Category Archives: racism

Wright requests Swartz documents

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…but doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

Related to the whole secrecy for us, nothing for you…apparently Barack Obama was wiretapped in 2004.

Well, it’s official, folks…the NSA is running this country, and we’re all guilty until proven innocent.

I don’t care if Obama was a candidate for the Senate, unless there was a warrant, what the NSA  did was illegal and against the Fourth Amendment.

From the column:

What did the NSA find out? All Obama’s phone calls and emails were scooped up – was there anything damaging? Such an action would be a great way to gain leverage over a politician and make sure they don’t cancel your program – Tice alleges it was also done to a wide variety of politicians and officials.

“I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on,” Tice said.

Knowledge is power, especially knowledge about embarrassing and/or illegal activities by politicians. No wonder Congress is scared to hold the NSA accountable.

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BINGO!!  Did I say this was Watergate on steroids?!! Yes I did. Over and over.  Well, now, Congress, your Patriot Act has now come around and bit you on the ass….ready to rein in the NSA yet?  Oh, wait….

…and now we have a new word: data plantation.  Good grief.

Rick Ross

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I edited the previous blog on the Webb story.  I can’t stop thinking about it–it is so compelling.  So…

I went looking for more of the story with Rick Ross. 

I wondered about his background.  I started with wiki, but there wasn’t much there.  Next I found the above site and it seems that it was the inability to read that sent him down the drug road.  It must have been devastating to him to have the talent of playing tennis well, especially in the time of doors being opened by Arthur Ashe,  (a side note~ how ironic that there is a picture of Ashe shaking Reagan’s hand, when Reagan’s ignoring the AIDS epidemic unfolding around him could be blamed for Ashe’s demise)  and not be able to see that through.  He is probably an undiagnosed dyslexic…possibly toxic (yeah, I know, some of you are groaning, but seriously…people are more affected by toxins than even they can recognize…and black folk who live in poor sections of town are more likely to be exposed to toxins dumped.  And don’t forget poor whites, too.)

This doesn’t mean that I excuse the behavior, because many who are dyslexic struggle but somehow compensate and overcome it.  ( I know that I had to read something two or three times while in school and college in order to understand and remember it.  )

–Rick Ross could have been affected while in school, and this in turn perhaps affected his ability to read and do well in school Just sayin’

It’s also important to note that without customers, Rick Ross had no busine$$.  It wasn’t just the poor blacks, as this article states, but the wealthy customers, too.  They’re just as guilty.

As I read the article on Ross, I began to think of all the devastation of cocaine.

David Crosby has said that cocaine was responsible for the end of the 60s.  Well, the love and peace and Light of it, anyway…

<sigh>

When a reporter touches a nerve…

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…and scoops a big newspaper…look out.       (**edited to clarify)

I can’t say that I remember the Gary Webb episode.  And you would think this would have been huge enough to be covered in my journalism classes or any of the communications classes I had at the university I attended.  Nope.  Perhaps it was too new at the time–and the facts were not well known.

The story is so compelling.  Not only for the bullying of Webb, but how crack cocaine was spread through the country.

Webb was vindicated by a 1998 CIA Inspector General report, which revealed that for more than a decade the agency had covered up a business relationship it had with Nicaraguan drug dealers like Blandón.

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If you click on the Dateline video on the fdl website, the reporter asks Rick Ross  if he had any responsibility in what happened (his pushing drugs among African Americans?)   And he answers that it was his responsibility for it.

The question arose about whether Webb thought the CIA wanted to get the African American community hooked on drugs….Yes, it is someone’s responsibility for taking drugs…if you don’t take it, then you can’t get addicted to it.  I don’t do drugs, but from what I have heard, cocaine is highly addictive—so…if the drug pushers know this (and I’m pretty sure if they were selling it in Nicaragua, they knew of its addictive qualities)—then they knew all they had to do is to get someone to take it once, and they had a customer for life…kind of like the tobacco industry trying to get people hooked on cigarettes.

…and why aren’t the “ruthless billionaires” in jail, too??

The  Webb story is a sad commentary on competitiveness, bullying, exposing criminal activity and doing what you think is the right thing…makes one wonder if we truly want to do good in this country?

I just wish Webb could have seen that what he did was important.  But to not get his ego wrapped around his career–that he had much to contribute in whatever path he took.  If he would have held on a couple more years, he would have been amazed at the internet, and perhaps his investigative skills would have been used for internet reporting.  (I’m also wondering why LAWeekly didn’t give him a job after the bullying episode left him unable to secure a position with other papers?)

Biracial Cheerios

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Apparently, the website comments section had to be disabled after this commercial appeared.  I really wish that everyone had to take biological anthropology–then they would know that the term “race” really doesn’t apply–we all emerged out of  Africa a long, long time ago…and there is no such thing as racial purity.

Perhaps the government  should sponsor genetic testing of the lineage of these haters to show them their family tree ain’t so pure, after all.

Heads would explode.

