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U.S. health plan not everyone’s cup of tea

admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:59:08 +0000

AMERICANS will get their national health insurance plan whether they like it or not. That was the prevailing opinion in Washington on the eve of Thanksgiving.

Whether this prediction holds water after the turkey has vanished from their tables should become clearer over the weekend. Republican activists and stirred-up independent opponents of Big Government have promised scores of tea parties to scare the daylight out of their senators and congressmen and -women back in their districts for the holiday.

That’s American politics up close and personal. Every gimmick is in play, including pieces of American history like the Dec. 16, 1773, Boston Tea Party. Ostensibly an act of resistance against taxation without representation, the American colonials boarded three British ships tied up in Boston and dumped their cargo of tea.

The tea parties awaiting President Barack Obama’s health care reform are not in the same historical league. But if they are widespread and intimidating enough, their political impact could derail Mr. Obama’s signet project — as well as his chances for a second term in the White House.

Health care is the heart of the “Yes, we can” change he pledged to bring to Washington and if he flops, he will be politically crippled — or worse.

I don’t think I am overstating the significance of the health care struggle. A rickety economy is already hurting Mr. Obama more than he lets on. He spent trillions of dollars on Wall Street bailouts and trillions more on economic stimulus that refuses to translate into American jobs.

Repeated setbacks abroad, as in Beijing last week when Chinese leaders lectured him on the foolishness of overspending, must be cutting him down to size in the eyes of foreign governments and publics. And Iran thumbing its nose at Mr. Obama’s threats of sanctions, unless Tehran abandons its quest for nuclear weapons, is rubbing salt into his wounds.

Put public opinion polls telling him that more Americans reject national health care than support it against this grim backdrop, and the depth of Mr. Obama’s troubles becomes obvious to friend and foe alike.

But, as I said, he will pull it out because he must. An American president’s power to grant or to withhold political favours is enormous and there should be no doubt he will use it.

Canadians know the up and the downside of national health insurance. They don’t have to worry about medical bills, but must wait their turn for anything short of dire emergency.

Most Americans don’t have to wait. They are well insured and get top services without delay. The less fortunate and the 20-odd million uninsured live in fear of financial ruin and depend on emergency room care.

The national health care legislation now wending its way through Congress is supposed to end this scandal.

Who could argue with such a sensible solution? On the face of it, only heartless curmudgeons, blind politicians and those who profit from the misery of others fit the frame.

The biggest problem is the enormous cost — and that scares the voters. Can the United States afford national health insurance? Mr. Obama and most Democrats in Congress say “yes.” Americans “cannot afford not to have it,” says Mr. Obama as he assures the country that his plan would save money over time and reduce the national deficit.

Experience with Medicare — benefits that Americans who paid social security taxes for 10 years get at age 65 — says something else. When President Lyndon Johnson sent his Medicare legislation to Congress in 1965, projections for the next 25 years said the plan would cost $12 billion by 1990 — $9 billion for hospital payments and $3 billion for doctors’ services. The actual 1990 tab was $110 billion.

These figures can be found in government accounts.

For all the political noise and numbers buzzing in Washington, the nut question is: How much? And I don’t have to spell out the spin from both sides.

Mr. Obama will buy the votes he must have to salvage his eroding power and offer a chance of re-election. The bidding has already started — at $300 million for a vote — when Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, withheld her support on make-or-break procedural votes until she got the money for her state.

Unless the tea parties fizzle and the Republicans turn out to be paper elephants, Americans will join Canada and the rest of the modern world where national health care is a given. It will cost them trillions of dollars more than Mr. Obama says it will, but who’s counting?rless processes and simplification is administrative savings and “green government.”

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Prospective 2008 Presidential Candidate: Mitt Romney

admin — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:39:46 +0000

Before being elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Mitt Romney headed up the Salt Lake City Olympic Organizing Committee earlier that same year. He had also made a run for the U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994 and lost. However, he did so much better against Kennedy that most of his previous challengers had done, that his loss actually helped boost his political career.

Since being elected governor, he has become one of the bright young stars of the Republican Party and surprisingly finished second in a recent straw poll of Republican insiders. Romney is a good speaker and an excellent campaigner. This could give him a big advantage over many of the other GOP hopefuls, which are perceived by many to be dull and boring. However, his Mormon faith could hurt him with religious fundamentalists in the GOP primaries. Many of them feel that Mormonism is a cult.

