invasion of Iraq anything other than the arrogance of the then US administration and the mounting pressures on the part of the possessors of wealth and power to expand their sphere of influence seeking the interests of giant arms manufacturing companies affecting a noble culture with thousands of years of historical background, eliminating the potential and practical threats of Muslim countries against the Zionist regime or to control and plunder the energy resources of the Iraqi people?
Why, indeed, almost a million people were killed and injured and a few more millions were displaced? Why, indeed, the Iraqi people have suffered enormous losses amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars? And why was billions of dollars imposed on the American people as the result of these military actions? Was not the military action against Iraq planned by the Zionists and their allies in the then US administration in complicity with the arms manufacturing countries and the possessors of wealth? Did the invasion of Afghanistan restore peace, security and economic wellbeing in the country?
The United States and its allies not only have failed to contain the production of drugs in Afghanistan, but the cultivation of narcotics has multiplied in the course of their presence. The basic question is that what was the responsibility and the job of the then US administration and its allies?
Did they represent the countries of the world? Have they been mandated by them? Have they been authorized by the people of the world to interfere in all parts of the globe, of course mostly in our region? Are not these measures a clear example of egocentrism, racism, discrimination or infringement upon the dignity and independence of nations?
Ladies and gentlemen, who is responsible for the current global economic crisis? Where did the crisis start from? From Africa, Asia or from the United States in the first place then spreading across Europe and their allies?
For a long time, they imposed inequitable economic regulations by their political power on the international economy. They imposed a financial and monetary system without a proper international oversight mechanism on nations and governments that played no role in repressive trends or policies. They have not even allowed their people to oversea or monitor their financial policies. They introduced all laws and regulations in defiance of all moral values only to protect the interests of the possessors of wealth and power.
They further presented a definition for market economy and competition that denied many of the economic opportunities that could be available to other countries of the world. They even transferred their problems to others while the waves of crisis lashed back plaguing their economies with thousands of billions of dollars in budget deficit. And today, they are injecting hundreds of billions of dollars of cash from the pockets of their own people and other nations into the failing banks, companies and financial institutions making the situation more and more complicated for their economy and their people. They are simply thinking about maintaining power and wealth. They could not care any less about the people of the world and even their own people.
Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen, Racism is rooted in the lack of knowledge concerning the root of human existence as the selected creature of God. It is also the product of his deviation from the true path of human life and the obligations of mankind in the world of creation, failing to consciously worship God, not being able to think about the philosophy of life or the path to perfection that are the main ingredients of divine and humanitarian values which have restricted the horizon of human outlook making transient and limited interests, the yardstick for his action. That is why evil’s power took shape and expanded its realm of power while depriving others from enjoying equitable and just opportunities of development.
The result has been the making of an unbridled racism that is posing the most serious threats against international peace and has hindered the way for building peaceful coexistence in the entire world. Undoubtedly, racism is the symbol of ignorance which has deep roots in history and it is, indeed, the sign of frustration in the development of human society.
It is, therefore, crucially important to trace the manifestations of racism in situations or in societies where ignorance or lack of knowledge prevails. This increasing general awareness and understanding towards the philosophy of human existence is the principle struggle against such manifestations, and reveals the truth that human kind centers on the creation of the universe and the key to solving the problem of racism is a return to spiritual and moral values and finally the inclination to worship God Almighty.
The international community must initiate collective moves to raise awareness in afflicted societies where ignorance of racism still prevails so as to bring to a halt the spread of these malicious manifestations.
Dear Friends, today, the human community is facing a kind of racism which has tarnished the image of humanity in the beginning of the third millennium.
World Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religions and abuses religious sentiments to hide its hatred and ugly face. However, it is of great importance to bring into focus the political goals of some of the world powers and those who control huge economic resources and interests in the world. They mobilize all the resources including their economic and political influence and world media to render support in vain to the Zionist regime and to maliciously diminish the indignity and disgrace of this regime.
This is not simply a question of ignorance and one cannot conclude these ugly phenomena through consular campaigns. Efforts must be made to put an end to the abuse by Zionists and their political and international supporters and in respect with the will and aspirations of nations. Governments must be encouraged and supported in their fights aimed at eradicating this barbaric racism and to move towards reform in current international mechanisms.
There is no doubt that you are all aware of the conspiracies of some powers and Zionist circles against the goals and objectives of this conference. Unfortunately, there have been literatures and statements in support of Zionists and their crimes. And it is the responsibility of honorable representatives of nations to disclose these campaigns which run counter to humanitarian values and principles.
It should be recognized that boycotting such a session as an outstanding international capacity is a true indication of supporting the blatant example of racism. In defending human rights, it is primarily important to defend the rights of all nations to participate equally in all important international decision making processes without the influence of certain world powers.
And secondly, it is necessary to restructure the existing international organizations and their respective arrangements. Therefore this conference is a testing ground and the world public opinion today and tomorrow will judge our decisions and our actions.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, the world is going through rapid fundamental changes. Power relations have become weak and fragile. The sound of cracks in the pillars of world systems can now be heard. Major political and economic structures are on the brink of collapse. Political and security crises are on the rise. The worsening crisis in the world economy for which there can be seen no bright prospect, demonstrates the rising tide of far-reaching global changes. I have repeatedly emphasized the need to change the wrong direction through which the world is being managed today and I have also warned of the dire consequences of any delay in this crucial responsibility.
