Some of Them

The recent broohaha over Chick fil A's (about as lame a name as ever for just as lame chicken) president (in poetic irony, dude's name is "Cathy") coming out against gay marriage has kicked off a bit of a dust up with even some mayors coming out punitively, others -- most notably Bloomberg -- saying that it would set a bad precedent for NYC to boycott.

As much as I support gay marriage I think Bloomberg's right. Let the friggin market decide. It's like the tbtf banks; they jack over the entire world, but if peeps are too stupid to divest from them, well, then they deserve what they get.

In fairness, our school system and mass media ain't helping the masses one bit and if I had to say whose side they aid and abet -- regardless of whether or not they have consciously decided to -- it'd be the evil empire's side. Let's face it; young couples are walking around with a kid in the stroller and one in the oven amid the most historic economic crisis in history. I know who they are, the Cal post-grad students thinking they're invulnerable, still armed with pieces of plastic handed out by the very drug dealing cartel that was in action when I was in school. Only now, they're far larger, more highly conglomerated, and their fangs drip with bloodlust out in the open.

And the argument -- "some of them" -- comes into play in both the tbtf banks and the Chick fil A weirdo. "Not all white people...." "Not all cops...." "Not all men...." "Not all priests...." so therefore, some of them....

All groups do it. When the Latasha Harlins case went down, I said -- immediately -- that the Korean community should denounce Soon Ja Du. I also had no problem at all with saying to anyone that would listen that if we're going to go kill anyone, it shouldn't have been Saddam but that asshat in North Korea who terrorized and murdered millions.

Why is that so hard? It's what truly mystifies me about Jews who, despite a bounty of information on what's going on, continue to support Israel's systematic visciousness. And too, despite the work and protestations of Jews like Anna Balthzar and of course, Chomsky.

Malcolm famously said that a white girl once asked him what she could do to combat racism, and he said "Nothing." He later said that he regretted that and went on to say that what white people should do is help other white people see the way that they are the beneficiaries of racism.

I think that's right.

No group is as guilty as us Americans. All it takes is one look at the murderers row of reprobates we have in Congress who've managed -- mis-managed -- this country down the tubes and safeguarded all the resources for their masters. I think it was the no bs talkin' Gerald Celente who said, "Ever notice that despite Democrats or Republicans in office, things continue on the same way?"

Oh, hold on. Some of the Democrats and Republicans.

14 TRILLION Reasons

I've gone on record as saying that Barack's a charismatic and accomplished guy, but before the election I told my circle of friends and relatives about my reservations. Those were founded upon the fact that he had very vocally advocated for and then voted for the bank/insurance bailout. Just as Hillary, McCain, Biden, et al, did, in the craziest rush to judgment on the biggest, riskiest, pure money bet in history.

Given that the banks did nothing to stimulate the economy via lending to medium and small businesses, let alone individuals, at least on any kind of significant basis, we now see that "lending" them this money was a huge mistake.

Or was it?

The irony of pre-TARP scare line "Too big to fail" not being lost on me in the post-TARP era of the recently conglomerated super banks, I wonder:

1. Ex Goldman CEO Paulson, as Secretary of the Treasury, lets Lehman Brothers, one of the few remaining competitors with Goldman, die. Doesn't that reek of conflict of interest?

2. How did they substantiate the TARP amount of $700 billion? To date, I've no clue. No one in mass media even asks, let alone with any semblance of consistency.

3. Why were there no stipulations on the money that only allowed Goldman, JPMrogan/Chase, Wells, B of A... to serve themselves with our money?

4. Why is it that as a result of bailing them out we now own GM and Chrysler, two crappy companies with four decades of shitty business models and clueless dinosaurs running them, and yet we do NOT own AIG, contrary to what the press has said. This reasoning is because AIG's stock has taken a meteoric rise Post-TARP. This would equate to massive earnings on our money, surely headline news. To date, nothing of the sort has broken in the media. This also applies to all of the newly conglomerated super banks - with all of the massive earnings Goldman and JPMC have made post-TARP, why is it that we only own the toxic, poisonous debt they gave us, nothing more, while they get to take our money, conglomerate and post record earnings that they horde to themselves???

5. Why has the government not told the American public the true cost of the bailout, which is now at over $14 TRILLION? See below, from Nomi Prins, for October, 2009, at:
http://www.nomiprins.com/bailout.html



[The owner corporations of America] spend billions of dollars every year, lobbying to get what they want. Well we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else....

...They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people … they’re not interested in that, that doesn’t help them, it’s against their interests. You know something? They don‘t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting’ fucked by a system that threw them overboard thirty fuckin’ years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want?