His father, the late George Romney, served as governor of Michigan and sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 but lost to Richard Nixon. His father’s remarks made during the nominating process about having been “brainwashed” about Viet Nam ultimately cost him the nomination. Should Mitt Romney decide to run, he will want to avoid that kind of blunder.
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Language and American Social Identity

admin — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 12:30:16 +0000

“Language shapes thoughts and emotions, determining one’s perception of reality.” Benjamin Whorf

From the day that the United States won its independence, intellectual Americans have attempted to define the new identity. When we speak about American social identity these elements and names come to the mind:

Religion

Language

Democracy

Pragmatism

Nationalism

Melting pot, apple pie, hollowing and…

I chose language which I think is very key factor in developing social identity in every culture.
Regarding the topic these kinds of questions come to the mind.

What is social identity? What is role of language in social identity development? So first of all we shall define identity and language.

“Identity is an umbrella term used throughout the social sciences to describe an individual’s comprehension of him or herself as a discrete, separate entity. The notion of social identity is defined as the way that individuals label themselves as members of particular groups (e.g., nation, social class, subculture, ethnicity, gender, etc.)”. Social identity is some thing like personality and individual identity.

“A language is a system of visual, auditory, or tactile symbols of communication and the rules used to manipulate them.” It is a means of communication between people. Language is not only a vehicle for the expression of thoughts, perceptions, feelings and emotions, and values features of a community; it also represents a basic expression of social identity. Language is an important element which influences cultural and intellectual aspects of human life. Not only language creates several communications among people but also it makes bilateral relation between different groups and societies. Events and realities are expressed by words and sentences. Politicians assert their abilities and their policies through language and words. Nowadays, since the role of media became very crucial we can learn about importance of language. So we can say individual’s ideology, religious concepts and literature are indebted to the language and actually all of them shape social identity of a nation.

In some countries like the United States as a result of verity of nations within geographical borders, there are many languages.” English is spoken by about 82% of the population as a native language. The variety of English spoken in the United States is known as American English; together with Canadian English it makes up the group of dialects known as North American English 96% of the population of the U.S. speaks English well.

The Spanish language is the second-most common language in the country, spoken by almost 30 million people.” Therefore these two languages had more effect on American social identity, English as language of Native Americans and Spanish as language of immigrants.

“English is a dominant international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy .The influence of the British Empire is the primary reason for the initial spread of the language far beyond the British Isles Since World War II, the growing economic and cultural influence of the United States has significantly accelerated the adoption of English.” English gives feeling of superiority and self confidence to Americans. If we look back to the past English has been the language of the most powerful empire which is British Empire and now English is the language of most powerful country which is United States. In deed power and English are inseparable. Regarding these matters American deserve themselves as a superpower and exceptional nation.

Spanish language is the second most common language after English. The Spanish language has been spoken in North America since the 16th century. “The United States’ Spanish-speaking population increased historically because of territorial expansion due to wars and land purchases. Modern factors continue to increase the Spanish-speaking population. The influx of large numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrants to the United States has elevated the number of Spanish-speakers throughout the country, making them majorities or large minorities in many districts.”

There are many other languages in the U.S. which belong to different cultures and these languages like some other factors are responsible for American salad bowl.

As it is mentioned above language is one of the most significant elements of social identity which gives a feeling of dependence or independence, superiority or inferiority and power or weakness. It even influences our personal identity as a part of social identity. It can specify your social level and your position. More over language conveys the whole story of a nation and keeps the identity of a nation.
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Perestroika and Democracy in Russia: Illusions and Reality (Part 2)

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:03:40 +0000

In intermediate and transitional phases in history the main task for major political groups is concentration and consolidation of power in order to create conditions for further assault on the society. Meanwhile the economic situation is being artificially aggravated and ideological basis for the major shift prepared. This period of preparations necessitates, among other things, the unsettlement of old beliefs and giving the public an outlet for their discontent – so appropriate leaders are specifically found, like M.Gorbachev, skilled in ‘oral politics’. Objectively, their task for the politicians standing behind them is to camouflage group interests as ostensibly public interests and distract attention from the process of power and property redistribution – by unrealistic projects, slogans and appeals, by erratic zigzagging in public policy. Having eventually compromized these ideas and steps, the new authority would receive ideological confusion and mass apathy, and gain power more easily.
Through all Gorbachev’s inadequacies and follies it is possible to discern the logic of newly-forming social predators: public functionaries, criminal structures, western big capital and morally flexible intelligentsia aspiring to become bourgeoisie.

Gorbachev’s Perestroika fulfilled the task of representing the interests of future bourgeoisie as public interests: following that tune, socialist ‘subjectness’ (meaning mutual responsibility, trust and interdependence of subjects) was eradicated, sacrificed to individualism, making profit mindless of others. (Post factum we have realized that ‘subjective’ approach was the guarantee of the Soviet people against pauperism, depopulation, predation – it guaranteed sheltered life. Now for 60-70 per cent life is close to survival, while a small percent has an opportunity to get easy profits, live abroad, ape it on TV.)