Now in this valuable event, I would like to announce to all leaders, thinkers and to all nations of the world present in this meeting and those who have a hunger for peace and economic well-being that the unjust economic management of the world is now at the end of the road. This deadlock was inevitable since the logic of this imposed management was oppressive.
The logic of collective management of world affairs is based on noble aspirations which centers on human beings and the supremacy of the almighty God. Therefore it defies any policy or plan which goes against the influence of nations. The victory of right over wrong and the establishment of a just world system has been promised by the Almighty God and his messengers and it has been a shared goal of all human beings from different societies and generations in the course of history. Realization of such a future depends on the knowledge of creation and the belief of the faithful.
The making of a global society is in fact the accomplishment of a noble goal held in the establishment of a common global system that will be run with the participation of all nations of the world in all major decision making processes and the definite root to this sublime goal.
Scientific and technical capacities as well as communication technology have created a common and widespread understanding of the world society and has provided the necessary ground for a common system. Now it is upon all intellectuals, thinkers and policy makers in the world to carry out their historical responsibility with a firm belief in this definite root.
I also want to lay emphasis on the fact that Western liberalism and capitalism has reached its end since it has failed to perceive the truth of the world and humans as they are.
It has imposed its own goals and directions on human beings. There is no regard for human and divine values, justice, freedom, love and brotherhood and it has based living on intense competition, securing individual and cooperative material interest.
Now we must learn from the past by initiating collective efforts in dealing with present challenges and in this connection, and as a closing remark, I wish to draw your kind attention to two important issues:
Firstly, it is absolutely possible to improve the existing situation in the world. However it must be noted that this could be only achieved through the cooperation of all countries in order to get the best out of the existing capacities and resources in the world. My participation in this conference is because of my conviction to these important issues as well as to our common responsibility of defending the rights of nations vis-à-vis the sinister phenomena of racism and being with you, the thinkers of the world.
Secondly, mindful of the inefficiency of the current international political, economic and security systems, it is necessary to focus on divine and humanitarian values by referring to the true definition of human beings based upon justice and respect for the rights of all people in all parts of the world and by acknowledging the past wrong doings in the past dominant management of the world, and to undertake collective measures to reform the existing structures.
In this respect, it is crucially important to rapidly reform the structure of the Security Council, including the elimination of the discriminatory veto right and to change the current world financial and monetary systems.
It is evident that lack of understanding of the urgency for change is equivalent to the much heavier costs of delay.
Dear Friends, beware that to move in the direction of justice and human dignity is like a rapid flow in the current of a river. Let us not forget the essence of love and affection. The promised future of human beings is a great asset that may serve our purposes in keeping together to build a new world.
In order to make the world a better place full of love and blessings, a world devoid of poverty and hatred, merging the increasing blessings of God Almighty and the righteous managing of the perfect human being, let us all join hands in friendship in the fulfillment of such a new world.
I thank you Mr. President, Secretary General and all distinguished participants for having the patience to listen to me. Thank you very much.
Immediately after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the term “Nine Eleven” was already tripping off the tongues of TV talking heads as if it was more natural than saying “last Monday,” or “last week Monday,” before even we knew the attack was not going to last several days. The day after the election of Barack Obama, a suddenly large proportion of the TV talking heads were black, overnight, like it had become some sort of costume party theme.
Television has become colorized, and much more vigorously than Ted Turner might have ever intended.
Have you noticed? On post-Bush television, Black is the new focus of equal-time. When pundits are summoned, now there’s a black person among them. Nothing wrong with this development. Whatever years of seasoning these new African-American faces may lack, they make up for by being visibly brighter than the vacuous white-breads they replaced. There must be an entire class of Anglo-Saxon communication majors who are lamenting the great lost entitlement of 2009.
It’s a fine development, though certainly limited in its generosity. The proportion of African Americans to the total population, is vastly smaller than the new TV ratio. Conversely, over half the US public is progressive. But still almost zero percent of the corporate media personalities reflect that.
Where did all these colored faces come from? Had they been training in the wings, for just this contingency? It’s a wise move on the part of the networks. President Obama and his family would be looking pretty dark against the sea of white Washington DC. Someone could confuse him for security or kitchen staff, but for the media framing of black commentators to remind White America that there is no cause to panic, the new American lens is colorblind.
It should be, but is it? White man still looks upon dark-skinned people as requiring domination. American urban blacks are to incarcerate, African blacks are to rescue, and insurgent/Muslim/pirate blacks are to lynch. I’m not sure we don’t really long to lynch the bunch of them, if AIDS isn’t thinning their number fast enough for our taste.
Obama meanwhile is the black man we invite to dinner. And these colored teevee folk too. They’re not poor blacks after all. They’re the Thomas Sowells, Uncle Toms, educated reformed black people. Rich black people are the new lawn jockeys.