They want obedient workers. OBEDIENT WORKERS.

People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paper work, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, AND NOW, THEY'RE COMING FOR YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY. THEY WANT YOUR FUCKING RETIREMENT MONEY.

THEY WANT IT BACK SO THEY CAN GIVE IT TO THEIR CRIMINAL FRIENDS ON WALL STREET. [Remember these shitheads? Eeeeyeah.]

AND YOU KNOW SOMETHING? THEY'LL GET IT. THEY'LL GET IT ALL FROM YA SOONER OR LATER, CUZ THEY OWN THIS FUCKIN' PLACE. It’s a “Big Club.”

AND YOU AIN’T IN IT.

You and I are not in “The Big Club.”

By the way it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell ya what to believe… with their media … what to think, what to buy…

The table is tilted folks, the game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice, no body seems to care. Good honest hard working people, white collar, blue collar, doesn’t matter what color shirt ya have one. Good honest hard working people continue… these are people of modest means… continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you.

AT ALL AT ALL AT ALL.

And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care… THAT’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day.

Because the owners of this country know the truth: it’s called “The American Dream,” cuz you have to be asleep, to believe it.

-Saint George of Carlin

Malcolm and Huey spoke about the role of anger in resistance, and I remember Yuri Kochiyama telling me that she believed in righteous anger, that there was nothing wrong in it, but that it shouldn't be an end point.

We're way beyond the point of righteous anger by a factor of 10, at least in my reality. And yet, there's no collective will, nothing pragmatic, direct and constructive toward resistance. In fact, it's the worst "response" of all, the modern-day equivalent of the verbal "like, you know" tick; a shrug of the dis-empowered shoulders and a faux helpless look.

MoveOn dot org, indeed, these people make me sleepy.

Inside Looking Out

The sad thing about consumerism at the top, ie: American consumerism - is that it carries the weight of veracity. That is, we luxuriate under the grand illusion that afflicted the bio-racists, such as Binet, of colonialism's heyday: That rationalism, hard science, logic, and economics were proof of western (subtext/subliminally, white) culture being superior.

On the obvious level, well... there's just too many examples of how gross we are as a consumer society. I remember I saw an aerial shot of an industrial sized cattle and hog farm, which had huge swaths of brown running out of them.

Yes folks, they were rivers of crap. Shit rivers.

For those of you who aren't aware of the implications of this kind of food production, take my word for it: it's bad news on several fronts and all of them having to do with the environment, your health and animal cruelty.

Yes, we Amerikkans are the fattest, grossest, most wasteful and consuming-est... and as was true in "The Mysterious Orient" a fat kid was a sign of posterity.

Which serves as a weird prolegomena to this chain of events:

1. An article which appeared in Jezebel;

2. A solicited response of a Woman of Color by an editor at Racialicious; and,

3. My response below.

While I think the original Jezebel article speaks to all of the naive aspects of Amerikkkan culture/peeps, the thing that leaps out to me is Sarah's admitted ignorance; "I was not into interna'tl politics at ALL..." [sic] But there's a catch; she takes the usual colonialist's way out and places the onus on the Other: "I started wondering about Islam and why people hated the U.S. so much." Typical.

It reminds me of the time when a white gal asked Malcolm if there was anything she as a white person could do, and he hurt her by saying "No." While Malcolm wishes later he hadn't told her that, he then makes a very valid point: white peeps, instead of attempting to understand the Other, should FIRST understand themselves.

As the cliche' goes, there's two sides to every story, and as Rashomon points out, sometimes more. This means understanding history outside of the usual pablum we are fed via the US conglomerated news media. A good place to understanding why any Other peeps hate us is to look at ourselves, our foreign policies of invasion, installation, and yes, terror. Think about Korea, Japan, Vietnam, El Salvador, guns for hostages trading with Iran, the Janus-faced creation of Saddam and then his lynching... and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, uncle scam LOVES to fuck with Others and then open his eyes wide and ask with upturned palms, "WHY do 'they' hate us?"

This is the main problem I have with Aaminah. Additionally, unless one is being entertaining or funny, I've grown a thick skin toward peeps who have to qualify their responses with a level of physicality. So she pukes because of Jezebel's transgression. Ok, you are sickened, literally, by such ignorance and flaunting of power. But unless you get white people in power to turn the mirror of reflection on themselves and away from the microscope of examining the Other, you can't possibly expect white people in power to "get it."

Empathy and self-reflection; two huge things missing in Amerikkkan consciousness. And yes, it all comes full circle folks. Remember our reality, those comfy two-car garages, our lattes and Sunday strolls on Malibu Beach or the barrio/ghetto where even mainstream news media is ignored, but yet the blaring spam of corporate consumerism is heard loud and clear? That's our psychological blanky, and we're like big babies, being fed pablum while told, "THIS is the life."