The pro-capitalist orientation of perestroika rhetoric in 1987-1988 blocked the truly democratic transformation of the Soviet society, in the interests of the community at large, turning critique current into the bed advantageous for the nascent criminal-bureaucratic paracapitalism (later oligarchic capitalism). It was important to begin to undermine the order, so that later the consequences of Perestroika could become irreversible.

The burgeoning capitalism wanted to make profit to its fullest potential, which demanded integration into the world capitalist system. That could be achieved by turning the country into capitalist states’ raw materials satellite. There were two tasks to perform on that way: 1) destruction of the USSR and the socialist system as the world capitalism geopolitical, ideological and economic competitor (space, defense, heavy industry) and divesting the world policy of the principle of balance, giving the illusion that only capitalist philosophy is truly progressive; 2) alienation of the major part of the population from the ‘public pie’ (including the benefits which were guaranteed and provided by the Soviet civilization in the 1950s-1980s). The latter part also suggested the destruction of the social strata of workers, peasants and intelligentsia (the ‘Soviet middle class’) and pushing them into poverty.

This double stroke was much facilitated by the ‘democratic’ irresponsible babble of Perestroika times, it popped to the surface the social scum and transformed it into the ruling class. Perestroika forged its executives – young wolves and jackals of privatization, managerial ‘geniuses’ and social engineers – whose real faculty was, and remains to be, not to create anything new (they are too selfish and mercenary), but grab, divide and obtusely guzzle away the heritage of the USSR – the country so much defiled by them.

DOING JUSTICE TO FALLEN CIVILIZATION

For most part the logic of critique of socialism is simple: those who support it are Stalinist, those who reject it are democratic. This dilemma is false: it is wrong to identify historical communism (socialism) entirely with Stalinism, i.e. its earlier stage. There were also historically higher stages of communism – transitional and mature phases, represented, respectively, by Khrushchov’s and Brezhnev’s periods.

As to the genetic and early stages of social orders, it should be remembered that all early societies are characterized by extremely cruel and bloody regimes – all of them were based on organized violence. The orders of slavery, feudalism, capitalism all began violently. Stalinism is in the line with them, corrected to the mass society epoch, when all processes take a mass character.

One of specific methods of menticide used in Perestroika and liberal mass media was that the mature Soviet society was permanently accused of the extremities of early communism. It is similar to the situation when the present Great Britain would be forever stigmatized as the ‘empire of evil’ for the blood and tears of Indians, Africans, or Tasmanian aborigines. Nobody thinks of doing it, yet. But the USSR was subjected to such defamation as a part of the psychohistoric war, which is continued up to date, with the accent shifted to Russia and the Russian nation.

It would be wrong to call for a choice within the primitive opposition ‘progressive capitalism – Stalinist communism’. The principle of systematic and historic analysis should be applied to social phenomena, when social systems are judged by the same criteria and compared by the same stages.

Socialism is estimated by many people as the heyday of Russian history. Historian, sociologist and philosopher Alexander Zinovyev maintains, that the economy of the USSR exceeded modern western economies in its organization and efficiency. Socialist economy based itself on centralized scientific planning and propagated this approach. More than 80 percent of the population were efficient (i.e. productive, useful for the society), less than 20 percent were not. (Now these figures are reversed: less than 20 percent are socially efficient, the rest are parasitic – for example, the number of young men working as security guards for private companies nearly exceeds the number of Russian army servicemen).

Though himself a victim of Stalin’s reprisals, Zinovyev says that he would never renounce his life in the Soviet Union as accursed past. ‘People felt really free and liberated, under socialism they became conscious of themselves as citizens, real Men – public boon was proclaimed the main criterion of progress’. The levels of education, culture and science were raised to their greatest heights. Russia displayed wonders of human mind and spiritual power. (Spirit is used here not in the religious sense, but in the sense of titanism, akin to the epoch of the Renaissance, and also in the sense of conscience and the capacity to feel the inner, sacred meaning of events, actions, relations). It was, perhaps, a single time in the Russian history when the powers of personality, collective and the state resonated and multiplied each other.

Scores of research institutions fruitfully worked for the good of the people; in 1954 the world’s first atomic power station was put into operation, followed by the first jetliner, the first nuclear ice-breaker; in 1957 the first artificial satellite was launched into space, in 1961 Yury Gagarin became the first man to fly into space. Russia was ahead of the world in putting into practice great discoveries of humanity – all those were the workings of that spirit.