Okay, so the corporate media wants to project an urbane sophistication about integrating racial harmony into its facade. We hope, I suppose, that by portraying it so, they can make it so. I think we have to wonder if that’s the real manipulation.
The day after September 11, the term “Nine Eleven” was coined before most of us knew what even happened. Flights were grounded anticipating more attacks. How curious that the experts were calling it “9/11” when it might still have turned out to be 9/11 – 17 or other. They’d gotten the memo about how to frame the “world-changing” development, complete with its catchy catchphrase.
Obama is just such another media campaign, to assuage the darker-skinned world that the Great White West comes in peace, see look, we love our Darkies. We respect them, we ask their advice, we put them up in the White House.
This year’s Clio Award, the advertising world’s Oscar, for best campaign, went to Barack Obama. What does that tell you about the collective effort involved, and the focused objective of the marketing?
University of California- Santa Barbara Sociology and Global Studies Professor, William Robinson, is under attack from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League for having spoken out against Israeli military atrocities in Gaza. Their position is quite simple and is that he should either shut up or be fired. See The Robinson Case
A quick view of his defense site shows that this professor and his supporters are quite aware of the nature of this enemy of free speech they are up against. See Academic Freedom in the News The Anti-Defamation League perversely spends much of its time trying to shut people up and defame them, so to speak. As another example of how this works, see the recent Right Wing attacks against President Obama himself for having shook hands with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Below is a passage of a news report about Obama and Hugo Chavez’s meeting last week.
‘Obama returned to Washington early Sunday evening. But even before he got back, Obama was facing condemnation from some Republicans about how he dealt with Chavez. “I think it was irresponsible for the president to be seen kind of laughing and joking with Hugo Chavez,” said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.’
While the Anti-Defamation League itself is not trying directly to remove Obama from office (they love Obama’s selection of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff way too much!), they do have a campaign going full steam to falsely label Hugo Chavez as being antisemitic. See ADL’s report below…
“What is troubling about Venezuela is that anti-Semitism is being used as a political tool,” Mr. Foxman said. “Anti-Semitism is fostered by those at the highest levels of government, trickled down the government apparatus and left unchallenged by officials in the Chavez regime, the government-controlled media, and civic and religious leaders who support the regime in Venezuela.
“We are encouraged by the many expressions of support for the Venezuelan Jewish community coming from opposition politicians and independent media outlets, who we believe more accurately reflect the views and feelings of the vast majority of the Venezuelan people.”
That is an excerpt from their website’s ADL Report: Venezuelan Jewish Community Under Threat
Coming after the US coup attempt and kidnapping of Hugo Chavez, one rather imagines that the ADL has the whole situation backwards. It is not the Chavez government that is anti-Semitic at all, but rather that it is the Right Wing Zionist Movement that is anti-Chavez. They want him removed just like they want all radical Left antiwar professors removed from their academic posts inside the US. And the ADL campaign against Venezuela’s current government moves hand in hand with the Republican campaign against Obama for shaking hands and laughing alongside Hugo Chavez. Both the Republican Right and the ADL simply want to stifle all views critical of US foreign policy and Israeli government policy.
This Israeli-made campaign to silence and trash all critics of the Jewish State hegemony in the Middle East promoted in US foreign policy even has been seen down to the level of covert attacks on American blogs like this one. That is why we now express our own solidarity with UCSB professor William Robinson. We will not, and should not, let them silence us all. They have many tools of intimidation and censorship and we need to bring to the light of day all of them.
Yes, they may succeed at silencing an individual critic of Israel here and there but our Movement to expose the reactionary nature of US foreign policy use of Israeli Zionist Jewish State propaganda grows stronger over time. People around the globe are simply getting fed up with the racism and imperialism that are political cornerstones of the Israeli and US governments. The truth will continue to rise up through the blankets of neo-con and Zionist propaganda for having yet more of their bloodshed and pillage.
What’s wrong with imagining that a German youngster could traverse a maximum security perimeter to charm readers with his innocent observations, for example, mistaking dirty excrement- encrusted forced-laborer uniforms for striped pajamas? And more, sneak under the wire, to suffer and thereby confirm, the inmates’ inhuman fate?
This year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 20, arrived with a new tale to beguile the kiddies: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
The photograph above depicts a concentration camp inmate killed between rows of barbed wire. At the Dachau Memorial its caption pronounces: “Suicide,” conjecturing that this inmate chose to rush the fence and be shot by guards sooner than endure any further brutalities. While the scene amplifies the savagery of the camps, it also puts to the lie the poetic liberties which imagine that camp inmates could linger in the no-man’s land between fences, or that likewise nearby locals could approach to within even hailing distance of the prisoners.
Angel at the Fence, Herman Rosenblat’s purported camp memoir, was debunked because the author asserted that he met his wife during the war, across the fence of a concentration camp, and that she saved his life pre-maritally, by throwing pieces of bread to him. Oprah called it the single greatest love story ever, but under scrutiny Rosenblat confessed his fabrication. Now he’s determined it should be redistributed as fiction, because it’s a magical tale that people still want to hear.
