Racism in history

I was reading today of Benedetto Dei. Dei was a Florentine merchant, an agent of the merchant house of Portinari, in the mid 15th century. Benedetto Dei travelled in Africa and was the first white man to visit Timbuktu. Of course Africans had lived there for centuries,Berbers and Arabs( aren't they white?) had been running trans Saharan caravans for years. So what's the significance that accords Dei his spot in history? The first white man(read European). We know Chris Columbus "discovered" America while he was lost in the Atlantic thinking he was off the coast of India. Sir Edmund Hillary conquered Everest, though doubtlessly Tibetan monks, who have a love of high places, had been there before. The examples are endless. The 16th-19th centuries are often called "The Age of Discovery". It's as if these places didn't exist until a European white man showed up to "discover" it. And of course, this arrogance led these Europeans to now claim, that since they "discovered" it, they owned it and began that sad and terrible experiment called colonialism, the end results of which still plague us today. It just doesn't count unless you're white.

Separated at birth??

Are they stupid or just naive

Does anyone really think the resignation of Rick Wagoner is going to turn GM around? Wonder what his golden parachute really looks like? Did the death of Al Capone or Lucky Luciano stop the Mafia? Did the passing of Kim Il Sung or Ayatottah Ruhollah Khomeini bring their respective nations back to the folds of civilization? Do any high level auto execs really want to give up all their perks? No we need a better incentive or these guys, like maximum security jail, where they get to spend some quality time as Bubba's new wife.

The 20th century is over boys

Rush and Benedict, what a pair. Rush wants to go back to the 50's. A time when we had a popular Republican president, women stayed home, everyone had short hair,"coloreds" still went to the back of the bus and Mexicans were only in western movies. God hadn't "died" yet, commies were held at bay,inner cities hadn't decayed(they had actually but white America didn't give a shit), drugs were a prescription medicine( Gee,Rush, Oxycontin hadn't been invented) and "Leave it to Beaver" was America's family.
Benedict(Joe Ratzinger, former head of the Vatican Gestapo) says condoms won't prevent HIV and he said this in Africa, where HIV is rampant. Joe says we need to use abstinence instead. I mean look at how well its worked for the Roman Catholic clergy. It seems to Joe that condoms are a greater sin that pedophilia.
You two dudes are a piece of work.

Right wing hypocrisy

I remember back in the 60's when to oppose the Vietnam war was almost equal to being a traitor. The phrase uttered in those days was "My country, right or wrong" or "America.. love it or leave it". During the Iraq war, a war based on lies and deceit, right wingers were accusing those who opposed this most unAmerican of wars of being unpatriotic. Why is patriotism the province of only the right wing politicians? Why is it when you oppose THEIR policies, you are unpatriotic? Today right wingers like Rush Limbaugh,Bobby Jindal, and Fred Thompson are hoping Obama will fail in his policies designed to get this nation back on track. But is this unpatriotic? Not according to them. The right wing is now so fearful that their way of life is being threatened that they stoop to what in another age would border on traitorous. A way of life based on racism, white supremacy,creationism,homophobia, religious hatred, aggression, greed and sexism, that in this 21st century is both obsolete and anachronistic. They are like cornered rats. The hate politics of the right wing,spawned by Joe McCarty and Dick Nixon, nutrured thru 45 years of cold war are as old and tired as the people who support these politics. A younger generation has disavowed their vision of America. No longer do phrases like the silent majority or moral majority hold any sway over America. Their are Republicans out there who do not share this vision of America, however the leaders of the RNC, it seems are deseparately trying to make this issue the substance of their party. Moderate Republicans, take heed, if you don't reform your party,one of two things will happen. Some kind of right wing coup to take over government or the extinction of your party. We let Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld run this country into the ground for 8 years. Most of those out in this neck of the woods don't support Obama for one reason, he's Black. Those days are over, my friends