Generation after generation grew proud of their country, enthusiastically studied and worked for it, making the most of their talents. The mature and technologically developed socialism was the present of the 1980s. It could have lived to these days…

Today’s reality is the order, where luxury and prosperity themselves seem inhumane – they are built on human degradation. Seeing the scenes of scavenging or begging pensioners, social orphans gradually becoming drug addicts and other ‘human scum’ of capitalist competition, most people slink into apathy, or adapt to ignoring them.

Revival of Russia has turned out to be problem of ‘higher sociology’. One important task to solve on this way is to develop new unifying ideology, overcome frustration and inspire confidence in one’s powers and the future. It is much more difficult than preparation of space flights. But there is a hope – space exploration was also once just a dream.

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The Souls of White Folk

admin — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 06:25:15 +0000

I attended my first Black History class in 1968 at the University of Maryland (UM). The class came about because black students demanded it in that tumultuous year. They were supported by a small but significant number of white students.

On the first day of class it was a shock to all of us to find out that a southern white professor was the teacher. Because of UM’s Jim Crow history, it has almost no black faculty at the time. But Professor Dan Carter turned out to be very knowledgeable and an relentless foe of Dixie apartheid. All of us learned a lot from that man.

But even though UM’s first Black Studies class was taught by a white man, the racists on campus still howled in protest. They argued loud and long that if “the blacks” (and they used another term that I won’t repeat here) had Black Studies, why not have White Studies? Of course, much of the class was taken up with the history of whiteness in America. Black people sure didn’t invent The Strange Career of Jim Crow described by historian C. Vann Woodward (one of the texts that Dr. Carter assigned to us).

Some of the black students on campus forcefully made the point that what passed for “history” at the University of Maryland was white history anyway, so white folks already had their “White Studies”. But that wasn’t right either. The history being taught at UM largely ignored how the whole concept of whiteness was created and nurtured and what part that played in American society. Sure the Great Men of History we studied there (…and yes, they were mostly men in 1968), usually had a melanin deficiency. But what role their actual whiteness played (if any) was generally ignored.

Dr. Carter’s class focused on the history of blackness, whiteness and their perplexing painful relationship. We learned that race was a social construct with a fairly recent history. I mean seriously, how many 10th century European or African peasants had a strong personal identification based on the melanin content of their epidermis? They would find our obsession with color more surreal than Alice in Wonderland.

So the irony was that it took a Black History class to introduce the study of whiteness to the UM campus. Go figure. It’s a crazy world.

But of course the racists on campus wouldn’t have been caught dead going into a Black History class to learn about whiteness even if it was taught by a white man. Well, as the old cliche goes, be careful what you wish for, you might get it. Now we do have White Studies.

Books like How the Irish Became White, The Wages of Whiteness, When Affirmative Action Was White, Sundown Towns and many others go into great detail about how that disparate and quarrelsome crowd of European immigrants, many of whom had endured terrible class and ethnic oppression, became white people and received the gift of white privilege.

Today’s White Studies proponents build on a tradition of research that came mostly from scholars of color: W.E.B. DuBois, Oliver Cox, Carter Woodson, Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon and many others. In order to survive, black people and other people of color have become shrewd observers of whiteness. Some of the more thoughtful articles that appeared during the recent Democratic primary are modern examples of this.

At the core of the White Studies movement is the recognition that America has a racial history so tragic that it would strain the abilities of a Shakespeare or a Sophocles to tell it. America invented the whole concept of people of color and white people and now whether we like it or not, that is our reality. Of course the problem with White Studies is that it tells us a story that many people don’t want to hear, even though white people who close their ears to it are the very ones who need to hear it the most.

In his book The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois talks about the “double-consciousness” that racism created among black people. On the one hand there is a racialized image of inferiority. On the other is the fact that black people are Americans, who are supposed to be a free people.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,-this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face– Chapter One of The Souls of Black Folk
Double-consciousness is a subtle concept that takes some real thought to grasp its implications. That’s why The Souls of Back Folk is is still taught in high schools and universities today. Double-consciousness affects both the individual person of color and people of color a whole. DuBois wrote The Souls of Black Folk in 1899, but it’s message has been taken up by other people of color as well. Times change and how double-consciousness plays out today today is still a subject of discussion and study.

The idea of double-consciousness applies to white people too, but in a different way. White people are subject to oppression, but they are also beneficiaries of racial privilege. An oft-used example of this is the story of Irish immigration to the USA. After centuries of brutal exploitation, mass murder and the horrors of the Great Famine, thousands of Irish boarded the “coffin ships” and headed to America in the 19th century. The Irish had suffered grievously from both class and national oppression.