Striped author John Boyne paints a similar scenario for younger readers, where two pre-adolescent boys meet on opposite sides of the fence of no less than Auschwitz. The German boy is fascinated by the other’s pajamas. Cute? Like a boy in another hemisphere being intrigued at a slave laborer’s dark black tan, or dirt under his fingernails? Eventually Boyne’s young protagonist crawls under the wire to join his new Jewish friend, and they die together in the darkness of a gas chamber.
Will this prove to be the ultimate aim of Holocaust Rememberers? To drag us all across an impassible divide, over a bridge that stretches credulity, by means of so false a memory that we suffer the Holocaust ourselves through a regression therapy assault on our psyche?
As usual, with summer coming up, my little girl wanted to know just how mad at her about her …uh… behaviors over the Winter I really was? She knows that if I had got really upset at her, I would be planning on sending her off to Vacation Bible School, otherwise known in our weird circles as the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission Summer Peace Camp. There she could learn about the cleansing effects of ‘non-violence’ as taught to her by some PPJPC version of ‘Mother Angelica’.
Too, she was really getting worried about being bored this summer and was not looking to going off to the family farm located right next to the Zetas’ paintball playground at Presa Marte Gomez, Tamaulipas and staring at the adobe (plaster) walls. So one night, as she watched Johnny Depp pirate around, I suggested maybe we too could go to Pirate Land- Cartagena, Colombia this summer, and fight crocodiles or something? So I said to her,
‘How about a vacation in Colombia this summer? There’s lots of family things to do down there!’
Her response to me was,
‘Sure, why not?’
That’s what I love about kids these days, they simply are open to anything. I told her then that if we do go to Colombia and live with the Caribbean Pirates that she would have to live off fried ants and guinea pig (cuy), since that’s all those poor people have to eat. That and aguardiente.
It just so happens that she has a boyfriend from Colombia who is a Pastuzo (Texas Aggie of Colombia) and that he has eaten cuy and says it is muy rico! The fried ants she kind of balks at though, but still, she was sufficiently excited at the thought of leaving the USA, that she had me rush off and buy us both one way tickets to Bogota! America, love it or leave it!
And that’s how it is that at long last, I will get to go on my Caribbean Vacation, that’s if we don’t spend too much time in the beautiful city of Eternal Spring, Medellin? I’m definitely looking forward to staying on for the Flower Festival there in early August!… Plus, you can simply just get lost in sightseeing in this under-appreciated city!
That’s Medellin in the picture above. It’s a Colombia emerald, a Colombia orchid, and a Colombian museo de oro… all rolled up into one! Honestly, it really does look like a nice place to spend some time on a family vacation. I’ll let you know how it works out! And then, there is always Mompox!
“As they sailed down to the coast the river had grown more vast and solemn, like a swamp with no beginning or end, and the heat was so dense you could touch it with your hands.”
from Gabriel Garcia Marquez – The General in His Labyrinth
General Simon Bolivar was headed to Mompox… As for us, when I have told people that we are headed for a vacation in Colombia this year, they look at me as if I had just told them I’m flying for Alpha Centauri instead. Oh well… But Mompox does sound like a rather relaxing place o me, though maybe the climate’s not quite right?
COLORADO COLLEGE- CC is holding a symposium on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre. Actually, it’s only called the Ludlow Symposium. True to Colorado Springs form, several among the audience want to call it an “incidence,” instead of a “massacre.” One of the participants, author Scott Martelle, is willing to oblige, explaining that if the militia hadn’t known that women and children were taking shelter beneath the tents which they were putting to the torch, then the soldiers were guilty only of criminally negligent homicide.
(*Note 4/12/09: this article has been revised in light of helpful comments offered by symposium participants. Also: Differences of opinion aside, I am remiss if I do not praise the scholars who were very generous with their time and encyclopedic memories to enrich this symposium.
1. CC’s own Professor David Mason authored an evocative narrative of lives caught up in the 1914 events, written in verse, entitled Ludlow.
2. Journalist Scott Thomas researched the most recent definitive account to date, the 2007 Blood Passion: the Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West.
3. Thomas Andrews, Associate Professor at CU Denver, enlarged the context in 2008 with his award winning Killing For Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War.
4. Zeese Papanikolas represented his authorative Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre, written in 1984.)
Does it matter what it’s called, or with what certainty? The symposium is filled with public school system educators looking for an angle with which to approach Ludlow with their kids. One of them expresses her doubt about teaching about Mother Jones, having just heard from the panelists a probably too-nuanced assessment of the labor hero’s tactics. The political climate of our age can’t find any purchase with moral nuance.
I’m stuck thinking that in recording social history, scholars cannot avoid writing the victor’s narrative. In particular as regards the history of labor, because neither academics nor even middle class hobbyists in the symposium’s audience can look at the events from the perspective of the working class.
