Sunday, January 31, 2010

Some Music from Hope For Haiti Now Telethon Dave Mathews Neil Young Sheryl Crow Justin Timberlake etc.

Anyway here's some music from Haiti Tribute: Hope For Haiti Now

Hope For Haiti Now - Telethon - Justin Timberlake & Matt Morris - Hallelujah
Hallelujah written by Canadian Icon Leonard Cohen




Sheryl Crow, Keith Urban & Kid Rock - Lean on Me cover 2010 Hope For Haiti Now Telethon



and two Canadians at the George Clooney Telethon for Haiti
Dave Matthews Neil Young Live at Hope for Haiti Now Telethon



and so it goes,
GORD.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Canada's Democracy Undermined By P.M. Harper-Haiti Aid & Madonna & Obama's "State of the Union "

Haiti


Post Update:4:31 PM & 7:42 PM Jan. 29, 2010
" So little news so much space"
" So much news so little space'


UPDATE:
* Donate to Red Cross (ICRC)and other reputable agencies-avoid internet scammers
* Haiti- Communities pulling together
*Haiti Tribute: Madonna sings "Like a Prayer"
* Canada PM Suspends Parliament & Democracy -will he next outlaw elections- or declare a state of emergency -
* Analyzing Obama's State of the Union address


First a song for Haiti tribute by Madonna - Like A Prayer [HOPE FOR HAITI



and update on Haiti-Mainstream Media still exaggerating the amount of violence in the country- in this video we hear about a community in Haiti which was able to take some measures to help each other- proving Neo-Cons & Neo-Liberals and other antiDemocratic ideologues such as David Brooks and Fox News that Haitians are not lazy or apathetic and do have strong family and community values.

The likes of David Brooks and other racists should be ashamed of themselves but they are not because in their minds they truly believe that most nonwhite Europeans Aryans etc. are in fact stupid, lazy, apathetic, corrupt to the core who devalue human life- this sort of sentiment is "rich" coming from Americans who think and defend their Illegal- War Of Aggression against Iraq, Afghanistan and Now Pakistan, Yemen and next Iran .

and now more on Haiti- the good news:

Interview the Director of the refugee camp in Les Cayes, Haiti. What is striking is the extent that the local community and churches have prepared for the influx of refugees arriving from Port Au Prince.
Great Commission Air has been assisting in the supply of this camp and local hospitals since Jan 18th.




And here on the Edge Of the American Empire our Prime Minister who is still a devotee of Bush & Cheney & is himself a Neoconservative and anEvangelical Fundamentalist-So he rules as if he had a clear majority when in fact he has a minority -similar to Bush's close call in 2000 when Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and the Republicans staged a non-violent Coup and took the Presidency -

Stephen Harper suspended parliament he claims to get more done by his government. But others argue Harper did so to prevent more questioning about Canada's mission in Afghanistan and whether we are acting responsibly or are we giving POWs /detainees over to foreign forces which we know engage in torture and abuse of POWs such as the Afghanistan military or the American military neither of whom Canada can trust not to abuse and torture prisoners in Afghanistan. The CIA we are told along with the military are still acting the same way they did under President Bush.

And now some bad news about the American & British War Crimes:

Its even harder to get justice since the American's have now cleared the Torture lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo of charges that they acted illegally or unethically by giving the Bush/Cheney Regime the Green Light to go ahead with torture and abuse of detainees and for kidnapping citizens in other countries and spiriting them away to secret detention centers run by CIA or by subcontractors such as Blackwater /XE Services - they use contractors because it appears they are not responsible to any one and no laws it appears apply to them -so they can abuse, rape, torture and kill without fear of prosecution.

Meanwhile Tony Blair claims even though the Intel was faulty or even made up fabricated he doesn't care because like George Bush he was the decider and therefore whatever he decided was legal and moral- as we now know God it appears was on speaking terms with Tony Blair and George Bush- so if God told them to attack Iraq who are they to argue- besides they told the public Saddam was as evil and as dangerous as Hitler & was the Anti-Christ-though now they say the Iranian leader is the Anti-Christ as foretold in the Book of Revelation in the Bible.

Therefore according to their logic anyone who was or is against the Iraq invasion or the blowing to bits innocent civilians in the Pashtun (Afghanistan/Pakistan area) area etc. must by definition be antiJesus and pro-Anti-Christ.

From Real News Network

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has single-handedly shut down Parliament. It is the second time he has done this since being re-elected in October of 2008. Critics claim that the move was used this time in order to postpone an inquiry into accusations of war crimes complicity for members of his administration and the Canadian military. Stemming from evidence that Canada continued handing- over people detained in the War in Afghanistan over to Afghan prisons that they knew practiced torture.

Produced by Jesse Freeston.



More on the State of the Union address

and from President Obama Mixed Messages the good the bad and the ugly-
finally speaks up for Gay rights and women rights and speaks about increasing enforcement of equity employment laws and enforcing Hate Crime laws.

Obama is another American President who to a great extent believes the Mythos of America that it has always been on the side of Justice, fair play democracy etc.
America has more often than not have been on the side of Brutal dictators and have supplied them with arms and CIA operatives to help operate "Death Squads"

I would counter that America interfered in the domestic affairs of other nations to extend its influence and its Empire It does what it does best overthrowing freely elected reformers who might in some way pass laws which might hurt the profits of American Corporations who are now according to US law "Persons". This was one of the main changes conservatives have been fighting in favor of for decades.

Bur it is a two edged sword because if a corporation is a person a citizen of the US then they are bound by laws affecting all citizens-therefore a corporation could be tried for criminal actions such as murder or committing murder through environmental pollution either over a short or long period of time. This will probably not happen because Americans treat corporations as if they were as invioble as a Religious organization-Most Americans pray to God or to the Better God that is the God of Prosperity and the God of Mammon and to General Motors , Disney Inc. MacDonalds Inc. & the most favored group in America all those companies that are part of America's rather dubious legacy to the world that is the Military Industrial Complex and the Mega-giant Ad agencies.(**Endnotes: see for Instance sci-fi satire "The Space Merchants" by Frederick Pohl.& C.M. Kornbluth or the novels of Kurt Vonnegut or Philip K. Dick or John Brunner :Shockwave Rider etc.)



and a more positive review by Chris Mathews on Obama's performance



** ENDNOTE

at Amazon.com:"The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth
# Paperback: 172 pages
# Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (August 15, 1958)
# Language: English

It is the 20th Century, an advertisement-drenched world in which the big ad agencies dominate governments and everything else. Now Schoken Associates, one of the big players, has a new challenge for star copywriter Mitch Courtenay. Volunteers are needed to colonize Venus. It's a hellhole, and nobody who knew anything about it would dream of signing up. But by the time Mitch has finished, they will be queuing to get on board the spaceships.
About the Authors
Pohl and Kornbluth started writing together as early as 1940, although both authors produced a wide variety of stories separately, under their own names and pseudonyms. Each wrote sections, starting where the other left off, and through long experience they developed an almost telepathic awareness of each other's intentions.


and so it goes,
GORD.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Deja Vu Watergate Bunglers? ACORN "PIMP" Landrieu Phone Squad Ties to Republicans & Conservative organizations & to the Intelligence Community

ACORN "Pimp"James O'Keefe arrested For Wiretapping
Republican Operative Dirty Tricks Department



"The four conservative activists arrested for tampering with the phones of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu earlier this week have been linked to the Pelican Institute, a conservative New Orleans think tank. Pelican is a relatively new organization, but it appears to have strong ties to members of the state’s Republican elite, most notably Representative Charles Boustany."

