Category Archives: African American

African Soul Fried Rice

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Michael Twitty has done it again with this blog on African Soul Fried Rice.  Sounds delicious.

I like the fermented aspect of the food.  I wondered if he means the bean from the locust tree…so I went looking and found this.

It’s considered medicinal, too….gotta wonder how much wisdom has been lost about our ancient remedies.  Thanks, modern medicine, for a bang up job of ignoring past wisdom. /snarky, for sure.

The locust beans are seen as a nuisance here…as is the dandelion.  We’ll discover, when it’s too late, that the things we thought were nuisances were healing plants to cure cancer, diabetes, etc.

Michael Twitty also has a blog up on some badass rice growers.  Yes, badass rice growers.  I *love* that they are bucking the system, the status quo of  Big Ag and getting the cold shoulder for it.  They are raising rice crops in unconventional ways that thwart the Ag profiteers who want to sell chemicals and bioengineered rice.  Heh.

On top of that, the way that they are raising it lowers the arsenic level in rice–very important to lower our exposure to heavy metals.

From the Washington Post article:

Thomet has unwittingly aligned himself with a small group of experimental U.S. farmers and hobbyists, probably no more than 50, who are breaking with a tradition that dates to colonial America. They’re rejecting paddy rice in favor of an increasingly accepted agricultural system that promises to increase crop yields while decreasing water use, chemical dependency and even the amount of arsenic in our grains.

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See, it bothers the status quo when you don’t play along with the technology-is-king mentality.  Using one’s brain is not allowed. :p

 

Reign of Error; Kochs, et al, planning assault on Ed.

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Patrick Walsh has a report up on Reign of Error, by Diane Ravitch.

Oh, and have you heard?  It’s open season on teachers.  The climate that No Child Left a Mind and Race to the Bottom have created—to punish students for not being perfect students and their teachers, who are under tremendous pressures to not have any stupid kids (said facetiously)–has now come to fruition.  I’m sure Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michelle Rhee, et al, are laughing themselves silly.

Jan Ressenger put up a link to this report from the Guardian on just how far the Kochs and their comrades are willing to go….not only to destroy public education, but continue attacks on working folks and unions…

SPN’s president, Tracie Sharp, told the Guardian that “as a pro-freedom network of thinktanks, we focus on issues like workplace freedom, education reform, and individual choice in healthcare: backbone issues of a free people and a free society.”

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I wonder if she could get the word “free” in there any more…was she wrapped in a flag, too??  Because that would *definitely* mean that this program was patriotic and would strengthen democracy…

...by destroying it…

“it’s for your own good” has to be the biggest lie ever told!

Side note~ someone in the comments section linked to the Yes Men video. Enjoy. (Be sure to click on Part 2–with Surviva-balls.  Hilarious.)

Someone also kindly posted a link to a list of Kraft foods.  Again…where are the antitrust laws?  Why is one food manufacturer able to control so much of the market share?  Not that junk food, which is the majority of crap that Kraft makes, is something healthy..what if folks were able to afford healthy made-from-scratch food…?  We could do some serious damage to Kraft’s bottom line if we refused to buy their junk food and bought only fresh….and we’d be healthier, too.

Center for Media and Democracy has the scoop on SPN.  (As a side note~ I haven’t been getting regular emails of the CMD for a few months now–it’s been spotty at best…interesting.  I’ll have to make a note to keep checking their website for updates.)

True to nature, they hide their lobbying disguised to avoid paying taxes.  Good Grief, these people know how to play the game of getting someone else to pay while they reap the benefits.

The mention of the Goldwater Institute raises huge red flags–Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl.  An excellent blog here on her history…er, her trying to re-write her history…and Bill’s.

The Clintons LOVE poor black people on welfare

• The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) that was dreamt up by past Republican administrations, was actually passed by Congress and signed by Clinton. This act was filled with vindictive measures aimed at the poor. Among other things, it set a five-year lifetime limit for cash assistance and gave the states power to adopt stringent restrictions in several other areas. Another key part of the Act, was the imposition for the first time of lifetime limits on welfare. Once a welfare mother uses up this lifetime limit, set at five years by the federal government, she and her children can never again receive federal cash benefits, no matter how desperate their condition and no matter what happens to the overall economy.
Bill Clinton has certainly laid his Mack game down heavy in the black community. Maybe that’s why the African-American community has been so thoroughly duped by lip service, prominent public appearances and appointments, and an office on Harlem’s 125th (although Clinton certainly hasn’t used it much).

