According to polls, only about 6 percent of Americans are following with any close attention the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. But that’s not stopping the media fascination on both sides of the Atlantic with American’s supposed fascination with Britain’s royals.
“Royal wedding reminds us why we tossed Brits,” ran one letter to a local paper recently. That exorbitant $80 million spent on a medieval style ritual in time of 21st century austerity. It’s shameful. It’s old world. It’s just what Americans fought a revolutionary war to throw off.
And then there are the folks like Rupert Cornwall at the UK Independent who argue hat people in the US love British royals precisely because they don’t have their own real thing. Gary Younge at the Nation noted that even his liberal friends wanted to know what he, a British citizen, thought of the prince marrying a “commoner.” Please.
The only serious and in fact actually quite insidious part about this is that it reinscribes the notion that the US has no class.
Really? When the top one percent of wealthiest Americans own 34 percent of the country’s wealth and enjoyed 80 percent of the total increase in wealth here between 1980 and 2005? No class?
As for ruling class? In the UK the commoners keep state royals on welfare. Here we do the same with our corprations. Billions in tax dollars keep them afloat and keep CEOs in mansions. Why not just give them palaces? At least we could keep them open for tours.
Since the Supreme Court has given corporations free speech rights and personhood — how about marriage equality next?
Then, we could string up Bunting flags for the next monopolisitic coupling… At the Comcast and NBC nuptials we’d all throw money while they stroll down the aisle. And — with a nod to Jim Hightower — instead of Aristocrats in coats of arms, the paid off politicains would wear their logos on their lapels. At least then we’d know who owns whom.
The trinkets from a corporate marrriage might be dreary. And the offspring, who can say? But at least we’d get a day off and one hell of a party. Plus we’d move out of denial. The more I think about it the more I like it. Monarchies or Megacorps? Why not declare them royal?
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv and editor of At The Tea Party, out now from OR Books. GRITtv broadcasts weekdays on DISH Network and DIRECTv, on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter and be our friend on As the media scrambled to cover the extraordinary uprising at the Tucson Unified School District board meeting last night, where hundreds of students and community members turned out in protest and nine Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies (MAS) students from the UNIDOS group chained themselves to the board members chairs to protest a controversial resolution that would have terminated their acclaimed program’s core curriculum accreditation, few noted that UNIDOS actually presented a counter resolution. Created in response to H.B. 2281, the controversial ban on Ethnic Studies throughout the state of Arizona, U.N.I.D.O.S. (United Non-discriminatory Individuals Demanding Our Studies) is a new Tucson youth coalition of students from local high schools, alumni and community members, according to alumni and Pima College student Leilani Clark, citing the group’s mission statement, “who formed in response of the growing attacks on education and culture by the Arizona legislature. As Ethnic Studies students we envision a society based on the values of respect, equality, justice, diversity and equitable education for all. We want an educational system, not just in Arizona, but beyond, where many cultures fit in.” In interviews with two UNIDOS activists last week, Rincon High School MAS student Mayra Feliciano declared: “The witch hunt has got to stop.” Here’s the UNIDOS Ten Point Resolution on Ethnic Studies: “We Want an Educational System Where Many Cultures Fit.” 1. WE WANT OUR ETHNIC STUDIES CLASSES TO CONTINUE TO MEET CORE SOCIAL SCIENCE REQUIREMENTS. 4. WE WANT NO SCHOOL TURN-AROUNDS, NO SCHOOL CLOSURES AND FULL SUPPORT FOR RINCON HIGH AND PALO VERDE HIGH SCHOOL COMMUNITIES. 9. WE WANT ATTORNEY GENERAL TOM HORNE, STATE SUPERINTENDENT JOHN HUPPENTHAL AND GOVERNOR JAN BREWER IMMEDIATELY REMOVED FROM POWER. 10. WE WANT LOCAL CONTROL OF OUR EDUCATION.
Ethnic Studies classes are meant to help students with core class credit, increase student interest in education and give us a chance to learn about not only our own culture, but others as well. Turning our Ethnic Studies classes into elective courses is a slow death sentence to the department for several reasons. First, students are required to take a high number of core requirements in order to graduate – many of the students simply would not have the time within their academic schedules to take both Literature and Mexican-American Literature. Secondly, this move is basically making Ethnic Studies “second class” classes; why should we say to our students that studying Herman Melville counts as core requirement but reading Gloria Anzaldua does not? The school board and the State are completely undermining the value of our history and culture. We say NO to downgrading our Ethnic Studies classes into electives! Our classes must remain core courses!
2. WE WANT THE REAPEAL OF HB 2281.
The wave of anti-Mexican, anti-migrant sentiment in the U.S. is growing. In the Arizona legislature, racism and xenophobia is out of control. In the schools, serious educational inequities are affecting students of color. By making it hard for us to access education and our cultural history, they intend to keep us down us an un-educated, second-class status group that doesn’t know its roots and is used as cheap labor or is incarcerated in the prison system. HB 2281 is only the latest example of a long history of discrimination. Repeal HB 2281 NOW!
3. WE WANT ETHNIC STUDIES PROGRAMS TO EXPAND EVERYWHERE: FROM K-12 TO UNIVERSITY.
The success of this program needs to expand to all school districts, statewide and nationwide. According to 10 years of data compiled by the Mexican American Studies Advisory Committee, 97.5% of students that take these classes graduate high school and 70% will seek out education beyond the high school level. So why would the State of Arizona and TUSD want to eliminate a program that is a solution to the educational crisis Latinos are facing? Do they want us to fail? You would think that because of its success they would want to EXPAND the program. We believe every student in America should have access to Ethnic Studies programs. We want Ethnic Studies to expand throughout all of Arizona and all across the country grades K-12 to all universities!
So politicians in Arizona can fundraise millions of dollars to defend racist legislation in the courts, yet they can’t find money for our books or to keep our schools open? There is no reason why any schools should close. Why is it that prison beds are increasing, while schools are closing? Why are our teachers at Rincon and Palo Verde High Schools fired and disrespected? We want no school turn-arounds, no school closures, and complete support for Rincon and Palo Verde High Schools!