Even the scholar’s objectivity is middle class. The opinion was expressed by the panel that the Ludlow aftermath was one of the few occasions when the story was spun to the benefit of labor interests. But this does not account for why authors and educators find themselves having to resurrect the tale of Ludlow these many years later. When it occurred, Americans may have swallowed the hyperbole, but since that time they’ve internalized its internment, effaced by a corporate culture so as to have disappeared from even our school textbooks.
I think this may have been something of the question posed by symposium organizer Jaime Stevensen to the panel, when she asked how the authors insulated themselves from the fictions woven into their own perspectives of history. She didn’t get any takers.
The very concept that history adds up to only so much trivial pursuit, is inherently a view from the ivory tower. 
Do the Ludlow scholars not recognize that common people today face the same foes as did the miners of Ludlow? With the added impediment of a corporate PR system erasing its malevolent deeds. Have not American unions been maligned to the point of extinction? Yet at the same time, capitalists have thoroughly reprised their Machiavellian ways. History can be a tool, not only for statecraft, but for the common American to protect his hard-fought democratic gains.
The United Mine Workers of America having successfully spun the deaths of the striking miner families as a “massacre” may have made an unmerited impact on the public’s sympathies, but likewise, deciding to call Ludlow “not a massacre” will be falsely charged as well. Is there a valuable lesson in unlearning that unbridled corporate greed can be unthinkably inhumane?
Historians can fancy themselves objective to ambivalence, but is that a luxury their readers and in particular the schoolchildren can afford? As we witness today the gloves coming off of the globalisation taskmasters?
How I prefer the emotional truth of earlier chroniclers like Barron Beshoar, author of OUT OF THE DEPTHS, a 1942 account of Ludlow, whose preface included this gem:
“If the mine guards and detectives, the mercenaries who served as the Gestapo and the coal districts appear to be scoundrels who sold themselves and their fellowmen for a few corporation dollars, the author will consider them adequately presented.”
At Colorado College the consensus of contemporary historical synthesis, embodied by CU Denver’s Thomas Andrews‘ excellent book KILLING FOR COAL, seems to conclude about Ludlow, “we may never know exactly what happened.” This may reflect the Factual Truth, but it does so at the expense of unrecorded oral accounts, by depreciating their traditional path to us through of folklore.
Another author made pains to debunk the lyrics “Sixteen tons, and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt,” a cultural indictment of the “company store,” which was one of the grievances of the Ludlow strikers. He postulated that modern readers could be prone to let folklore color a predisposition against the company store. Perhaps a company store was in fact a convenience, derided because it was an arbitrary restriction against which human nature bucked. Trying to be helpful, another panelist suggested: “Imagine if the company store was 7-11, and you were told you could only shop there.” I believe both of these gentlemen are overlooking the much grosser complaint which the miners were protesting, that of insurmountable debt, systematically forced on them by their employers. That’s a phenomena on the rise today, if maybe not among college professors. Around the world, indentured servitude has never abated.
In our ivory tower we can debate which side, the union or the militia, fired the first shots on April 20. Who was at fault, seemed to be what that question would decide. At least panelist Anne Hyde had the presence of mind to lay some of the responsibility on the mine owners, who weren’t there of course, but whose stubborn greed played a not unsubstantial part in what the other panelists were attributing to “macho intransigence.”
That expression was in vogue to describe Cowboy presidencies. What an effete put down of militant activism. Are we to blame the striking miners for holding firm to their demands?
Thank goodness someone in the audience brought up recent efforts to deny the Sand Creek Massacre, which two panelists quickly weighed in to say “that was a real massacre,” discrediting Ludlow, obviously, and failing to grasp her point that indeed some Colorado Springs locals are rewriting Sand Creek as a battle, and not a massacre.
Another isolationist luxury has become to judge every action as it compares to a nonviolent ideal. It was noted that UMWA union leader John Lawson always recused himself from violent tactics. During the symposium’s opening reception, someone performed a song dedicated to the Ludlow martyr Louis Tikas, which lauded him for choosing to fight with words not guns, as if guns would discredit him.
I’ll play devil’s advocate and suggest that the miners fired the first shots. They saw Louis Tikas bludgeoned in the back of the head and then executed as he lay on the ground unconscious, they saw the National Guard move a machine gun into position above their tent city, and they probably began to fire at the soldiers lest a rain of bullets descend on miners’ wives and children before they had a chance to flee the camp.
The miners were asking that their union be recognized, that the Colorado eight hour work day be enforced, that the scales which determined their pay be verified, that their full hours be compensated, etc. The mine owners clung to their profits, and ordered the miners’ tent city, their only shelter and all their worldly possessions burned to the ground. Women and children were hiding in underground pits dug to escape the sniper fire which the mine guards sporadically aimed at the tents. The guards drove an armored car around the perimeter of the union camp, at all hours, for that purpose.
Ultimately this climate erupted into the violent clash on April 20, 1914, in which the miners battled with the far better equipped soldiers. The casualties were 25 to 1. I call that a massacre.
ADDENDUM: Photographs from visit to the Ludlow Memorial.
LUDLOW MEMORIAL, COLORADO- Day three of the Colorado College Ludlow Symposium featured a bus ride to the site of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, then on to Trinidad to the grave of Union leader Louis Tikas. A reporter for Colorado Public Radio interviewed the symposium panelists at the U.M.W.A. memorial grounds.