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Ahem.   There are white people on food stamps, as well.  The Clintons, along with the Kochs, et al, don’t like POOR people.  Period.

We can’t talk about Bill Clinton’s love for his “black race” without mentioning Rwanda. You remember what happened in Rwanda? If you don’t, then I suggest you rent the movie “Hotel Rwanda” and be prepared to be thoroughly disgusted. Bill Clinton not only refused to intervene to save over one million people from being hacked to death, but he even declined to convene his Cabinet to discuss the crisis.

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I highly recommend Hotel Rwanda.  Just don’t watch it and Schindler’s List on the same weekend.  I actually had to call my son after watching them both one weekend….I needed to talk to a sane human being…

And let’s not forget this piece on the secretive group Hillary Clinton belongs to.  As I’ve said on many occasions…it never ceases to amaze me how people who call themselves Christian act nothing like Christ.  Who would Jesus bomb, Hillary?

I’ve read this piece before, but this sentence just packed a punch:

It emerged, he [Reverend Don Jones] says, as a third way, a reaction against both separatist fundamentalism and the New Deal’s labor-based liberalism.

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…a reaction against….the New Deal’s labor-based liberalism.  In other words:   unions….working folks….public education…social security…medicaid…..livable wages…(and the environment, too, but that would come later).

…and if you listen carefully to conservative media, you’ll hear subtle and outwardly snide attacks on Roosevelt’s New Deal.  Get it, now?

And this:

Niebuhr and Tillich’s combination of aggressiveness in foreign affairs and limited domestic ambition naturally led Clinton toward the gop. She was a Goldwater Girl who, under the tutelage of her high school history teacher Paul Carlson (whom Jones describes as “to the right of the John Birchers”), attended biweekly anticommunist meetings and later served as president of Wellesley’s Young Republicans chapter.

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…she attended biweekly anticommunist meetings.  Wellesley…if the movie “Mona Lisa Smile” is any indication, is a conservative’s utopia…so Young Republicans chapter there?  Pretty hard to swallow that this was a fluke -a flash in the pan….especially when one turns a critical eye to Hillary’s record.  I mean, if they call themselves Democrats, but act as Republicans…

“Mind conservative but a heart liberal” tells me that she is like so many guys who say they’re “socially liberal, but fiscally conservative”.  What this means is:  I’m selfish and self-absorbed.  And I don’t follow my heart.  I let my purse strings do the thinking for me.   In other words, I choose money over God.  (Jesus said that we could only serve one Master–money or God.  Not both.)

Okay, there is more to write, but I’m really tired from the day and need to call it quits.

 

The War against Teachers

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Reclaim Reform has this somber post up on the worldwide attack on the teachers, the teacher’s unions, and free speech, as well. The last video (world wide) really got to me–treating these folks like animals!  Take note that World Bank demanded the austerity measures….

JFK

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This post may be too graphic for some–fair warning:

DN featured Oliver Stone speaking on John F. Kennedy’s murder. (Stone is also doing a piece on Martin Luther King, Jr.)

In addition. REELZ is running a documentary on it, too.  They put forth the theory that it was actually an FBI agent George Hickey that fatally shot Kennedy.  He supposedly stood up in the car with the safety off and the car lurched, causing him to lose his balance.  I believe they said 12-15 witnesses had seen an agent with a rifle in a car behind the president.  Stone, however, places the fatal shot coming from the front of President Kennedy’s car.  Stone served in Vietnam and bases that on what he witnessed in the war–a shot came from the front, which is why Kennedy’s head bounces back from the force of it.  Stone brings up the inability of the FBI and others to replicate the bullets.  CBS also did a piece on it and also could not replicate three rapid fire shots from that type of weapon.

Stone also brings up another important point:  Kennedy had fired Allen Dulles.  I was unaware of that–and then he was the head of the Warren Commission??  Good Grief no wonder the investigation was so warped.  Hmmm…

The REELZ documentary makes the point that the WWII rifle used by Oswald was a full metal jacket– a bullet that would make a clean pass through a person’s body.  However, the bullet that killed the president was a different bullet that exploded upon impact–it is designed to cause as much damage as possible.  They noted several fragments in Kennedy’s brain.