Letter to Wendy

"Such is life"Wendy2009

And such it is. Its amazing what comes down the fucking pike sometimes, really. I am sure no one can predict the future, a lot of it is karma but a lot of it is just fucking random. Yet there is a beauty to all this. Most of our crap is not the immediate life threatening stuff our Australopithecine ancestors faced. Our is shit, really, a disappointment, a lack of some need, the blues, financial stress, love shit and etc. It births change in us, coping skills learned during adversity are awesome things to have, They make us,identify us, define us. The death of loved one, birth of child, war, heartbreak, deprivation and such become chapter heading in our autobiography. Think how boring life would be without these events. No challenges, no lessons, no confrontations, well I suppose you'd have to look at a lot of TV. This is how some folks view heaven. No thanks, I'll pass. I may piss and moan when the shit hits the fan, but in the end, I'm stronger, reaching into the inner recesses of my brain to pull out the tools I need, then I sit and give thanks, for I have yet again been gifted. Yes there is a beauty about it.

Special thanks to White Tara and Mahakala for participating in the blog.

Om Tare Tutare Ture,Svaha

Muse

"Well it seems as if some fine things have been laid upon your table, but you always want the things you cannot get"

The Eagles "Desperado"

Of lawyers and war

Seems that lawyers are getting more involved in war these days. They take their place right up with the generals. Now war is a horrible thing, been in one myself, so I know what I am talking about. Its slaughter,mayhem,and atrocity city. Over history wise men, realizing that they couldn't end war, decided to make war civilized(what an oxymoron, to slaughter people is not civilized) OK we came up with the Geneva convention and on the surface, we adhered to it when it suited us. I am sure Hiroshima and Nagasaki don't fit in with the parameters of the Geneva convention. But the excuse has always been, look how many lives it saved,without asking how many lives it took. My Japanese professor in college was a survivor of Nagasaki, and he didn't paint a pretty picture. In Vietnam we basically ignored a lot of it(what the hell, the enemy didn't sign that treaty, so why should we be bound by it) An example is white phosphorus,WP or willy peter in military talk. WP burns, it doesn't stop burning, you can't extinguish it, it burns thru your body and comes out on the other side, also makes a nice white smoke cloud. The Geneva convention states that WP cannot be used against troops, but it can be used as a marking round. I was an artillery FO in Nam and boy we sure used alot of "marking rounds".( Great stuff to airburst over trenches)
Now it's more sophistcated and this where our friends the lawyers come in. During the Rwanda mess in the late 90's, many concerned people were afraid genocide was taking place. The USA, and other signatories were bound by the UN charter to take action against genocide. Remember "Never Again". Well nobody wanted to get drawn into Rwanda, especially America after she got whupped in Somalia on a peacekeeping mission. So a State dept spokeswoman said,well there have been acts of genocide but we aren't sure the whole thing is genocide. This same excuse is being used in Darfur. We need a bunch of lawyers to sit around for a few years deciding what the legal definition of genocide is. By the time they sat down for their second cup of coffee,800,000 Tutsis had been killed in about 4 months. and we are not sure it's genocide?? DUH!
The second Bush administration ducked the Geneva convention by defining al Qaeda operatives as enemy combatants, and hence not eligible for Geneva convention nicities. We could imprison them without due process, torture them in foreign prisons and deny them basic rights. Oh, right, their terrorists,but I,ll bet if the Japanese captured the crew of the Enola Gay after she laid her egg and loped off their heads with samurai swords, we'd be squaking, Geneva convention. In war the victor gets to make all the definitions. I do not mean to condone terrorism or the actions of groups like al Qaeda, but the average brainwashed suicide bomber kid isn't really much different than a brainwashed soldier or Marine. Easiest thing would be to outlaw war completely and settle difference with a chess match,although I'm not sure that Bush would be able to beat bin Laden. Obama on the other hand, checkmate in 6 moves!