David Mason is interviewed by a freelance reporter for Colorado Public Radio.
Scott Martelle and Thomas Andrews are interviewed above the fatal cellar.
TRINIDAD, COLORADO- Masonic Cemetary.
Zeese Papanikolas spoke about his protagonist’s gravestone and its reference to Tikas as a “Patriot.”
Brownshirt, Blackshirt, Blimp-neck, Dittohead, Wingnut, Cracker –the term you’re looking for is REDNECK. Musically, Randy Newman gave it humanity, and Jerry Jeff Walker gave it love, and the Grateful Dead tweaked his lyric to capture what I think is the essence of the good ol’ boy: his thinking man self image.
M is for the mud flaps you got me for my pickup truck
O is for the oil I put on my hair
T is for T-bird
H is for hen
E is for Einstein’s theory of relativity, and
R is for YOU REDNECK MOTHER!
And for good measure, Newman’s Rednecks:
Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show
With some smart ass New York Jew
And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox
And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too.
Well he may be a fool but he’s our fool.
If they think they’re better than him they’re wrong.
So I went to the park and I took some paper along
And that’s where I made this song.We talk real funny down here.
We drink too much and we laugh too loud.
We’re too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we’re keepin’ the niggers down.We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol’ boys from Tennessee
And colleges men from LSU.
Went in dumb. Come out dumb too.
Hustlin’ ’round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin’ drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they’re keepin’ the niggers down.We’re rednecks, rednecks
And we don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground.
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks
And we’re keeping the niggers down.Now your northern nigger’s a Negro.
You see he’s got his dignity.
Down here we’re too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free.Yes he’s free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City.
And he’s free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side.
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland.
And he’s free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis.
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco.
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston.
They’re gatherin’ ’em up from miles around,
Keepin’ the niggers down.
Closing arguments will be heard this morning in the Ward Churchill trial and then the case goes to the (very young and earnest) jury.
Winston Churchill said “history is written by the victors” which has been a central thesis in much of Ward Churchill’s work. It’s scrumptiously ironic that when Ward Churchill wins his case against CU, he’ll become a contributor to the “Master Narrative” he so despises. I’m guessing his chapter will be full of tales of brave Indiginists and murdering technocrats, white male regents and the soulless women who love them. Academia will be recast as the valiant protector of the ruling elite and the mighty slayer of free thought and open debate. The jury of young, multiracial unsophisticates will be consecrated as puissant defenders of justice. A few vindictive ex-wives and some illicit boys’ room puffing may be tossed in to add color.
When Ward Churchill prevails against the esteemed institution that called into question his academic integrity, his reputation as a scholar and a brilliant polemicist will be restored. More importantly, the master narrative will no longer be inscrutable.
The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is. — W. Churchill
Bite me.
What got me onto this, of course the very Anglo-American persecution of their fellow Americans, including and especially American Indians, like the Ward Churchill (metaphoric) Lynching…
But after I published the bit about Malaysian students being forced to learn English by their Corporate Masters, a show came on and just ended about a half hour ago, comparing America to the Bible.
Claiming, and rightly in some cases, although as you can well imagine they didn’t use quite the same phrases or even the same concept, that some of the worst criminals in History and especially American History, men like Captain John Smith and Cotten Mather, Kings Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth 1st, King James etc etc… were inspired by the ENGLISH versions of the Bible, and that the Bible is the Sole Inspiration for Imperialism, American Style, that we’re (again with Cotten Mather, gotta love that jerk, he makes it EASY to hold my fellow Christian’s feet to the fire) “the Shining City on the Hill” with our Manifest Destiny to bring the Poor, Benighted Dark Skinned world to Americanism. oh, that’s right, they said “Christianity”.
America is NOT God and is not even a lower case “g” god.
It’s two continents.
Just because certain highly placed United States government officials believe that the term “America” applies exclusively to us, they also by coincidental occurrence believe that Christianity belongs Exclusively to the English as a RACE.
I’ve been in MAINSTREAM churches where this is often preached.
They preach that America is actually the “New Jerusalem” and the English RACE has taken over the position (through the silliest use of Transmogrification Magic that I personally have ever heard of) The New Chosen People of God.
Sarah Palin’s church, for instance, preaches that. Not the entire Assemblies Of God denomination but her church in particular.
Evangelic churches have one doctrine, the Priesthood of the Believer.
Like there’s no Baptist Pope.
In their mindset, criticizing American Foreign Policy or American Corporate Imperialism or American Racism, interchangeable concepts actually,
Is tantamount to Blaspheming against God Himself.
Feh.
I can turn that on it’s very illogical head and say that people who think that resistance to Imperialistic Racist Corporate Tyranny is Anti-American and Anti-Christian are defiling the Name of Christ with their dogmatic insistence on equating their Murderous Evil with His Name.
Taking God’s Name in Vain, in other words, the first instrument of any act of Blasphemy.
It figures prominently in what’s referred to as “God’s Top Ten No-No List”.
