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Dr. Phil, Black Girl Thinks She Is White (Videos)

The Title of this video is, “Dr. Phil, Black Girl Thinks She Is White”

When I first saw this video of Treasure Richardson, I knew from the start it had to be a set up, a hoax, a scam or some such thing as that.  In the ensuing days after the airing of this segment, with a little ground work and exposure by Treasure’s Sister, Nina, it has come to light, that it is simply a scam for ratings and notoriety, perpetrated by a young woman and her mother who come from a very painful home life experience.  While that is no excuse, it does help to fan the flame of the outrageousness of their behavior that subsequently landed them on the Dr. Phil Show.

From my experience with African Americans who identified as “white” it would only take a moment or two before the “black-ish” would come out.  The illusion of race is really to perpetrate the fraud of the difference in color, when in fact it is the difference in ethnicity, culture, social orientation, lifestyle, etc. along with genetics that cause people of a certain ethnicity to manifest physically in  a certain general form causing a general grouping of individuals.

To my thinking, White Supremacy is just as toxic as Black Supremacy.  The two paradigms are pitched against one another to keep the separation active, but from a high station above the clouds, looking down on this planet, you see people, different people, but people nonetheless.

To me it shows how Creative the All Encompassing Divine Force can be in expressing itself through our physical reality.  A garden filled with one type of flower holds a certain beauty but a garden of many flowers has a certain exquisite beauty that leans towards being quite breathtaking.

In this video, I will be citing a commentary on this Dr. Phil segment, submitted to me, from an email buddy, named Chaz White.  With all the commentary on this segment, I have found  Mr. White’s commentary to be the most profound so with his permission I will share it here.

On Monday, October 29, 2018, Mr. White wrote:

 “Such as a man thinketh… Such as he is.”

Blind Ridiculous Conformity ensures success in the “out-sane asylum” controlled by con artists. In wrestling,and you control the head of your opponent to direct the body of your opponent.

This show, like many others could be well scripted performance art. The programming is directed by mischief makers, i.e. authors of confusion, to condition mentalities for continued slavery of the populace.

We should first ask: What is the purpose of this story? Why is she being featured and promoted?? How does it serve system lords?

Confusion that confuses to more confusion is understandable in western cultures based upon confusion, while making that confusion seem like normal behavior.

She is only telling the same lie as so called “white people” tell.

If others can tell the same lie, why should not she?

Pay attention to Dr. Phil’s comments and assertions. They are misguidedly misinformed and shows his ignorance based on the inconsistencies in his description of race being biologically definable.

He is after all DR. PHIL. Which means that his thoughts and research should be responsibly connected to the information he dispenses to the public such that it educates, rather than sensationalize the mind.

The so called, “well educated,” therapist was not any better. Neither she nor Dr. Phil chose to address Race, Racism, or Whiteness, with the fact based approach which she so eloquently referred.

It’s all a sham, scam, and ham, G-d Damn!

The system encourages scientific ignorance and moral stupidity, then preys upon it.

Snow is white. The albumen of a cooked egg is white. Clouds are white.

Humans are not White

The concept of whiteness is the source of racism. Every other definition of race is based on this flawed make-believe of “whiteness.”

The invention of “whiteness” is rooted in pretension and presumption of the mentally/emotionally unstable mind. It is “Royalism,” that is beyond reproach, inquiry or inspection. It’s great to be the a royal or associate one’s validity with royals.

Royalty does what it wants to do, without question  It is always the victor with the spoils. It is the way of spoiled, overindulged children. They get their way at the expense of others deemed by them as inferiors, no matter what.

The designation of so called “white people” is even scientifically inconsistent with the definition of white itself. If white is the mixture of all colors (i.e. wavelengths of light),  then that would mean that so called “white folks” are the most colored folks of all folks.

The inconsistency is heard when someone uses the oxy-morron that describes a person as a so called “black albino!”

Incidentally, the largest contingent of Albinos is in East Africa.

The attachment to “Whiteness” used to define any Humans,  as superior, is a pathological dis-ease designed to soothe mental and emotional instability, while cloaking inadequacies and validating oppression upon any arbitrarily group designated as “not so called white”.

The quality of the content of ones character has nothing to do with physical attributes of Humans. It has more to do with behavior and beliefs upon which that behavior is based.

All Humans without exception are related. That is to say they are family. A dysfunctional family, but they are family nonetheless.  The con artist profit from the dysfunction and keeping the Human dysfunctional. Read Stephen J. Gould’s, “The Misrepresentation of Man,” to understand the history of the propaganda against scientific facts.

Here is an experiment for you: Ask a “so called white person” to prove without a doubt that he/she is white.

Their explanations will be no better than this young lady on Dr. Phil. You will see it is a matter of Blind Ridiculous Conformity or simply put “make believe.”

It is time to “raid the game,” by going to the falsehoods of the matter and challenging the facts to arrive at the truth.

This concludes, Mr. White commentary on the Dr. Phil Show, featuring a “Black Girl who thinks She Is White.”

Thanks for listening, thanks for watching, peace and blessing to you, your family and loved ones.

LINKS OF INTEREST

Dr Phil accused of ‘exploitation’ after black teen tells show ‘I’m white’

https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/dr-phil-accused-of-exploitation-after-black-teen-tells-show-im-white/news-story/bcce7b68fbb8b99b4f15ba002b71dcf3

Black Teenager Tells Dr. Phil She Hates Black People, Claims She is White

https://www.wbls.com/news/news-0/black-teenager-tells-dr-phil-she-hates-black-people-claims-she-white

 

This video: https://youtu.be/BbIeOUQPA4Y

Music: Together [Eternal Glance] 1822

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Category:

African American, African American culture, African Americans, African family, African-American woman, agenda, Alternative News, corporate media, mainstream media, media manipulation, media psyops, Primetime TV, race, racism, systemic racism, Uncategorized

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Did Africans sell fellow Africans into Slavery? (Videos)

Are you tired of Racist and/or uninformed people using the line, “Well you all sold your own people into Slavery”? I thought you would be. But NOW you have a weapon… Whenever that comes up, Post this video as a response. Another Truth and Edutainment Production.

Category:

Black History, indentured servants, Middle Passage, race, racism, research, Transatlantic Slave Trade, Truth and Edutainment Production, white supremacy

DR FRANCES CRESS WELSING PREDICTED DONALD TRUMP’S VICTORY!!! (videos)

DR FRANCES CRESS WELSING PREDICTED DONALD TRUMP’S VICTORY!!!
Third generation physician and author of the Isis Papers, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing passed away in January 2016. Weeks before her transition she told her Cress Welsing Institute students that Donald J. Trump would be the next president of the United States. Her clairvoyance was a a product of her scientific brilliance and her unparalleled understanding of Racism/White Supremacy. It is a colossal loss not having her with us to dissect the results and take a bow for extra-ordinary forecast.
Third generation physician and author of the Isis Papers, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing passed away in January 2016. Weeks before her transition she told her Cress Welsing Institute students that Donald J. Trump would be the next president of the United States. Her clairvoyance was a a product of her scientific brilliance and her unparalleled understanding of Racism/White Supremacy. It is a colossal loss not having her with us to dissect the results and take a bow for extra-ordinary forecast.
Frances Cress Welsing (born March 18, 1935) earned a B.S. degree at Antioch College and in 1962 received a M.D. at Howard University. In the 1960s, Welsing moved to Washington, D.C. and worked at many hospitals, especially children’s hospitals. In her writing, Welsing discusses that white people are the result of a genetic mutation of albinism and are the outcast offspring of the original peoples of Africa. (Wikipedia)
Peace to a Warrior Scholar – Dr. Frances Cress Welsing
Posted by ALI JAMAL on JANUARY 5, 2016
Heavy hearts and open minds.

Open to a renewed sense of struggle, only brought forth by greater understanding…
Our dear sister, Frances Cress Welsing brought an energy only understood by the god within.  Her delivery was poignant, undeniable, critical, thought-provoking, painful, instructional, enlightening, and most importantly, empowering.
When the sister of 80 strong said peace to the nation, she left her imprint for truth, dialogue, and mass movement.

Let us a take a moment to remember our ancestor, honor her physical life as Frances Cress Welsing, read her words, watch her speak, and feel the greatness that she fought so valiantly to bring out of each and every one of us.
…rest from this realm, my sister, and bring forth the love and guidance you will forever posses.  We, your close and distant descendants and kin, say thank you. Your work was not in vain.

Category:

African American, Educator, Frances Cress Welsing, Philosopher, Psychiatrist, racism, Visionary, white supremacy

The Real Reason White People Say ‘All Lives Matter’

NB Commentary: Great article! Well written! Points well taken.

The Real Reason White People Say ‘All Lives Matter’
 07/25/2016 05:57 pm ET 
Editor-at-Large at HumanisticPaganism.com and editor of Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans
Why “Black” Makes Us Uncomfortable
Dear fellow white people, let’s have an honest talk about why we say “All Lives Matter.” First of all, notice that no one was saying “All Lives Matter” before people started saying “Black Lives Matter.” So “All Lives Matter” is a response to “Black Lives Matter.” Apparently, something about the statement “Black Lives Matter” makes us uncomfortable. Why is that?
Now some white people might say that singling out Black people’s lives as mattering somehow means that white lives don’t matter. Of course, that’s silly. If you went to a Breast Cancer Awareness event, you wouldn’t think that they were saying that other types of cancer don’t matter. And you’d be shocked if someone showed up with a sign saying “Colon Cancer Matters” or chanting “All Cancer Patients Matter.” So clearly, something else is prompting people to say “All Lives Matter” in response to “Black Lives Matter.”
Many of the people saying “All Lives Matter” also are fond of saying “Blue Lives Matter.” If you find that the statement “Black Lives Matter” bothers you, but not “Blue Lives Matter,” then the operative word is “Black”. That should tell us something. There’s something deeply discomfiting about the word “Black.” I think it’s because it reminds us of our whiteness and challenges our notion that race doesn’t matter.
The Problem With “Colorblindness”
If you’re like me, growing up, the word “Black” was always spoken of in whispers in your family. It was like we were saying something taboo. Why was that? Because itwas taboo. We might feel more comfortable saying “African-American,” but not “Black.” The reason is that we were raised to believe that “colorblindness” was the ideal for whites. We were taught that we shouldn’t “see color.” And saying the word “Black” was an acknowledgment of the fact that we did “see color.”
The problem with being “colorblind” — aside from the fact that we’re not really — is that it is really a white privilege to be able to ignore race. White people like me have the luxury of not paying attention to race — white or black. The reason is because whiteness is treated as the default in our society. Whiteness is not a problem for white people, because it blends into the cultural background.
Black people, on the other hand, don’t have the luxury of being “colorblind.” They live in a culture which constantly reminds them of their Black-ness, which tells them in a million large and small ways that they are not as important as white people, that their lives actually do not matter as much as white lives. Which is why saying “Black Lives Matter” is so important.
“Black Lives [Do Not] Matter”
“All Lives Matter” is a problem because it refocuses the issue away from systemic racism and Black lives. It distracts and diminishes the message that Black lives matter or that they should matter more than they do. “All Lives Matter” is really code for “White Lives Matter,” because when white people think about “all lives,” we automatically think about “all white lives.”
We need to say “Black Lives Matter,” because we’re not living it. No one is questioning whether white lives matter or whether police lives matter. But the question of whether Black lives really matter is an open question in this country. Our institutions act like Black lives do not matter. The police act like Black lives do not matter when they shoot unarmed Black people with their arms in the air and whenBlacks are shot at two and a half times the rate of whites, even when whites are armed. The judicial system acts like Black lives don’t matter when Blacks are given more severe sentences than whites who commit the same crimes and are turned into chattel in a for-profit prison-industrial complex.
And white people act like Black lives do not matter when we fail to raise the appropriate level of outrage at unjustified killings of Blacks or when we respond with platitudes like “All Lives Matter.”
But we still say it. We say it because “All Lives Matter” lets us get back to feeling comfortable. “Black Lives Matter” makes us uncomfortable. Why? Because it reminds us that race exists. It reminds us that our experience as white people is very different from the experience of Black people in this country. It reminds us that racism is alive and well in the United States of America.
The New Face of Racism
Now, I just said the “R” word, so you’re probably feeling defensive at this point. You’re instinctively thinking to yourself that you are not a racist. You may be thinking that you have Black friends or that you don’t use the N-word or that you would never consciously discriminate against a Black person. But most racism today is more subtle than that. Sure, there is a lot of overt racism that still goes on. The KKK is still active and some white people do still say the N-word. But overt racism is really culturally unacceptable any more among whites today. The racism that we need to face today is much more insidious than white hoods and racial slurs. It is the racism of well-meaning people who are not consciously or intentionally racist.   
The racism that we need to face is the racism of average white middle-class Americans who would never think of saying the N-word and would vociferously condemn the KKK, but nevertheless unwittingly participate in institutionalized racism. We most often participate in racism by omission, rather than commission. We participate in racism when we fail to see it where it exists. We participate in racism when we continue to act like race is a problem that only Black people have. We participate in racism when we seek comfortable responses like “All Lives Matter.”
What We Can Do: Embrace the Discomfort
We white people need to embrace our discomfort. Here are some things we can do:
1. Recognize that we are not “colorblind.”
We can start by recognizing that we all have an “implicit bias” toward Blacks. Think you don’t have it? Consider how we mentally congratulate ourselves when we treat the random Black person the same way we treat white people. Here’s a tip, if you give yourself brownie points for treating Black people like you do white people, you’re not really treating Black people like white people.
Still don’t think you have unconscious bias, go to the Harvard implicit bias testing website and take the tests on race and skin-tone. Even white anti-racism activists like me have these biases. And they come out in all kinds of subtle ways, as well as not so subtle ways.
2. Work against unconscious bias by spending time with Black people in Black spaces.
Next, go out of your way to spend time with Black people in Black community settings. Many of us live segregated lives in which we have little to no interaction with Black people. Let’s face it, Black people make us white people uncomfortable. It’s because we’ve been socialized by a racist system to fear Black people.
Even if you feel comfortable around individual Black people, you most likely do not feel comfortable in a room full of Black people. You might have Black friends, but you probably socialize with them in white spaces. Have you ever been to a Black space and felt uncomfortable? Maybe you felt like no one wanted you there. Welcome to the everyday experience of Black people in white culture.
And when you go to a Black space, go to listen rather than lead. Learn to follow. Leading is a white privilege. Let go of it for a while and learn from those whose experience you will never have. Listen to Black people, and if what they are saying or how they are saying it makes you uncomfortable, so much the better.
3. Talk to white people about institutional racism and say “Black Lives Matter.”
It’s no good sitting around feeling guilty about white privilege. We need to do something about it. One thing we can do is to use our white privilege to dismantle it.
One white privilege we have is that other white people listen to us. We can go into white spaces and talk to white people about implicit bias and institutional racism. We can unapologetically proclaim that “Black Lives Matter.”
After the Orlando shooting, I went to an interfaith vigil in my small conservative town. Almost no one among the speakers said the words “queer,” “gay,” or “lesbian.” This was probably unconscious, but it revealed a lingering, but deep seated discomfort among heterosexuals with gayness and queerness, a discomfort that the popular use of the acronym “LGBT” obscures. Similarly, we whites are uncomfortable with Black-ness. We don’t even like like to say the word. It feels wrong in our mouths. We hide it by using code words like “inner city” or “urban,” terms which allow us to hide from our unconscious racism. We need to say “Black Lives Matter” because we need to overcome our discomfort with Blacks and face up to our unconscious bias.
Join the Second Civil Rights Movement
Dear fellow white people, we are in the middle of a second Civil Rights Movement. Most of us white people idealize Martin Luther King, Jr. and we like to think that we would have been on his side of things during the Civil Rights era. But the fact is thatthe majority of the American public did not support the Civil Rights movement while it was happening and only came to see King as a hero after he was killed.