From: "Did Louisiana’s Republican Elite Support the Landrieu Phone Squad? by Kevin Connor at AlterNet.org, January 28, 2010

ACORN "Pimp" arrested -republicans embarrassed
Deja Vu Watergate - Pimp a Republican Operative -Dirty Tricks Dept.???
So how far up does this go-to the inner circle of the Republican Party ???
President Obama continues with the Bush/Cheney Regime's disastrous policies on the War on Terror
Meanwhile Health Care Reform is still being watered down to please the Conservative Movement and appease the Health Insurance Industry and Big Pharma etc.

THESE ARE NOT KIDS! Keith Olbermann Comment On ACORN "PIMP" arrested For Wiretapping



Keith Olbermann-On Criminal Consequences for arrested"ACORN PIMP"




"Did Louisiana’s Republican Elite Support the Landrieu Phone Squad? by Kevin Connor at AlterNet.org, January 28, 2010


The four conservative activists arrested for tampering with the phones of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu earlier this week have been linked to the Pelican Institute, a conservative New Orleans think tank. Pelican is a relatively new organization, but it appears to have strong ties to members of the state’s Republican elite, most notably Representative Charles Boustany.

Though only one of the tamperers is from Louisiana, Pelican appears to have been the group’s home base there. The apparent ringleader, James O’Keefe — also the activist behind last September’s ACORN videotape — spoke at a Pelican Institute luncheon last week. Another one of the four, Robert Flanagan, is a paid blogger for Pelican (Flanagan is the son of the acting US attorney in Shreveport, Bill Flanagan). Pelican’s founder, Kevin Kane, blogs at Big Government, the site where O’Keefe first posted the ACORN video.

TPMMuckraker has found that Pelican “enjoys a prominent voice in Louisiana political circles.” A close look at its board of directors helps explain why this is the case.

Pelican listed three board members on its 2008 990 (available from Guidestar): founder Kevin Kane, lawyer Stephen Gele, and one “J LeBlanc.” A LinkedIn page reveals that the listing refers to Jennifer LeBlanc, a Republican fundraiser who chaired the Lousiana finance committee of presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani in 2008.

LeBlanc is extremely tightly linked to Representative Charles Boustany, who was a close friend of her late husband, Patrick LeBlanc, before he died in a 2008 plane crash. LeBlanc was a top Boustany donor, as well, and he and Jennifer hosted a high-profile fundraiser for his Congressional campaign in 2005. Vice president Dick Cheney was the featured guest. The LeBlancs, Boustany, and Senator David Vitter all endorsed Rudy Giuliani’s campaign for president in 2007.


--
Bungling wiretappers Ties to GOP & the Intelligence Community

James Bond Wannabe Part of Right-Wing Plot to Tamper with Senator's Phones One of the men arrested in the plot to bug Sen. Landrieu's phones has ties to the intelligence community -- and an angry penis (according to himself).by Lindsay Beyerstein at Alternet.org January 28, 2010 |

Earlier this week, four young men were arrested for allegedly scamming their way into the New Orleans offices of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and trying to tamper with the office telephones. All four were criminally charged with entering a federal building under false pretenses to commit a felony.

The circumstances of Dai's arrest are difficult to square any theory that the men were just checking the protocols of Landrieu's phone system. A federal law enforcement official told the Associated Press that one of the four suspects was arrested a few blocks away in a car with "a listening device that could pick up transmissions." Another anonymous official told MSNBC that the man in the car was Stan Dai. It's unclear why the listening device wasn't mentioned in the affidavit. The U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Louisiana declined my request for further comment.

In 2008, Dai served as associate director of the Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence at Trinity Washington University. The ICCAE is funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and charged with recruiting the next generation of spooks. A university official assured Laura Rozen of Politico that Dai was a civilian whose job with the university ended in 2008 when the grant money ran out.

Last June, Dai was a featured speaker on torture and terrorism at a "CIA Day" for students in the Junior Statesmen of America's summer school. The mission of the Junior Statesmen, according to the organization's Web site, "is to strengthen American democracy by educating and preparing high school students for life-long involvement and responsible leadership in a democratic society." The students visited Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Va., and then returned to Georgetown for a series of lectures.
While President Obama tries to defuse anger at Muslims his conservative counterparts are stirring up more hatred of Muslims . They are also taking concrete measures against ordinary loyal patriotic Muslim Americans. The Islamophobes in Washington and their media agitators want to curb the rights of all Muslim Americans and appear to be moving towards more Muslim Americans being investigated and held in indefinite detention and possibly at some point a round up of all Muslim Americans. If such a step were necessary why didn't their hero in chief George Bush move in that direction. So if they want to blame anyone for intel failures regarding homegrown terrorists they should also hold the Bush & Obama administrations jointly responsible. It's like other policies for instance on abortion if it was such a core issue for Republicans and conservatives why didn't the Republican conservative Bush Regime not take action on the issue of abortion. Well in part because the pro-life /abortion issue is one that is great for campaigning and rallying the troops but to resolve the issue would mean losing a good campaign issue.

"How Members of Congress Are Advancing Anti-Muslim Hysteria to Push a Radical Legal Agenda:Islamophobes in Congress like Joe Lieberman are trying to set the U.S. on a path to establish a different set of legal standards for Muslims." AlterNet / By Liliana Segura, Jan.28,2010

Roughly one month after the massacre at Fort Hood and a little over a week after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the "underwear bomber") tried to blow himself up over the city of Detroit, one of the most conservative Republicans in the Congress, South Carolina Representative Gresham Barrett, re-introduced a sweeping piece of legislation that he first rolled out in 2003 as a freshman on Capitol Hill.

The Stop Terrorists Entry Program (STEP) Act was originally introduced on September 11 (naturally), 2003 "to bar the admission of aliens from countries determined to be state sponsors of terrorism, and for other purposes." At the time, these countries included Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Iraq and Cuba. The bill not only sought to bar presumed enemies of the state from entering the U.S., it also would have forced "nonimmigrant aliens" -- visitors with a temporary visa -- to leave the country, within 60 days of its passage.

In other words, they would be deported.

The STEP Act never got very far. But a few days into the new year, Rep. Barrett decided to try again. "Twice in the past two months, radical Islamic terrorists have attacked our nation and the administration has failed to adapt its national security and immigration policies to counter the renewed resolve of those who seek to harm our citizens," he announced. "In light of these unfortunate facts, the Step Act of 2010 bars the admission of aliens from countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism and Yemen."


"You have said you are reintroducing the STEP Act in response to the Fort Hood shooting and the Christmas Day attempt to blow up an airplane over Detroit," Parsi wrote. "We hope you recognize that no Iranian has been involved in any of these attacks, or the 9/11 terrorist attacks for that matter. The individuals who carried out the Fort Hood attack and the Christmas day attempt -- an American Army major and a Nigerian national -- would not have been affected in the slightest by the sweeping provisions offered in your bill."

---------
Maybe it would be better if Obama listened to Rep. Grayson rather than those in his inner circle IE Bill & Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden etc. who have too many ties to Big Business to ever be serious about health Care reform or going after Big Pharma or the Military Industrial Complex which is too powerful to fight . Far too many people in various government departments appear to act as if they are still taking orders from Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld et al.

Democratic Rep. Grayson thinks its not too late for Obama to push for real Healthcare Reform but Obama still wants to govern with bipartisanship consensus when in fact the Republicans are not interested. If the Republicans fight Obama on various initiatives if those fail the Republicans won't be affected. But if he were president would Grayson do what needs to be done or would he also find himself between a rock and a hard place.