But the T.V. show, it was playing “America the Beautiful” in the background.
And preaching that the English language is the Savior of the World.
Funny thing about that is, Jesus didn’t speak any English and the English Language wouldn’t evolve into anything recognizable to anybody who doesn’t have at least a High School grasp of English for well over a thousand years.
The English people of His time had this really nasty practice of capturing Roman soldiers, putting them in wicker cages and lighting them on fire.
Legion X spent time in Anglia and Judea…
A LOT.
Tenth Legion. A Punishment Brigade.
Pontius Pilate himself was made governor of Judea because he pissed off the Emperor.
He was on Punishment Detail, too.
For those readers who’ve never been in the service, those would be the guys who you see picking up cigarette butts and raking the rocks on base.
Worse than that even, Legion X was usually your last chance as a soldier before being sold as a slave or simply crucified.
They’re THE only legitimate connection that can be claimed between Jesus and England in His time.
Actually I was riding along today, thinking that just everybody in the whole town seems to be in a truly messed up mood.
It’s like a cusp, you know, where one side is something especially good fantastic wonderful is about to happen, or perhaps it’s gonna be something horrifying.
Then the whole “cusp” notion started taking hold, it actually is the cusp. As in, astrology, it’s the three days when Pisces overlaps with … Aquarius.
I don’t actually believe in Astrology. It’s absurd to me that the heat from somebody smoking a cigarette two miles away gives you far more Relative energy than the closest star (other than the sun) but people smoking all around isn’t supposed to rule your life, but Alpha Centauri being ascendant on the day of your birth supposedly does.
The whole coincidence of this being the Aquarian cusp reminded me of the Age of Aquarius which was supposed to replace the Piscean Age in 1967.
Summer of Love…
Then again, in the summer of 1987, there was a “grand alignment” meaning that all the planets were on the same side of the sun.
As I remember, that summer was also very very F.U.B.A.P.O.R.
(Messed) Up Beyond All Possibility Of Redemption.
Right about now I’m just rambling, some of you who know me well recognize the symptoms.
Meanwhile, people today on the streets and shops and just everywhere I went in Colorado Springs, were in a really crap mood.
So today I went to King Soopers to score some groceries and to hang up a “Computers for sale” sign…
I got off the bike because I was out of breath and couldn’t make it up that last little hill into the parking lot.
And a car pulls up beside me, a station wagon, green subaru…
One of the stupid little bastards in the back seat chunked a handful of small rocks at me, his Mommy or whoever it was that was old enough to drive pulled out just far enough to feel “safe” and the kids started screaming “fuck you” and tossing up the ol’ one-finger salute.
Yeah, there were four in the car, young teenagers and whoever was driving.
Chickenshits really.
As usual, they peeled off screaming about how badass they felt themselves to be, and not accepting the invitation to come back around.
I don’t blame them for being afraid, not coming back around even though there were four of them.
Four times the number of Cowards merely equals four times as much Cowardice.
Typical Republicans.
They’ll grow up to wave “love it or leave it” signs at Peace Rallies.
Promote war as long as somebody else does the fighting.
Vote for Sarah Palin or some similar Right Wing Loser.
You know tomorrow at school they’re gonna be talking long and proud about how they “showed that big,scary crippled old hippie”
They might impress the really Stupid kids with their story.
Everybody else will just realize what pussies they truly are.
Like Parents, Like Demon-spawn…
Maybe they’ll call up Rush Limbaugh or Gunny Bob and tell their story of their Great Victory…
Rush or Gunny would talk them up like they were Heroic Warriors or something.
And anybody stupid enough to listen to them would believe it.
A first application of stimulus funds went to rescue law enforcement jobs in Ohio. Barack Obama was on hand to herald their taking the oath. Are you wondering how policemen meet the criteria used to justify taxpayer monies supposed to stimulate growth and common wealth?
Aside from the obvious, raising income for municipal entities, through fees, court costs, and social services. More action for the penal system, much of that already a growing private sector.
There would also be the police function of assuring stability, which encourages confidence in business investment. Or is that getting ahead of our recovery narrative?
More police anticipates America’s rising unemployment, and rising unrest. When the public faces repossessions, foreclosures, padlocked factories, and a drastic reduction in the supply of even the basic needs, local police departments are going to be the front line government service to teach the “tough love.”
From Haaretz… Protests as IDF colonel who ruled for attacks on Gaza civilians starts as TAU lecturer …And how many times have we at Not My Tribe had to listen to posters from the Israeli military propaganda Spam Gun here deny that their beloved Israeli military has ever deliberately targeted civilians in Gaza? I can’t even begin to count the number myself since it has happened so often now.
‘Sharvit-Baruch was appointed by the Law Faculty to teach a class this semester. Both professors and students protested the move, after Haaretz reported that under Sharvit-Baruch’s command, IDF legal experts legitimized strikes involving Gaza civilians, including the bombardment of the Gaza police course closing ceremony. Right-wing students waving Israeli flags were joined outside of the classroom by Likud MKs Danny Danon and Tzipi Hotovely, where they were met by left-wing protestors.’