The power of a name

America has had 44 presidents and among those 44, three family names show up twice,Adams,Roosevelt and Bush. I guess that says something about power.America must have thousands of family names. But consider this, one man's name became not only a household word, a personal name, it became a title itself. Consider Gaius Julius Caesar. Not a "Caesar" himself, but a Roman politician who held various important Roman offices and titles. His final title(before deification) was dictator or life. His clan name was Julius, Caesar was an attribute(fine curly hair) that became sort of a family name within the Julian clan. His successor Octavian was Caesar's adopted son and immediatly after Caesar's death, Octavian insisted on being addressed as Caesar. So powerful, dominant and influencial he was in age that by the time of his death, he was no longer just another member of the Caesar family, but The Caesar. He defined the word so well that his successor insisted upon using it to convey the authority he felt was willed to him. It became one of the names of all Roman rulers afterwards. Both Julius and Octavian(Augustus) gave their names to titles in the late empire, Augustus strangly being the senior and Caesar the junior. But Caesar stuck. It became Kaiser and Tsar. The Ottoman emperor in his array of titles included casar of Rum(Rome). The deinetly left us a legacy.

Piracy in America

OK, we know there are pirates in Somalia, taking ships and holding them for ransom. Now we find right here in America, corporate piracy. Its called retention bonuses. AIG paid out a bunch, but some left anyway, like rats deserting a sinking ship. Todays news reveals Fannie Mae, another financially stressed outfit and recipient of government monies, is paying of retention bonuses. Corporate AMERICA,in its ever increasing greed has discovered a new way to steal our money. Oh, we need to pay them bonuses to keep the talent. Now that salary caps have been suggested, these pirates have come up with another scheme. It does not matter that our nation is being torn asunder by greed, because if America fails, these guys will go abroad, using their Swiss bank account money. It even seems they have gotten to some officials in the Treasury Dept. Bribes and payoffs, I reckon. This greed, this piracy, is like a cancer attacking our country. Now what did they do in the old days to effectively control piracy. Hmm burning at the stake did the trick and yeah i got the matches.

Where's mine?

It seems that both presidents(Bush and Obama) gave a whole lot of money out with little or no oversight. How could AIG give massive bonuses with federal monies? Back in October, my retirement account lost nearly half its value, overnight. Years of savings wiped out..just like that. I got no bonus, no bailout, no sympathy from the government or my bank. The money was gone. Disappeared. My quality of life took a nose dive and I began the belt tightening act. The account has lost even more in recent months and no one has made any attempt to bailm out people like us. I don't want a million dollar bonus, just to get back a little of the dignity I had when my account was stable.

Stealing rom the rich,giving to the poor 101

In an earlier post today, I said stealing from the rich,give to the poor. I am not advocating burglary,mugging,embezzlement or robbery. Its easy to steal from these fat cats, if you just do a little research. You are a consumer, so when you shop, you just buy any old thing, you pick a brand that satisfies you. Now take that one step further, do some research. If your insurance company, bank, brokerage etc is a company that engages in greed(Like AIG for instance) don't do business with them. You have that right! So you take your money out Citibank(lets say) and put it in a local solid bank. So on down the line, divest yourself of these pigs and deal locally. Enuogh people do that, these giants might get the message. Investing locally stimulates your economy, creates jobs in your neighborhood. If you attend a religious service reguarly choose your congregation based on outreach that they do, not the hate and crap that spills from some pulpits. Support a food bank. I you hunt, find a group like hunetrs for the hungry and give them some of your meat harvest. That's giving to the poor. Nothing illegal here just an idea, but imagine if millions of people got pissed off enough to do this!