And, as a side note, the comment that General Mills is not racist–they’re happy to poison folks with GMO’s if they’re  white, black, red, or yellow is spot on.

 

Why Detroit Matters

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I’m bopping around the web this morning reading up on Detroit….I just can’t get the dumping of petroleum coke out of my mind.

Whatever happens to Detroit happens to all of us….

Here’s a piece up on a refinery fire…by Marathon…where the residents were not even told what was going on.  It is just unconscionable that these folks were not told what was going on and that some were evacuated but others across the street were not.

This piece spouts the pro-corporate view that anything that supports the environment is bad for business.  Tell me, what good is business if so many are sick or even dead because of toxic overload?  Who will be left to buy your product?

From the article:

The document claims city planners fail to take into consideration that Metro Detroit’s poor and minority neighborhoods are already deluged with excessive pollution and contaminated industrial, commercial, and hazardous waste sites.

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Claims of “environmental injustice” (and environmental racism) are little more than catch phrases used by green activists to draw attention to the purportedly disproportionate negative effects of pollution in poor and minority communities. The accusation is that federal, state, and local governments have conspired to permit more pollution in impoverished black communities than in affluent ones.

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He goes on to say that there are the same health problems in more affluent neighborhoods.  He thinks the problem is their lifestyle rather than the toxic environment.  I think that’s too simplistic as it doesn’t take in the whole picture.  It is known that mercury damages a person’s DNA.  So…if the parents of affluent African Americans were poor and lived in these more toxic areas, being exposed to lead and mercury and arsenic, their DNA will be affected and pass that on to their children.  It gets worse with each generation.  Also, toxins do not stay in a particular geographical area, although it will be more concentrated in that area, it will drift, and also cause health issues (on a lesser scale) to those in affluent neighborhoods.

As far as environmental racism…it is a well known occurrence.  Probably should be better categorized as environmental “poor-ism” because it’s done towards the poor.  I say this with the thought in mind that it does not follow blacks whom have moved into more affluent neighborhoods.  Perhaps one can say that it is because whites also share that neighborhood.  Well….I guess you could say that, BUT then whites also share the poor neighborhoods with blacks….which leads me to conclude that it is against the poor rather than exclusively against blacks.

The last line about the gov’t allowing the poor to bear the brunt of toxins ignores the above~~you don’t see the petroleum coke being dumped on the Koch’s front lawn, do you?  When that happens, you can tell me that gov’t officials have not discriminated against the poor.

I notice that the author was once a commissioner….so I am left to wonder whether he, in his official capacity, willfully went along with poisoning the poor and is now trying to justify it?

On to the financial woes of Detroit, I found some interesting articles.

This one details the bad news. Note that they’re going after unions.  HUGE RED FLAG that Disaster Capitalism and ALEC are in the midst.  (related to this is a strike by fast food workers to form unions.)

This article on Slate paints a different picture of the stuff going on behind the scenes.  Note the link to the NY Times’ article on Dan Gilbert trying to make a fortune rebuilding the city…

The article talks about the cityscape with abandoned houses, empty spaces after demolition of houses, and the population dwindling from 2 million down to 700,000.    When reading that Gilbert’s solution is to bring business in, to spur people walking the streets (shoppers)…and it strikes me that there is so much opportunity here….but it feels like trying to fix the problem with the same old, same old…

With all the demolished houses…what about the urban farmer?  I know that would be difficult if the ground were polluted, as Detroit seems to be the dumping ground, but if the soil were not toxic, why not encourage that? It would help those in the inner cities to feed themselves as well as sell produce to earn income.

Why not encourage planting of trees to help the air quality?  As I blogged before, we need to include nature into our plans and stop ignoring the impact we have on nature and the colossal impact nature has on us.

It also ignores the devastating impact that Big Box stores have had on our local economies.  Walmart moves in….independent small businesses die…and entire downtowns are destroyed…not only do the businesses die, but our feeling of connectedness dies with them…

 

With politicians like these….

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…who needs Bozo the Clown?

Did Walworth really ask if they were growing cultures that would become human beings?  OMG….these are the people deciding educational standards?  ::holds head from spinning::

Even more alarming (if anything could be more alarming) is this passage from Louisiana Voice:

Where others within the Department of Education (DOE) have alluded privately to data suppression and manipulation of school performance scores that artificially inflated graduation rates, Bassett, a band director who said he was “highly qualified” to teach math, publicly charged White, BESE and DOE of misrepresenting test scores and then covering up the lie by removing the data from the Louisiana Believes website. “This is data suppression,” Bassett said.

He said he was asked by his principal last October to look into his school’s score so that it could be improved in the future. “My subsequent research revealed deceit, distortion, manipulation of scores and data suppression,” he said.

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Further down, it goes into specifics about VAM and how the data was missing or manipulated.  Good God, these people have no conscience nor credibility…

Unfortunately, Louisiana is not alone.

Fox guarding hen house attacks hen

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…news at 11:00.  Seriously?? 

Cue the “outrage” that such action occurred….then quietly continue with status quo….