The Civil Rights movement was unpopular among most whites when it was happening. It was unpopular because it made white people deeply uncomfortable. Today, the Black Lives Matter movement makes us uncomfortable, too. In forty years we will look back on this second Civil Rights movement and have to ask ourselves whether we were on the right side of history. If we want to be on the right side of history this time, we have to make ourselves uncomfortable. There is no comfortable way to change. And the change can start with saying this simple but powerful phrase: Black Lives Matter.


Category:

All Lives Matter, bias, Black lives Matter, blacks, civil rights, criminal justice system, Human rights, police brutality, prison industrial complex, racism, systemic racism, white

Happy 4th Of July: Here Are 10 Ways America Is Number 1 — That Are No Reason For Celebration

NB Commentary: American Exceptionalism is a hodgepodge of deluded definitions of what it means to be exceptional. In reality, there is no real value in this exceptionalism except that it is highly overrated and seriously undermines any reality that one might wish their brain to travel through.
The Media hype about how great America is, which probably should be stated the USA, is the burning flame of this delusion. It tends to give folks the idea of being better than the rest of the world and that in and of itself gives them the right to impose their “betterness” on the less fortunate creatures who don’t have a clue about how to run their lives without the help/ better known as intervention from the USA.
This bandage over the eyes of the citizens of the USA has them sullied in the eyes of those who meet the brunt of the swift hard kick that comes from American Boots on the ground. How great is great and what does it mean? I could add a few more to this list of ways that America ain’t so great, but suffice it to say, that without mentioning the pervasive inequality between the haves and the have-nots, the USA does a serious disservice to its credibility when trumping around telling others to run their governments and live their lives as Americans do.
Unfortunately, there are enough other folks out there, who risk their life and limb to come here, as they too, have swallowed the hype that America is better than any other “free” country in the world. They soon find out that that is not the case, quite the contrary. They see that they too will be stepping over the homeless, subjected to bigotry, inequality, low wages and disruption in family life as they attempt to assimilate and get their Lion share of the American pie.
This dichotomy can only create a nation filled of delusional, paranoid, socio-pathic, psychopaths swimming a a pool of cognitive dissonance. So Yeah, What does the 4th of July mean? Ask Fredrick Douglas.

http://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2016/7/4/what_to_the_slave_is_4th


Happy 4th Of July: Here Are 10 Ways America Is Number 1 — That Are No Reason For Celebration
JULY 4, 2016
As Americans don their red white and blue sequence bar-b-que aprons and raise their flags, ironically made in China, in an effort to “celebrate their freedom,” we should be asking ourselves this 4th of July, what freedoms do Americans really have?
We are under constant surveillance, our every move under a microscope by government goons, “protecting us” from “terrorists.”
We are under the constant threat of violence from the State for possessing a plant, or having a tail light out, or simply walking down the street.
Americans are constantly paranoid of those blue and red lights popping up in the rearview mirror that most always end in extortion and could very well end with a visit to the hospital, being locked in a cage, or worse.
In the Land of the Free, police killed more people in just one month of this year than the United Kingdom has in the entire 20th century.
In the Land of the Free, police kill at more than 70 times the rate of other first world nations.
In the Land of the Free, we are told to “fear the terrorists” but US police kill 58 times more people than all terrorist activity against US civilians since 9-11!
State-sanctioned deprivation of rights, liberty, and life, is that what we call “Freedom” these days? The exact opposite of what the founders meant when they signed the Declaration of Independence.
Sadly, when people do begin to question this paradigm of violence against the citizens and the usurping of freedom, blame is quickly associated and directed toward whichever corporate puppet is in charge, then they just go back to sleep — resolute in the notion that they can vote those bastards out and it will all be fixed.
Boobus Americanus then slips back into la la land, cheering on the police state as if they are fans on a football stadium sideline. “My team is winning! USA! USA! USA!”
But your team is not winning, Boobus!
Just for a moment, can we stop chanting that “USA is number one”?
Can we remove the patriotic blinders for a moment and take a look at the categories in which we are actually number one?
Because it’s certainly not freedom.
According to the 2014 Legatum Prosperity Index released in November, in the measure of personal freedom, the United States has fallen from 9th place in 2010 to 21st worldwide—behind such countries as Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Uruguay and Costa Rica.
Other such rankings systems show the US as low as 46. Yet somehow, Americans still believe their leaders when they say that terrorists “hate our freedom,” as if the ‘terrorists’ took down the first 45 freest countries and are just now getting to us!
No, we are most assuredly not number one in freedom.
But, we are however number 1 in,
Prison Population:
The job of law enforcement in America today is enforcing every arbitrary edict in the land to maximize profits for just a few private prison companies who are paid with stolen money (taxes). Because order followers don’t question any of their orders, it has lead to 65 million Americans (about 22% of the population) having criminal records. 
This vicious cycle has become a phenomenon known only as recidivism.

Obesity:
Of all the major industrialized nations, America is the most obese. Mexico is #2.

Child abuse death rate:
The United States has the highest child abuse death rate in the world. Many of these deaths happen in State-approved foster homes after children are ripped from their parents’ arms because their parent took part in some arbitrary victimless crime, like smoking marijuana.

Hours spent in front of the television:
Nobody watches more television per week (28 hours) than Americans do. Americans are far better at keeping up with the Kardashians than they are about putting an end to government corruption.

Teen Pregnancy Rate:
The US leads the world, by a wide margin in teen pregnancies. This is in spite of public schools offering vaginal implants for birth control to 11-year-old girls without their parents’ permission.

Prescription Drug Use:
Americans are not even close to being in the top 10 healthiest countries in the world, despite consuming far more prescription drugs than the rest of the world.

Citizens Killed by Police:
In Canada, the total number of citizens killed by law enforcement officers in the year 2015, was 23; 52 times less than the U.S.
If we look at the United Kingdom, police killed 3 people in 2015, one person in 2014, and 0 in 2013. English police reportedly fired guns a total of three times in all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities.
From 2010 through 2015, there were eight fatal police shootings in England, which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent the size of England’s, is approaching 40 fatal police shootings in that same time period.
China, whose population is 4 and 1/2 times the size of the United States, recorded 4 killings by law enforcement officers in 2015. Police in America killed 302 times more people than China!

Debt:
The United States has accumulated the biggest mountain of government debt in the history of the world.
As for the citizens, there is more credit card debt in America than anywhere else in the world. There is more mortgage debt in America than anywhere else in the world. And, there is more student loan debt in America than anywhere else in the world.

Crime:
According to nationmaster.com, the United States has the most total reported crimes in the world, by a long shot.

Arbitrary, immoral and downright evil laws:
How ironic is it that the Land of the Free has the most laws on the entire planet?
Attorney Harvey Silverglate argues that the average American commits three felonies a daywithout even knowing it. Although it has been estimated that there are over 3000 types of federal criminal offenses, no one knows the exact number for sure.
At any given time, a police officer could walk up to you and find you in violation of some arbitrary law. It is a mathematical certainty.
So, next time your chest begins to fill with patriotic puff, stop for a second and realize that Americans are number one, but in such a bad way.
In the meantime, however, we still have the freedom in this country to inform ourselves and others. Only through a lesser ignorance will these horrid tyrannical traits subside.

Humanity is involved in a struggle, as we have always been, but there are much more of us now. Inciting peaceful change has never been more important. However, so many well-meaning individuals go about inciting this change with blunt force. This has to change.
If you truly want to make the world a more peaceful place, you have to become a more peaceful person. Petty infighting, personal attacks, vitriol, and hate are the tools of tyrants and also of those who only claim to be awake.
Peace is true professionalism.
Next time you’re cringing in a public setting, listening to Joe Six Pack spout off NFL stats like an ESPN commentator, wait for an opportune time and plant a seed.
Hey Joe, speaking of the Kansas City Chiefs, what do you think of wide receiver, Dwayne Bowe and his arrest for having weed? Do you think its cool that he was deprived of his freedom for having a plant? How can we legitimately call this country the land of the free when that can happen to someone?
Be the change that you want to see in this world.
Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. He is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. .

Category:

4th of July, child abuse, death, debt, drugs, Frederick Douglas, governments, holidays, obesity, police brutality, prison, racism, USA

The Agenda, Homosexuality, Genocide or Population Control

NB Commentary: Nana’s Rants Blog are my feelings and thoughts around certain subjects. In some of them I will post  videos and links to support and/or to counter my positions. These Rants are my reactions to certain topics as it relates to current events, etc.
In this one, I wish to tackle the “Homosexual Agenda” as is being purported by many who feel that there is a Depopulation Agenda using Homosexuality at its helm. To me there are so many other more serious indicators that suggest that there is an agenda to depopulate the so-called over populated planet but to point a finger at the Homosexual Lifestyle as the key generator of this idea is spurious to me. It suggests that there is little or no understanding of the individual homosexual as well as little to no understanding of the homosexual life style.
People tend to focus on the “sex” act between a male and a female as the only way to pro-create yet they are limited in their knowledge of the various nuances that even this type of sex has as to whether or not a child will come from this union. They seem to be oblivious to the many failed attempts or no attempts at all to have children and would rather point a finger at the same sex relationship as the primary culprit for the decrease or possible depopulation of the entire human species. The other variables that effect fertility in the human population are ignored or glossed over, and particularly when those who are the standard barers of this tripe, themselves have only one, two or no children themselves. I suggest that those who fear depopulation should have more and more children to augment the advance of the annihilation of mankind on this planet. That way they can make up for the perceived loss of people to populate this planet through same sex relationships, that in their minds, bare no children.     



These ART data are a rich source of information that can give potential ART users an idea of their average chances of success per ART cycle or ART transfer.  Average chances, however, do not necessarily apply to a particular individual or couple.

ART success rates vary in the context of patient and treatment characteristics, such as age, infertility diagnosis, number of embryos transferred, type of ART procedure, use of techniques such as ICSI, and history of previous births, miscarriages, and ART cycles.  People considering ART should consult a physician to discuss their treatment options.  http://www.cdc.gov/art/artdata/index.htm

I agree that there is certainly an agenda to depopulate the world, but populations among Europeans and/or developing countries,  have been on a steady decline since the 1970’s and not due to folks being homosexual. With the advent of the feminist movement, women have been hoisted out of the home and into the mainstream job market. These women who are upwardly mobile, tend to delay having children to late in life, or none at all. Those who do have children are subjected to the rat race of dragging their children from home to school to day care, each and every day of their lives if they chose to have a career. This burden in and of itself has been arrested by many families by having fewer to no children at all. There are many economic factors to consider when having children that seem exacerbated in the Industrial world. This also becomes another deterrent for people to have children. The argument that Homosexuals are causing depopulation is a bit misplaced and somewhat unfair, as if they should carry their weight to keep the world population going, and not consider the same deterrents that those who are heterosexual face each and every day. On the other hand, many homosexuals are doing their part and having children and even adopting children that heterosexual couples, families and individuals admit to adoption agencies.

In the period from the 1950s to the 1980s, concerns about global population growth and its effects on poverty, environmental degradation and political stability led to efforts to reduce human population growth rates. While population planning can involve measures that improve people’s lives by giving them greater control of their reproduction, a few programs, most notably the Chinese government’s “one-child policy“, have resorted to coercive measures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_planning

Homosexuality has been around as long as there has been humans. Decrease in populations among Europeans is due to the propaganda that the best size for a family is 2.25 children. Not that you can have a fraction of a child but I’m just saying. Thus the advance of prophylactics and various other birth control formulas to keep the population under control. As a result, Industrialized Western/European nations are having a minus birth rate while the other so-called underdeveloped countries continue to grow. Nations that are not Western, and in particular Cultures that see their children as their posterity continue to have children and sometimes, it has been slated, at an alarming rate, yet these cultures have homosexuals in them.
China is a great example of overpopulation to the point where they had to, under pressure, make laws preventing couples from having more than one child.
In war torn countries, they continue to have children to replenish their population and impoverished countries do the same. The depopulation agenda in these countries IS NOT HOMOSEXUALITY  but has a different face, and is implemented through war, vaccines laced with birth control, disease, pestilence and corrupt governments. Infant mortality is high in these countries and yet, I am sure there are homosexuals there as well.

The following excerpt was taken from an outline of a Government Project: The Wildlands Project.