5. WE WANT A TUSD GOVERNING BOARD THAT IS ACCOUNTABLE AND WILL STAND UP FOR ALL STUDENTS.
The purpose of a governing school board is to make decisions benefitting students and communities and promote educational opportunities for all. We need an accountable and democratic school board that will listen to students and community. We need strong-willed board members that will defend the community against any and all racist attacks. Right now, we are under serious attack from the Arizona legislature and State Superintendent. Yet the TUSD board as a whole is FAILING to defend us and is in fact considering a vote against us. The school board and superintendent are subject to the will of the people. If they can turn-around our schools, we should have the right to turn-around the board. We want an educational system that truly values students, teachers, community, democracy and ethnic studies! We want a governing board that is accountable to us and stands up for all students!
6. WE WANT AN EQUITABLE EDUCATION FOR ALL.
There are serious problems in the educational system when a high number of Latin@s drop out or are pushed out of our schools. The Pew Hispanic Center recently released a study based on newly released U.S. Census data showing that Latin@ dropout rates are higher than other ethnicities. Of Latin@ adults 20 and over in the United States, 41% do not have regular high school diplomas. Arizona has one of the highest high school dropout rates in the nation. Latin@ students are severely segregated and neglected in the schools. Ethnic Studies is one solution to the deep educational inequities negatively affecting students of color in our Arizona schools. This is why Ethnic Studies must stay. We demand equitable education for ALL students!
7. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO ALL RACIST, ANTI-MIGRANT, ANTI-INDIGENOUS POLICIES.
In April 2010, a group of UN human rights experts declared their serious concern over laws recently enacted by the state of Arizona, that affect people of color, indigenous people and migrants, subjecting them to discriminatory treatment. This is what they said about SB 1070 and HB 2281: “a disturbing pattern of legislative activity hostile to ethnic minorities and immigrants has been established with the adoption of an immigration law that may allow for police action targeting individuals on the basis of their perceived ethnic origin, and a law that suppresses school programs featuring the histories and cultures of ethnic minorities.” We want an immediate end to white supremacy, anti-migrant, anti-indigenous policies!
8. WE WANT FULL COMPLIANCE WITH OUR CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS.
The ban on Ethnic Studies is unconstitutional, dehumanizing and is in violation of our human rights. According to Article 31 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, we have “the right to maintain, control, protect and develop [our] cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions.” Basically, Ethnic Studies is a human right. So TUSD, the State Board of Education and the State of Arizona must act in accordance to international human rights law because Ethnic Studies is a human right!
It is clear that these so called leaders of our state do not represent us. Tom Horne, John Huppenthal and Jan Brewer are here to maintain power and control among the rich, while they throw our people under the bus. Politicians, whether Republican or Democrat, that do things to attack or oppress any group must be taken out of their positions. No policy or politician should ever harm a group of people. We condemn Tom Horne for introducing the ban on Ethnic Studies, John Huppenthal for vowing to continue the attack on Ethnic Studies and Jan Brewer for signing racist legislation. They themselves are in violation of HB 2281 because Horne, Huppenthal and Brewer are promoting resentment and hatred towards other races—Latino/Indigenous peoples. According to the U.S. Declaration of Independence, “To secure these rights [of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], governments are instituted among men [and women], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government…” We demand for their immediate removal from power!
As local tax payers in the community, we should have the right to control our education since we help fund it. Why are we getting told how our education should look like by Phoenix and Tucson politicians that don’t even live in our communities? We, the community of students, parents, and community members, should have direct decision-making power over the decisions that affect our education. We want local control of our education!
Written by Eleanor Hinton Hoytt for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.
This article is second in a series published in partnership with Choice USA in an effort to highlight the importance of inter-generational dialogue within the reproductive justice movement and to uncover ways to work together across generations in order to sustain and thrive. Read the first by Andrew Jenkins here.
Over the past year, I’ve been in many conversations about the future of the pro-choice movement—conversations that have raised questions about the absence of passionate, angry young feminists today who will take our place as heads of pro-choice organizations tomorrow. These conversations and my recent participation in the Stand Up for Women Rally against defunding Title X and Planned Parenthood reminded me of early experiences about finding my place in a budding feminist movement in the South.
From my time a college student in the South at the height of the civil rights movement to the early 1980s, when the National Black Women’s Health Project was started, there were few places for young, angry Black women. I witnessed many young Black women throughout our communities who were faced with unintended pregnancies and grappled with their one option, feeling that they had no choice. With no job, no money and paralyzing fear – many young women made the decision to have a back alley abortion. Admitting their “sin,” returning home to disgraced parents, becoming a wife at their own “shotgun” wedding, and putting their dreams on hold to take care of an unwelcomed baby and an unwanted husband were not options.
It was these events that led me to step from behind the shadows during a time when many felt women were at their best when they were mute. I declared myself a Black feminist and became embroiled in one of the biggest rights movements in our nation’s history. … Read more
Has Wisconsin finally come to Arizona?
In an extraordinary uprising at the Tucson Unified School District board meeting tonight, Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies (MAS) students chained themselves to the board members chairs and derailed the introduction of a controversial resolution that would have terminated their acclaimed program’s core curriculum accreditation.
Popular Tucson blogger and activist David Abie Morales calls it a “field trip for civics and democracy in action.”
“Nobody was listening to us, especially the board,” said MAS high school student and UNIDOS activist Lisette Cota. “We were fed up. It may have been drastic but the only way was to chain ourselves to the boards’ chairs.”
While hundreds of supporters packed the district meeting room in a celebratory fashion, nine MAS students and UNIDOS activists defied security officers and literally took over the board members’ places minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin.
“I’m very moved by their passion and commitment to maintain these courses and curriculum,” said MAS teacher Sally Rusk. “They’re brilliant. This is not a one-time event. It looks like they’re not going to stop until they have an impact on this decision.”
TUSD Superintendent John Pedicone canceled the board meeting, but students have vowed to return to the district office until TUSD board president Mark Stegemen withdraws his proposed resolution, which has brought stark divisions in the community.
Over the past two years, the Ethnic Studies Program in Tucson has been subjected to a controversial and costly witch hunt by Attorney General Tom Horne.
