Tag: politics (Page 2 of 3)

The Blind Spot at the WSWS

2019-05-25 / / 0 Comments

Note: This is an older post from my Blogger days.

I commend Bill Van Auken On his piece “America on a Killing Spree” (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/kill-n18.shtml). He is absolutely correct in saying that “That the massacre of an innocent people more than 5,000 miles away can be promoted as a means of boosting public morale and fostering national unity is an indication of a society suffering from protracted and profound degeneration.” This degeneracy was again made perfectly apparent domestically with the uproar over football player Terrell Owens and “Desperate Houswives star Nicollette Sheridan’s plug for her T. V. show before the start of MNF (ABC’s intro showed Sheridan wearing only a towel and provocatively asking Owens to skip the game for her as the two stood alone in a locker room. She then drops the towel and jumps into Owens’ arms). Never mind that Sheridan’s show is a monument to trash and that football is a very violent sport that glorifies war and militarism. What most of the mainstream press concentrated on instead was the trashiness of the plug while little was said of the raced based sexual taboos raised and the violent culture that helps make the NFL the most popular sport in the U.S. This whole episode is yet another example of how far off the moral compass of U. S. society is. This is particularly true in regard to race and this is where I believe Mr. Van Auken falters. While he touches upon many bases he does not directly address the endemic racism within U. S. society. It is racism, as well as militarism, nationalism and cultural hubris, that is a defining characteristic of the face that American society is now perhaps more clearly than ever presenting to the world. Continue reading

Liberals and Hot Air America

2019-05-25 / / 0 Comments

Note: This is an older post from my Blogger days.

What can be made of something like Air America? For those that do not know, Air America is the liberal answer to the right-wing dominated talk-radio world. Here in New York it airs on WLIB and has replaced programming that was geared to the Afro and Caribbean American community which had been a staple for years. Listeners from these communities, however, are crying foul! Instead of being able to listen to news, announcements, music and discussion of issues relevant to the Black community, whether Afro or Caribbean, we are treated to white liberals holding court. Only two of the hosts broadcasting during Air America’s allotted hours here in New York are black and they are stuck with white co-hosts. Continue reading

Decency Should Not Be Assumed

2019-05-25 / / 0 Comments

Note: This is an older post from my Blogger days.

As I’ve read much on the material on blackcommentator.com I’ve been impressed with the focus and dead on analysis of U. S. society. Specifically, on the current misadventure in Iraq, much of the commentary focused on the enabling character of the white U. S. population. Although there is some truth to Noam Chomsky’s assertion that the high levels of support for the war is a result of the massive and unprecedented propaganda campaign unleashed on the North American populace, I have always maintained that the strength of the propaganda campaign is not solely based on its intensity and pervasiveness but on the receptiveness of the white American audience that it is directed at. It does not take much to convince a population who are inured to violence (witness the popularity of professional wrestling and reality TV), mesmerized by popular media that consistently and unabashedly define democracy and freedom as uniquely American values and finally, are heirs to three plus centuries of fashioning a national identity based on white superiority and privilege. Continue reading

An Argument for LGBTQ Rights

2019-05-25 / / 0 Comments

Note: This is an older post from my Blogger days. When I first wrote this piece  a number of years ago I did not foresee the rise of Identity Politics and the weaponization of LGBTQ rights. While its good to see LGBTQ people become more visible in media, the Arts  and elsewhere, it has in part come about via political forces that have hijacked the struggle for LGBTQ rights for reactionary purposes. A virtual Taliban has arisen that supposedly speaks in the name of the LBGTQ community but rather than fighting for the genuine inclusion of LGBTQ people in the life of the society, instead use it as a political battering ram to smear, browbeat, cajole and terrorize their political opponents. The aim here is not so much the advancement of the human rights of the LGBTQ community as whole, but the furthering of the political and economic interests of a complacent, smug and relatively well off, middle class segment of that community. Moreover, the ensuing divisive and diversionary discourse meant to divert people’s attention from the pressing political, social and class rooted economic issues is readily used by, as Gore Vidal put it: “the second most enthusiastic Capitalist party” (the Democratic Party), to dragoon people into its waiting, wide open jaws. My observations can also be applied to feminist and “anti-racist”  movements such as #metoo and #blacklivesmatter. Figures such as Jussie Smollet and Rachael Maddow are poster children for this sort of “protest through identity.” Theirs, like most of their ilk, are grievances underlain by  privilege,  addressed  through rank opportunism and always, always genuflecting in the face of power. Future movements, beyond the usual resistance to change, will have a rough time of it because of the harm, possibly irreparable, done by the recent wave of weaponized movements created under the auspices of Identity Politics. Continue reading