…Humanity must drastically scale down its industrial activities on Earth, change its consumption lifestyles, stabilize and then reduce the size of the human population by humane means, and protect and restore wild ecosystems and the remaining wildlife on the planet.”The Wildlands ProjectThe Tartars had the idea of infecting the enemy by catapulting bodies infected with bubonic plague over the walls of the city of Kaffa. Some historians believe that this event was the cause of the epidemic of plague that swept across medieval Europe killing 25 million. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_depopu20.htm

Over population propaganda resulted in more and more people in the middle and upper classes choosing to have fewer and fewer children, or maybe opting out of bearing children at all. This fact cannot be blamed on the homosexual agenda. Homosexuals bear and raise children. I don’t have the statistics, but I think that folks who do not know the homosexual community make a very erroneous statement when they equate population control with homosexuality or a homosexual agenda. It may be against your religion but honestly, unless a homosexual has a sex change,,, and even that’s stretching it, being homosexual does not stop you from the DESIRE to bear or have children.  Many choose to have children either through conception with the opposite sex, fertility clinics, turkey basters, surrogate mothers, adoptions and caring for foster children. I have experienced homosexuals do all of the above.
The other thing that is missed is that sometimes folks don’t even come out as gay or homosexual or even trans-gendered until they have taken the heterosexual way of life, settled down in marriages and had children and then realize they are gay. Even after this realization with all the hatred and bigotry going around against gays they may stay in the heterosexual lifestyle until they simply cannot lie to themselves anymore. This may be after several marriages, relationships and/or children. It galls me to use Caitlyn Jenner as an example but for the sake of argument, I must.

In no way can a Homosexual Agenda make anyone who is not inclined towards homosexuality, become homosexual.  In fact this Agenda, may make people more accepting of those who are different in the way they express their capacity to love.
For those who argue that our children are being subjected to this lifestyle at a very young age, I would suggest that our children are being subjected to being sexualized and commercialized at a very young age. To me that is more exploitive than showing them people who are gay.
All too often the homosexual has had to live in a dark closet of fear and trepidation. They have been ostracized from mainstream society and have had to live a lie for a large portion of their lives in some cases. The resulting suicides, drug use, nefarious behaviors, criminal activities etc. are all smoke screens for the deeper issues around fear of and actual rejection of the human being. Homosexuals have been raped, killed, tortured, fired, ostracized, humiliated, damned and relegated to hell fire. Who in their right mind would want to be homosexual in such an unwelcoming society? It is an act of bravery on anyone’s

Aisha & Danielle

part who is gay or trans-gendered to speak their truth in such a hostile environment. Knowing how difficult it is for someone who is same sex oriented to speak out, imagine how much more difficult it must be for someone who is heterosexual to openly choose that lifestyle knowing what they have said, done or co-signed when it comes to gay bashing. My point is, how can seeing more gays on TV and in the media make anyone want to be gay when they know in the “real world” the bigotry exists and has persisted even in their own behaviors towards the homosexual community.

For the first time Essence.com, the online companion to the preeminent black women’s periodical Essence magazine, will feature a lesbian couple in its “Bridal Bliss” section. Aisha and Danielle Moodie-Mills will be the first lesbian couple to have their love story and wedding photos featured on the site.  http://www.glaad.org/2010/10/13/essence-com-profiles-first-wedding-featuring-a-lesbian-couple

Homosexuality has been rampant in Hollywood, the Catholic Church, the Christian Church, the Entertainment industry, and even politics but was underground. Here is where people and many of them children, were being molested and taken advantage of. It was well known in the circles about who was “gay” and what they were doing. Most folks looked the other way, as they were protected societies. But how did the “Homosexual Agenda” foster depopulation in these communities? Especially in the Catholic communities where it was outwardly viewed with disdain as an abomination, and parishioners were extolled against using birth control.

For many of the couples Allen consults, having a family means going up against the traditional ideals of the conservative black church, Georgia’s anti-LGBT laws, and a cultural bias that criminalizes non-heteronormative behavior. But the idea of what constitutes a “normal” family — and who has the right to define that — is increasingly up for challenge in this country. Even in the red state of Georgia.

Preston, however, is proof that the human desire for family, to nurture a child and provide a loving household, does not discriminate based on sexual orientation.“We want babies like you want babies,” Allen says. “Your life is no different from mine. I just don’t have a husband; I have a wife.”  http://clatl.com/atlanta/meet-the-babymaker/Content?oid=10641602

I do understand the aim of social engineering. However, I believe that what is happening with the presence and open exhibition of the gay lifestyle is exploitive more so than condoning. When I look at what is presented in the Media, I DO NOT  see true stories of the average LGBT lifestyle. I see exploitation, distortion, make-believe and fantasy. Maybe that, like so many others, is done for the views, but it certainly is not reality.

Back in the 70’s there was a slew of what we coined as Black-Exploitation films in the media. They did not depict the average black person here in America. I sincerely doubt if they even help folks to appreciate Blacks, quite the contrary. So, in essence these media demonstrations don’t help folks to get to know the LGBT community but portray a false narrative of what it is like.

Family Pride Network’s mission is to connect and support LGBT families and prospective parents through social events, educational programs, and professional resources.  http://www.familypridenetwork.org/

If you want to site instances of experiments and the infiltration into the water systems and food, a hormone that would turn men gay, then I would ask, how does that work when women are drinking and eating the same water and foods? Do the women become more female???

When People work from their fear center, they do not use their common sense, and that is why this hype about a homosexual agenda sounds frivolous to me. The actual facts show that people cannot be turned gay when they are heterosexual.  With all the angst against homosexuals, especially male homosexuals, I find it striking that folks would fear them and or feel threatened by them, when they are one of the most denigrated factions of society. I do agree that there is a Homosexual Agenda, and that agenda, like every other agenda, is exploitation divide and conquer and follows the platform of most religious and political parties. Folks have to have or find something to fight over or against.
If you or anyone you know has had any children over the past several decades, I would say that having them whether you are gay or not is a tremendous challenge as well as a burden in a world where their mind body and soul are being attacked on all sides. Western cultures are not child-friendly so to me, anyone who has a child in this day and age is bringing that child into a hostile non-sustainable environment. And at the rate the Western world is going.. it is not leaving much behind for its children except death, destruction and debt.

Nevertheless, human beings are given to the urge to mate and pro-create.  That is a universal urge, whether you are straight or gay. It falls like dust on all of us. Some of us will go ahead and have children, some of us will not, but to say there is a “Homosexual Agenda” cloaking a depopulation agenda, is queer as a three dollar bill in my estimation. When I look around at the environment we live in, industrialization, corporations, capitalism, big Pharma, Military Industrial Complex, GMO’s, pollution, Geo-Engineering, Deforestation, Racism, poverty, vaccines, militarized epidemics, mind control, Fast Foods, Shadow/Corrupt governments, Big Agri, etc., etc., etc., all or in part will have a much bigger impact on population than a few homosexuals who do not have any children.
FINAL NOTE: For those of you who feel that someone may become gay from watching gay people on TV, in the movies and in the media, I am here to set your mind at ease. Homosexuality is not a virus. You can not catch it from walking with, talking to, sitting beside, breathing the same air or riding on the same bus with someone who is gay. It is not airborne, nor is it a deadly pathogen. It cannot be weaponized, nor vaccinated against. It can not be distributed worldwide in aerosols sprayed from military aircraft. And while they may experiment with putting the gay gene into frogs, the fear that you may “turn” gay and grow a penis or vagina should be quelled immediately, since you ain’t no frog.  It is not sold on the Black Market or dark street corners. It’s not disguised as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny (although there may be a homosexual individual wearing these costumes). Additionally, it cannot be washed out, stamped out, eradicated or stripped from your DNA. If your fear is that they will be damned to hell, then be thankful that you won’t be on the same side of hell with them.
If anyone fears catching gay-itis, I suggest you look deep into your heart and into your dreams to find what secrets you harbor there.
To Those who accept your sexuality without hesitation, I applaud you, because there are those who are deathly afraid of you and they are armed with ignorance and may be extremely dangerous, so pick your battle and be sure to pick your friends and associates wisely.
LINKS:
http://www.cdc.gov/art/artdata/index.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_planning
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_depopu20.htm
http://www.etonline.com/news/160510_sara_gilbert_welcomes_first_child_with_linda_perry
http://www.glaad.org/2010/10/13/essence-com-profiles-first-wedding-featuring-a-lesbian-couple
http://clatl.com/atlanta/meet-the-babymaker/Content?oid=10641602
http://www.familypridenetwork.org/
MenWeb – Men’s Issues: Gays: Guardians of the Gate Interview with …
http://www.menweb.org/somegay.htm
Malidoma Somé recognizes that he learned more through his initiation as a … also touches on what has become known here as the “gay” or “homosexual” issue.
https://themadmanchronicles.com/2014/01/31/homosexuality-began-in-africa

Gay Ugandan King Proves that Homosexuality is Africa

By         January 30, 2014 09:39 GMT

Homosexuality BEGAN in Africa?!?!?!?

So… A UK newspaper is laying out what they deem as irrefutable evidence that homosexuality BEGAN in Africa and it was colonialism that brought in the homophobia concept…not the other way around.

They even went so far as to provide a pic of the first “Queen”.. “Ugandan King Mwanga II was widely reported to have engaged in sexual relations with his male subjects…”

”
According to the report, a commonly cited reason for maintaining, or expanding, criminalisation of homosexuality nowadays, is that homosexuality is “un-African” or, in other words, a foreign phenomenon.
The research, however, showed that throughout Africa’s history homosexuality has been a “consistent and logical feature of African societies and belief systems”, and that Uganda’s laws criminalising homosexuality originates entirely from legislations introduced by the British colonial administration in 1902 and 1950.”
I wonder how the Brothers who insist homosexuality began in Rome will take this bit of news? Call it Conspiracy? I must admit.. As a scholar of African studies I never heard of this dude either. And for them to have a pic of ol’ it seems mighty convenient… But there is also the fact that Blacks are known for dismissing and sweeping homosexuality under the rug and keeping away from public knowledge.
SIDE NOTE: To all the brothers upset about this. Do the due diligence. Do the research. And ask your self THIS. If homosexuality DID exist in the motherland… That would mean your homophobia and intolerance is a European construct, and going by what we know of Europeans, that wouldn’t be a far fetched theory. It would prove we were also brainwashed in this area, along with religion, skin color and everything else we follow the European ideal about. This calls for research and a mirror Black man.
 ‪#‎interesting‬…..

read the full story here


Category:

bigotry, children, depopulation, discrimination, equality, fear propaganda, gay marriage, homophobia, Homosexual Agenda, homosexuality, LGBT, racism, religion

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary

Nana’s Commentary:

I remember thinking to myself, back in 1990; “I wonder what has happened to Black Folks as a result of Slavery?” It was like an epiphany, as I can actually remember where I was sitting when it occurred to me.
I had just entered the field of mental health having started off in Sociology. Somehow, life lead me to the field of Mental Health and particularly as a result of wanting to use Cultural Enrichment as a way for healing and benefiting Black folks who have so many odds stacked against them as it were.
I couldn’t help but notice the parallels, from denial to over achievement to resilience to secrecy and a host of other conditions, outcomes and variables that plague our community as well as offer some real life stories of survival even in the most hostile of environments. We still managed to work, have families, raise our children, get an education, despite the trauma we received.

However, it seemed that talking about PTSD in the clinical sense was didactic, linear and devoid of inference beyond the obvious. That is, a person caught in a war zone, a person who experienced a car accident, physical/emotional abuse or the death of a loved one. We knew that it would affect them in so many ways and we often called in “Adjustment Disorder”. Then we moved on to figure out strategies for healing and getting these “individuals” to a healthier mindset and that feeling of “safety” again.

As these thoughts swirled around in my mind and I began to seriously wonder if we may be suffering from trauma that was inflicted upon our foreparents and if in fact, the genetic memory has been imprinted on our DNA. It has been discovered that various events can be imprinted on our DNA so how about some shock?
I remember attending seminars where it was presented that our bodies remember our trauma long after the traumatic event had passed. Being a dreamer and one who interpreted dreams, I knew that our subconscious, or that place where dreams lie, would also bring up disturbing and/or traumatic events in various dream images.
It all began to make sense to me that surely, African people in the Americas, and perhaps the entire Diaspora; who were captured and imprisoned on slaved ships and brought to a foreign land, most certainly have suffered serious trauma along with transmitting that trauma to generations that followed. And as Dr. DeGruy Leary explains the trauma didn’t stop after they were brought here, nor did it stop after they were released from chattel slavery, it continued, and continues to this day. Much of it is insidious and below the surface but it continues in the form of police brutality, poverty, poor educational systems, dilapidated neighborhoods, erroneous depiction of our youth in the media, etc., etc., etc.

I always wanted to research it, or see what others have done in that line of research. I am so grateful to Dr. DeGruy Leary who has done the grunt work on this topic. I am sure it can be developed even beyond the book she wrote, and perhaps others will look into it. She also has a lot of courage to even broach this subject. In my ignorance it seemed to only make sense that the impact of our past would affect our future, but the cognitive dissonance will not allow many on both sides of the aisle to see it, accept it or do anything about it. So I must commend her bravery to even take the time, resources and brain work to put this thought together so eloquently.

She, along with Dr. Frances Kress-Welsing, in my estimation, have capture two of the most profound aspects of our history post Trans-Atlantic slave trade.  When you couple White Supremacy with Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome you can pretty much sum up the African experience in the Americas and throughout the Diaspora where racism is an integral part of the society where its impact can be seen in politics, education, religion, entertainment, historical analysis, health care, economics and the general welfare.
Below you will find a video playlist of some of Dr. DeGruy Leary’s talks on Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (PTSS) is a 2005 book resulting from years of historical and psychological research by Joy DeGruy (formerly Leary)[1] PTSS describes a set of behaviors, beliefs and actions associated with or, related to multi-generational traumaexperienced by African Americans that include but are not limited to undiagnosed and untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in enslaved Africans and their descendants.[1]
PTSS posits that centuries of slavery in the United States, followed by systemic and structural racism and oppression, including lynching, Jim Crow laws, and unwarranted mass incarceration, have resulted in multigenerational maladaptive behaviors, which originated as survival strategies. The syndrome continues because children whose parents suffer from PTSS are often indoctrinated into the same behaviors, long after the behaviors have lost their contextual effectiveness.
DeGruy states that PTSS is not a disorder that can simply be treated and remedied clinically but rather also requires profound social change in individuals, as well as in institutions that continue to reify inequality and injustice toward the descendants of enslaved Africans.
DeGruy holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Communication, a Master’s Degree in Social Work, a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Social Work Research. She teaches social work at Portland State University and gives lectures on PTSS nationally and internationally.
Do You Have Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome?
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary talks about her provocative new book
Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary- Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (1/19)
Watch: Dr. Joy DeGruy Gives Stunning Lecture on “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome”
Post-traumatic slavery syndrome
African-Americans are killing themselves at an unprecedented rate. In “Lay My Burden Down” Alvin Poussaint and Amy Alexander try to explain why.