“We’ll keep coming back, with twice as many people next time, each time,” added Cota. “We’re not going to let this happen. We’re going to make it impossible for them to vote.”
Through the evening, the students and their community supporters chanted: “Our education is under attack, what do we do? Fight back!”
video courtesy of Javier Gonzalez
“Just like the people of Wisconsin took a stand and said ‘enough is enough’, the youth of Tucson are standing up and letting it be known that they are fed up with these attacks on their education and on their future. They have been under relentless assault by Tom Horne, John Huppenthal, and by the Arizona State Legislature, and they have had enough,” said Sal Baldenegro, Jr., a TUSD Ethnic Studies alum and member of the Southern Arizona Unity Coalition. “As Arizonans, we absolutely must stand behind our youth and say ‘enough is enough’ with these attacks on their education. There has never been a more critical time to stand behind our children as they fight for their rights and for their futures.”
Tucson resident and education activist Mohur Sidhwa, who attended the meeting, added: “A wonderful show of civic engagement on the part of the students. It gives me hope for the next generation.”
photos courtesy of Javier Gonzalez
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters late last week that he thinks we may turn the corner at the end of this year in Afghanistan. Again. Turning the corner, or the tide, or the momentum, or what have you, has become a semi-annual ritual in the failing U.S. war in Afghanistan. While all these turned corners make for great soundbites, the reality is that we’re just turning in circles in Afghanistan.
Here’s what Gates said:
“We have driven the Taliban out of areas they have controlled for years, including their heartland. They clearly intend to try and take that back. If we can prevent them this year from retaking the areas that we have taken away from them and we can continue to expand the security bubble, I think it’s possible that by the end of this year we will have turned a corner, just because of the Taliban being driven out and, more importantly, kept out.”
First of all, let’s not fail to notice that this is the latest a continual string of promises about “turning a corner.” Joshua Foust and Win Without War over the past months have compiled fairly extensive lists of the embarrassment of “turned corners” claimed by U.S. officials. Here’s Foust’s list, just to give you an idea:
- February 20, 2010: “Western officials believe that a turning point has been reached in the war against the Taliban, with a series of breakthroughs suggesting that the insurgents are on the back foot for the first time since their resurgence four years ago.”
- August 31, 2009: “Monday marks the end of August, a month with both good and bad news out of Afghanistan — and the approach of a key turning point.”
- February 6, 2008: “But the ties that bind NATO are fraying badly – and publicly – over just how much each member state wants to commit to turning Afghanistan around. ‘It’s starting to get to a turning point about what is this alliance about,’ says Michael Williams, director of the transatlan- tic program at the Royal United Services Institute in London.”
- July 23, 2007: “Taken together these may reflect a turning point in how the war in Afghanistan is to be waged.”
- September 12, 2006: “The Afghan front is at a critical turning point that imperils many of the hard-fought successes of the early phase of the conflict and the prospects for snaring bin Laden.”
- September 22, 2005: “Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s foreign minister, called the recent parliamentary elections ‘a major turning point’ on his country’s path to democracy.”
- January 27, 2004: “A statement from U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad called the enactment of the constitution a ‘turning point for the Afghan nation.’”
- February 26, 2003: “The growing aggressiveness by guerrillas is a relief for US forces, who greet the possibility of a real engagement with the Taliban as a possible turning point in the war. ‘We want them to attack us, so we can engage them and destroy them,’ says one Special Forces soldier from the US firebase at Spin Boldak, who took part in the initial firefight that led to Operation Mongoose.
- December 2, 2002: “But in ‘Bush at War’ there’s a glaring omission. Woodward misses the turning point in the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al Qaeda forces. It’s as though the most important scene had been left out of a movie, say, where Clark Kent turns into Superman.”
It’s almost a yearly tradition for some ebullient U.S. official to come to some microphone and claim we’re ready to hang a left or a right onto the road to glorious victory. It’s silly, and it insults our intelligence.
Gates’ comments imply a growing level of security in Afghanistan. That is a patent falsehood.
- Insurgent attacks are at an all-time high in Afghanistan. March 2011 saw 68 percent more insurgent-initiated attacks than March 2010.
- In fact, every March since at least 2006 has been more violent than the last. The same is true for every February, and it looks like attacks are on track to make that true for every April as well, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office’s (ANSO) figures.
- Looking at the entire first quarter of the year, insurgent attacks have skyrocketed by a horrendous 51 percent compared to the prior year. ANSO reports that in the first quarter of this year, insurgent attacks averaged “35 per day, surpassing even the August 2009 summer peak during Presidenial elections.”
- The number of insurgent-initiated attacks in the first quarter of 2011 was more than twice the level of insurgent-initiated attacks in the first quarter of 2009, when President Obama took office and started launching his repeated escalations of the military campaign. That strategy has obviously failed.
Rolling into places like Marjah with lots of troops and TV cameras hasn’t done a thing to increase security nation-wide for Afghans or blunt the growth in insurgent-initiated attacks. We’re not “turning a corner.” We’re turning in circles. It’s time to make a U-turn and get those troops home.
If you’re fed up with a war that’s making us less safe and that’s not worth the cost, join Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook and Twitter, and share our latest video with your friends.
Gas prices have been edging up since February, reaching $4 a gallon this Easter, and Republicans are gearing up to make a stink about it. To blame Democrats, that is, for setting things up this way.
Blaming green energy initiatives for driving up prices, House Republicans are planning to hold hearings on a slurry of bills aimed at expanding domestic oil production in response to high gasoline prices. Even the President admits gas prices effect his standing in the polls.
But it should be easy enough to fight back. While the five biggest oil companies report historically high profit earnings, the same GOP that would slash juice programs for poor kids in school stands firm for federal subsidies for big oil.
It’s enough to make your head spin. But then again, so is this country’s entire relationship with big oil.
Like a marriage from hell. Americans keep getting beaten up environmentally, politically and at the pump. And even as we’re beaten up, we shell out: in subsidies, tax breaks, and troops sent around the world to die and kill in defense of the interests of Big Oil.
While Americans keep paying; Big Oil keeps on profiting. The top five companies together made a greasy trillion dollars profit over the last decade. That’s Trillion with a T. Yet Republican budgets would lay off the regulators even as they lay on the corporate welfare.