This is more than a military issue.  This is a culture issue.

Yeah, rape is hilarious. It’s just so freaking funny to listen to a woman scream “no, no, no” over and over again.  And hey, it’s great fun to force yourself on someone who is asleep and unable to fight you off.  /snark

Elizabeth Smart and why she didn’t run away--her self esteem was so low she felt like a “chewed up piece of gum”….because the way she was raised, if one lost their virginity, one was worthless.  The ever important hymen must be intact (Gah, can someone say Al-Queda?) in order for her to be worthy….it is so sad that she felt so awful about herself instead of putting the behavior onto her captor.  It should also be noted that when feminists began working to uplift women’s self esteem, the evangelicals put a stop to it (Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within).

And the lovely gun manufacturers’ target, “The Ex”. …they included a woman, dripped in blood, because they didn’t want to be sexist…?!  I’m surprised they didn’t also say that they wanted to include a black man because they didn’t want to appear racist….and he just *happened* to look like President Obama…just like the “devil” on the Mark Burnett / Roma Downey “Bible” series…these things just happen, dontcha know?

See my blog here on the Steubenville case and rape culture around the world.

 

Ripping the Band Aid Off

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Diane Ravitch has a blog up on the new standard, Common Core for the public schools in NYC.

From The Economist comments section:

the new testing regime encourages a wider opening of the class gulf by giving teachers an incentive to compete for students with strong skills, excellent home support, and private resources to purchase any necessary tutoring to get Junior up to snuff. Who will stand up for the child of a poor single parent who can’t afford Khan Academy tutoring, doesn’t know enough algebra to help, and doesn’t have time to walk her/his child through the mountains of test preparation homework dispensed in the months leading up to this?

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Word.  The poor kids with no one at home who can help them and no money for tutoring and coming to school hungry because single Mom can’t afford breakfast…depressing….

An incident popped into my head when reading the comments on the link she provides to The Economist (strange that a story on education would end up there, eh?)  Anyway, being 34, the college I wanted to attend had required I take entrance exams a second time (the first time was the SAT’s in h.s.).  Algebra and Trigonometry were part of the exam.  I didn’t take the college prep courses in high school because I didn’t think I’d ever get to go to college (even though I wanted to)….so you could have knocked me over with a feather when the admissions counselor told me that I passed the Math test and could opt out of the pre-Math courses.  I think I actually laughed that I passed them without taking classes….which goes to show that exams shouldn’t have as much weight as they do.  I mean, I got decent grades in Math (B’s)…but did not know the material before taking the class—it would have been a disaster for me to opt-out.  Maybe, just maybe, I had a few Algebra and Trig problems while in h.s., because, if I recall correctly, textbooks at that time had problems for the next grade level at the back of the book, in order to prepare the students for the next year.  This might explain at least some of it.

Additionally, when I was in college, the ADD was bad and even though I studied my butt off for several hours and knew my subject matter, I still only got B’s and sometimes C’s because of poor test taking.  My mind would be all over the place.  This is another reason that testing shouldn’t be given the weight that it does–I knew the material, but you wouldn’t know it by the test.

Also, the university I began at had a much better support system with excellent tutors available to help unravel the Math mysteries.  The university I went to after the initial classes–the one I graduated from–deliberately made Math very difficult.  I think this was to “weed out” the students…after all, most of the professions that pay well involve Math.  If you have a lot of folks who can do Math, well then, you don’t have exclusivity, do you?  Harder to justify higher salaries when there are more folks who can do those jobs.

Lastly, testing aside, parents DO need to take an active role in supplementing their child’s teacher’s efforts.  AND even question their teachers when appropriate.  I had to do this twice –once when my middle child was having difficulty learning to read.  Her 1st Grade teacher was frustrated and going to label her as “stupid”…I could see the handwriting on the wall. I went to the precious gift of the library and checked out books on teaching kids to read, since I didn’t know how to help her—she was getting stuck on the words “a” , “and” and “the”….I luckily (or guided 🙂 found a book on Dyslexia.  I discovered that she was dyslexic.  And I discovered that I was, too.   Dyslexics have a hard time with a, and, the—because they learn to read by visualizing a picture in their head–b-a-l-l is a round thing they can bounce….they can’t picture a, and,the—because they don’t represent any *one* thing.  I checked out a Phonics book and began sitting down with her every night and eventually she *got it*.  She graduated from the same university many years later 😉

The second time I had to question my child’s teachers was when they were going to “Whole Language” — a stupid program that didn’t teach Phonics.  I wouldn’t have it and protested it.  I got a bunch of flack for it, but I went ahead and checked out the Phonics book a second time to help my third child  to read, too.  Incidentally, I also protested a change in class organization, when they were going to make the 2nd graders switch classes….like they were in middle school…to have two different teachers during the day.  I protested that because I believe the younger kids need to have one teacher for consistency…little ones need that security.  I was sent a condescending note that “they were sorry that I wouldn’t be joining them…”  As if everyone else didn’t have a problem with it, so why did I?