Category:

adaptation, African Americans, discrimination, Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary, hyper-vigilance, Incarceration, Jim Crow Laws, police brutality, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, racism, slavery

Hillary Wants a Crusade to Defeat Trump’s “Bigotry” – and Leave Her Bankers Alone

Hillary Wants a Crusade to Defeat Trump’s “Bigotry” – and Leave Her Bankers Alone
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“It took the emergence of a grassroots movement against police terror, to wake a critical mass of Black folks to the reality of their condition.”

“If Hillary Clinton can make the general election into a crusade against “bigotry” and “intolerance” as embodied by Donald Trump, she can win with an otherwise issue-less campaign, thus shielding the 1% from harm. Black folks will be happy, imagining the election is all about them. “The great task of independent Black politics is to pry Black folks loose from the Democratic Party’s lethal embrace.” For that, we need a movement in the streets.”

Tuesday’s primary victories will allow Hillary Clinton to get busy planning her “big tent” general election crusade against racism and incivility, in the person of Donald Trump. It will be a corporate Democrat’s dream campaign, with the prospect of the party garnering majority white support for the first time since 1964. Clinton will allow Bernie Sanders’ delegates to craft much of the language of the party platform, in Philadelphia – a meaningless exercise designed to convince the Sandernistas that there is still hope to transform the Democratic Party “from below.” Clinton – who is permanently primed to lie on any subject, at any time, in the interests of the Lords of Capital – may give forked-tongue service to a Sanders-inspired platform, especially if Trump continues his hype on jobs losses to “China” because of “bad deals.” But, Wall Street will have little to worry about. Clinton’s central project will be to build an historic Democratic super-majority by appealing to all “decent” Americans to reject “bigotry” and embrace “fairness” and “tolerance” – by which she will mean nothing more than that they reject Trump.
Such civil rights-sounding rhetoric will signify to Black voters that their faith in the party, and the Clintons, has been bounteously rewarded; that the campaign is really all about them. They will be reassured of the continuity of Barack Obama’s policies under Hillary – as if that were a good thing, and as if Obama and the Clintons were not political triplets all along, rooted in the same right-wing of the party.
When Hillary Clinton is sworn in, there will be no Great Black Hajj [3] of millions to the Washington Mall, as in 2009 – no dizzying euphoria. But, the effect of a huge Democratic triumph over the Trump Monster could reproduce much the same disastrous Black political passivity as in the early Obama years, when folks thought they were on track to the Promised Land. Despite having been set back as much as 30 years by the Great Recession, in terms of their relative position to whites, African Americans clung to the delusion that things had never been so good, simply because there was a Black family in the White House.
“The effect of a huge Democratic triumph over the Trump Monster could reproduce much the same disastrous Black political passivity as in the early Obama years.”
It took the emergence of a grassroots movement against police terror, under the general heading of Black Lives Matter, to wake a critical mass of Black folks to the reality of their condition. For two generations, the dead, hegemonic weight of the Democratic Party had subverted and suffocated the Black Radical Tradition, diverting all Black political energies into a corporate dominated electoral enclosure. However, no sooner had the “Ferguson movement” (as many initially called it) gained traction, than it was partially co-opted by young opportunists with corporate ambitions. Campaign Zero immediately set out to become a player in the Democratic Party. (Its twittering star, DeRay McKesson, is currently running for mayor of Baltimore.) #Black Lives Matter was endorsed by the Democratic National Committee, with its founders mentioned by name. However, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, rejected the endorsement [4]. “The Democratic Party, like the Republican and all political parties, have historically attempted to control or contain Black people’s efforts to liberate ourselves,” they said. “True change requires real struggle, and that struggle will be in the streets and led by the people, not by a political party.”
In a caricature of confrontation with power, activists held two cozy “chats” [5] with Hillary Clinton, in which they made no substantive demands. Clinton easily dominated the discussions, and succeeded in projecting herself as a stern but sincere supporter of the movement – an undeserved reputation that would benefit her presidential campaign.  
The brazenly opportunist Campaign Zero group and the Garza-Cullors-Tometi network dickered with [6] the Democratic National Committee over campaign events. Campaign Zero agreed to collaborate with the Democrats on a televised town hall-type event on racial justice issues.  The #Black Lives Matter network preferred a televised debate. Either way, participation in such projects relegates the collaborators to the status of annexes of the party, like MoveOn.org.
“Being controlled by the two-party system is hugely problematic and is disempowering and oppressive to black people.”
It was refreshing, and heartening, therefore, to hear another founding member of #Black Lives Matter explain why the network will not endorse any presidential candidate. Prof. Melina Abdullah, chair of the Department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, told Democracy Now! viewers that “neither Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton have a strong command of the particular issues related to race in the specificity of black oppression.” (Actually, a more knowledgeable Democratic Party leader would be, if anything, even more dangerous.) More definitively, Prof. Abdullah said “being controlled by the two-party system is hugely problematic and is disempowering and oppressive to black people.” The movement needs to “think about what democracy is,” and “we need to really kind of redefine what that means and break away from this notion that the only way of being democratic is engaging in electoral politics.” The #Black Lives Matter Network “is pushing the real revolution,” she said.
Revolutionary movements – movements of any kind – require the formulation of demands. “We need to develop a plan that really deals with the specifics of blackness – black jobs, black employability, moving toward black wealth,” said Abdullah, the political scientist.
Hillary Clinton hopes to build a super-party this election season, packed to overflowing with “moderate” Republicans fleeing the taint of Donald Trump, who will bring their otherwise conservative politics with them into the Democratic “big tent” – an ideal infusion to reinforce Hillary Clinton’s (and Barack Obama’s) corporate wing of the party. Black folks will emerge from this electoral process even more marginal to party policy than before. But, most will not realize it.
The great task of independent Black politics is to pry Black folks loose from the Democratic Party’s lethal embrace. For that, you need a movement that is armed with proper demands. The #Black Lives Matter network is not there, yet, but at least some members are aware of the general path that must be taken.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com[7].
Links

Category:

2016, bankers, Barack Obama, bigotry, Black lives Matter, democrats, election, Hillary Clinton, MoveOn.org, police brutality, politics, racism, republicans

In Comparison, Bundy Ranch Supporters 2016 & MOVE Bombing 1985

NB Commentary: Let’s Talk About the Difference Between Who is Considered a Patriot and Who is Considered a Terrorist.
While the MOVE Organization was not officially declared a Terrorist Organization they were indeed treated like they were Enemies of the State. I am from the area and was there when it happened.
The group was/is called MOVE. they were/are a back to nature group of Africans who leader’s name was John Africa. They felt that the government was vile and used vile language to express their contempt for it.
On the other hand, they were mostly self sufficient, planted their own food and were vegetarians and wore dread locks.
A group of them moved onto Osage Ave., in West Philadelphia and built a fortress within the house because they had been threatened jailed and tortured by the police for their way of life. They claimed freedom of speech and continued to express their discontent with the government, local, national and global.
In 1978 they previously lived in an area of West Philly called Powelton Village

where a blockade was place upon them, no food or water was allowed to get to them and no one could interact with them or be arrested. This stand off ended with them firehousing the house till its collapse and the members were forced to leave. Delbert Africa was brutally beaten.

In 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a bomb on the house located on a city block of Osage Ave. There was a bunker on top of the house and the fortress was so well constructed that the police after firing multiple rounds could not penetrate the walls of their home. The next option was to drop a bomb, this bomb ignited a fire that cause the MOVE members to escape while others, women and children, died in the blaze. Because it was allowed to burn, the entire block succumbed to the fire and was destroyed, and the mostly homeowners, displaced and/or homeless.

 The city did a make-shift job rebuilding their homes but never could they return to those people the valuables and memories and momentums. Some of these people had lived on this block their whole lives and had grand children who visited them there. It was devastating to the neighborhood, who simply believed that by asking the city government to intervene that they would simply remove the occupants of the MOVE home and all would go back to normal. This blazing inferno could be seen for at least a mile radius. It turn a beautifully sculptured community neighborhood into a war zone.

Jason Osder spent ten years making Let the Fire Burn, a harrowing documentary account of the confrontation – and ensuing conflagration – between members of MOVE and the Philadelphia Police Department, resulting in the death of six adult members of the Afrocentric back-to-nature organization, and five children. Read more at  http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/entertainment/movies/MOVE-doc-gets-theatrical-distribution-Will-open-in-fall.html

The war against civilians is not a recent occurrence. However, it is demonstrated in a certain and accurate strategy of terror, control and manipulation and in many cases is racist at best and xenophobic at worse.
One thing that is certain, if they can drop a bomb on a residential area in the middle of a large city, no place is safe from the aggression of the militarized police. 

“I took a cab to the 6200 block of Osage Avenue this week, to the block where

the City of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on a rowhouse in 1985.  I had been at work that day, in my office which is also in West Philadelphia and I wanted to see for myself what the location looks like now.  While the driver waited, I walked up and down the sidewalks with my cellphone camera and my small Cannon PowerShoot A2500.  The street was narrower than I had imagined.   I was shocked by the townhouses that had been built to replace the homes destroyed in the bombing and fire.  At most they were a step off the ground.  No stairs to sit on, no porches.  Small areas for a chair or two are enclosed with black wrought iron fencing.  Many houses are boarded up.  Others appear occupied but look unfinished.   There are flowers and other signs of life where people are living.  I tried to be discrete as I took snapshots.  I failed.  A man came up from the western end of the block … grumbling.  He pointed out 6221, the location of the MOVE house; maybe he assumed that was what I was looking for.  I introduced myself to a woman sitting in front of her property.   She expressed mild dissatisfaction with visitors/voyeurs like me. She said that all she wants is for the city to fix up the vacant properties and allow the neighbors to live in peace.  Thirty years and the MOVE fiasco is not over yet for either of us.” Source: https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/5657-collective-trauma-transitional-justice-and-two