House Republicans marked the anniversary of the BP oil spill by voting unanimously FOR extending oil subsidies again this year.
It’ll come as no surprise that for its first round of political contributions for the 2012 cycle, BP handed out a total $29,000 and it went almost entirely to House Republican leaders.
The President’s response so far has been to initiate a task force to investigate illegal commodities trading. But as Public Citizen reports, it’s not the illegal but the legal speculation that’s most to blame.
And progressive Democrats offer the President a far stronger way to go. Tax dirty energy companies, end corporate welfare, and impose a tax on commodities trading. Instead of getting on the defensive and easing up on drilling the White House should ask Senator Bernie Sanders about his end-to-subsidies bill.
The President needs to take a moral stand against Big Oil for all our sakes, before Drill Baby Drill becomes Gouge Us Baby One More Time. It seems that Reverend Wright was not enough. The Right is trying to generate another Obama “racist” Pastor scandal as a lead into the 2012 election. Conservative talk radio website WRNO’s piece, “Obama’s Church Choice for Easter Based on Race” is telling not because of how it plays to white Conservatives’ fears of America’s first Black President. Likewise, it is not shocking that the New Right hate President Obama because they demonstrate that ugliness at every opportunity. Rather, what is insightful here is that the paranoid imagination of the Tea Party GOP holds no pretenses of internal consistency in their criticism of the President. The end goal of destroying the President much be reached at any and all costs–style, wit, and intelligence in presentation be damned. [An introductory question: Riddle me this. So Barack Obama is a closet Muslim not born in this country, but he goes to racist Black Christian Churches? Please help me understand.] Let’s play the annotation game and expose the Tea Party GOP’s nuttery as channeled by WRNO. My comments follow in bracketed italics. **** Obama’s Church Choice for Easter Based on Race It may sound a little callous and abrasive to even be suspicious of Obama’s choice of churches for Easter Sunday 2011, but given the climate of the media bias so overwhelmingly in favor of casting Obama in the best light possible, the regular media professionals can’t be trusted to actually do some basic reporting. [Note the early wink to the myth of the liberal media that is embraced by Conservatives. This is a great deflection because it immediately establishes an observation that can be easily disproved as an indisputable fact, i.e. there is no liberal media: A corporate media dominates the 4th estate. By starting with this lie, Conservatives are free to transmute Right-wing opinion based news, i.e. Fox, into fact based journalism.] Shiloh Baptist Church was that it was founded by freed slaves during the Civil War. There was no mention that this was the first Presidential visit to Shiloh, nor any mention that this inaugural visit could be more than a coincidence. [A good dog whistle is deployed here. God forbid that a Black man would dare to go to a church founded by Americans seeking their freedom in an era of overt and violent white supremacy. I thought that Conservatives would run to this history as they channel a childish version of the GOP as "the Party of Lincoln." Instead, and especially when it relates to the first Black president, Conservative pundits abandon their own principles (to the degree they possess any) to take a specious political shot. Because Obama dared to attend a church founded by Americans who took their freedom and demanded that this country live up to its democratic potential, he is slurred as somehow being too "pro-black" and thus is by definition "anti-white."] Was there no mention that this is a predominately black church because the media didn’t want the American people to know that our President chooses his church based on race? I’m reticent to openly guess at the media’s intentions, but when flattering facts are reported and unflattering facts are omitted, we have no choice but to fill in the blanks. [Sunday is the most segregated day of the week in this country. White folks go to one set of churches. Black and brown folks go to others. That having been said, the idea that President Barack Obama chooses a church based on its racial composition is a glaring example of the normativity of whiteness and the blinding glare that is White privilege. So White Presidents can go to any church, however uniform in their composition, and that choice goes uncommented upon. Why? Because whiteness allows white folks to make choices free of the calculus or stigma that is race making in practice. This is the ultimate privilege of whiteness in America, and one that Obama as a black man can never access.] It’s understandable that the President hasn’t been too eager to jump back into church life given that the one and only church our President has ever joined in his life is one of the biggest political sandbags he carried through the 2008 campaign. [Naked signaling to Reverend Wright, a human noose that the Right literally tried to hang around then candidate Obama's neck. Also, this passage hints at the erroneous belief, and once more to whiteness as normality, that White folks' churches are imagined by many as being spaces free of politics. Insert fingers into mouth and induce vomiting.] One has to dig into the blog notes from various reporters to piece together the content from the sermon. Aside from the First Couple being honored guests, Pastor Wallace Charles Smith also announces that his 4 week old grandson is attending church for the first time, and a pool reporter noted an interesting perspective on the infant… Pastor Smith talked about how his baby grandson’s gurgling is actually “talking” because he is saying ‘I am here … they tried to write me off as 3/5 a person in the Constitution, but I am here right now … and is saying I am not going to let anybody from stopping me from being what God wants me to be.’” The pastor hears American institutional racism in a baby’s gurgle? Do most people with infants hear Constitutional bigotry in their baby’s gibberish? Did any mention of the 3/5 clause or racism in general make it into the Easter service you attended? Is this pastor’s amazing leap from a baby bark to white oppression another coincidence to add to the list, or has he established a pattern of race baiting and white bashing in the past? [These folks don't have a sense of humor or irony. Once more to the power of the colorline to limit the White Conservative soul's ability to empathize across divides of race and to accept that their life experiences and perspectives may not be that of others. This is typical of the Conservative political personality type. Nevertheless, it is still jarring to see it so nakedly displayed. Black folks are a Blues People. We can't run away from our history, because blackness is politicized in the womb. And yes, there is something prophetic and triumphant about the thought of a black child in the year 2011 as heir to a triumphant lineage of survival and success. Perhaps some possessed of Whiteness don't get that fact. Just as when Conservatives threw a collective fit when Michelle Obama dared to suggest that America has done people of color wrong for centuries, and thus the election of her husband allowed for a new feeling of pride, the WRNO hit piece mines the fool's gold of symbolic racism to inspire their mouthbreathing racially resentful audience (see the attached comments on the website if you want to see the political scatology the contemporary Right wallows in). Blacks folks (and other people of color to varying degrees) are perpetual outsiders in Conservatism's