Rep. Grayson: Obama Needs to Push Health Care In Earnest -- With a Public Option The health care battle between Republicans and Democrats has looked like a fight 'between the crazies and the lazies,' Grayson said. Now it's time to get serious.AlterNet / By Adele M. Stan January 28, 2010

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., has a message for Senate Democrats: Pass health care with a public option -- and pass it quickly. On Wednesday, Grayson joined Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Jim Dean of Democracy for America in delivering some 225,000 petitions to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that demand the Senate leadership use a procedure it has avoided so far in the health care fight in order to pass a bill that contains a public health insurance option. CREDO Action also co-sponsored the petition.


----------------
In the War on Terror for instance Obama is just continuing the Bush/Cheney policies. Blowing stuff up killing innocent civilians targeted assassinations , indefinite detention ,renditions, secret prisons and enhanced Interrogation Techniques (torture) & other abuses of POWS. One wonders why Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize while he escalates the war and abuses detainees and makes excuses for killing civilians (collateral damage) And Obama has done nothing to reign in the Evangelical Fundamentalist who have infiltrated and now control the military, the Pentagon and much of the Intelligence Community.

Iraqi and Afghan citizens spirited away; disappeared by US agencies military Special Forces, CIA, Blackwater -but why doesn't Obama just issue a directive stopping this or hold back on funds for the Military or CIA etc.


Under Obama in Afghanistan, US Conducts Night Raids, Runs Hidden Detention Centers Even if inherited from the Bush administration, the Afghan night raids, the accompanying killings are now after a year in office, Obama's official policy. Tomdispatch.com / By Anand Gopal via AlterNet.org Jan 28, 2010

and so it goes,
GORD.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Glenn Beck Paranoid Vision VS Hillary's Blame Game

Updated: September 26, 2017



UPDATED: 4:27 PM & 5:43 PM Jan. 28, 2010


This is an old post from days of yore when Beck was crazy because Obama a Black man became president.



Now we have some high strung Democrats who are upset that Trump is POTUS and they want to blame Russia, Putin, Black and Hispanic citizens and white working class, and Bernie Sanders , and racism as a backlash to 8 years of Obama and sexism that Hillary lost because she's a woman , or that the DNC didn't do enough and the Media they claim was against Hillary - little of this holds water.


Trump is a bit of a disaster but mostly because he is uncouth he says in public what other presidents only say in private to their closest advisers.
Obama was just as much of a war monger who ignored all the civilian deaths he caused because he never really cared anymore than Trump or George Bush or Hillary Clinton , or John Kerry , or Joe Biden or Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney or Karl Rove or Nixon and Henry Kissinger- it is all about power and money .



- Hillary ran a terrible campaign, the leaked documents were factual but not flattering and showed how corrupt and manipulative the DNC was and is .
Hillary and her friends John Podesta, David Brock, Robbie Mook , Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Peter Daou , et al decided to move further to the right at a time when American voters were in a Populist mood and wanted someone who was outside the establishment.
There were also emails and Documents leaked which showed that the DNC, Hillary and the Media colluded to undermine Bernie Sanders campaign - which in fact added up to cheating Bernie and lying to his supporters and making up crap about him .
Other emails from the Clinton Foundation etc. showed that Hillary used a system of Pay for Play as Secretary of State.V

Hillary was unable to sell herself as someone outside the elites , the establishment or Wall Street while she remained a hawk in foreign affairs while spouting discredited Neoliberal economic and social policies .
Hillary was in favor of more wars. Hillary was against raising the minimum wage to 15 dollars, Hillary was against Universal Health Care.
Hillary was against any consideration of free college education across the board.
Hillary was also in favor of a get tough immigrant stance .
Hillary was still the sweetheart of the Fossil Fuel industry from coal to oil to Mountain Top Removal to Fracking and more pipelines while wanting to easer up on environmental and safety regulations.



And you thought Glenn Beck couldn't get any crazier but he has now gone over the edge into rather dangerous territory as he appears to want like minded conservatives to rise up and take to the streets with their automatic rifles and stat killing all liberals, progressives, and leftists. Glenn Beck hates all of these people who discuss American history in such a way that it undermines the American Mythos ie the City on The Hill , the savior of the world, God's Chosen Nation, Manifest Destiny , the greatest Democracy , a land of equality and equal opportunity .



In Glenn's mind America up until recently was a capitalist paradise where the rich were respected in the way he believes they should be which now includes himself. But his wealth is in great part based upon his selling his Hate Speech & conspiratorial thinking . It never occurs to him that America has ever done anything wrong except when the hated"Liberals" were ruling America. But both parties are in fact responsible for various disastrous domestic and foreign policies. XXX



For instance : It was after all the Democrats under FDR who helped make America into a better nation yet it was the Democrats who were responsible for the disastrous Vietnam war while the Republicans doubled on Vietnam under Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
Meanwhile later on it was the Democrats under Bill Clinton who gutted the welfare programs and public housing while pushing for laws which has led to Mass Incarceration and the militarization of police forces and given them unlimited powers to stop and search people with no real grounds for doing so the grounds seem to be if the person is Black or Brown since Hillary referred to young Black men as Superpredators who needed to be brought to heel as if Black citizens were animals.



Is Glenn Beck inciting violence. By comparing President Obama to Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin , Mao , Pol Pott he is saying that Obama and the leftist are out to destroy traditional America and rounding up and killing all who disagree with their policies. So according to Glenn Beck the left is intending to set up concentration camps and death camps to kill him and all his followers. Is Glenn Beck just doing this for the ratings or is he agitating hoping for some violence or chaos. It is one thing to disagree with the policies of President Obama and progressives and another to claim he is as evil as Hitler or Stalin. So what is his audience supposed to react to his claims-assassinate the president & others connected with the Obama administration or just march and demonstrate in the streets. Is he just playing on the fears and paranoia of those who don't trust Obama because he appears too liberal or because he's black. In their little minds the only way for a black man to be president would be a result of a massive conspiracy.XXX



The Young Turks Critique of Glenn Beck documentary Live Free or Die



XXX


X

XX  Once again we get a revisionists history by a right-wing nutter . To the revisionists historical facts are merely a matter of opinion. Therefore Glenn Beck and others can reimagine the past anyway they care to. Part of the issue is that Hitler and others were mass murdering maniacs whether or not they were perceived as on the left or right. Glenn beck is stuck on the fact that the Nazi party was supposedly a socialist party. Hitler turned the party as such into whatever were his personal goals, ambitions and his own paranoid conspiratorial style. Tim McVeigh ,

So is he saying that the Ku Klux Klan never committed acts of violence or that if they did they must be liberals-but they are right wing racists. So all those people in the South who went to the thousands of lynchings were liberals who were pro-gay, pro-civil rights, and were anti-war or who had a hidden agenda in what they appeared to be doing. Henry Ford whom I have discussed before was a rabid anti-semite and supported Hitler & Mussolini . XXX

  For almost 2,000 years the Christian Church and the early Christians promulgated anti-Semitism-therefore according to Beck the Christians and especially the Catholic Church must have been on the left.Surely according to his way of thinking no Christian was ever anti-semitic. The idea that the Catholic Church and later the Lutherans and protestants were also fanatically anti-Semitic and were racists who believed the White European Race was superior to all other so called races and religions and cultures. Samuel Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations is at its core a racist screed in favor of Christian European White Culture as superior to all others.