Check out this information: 25 Years Ago: Philadelphia Police Bombs MOVE Headquarters Killing 11, Destroying 65 Homes
Remembering Philly’s infamous bomb-dropping, guns-blazing, child-murdering day.
BY MICHAEL COARD  |  MAY 12, 2015 AT 12:05 PM
In this May 1985 photo, scores of row houses burn in a fire in the west Philadelphia neighborhood. Police dropped a bomb on the militant group MOVE’s home on May 13, 1985 in an attempt to arrest members, leading to the burning of scores of homes in the neighborhood.
A version of this article was originally published in 2012.
On May 13, 1985 at 5:20 p.m., a blue and white Pennsylvania State Police helicopter took off from the command post’s flight pad at 63rd and Walnut, flew a few times over 6221 Osage Avenue, and then hovered 60 feet above the two-story house in the black, middle-class West Philadelphia neighborhood. Lt. Frank Powell, chief of Philadelphia’s bomb disposal unit, was holding a canvas bag containing a bomb consisting of two sticks of Tovex TR2 with C-4. After radioing firefighters on the ground and lighting the bomb’s 45-second fuse — and with the official approval of Mayor W. Wilson Goode and at the insistence of Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor — Powell tossed the bomb, at precisely 5:28 p.m., onto a bunker on the roof.
This was followed shortly thereafter by a loud explosion and then a large, bright orange ball of fire that reached 7,200 degrees Fahrenheit. That day, Powell, the mayor, the police commissioner, Fire Commissioner William Richmond, city Managing Director Leo Brooks, and numerous police officers committed, in the words of Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (better known as the MOVE Commission) member Charles Bowser, a “criminally evil” act that led to the death of 11 human beings, including five completely innocent and defenseless children, the destruction of 61 homes, and the incineration of thousands of family photos, high school and college sweetheart love letters, heirloom jewelry, inscribed Bibles and Korans, and many other totally irreplaceable mementos.
Mr. Bowser, my mentor and the author of the powerful tell-all expose entitled Let the Bunker Burn, told me that five of the city’s most influential black political leaders met at the mayor’s home before dawn on May 13, 1985, in response to the mayor’s invitation and warning that “I’m going to make a move on the MOVE house … (this) morning.” This was in connection to what Goode described as complaints by Osage Avenue neighbors and outstanding arrest warrants. By the way, it should be noted that those same neighbors attempted to stop the police department’s siege of their community as soon as they realized what was developing. In fact, as the five influential black leaders watched the television broadcast of the military-like assault unfolding with shots and tear gas, two of them repeatedly urged the Mayor to call it off. In particular, City Council President Joseph Coleman, sitting at the Mayor’s kitchen table, told him the 500-strong police action was “excessive” and State Senator Hardy Williams, standing near the kitchen entrance, said “Why don’t they just back up and relax? Nobody’s going anywhere.”
MOVE: An Assault That Never Would Have Happened in the Northeast
More than 500 cops fired more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition in less than 90 minutes — in a middle-class, black neighborhood. WTF? No, let me say it: What the Fuck?! This was blatantly outrageous brutal racism. It never would have happened in the Northeast or in South Philly, even if the Hell’s Angels had kidnapped then-President Ronald Reagan. And everybody knows it.
The cops would have simply sent in a hostage negotiator. And if that didn’t work, they would have cut off access to electricity, water and food, and then waited the criminals out. And if that didn’t work, they would have sent in a professionally trained SWAT unit to storm that specific house with surgical precision. Goddamnit, even Osama’s house and neighborhood in Abbottabad weren’t firebombed. The mayor, police commissioner, fire commissioner, managing Director, and the cops — and especially the public — would not have approved, allowed or tolerated the burning down of a white neighborhood and the destruction of 61 white homes.
And don’t tell me some shit about the incineration of Osage not being racist simply because the mayor and the managing director were black. It’s the victims that make it racist! They were black. And they lived in a black neighborhood. Furthermore, Powell, the bomb-dropping cop, was white. Moreover, William Klein, the cop who made the bomb, was also white. As eloquently stated by Bowser, “Goode and Brooks did not shoot 10,000 bullets into that house. They did not put military explosives into the bomb. They did not decide to let the bunker burn. And they did not shoot at children trying to escape the fire. I know none of that would have happened in a white neighborhood and so do you.” That’s exactly why the MOVE Commission pointed out, in one of its final official comments, that none of this would have ever happened “had the MOVE house and its occupants been situated in a comparable white neighborhood.”
MOVE: The Making of the Bomb
Tovex TR2 was a commercial explosive invented in the 1960s as an option to dynamite, and its purpose was to dig trenches through rock in order to lay pipes. The “TR” is the abbreviation for trench, and the “2” refers to the second DuPont Company item in its trenching products. The company’s explosive products division was located a little more than a half hour from Philadelphia in Delaware. But not one fire or police department official ever cared enough to contact DuPont and ask what could happen if TR2 were used in a residential neighborhood. And that’s because they didn’t give a shit about black people. If they had asked, DuPont would have told them that it had been designed exclusively for, and had been used exclusively for, underground purposes. And the last time I checked, every black man, woman and child in the Osage community lived above-ground.
It gets worse. As horrifically explosive as TR2 was, Klein fired things up even more. Exercising his independent judgment, he decided that TR2 wouldn’t be strong enough to breach the bunker. So what did he do? He unilaterally placed a one-and-one-quarter-pound block of C-4 on top of the two sticks of Tovex — despite the fact that the U.S. Army in 1979 had ended distribution of C-4 to all local police departments throughout the country. But, as documented in an October 22, 1985, letter from a special agent who headed the FBI’s Philadelphia office, approximately 30 blocks of C-4 had been delivered to the city by an FBI agent without the city requesting it and as a proposed solution during discussions regarding an anticipated confrontation with MOVE. Wow! And the rest, as they say, is history — or better said, it’s Philly’s 9/11, but as our own city, state and federal governments’ inside job.
MOVE: The Scene of the Crime
If that’s worse, and it certainly is, here’s worst: The children, and some of the adults, were shot at or shot and killed by police as they were fleeing the flames and surrendering. Wow, again! The police covering the alley leading from the rear of the MOVE house had automatic weapons and shotguns. No one ever claimed that MOVE had automatic weapons or shotguns at the scene, and no automatic weapons or shotguns were found among the ashes. Police officer William Stewart, a 28-year veteran of the department and a firearms instructor at the academy, was asked by investigators, “Did you hear gunfire at this time,” meaning when people were fleeing the MOVE house from the alley in the rear. With his lawyer present, he responded “Oh yes, automatic fire.” And when asked about who was firing the weapons, he replied, “Police officers. All the stakeout officers were running into the alley. They all had Uzi machine guns.” Strangely, though, 16 days later, he told the MOVE Commission that he never heard any police gunfire in the alley.
Fire Department Lt. John Vaccarelli and fireman Joseph Murray, who were veterans of the Vietnam War and who were in the vicinity of that very same alley, said they did, in fact, hear automatic fire when the MOVE members were running away from the flames. In fact, Vaccarelli pointed out that he saw at least three MOVE members in the yard next to the alley. This was corroborated by police officer James D’Ulisse. So since these people were outside the property lines of the interior of the house itself, how is it that their bodies were later found inside those property lines among the charred rubble? Only the police (and no reporters or other civilians) had access to the sealed-off crime scene during and after the inferno. Hmmm …
And why does the official report of the city’s own medical examiner provide proof from the autopsies of six of the 11 dead — namely, 7-year-old Tomasa, 9-year-old Delicia, 10-year-old Phil, 11-year-old Netta, 13-year-old Tree, and 25-year-old Rhonda — that they did not die inside from flame-fire but died outside from gun-fire? If, as the police later testified under oath, these victims died from the flames that exceeded 2,000 hellish degrees inside the house, why were Tomasa’s long locks still long? Why was Phil’s body not burned? Why was Netta still wearing her white blouse with red trim? Why were Tree’s pubic hair and blue jeans still intact? And why did Delicia’s body and Rhonda’s body have in them metal fragments consistent with shotgun pellets as noted by an FBI ballistician? You think maybe they were fatally hit when they all were being shot at while trying to run from the flames and surrender?
Even MOVE Commission Chairman William Brown, stated, “I firmly believe that more people got out than Birdie and Ramona and that’s something that still nags at me. I believe that someone, someday will deliver a deathbed confession …” And the Commission itself noted in Finding Number 28 of its official report that “police gunfire in the rear alley prevented the escape from the fire of some occupants of the MOVE house.”
Also, consider this: Detective William Stevenson, who was assigned to take contemporaneous notes during the entire confrontation, wrote that Sgt. Donald Griffiths, a commander on the scene, “from stake-out is in the rear of Osage Avenue, 6221, and is pointing to an area that he states, ‘I dropped an adult male from the MOVE property who fired at me when the female and child escaped.’” And Battalion Chief John Skarbeck said he had overheard a police sergeant say, “something to the effect that ‘I got one back there’ or ‘I shot one back there.’” But Sgt. Griffiths testified that he had been misquoted, that what he really had said was people had “dropped out of sight” at that particular time and place. Yeah. He actually said that. With a straight face, too.
The overkill police presence, the military-style assault, the malicious bombing, the callous burning, and the evil shooting at fleeing victims were not just “grossly negligent” and “unconscionable” as the MOVE Commission properly and officially noted in Findings Number 15 and 18. They were also murderous. And justice demands the prosecution of each perpetrator because there’s no statute of limitations for murder. If it were your family, your neighborhood, your home, your property, and your memories — even if it weren’t — wouldn’t you agree?
If you do agree, join Dr. Cornel West, Angela Davis, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Fred Hampton Jr., me, and hundreds of others by attending the daylong “Memorial and Empowerment” event beginning at 11 a.m. on May 13th at 62d and Osage — 30 years to the day after the bombing. For more info, call 215-307-3960.
Michael Coard’s radio show, “The Radio Courtroom,” airs at noon on Sundays and Wednesdays. It can be heard locally on WURD 900 AM and on the Internet at 900amwurd.com. Follow @MichaelCoard on Twitter.
“It’s the week of the 29th anniversary of the MOVE bombings, and for those who were in the middle of it and are still with us, the memories of those tragic events still linger all these years later. As the haunting story unfolds in Jason Osder‘s Let the Fire Burn, which premieres tonight on Independent Lens on PBS (check local listings), you may be curious as to what became of some of the people involved.”

Category:

1985, Africa, bombing, Bundy Ranch, bunker, inferno, Michael Coard, MOVE, nevada, Osage Avenue, philadelphia, police state, racism, standoff, Wilson Goode, xenophobia

Whatever Happened to the Boycott? No Justice, No Profit!

JUSTICE OR ELSE?

In reality if there is no serious response from our people after all that marching in the streets and demanding justice, etc. Then we will not be a force to be reckoned with. The police will continue to assassinate our people with impunity and nobody should say nuffin no more.

How can we make any kind of impact or change if we are too weak, brainwashed and conditioned to stop participating in their holidays? I always say that this time of year is the most blatant celebration of white supremacy ever! White Jesus, white Christmas and giving all your money to the white man, going into debt for a capitalistic economy and it’s banksters who could care less about you or anyone in your family who suffered under police brutality. 

Marches keep them going. T-shirts give them a spike in sales. Magic markers and poster boards ring their cash registers. George Soros can bank roll it and profit from it, but does it change anything? NO! We have to hit them in their pockets. But if we are too dumbed down to do it, well, ain’t no need to be griping about how racist this country is.

Category:

Black lives Matter, Emmit Till, eric garner, Freddie Gray, John Crawford, Justice or Else, Michael Brown, oppression, police brutality, protests, racism, Sandra Bland, Sean Bell, soros, Tamir Rice

#BlackLivesMatter: Chat Partners with Hilllary


Nana’s Commentary:
“George Soros and his NGO, Black Lives Matter. The Open Society Foundations does exactly what it has done in its world wide infiltration of progressive movements. The infiltration is designed to undermine, redirect and take over the movement, codifying them into controlled opposition that subsequently becomes part of the mainstream. #Occupy Wall Street for starters. It should be clear that any funding coming in from the elite spells the inevitable demise of the original movement.”
    THE LEADER IN BLACK WORLD NEWS!
    WE should all be reminded that the group that call itself, {black lives matter} is funded by the GEORGE SOROS,organization who is known world wide for funding social movements to destabilize nations for the purpose of over throwing their governments, in fact he and his organizations  were  just kicked out of RUSSIA for this same reason.
    WE black AMERICANS are now being faced with whole manufactured black movements that claim to speak in our name for our cause and are nothing more than movie productions from JEWISH billionaires wishing to exploit our legitimate grievances.
    LET’S pass the word on these people so we’re not played as useful idiots serving a cause unknown to us .
    THIS website has numerous articles on SOROS  and black lives matter in it’s archive but the article below is from THE DAILY MAIL , dated 1/16/15 and more updated video’s on the most recent protest.
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
The #BlackLivesMatter organization is now part of the 2016 Democratic Party election machinery, assuming its role as a power broker on behalf of Black people. It’s a familiar historical pattern, except for the speed with which the transition has taken place. “The #BLM philosophy is that therapeutic dialogue with members of the power elite is politically more effective than the presentation of core demands.”
#BlackLivesMatter: Chat Partners with Hilllary
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“When #BLM folks claim they have ‘lots’ of demands, it actually means they have no core demands, at all.”
The best thing that could be said about the #BlackLivesMatter Campaign Zero team is that they are an embarrassment, political tourists in the halls of empire. The truth is, however, much worse. In two meetings with Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, they have offered no demands worthy of the name, choosing instead to imagine that they are “pushing” Clinton and the Democratic Party into some stance advantageous to Black people. In reality, the #BlackLivesMatter clique has dissipated the energy – and threat – of angry Black bodies, hands and missiles in motion in Ferguson and Baltimore. Quickly fading is the specter of a Black movement from down below that struck real fear in the Obama administration and much of the U.S. power structure. Instead, #BlackLivesMatter provides harmless chat partners for Hillary and the other presidential hopefuls.
The #BLM operatives claim they “spent months” studying Clinton’s positions on the issues, in preparation for the meeting. Why? To gauge how far they could “move” the war criminal and corporate thief? Move her towards what? Campaign Zero’s “demands” are an eclectic assortment of criminal justice reform ideas and recommendations, many of them straight out of Obama’s presidential task force on policing, and borrowed “best-practice” police procedures (Seattle is their favorite department). When #BLM folks claim they have “lots” of demands, it actually means they have no core demands, at all.  
“#BlackLivesMatter provides harmless chat partners for Hillary and the other presidential hopefuls.”
The Democrats scoped them as political assets, early on: that’s why the Democratic National Committee overwhelmingly voted to “endorse [3]” #BlackLivesMatter back in August. The trio of #BLM founders, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza, formally rejected [4] the official DNC embrace, but the #BLM’s chat-and-tweet-squads have continued to make the Democrats look good by pretending to hold them accountable through meaningless, meandering, demand-less meetings.
DeRay Mckesson, Brittany Packnett, Johnetta Elzie, Cherno Biko and Samuel Sinyangwe provided Hillary Clinton with another useful backdrop [5], last week. They appear to believe their mission was to “educate” Clinton (although they would have done far better to have educated themselves on political movement history, practice and theory). “This was an opportunity to get input from black people, who are experts of their own lives, solutions to dismantling anti-black racist institutions and policies,” Johnetta Elzie told reporters. #BLM thinks that relaying the recommendations of an Obama task force to a former Obama Secretary of State equals providing “solutions to dismantling anti-black racist institutions and policies.”
“They appear to believe their mission was to ‘educate’ Clinton.”
Actually, the #BLM crew’s primary mission was to force Clinton to mentally grapple with white privilege, and to grasp how Black people “feel.” #BLM’s aim is to assure that the next president has a deeper understanding of the workings of racism – presumably, deeper than the current, Black one. In the course of the conversation, Elzie said Clinton “…would listen and acknowledge that her experience was totally different than any of the black people at this table. It took her awhile to get there, but she got there. So I’m hopeful that she will continue to have this educational conversation with herself to acknowledge her privilege. You saying that you know that you’re white, you know that you have power, and you know that you are wealthy is not the same as seeing it and knowing that the way that police interact with you is completely different than how they will ever interact with us.”

The #BLM philosophy is that therapeutic dialogue with members of the power elite is politically more effective than the presentation of core demands. (Certainly, it is better for the future careers of the #BLM interlocutors.)
When it came to actually doing something about the Black condition, Clinton was less forthcoming. “I think she can take a harder stance on how she understands the role of the federal government in protecting the rights of people of color and pushing and modeling for local and state governments,” said DeRay Mckesson. “She kind of downplayed the role of the federal government and placed it all on state and local government,” said Johnetta Elzie.
Clinton used the meeting to announce her opposition to private prisons – which may have come as a shock to her campaign contributors from Wall Street’s corporate incarceration firms.
Elzie offered that Bernie Sanders has a better understanding of Black people’s justifiable fears of police. She and McKesson told the press they would wait to see more specifics from Clinton before deciding who to support. Cherno Biko said Clinton “hasn’t earned my endorsement yet, but I’m looking forward to her releasing a racial justice platform in the coming weeks.” Brittany Packnett emerged from the meeting “still thinking about where I will put my vote and not yet having an answer.”
“The #BLM crowd milked the incipient movement for all it was worth.”
They will all endorse one of the Democrats, sooner rather than later. The #BlackLivesMatter tent has already been folded up inside the Democratic Party, where slick Black “activists” on the make go to catch the express elevator to the executive suites. In less than a year, the #BLM crowd milked the incipient movement for all it was worth, presenting themselves as the interlocutors between the streets and Power. It’s been one hell of a journey – a great hustle. They have arrived at where they wanted to be: part of the age-old Black Petit Bourgeois Shuffle, dancing to the Master’s tune, while complaining that their pale partners still don’t have the right rhythm.
The demand from the streets remains the same as it has been since the imposition of the modern Black mass incarceration regime, two generations ago: Black community control of the police – by any means necessary. The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice [6], Peace and Reparations will rally and march on the White House onSaturday, November 7 [6] – as it has every year since 2009 – under the banner “Black Power Matters.”
The demand for Black community control of police is called forth by both the principle of self-determination and the facts of Black existence in the United States. But self-determination does not exist in the practice of #BlackLivesMatter, which has squandered Black people’s dignity and the momentum of an emerging movement.
We wish them a swift and complete assimilation into the corridors of Power – which was their mission, all along.
BAR executive editor GlenFord can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [7].