conception(s) of what it means to be American. As enshrined for centuries in law or more recently in Palin's gutteral and shrill war cries of "Real America," to be White is to be a full and equal member of the polity.] This is in fact another pastor who sees racism around every corner, preaches white hatred, and equates talk radio with the Klan, specifically mentioning Rush. [Ah the joys of white victimology and white oppression. It is a new/old day in American again.So, is this the same Rush Limbaugh who describes Barack Obama's supporters as savages and walking human debris? Or says that Liberals and those others who voted for Barack Obama actually did so because they wanted to create an America in which white people shine the shoes of black people? Is this the same Right-wing talk radio that routinely offers Eliminationist rhetoric where liberals and those not sufficiently Conservative are to be killed, possessed of a mental illness, and ought to be expunged from the body politic by any means necessary? No connection to the spirit and ethic of white bigotry and violence is present here. Nope. Nothing to see here. Move along.] While this pastor is a little less flamboyant than Jeremiah Wright in both tone and wardrobe, the evidence is in: Obama prefers and actively seeks out these churches, race is our President’s primary motivation on a variety of decisions, and the media will actively provide cover for minority racists as long as it fits their narrative. [Damn minority racists they are everywhere, hurting good white folks and limiting their life chances! Never forget, black churches are sites of conspiracy making and strange religious practices where white folks are burned in effigy and America is routinely besmirched by ingrates who should be happy the slave ship dropped them off in the United States. Thus, we need a secret video to reveal these hidden truths of black political malfeasance and treason. Why? Because President Obama is a race obsessed, "Traitor in Chief" who hates white people, wants to oppress them, and is pathologically attracted to these cult like hives of anti-white scum and villainy. Once more, the Right signals to a basic premise: the White Racial Frame cannot accept that a black man is President.This is doubly ironic given that Obama is both remarkably race neutral and hyper-vigilant in being a President who happens to be black and not America's first black President. Sadly, he cannot win for losing. If Obama does not talk about race the Left and the Black pundit classes skewer him. When he wakes up in the morning the White Tea Party GOP Fox News echo chamber condemns him for being black and having the nerve to breath air. Dude can't win for losing.]
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv and editor of At The Tea Party, out now from OR Books. GRITtv broadcasts weekdays on DISH Network and DIRECTv, on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter and be our friend on
No great research team was needed to uncover what comes next. The fact that a YouTube search immediately grants the answer only underscores how astronomically inept/lazy/biased the media can be.
What would happen if you pared your life down to the essentials?
It’s been a while since my last blog post. Truth be told, I’ve been frozen like a deer in headlights. It felt like everything there was to say about personal finance had already been covered in the national media thanks to CNN, CNBC, The New York Times, etc. I wasn’t sure I had anything left in me that could help you.
And then I royally screwed up.
I was supposed to do a half hour LIVE radio interview one Friday night at 9pm EST. The morning of the interview I emailed the show host to confirm the dial-in. Some time in the afternoon we exchanged emails to further clarify the topics we’d be discussing on the show. That night I came home and…. completely forgot to dial in to the LIVE radio show. We’d been planning the interview for over a month. It was for a show whose audience I felt passionate about helping. I adored the show host. And I just completely forgot. It was as if a circuit breaker just flipped in my head.
While mortified by my behavior, in retrospect it was a huge wake up call. I had been packing my days so tightly with work, my brain was literally overloaded and had shut down. I was burned out.
That got me thinking about whether the overwhelm so many people feel about their personal finances could be caused by packing their lives too tightly. So I turned to my friend, Francine Jay, author of the critically-acclaimed book, THE JOY OF LESS. In this must read book, Francine details how she – and you – can “live lightly” on this earth. Today Francine shares with us her thoughts on how minimal living can help combat financial overwhelm. Here’s hoping this Q&A with Francine will help keep you from missing any important events in your life. [For more Francine, sign up for her Miss Minimalist blog, follow Francine on Twitter, or read her other insightful book, FRUGILLIIONAIRE].
(1) Francine, what is minimal living & what triggered your journey into it?
Minimalist living is stripping away all the excess, to make room for what’s truly important to us. It’s about eliminating the clutter and distractions that keep us from fully appreciating life.
My minimalist journey began when I started traveling lightly. I realized how wonderful it was to travel with a small carry-on bag, with only the essentials, instead of lugging around a heavy suitcase. When I was on vacation, I found it absolutely exhilarating that I could get by with so little – I felt like I could go anywhere, and do anything, because I wasn’t loaded down with stuff. And I thought, wow, how amazing would it be to live this way, and have the freedom and flexibility to pursue whatever opportunities arise!
(2) How has living a minimalist lifestyle affected your finances?
Becoming a minimalist was the best thing I ever did for my bottom line. When I decided I didn’t want to own a lot of stuff, my spending plummeted; it’s amazing how much money you save, simply by staying out of the stores. Furthermore, selling my castoffs on eBay and Craigslist was an eye-opening lesson—I learned just how quickly material goods depreciate. Henceforth, I resolved to “waste” as little money as possible on frivolous consumer items.
(3) What is your top tip for streamlining the day-to-day financial tasks associated with running a household?
Pay with cash or a debit card whenever possible—it eliminates a world of worry (like interest rates, minimum payments, and late fees) from your financial life. Accordingly, reduce your credit cards to the absolute minimum. Learn to say no to all those credit offers and store-branded cards; the fewer bills you have to deal with, and the less temptation to swipe the plastic, the better.
Also, put some transactions on auto-pilot. Set up automatic payments for recurring bills like your car loan, mortgage, or insurance premiums—it not only frees up your time, it guarantees you won’t miss a payment and incur late fees or higher rates. I’m a big proponent of automating investments as well… it’s a wonderful, no-fuss way to grow your nest egg.
(4) Francine, as someone who has written a personal finance book and a book about minimal living – what is the most common mistake you see people making with their money?
… valuing consumer goods over financial freedom. Chasing trends, status symbols, and the “latest and greatest” technology is a losing proposition; the satisfaction we derive from most such items is short-lived at best. When a newer model comes out, or a “must-have” goes out of style, we’re right back where we started—and with less money (or more debt) to boot…. Financial security creates more long-term happiness and well-being than any consumer item.