For the fat cats its business as usual

Once again the troubled insurance giant, twice bailed out by taxpayer dollars,is in the news. After the first bailout,AIG fat cats went on a big spa junket. Now after receiving 173 billion in taxpayer funds, the execs treat themselves to 165 million in bonuses! Are they clueless? Don't they know we are in a depression? Of course they do, the just don't give a shit. They are better than you, the upper crust, the privledged, the elite, they deserve 165 mill for destroying their company. We have the Bernie Madoffs and now these guys. Its disgusting. The selfisfness and greed are going to destroy this country and they just don't care. Why should they, their millions are locked up in Cayman and Swiss bank accounts. If America implodes they'll just go somewhere else. Perhaps they get their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh, the traitor, spend,take, steal boys, so that Obama fails. Where are Robin Hood and his merry men? There seem to be an awul lot of Sheriffs of Nottingham around these days. Steal rom the rich, give to the poor, let them feel your pain!

Understanding Darfur.... Nomads and farmers

This has always been an ancient political creature. Nomads providing meat and milk, farmers providing millet and other grains. Raiding is also part of the nomadic economy, always has, everywhere it has flourished. Darfur has numerous ethnic groups, all much intermixed, where the "Arabs" can be as dark as the "Africans". This conflict has always been presented on racial lines. Arabs vs Africans. But that is a poor way of looking at it. The Fur are the dominant African people in Darfur. Once they had a sultanate of their own. These people were farmers and land claims date from the Fur sultanate. Ownership derives from this. The Abbala Rizeigat and Baggara Rizeigat are nomads. They descend from Arab tribes entering the region around 500 years ago. They came from the Jeddah region region of Arabia in Hejaz. The Abbala raise camels, the Baggara raise cattle. They are nomadic. The Baggara do have land which they "tribally own". The Abbala do not. They have always been on the move and on the fringes of government. The great Sahel drought changed many traditions in Africa. People moved, they crossed traditional tribal borders. Conflicts ensued. Nomads claim the farmers were encroaching on traditional pastures, and bullets began to fly.
Omar el Bashir was able to fan this ancient divide into full fledged genocide. He played on differences and caused hatreds to grow. He armed the Abbala and Baggara and created the Janjaweed. The horror began.

But this an old political ploy, is it not. Slobodan Milosevic did in Kosovo,fanning the flames of ancient religious differences that had been forgotten by many. Racism, it appears, doesn't disappear, it just goes underground. During the recent American presidential election it raised its ugly head again. Republicans in general and Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh in particular always played on difference to divide people. Now outright racism is frowned upon these days in America. Civil rights changed all that. Nobody was running around using the N word, at least within media earshot. But I sure received alot of very provacative cartoons and jokes from some of my more conservative acquaintances. These people hunt, fish, cut wood, go to church on Sunday,dip snuff. They don't make these cartoons. But who did? Some "literary" minds at work somewhere, I reckon, sending this crap out. Of course I have acquaintances who claim not to be racists( some of my best friends are colored) but guess who they voted for, even the liberal ones. Not Barack Obama. The old hatred was still there, deep down, ready to be awoken.
Darfur is a worst case scenario of what happens when these old differences are used politically. In the old day, shaykhs of the Fur and Abbala would have sat down and worked it out, as they have for centuries. A tribute of grain would suffice for any land taken by farmers. Blood monies paid to end vendettas. Then comes an Omar el Bashir or Slobodan Milosevic with truckloads of AK 47's for their chosen side. The balance is upset, hatred flares and genocide begins. The Fur, Zahgawa, Abbala, Baggara and others aren't going to go away. People like Omar el Bashir and Ahmed Haroun need to go away... far away and for a very long time.