Published on Black Agenda Report (http://blackagendareport.com)
Home > #BlackLivesMatter: Chat Partners with Hillary
Submitted by Glen Ford on Wed, 10/14/2015 – 10:26

Links

Category:

2016, agenda, billionaire, Black lives Matter, co-opting, crowdfunding, demands, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, movements, Obama, Occupy Wall Street, politics, presidential campaign, protests, racism

Rachel Dolezar has a Twin Brother…..Why Do People Imitate Oppressed Groups???

Why Do People Imitate Oppressed Groups?

How Do They Manage to Get Into Positions of Power Among Them?

video.breitbart.com
Did Black Lives Matter Organizer Shaun King 
Mislead Oprah Winfrey By Pretending To Be Biracial?
Source: by Milo Yiannopoulos19 Aug 2015

Category:

activism, Black lives Matter, Breitbart, left wing, Morehouse, NAACP, Oprah, politics, rachel dolezar, racism, right wing, shaun king, white privilege

Racist Killing Fields in the U.S.: The Death of Sandra Bland Posted on Jul 23, 2015 By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout

Racist Killing Fields in the U.S.: The Death of Sandra Bland

Posted on Jul 23, 2015

By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout

Sandra Bland, 28 years old

On July 9, soon after Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman, moved to Texas from Naperville, Illinois, to take a new job as a college outreach officer at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M, she was pulled over by the police for failing to signal while making a lane change. What followed has become all too common and illustrates the ever-increasing rise in domestic terrorism in the United States. She was pulled out of the car by the police for allegedly becoming combative, and was pinned to the ground by two officers. A video obtained by ABC 7 of Bland’s arrest “doesn’t appear to show Bland being combative with officers but does show two officers on top of Bland.”

A witness reported that “he saw the arresting officer pull Bland out of the car, throw her to the ground and put his knee on her neck while he arrested her.” In the video, Bland can be heard questioning the officers’ methods of restraint. She says: “You just slammed my head to the ground. Do you not even care about that? I can’t even hear.” She was then arrested for assaulting an officer, a third-degree felony, and interned at the Waller County, Texas, jail. On July 13, she was found dead in her cell. Quite unbelievably, the police reported that she took her own life, and the Waller County Jail is trying to rule her death a suicide. Friends and family say that this scenario is inconceivable, given what they know about Sandra: She was a young woman starting a new job, who was eagerly looking forward to her future.

Sandra Bland was an outspoken civil rights activist critical of police brutality. She often posted videos in which she talked about important civil rights issues, and once stated: “I’m here to change history. If we want a change we can really truly make it happen.”

Sandra Bland’s family and friends believe that foul play was involved in her death, and rightly so. Their belief is bolstered by the fact that the head sheriff of Waller County, Glenn Smith, who made the first public comments about Bland’s in-custody death, was suspended for documented cases of racism when he was chief of police in Hempstead, Texas, in 2007. After serving his suspension, more complaints of racism came in, and Smith was actually fired as chief of police in Hempstead.”
Bland’s death over a routine traffic stop is beyond monstrous. It is indicative of a country where extreme violence is the norm – a society fed by the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, the incarceration state, the drug wars and the increasing militarization of everything, including the war on Black youth. There is more at stake here than the fact that, as federal statistics indicate, the police are “31 percent more likely to pull over a Black driver than a white driver”: Routine traffic stops for Black drivers contain the real possibility of turning deadly. This regular violence propels a deeply racist and militarized society. It is a violence that turns on young people and adults alike who are considered disposable. This type of harassment is integral to a form of domestic terrorism in which Black people are routinely beaten, arrested, incarcerated and too often killed. This is the new totalitarianism of the boot-in-your-face racism, one in which the punishing state is the central institution for both controlling poor people of color and enforcing the rules of the financial elite. How much longer can this war on youth go on?

CONFIRMED: Dashcam Video of Sandra Bland’s Violent Arrest was Indeed Edited Read more at 

The United States has become a country that is proud of what is should be ashamed of. How else to explain the popularity of the racist and bigot, Donald Trump, among the Republican Party’s right-wing base? We celebrate violence in the name of security and violate every precept of human justice through an appeal to fear. This speaks clearly to a form of political repression and a toxic value system. Markets and power are immune to justice, and despise it. All that matters is that control – financial and political – serves soulless markets and the Darwinian culture of cruelty. How many more young people are going to be killed for walking in the street, failing to signal a lane shift, looking a police officer in the eye, or playing with a toy gun? How many more names of Black men, women and young people will join the list of those whose deaths have sparked widespread protests: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Renisha McBride, Aiyana Jones and Sakia Gunn, among many others – and now, Sandra Bland. Is it any wonder that one funeral director in Chicago stated that “young people in the city do not expect to live late into their adult life”? Moreover, police violence in the United States is not only a direct manifestation of state violence, but also serves as a gateway to prison, especially for people of color and the poor.

Yet, the mainstream media is more infatuated with game shows, financial brutishness, celebrities and the idiocy of Donald Trump than they are concerned about the endless violence waged against poor children of color in the United States. This violence speaks clearly to a society that no longer wants to invest in its youth. And if one measure of a democratic society is how it treats young people, the United States has failed miserably.

The form that the “war on terror” has taken at home is a war on poor people of color, especially Black people. Racism and police militarization have created a new kind of terrorism, one in which extreme violence is being used against Black people for the most trivial of infractions. The killing of Black youth by the police – a norm that stretches back, in an unbroken line of terror, to slavery – takes the form of both routine affair and spectacle. Nowadays, acts of domestic terrorism perpetrated by police take place increasingly in full view of the US public, who more and more are witnessing such lawlessness after it is recorded and uploaded onto the internet by bystanders. New technologies now enable individuals to record such violence in real time and make it a matter of public record. While this public display of the deployment domestic terrorism is undeniably crucial, in that it makes visible the depravity of state violence, these images are sometimes co-opted by the mass media, commodified, and disseminated in ways that can exploit – and even attempt to erase – Black lives, as William C. Anderson argues.

In the current environment, racial violence is so commonplace that when it is perpetrated by the police against innocent people, justice is not measured by holding those who commit the violence accountable. The official measure of justice is simply that the presence of violence be noted, by the authorities and the mainstream media. Few of the most powerful people seem distraught by the ongoing shootings, beatings, and killings of African-Americans in a society in which a Black man is killed every 28 hours in the US by police, vigilantes or security guards.

6 Things You Should Know About The County Where Sandra Bland Died

This part of Texas has a long, complicated relationship with race.

In a country in which militarism is viewed as an ideal and the police and soldiers are treated like heroes, violence becomes the primary modality for solving problems. One consequence is that state violence is either ignored, rendered trivial or shamelessly legitimated in the name of the law, security or self-defense. State violence fueled by the merging of the war on terror, the militarization of all aspects of society, and a deep-seated, ruthless and unapologetic racism is now ubiquitous and should be labeled as a form of domestic terrorism. Terrorism, torture and state violence are no longer simply part of our history; they have become the nervous system of an increasingly authoritarian state. Eric Garner told the police as he was being choked to death that he could not breathe. His words also apply to democracy itself, which is lacking the civic oxygen that gives it life. The United States is a place where democracy cannot breathe.

This authoritarianism fueled by the mainstream press, which seems especially interested in stories in which it can (wrongfully) frame victims as assailants, as in the case of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, but is less interested when the old stereotypes about crime and Black culture cannot be invoked. When dominant forces cannot figure out a way to label victims of police violence “thugs” – consider the case of Tamir Rice, who was only 12 years old when shot to death by a policeman who in his previous police assignment in another city was labeled as “unstable” – such acts of state terrorism often fade out of the mainstream view.

Why was there not a more sustained and mainstream public outcry over the case of Kalief Browder, a young Black man who was arrested for a crime he did not commit and incarcerated at the notorious Rikers Island for than a one thousand days – two years of that time in solitary confinement – waiting for a trial that never happened? Shortly after being released he committed suicide. Would this have happened if he were white, middle class and had access to a lawyer? How is what happened to him parallel to the egregious torture inflicted on innocent children at Abu Ghraib prison?

Not surprisingly, the discourse of “terrorism” once again is only used when someone is engaged in a plot to commit violence against the government – but not when the state commits violence unjustly against its own citizens. What needs to be recognized, as Robin D. G. Kelley has pointed out, is that the killing of unarmed African Americans by the police is not simply a matter that speaks to the need for reforming the police and the culture that shapes it, but also for massive organized resistance against a war on Black youth that is being waged on US soil. The call for police “reform,” echoed throughout the dominant media, is meaningless. We need to change a system steeped in violence, racism, economic corruption and institutional rot. We don’t need revenge, we need justice – and that means structural change.

Sandra Bland’s family ‘infuriated’ at video of her arrest

Ending police misconduct is certainly acceptable as short-term goal to save lives, but if we are going to prevent the United States from becoming a full-fledged police state serving the interests of the rich who ensconce themselves in their gated and guarded communities, the vicious neoliberal financial and police state has to be dismantled. Such resistance has taken shape with the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, along with youth movements such as the Black Youth Project, Million Hoodies, We Charge Genocide and other groups.

A new brutalism haunts America, drenched in the flood of intolerable police and state violence. Millions of people are being locked up, jailed, beaten, harassed and violated by the police and other security forces, simply because they are Black, Brown, young and/or poor, and therefore viewed as disposable. Black youth are safe neither in their own neighborhoods nor on public streets, highways, schools – or any other areas in which the police can be found.

Source:  TruthDig

Category:

African Americans, arrest, CNN, dashcam, mugshot, police brutality, racism, Sandra Bland, Texas, traffic stop, truthdig, voicemail, Waller County

Is Gun Control the Real Answer? Sure it is. It’s Disaster Capitalism!

With all this fear mongering and heavy handed responses to the event that happened in Charleston, SC, it makes you wonder over and over again, what is the hidden agenda?

Race Riot?
Civil War?
Martial Law?
Polarizing the American public?
Discrediting Conspiracy Theorist who align this event with other false flags/hoaxes?
$29 million pay out (off) the the victims’ families?
Stricter Gun Control Laws?
Exposure of Repubs White Supremacist supporters?
Shifting the Balance of the Presidential candidacy towards the DEMS?
Home grown terrorism and blame it on ISIS?
More martial law?
And on and on……

So……..

Let’s Talk About the Hypocrisy of Gun Control As a Solution

“The American Military Empire spent 20 billion dollars  in training and weapons for the Iraqis.  The Iraqis are using those weapons to fight ISIS.  ISIS is also using weapons from the American Military Empire.  The American Military-Industrial Complex is in the business of selling weapons of war, and they don’t care who to…………..”

 

The irony of all this is underneath it, this is disaster capitalism.

1. Black folks will buy more guns to protect themselves from whites
2.White folks will buy more guns to protect themselves from blacks
3. All folks fearful of new gun control laws will buy more guns before they make stricter laws about gun ownership
4. The threat of stricter laws just makes the manufacturers of guns even richer as they sell more guns to frightened people who feel they must stock up.
So actually, events like this, police brutality, racism, poverty, fear and degradation actually impact on the stock markets and trading and boosts their assets and profits.
Question: is this a stimulus package for the corporations and banksters that deal in weapons manufacturing?
Is this a tactic to get more money out of the pockets of the consumer who has been virtually holding on to their cash, being more thrifty about purchases and using better budgetary sense?
When you think about this stuff and stretch your mind to the realm of “outside the box” you realize that the public is being played, but how and for what end seems to evade us. So like Dora says, “Let’s stop and think.”
Who really benefits from all this? The average citizen or the corporations, banksters and globalists who have an agenda that for all intents and purposes is to forment chaos so that they can stay in power. I seriously don’t believe they want to take the guns from the American people.
The argument that folks need to protect themselves from the Government Martial Law is whimsical in that seldom do you hear of a person being armed and stopping the police from invading their home or business establishment. And in those case, most often the armed person is taken down!
I believe that they want everyone to HAVE guns, that way crimes of passion with a firearm can rise, people can be even more leary of their neighbors, domestic violence can sore, and children can accidentally kill their friends and family. But mostly, they can sell more guns, guns, and more guns…….
Heck, they openly sell them to Rebel groups around the world, especially in the middle East and Africa, now the Ukraine, why not arm a restless, frightened, economically beaten down US citizenry? Makes sense?

Obama Sells Guns; Lots of Guns

http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2012/08/obama-sells-guns-lots-of-guns.html
Excerpt: “When an incumbent president seeking a second term has already put two people on the nine-member Supreme Court who would vote away this basic human freedom [Second Amendment gun rights], they have the right to be fearful. And when you realize that, if reelected, that incumbent president would have a good chance of getting a few more Supreme Court picks, and so could reshape the high court for decades, people have a right to be motivated to buy firearms now. _Forbes”

11 Photos Of U.S. Weapons Used By ISIS — And Some Rockets From America’s Friends
Excerpt: “Far less has been made of the captured weapons that are likely most useful to ISIS as the group continues its onslaught in parts of Syria and Iraq: the small arms like assault rifles and handguns that every soldier needs and regularly employs. “A U.S. Humvee might be good for the show, for propaganda, but what’s interesting is to know with what they actually fight,” said Damien Spleeters, a field researcher with Conflict Armament Research, a U.K.-based firm that tracks weapons in conflict zones. “Small arms are less sexy, but I believe they are very important.”

Armed with U.S. weapons, infamous militia beating ISIS

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/armed-with-u-s-weapons-ruthless-militia-beating-isis-in-iraq/

Excerpt: “The U.S. spent $20 billion training and arming the Iraqi army. Now many of its weapons are in the hands of these unchecked militiamen.