(5) What are the greatest benefits of living a minimalist lifestyle?
Less stress. The fewer possessions you have, the fewer chores and worries you have (in other words, you have less to clean, maintain, repair, insure, protect, and pay for).
More freedom. Possessions can be like anchors, tying us down and keeping us in place. When you’re not weighed down with stuff (or the debt used to pay for it), you’re more flexible, mobile, and able to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.
More joy. I believe that true happiness comes from what we do, not what we have. And the less stuff we have to fuss over, the more time we have for friends, family, community, and the wonderful experiences in life.
Thank you, Francine! Here’s to all readers avoiding financial, and all other, overwhelm thanks to Francine’s excellent tips.
Do you have any additional tactics you’d like to share about avoiding financial overwhelm? I’d sure love to hear them!
[This post originally appeared at ManishaThakor.com.] Want more financial love? You can follow Women’s Financial Literacy Initiative founder, Manisha Thakor, on Twitter at @ManishaThakor, sign up to get her email updates delivered right to your inbox here, and enroll in her innovative new online personal finance course called “Money Rules.”
Written by Kathleen Reeves for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.
Last week, Tennessee’s State Senate passed out of committee SB49, the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Stacey Campfield, proposed this bill without luck for six years when he was a member of the House. Presumably too idiotic for state legislators in the past, the bill is now on the floor!
While the bill would technically outlaw discussion of homosexuality in the classroom before the ninth grade, its practical effects are unclear, for many reasons. First, Tennesee’s current guidelines on sexuality education, referred to (tellingly) as the “family life curriculum,” are vague and poorly-enforced. Family life education is overseen by Local Education Agencies, which often receive insufficient guidance from the state. As a result, sexuality education in Tennessee (such as it exists) is shrouded in darkness: it’s unclear what children and teenagers are learning, what and who their sources of knowledge are, and how effective this “curriculum” is.
One clear element of the state’s policy on sex ed is the mandatory promotion of abstinence. Every course on sexual health must “include presentations encouraging abstinence from sexual intercourse during the teen and pre-teen years,” according to the SIECUS report cited above. So Stacey Campfield’s insistence on banning gay talk seems redundant. … Read more
As the United States and its allies get deeper into the confrontation with Qaddafi in Libya, it’s worth stepping back to consider what is actually taking place—and why.
We’ve been told very little about the rebels seeking to supplant the dictator. But one in particular deserves our attention. General Khalifa Hifter, the latest person to head the rebel forces.
There’s been little effort to look at Hifter’s background. One notable exception was the work of the always-diligent McClatchy Newspapers, which briefly inquired about his background in late March. That report does not seem to have generated much additional digging by other news organizations.
The new leader of Libya’s opposition military spent the past two decades in suburban Virginia but felt compelled — even in his late-60s — to return to the battlefield in his homeland, according to people who know him.
Khalifa Hifter was once a top military officer for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, but after a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s, Hifter switched to the anti-Gadhafi opposition. In the early 1990s, he moved to suburban Virginia, where he established a life but maintained ties to anti-Gadhafi groups.
Late last week, Hifter was appointed to lead the rebel army, which has been in chaos for weeks. He is the third such leader in less than a month, and rebels interviewed in Libya openly voiced distrust for the most recent leader, Abdel Fatah Younes, who had been at Gadhafi’s side until just a month ago.
At a news conference Thursday, the rebel’s military spokesman said Younes will stay as Hifter’s chief of staff, and added that the army — such as it is — would need “weeks” of training.
According to Abdel Salam Badr of Richmond, Va., who said he has known Hifter all his life — including back in Libya — Hifter — whose name is sometimes spelled Haftar, Hefter or Huftur — was motivated by his intense anti-Gadhafi feelings.
“Libyans — every single one of them — they hate that guy so much they will do whatever it takes,” Badr said in an interview Saturday. “Khalifa has a personal grudge against Gadhafi… That was his purpose in life.”
According to Badr and another friend in the U.S., a Georgia-based Libyan activist named Salem alHasi, Hifter left for Libya two weeks ago.
alHasi, who said Hifter was once his superior in the opposition’s military wing, said he and Hifter talked in mid-February about the possibility that Gadhafi would use force on protesters.
“He made the decision he had to go inside Libya,” alHasi said Saturday. “With his military experience, and with his strong relationship with officers on many levels of rank, he decided to go and see the possibility of participating in the military effort against Gadhafi.”
He added that Hifter is very popular among members of the Libyan army, “and he is the most experienced person in the whole Libyan army.” He acted out of a sense of “national responsibility,” alHasi said.
“This responsibility no one can take care of but him,” alHasi said. “I know very well that the Libyan army especially in the eastern part is in desperate need of his presence.”
Omar Elkeddi, a Libyan expatriate journalist based in Holland, said in an interview that the opposition forces are getting more organized than they were at the beginning up the uprising. Hifter, he said, is “very professional, very distinguished,” and commands great respect.
Since coming to the United States in the early 1990s, Hifter lived in suburban Virginia outside Washington, D.C. Badr said he was unsure exactly what Hifter did to support himself, and that Hifter primarily focused on helping his large family.
So a former Qaddafi general who switches sides is admitted to the United States, puts down roots in Virginia outside Washington, D.C. and then somehow supports his family in a manner that mystifies a fellow who has known Hifter his whole life. Hmm.
The likelihood that Hifter was brought in to be some kind of asset is pretty high. Just as figures like Ahmed Chalabi were cultivated for a post-Saddam Iraq, Hifter may have played a similar role as American intelligence prepared for a chance in Libya.
We do need to ask to what extent the Libyan uprising is a proxy battle, with the United States far more involved that it would care to admit. Certainly, Qaddafi has been on the “to-remove” list for a very long time. But after something of a rapprochement, he again became a major irritant in recent years.
As the New York Times reported, almost in an aside,
In 2009, top aides to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi called together 15 executives from global energy companies operating in Libya’s oil fields and issued an extraordinary demand: Shell out the money for his country’s $1.5 billion bill for its role in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 and other terrorist attacks.
If the companies did not comply, the Libyan officials warned, there would be “serious consequences” for their oil leases, according to a State Department summary of the meeting.