XXXNo White European Christian could ever commit the crimes committed by the Japanese and the Chinese or Africans and other non Europeans. So were The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Witch hunts, slavery all part of a leftist plot. I guess these so called leftists in Beck's imagination are confused with like the non-existent Illuminati plotting for centuries to kill off millions of conservatives or libertarians. Glenn Beck in part 3 of his documentary talk about the Ukrainian famine which was engineered by Stalin as if it were some dark hidden secret. It became well known in the West .XXX

 Yes there were die hard pro-Communists who refuse to believe it had been engineered . It is among the reasons many people eventually left the Communist party in the US Canada and elsewhere. Beck forgets that it was difficult to get any reliable news out of the Soviet Union. There was at times so much propaganda on both sides that it was difficult to discern what was really going on. Later we get to see the same madness unleashed in Red China during the so called cultural revolution and in Cambodia under Pol Pott.XXX

  Part 3| Glenn Beck Documentary: "The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free...Or Die" - 01/22/10

X

XX   Beck's conspiracy theory is an old one which can best be illustrated by the notorious infamous forgery created by the Russian Secret police in 1905 to incite anti-semitism . This forgery known as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion has been used by anti-semites ever since as proof they claim of a world wide Jewish conspiracy. So if one wants to create a Conspiracy Theory the Protocols can be used as a basic blueprint-all you do is instead of referring to Jews you change the name of the group to the one you wish to attack ie Illuminati, the Knights of Malta, The Masons , the Catholics, liberals, socialist, Community organizers, civil rights movement , labor unions, Native black Africans etc.

XXX  To Glenn Beck and his ilk Martin Luther King Jr. was an evil Communists who got America's black people and the poor all riled up over in his view nothing that important. He seems to believe everything was OK in America til Communist agitators interfered with the Segregation in the South. I have been hearing this nonsense from the US Conservatives , John Bircher Society, and the KKK and William F. Buckley , Jesse Helms, Barry Goldwater,Governor George Wallace & even the Mainstream US Media since the early 1960s up to the present. XXX

 Also note that if Beck is going to talk about Genocides prior to Hitler he should also examine the Armenian Holocaust, the Native American Holocaust, the Irish Potato Famine, the hundred if not thousands of pogroms and massacres of the Jews in Europe by Holier than thou Christians then add in the Crusades, the Inquisition, the expulsion of Jews and Muslims and other non-Christians from Christian countries and add in hundreds of years of Slavery and wars and massacres between various Christian factions. Hitler did not invent anti-Semitism or the notion of Genocide. For instance during the Irish Holocaust the English & their fellow travelers in Ireland conspired to rid the land of people to be replaced by Sheep and more potatoes. Over six million died or went into exile in the 19th century. Americans took in several million during those years which led to an anti-Irish backlash.XXX

 So you have signs that read no Jews , No Niggers, No Dogs and No Irish but Beck doesn't want to talk about how European Capitalist and Christians were involved in this sort of massacre. In Dublin on the piers there are statues commemorating the Irish Famine. People lay starving on the docks while ships were loaded with produce and then sailed away. The US tried to run the Blockade established by the English by sending ships loaded with food for the Irish. The English made the American ships unload in England and then the aid was put on English ships creating long unnecessary delays in the delivering of aid to the Irish people. Glenn Beck also does not want to talk about how the British, the French, the Spanish & Portuguese mass murdered an estimated 40 million or more Native Americans from the Arctic circle down to the tip of South America. They engineered this Genocide so there would be more room for Europeans coming to the Americas. and now for a little levity as it were Is this another Watergate Were these guys working for the Republicans when they wire tapped the phones -dirty tricks ala Nixon Were they being being paid or was the job done with a wink and a nod to true believers. Cenk doesn't mention that these characters were or may have been in cohoots with the Republicans or other right wing conservative organizations or interests. ACORN Cleared, Right Wing 'Pimp' ArrestedXXX

  X

XXX  also see earlier posts ie : More examples of my posts on art & social commentary & politics etc.  

Gords Notebook : ROBERT BURNS POEMS " SUCH A PARCEL OF ROGUES " & " A MANS A MAN FOR ALL THAT "XXXXX  

Gords Notebook: AMERICA IN THE NAME OF TYRANNY & THE IRONY OF HISTORY & MY VERSION OF LA MARSEILLAISEXXXX  

Gords Notebook : ROBERT LOWELL'S FOR THE UNION DEAD CIVIL WAR TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Gords Poetry Factory: W.B. YEATS " A TERRIBLE BEAUTY IS BORN " & THE EASTER REBELLION IN IRELAND 1916XXXXX  

Gords Notebook: 1916 IRISH EASTER UPRISING AGAINST THE TYRANNICAL ENGLISH GOVERNMENTXXXX  

Gords NoteBook: ART COMEDY & SATIRE NEO-CONSERVATIVES & THE POLITICALLY CORRECTXXXX  

Gords NoteBook: "THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS " 1966 FRENCH FILM STILL RELEVANT & POWERFUL XXX   Gords Notebook: COSTA-GAVRAS FILM "AMEN" THE HOLOCAUST & THE CATHOLIC CHURCH XXXXXXX  

Gords Notebook: THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES & MY VERSES " AN EPIC FOR OUR TIME: A REQUIEM"- PART VI " THE WAYS OF THE WORLD " XXXX  

Gords Notebook: REVIEW OF JOHN CARPENTER'S " THEY LIVE" CONSPIRACY THEORY OR IS IT REALITY ???XXXX  

Gord's Notebook: MY LAI TO ABU GHRAIB & OTHER U.S. ATROCITIES EXPOSED BY INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST SEYMOUR HERSH XXX  

Gord's Notebook: PABLO NERUDA ON POETRY & MY POEM " AN EPIC FOR OUR TIME : A REQUIEM PART V " TRAGEDY OF MAN " & " WILTED FLOWERS "XXX XXX

Gord's Notebook: WAR CRIMES & PUBLIC INDIFFERENCE TO DEATH TOLL IN IRAQ PABLO NERUDA & FACING THE REALITY OF WAR & OPPRESSIONXXX  XXX

Gord's Notebook: ISRAELI ATROCITIES & WAR CRIMES SUPPORTED BY CHANCELLOR STEPHEN HARPER & NEOCONS & RADICAL CHRISTIAN RIGHT XXX and check out:


May 12, 2005
THE POWER OF NIGTMARES DOCUMENTARY BY ADAM CURTIS & THE POLITICS OF FEAR & THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH

April 18, 2007
ART AS POLITICAL & SOCIAL COMMENTARY EARLIER BLOGS: ROBERT BURNS POEMS " SUCH A PARCEL OF ROGUES " & " A MANS A MAN FOR ALL THAT "

June 03, 2005
1916 IRISH EASTER UPRISING AGAINST THE TYRANNICAL ENGLISH GOVERNMENT

BLOODY SUNDAY 1920
black & tans irregular soldiers enter a football stadium shooting into the crowd indescriminately
( sort of like the CIA backed death squads in central america)

See:Irish 1916 Easter Rising ~ War for Independence -
/home.fiac.net/marshaw

Ireland - becoming a free state
www.iol.ie/~dluby/history.htm#Rising

Britain Irish Easter Rebellion 1916
www.onwar.com/aced/data/india/ireland1916

THE HISTORY PLACE:
IRISH POTATO FAMINE
www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine

on Black & Tans seeNationmaster.com
www.nationmaster.com/

also see on Bloody Sunday(II) January 30, 1972
PARATROOPERS FIRE INTO A CROWD OF PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATORS
CREATING A NEW GENERATION OF MARTYRS & RECRUITS FOR THE IRA.
WILL THE ENGLISH EVER LEARN???
Irish Northern Aid Inc.
www.inac.org/irishhistory/bloodysunday

Also see: TRISKELLE
History of Ireland from ancient era to the present
www.vincentpeters.nl/triskelle/history

Another excellent site is SARA'S Michael Collins SITE
which deals with the life & political career of Michael Collins
& includes pages on The Easter Rebellion & BLOODY SUNDAY 1920
& THE BLACK & TANS
AT www.geocities.com

and so it goes,
GORD.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

State of the Union Where's The Change Obama? :Perpetual War Kowtowing To Religious Right and Ultra Conservatives & Pentagon etc.