Upon arrival, they became a despised minority as symbolized by the sign “No Irish Need Apply”. In America, the Irish met another despised minority, black people, many of them in slavery. The Irish brought with them a culture of resistance that was born out of their struggle with English imperialism. The Irish had a choice. Would they resist becoming white people and join in solidarity with another despised minority that also had a culture of resistance? Or would they fight to become white people as they became bitter enemies of their potential black allies?

Most European ethnic groups faced this choice upon arrival here. I call it The Deal. Here’s The Deal. If you accept America’s Caste System of Color, America will let you keep your flag, your music, your dances, your literature, your own parade every year and you’ll eventually gain economic and political power. But you’ll have to do your part in keeping America’s Caste System of Color intact, whatever the cost. You can join the Club of White People and with membership come its white privileges.

My Scottish ancestors came here with a culture of resistance and some with a strong class consciousness. Scotland after all had resisted English imperialism for centuries and when finally absorbed into the growing British Empire, became a focal point for the savage class warfare that accompanied the Industrial Revolution. Scotland’s national hero is the poet Robert Burns, who decried the poverty and oppression that stalked our planet in the late 18th century. There is a statue of Burns in my dad’s hometown in Vermont. He once gave me a battered copy of the Complete Works of Robert Burns.

But for the most part, the Scots of America, like other ethnic groups, took The Deal and ran with it. They traded an important part of their national heritage for the privilege of becoming white people. Today one can attend annual dinners toasting Robert Burns or go to a Scottish Highland Games Festival to see Scottish dances and Scottish athletic contests, but the racial history that accompanied the Scots in America is nowhere to be found.

One of my favorite comics is the long running strip about newspaperwoman Brenda Starr. When Ms. Starr is confronted with a moral dilemma, a little devilish Brenda sits on one of her shoulders while a little angelic Brenda sits on the other. They then proceed to argue with each another until Ms. Starr finally makes a decision.

Being a white person in America with our own peculiar double consciousness is a bit like that. We have two contending souls within us, one of collaboration with oppression and the other one of resistance to it.

For many years, I have been puzzled by the exceptions, the white people who rejected The Deal. Why did some white people become abolitionists, fight for Reconstruction, join multi-racial alliances in the labor and populist movements, risk their lives for civil rights or stand in solidarity with the Black Panther Party? Why did some vote for Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama for President?

But more importantly, when do the breakers of The Deal become the rule rather than the exception?

One of the goals of White Studies is to understand the complexity of The Deal and to try and answer that question. The answer is critical to the future of our nation. One of the main barriers to transforming our dysfunctional social and political system is what W.E.B. DuBois recognized so long ago, the Color Line.

Taking The Deal has left white people largely at the mercy of our wealthy elite. When times are flush, The Deal doesn’t look so bad to the white people who only care about their own short run “success”. But remember what everyone who lives year-round in Vegas knows. The Dealer always wins in the end. When the economy goes sour, white people are subject to exactly the kind of misery and exploitation that taking The Deal was supposed to prevent.

But white people always have a choice. They can say No to the The Deal and resist alongside of people of color. Or they can say Yes to The Deal and become the modern-day equivalent of the slave catchers, the lynch mobs, and their apologists, all the while hoping their white “betters” toss them a few crumbs off of their table.

It isn’t easy to break The Deal. One of the most insidious and least recognized effects of slavery is how it has affected white people. White privilege grew out of the horrors of slavery and has been clouding the judgment of white people ever since. To put it bluntly, it has been dumbing this nation down since its very beginning.

Even the most well meaning white people carry within them the debris of our twisted racial heritage, that unconscious arrogance that comes with privilege. You may be a dead-broke abused white person, but you still have that whiteness and that racial superiority to call your own. Nobody can take that away from you. Like the American dollar, it’s not worth as much as in the old days, but it’s still worth something.

It should surprise no one that people of color carry within them a long history of mistrust about the motives of white people, especially white people bringing gifts of friendship. That gift of friendship has too often turned out to be the modern day equivalent of the Trojan Horse. To survive as a person of color in America, it’s always been wise to be very cautious around white people until they have proven themselves.

Our present political impasse over the grave issues of war and peace, health care, education, crumbling infrastructure, crime, the environment and so on and so forth will remain an impasse until The Deal is broken once and for all.

It has always taken powerful social movements to move this nation forward. Where would Lincoln have been without the abolitionist and free soil movements? Where would Roosevelt have been without the labor movement and the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations)? Where would JFK and Lyndon Johnson have been without the civil rights movement and organizations like SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee)?