…The episode and others like it, the officials said, reflect a Libyan culture rife with corruption, kickbacks, strong-arm tactics and political patronage since the United States reopened trade with Colonel Qaddafi’s government in 2004. As American and international oil companies, telecommunications firms and contractors moved into the Libyan market, they discovered that Colonel Qaddafi or his loyalists often sought to extract millions of dollars in “signing bonuses” and “consultancy contracts” — or insisted that the strongman’s sons get a piece of the action through shotgun partnerships.
Unfortunately, items like the McClatchy piece and the above extract from a longer Times piece are rarely patched together into a larger analysis of what is going on.
More detailed examinations of the complex history and interests in play are usually relegated to little-known blogs. For example, the Irish author and journalist Ed Moloney writes about President Obama’s decision to authorize the deployment of CIA agents on the ground in Libya, and notes
…The rebels are by themselves incapable of dislodging Gaddafi. The allies’ no-fly zone, cruise missile strikes and bombing missions may be sufficient to deny Gaddafi a victory over his rebel opponents but it cannot assure success for the rebels.
Slowly but surely Obama and his French and British allies are being sucked into direct involvement in yet another project to secure regime change in a Muslim country. The next stage will be to give the rebels sophisticated weapons in the hope this can reverse their decline. The rebels will have to be trained of course, the training must take place in Libya and the trainers will have to be protected, in Libya, by NATO soldiers. Slowly but surely the prohibition against “boots on the ground” will be erased. If, as seems very possible, the acquisition of modern weaponry fails to transform the rebels’ fortunes the only remaining option will be to send NATO troops in against Gaddafi. Failure to remove Gaddafi means a humiliating defeat for Obama and his allies and in the end NATO may have little alternative but to fight on Libyan soil.
…President Obama’s motives in ordering the bombing of Gaddafi’s forces may well have been driven by humanitarian concerns but the appointment of Khalifa Heftir to lead the armed uprising in the oil-rich North African republic, is a reminder that there is a long and tangled history of secret American efforts to oust the Libyan ruler.
Heftir’s elevation also signals that Obama’s intervention in Libya is now not just about saving civilian lives but is aimed at removing Gaddafi from power, a mission begun a quarter of a century before by a President regarded as an American Conservative icon and supposedly the polar opposite, politically, of the White House’s current resident.
The story of Khalifa Heftir’s entanglement with the CIA begins with the election to the White House of Ronald Reagan in 1980 amid gradually worsening relations with Gaddafi’s Libya and a growing obsession on the part of Reagan and his allies with removing the Libyan leader.
Here the story becomes complicated, with lots of names and dates and countries involved. If you don’t have the time or inclination to go further, that’s understandable. The key thing is to appreciate that, as the saying goes, past is prologue. Without understanding what came before, we have no real idea what is happening now, and why. In any case, here’s the back story, which itself is presumably rife with spin and manipulation, and deserves further investigation (the role of Bob Woodward as a principal reporter on these issues, for example, means that the narrative itself may be strategic—see this and this for more on Woodward’s work.)
A year before Reagan’s election a Libyan mob, imitating Iranian revolutionaries, burned down the US embassy in Tripoli and diplomatic relations were suspended. Two years later the Libyan embassy in Washington was closed down while US and Libyan jets skirmished over the Gulf of Sidra, which Gaddafi claimed to be part of Libya’s territorial waters.
Later in 1981 American press reports claimed that Libyan hit squads had been sent to the US to assassinate Reagan, shots were fired at the US ambassador to France while the ambassador to Italy was withdrawn after a plot to kidnap him was uncovered. After explosives were found in musical equipment at a US embassy sponsored dance in Khartoum, Sudan, Reagan ordered a travel ban and ordered all Americans out of Libya.
In 1983 there were more air skirmishes off the Libyan coast; two years later five US citizens were killed by bombs planted at Rome and Vienna airports and US officials blamed Libya. The worst clashes came in 1986, beginning with more air skirmishes over the Gulf of Sidra and the destruction of Libyan SAM sites by American missiles. In April a bomb exploded at the LaBelle nightclub in Berlin, a bar frequented by off-duty American servicemen. Three people were killed, two of whom were US soldiers and of the 200 wounded, sixty were American citizens. President Reagan blamed Libya and on April 15th, some 100 US aircraft, many flying out of bases in the UK, bombed Libyan bases and military complexes. The Libyans said that 70 people were killed in the attacks which also targeted Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli, killing his adopted infant daughter, Hana. One account claimed that nine of the jets had been directed to blast Gaddafi’s compound in a clear attempt to kill him.
By the mid-1980’s, the Reagan administration and the CIA believed that Gaddafi was supporting terrorist groups or helping fellow radical states throughout the globe. In a November 3rd, 1985 article for the Washington Post, Bob Woodward listed the countries where Gaddafi was said by the White House to be active. They included Chad, Tunisia, Sudan, Iran, Syria, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon and Iraq. Gaddafi was also supporting the IRA in Northern Ireland and significantly stepped up supplies of arms and cash to the group after a British policewoman was shot dead and diplomats expelled following a confrontation and lengthy siege at the Libyan embassy in London in 1984.
In May 1984, less than a month after the London embassy siege, gunmen launched rocket and gun attacks against the Tripoli army barracks where Gaddafi’s family compound was located. The initial assault was repulsed and most of the insurgents killed when Libyan tanks shelled the building overlooking the barracks where the gunmen had taken refuge. It was though the most serious challenge to Gaddafi’s hold on power in Libya, made all the more threatening by the fact that it had happened on his doorstep.
The attack was claimed by a group calling itself the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), composed of anti-Gaddafi exiles, some of them supporters of the Idris monarchy overthrown in the 1969 revolution. Claims that the NFSL was at that time supported by US intelligence derive some support from a leak to American newspapers a few days before the attack in Tripoli that President Reagan had recently signed a new directive authorizing US agencies to “take the offensive” against international terrorism by mounting retaliatory or pre-emptive attacks. But the Americans were, at this stage, not directly involved in supporting the exile group’s activities.