UPDATE: 1:01 PM ,Jan. 27, 2010

"Our God Against Their God"-Crusades continue
Trijicon Biblical references On US Military Rifles:

"Rifle known in the US military as"The Spiritually Transformed Fire-Arm of Jesus Christ"




James Cameron's AVATAR a critique of American Imperialism & symbiotic relationship between the military and Big Corporations ( which are now to be treated in Law as persons)



US Media hyping news of Al Qaeda Preparing for an attack on United States or on its overseas installations or troops etc.

How many times have the Media and the US intelligence community been involved in this bogus threats. So is Obama also part of the Military Industrial Complex. This is what he gets for surrounding himself with Hawks and those who have financial stake in ramping-up the US War Machine. The more fighting the more money to be made by the War Profiteers.

Graph below of US Government Spending in which the lion's share goes to the military -& the private contractors from Halliburton, Kellogg Brown and Root, & Other Corporate War Profiteers and of course the overpaid Christian Crusaders such as Blackwater XE Services & other mercenaries.

Today's Topics

Where's the change?

*President Obama has not yet set up an official inquiry into the wrongdoing, illegal activities and the breaching of US laws, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights and other basic tenets of American jurisprudence besides International Laws and Agreements which are supposed to be treated as having the force of any Domestic Laws- ie torture, renditions, indefinite detention, abuse of POWs and civilians in Iraq ,Afghanistan and Pakistan ie the Drone Wars

*Obama has ramped up the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan while still threatening Iran and now Yemen. So on how many fronts can America fight.

* The Crusades continue"our God against their God" The US military still a captive of the Evangelical Fundamentalists who are Gung-ho about the war because they believe that the War on Terror is a War on Islam and therefore a continuation of the Christian Crusades


*Health Care reform undermined by phony bipartisanship-Republicans don't want any changes in health Care unless it benefits the Private Health Care industry- HMOs, Insurance companies, Big Pharma -some believe President Obama could still turn this around???


*Obama administration gives billions away to Wall Street while having little left over to help average Americans

(Why didn't he just let some of these banks and other financial institutions fail-I thought according to Capitalism it is the fit that survive and no company or corporation would stoop so low as to take a handout from the Government???)

The Long Shadow of Katrina Fiasco now hangs over Aid for Haiti

*Our God Against Their God
Rifle known in the US military as"The Spiritually Transformed Fire-Arm of Jesus Christ"
General Order #1 ignored by not just lower ranks of soldiers but also by most of the Top Brass and the Pentagon.
Those in favor of proselytizing claim the complainers about Christianization of the Military should stop causing problems or get out of the US military since they aren't wanted anyway.


"Firearms of Jesus Christ" Expose Prompts Anti-Semitic Hate Mail By Brad Friedman, Brad Blog. Posted January 25, 2010

Following the discovery that American guns were inscribed with biblical passages, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation received anti-Semitic emails.





'Christian' Crusaders and Failures of Intelligence in the US Military By Eileen Fleming

January 25, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Thirty years ago, Glyn Bindon, the founder of Trijicon, a Michigan Defense contractor, instituted the practice of stamping references to New Testament Bible verses on combat rifle sights manufactured for the U.S. military.

Trijicon has now released a statement that they will quit their three decades of practice and also provide the armed forces modification kits to remove the Scripture citations from the 300,000 telescoping sights already in use by the Marines, Army and which are being used to train Afghanistan troops.

Beyond the charges of breaking the American government rule that bars proselytizing by American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, this ABC video clip exposes a thriving Crusader mentality in the US Military and a gross failure of intelligence by Christian’s regarding their own faith.


President Obama is initiating a government spending freeze to be announced at his State of the Union address.

Thom Hartman :Has Obama just become a Herbert Hoover Republican?
& The Two Santa Clause Republican Theory
http://www.thomhartmann.com



A major problem with the spending freeze is that it does not apply to the most wasteful department that is the Department of Defense . In a militarized state the budget for the military is sacrosanct and therefore untouchable as Glenn Greenwald in his most recent article.So once again there is little hope of substantive change to reign in military spending no matter how wasteful.

" The Sanctity of Military Spending " by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com via CommonDreams.org/ Jan. 26, 2010

The facts about America's bloated, excessive, always-increasing military spending are now well-known. The U.S. spends almost as much on military spending as the entire rest of the world combined, and spends roughly six times more than the second-largest spender, China. Even as the U.S. sunk under increasingly crippling levels of debt over the last decade, defense spending rose steadily, sometimes precipitously. That explosion occurred even as overall military spending in the rest of the world decreased, thus expanding the already-vast gap between our expenditures and the world's. As one "defense" spending watchdog group put it: "The US military budget was almost 29 times as large as the combined spending of the six 'rogue' states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) who spent $14.65 billion." To get a sense for how thoroughly military spending dominates our national budget, consider this chart showing where Americans' tax revenue goes:


and he concludes:

The clear fact is that, no matter how severe are our budgetary constraints, military spending and all so-called "security-related programs" are off-limits for any freezes, let alone decreases. Moreover, the modest spending freeze to be announced by Obama tomorrow is just the start; the Washington consensus has solidified and is clearly gearing up for major cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with the dirty work to be done by an independent "deficit commission." It's time for "everyone" to sacrifice and suffer some more -- as long as "everyone" excludes our vast military industry, the permanent power factions inside the Pentagon and intelligence community, our Surveillance and National Security State, and the imperial policies of perpetual war which feed them while further draining the lifeblood out of the country.

The Washington Post is hyping the same report. Apparently, it's breaking news -- meriting screaming red-alert headlines -- that Al Qaeda would like to ("aims to") acquire WMDs and use them against the U.S. But we should all try to remain a little calm, at least. I'm sure if we just buy some more fighter jets, create some better underground bombs, invade a few more Muslim countries, keep more Muslims imprisoned forever with no charges, give the Pentagon, the CIA and their private contractors a lot more unaccounted-for cash and stay out of their way, expand our domestic spying networks even further through private sector telecom contracts, pour tens of billions of dollars more into the coffers of our Middle East client states, and kill a few more civilians with drones, this problem will be handled. It's just a matter of making sure we bulk up our military budget -- and Look Forward, not Backward to what was done in the past -- and we'll be able to Stay Safe from this Terrorist-WMD menace.

As for the deficit, no need to worry about that. We can just freeze programs for national parks and cut Social Security and Medicare


So where's Obama's inquiry about Iraq and those who lied to the American people to go to War with Iraq. Where are the indictments of the members of the George W. Bush Regime and for its Reign of Terror for their illegal and their traitorous actions for torture, renditions, kangaroo courts, cruel and unusual punishment, the unnecessary invasion of Iraq causing 5,000 US dead and half a million or more Iraqis killed

In Britain they are carrying out an official inquiry into the lies and propaganda produced by Tony Blair's government to make the case for a pre-emptive attack on the sovereign nation of Iraq which was in fact a War Crime and a Crime Against Humanity.

"Intelligence on WMD 'taken out of context', Iraq inquiry hears Gordon Brown offers to give evidence to Chilcot before election" By Michael Savage, at Independent .UK ,Jan. 21, 2010

Intelligence outlining the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was taken out of context when it was used as part of the Government's case for invading Iraq, a senior member of Tony Blair's intelligence team has said.

Sir David Omand, who was Mr Blair's security co-ordinator, said that including the claim that Saddam had missiles that he could launch within 45 minutes in the now-infamous September 2002 dossier on Iraq was "asking for trouble". If all the intelligence on Iraq had been published, the public reaction would have been "Is that it?", he said.