Isn’t this new law professor a terrorist, in fact? A terrorist financed partially by the United States government since our government gives tens of billions of dollars in aid to Israel to buy military equipment used to attack civilians?
So, it was on again today.
And this time, thanx to all the Mossad, Knesset and IDF name dropping that’s been going on, courtesy of our Trolls…
Some of the names were eerily familiar.
People in Netanyahu’s Koalition of the Killing government with his 22% “majority mandate”.
Nut Job after Nut Job saying how wonderful the Bible Code works, citing events they ‘discovered” in the code … after they happened of course…
And even a couple of Pentagoons and yeah, Troll, I know you think you have a handle on accuracy but I call the PentaGoons that deliberately.
Our Army is at least in their leadership every bit as thuggish and murderous as IDF.
It makes it difficult to tell which is the Master and which the Disciple in their Sick Sadistic relationship.
But the theme comes out, they want to take the so-called Proven Accuracy of their decoding of the Talmudic Matrix, and use it as Legitimate Foreign Policy.
And apparently, these demented Freaks actually have backing from some shadowy types from OUR government.
Let’s boil that down, shall we?
Why thank you, of course we shall.
There’s a politically backed movement to base Life and Death decisions, active in TWO Nuclear Armed governments,
On a Glorified Seance.
An Ouija Board.
Reading Tea Leaves.
The show was taped in 2004.
The people interviewed saying how much they would love to actually influence Official Policy both in Washington and Tel Aviv, are now close to the hearts of both governments.
One of the “ACCURATE” predictions involved the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.
You know the ones, the 500 metric tonnes (that’s more than a MILLION pounds, folks) of WMDs that it turns out didn’t exist in the first place.
OOOPS….
Apparently the Code didn’t predict that disastrous misstep.
Or the bit about the Syrians and Lebanese running the IDF out one more time when they invaded Lebanon again.
Just like the IDF got run out in 85.
Well well well well well…
But one thing predicted during the show, and welcomed with Loud Hosannahs from the Silly Ass proponents of the Bible Code, was the notion of WMDs in Iran…
I know the Country Song says the writer is too stupid to be able to tell the difference between Iraq and Iran.
Probably can’t tell the difference between the U.S. and Mexico or Russian and China or Germany and France either.
Bigots are like that…
But for those terminally confused types, that’s IRAN spelled with an “N” on the end of it and with nearly 4 times the prewar population of IRAQ spelled with a “Q” or alternately IRAK spelled with a “K”.
Remember always, gentle readers, and forget never, that these are the SAME “experts” that George Bush hired to give intelligent intelligence reports about Uranium, anthrax, Smallpox, Mousepox, Nerve Gas… In Iraq 6 years ago.
In other words, Lying Warmongering Sell-outs to God and the Whole Human Race.
Since both Washington and IDF still have prisoners in Torture Chambers across the globe being tortured and Murdered based on these DumbShit’s “expert testimony”…
That would cast a rather large shadow on every other aspect of their Continuing Terroristic War against everybody who doesn’t bow and worship the Washington-London-Tel Aviv REAL Axis of Evil.
How many more prisons filled up with their victims, how many graves?
How much more of the basic humanity and wealth of the world are going to be bombed out of existence based on their Lying Interpretation of “Code” which, by a bizarre coincidence, is manipulated to support their already predisposed an predetermined Plans of Conquest, Murder and Pillage?
Donors pledge $5bn to rebuild Gaza. …What’s $5 billion to the US government when it throws trillions out to the banks and financial institutions in their ‘crisis’? The US government simply destroyed the already semi starved Gaza in an attempt to shove Hamas to the side afterwards during the ‘fixing’ to be arranged! That’s simply their standard morality at the US-Israeli Zionists Central Command. All’s fair in love of Israel and war against the Palestinians is their motto!
Remember when Barack Obama didn’t say a word as CIC Dubya and Israel went about with their ethnic cleansing rampage of destruction against the people living in Gaza? The excuse then was that ‘I am not president yet’, and blah, blah, blah…. ‘One president at a time’… and blah, blah, blah. They just couldn’t act at the time they said, because?…. well just because.
Enter now Zionist Barack Obama, Zionist Joe Biden, and (my favorite Zionist cutie) Zionist Hillary Clinton. Cracks the ears just to hear them rattle on about how they’re going to make sure that only their slave, Abbas of the PLO, can be allowed to control the distribution of ‘aid’ to Gaza. Who does the US government think that they are kidding in the Muslim World? It simply sickens to see the Saudis, Israel, and Dictator Mubarak in Egypt all talking together about how they’re now going to help Gaza out. What a line up of total scum, and the Muslim World is all watching! So much for bringing democacy to the region, since it’s more like bringing Hell.
YES, this is what American liberals bought with their votes. They bought more support for Israel in ethnic cleansing the so-called Holy Land. They bought more support for waging an eternal war for the military industrial complex business called GWOT. They bought more WAR. They bought into destroying Gaza so that they could then ‘fix’ it. They bought into helping murder off the children of Gaza.