Darfur,Genocide and Racism

Sudanese strongman Omar Bashir has expelled a whole bunch of NGO's from Darfur. This was his reaction to being found guilty of genocide and war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Thanks to tireless work of Luis Moreno-Ocampo the ICC has charged numerous Sudanese with crimes, including Ahmed Harun, formerly in charge of the Darfur genocide operations and now Minister of human rights in Sudan(nice touch, Omar). With the departure of NGO's there is going to massive starvation in the refugee camps in Darfur. There will also be mass migrations of starving Darfuri to the Chad border, where NGO's can barely handle the current refugee influx. Those fleeing will be attacked by the Jangaweed(Arab militia armed by Bashir) and raped, tortured and killed.
After the extent of the Holocaust became known the phrase "never again" was uttered. Never again genocide? Or never again genocide for the Jews? We have encountered genocide in Rwanda, where the world did nothing. We have encountered it in Bosnia, where the world reaction was too late, and now here it is in Sudan. Both UN and African Union are underfunded,politically hamstrung and basically ineffectual. Sudan is a failed state. It is engaed in a systematic campaign against the African south, both Muslim(in Darfur) and Christian. But no one lifts a finger. If suddenly some dictator arose in Europe and began a campaign of genocide against Christians or Jews, there would be great outcry and fast movement to end the crisis. But who cares about a bunch of Black AND Muslims out there in the back of beyond in some shithole no one ever heard about. Certainly not America and Europe. These people have the double whammy, Black and Muslim.
Darfur, at one time, was an independent sultanate, and cultural beacon in the Sahel under the Keira dynasty. Now it the boondocks. It seems no one cares. Its seems "Never Again" doesn't apply to the people.

Balkan Wisdom

"When you are face to ace with a wolf,the only option is to work with it,until it becomes a pet"

Ejup Ganic former president of Bosnia and academician

History repeats

Its been over 90 years since the end of World War I.When the Ottoman empire fell, Lawrence,Balfour,Sykes,Picot and others made a lot of promises they couldn't keep. They redrew the map of the Middle East to suit their imperialistic appetites. We have suffered chaos there ever since. Now that Bush,Cheney,Rumsfeld,and Wolfowitz have redrawn the lines in the Middle East, we will have another 100 years of chaos. Perhaps reason will prevail in the end, perhaps the Arabs will enter the 21st century and perhaps there will be peace. We can only hope.
America bungled into Iraq with no knowledge of the Iraqi people and no plan for recovery. Now that she is withdrawing, will Iraq be plunged into more sectarian violence, or will some kind o government take root to weld the 3 separate parts of Iraq into a nation? No one in the west wants any kind of Arab unity because it would spell death or Israel and the mother of all energy crises. Islam has to find a way to enter the 21st century that's acceptable to most of ulema(muslim legal experts). As long as the Sharia and the Hadith are going to worry about beard length and whether you have enough ankle exposed(the Prophet liked his dishdasha on the short side), its going to be a tough job. The Sharia and Hadith is sort of like the Jewish Talmud, a body of religious law. No efforts have been made to accomodate these scared tradtions to a post modern world. Religious police(checking beard lengths etc) have been part of the Islamic world for centuries. The fundamentalists come and go, but remember it was Islamic civilization that studied and translated Aristotle,Galen,Plato and Hippocrates, and brought Europe out of a very deep sleep called the dark ages. Will this too happen again?

God and the law

God and the law seem to have been connected for ages. We see Moses with the tablets as an example of god being associated with the law. About this time is the civilized middle east, codes of law were being promulgated by rulers. Moses trumped Hammurabi by saying "God said so" Since then the two have have been indivisible. Religion became a way to control peoples lives. One only has to look at Jewish law and the Sharia to see how involved this concept has become. God's true law is beyond our understanding, and involves the way creation works. It is ever changing and totally fluid. One can't pin it down. We try but we fail. For example, we have set down "laws'' that govern the classification of species, however they don't fit. There is no firm border between one species and another, it is fluid. Canids are a great example, wolves, dogs and coyotes inter breed successfully beyond specific lines. Get into warblers and it gets really confusing.
One only has to look at the laws of Taliban to see how ridiculous these things can get. Taliban law regulates beard length, the length of your garment,etc, all based on traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. Christianity seemed to escape this kind of thing, at least the Talmudic law thing, thanks to St. Paul. Paul found that to gain conversion to his new faith, he had to put aside certain features of Jewish law, like circumcision and dietary laws. Paul realized no one was going convert to a faith that required penis mutilation. However, Christianity accepted Roman law and made it apart of the religion, especially after Constantine. For instance, one of the titles carried by the pope is Pontifex Maximus, or as it appears in English, Pontiff. The Pontifex Maximus was orginally the title of head priest of the old Roman state religion. Julius Caeser obtained this post early in his career and it became the province of the emperors ever since. Of course Caeser later was promoted to god status himself and this too became Roman tradition. Constantine had to drop this facade, but maintained, instead, to be god,s representive on earth, which later on translated into the divine right of kings.
Holy books are written by men, perhaps some divinely inspired, but men, none the less. The Torah,Bible, Buddhist sutras, and the Koran are examples of this. All written down after their prophet had died. Today the sun rose, the spring flowers are poking thru the snow, a possum decomposes into to food for myriad creatures. That is gods law.