The interference by the Secret Service, CIA, as well as other agencies is a red flag.  The physician who was to perform the autopsy in Dallas insisted that the body stay there until it was performed, but the Secret Service would not allow it.  The physician protested that this was state law– in order to protect the chain of control (I think that’s the right term).  They basically told him they were in charge and he best get out of the way.   So they took the body and when the autopsy was performed in D.C., they were contaminating the area with wall-to-wall agents and interfering with the physical evidence and the autopsy itself.  Red flags all over the place.

Stone brought up some great points when asked if Kennedy was a warmonger–he was instead an advocate of Peace.   He didn’t feel the need to bomb the hell out of another country to prove himself being “tough on war” or that the U.S. was superior in weaponry.   He makes the case that Kennedy, had he lived, would have stopped the Cold War.  While Stone is speaking about that, I think of the much ballyhooed Reagan by the conservatives and how Reagan stopped the Cold war.  Pfft.  The Soviet Union was impoverished and could not continue the arms race.    Reagan was a war hawk.  He wasn’t into Peace.  He thought of anyone seeking peace as a Commie Hippie.  I can only wonder at the number of people whom have been turned away from seeking peace just so they wouldn’t be called a Commie.  I know that I wouldn’t want to be labeled a Communist (or terrorist).  (Same with environmentalists –those that would support it but don’t publicly because of fear of being labeled troublemakers?)  People don’t realize that those names are thrown out to do exactly that–make something out to be the opposite of what it is so that people will find it distasteful.   When Martin Luther King, Jr. started speaking out against the Vietnam War, and advocating for the poor, he, too, was labeled a Communist.

(Side note–It’s tough to see the footage of Walter Cronkite announces President Kennedy’s death.  Still brings tears.)

The question that needs to be asked is:  who stood to gain from it??  Follow the money…and those deadset against Kennedy’s seeking peace instead of war…

Here is an account by Carl Oglesby in the book “From Camelot to Kent State” — a good book on the personal history accounts of the 60s:

I was ten years older than the SDS kids.  I was running the technical publications dept. at Bendix Aerospace Systems Division of the Bendix Corporation in Ann Arbor:  per defense work, rockets and missiles and electronic subsystems, some moon stuff, some supersecret Vietnam stuff.

[…]

The reaction to the Kennedy assassination really blasted me loose.  I was at work, of  course, like most everybody else.  It was Friday, a half hour or forty-five minutes or so after the guy was announced dead, I wondered down to the personnel office to talk to my pal, the personnel manager, Tony, and I said, “Tony, we should take the flag down.”

He didn’t want to do it.  He said, “Well, when we get word.  When we’re told by corporate headquarters to put the flag at half-staff.”    And we got into a big argument in the hallway about that, about whether or not we needed to hear from corporate headquarters about putting the flag down.  Did the flag belong to corporate headquarters?  Was that what that was about?  That Bendix owned the flag?  Did it own the country?  Big fight.

Then I went up to Mahogany row, a couple of floors up, to check out with some guys I knew up there, who I thought would be more reasonable, and in this one office they had the Scotch out.  The ripple of excitement, the thrill that ran through the Bendix Systems Division when the word came of Kennedy’s death, and with it the implicit word that now we got Johnson.  It was like—I don’t know how to describe it.  It was almost a physical tremor.

Before, there was gloom, because for one thing Kennedy had canceled out a big contract we had.  We were building something called the Eagle missile that was supposed to go on a certain airplane.  Well, the airplane didn’t exist, and it wasn’t going to exist, either.    So Kennedy logically figured out why build the missile?  But this didn’t seem reasonable to “corporate headquarters.”  which was real pissed at having lost the Eagle missile system.  Well, that was the mood people were in.

The next minute Kennedy gets popped.  A minute after that, the Scotch is out, because the contracts are coming back.  And they did!  By God, they did.  I couldn’t shrug that off.

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Diane Ravitch on Melissa Harris-Perry

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Diane Ravitch was on Melissa Harris-Perry, and had a wonderful discussion on public education.   I wish they could have had more time to go in-depth about it, but I’ll take it.  You’ll have to click on each link separately, because NBC has chosen to not run them in sequence.

 

New faces of soul food

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Michael Twitty has a link up to a piece on soul food.  I like how he characterizes it as not necessarily West African, but a food of an enslaved people.

I recently made collard greens with chicken fat to flavor it….and I couldn’t believe the difference in taste.  It took the bitterness out and added something sweet to it.  I also put in chopped garlic cloves.  Yum.