But with the Iraqi army in disarray, they have the best track record of defeating ISIS in central Iraq. The villages around Al Muqdadiyah are battle scarred and the local people have all fled. The battle for Al Muqdadiyah lasted four days, and when ISIS was finally defeated its fighters fled over hills where they’ve now regrouped.”

US War on ISIS a Trojan Horse

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2015/03/us-war-on-isis-trojan-horse.html
Excerpt: “Few would believe if one told them then, that in 2015, that same discredited US would be routinely bombing Syrian territory and poised to justify the raising of an entire army of terrorists to wage war within Syria’s borders, yet that is precisely what is happening. President Obama has announced plans to formally increase military force in Iraq and Syria “against ISIS,” but of course includes building up huge armies of “rebels” who by all other accounts are as bad as ISIS itself (not to mention prone to joining ISIS’ ranks by the thousands).

All it took for this miraculous turn in fortune was the creation of “ISIS,” and serial provocations committed by these Hollywood-style villains seemingly engineered to reinvigorate America’s justification to militarily intervene more directly in a war it itself started in Syria beginning in 2011.

ISIS could not be a more effective part of America’s plans to overthrow the Syrian government and destroy the Syrian state if it had an office at the Pentagon.

Having failed to achieve any of its objectives in Syria, it inexplicably “invaded” Iraq, affording the US military a means of “easing into” the conflict by first confronting ISIS in Iraq, then following them back across the border into Syria. When this scheme began to lose its impact on public perception, ISIS first started executing Western hostages including several Americans. When the US needed the French on board, ISIS executed a Frenchman. When the US needed greater support in Asia, two Japanese were beheaded. And just ahead of President Obama’s recent attempt to formally authorize the use of military force against “ISIS,” a Jordanian pilot was apparently burned to death in a cage in an unprecedented act of barbarity that shocked even the most apathetic.”

Category:

2nd amendment, another gunmen, Civil War, Dylann Roof, false flag, martial law, psyops, racism, rights, riots

Anti-Police Organizing in the Wake of Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s Death

Anti-Police Organizing in the Wake of Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s Death

by MICHELLE MATISONS

Cop Killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley Had Pocket Full of $100 Bills – But No Job or Home

Remember how the 9/11 attack led people to cancel or pull back from anti-globalization protests?  It appears a similar dynamic could be at work as a shocking event challenges and divides a growing and effective movement making serious headway.  Like anti-globalization protests before it, the anti-police brutality/ policing movement is going through its own birth pangs as the tactics debate (when is property violence appropriate?) and issues such as how to foreground anti-black racism (#BlackLivesMatter vs. #AllLivesMatter) have taken center stage in the multifaceted and large scale resistance efforts underway.

Saturday, December 20th, was a big day for movement news.  While Minnesota’s Mall of America protest had people occupying space in the US’s largest mall to demand an end to police violence, half way across the country in Brooklyn, two police officers were shot and killed by a young black man who had ostensibly posted on social media before the shootings about his intention to “put wings on pigs”, citing revenge for the deaths of Brown and Garner as motive.  The accused shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, shot himself dead on a nearby subway platform after shooting the officers.  As of Sunday afternoon, there is little information and much speculation about the accused murderer’s life (including that the murders were part of a counter-intelligence plot to discredit the movement and justify extreme force).  Much is uncertain, but it’s certain that the NYPD is already using this to suppress protest, repress entire communities, and further foment divisive public relations–especially with NYC Mayor deBlasio.  How can recent police union behavior and statements be considered anything but a naked admission of a police force’s own extra-legal/ paramilitary ambitions?

At this writing we do know a few things for certain: the corporate state’s policing apparatus will do everything in its power to use this event as a further call to arms against protesting U.S. residents and communities of color.  They will attempt not only to discredit a growing direct action-based movement, but also to aggressively attack protest groups and individuals they have been trying to get their hands on anyway.  If Ismaaiyl Brinsley had been arrested  and charged with the killing of two police officers in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, clearly the anti-policing movement would be having very different debates and discussions.  Now, in his death, many people righteously struggle to contextualize his motives or opportunistically use his actions for their own political reasons.

Not that probing Brinsley’s motives is entirely irrelevant–he shot a woman, possibly an ex-girlfriend, before the officers, for example– but the movement can hurt itself by participating in the posthumous quasi-legalistic media charade of “nailing down” his motives or state of mind.  (This activity already inculcates participants in the state’s judgmental logic of condemnation/ exoneration–echoing media character assassinations of murder by police victims like Brown and Martin.)   What if he was acting in concert with counter-intelligence forces? What if Mao’s little red book was in Brinsley’s pocket?  What if he was an active member of a local Cop Watch group?  What if he was a well-known local homeless man struggling with mental illness and addiction?

Initial activist reactions offer a range of responses: some grapple with the delicate issue of expressing compassion about the shooter’s life, death, and family; some timidly, or not so timidly, tiptoe around self-defense concepts and a deep understanding of the extreme nature of “revolutionary suicide”; some routinely denounce Brinsley’s actions–acting as guardians of the “real non-violent movement” against  “unstable violent outsiders”; some have decided that was a police action he got entangled in.  Then there’s those (new to the issue white activists, I am talking to you) who may have been active and supportive of the anti-police brutality movement, but will use this as an excuse to pull back.  (Controversial events function as a movement’s filtering process, losing people who are too challenged to keep fighting and were just waiting for a chance to fold anyway.)

If there’s anything I am reminded of by this event, it’s the power of social movements, and anti-racist struggles in particular.  For me, there is a connection between the cop murders and the movement.  Before you jump down my throat insisting that I am “feeding the cops’ ideology” by saying this–hear me out, please, and don’t take my statements out of context.  Since the drug war and mass incarceration/ deportation practices, many black and brown lives have been destroyed.  You don’t have to be a front lines long term activist to have strong opinions about policing and institutional racism in America, and feel hopeless in the face of it, too.  Frustration and anger is woven into the everyday fabric of people’s lives, and this includes individual consciousness, rhetoric, and self-understanding.  Add to this an endless flow of social media, news commentary, and live feeds of protests and demonstrations all over the U.S.  Some people may not be able to attend protests for various reasons (work, childcare, transportation, not living close to one, or a shy demeanor) but social media offers a strong way to feel emotionally connected to events since Ferguson began.

This access and ability to connect is both reason for the movement’s effectiveness and a reason to prepare for more controversial actions taken up by individuals in the name of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or against violent police generally. (And then there’s always police counterinsurgency activities…)  In a large, multifaceted, international movement such that the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!/ anti-policing movement has become, no one can ultimately judge who’s a protestor or a non-protestor, who cares or doesn’t care, about “the issues”. (Who has an authentic political consciousness gauge and where can I get one?) We can only state if we support certain actions as part of strategies our organizations or ideologies endorse.

I believe, from what I understand about Brinsley’s biographical facts and his presumed state of mind before the murders, he understood himself as a target of racist policing.  Go figure: young, black, and male in the U.S. A. But, As Dr. Johanna Fernandez wrote in CounterPunch, he could have also been acting in concert with authorities to execute a state plot to discredit the movement.  We will never know the facts here, and it shouldn’t deflect from our understanding of institutionalized racism, anyway.

Whether or not Brinsley acted alone or in concert with the state, his life had a truly tragic end.  If we admit understanding or empathy with people espousing extreme tactics — even cop murder — to express oppositional feelings, are we only throwing the police state, and its rabid NYPD, another reason for street level preemptive attack? (As if it ever needed a reason.  We’ve clearly seen over the decades, if the state doesn’t have a reason to justify aggression it’ll make one up.)  What about attempts to understand how social pressures like racist policing and mass incarceration damage people–like Ismaaiyl Brinsley? If we deny a careful consideration of the incalculable impacts movements can have, which include tapping into very real frustrations/ psychological dynamics leading individuals to act alone or as police agents, we sacrifice any potential unity than can be derived in a process of self-reflection and greater political awareness. Collective analysis may not lead to the unity of a shared position, but it could lead to an “agree to disagree” unity or a commitment to explore unpopular perspectives.  Something beyond simple condemnation or exultation is called for here.

It’s a daunting situation and the corporate state wins again if we play into the terms of engagement it always sets by the very nature of its power.  If Ismaaiyl Brinsley had survived and faced his accusers in court, we would see the movement split around “just” court procedures and outcomes.  Some would want him evaluated to qualify for mental health rehabilitation services, some would want him routinely punished, and some would call for his freedom, with an understanding his actions were committed under extreme duress due to the pernicious police state apparatus (a kind of “black rage” defense– if you will.)  From the looks of his social media posts, he knew he was probably going to die Saturday.

I shudder to think about what the state would do to Brinsley, and how the movement would split around his “just” punishment and desirable “rehabilitation.” (How are we going to rehabilitate psychotic racist police?  Any ideas?)  We would have to painfully endure a real trial of the Left’s anti-policing/ abolitionist positions. Instead, we are left to grapple with three dead bodies, many unanswered questions, and a big question mark about our ability to buoy the turbulence of building and sustaining a mass movement, focused specifically on the deep and festering wound of racist police violence, in the age of social media activism.

 
 

On Tuesday police Commissioner William Bratton said Ismaaiyl was carrying $100 bills in his pocket.
But he had no job or home.The Yeshiva World reported:

If we are going to posthumously speculate on Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s life, dare I suggest we use the very commitment to institutional analysis and human compassion that has served as a foundation of the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!/ anti-policing movement–and previous anti-racist movements– since its inception?  As the saying goes, let’s “keep our eyes on the prize.”

Michelle Renee Matisons, Ph.D. has  written for Counterpunch, Black Agenda Report, Z Magazine, Mint News Press, the NJ Decarcerator, Rethinking Schools, Alternet, and other publications. She can be reached at michrenee@gmail.com.

Anti-Police Organizing in the Wake of Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s Death » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Category:

CIA, conspiracy, counterpunch, hands up don't shoot, Manchurian candidate, mike brown, police brutality, police state, poverty, prison industrial complex, racism, USA, violence, white supremacy

STOP THE KILLING TRAIN!

STOP THE KILLING TRAIN

author unknown

Published 8 August 2014

The killing train transcends each separate war, inequity, and injustice, and ultimately, and this is, of course, the point – so must our opposition. The killing train is fueled by poverty, disease, starvation, indignity, death squads, racism, sexism, class division, bombs, and more bombs.

Many years back, moved by the first Gulf War, I wrote a piece with the above title, Stop the Killing Train. I am revisiting the same subject because, regrettably, the topic remains at the forefront even if the precipitating violence is different.

For the purpose of the exercise, please use your imagination.

Suppose a hypothetical god got tired of what we humans do to one another and decided that from January 1, 1991 onward all corpses unnaturally created anywhere in or by the hand of the “free world” would cease to decompose. Anyone dying for want of food or medicine, anyone hung or garroted to death, shot or beaten to death, raped or bombed to death, anyone dying unjustly and inhumanely for want of clean air or water or other necessities of life, would, as a corpse, persist without decomposing. The permanent corpse would then automatically enter a glass-walled cattle car attached to an ethereal train traveling monotonously across the U.S., state by state, never stopping. The hypothetical God would tirelessly display our achievements for us all to see.

One by one the corpses would divinely load onto the cattle cars. After every thousand corpses piled in a car, a new car would hitch up and begin filling in turn. Mile after mile the killing train would roll along, each corpse visible through the train’s transparent walls. We can suppose it fills at the rate of 200 new corpses a minute, or one new car every five minutes, day and night, without pause.

By the end of 1991, on its first birthday, the killing train would easily measure over 2,500 miles long. Traveling at 20 miles an hour it would take about five days to pass any intersection across the U.S. Imagine you are sitting at a railroad crossing. You watch this horror go past, 24 hours a day, for five full days. Every car contains 1,000 corpses, all clearly visible. This hypothetical God knows how to communicate so we can’t ignore reality.

By the year 2000, assuming no dramatic change in institutions and behavior, the train would stretch from coast to coast about seven times. It would take about six weeks from the time its engine passed the Statue of Liberty to when its caboose would go by. Would the God still wonder when pitiful, aspiring humanity would get the message?

By 2014 – you can safely just double the ugly statistics. Deaths accelerate, unless, of course, we had gotten the message. So, coast to coast it would stretch, about 14 times. Every corpse an indictment.

Think how a young child sometimes points to a picture in a book or magazine and asks for an explanation, “Tell me about a tree?” A car? A boat? Or a train? A big train? The killing train? Go ahead, try to answer that one. Perhaps that explains why this image isn’t, in fact, a common one on our TVs and in our never-ending streams of information.

Bad enough, way worse than bad enough, it could even get worse. Consider that climate change will before long start to wrack up even larger kill lists. But, of course, those dead would pile into the killing train too, since with only modest exceptions they too are preventable.

The killing train, in any event, no matter how each moribund commuter who need not have been on board got his or her ticket, is horrendous.

Imagine the lost opportunity and lost love. Imagine as well the network of negative influences that radiate from the unnecessary deaths displayed by the killing train stretching from coast to coast and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Consider the horrendous impact, not only on those on board, but on every person that any of those corpses ever loved or would have loved, fed or would have fed, taught or would have taught.

Who rides the killing train? 
Certainly citizens of the “Third World,” selling their organs for food, selling their babies to save their families, suffering disappearances and starvation. They live in Brazil, the Philippines, El Salvador, but also New York. They enter the killing train, every day. It isn’t a peace train. It isn’t a justice train. It isn’t a love train. It is a killing train. Its current most bloody loading platform: Gaza. But don’t forget those who starve and die of preventable diseases in the Third World and in the first world too. All are onboard.

Is the gigantic sprawling disgusting image exaggerated? 10 million kids die yearly for lack of basic medical aid that the U.S. could provide at almost no cost in countries whose economies Exxon and the Bank of America have looted. Preventable death fills the killing train. To the sane, it is mass murder. The grotesque image I offer is actually understated.