Rush Limbaugh is a big fat TRAITOR!

Ole Rush, a traitor? Poster child for the republican party,prophet of hate, drug addict and all around hypocrite, a traitor? Say it ain't so, Mustafa. Well here's the deal. Rush wants Obama to fail, not very patriotic seeing as we are in an economic nightmare. Does he want his bailout to fail? Does he want his foreign policy to fail? Does he want more Americans needless killed in the Middle east? Is that enough? Probably not. Rush is demonizing Obama, with racist overtones(remember Barack the Magic Negro) to a large group of people whose main business is hate. One white supremist's website crashed on election night due the number of crazies who wanted to hate. So let's "energize'' all these people. All these gun toting, hate spitting crazies, let's get them riled up. Maybe, just maybe, he'll find some Lee Harvey Oswald or James Earl Ray to do the job he wants to do himself but is too much of a coward to try. Find a patsy, Rush. My faith in this country will greatly increase if Barack Obama makes it thru his 4 years without some asassination attempts,impeachment proceedings, or downright coup. If you are a spiritual person, please pray for the President, the crazies are loose.

Surrender

Well apparently Michael Steele and the RNC surrendered to Rush Limbaugh today. Steele issued the usual "misunderstanding" type statement after Limbaugh suggested he supported Obama/Pelosi. So the Republicans move one step more to the fringe right. Sad,while our nation falls apart, these idiots continue to sow the seeds of hate, so common in the Bush era. Wow lets all hope Obama fails, and our conomy collapses, unemployment becomes rampant and the rich continue to pad thier Swiss accounts. While we eat beans and possum gravy, we can rest contented that we didn't support "socialism". I'll bet the execs at AIG( bailed out for the second time) are planning another expensive taxpayer funded soiree, and I'm sure possum gravy won't be on the menu. Well gotta go, time to see if there's any fresh road kill out there for the pot.

The end of the Republicans

Remember the Federalists, the Whigs, The Bull Moose party? Political parties that lost favor with America because they lost sight of what America wants and needs. You would think, after the 2006 losses in Congress and the defeat of McCain/Palin, that the Republicans would reassess their priorities. Apparently not. With the economy in shambles, two wars in progress, they turn to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to re-energize the party. Wrong moves, guys. Your base, those rural American conservatives are no longer all that concerned with big government, gay rights, abortion and all the other nation dividing things that Karl Rove used to tear us apart. They are concerned with their wallets. Working class America is suffering most here and sooner or later they are going to figure out that your talk of tax cuts doesn't mean tax cuts for America's workers, but for the rich. The rich are sucking America dry, with the support of Republicans. They could fool their base with hate and fundamentalist principles but that dog won't hunt no more.
To empower a drug addicted hypocrite like Limbaugh as a party standard bearer is ridiculous. Where are the moderate Republicans? Where are Republicans who care about America not special interest groups. Wake up, boys, and save your party before it becomes a footnote in history books.