Yet these efforts have always fallen far short of what their best people hoped to accomplish. Post-Civil War Reconstruction with its vision of social justice for all was defeated by the adherents of white privilege. Decades of Jim Crow apartheid and savage terrorism were the result. The CIO’s efforts to mend the racial divisions in our working class foundered on the rocks of white privilege, leaving this nation without universal health insurance and other social benefits that most developed countries take for granted. The promise of the civil rights movement was met by a white privilege backlash that gave us the brutishness of the Nixon, Reagan and Bush years.

Many people now feel that we are on the verge of another great movement for social justice. Will this movement be able to transcend our racial tragedy and meet the complex challenges of the 21st century? Whatever one thinks of Barack Obama, that is really The Hope that he has come to symbolize. But as attractive and charismatic as he can be, he is still only one man. It’s going to take many millions of Americans to say No to The Deal and mean it, before that hope becomes any kind of reality.

Given America’s foul racial inheritance it’s easy for America’s internal enemies to tell white people that the cause of their growing problems is their neighbors who are people of color. And given America’s foul racial inheritance, there will be white people who will choose to believe that. For them, resistance looks too hard, too fraught with danger and even impossible to imagine. Better to be obedient servants and hope for better days ahead.

Therein lies madness. Just read the Diary of Ann Frank to refresh your memory. Nazi Germany was a place where virtually an entire people stuck to The Deal when economic times got tough. The result was a devastated continent. How does that look to you?

Oh, you think it can’t happen here?

Not far from where I took my first Black Studies class is a little stream called Antietam Creek. On a September day in 1862, 23,000 Americans were killed or wounded there in the single most bloody day in our history. Those 12 terrible hours in the rolling Maryland countryside were only a small moment in the most terrible and destructive war ever fought in the USA…and all because of The Deal.

It not only can happen here. It has happened here. Say No to the Deal.
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American Greek Antique Democracy Meets Asian Control

admin — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:07:14 +0000

The story of America is unique in the world. It began as a trickle of independent minded Puritans who determined to speak directly their God, keep their muskets and beholden to no king who would stand between them and God like an English pope. King James, while creating the wondrous new Bible, also determined he would harass out of the land these protesters who took the term Protestant too far for his liking. So many rebellions, so many deaths, English rebels were sent home but after turning in any musket strong enough to begin another rebellion again.

In no other English speaking countries but America did it become custom to carry a musket, other than country folk for protection from bears or natives. And so we come to now, after American protests once too much to the king, and were now free. Well, the white men. Who owned property. But, war by blood, all men, then among the first on earth, all women. America, the first democracy on earth, is an inspired example to others all over earth. In China during the 1989 rebellion it seemed amazing but wonderful that we all over earth could witness idealistic Chinese students dared display a Statue of Liberty in the center of the Forbidden City, and the world watched them die before tanks churning them into hamburger, as was said by students there then.

In contrast, America was created, ship by ship, town by town, by idealists from Europe, then gradually from all corners of earth, as a place a man could bring his family and start a new life. No serf master, no nobleman to bow and pay most of their crop to, and see no hope of advance for your children, or theirs yet unborn. Ironically it was the decades of small booklets written by an early American who really encouraged the deluge. Benjamin Franklin, an enterprising young lad in a printer’s shop in Boston, tired of the whippings and the sleeping behind the stove, fled to Philadelphia. Here he trained in a printers shop, studied all he could in this and other trades, read all he could, and still in his 20′s he began publishing Poor Richard’s Almanac, which was an instant hit.

People loved Franklin’s timely wisdoms, history factoids, and overall tone that favored a life of hard work, diligence, respect for others and obedience to general standards of decent behavior, proper grooming, the value of a penny saved. This seemed such good logic to many of the barons of estates throughout Europe, and soon Franklin’s witticisms and reminders of early to bed, early to rise were being translated into many languages and being generously handed out. Unfortunately for the barons their messages had the opposite effect: that of creating in the serfs a desire to move to this promised land filled with fair minded people like Poor Richard.

And the flood has rarely slowed down since, from those sickly few to the world’s mightiest nation of three hundred million people, and growing daily. But until further settlements such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, Savannah, and some English take overs such as Dutch settled Manhattan, named Niew Amsterdam, becoming New York: it was a doubtful matter. This initial settling of a handful of sickly English settlers around Boston and Jamestown to face a forested continent filled with lions and tigers and bears and resentful natives seemed ill fated; settlers kept dying of diseases, and infecting the natives. What to do?