It isn't. It's OUR life. Rife with all of the Stepford Wives and their manicured lawns that reach their fingers into our brains and massage it - CONSTANTLY. And with that comfort comes the assurance that what we are doing must be right, otherwise things wouldn't be so good. What's dumbya's big tagline; "They hate our freedom."

Freedom to do what? Buy a $10 sweatshirt at Wal-Mart (China's largest consumer and therefore instigator of mass pollution. Take a look at Beijing's air sometime - it's disgusting) and feel like you got a deal while being blisffuly unaware that some Chinese person worked like a machine cranking those out in a sweat shop for a dime?

Wasn't it dumbya who said in 9/11's aftermath, "Go out shopping?"

This is why I say, Marx got it wrong. Religion isn't the opiate of the masses, it's that rectangular piece of plastic with "Mastercard" on it.

Aaminah concludes by saying that rags like Jezebel can't be expected to incorporate Other views. Well, news bulletin: YEAH. But by not calling them or even Sarah (whom she kinda lets off the hook) out to turn that reflection back on themselves, she misses the opportunity to get white peeps to do the most important thing in life: look at yourself. Clarification: pointing out their prejudice is fine, but relating it to the overall terrain of mass media and how they are no different from, say, the major broadcast networks in that regard.

The thing is not being surprised, or shocked, or even sickened. Ok, you can get sick, but to make that the lead in to your piece instead of calling out whites for their lack of self-understanding misses the boat. In so doing, you've made your revulsion the theme. It's like balling out a kid for leaving his computer on while his room's a mess. So ignorant white peeps, like little kids, don't wanna hear it, and keep on "leaving their rooms a mess."

So keep telling them their room's a mess.

That's your job, to point out their pathology, and not to stop until they get it, not to make it about you, and your revulsion, your shock. Is it tiring/wearying/a pain in the ass? Of course. But, seriously, who gives a flying fuck about your shock (or mine for that matter?) when powerful old white men are running amuck and giving Others plenty of reasons to hate us ... ? I mean, c'mon, check out Exxon-Mobil's profits over the past two years - records for any corporations in our entire history. (Save for Walmart who rose to number one this year, but Exxon-Mobil was right behind them) Think there's some connections to be made here?

It's like what Don Piri Thomas said his dad told him when he was a boy; that before attempting to smell other peep's caca (bullshit) that he should first start with himself and realize that he had plenty of his own.

A Long Overdue Toast: Glen Ford & BAR

This is too long overdue, but brotha Glen Ford and his Black Agenda Report hold it down on the real.

If you don't know then don't ask somebody, just check it out.

Coming up in East Los, we were subject to the usual stigma of intellectual thought as anathema. You were either a thug, an athlete, a dopehead, whatever. But an intellectual? No way. Chris Rock talks about the anti-intellectual stance in the ghetto in his famous "books are Kryptonite to Niggas" riff.

I was lucky. Moms had a big library and I could pick and choose. Whenever I wanted to go to the bookstore, she'd drop every thing and we'd go, usually to the Alhambra Bookstore. Like me, she'd be content to just browse for hours.

My survival in the jungle is marked by what I can only conclude was a decent ability at athletics, I had a mouth on me, and wasn't a complete jerkoff.

This is what makes the four great stories of the American urban landscape - Piri Thomas' Down These Mean Streets, Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land, Malcolm's Autobiography..., and Luis Rodriguez's Always Running - so fascinating; each were street urchins, and each found the keys to their freedom when they discovered the wonders of intellectual thought through reading, and just as importantly if not more, writing. I still remember Malcolm saying, so poetically: "Never was I so free as in prison [while reading]." (To these I would also add Dr. Huey P. Newton, Jimmy Santiago Baca, David Hilliard, Elaine Brown, and much underrated and little known, Anne Moody, her story not strictly urban and in fact rural in the early stages. But what a story, what a great writer.)

Their stories are more than an escape from poverty, crime, etc. They are great stories of human triumph against tremendous odds, of spirits meeting their time. Transcendence.

And as such they are truly inspiring, in the best sense of that word.

My world has been tremendously influenced by them all, and I owe them a debt of gratitude.

Glen Ford (and BAR) are carrying the torch today, but in a different mode than autobiography. His gig is journalism, and this brotha is fiercely independent. This is the kind of journalism that is sorely needed, and how I long for an Asian-American counterpart.

BAR brings the fire, people. As the late great Tony Williams said back in the day; "Believe it."