 

 

Broad and Clinton

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I posted these links in a comment on Diane Ravitch’s blog yesterday, but they are still awaiting moderation….so I thought I’d post them here:

Bill Clinton’s Big Ideas for education.  Note the mention of Eli Broad in the audience.

From the article:

One of his big ideas for U.S. education: “We have to move toward somewhat local operational control but a national commitment to a longer school year, better trained and better paid teachers, to principals and superintendents who can actually be held accountable for results

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What the hell does that mean?  Oh, I forgot for a second that he’s a politician speaking doublespeak….let’s try to deconstruct, shall we?

“local operational control for a national commitment”  =  we have to be sure we have toadies willing to foist this crap onto the kids even when it’s evident that it is detrimental to them, by holding onto tax dollars paid by the public and not releasing them until these schools follow our mandates.

“better trained” = teachers that are pressured into teaching to the test so that their kids will pass (and not feel like idiots) so their school won’t “fail” and be closed…..to reopen with for charter profiteers.

“better paid” = bwahahahahahahaha

“principals and superintendents who can be held accountable”  = what does “held accountable” mean, anyway?  By what standards?  Who decides? Gates? Broad? Clinton? Rhee?

Bill Gates and Clinton Global Initiative.

Note the Big Brother aspect of videotaping teachers….always done with a positive twist–to “improve” the teachers’ performance.  Um-hmmm….to monitor the teachers to ensure that they teach only the rigid No Child Left a Mind.

And the final sentence says it all:

It is startling, however, to hear Gates state so bluntly the power of teachers.

He is concerned that they may be able to thwart his plans. And Gates isn’t someone who is used to being thwarted.

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Joanne Barkan’s excellent piece that I’ve posted before but bears repeating.

More news from Diane:  Eli Broad secretly funded anti-public school, and anti-union initiatives.    I see that Broad has the politician doublespeak down:  he publicly states he is for something, but then he funds efforts against that very thing.  Yep–keep people off balance and questioning, that’s the key.  Note that Gov. Brown felt compelled to be “nice” to Michelle Rhee to keep in good favor with Eli Broad to get the tax increase passed.  That’s how they work it, folks….kiss the toad and he just might turn into a prince….

This is also more proof that these folks are not paying enough in taxes if they have this kind of money to throw around….and why Citizens United needs to be overturned.

Someone posted this quote:

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Absolutely, Dr. King.  Absolutely. And the ability to think critically with creativity with character is not going to be had with a for-profit school run by hedge fund managers who see kids as machines to be built with little regard for humanity, democracy, and potential.

Food, Food, Food

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Apparently, there is a square knish shortage due to a factory fire in New York.  I had no idea what a knish was until this piece, so thanks for enlightening this writer.  It sounds yummy.

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In other food blogs is Michael Twitty’s piece on the life of a slave.  A great glimpse into history we don’t usually read about.  It’s well written–puts the reader into the daily struggle for them.  I was thinking when he wrote about catching the fish, that the fish must have tasted so good being caught in non-polluted waters.  And even though the work was hard,  it must have been nice to work outside in the sunshine….don’t misunderstand me–I know it was very hard, but I personally really enjoyed working on a farm.  I even liked it when the rain came down.    I would be weeding the old fashioned way of pulling them, and a grasshopper might leap onto a leaf nearby…..or a butterfly come floating past….birds singing….

 

 

The Economic War of Israel

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Edward Teller has one of the best posts up I’ve seen on the situation in Israel. There are ways of waging war that don’t require planes dropping bombs…

Max Blumenthal explains in the 2nd video  how control of food is tantamount to control of people.   A poignant point he makes was the destruction of the herds of Buffalo to starve out the Native Americans.  They were forced to adopt the grain-based diet including fry bread, which we now know is very unhealthy, especially if one is gluten intolerant.  As Blumenthal highlights, the Native Americans now have issues with diabetes.  I would go a step further and say this also may be linked to alcoholism….as I believe there is a link with diet and alcoholism.

Henry Kissinger’s words flashed in my mind as Blumenthal spoke of the Israelis destroying chickens, and other livestock so that the Palestinians could not provide for themselves.   More quotes of Henry Kissinger.

I skipped over the first video to see his take on the market.   When I viewed it, I was stunned, to say the least.  American rightwing talking points about President Obama not being a U.S. citizen, of being a Muslim, and calling him a n***er, etc.  Wow.  Just wow.   And the gal who said she was “politically aware” but didn’t know who Benjamin Netanyahu was? For real?