Well, it seems, stir and mix; have Tom Jefferson send Lewis and Clark to the Pacific, and within decades families in conestoga wagons were creating a new mighty nation. While in this time ming made vases and Europe made war with itself, as always. Anything American is unique: Canada’s later wild west cowboys, many who were escaping American justice, were met and occasionally hanged by Canadian Red Coats. And Mexico’s amigos were not usually riding with the Texas Rangers, as any antique shop in any neighborhood makes clear. Just as Rome was Rome, America is America.
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Does America Have the Courage to Win?

admin — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:54:50 +0000

WEBSTER’S II dictionary defines courage as “The quality or state of mind or spirit enabling one to face danger or hardship with confidence and resolution: BRAVERY”. The synonyms for cowardliness or cowardly are COWARDLY, CHICKEN, CHICKEN-HEARTED, PUSILLANIMOUS, YELLOW, YELLOW-BELLIED, meaning: ignobly lacking in courage”.

Leadership requires that people have courage but, other than our military, few leaders are showing much courage. Politics in America has degraded to winning elections more than enacting policies that allow America to win. That includes both winning hot wars and winning competitive economic wars in global markets.

Cowardliness, by too many of our leaders, has destroyed our economy and has created Ponzi Schemes that will fall on our grandchildren. When our leadership is more concerned with maintaining positions of power and enhancing their economic well being over Americas future, they are cowardly.
Progressive politicians have been mostly responsible for the bankrupting of our nation; they have done that primarily by hiding the truth from citizens and creating victims who can easily be lured into Ponzi Schemes. Their motives are bigger government and government control.

I consider myself a conservative, but conservative politicians did not score much higher when they had the reigns of power. Maybe I should use the word Republican because not all Republicans are conservative, just like all Democrats are not ultra liberals, but too many politicians, of both parties, have re-election as number one on their agenda.

Cowards exist throughout all civilizations but only those who have leadership that demonstrates courage and commitment will win. Courage must start at the top and radiate down, if you have a platoon or squad leader that shows cowardice it will radiate throughout the whole unit and the enemy will win.

Our political system, Democracy, is intended to allow freedom for the citizens, its government by the people. Politicians have selfishly perverted our system to allow big money and special interests to set policy. Maybe I should look up the word selfish along with courage, but if people cannot understand selfish I am wasting my words.

Democracy requires that all citizens participate, and I do not mean every four years to vote for some politician who is pretty or speaks well. You better spend the four years learning who that politician is, and what he or she sands for. Education is the key to success, without it people have a 50/50 chance of success in picking a leader who will set policy for the next four years, or longer.

Educating oneself about policies that protect our freedoms, and protect Americas future for our grandchildren, should be every citizens top priority. In our early history when a big demand for manual labor created slavery, slaves were not allowed to be educated for fear they would understand they were slaves. In our modern America it is no different; some political policies allow too many citizens to be uneducated, policies that reward the teachers union for their votes. Other political programs, in an effort to gain more votes, educate many to think that money grows on the federal money tree.

It is well past time for our leadership to grow a pair and show some courage, but they never will until we show some first. It is easy for countries like Communist China to recognize and utilize policies that made the USA the greatest power on earth because they are not hampered by Democracy. Liberty and freedom, provided by our Democracy, allows freedom for people to be complacent and ignorant, but if freedom is to prevail it means that all citizens must insure that it does prevail.

If citizens do not value their constitutional freedoms and work to hold their leaders accountable, Democracy will degrade to what exists in America today, quasi-socialism bordering on fascism.

If we want America to win on all fronts, we need to first understand what is needed to win, and then show courage to force our leaders to do just that. After all, they supposedly work for us; China may be winning by utilizing our working model, but we have not lost the war yet.
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Democracy on a Silver Plate

admin — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 06:25:29 +0000

Democracy is like a good meal, a satisfying meal that makes you burp. If you feel happy with your meal it is most certainly that you want more of it. This good food makes you sit straight and get excited. A good meal is made of all the organic and quality raw ingredients. The taste of your food would be the most appetizing one, still this food should culturally be digestible.

It is not only preparing this meal, it is about serving it and it is about how people see this food being adequate to their cravings of that day. One of the major points of going to a restaurant is that you are being served properly. Having your food in a nice plate makes the food look tastier, a silver plate, well; it gives the food more of a cultural value.