The NFSL was getting aid mostly from Saudi Arabia whose ruling family despised Gaddafi after he had accused them of defiling holy Islamic sites in their country but also from Egypt and Tunisia in whose internal affairs Gaddafi had meddled. Sudan was another sponsor. Gaddafi had tried to foment an uprising against its pro-Western leadership and in response Sudan supplied the NFSL with bases from which the May 1984 attack was planned.
The Sudanese, according to one account, kept the CIA informed of the plot. CIA Director, William Casey, was heartened by the attack even though it had failed and renewed his efforts to persuade Reagan to authorize specific covert action against the Libyan leader. Casey is said to have remarked: “It proves for the first time that Libyans are willing to die to get rid of that bastard” (p. 85). From thereon the NFSL was put on the CIA’s payroll.
It was after the unsuccessful effort to kill Gaddafi in his Tripoli compound that Reagan took the intelligence offensive. Bob Woodward revealed Reagan’s move, first in the Washington Post (November 3rd, 1985) and then in his account of Reagan’s secret wars in his book Veil, published in 1987. A secret presidential directive, which Woodward was able to quote, signaled that the exile groups like NFSL would be an important weapon wielded in this campaign against the Libyan leader: “…the exile groups, if supported to a substantial degree, could soon begin an intermittent campaign of sabotage and violence which could prompt further challenges to Qaddafi’s authority.”
The Reagan directive had listed ten options for action against Gaddafi, which ranged from regime change to economic sanctions, although it was obvious that the operation could only be judged a success if Gaddafi was dislodged: “…no course of action short of stimulating Qaddafi’s fall will bring any significant and enduring change in Libyan policies”, the document read.
The former French colony of Chad on Libya’s southern border had already been a major battleground in the war between Reagan and Gaddafi and after the 1984 bid to kill the Libyan dictator it assumed even greater importance. Chad had gained independence from France in 1960 but its history for many years thereafter has been one of coups and civil wars, often sponsored by foreign powers using Chad as an arena for their rivalry.
Libyan interest and activity in Chad pre-dated Gaddafi’s 1969 revolution and centered on a piece of land in Northern Chad called the Aouzou Strip which is rich in uranium and other rare minerals. Gaddafi formed an alliance with the government of Goukouni Wedeye who allowed the Libyans to occupy the strip but in 1982 Wedeye was overthrown by Hissene Habre who was backed by the CIA and by French troops.
Hebre’s was a brutal regime. During the eight years of his leadership some 40,000 people were estimated to have died in detention or executed. Human Rights Watch observed: “Under President Reagan, the United States gave covert CIA paramilitary support to help install Habre in order, according to secretary of state, Alexander Haig, to ‘bloody Gadafi’s nose’”. Bob Woodward wrote in Veil that the Chadian coup was William Casey’s first covert operation as head of the CIA.
During the years following Habre’s coup, Gaddafi’s army and the forces of the Chad government, the CIA and French intelligence clashed repeatedly. In March 1987 a force of some 600-700 Libyan soldiers under the command of General Khalifa Haftir was captured and imprisoned. Gaddafi disowned Heftir, presumably in anger at his capture, and the former Libyan General then defected to the major Libyan opposition group, the NFSL.
A Congressional Research Service report of December 1996 named Heftir as the head of the NFSL’s military wing, the Libyan National Army. After he joined the exile group, the CRS report added, Heftir began “preparing an army to march on Libya”. The NFSL, the CSR said, is in exile “with many of its members in the United States.”
In 1990 French troops helped to oust Habre and installed Idriss Debry to replace him. According to one account the French had grown weary of Habre’s genocidal policies while the new resident in the White House, George H W Bush did not have the same interest as Reagan had in using Chad as a proxy to damage Gaddafi even though the Libyan leader formed an alliance with Debry.
A New York Times report of May 1991 shed more light on the CIA’s sponsorship of Heftir’s men. “They were trained” it said, “by American intelligence officials in sabotage and other guerilla skills, officials said, at a base near Ndjamena, the Chadian capital. The plan to use the exiles fit neatly into the Reagan administration’s eagerness to topple Colonel Qaddafi”.
Following the fall of Habre, Gaddafi demanded that the new government hand over Heftir’s men but instead Debry allowed the Americans to fly them to Zaire. There Libyan officials were given access to the men and about half agreed to return to Libya. The remainder refused, saying they feared for their lives if they went back home. When US financial aid offered to Zaire for giving the rebels refuge failed to materialise they were expelled and sent to Kenya.
Eventually the Kenyans said the men were no longer welcome and the United States agreed to bring them to America where they were admitted to the US refugee programme. A State Department spokesman said the men would have “access to normal resettlement assistance, including English-language and vocational training and, if necessary, financial and medical assistance.” According to one report the remnants of Heftir’s army were dispersed to all fifty states.
That was not, however, the end of the Libyan National Army. In March 1996, Heftir returned to Libya and took part in an uprising against Gaddafi. Details of what happened are scant but the Washington Post reported from Egypt on March 26th that travelers from Libya had spoken of “unrest today in Jabal Akhdar mountains of eastern Libya and said armed rebels may have joined escaped prisoners in an uprising against the government….and that its leader is Col. Khalifa Haftar, of a contra-style group based in the United States called the Libyan National Army, the travelers said.”
The report continued: “The travelers, whose accounts could not be confirmed independently, said they heard that the death toll had risen to 23 in five days of fighting between security forces and rebels, including men who escaped from Benghazi prison thursday and then fled into the eastern mountains.”
What part the CIA played in the failed uprising and whether the then US president, Bill Clinton had given the operation his approval are not known. By coincidence or not, three months later, Gaddafi’s forces killed some 1200 political prisoners being held in Benghazi’s Abu Simal jail. It was the arrest of the lawyer representing many of the prisoners’ families that sparked the February 17th uprising against Gaddafi and with it, the return of Khalifa Heftir.
As usual, the back story is complex. Valuable strategic resources abound. There are no good guys. And, as usual, the reporting that commands most of our attention just isn’t very good at helping us understand what is really going on.
The consequences of an uninformed public….well, we know what those are.
Image Credit: (voiceofdetroit.net)
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WhoWhatWhy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news site founded by Russ Baker. Follow it on Facebook and Twitter or visit WhoWhatWhy.com
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