In a wide-ranging condemnation of the document, given during his evidence to the Iraq inquiry, Sir David said that the manner in which intelligence was used to make "a case" for taking action against Iraq was a "big mistake". He revealed that the 45-minute claim was included to offer "local colour", adding that such a dossier should never be produced again.

Sir David said that Mr Blair should not have been allowed to state that it was "beyond doubt" that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), a claim made in the former Prime Minister's foreword to the document. He said that the foreword was only shown to security officials "fairly late in the day" and should have been issued as a separate document. "My memory is that I didn't pay that much attention to this bit of it, which was a mistake," he said. "I totally failed to spot the potential problem that would arise."


HAITI

Max Blumenthal provides more background on Haiti's political History especially the Aristide period 1992 when the infamous extreme right winger Jesse Helms and his buddies created a group to undermine President Aristide & succeeded in doing so -President Clinton allowed Aristide back into power but only after agreeing to a free trade agreement giving the US companies free reign- meanwhile the tariff on rice was eliminated which devastated Haiti's largest export and left a large portion of the population destitute-

Max Blumenthal on Haiti's political history-Thom Hartman
http://www.thomhartmann.com


The US government appears to have learned little from its fiasco in Louisiana during Katrina. There too there were exaggerated stories about "looting", murders, rape and violence in general which was Good Business for Blackwater and other Private Contractors.

Because of the exaggerated claims of violence in Haiti by the US Mainstream Media and the American military and intelligence community and some of the Hawks surrounding Obama aid has been slow to get to those in need in Haiti.

So priority has been given to military operations and for military planes landing in Haiti- then come official visits for Photo Ops including US government officials and famous people such as John Travolta -and then foreign aid comes in last . Meanwhile most American soldiers are underutilized because instead of helping with aid distribution they are patrolling the streets looking for so called Looters and thugs while ordinary Haitians die from lack of food, water, shelter or medical aid.

" Hey Corporate Media, "Looting" Is a Racist Code Word" by Chloe Cockburn, Blog of Rights,January 25, 2010.

"Aftershock rattles Haiti, but aid flow ramps up" Reuters Jan. 20,2010

LOCALIZED VIOLENCE

Landline telephones in Port-au-Prince were still down, but two wireless networks had spotty service, said U.S. Federal Communications Commission officials helping with the relief.

While military escorts are needed to deliver relief, the United Nations said security problems were mainly in areas considered "high risk" before the disaster.

"I have seen no indications that leads me to believe that the security situation is deteriorating," said General Floriano Peixoto, chief of the Brazilian U.N. peacekeeping contingent.

Brazilian peacekeepers have helped Haitian police recapture some of the 4,000 prison inmates who escaped after the quake.

To speed the arrival of aid and stem looting and violence, the U.N. Security Council has unanimously agreed to temporarily add 2,000 U.N. troops and 1,500 police to the 9,000-member peacekeeping mission in Haiti.

Around 12,000 U.S. military personnel are on the ground in Haiti and on ships offshore including the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort, which arrived on Wednesday to provide essential capacity for complex surgeries.


and so it goes,
GORD.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Bill Moyers Response To Pat Robertson and David Brooks' Attacks On The People of Haiti:The Disastrous Effects of Colonialism & US Interferrence

UPDATE: 1:10 PM Jan. 26,2010

Today's Topics

Racism still alive and well in Mainstream Media

*Video: Bill Moyers Responds to the idiocy of Pat Robertson and David Brooks' Blaming the Haitians for their predicament
* Haiti:Looting is a racist code word
* Haiti: Exaggerated Security Concerns still preventing aid distribution
* Video: Comparing Haiti disaster to Katrina Grit TV



David Brooks in a recent article sounds a bit racist. He argues that the people of Haiti are all corrupt , shiftless lazy , backward and lacking in family or community values. But Moyers points out Haitian seem far from lazy when they work they are paid a dollar a day or 11 cents an hour and work 18 hours a day.




Journalist Bill Moyers at PBS comments on the Haiti earthquake disaster and Responds to the idiocy of pat Robertson and David Brooks.

Moyers criticizes the idiotic conclusions of many conservatives who in one way or another blame the Haitian people for the mess their country was in before the Earthquake. Pat Robertson concludes Haiti's problems date back to the Slave Revolt when Haitians made a pact with the devil which he believes led to the Slaves defeating three major colonial powers and winning for themselves independence as a sovereign nation. But because of this pact the Haitian people have been punished by the Christian God and so their suffering has continued.

Next Bill Moyers targets David Brooks' article in The New York Times and his condemnation of the Haitian people as being backward and in his view"progress resistance". This is just old fashioned colonial racism and the notion of "The White Man's Burden". Brooks calls Haitians lazy, lacking in initiative and lacking in positive community or family values. Brooks ignores the fact that other nations such as the United States , France , Britain etc. have oppressed in one way or another for the last 200 years or so. France for instance insisted on reparations for their financial loses when the slaves freed themselves. Even the Americans did all that it could to slow any real progress down in Haiti especially on issues of Haiti's sovereignty and human rights and reforms that would help the poor in Haiti. All America wanted was to use Haiti for its cheap labor to benefit the American corporations and their Haitian business counterparts who had no interest in human rights or for reforms.

So the corporate media circle their wagons smugly blaming the victims in Haiti for not being grateful to America for the US supported Haitian dictators and their thugs and "death Squads'. Ah well America was happy to support Saddam for over a decade and ignore his crimes against humanity. As we know now The US government that is the lobbyists, Wall Street the Pentagon and the CIA sometimes use these crimes against humanity as an excuse for invading a country but otherwise couldn't care less. If they did care they would have insisted on Saddam being arrested and incarcerated for the crimes he committed before he attacked Kuwait. To put it another way if these things such as torture, humiliation, inhumane treatment including rape and sodomy were matters of sincere concern the CIA and the Blackwater and average soldiers would not be told that in Iraq it was free fire zone and they could do to the Iraqis as they pleased. Of course it also helps that the US military has and is still actively recruiting inner city gang members, racist, white supremacists, hardened criminals or those who are mentally unfit for duty or religious fanatics who want to kill as many Muslims as they can.


In his article at the New York Times "The Underlying Tragedy" Jan. 14,


David Brooks proclaims " Haitians are not like us" (Americans) You know they are like the Iraqis and Afghans and the majority of people in Africa and the Middle East who are corrupt, lazy , lacking in initiative unlike those like David Brooks who are of European Aryan Extraction .

At times like these we see the racists come out of the closet and make what appear to be cultivated civilized logical arguments which are really a cover for their racist beliefs. All those who have run Empires have had to develop and promulgate the notion that they are superior to other peoples and that what they are trying to do is give them more freedom and a better life even though it never works out that way.

We could push this further as an attack on the Obama administration which Brooks is concerned will develop policies towards Haiti which are altruistic and in his view naive. For him what matters is not whether 200,000 Haitians are dead but what's the bottom line -that is can America profit by helping out the Haitians as they have been able to do over the last century or more. Anyway what is sad is that this sort of rant is seen as a rational response to a natural disaster but we have seen this sort of indifference to human suffering on the part of people like David Brooks when it comes to suffering of the Iraqi people- 650,000 dead means nothing to those who believe Iraqis are backward, stupid, lazy and ungrateful to the Americans who finished off what Saddam had started by reducing much of Iraq and its cities to rubble.