Bloated diseased bodies are victims of murder just as surely as bullet-riddled bodies tossed into rivers by death squads, or shrapnel shredded bodies prone in the piles of blasted hospitals and homes. Denying medicine by out of reach pricing or preventable shortages is no less criminal than denying medicine by blowing up pharmacies and demolishing hospitals is no less criminal than supplying torture racks, stealing resources, and paving roads with bomblets. Bombing electric power stations and pulverizing hospitals enlarges the train. Deaths by starvation and disease are no less unnatural than those by bomblet and bullet, and enlarge the train.   

Evolution has given humans the capacity to perceive, think, feel, and imagine. During war time—as now exists in so many places —if we get aroused to action we begin to see the whole train as it persists day in and day out. When this happens, what do we do about it? Do we become depressed? Cynical? Anguished? Cry? Daydream of Armageddon? Daydream of justice? Or do we hand out a leaflet?

Once we begin to see the killing train, how do we face the killing train? Part of me says these crimes are so grotesque, so inhumane, that the perpetrators deserve to die, now. A little tiny killing train for the killers and no more big killing train for everyone else. An eye for a million eyes. What other step makes more sense? Was this the hypothetical God’s plan?

But, of course, that’s not the way the world works. Yes, people give the orders. People wield the axes, withhold the food, pay the pitiful salaries, blow up the power stations, spew the garbage, lie, steal, cheat, obey – and produce corpses. But institutions create the pressures that mold the people.

When an institutional cancer spreads through the human patient, what kind of surgeon can cut it away? Is the imprint of accumulated repression so deep it can never be excised.

At first, becoming attuned to our country’s responsibility for the corpses stacked behind transparent cattle-car walls makes handing out leaflets, or writing essays, or arguing for peace with a co-worker, or urging a relative to think twice about paying taxes, or going to a demonstration, or sitting in, or doing civil disobedience, or even taking over a workplace, seem insignificant. But the fact is, these are the acts that the hypothetical God, tired of our behavior, would be calling for if she were to actually parade the “free world’s” corpses down our main streets in killing trains. These are the acts that can accumulate into a firestorm of informed protest that raises the cost of profiteering and domination, of war making and pollution so high that the institutions breeding such behavior start to buckle.   

The fact is, when fighting a behemoth, “You lose, you lose, you lose, and then you win.” Every loss, understood properly to learn its lessons, is part of the process that leads to transforming institutions so that there can be no people as vile as Hussein or Bush, as Netanyahu or Obama. No more “Good Germans” or “Good Americans.” No more incinerated Jews or decapitated, starved, poisoned, starved, bulleted Palestinians.   

War is invariably unjustly motivated. War is always horrendously harmful. War is an orchestrated atrocity that mandates our militant, unswerving opposition. But so too does exploitation, racism, sexism, the systematic deprivation of any one community at the hands of any other.

But even after the Gaza crimes of the little thug Israel and of its guardian angel the big thug, America, ends, the on-going U.S. war against “free world” people who it has consigned to ride the killing train will, if it continues, remain a enormous crime against humanity. The killing train transcends each separate war, inequity, and injustice, and ultimately, and this is, of course, the point – so must our opposition. The killing train is fueled by poverty, disease, starvation, indignity, death squads, racism, sexism, class division, bombs, and more bombs. The power plant of the death, destruction, and generalized deprivation is our basic institutions.

The institutions must become our target.

Category:

bombs, bombs deprivation, death, death squads, destruction, disease, Gaza, hospitals, institutions, Israel, killing, Obama, poverty, racism, schools, sexism, starvation, war, war crimes

"Venus Noire" ("Black Venus") Film & Review

“Venus Noire” 

(“Black Venus” – Controversial Hottentot Venus Film)

Part 1

Part 2

It’s been over a year since I saw Venus Noire (Black Venus) at the New York Film Festival in the fall of 2010, and it never received a stateside release; actually I’m not sure it got much of a release outside of the international film festival circuit and a few European territories.
So I’m betting most of you have never seen French/Tunisian filmmaker Abdel Kechiche’s problematic though worth-watching Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman, otherwise derogatorily known as the Hottentot Venus film, which starred newcomer Yahima Torres in the title role.
The subject matter certain isn’t one that will attract audiences to the theater en masse; and the fact that the film is almost 3 hours long, with subtitles, likely didn’t exactly make potentially interested American distributors salivate at the film’s box office potential.
But if you’re in Los Angeles during the month of February, and you’re at all interested in seeing the film, here’s your shot! It’s either now, or you wait for a stateside home video release (though it’s on DVD in parts of Europe and Canada; just not in the USA). 
But I’d recommend a theatrical viewing.

It’s a challenging work, and one that I’m sure will piss a lot of people off, not only because of its content, but also the manner in which it’s handled by the director. It’s just something you should see for yourselves.
I wrote a lengthy review of it last year, after I saw it; and, as I said in that write-up, I was left with conflicting thoughts on the film. Unfortunately, I never got to see it again, even though I wanted to. I’ll be at the PAFF this year, so I just might see it again on the big screen, if my schedule allows for it
In the meantime, below you’ll find my initial review, as well as a trailer for the film, a clip from it, and an interview with star Yahima Torress…

And finally here’s my 2010 review:
 So there I was waiting for the subway train after my screening of Venus Noire (Black Venus), and what did I see plastered almost all over one of those ubiquitous tunnel newsstands? Covers for various magazines, many unabashedly featuring the barely covered-up plump bottoms of predominantly black women in seductive poses – 2 dimensional images of voiceless bodies, objectified, exotified, envied, denigrated, and more; depending on the viewer.
And with that picture, Obvious Guy asks, so, really, has much changed in the 200 years since Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman found herself victim of the same kind of mixed gaze? Of course, there’s the perceived independence, and even false sense of power and control some might claim those in the present-day wield over their spectators (an illusory brand of feminism as I’ve heard others suggest), and they aren’t introduced in cages by a man carrying a whip (well, actually, some are), and Saartjie’s experiences were more direct and literal; but, frankly, the similarities can’t be ignored. I even considered that Saartjie’s torment was strictly race-based, and a result of its time; but I was able to dismiss that notion in realizing that there still certainly exists a racial “otherness” that precedes and influences the various gazes I mentioned above. For example, I still (unfortunately) hear stories about enthralled white women asking black women if they can touch their hair, ignorant of the sensation the request itself provokes.
The film opens in 1815, France, some time after Saartjie’s death, as a French academic, addressing what look like his peers, with a physical mold of Saartjie’s body on display, makes his scientific and historic case for why her “species” is inferior to theirs. The lengthy opening lecture is met with applause from his audience of all white men. The matter-of-fact nature of the entire sequence is revelatory in that it shows just how ignorant, yet assured of themselves these leaders of the world were, and helps explain their callous treatment of their perceived inferiors – a trend that continued long after they themselves perished.
Following that opening sequence, we travel back in time, 5 years, to 1810, London, some time after Baartman had been taken from Cape Town, with promises of wealth, via exhibition, in Europe. And so the tragic tale of the “freak show attraction” known as the Hottentot Venus began…
Like those women on the magazine covers, Saartjie is mostly mute throughout the film, her body language representative of her thoughts, and clearly, she isn’t exactly cherishing the spectacle that’s being made of her physical self – much of it some will find difficult to watch, as it should be. Writer/director Abdellatif Kechichemakes sure of that, with numerous scenes running quite lengthy – possibly 10 minutes or more in some cases.
Given the style in which the film is made, it felt almost like a documentary. Kechiche does little to distract from the narrative; the performances from the entire cast are realistic (you believe them), including Yahima Torres(as Baartman), Andre Jacobs, Olivier Gourmet, Elina Lowensohn, Francois Marthouret, Michel Gionti, andJean-Christophe Bouvet; there’s virtually no soundtrack (any music heard occurs naturally within the scene); the mostly hand-held camera moves but, oddly, you forget that it’s there – partly due to the stark nature of the physical settings, and also of the subject matter itself; you may feel guilty enough to look away, but you can’t.
In reading some early reviews of the film before I saw it, I expected to be turned off by what some seemed to suggest would be gratuitous on the part of the director. But I didn’t feel what they felt, and I do wonder if the reactions to Venus Noire will be similar to a film like Precious (a story about a character whose physical self was also arguably a character in its own right), in that they will be separated along color lines. I could certainly make sense of a white film critic being made uncomfortable by the inhumane treatment Saartjie endured; her captors are white. And as I’ve already suggested, one can’t help but see connections to the present-day race- and sex-based prejudices that still exist. There’s a reason (amongst many) that films that center on whites-as-saviors-of-“others” continue to be produced. They like to see themselves in that light. Rarely do we see stories told that detail the inhumanities whites have dished out intently and indiscriminately on the darker-skinned “others” across the world, without retribution. In a way, it’s like a revision of history.
But no one comes to save Saartjie here; she lives a brutal life, and dies just as punishingly, with the film not necessarily making it clear who we are supposed to point our fingers to, for blame.
Although, I felt numb to it all, and I wonder if my reaction would mirror those of other people of African descent. By most accounts, I should have been appalled, disgusted, and completely turned off by Kechiche’s lengthy scenes showing all the horror that Saartjie endured before her early death. But, little of it actually disturbed me.
In thinking about it further, I realized that it wasn’t necessarily because the filmmaker had failed in creating moments within the film that would elicit specific reactions out of me (although, who am I to say what the filmmaker intended); I felt numb because, again, as I eluded to above, we have and still are so bombarded with similar parades of images of women’s bodies (specifically black women’s bodies), accentuating specific attributes, whether still or moving, that what I saw on screen, as revolting as it was, seemed almost, dare I say, “ordinary” to me.
From music videos, to magazines… however, less obvious and even deceptive are those studies, surveys, investigations into the so-called black experience that suggest an “otherness;” different, and thus must be observed and studied like monkeys in a cage. Whether it’s CNN’s redundant, surface “Black In America” series, the recent article about how black people use Twitter, or more direct, scientist claims that people of African descent are less intelligent than whites, and so on.
I’ve rallied against most of these ideas and occurrences on this blog and elsewhere, and will continue to do so. However, the point here is that this long-standing, continuous assault on our senses, all suggesting an inferiority as the basis for marginalization of a group of people, have had an effect on how I react to similar instances (real or fictional). Numb – which can be a dangerous place to be, because it could lead to a lessened desire to act against like injustices.
Saartjie doesn’t speak very much in the film, as I already stated; usually only when spoken to; we don’t really get a sense for how she feels. Certainly, as I said above, her body language leaves little doubt that this isn’t the kind of life she thought she would be leading, or that was promised to her by the man who brought her to Europe (he lied, telling her and her slave owner that she’d essentially be a song and dance act, not the circus freak show he would eventually convince her to be); but I would have liked to hear her wrestle with her predicament; here she is, seemingly a willing (coerced) participant in an act, sharing in the benefits afforded by the booty (no pun intended), though unequally, with her captors; but struggling to come to terms with the truth of who (or rather what) she is to the ignorant, yet curious and enchanted audience that pays to watch her perform. To contemporize it, think of the strippers who are “trapped” by the money they earn used to feed, house and clothe themselves, but who struggle with the impact the work they do has on their lives, and the perception others have of them. Not exactly the same thing as what Saatjie endured, but I’m trying to make sense of what I felt was one of the film’s notable deficiencies. We see Saartjie through the eyes of her captors and the audiences that pay to see her – as a lottery ticket, and a spectacle respectively – but we get few glimpses into the mind of the woman that the body belongs to.
From the film, we know she despised her treatment, she’s outright defiant in moments, and the filmmaker does attempt to humanize her, giving her some 3-dimensionality; and I never once felt like he was being exploitative; but, as is, it’s still questionable just how much control she really had over her predicament (although we know that she was a slave). In the film, she remains something of a mystery, and I can’t say whether that was all intentional on the filmmaker’s part, as, I’d guess, he tried to piece together a personality based on limited availability of information, written by others about her.
There’s also that saying about the the presence of mental shackles even in the absence of tangible ones.
Director Kechiche’s film isn’t a lecture on the matters it documents. Each scene is presented “as is,” without any obvious commentary, you could say. It’s neither what I’d describe as a call to action. You are simply witness to an ugly injustice, an accomplice even, and your reaction to it is just that… your reaction, based on your own life experiences, which will also determine what you choose to do about whatever it is you felt, assuming you’re inspired to act in any way.
Don’t go into this looking for a biopic of Baartman, as you will be disappointed. It’s more a document of a very specific part of her life, that which she’s most known for. And despite the title of the film, she instead feels like one of several equal players in this tragedy, instead of its star center. There’s also what I’d call a disconnect between the filmmaker and the material. Like I said, he doesn’t necessarily take sides. In fact, the film played out more like a series of filmed news reports.
It does take a few creative liberties, however, the script remains fairly close to the true story of Saartjie Baartman. At almost 3 hours in length, some editing could have been done to trim it a bit, without losing its substance; and that running time makes it a tough sell for audiences outside of the expected art-house crowd – especially here in the USA.
Although, I certainly hope it does receive a wide enough release. I’m curious about global reactions to the film. I suspect most aren’t at all familiar with Saartjie Baartman’s story, or are even aware of the derogatory “Hottentot Venus.” In a way, I actually envy those who’ll be seeing the film ignorant of the real-life story it’s based on. Most importantly, it means that one is less likely to spend time comparing the film’s details to what they know of the historic figure the characterization is inspired by. I can only imagine what their reactions would be, but I expect sharply contrasting sets of opinions.
I’m left with conflicting thoughts on the film, and I wasn’t even sure how I would review the film. I feel like I could write volumes on the experience I  had watching it. But maybe that’s all a good thing. I think a second viewing might be helpful in clarifying my thoughts. If anything, it’s not a film one walks out of the theater and immediately forgets. Other reviews I’ve read thus far have expressed concern about the film being hard to watch – not because it’s a bad film, but due to the contemptible scenarios Baartman lived through as explicitly documented in the film. As I’ve said before, the subject matter is already controversial enough, that any film made about Baartman will find it impossible to escape controversy. Kechiche’s handling of it is obviously crucial, and I’d say he handles it better than I expected. It certainly should inspire further discussion, especially with regards to contemporary correlations.

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Abdel Kechiche, Baartman, black, buttocks, documentary, exploitative, film, France, Hottentot, racism, Saartjie, Sarah, shackles, Venus, white supremacy, Yahima Torres