Remembering Gary Webb

2019-05-25 / / 0 Comments

Note: This is an older post from my Blogger days. Reading it today one cannot help be struck by the relevancy of Gary’s fate to that of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. What happened to Gary was a harbinger of what was to come. Like Gary, Assange and Manning stand virtually naked in front of a vindictive and venal American State. Gary exposed some of the dark secrets, of which there are so many, of the CIA and for that he was ruined to the point of taking his own life. Over two decades later and the lives of two men, Manning and Assange, are being similarly ruined. In Gary’s time the so called free Western Press had not yet descended to the depth of subservience and cowardice seen today. While not supportive of Gary, it did not actively engage in the despicable and contemptible blackening of his name in the manner we see today with Manning and Assange. When the final history is written, the collective West will stand condemned. It has consistently destroyed its prophets and rendered Western society as inhuman and incompatible with truth. Continue reading

Movie Review: The Affair (1995)

2019-05-25 / / 0 Comments

Note: This is an older post from my Blogger days.

In “The Affair” Courtney Vance (Travis) gives a strong performance as a Black G. I. stationed in England during W. W. II who meets and falls in love with a married Englishwoman (Maggie). It is a compelling story because it dramatizes how dangerous love, whether extra-marital or not, could be between a Black man and a White Woman. It should be recalled that during W. W. II black and white soldiers in the U. S. still served in separate divisions. Racism, though somewhat less pronounced, still was rampant within the U. S. military and with that came the usual strong prohibition against sexual relations between the races. However, war, perhaps more than any other setting, allows for all kinds of situations. It was within this volatile mix of war and entrenched racism that a Black G. I. meets and falls in love with White Englishwoman Maggie.   Continue reading

Reinventing the Wheel and the Coming Attack on Iran

2019-05-24 / / 0 Comments

Note: This is an older post from my Blogger days. I wrote this piece in 2006, However, considering the present geo-political situation, it has held up well. The US has been itching to attack Iran for a long time. That it has not happened yet, as of the year 2019, is testimony to the decline of US power and Iranian resolve and diplomacy. The bells toll for the US Empire though and so, like most empires that came before, it’ll look to solve its problems through war. Fast forward from when I originally wrote this piece and little has changed. War is in the offing. Continue reading

Letter to Joshua Frank

2019-05-23 / / 0 Comments

Note: This is an older post from my Blogger days.

Below is a letter written to Joshua Frank in response to his article entitled ” It’s 2004 All Over Again . . . ” Nothing that I have seen in the days following the elections, including Rumsfeld’s resignation, has changed my mind about the socio-political situation in the country and what will have to happen for progressive change to happen here. Considering how prolific a writer Mr. frank has been, I thought I would get a more sanguine response other than a message thanking me for writing. My guess is that although Mr. Frank clearly knows what is up with the two party duopoly, he still cannot quite bring himself to see what the utlimate implications are. As I’ve mentioned before in previous blog entries, the crisis within global Capitalism in general, and American Capitalism in particular. It  will ultimately lead to an explosion. In the next few months to a year the Democrats will be exposed for what they are; the ruling class’s B-Team. As such, they will simply deal with aesthetics rather than a real change in course whether it has to do with Iraq or the ongoing economic race to the bottom U. S. workers are in the thick of. Eventually, we’ll see either civil war or revolution in the streets in this United States of America. Continue reading

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