Odd how conservatives regard the New York Times as liberal. There is nothing liberal about David Brooks racist pro-colonialism screed- claiming some races are it appears to be inferior to others or some cultures and religions are inferior. What he means is that America and American values and the American culture is superior to all other nations. Brings to mind the recent movie Pandora where we see the likes of David Brooks as the Ugly American who believes that a corporations profits outweigh the rights of other people whether they are the fictional Navi or Haitians or African Americans or Hispanic Americans etc. who don't according to his view do well in America because of their lack of initiative or a "good Work Ethic" or family values and indifference to education . The poor in America or Haiti are depicted as inferior and lacking in pride and so are content with handouts while living in substandard housing unable to feed or clothe themselves properly because of their low wages or the insufficient funds given to them by government run welfare.

note the concluding part of David Brooks so called argument:

"It’s time to take that approach abroad, too. It’s time to find self-confident local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people — maybe just in a neighborhood or a school — with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.

The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington used to acknowledge that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old. "


Oh yes that's the solution surround the poor in their Ghettos and shanty towns with well off middle class people in their oversize houses in their gated communities who spend their lives sucking the energy and sweat out of their fellow though inferior citizens. As long as the likes of David Brooks believes that the poor are undeserving and the rich are deserving of whatever wealth they can amass even if it means bending the rules, or breaking the law or even better putting people in power who will favor the hard done by wealthy members of Western Society-imagine daring to tax the rich when only the lower classes need pay taxes and work at jobs with little or no benefits . You see in the Western civilization during the last century the improvements for a time of the lot of the working class was brought about not because of the kindness of the wealthy but because workers organized into Unions. Unfortunately David Brooks has no time for Unions since it is up to the market place to decide what the going wage should be and if necessary a company goes to a country run by a dictator or Oligarthy where human rights don't exist for a large part of the public.

David Brooks sounds like many conservatives that he would be happier in an earlier time when people had a good work ethic as in the 19th century-are there no work houses are the tred mill laws still in effect. To encourage the poor who were incarcerated for their debts they were placed on a big wheel called the tred mill it had no function other than to keep prisoners busy to help them get used to hard work and develop a better work ethic. Unlike of course the corrupt greedy opportunists on Wall Street who are are forced to pay for their crimes so what the ultraconservative says if these financial investors lie and cheat average people out of their life savings . They are the modern day pirates but instead of being incarcerated or flogged for their wrong doing they are held up as the paragons of the American Dream.

As for "the same old same old" well if he means that the US and other nations shouldn't defend brutal dictators in Haiti or elsewhere then that one could support. But he sees nothing wrong with a small elite taking advantage of the general population. Brooks sounds also like another member of fanatical fascist religious organization for the rich and successful and powerful "The Family" who support any dictator even if they commit genocide that's fine as long as they are pro-unfettered capitalism and free trade and have friendly relation with American business' interests. To these ultraconservatives Generalissimo Pinochet, and Franco , and Papa Doc and other dictators are fine . Besides as Hillary Clinton and other members of "The Family" believe that one has only to reach out to Jesus and whatever one does is alright because as a rich and powerful person one has already been blessed and chosen by their pro-capitalist GOD.

Blaming the victims while refusing to seriously study the history of Haiti. All that matters to Mr. Brooks and like-minded Americans and those in Canada and Britain etc. is to use the latest disaster in Haiti to blame the Haitian people for their predicament without considering the role played by the United States, Britain , France and other countries and the IMF and their policies which keep Haiti poor. David Brooks is indifferent to defending the human rights of Haitians or that Haitian workers should be paid decent wages or that any wealth produced in Haiti should benefit the Haitian people in general and not just a few who constitute an elite which is friendly with America's government and its elite. David Brooks having no soul doesn't see why he should care about the people of Haiti. He sounds like a student of Leo Strauss who was against any form altruism. Strauss preached that a nation ie America helps out another nation ie Haiti only if its in that nations( America's) interest and will lead to more profits.

Looting versus survival

"Hey Corporate Media, "Looting" Is a Racist Code Word "by Chloe Cockburn, Blog of Rights January 25, 2010.

When the news camera captures footage of a Haitian man taking rice, what does it show? Theft? Survival? What if that man is white? AlterNet

In the aftermath of the earthquake, there have been numerous reports of dangerous looting in the capital. (See examples here, here, and here). The Washington Post has a video showing people "looting" a shop, as stated in the caption. The items taken appear to be food and supplies. There is no violence on the camera. But the violent connotation of the word remains.

In contrast to international news of looting in Haiti, local reports indicate that in reality, there is not massive violence or unrest. Partners in Health recently stated that "Our team on the ground reaffirms that the reports of violence on the streets of Port-au-Prince have been grossly exaggerated and have become a major obstacle to mounting the response needed to save tens of thousands of lives each day.” United Nations officials in Haiti have criticized reporters for sensationalizing the earthquake aftermath, exaggerating looting reports, noting that the situation among civilians was calm. In a New York Times op-ed, Haitian novelist and Port-au-Prince resident Evelyne Trouillot wrote, "Many of us Haitians are offended by the coverage of the earthquake. Once more, a natural disaster serves as an occasion to showcase the impoverishment, to exaggerate the scenes of violence that are common to any catastrophe of this type."



January 23, 2010 by GRITtv Is It Fair to Compare Haiti to New Orleans? common Dreams


The comparisons between the earthquake in Haiti and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans have come fast and furious, but often from people who've watched both disasters through the clean-cut white lens of Anderson Cooper broadcasts. Meanwhile, people in Haiti-and those in the Gulf Coast still struggling four years later-need more than blame and comparisons. They need real solutions.

To offer some, we ask Monika Kalra Varma, director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Princeton professor, Nation contributor, and author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought and James Perry, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center and candidate for mayor of New Orleans





and so it goes,
GORD.

Monday, January 25, 2010

The Wild & Crazy World of Wacko Glenn Beck "Liberalism/The Left = Nazism" & Haiti: Racist David Brooks et al's "The White Man's Burden"???

UPDATE: 12:35 PM & 1: 39 PM ,Jan. 25, 2010

Glenn Beck the average American who makes $20 million a year. Does the average American fall for this line of BS . If millions do believe it and act upon Glenn Beck's nonstop call to arms then be afraid.




"...Not many writers would have the courage to use a tragic event like a 50,000-fatality earthquake to volubly address the problem of nonwhite laziness and why it sometimes makes natural disasters seem timely, but then again, David Brooks isn't just any writer."

From Matt Taibbi Blasts David Brooks: 'Wait Until After The Bodies Were Cold' at huffington Post ,Jan. 18,2010

"The Haitian tragedy has opened up a whole new industry for what I call the genteel racist point of view. A week into the crisis I heard an otherwise intelligent report on NPR in which the correspondent opened her piece from Port-au-Prince by declaring that it "is not falling into a...pit of violence," thereby giving us an idea of what she had been anticipating, almost breathlessly. We heard this kind of thing frequently in the days after the earthquake, with scores of fresh reporters receiving their Haitian baptism amid the rubble. There are many problems in Haiti, but most of the negative pronouncements that have been circulating do not touch on them. The commentary has been psychopolitical rather than analytical."