In contrast to how food on a silver plate can increase the value of the moment, democracy can not be served on such a plate. The all-you-can-eat version of this meal, if it is called Democracy has to be cooked accordingly to each nation taste and aptitudes. A real buffet gives you the option of choosing your own favourite meal. You can eat all you want if you desire. Still, you enjoy that food when the look and the taste are more congruent to your culturally based values.
A real problem is that when we have aptitude for food, but we do not have the good components or we do not know the art of mixing ingredients together. Another challenge is that when we tell people to cook the same food as we did. With all the best cook books and the instructions for how-to-cook your-own-food, sometimes our recipe is not accordingly to the social context of the individuals.

We have to consider the right tools for our cooking instructions. What is significant is that a meal and the details around preparing that food, has to be established and rooted in a culture.

Democracy can neither be served on a silver plate, nor will it taste good when it is not an internalized, familiar, and known taste.

We can not burp on an unfamiliar taste because we are not really digesting that food. We digest a food and we enjoy it, when we have been part of providing for all aspects of preparation and completion of that food. We value things that we are part of creating it. This is our human nature, we are born to create our own food and destiny.

In every culture we use various spices and flavours. No one would enjoy a food that is not having the culturally appropriate texture, consistency, and nutritional properties. Once you are a good gardener and you raise your own vegetable, cooking your own food with your own ingredients is the most enjoyable activity.

In our new world and the new trend, we talk about healthy and nutritious food. It is perhaps healthy to first learn to create your own unique recipe that can result in a good food based on your reality and expectations. This is the only way we can have appetite for Democracy as food.

Poran Poregbal
July 29, 2008
Vancouver, B.C
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Mexican Flag – Dia De La Bandera

admin — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:17:42 +0000

The Flag of Mexico is rich with historic symbolism. The tricolors of green, white and red with the coat-of-arms centered in the white middle stripe were adopted by Mexico following their independence from Spain during the War of Independence in 1821.

There have been changes to the flag during history but the coat of arms has always featured a majestic eagle holding a serpent on top of a cactus. The current coat of arms was designed in 1968 by Helguera. Legend says that the Aztecs, then a nomadic tribe wandering throughout Mexico, were waiting for a sign from the gods telling them were to build their capital city. Their god, Huitzilopochtli told them to search until they found a place where they saw an eagle, devouring a serpent while perched on a prickly pear tree, growing out of a rock submerged in a lake. After wandering for two hundred years, they saw this mythical eagle on a small island in Lake Texcoco and built their capital, Tenochtitlan, where the main plaza in Mexico City is now located.

Over the years the three colors of green, white and red on the flag have remained the same but the meaning of the colors has changed. The green stripe represents Independence from Spain or can signify Hope. The white stripe represents purity of the Catholic faith or Unity. The red stripe represents Heroes blood or Religion.

When the flag of Mexico is paraded in front of a crowd, bystanders raise their right arm, place their hand on their chest parallel to the heart. The hand is flat with the palm facing the ground. This salute is known as the El Saludo Civil de la Bandera Nacional. On February 24 each year a national celebration, Dia de la Bandera, Flag Day is held. This commemorates this day in 1821, when all the factions fighting in the Mexican War of Independence joined together to form the Army of Three Guarantees.
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Nostradamus Predicted Obama’s Running Mate

admin — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:25:57 +0000

The Nostradamus websites are having a field day. Bloggers have discovered uncanny parallels between the lines of a quatrain and Barack Obama. They have interpreted the verses, rife with political symbolism, as being a remarkably accurate description of the Democratic contender.

Born of obscure and dark family,

Of white and black of the two intermixed.

The dark one biding his time,

Before the Empire changes.

“Born of [an] obscure… family” means that he did not come from a prominent or privileged blood line. Obama most definitely does not have a well-connected political lineage; his humble beginnings are well-documented in his biographies. The word “obscure” also has the additional connotation of “not clearly understood,” and questions have surfaced in certain quarters concerning his origins.

“Of white and black of the two intermixed.” Obama had a white mother and a black father.

“The dark one.” Despite his racial dichotomy, his appearance is darker, rather than lighter.

“Biding his time.” Nostradamus loved to insert puns into his writing. This particular one is taken to be a play on the name “Biden,” as in Senator Joseph Biden, Obama’s chosen running mate. Obviously, Nostradamus did not pen his quatrains in English, but his adherents point out that the familiar phrase can be translated in no other words, and has been done that way for centuries. They take it as further evidence that the same hand of Divine Providence that allowed his prophetic visions to reach across time provided this quatrain for our day and age.

“Before the Empire changes.” It is no state secret that George W. Bush is often referred to as the “Imperial President,” an allusion to his Napoleonic nation-building, as well as for co-opting the Constitution and acting as unitary executive. And of course, Obama is running on a platform of change.

Just exactly how the Empire will change remains to be seen.
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