From: Hey David Brooks, How Dare You Blame Haitians? By Amy Wilentz, The Nation. Posted January 25, 2010. Armchair commentators like David Brooks, who know nothing about Haiti, have rebuked suffering Haitians from the comfort of the U.S. and Europe.

and : "Exploitation, racism keep Haiti in despair"
Tony Fraser at Guardian.co 20 Jan 2010



It is necessary to temporarily break from the series on party politics to share a perspective on Haiti that responds to the ignorance and frankly racist comments flowing since the earthquake of last week. A particular strain of the comments seeks to make Haiti and its people incurably backward, genetically subhuman and so preoccupied with evil and voodoo that even the God of the universe has turned His back on the land and its people. Any attempt to understand and analyse the reasons for Haiti’s backwardness as a society and the human condition of large numbers of its people should start from the appreciation that that country has been a victim of the worse forms of economic exploitation, racist sub-human degradation and imperial imposition known to man.


and more on David Brooks racist analysis of Haiti"David Brooks Blames the Victim in Haiti :Is David Brooks competing with Pat Robertson to make the most callous commentary on Haiti's earthquake?" by Yifat Susskind at Commondreams.org/ Jan. 16,2010

and : Racism, misinformation and militarization have hurt Haiti relief effortBy Derrick O'Keefe at rabble.ca,January 21, 2010



And a few words from Uberconservative Lt. Governor Andre Bauer (South Carolina).

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better," GOP Hopeful Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer
Typical thinking of a Uberconservative and even spouting such nonsense out loud to the public at large.

GOP Hopeful: People on Public Assistance "Like Stray Animals" Saturday 23 January 2010 by: Nathaniel Cary,McClatchy Newspapers via Truthout

Glenn Beck creates an in depth propaganda piece purportedly reporting on the centuries old leftist and liberal conspiracy theory. Hitler, Stalin,Mao ,Mussolini, Franco, Pinochet in Chile and Chavez in Venezuela Castro. Polpott are all begin as stealth fifth columnists out to destroy democracy and religious freedom. Beck also accuses the left and liberalism of committing all of the acts of Genocide over the last two centuries. The left was responsible for centuries of anti-semitism and racism for the pogroms and massacres of Jews or other peoples and even the practice of slavery. So it is liberalism as in Thoms Paine's "Rights of Man" ?. Beck even picks and chooses which things Thomas Paine' was in his view right about and ignore all the rest.
Glenn Beck is pulling the mask off of the Leftist Monster .The Wild & Crazy World of Wacko Glenn Beck on Self-hating Jews & The Revolutionary Holocaust Live Free or Die 1of5



And on international and American aid to devastated Haiti and the notion that Haitians are incapable of governing themselves according to many conservatives or even neo-liberals. The usual stereotypes of a backward , lazy, uncultured, who's system of values is non-existent and so as a people are to become as Kipling said "The White Man's Burden". At the end of the day this is just another form of racism.
The Haitian people historically proved that they were capable of initiative by revolting against their plantation masters and free themselves from this tyranny. For rising up and defeating a European power to the colonial powers this was unforgivable so this event was for the most glossed over or never mentioned . The very idea of Black slaves defeating a white European power was unthinkable and that these former slaves were able to govern themselves was too threatening to White Europeans to accept as an historical fact. Even the Bible had said that slaves were to obey their masters and had no right to rise up and revolt demanding the end of their oppression.

An Open Letter to David Brooks on Haiti" by: Tom F. Driver and Carl Lindskoog, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed,Jan. 19,2010

Dear Mr. Brooks,

In your January 15, 2010, opinion piece in The New York Times, "The Underlying Tragedy," you present what you seem to believe is a bold assessment of the situation in Haiti and what you certainly know is a provocative recommendation for Haiti's future. You also offer some advice to President Obama. In order to successfully keep his promise to the people of Haiti that they "will not be forsaken" nor "forgotten" the president, you say, has to "acknowledge a few difficult truths." What follows, however, is so shockingly ignorant of Haitian history and culture and so saturated with the language and ideology of cultural imperialism that no valuable "truths" remain. Please allow us, therefore, to present you with some more accurate truths.

First, Haiti is not a clear-cut case of the failure of international aid to achieve poverty reduction. For almost its entire existence, Haiti has been shouldered with a load of immense international debt. The Haitian people had the audacity to break their chains and declare independence in 1804, but were later forced by France to repurchase their freedom for 150 million francs, a burden that the country has had to carry throughout the 20th century.

What's more, the "aid" Haiti has received from its powerful neighbor to the North has never been the sort that would help the country reduce poverty or achieve meaningful development. In the early 20th century, the principle aid Haiti received from the United States came in the form of a brutal military occupation that lasted from 1915 to 1934. After "Papa Doc" Duvalier ascended to power, "aid" meant assistance to a ruthless (but conveniently anti-communist) dictator. The US gave Duvalier $40.4 million in his first four years in power, briefly suspended military and economic assistance to the dictator in 1963, but resumed shortly thereafter, restoring full military and economic aid to Duvalier by 1969. In the early 1970s and 1980s, when "Baby Doc" Duvalier was at the helm, the "aid" the United States and other international agencies contributed failed to reduce poverty, but did enrich foreign investors in the newly constructed assembly industry. Economic policies that the US forced upon Haiti decimated its agriculture for the benefit of American farming while driving Haiti's peasants into Port-au-Prince and other cities where they found few jobs and scarce housing. Four years after Baby Doc's departure, the Haitian people decided to help themselves by democratically electing a new leader, but the United States aided Jean-Bertrand Aristide's domestic opponents in the coup of 1991 and did so again in 2004. It is no wonder then that that such aid from the United States has failed to lift Haiti out of poverty.

Equally unconvincing is your argument about "progress-resistant cultural influences," which brings us to important truth number two: Haitian culture is not "progress-resistant" as anyone familiar with the examples you yourself provide can attest to. If Vodou or "the voodoo religion" as you put it, "spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile," how do the majority of Haitians manage to survive on scant resources and less than two dollars a day? How do so many Haitians manage to travel abroad, find and maintain difficult jobs and send money back home if not through careful planning and a fierce defense of precious life? How do the nationwide customers of Fonkoze, the Haitian banking operation that teaches literacy and business practices to curbside marketers to whom it makes small loans, achieve such strong records of loan repayment? In fact, it might be Haitian culture itself (and even Vodou) which allows Haitians to persist. After all, the Vodou spirit Ogou (St. Jacques) is honored as a clever planner and master of skills. So was the champion of Haiti's war of independence, Gen. Toussaint L'Ouverture, a onetime slave who entered history as a military and diplomatic genius.

The third important truth we have to offer (and we hope President Obama is listening as well) is the opposite of your call for "intrusive paternalism" as the solution to Haiti's woes: Haiti does not need nor does it want the paternalism of the United States. Haiti is literally dying of cultural imperialism.

Whenever America's leaders and pundits speak of subordinate peoples, the ideology of imperialism shines through. As it does in your words, Mr. Brooks, so it has done for far too many earlier Americans. President William McKinley, for example, facing the difficult question of how he was to govern the newly-conquered Filipinos worried that:

left "to themselves they are unfit for self-government-and they would soon have anarchy and misrule ... [So] there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them."

Closer to home, those who worried about an earlier form of "progress-resistant cultural influences" decided it was better to remove the children of Native-American families than to let them absorb the backwardness of their pagan and uncivilized parents and community. A common refrain by these "reformers" was, "kill the Indian, save the man." And now, Mr. Brooks, you propose to save the Haitians from themselves by replacing Haitian cultural values and institutions with "middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands." Imperialism, whether economic or military, is the primary reason for the conditions that so worsened the impact of the earthquake on January 12. Haitians need less imperialism, not more.

During the Vietnam War, an American officer famously stated that "it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it." Today, Haiti is virtually destroyed. The earthquake having done the hard part, Mr. Brooks, you think "intrusive paternalism" will save it. Lacking a foundational understanding of Haitian history and culture, and bearing the familiar colors of American imperialism, you and your ilk will do vastly more harm than good.

Tom F. Driver
Paul Tillich professor emeritus of theology and culture, Union Theological Seminary

Carl Lindskoog
doctoral candidate, Department of History, The Graduate Center, City University of New York


and so it goes,
GORD.