Re: [Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again!
Thanks again Rose You will notice that Governor Corzine, still lags in the public opinion polls, even with President Obama support, effusive public embrace and fundraiser.
Be mindful of the fact that any and every Democrat is supposed to be enjoying the after-glow of President Obama's election and popularity. After all, it is less than a year, since November 2008.
Governor Corzine it should be remembered, is supposed to also possess the incumbent's usual advantages and perks of power.
Auspicious I think the evidence of the pattern, which Rose and I, speak of, here, it has since become obvious to many, despite your willful neglect to observe same.
Re: [Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again!
Originally Posted by I Love Nigeria
Thanks again Rose You will notice that Governor Corzine, still lags in the public opinion polls, even with President Obama support, effusive public embrace and fundraiser. Be mindful of the fact that any and every Democrat is supposed to be enjoying the after-glow of President Obama's election and popularity. After all, it is less than a year, since November 2008.
Governor Corzine it should be remembered, is supposed to also possess the incumbent's usual advantages and perks of power.
Auspicious I think the evidence of the pattern, which Rose and I, speak of, here, it has since become obvious to many, despite your willful neglect to observe same.
I absolutely agree with you about Corzine...which is why I'm disappointed BO didn't throw his weight behind other candidates like Paterson and Thompson. BO is also soliciting support for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Virginia. I'm making it my business to spread the word about this pattern and it's good to know others are definitely catching on. I'd love to know how Deval Patrick "really" feel about BO now.
Re: [Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again!
Stop Begging Obama to Be Obama and Get Mad
by Chris Hedges
The right-wing accusations against Barack Obama are true. He is a socialist, although he practices socialism for corporations. He is squandering the country's future with deficits that can never be repaid. He has retained and even bolstered our surveillance state to spy on Americans. He is forcing us to buy into a health care system that will enrich corporations and expand the abuse of our for-profit medical care. He will not stanch unemployment. He will not end our wars. He will not rebuild the nation. He is a tool of the corporate state.
The right wing is not wrong. It is not the problem. We are the problem. If we do not tap into the justifiable anger sweeping across the nation, if we do not militantly push back against corporate fraud and imperial wars that we cannot win or afford, the political vacuum we have created will be filled with right-wing lunatics and proto-fascists. The goons will inherit power not because they are astute, but because we are weak and inept.
Violence is a dark undercurrent of American history. It is exacerbated by war and economic decline. Violence is spreading outward from the killing fields in Iraq and Afghanistan to slowly tear apart individuals, families and communities. There is no immunity. The longer the wars continue, the longer the members of our working class are transformed by corporate overlords into serfs, the more violence will dominate the landscape. The slide into chaos and a police state will become inevitable.
The soldiers and Marines who return from Iraq and Afghanistan are often traumatized and then shipped back a few months later to be traumatized again. This was less frequent in Vietnam. Veterans, when they get out, search for the usual escape routes of alienation, addictions and medication. But there is also the escape route of violence. We risk creating a homegrown Freikorps, the demobilized German soldiers from World War I who violently tore down the edifice of the Weimar Republic and helped open the way to Nazism.
The Afghanistan and Iraq wars have unloaded hundreds of thousands of combat troops, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, back into society. According to a joint Veterans Affairs Department-University of San Francisco study published in July, 418,000 of the roughly 1.9 million service members who have fought in or supported the wars suffer from PTSD. As of August 2008, the latest data available, about a quarter-million military veterans were imprisoned on any given day-about 9.4 percent of the total daily imprisoned population, according to the National GAINS Center Forum on Combat Veterans, Trauma and the Justice System. There are 223,000 veterans in jail or prison cells on an average day, and an unknown number among the 4 million Americans on probation. They don't have much to look forward to upon release. And if any of these incarcerated vets do not have PTSD when they are arrested, our corrections system will probably rectify the deficiency. Throw in the cocktail of unemployment, powerlessness, depression, alienation, anger, alcohol and drugs and you create thousands, if not tens of thousands, who will seek out violence the way an addict seeks out a bag of heroin.
War and conflict have marked most of my adult life. I know what prolonged exposure to industrial slaughter does to you. I know what it is to confront memories, buried deep within the subconscious, which jerk you awake at night, your heart racing and your body covered in sweat. I know what it is like to lie, unable to sleep, your heart pounding, trying to remember what it was that caused such terror. I know how it feels to be overcome by the vivid images of violence that make you wonder if the dream or the darkness around you is real. I know what it feels like to stumble through the day carrying a shock and horror, an awful cement-like despair, which you cannot shed. And I know how after a few nights like this you are left numb and exhausted, unable to connect with anyone around you, even those you love the most. I know how you drink or medicate yourself into a coma so you do not have to remember your dreams. And I know that great divide that opens between you and the rest of the world, especially the civilian world, which cannot imagine your pain and your hatred. I know how easily this hatred is directed toward those in that world.
There are minefields of stimulants for those who return from war. Smells, sounds, bridges, the whoosh of a helicopter, thrust you back to Iraq or another zone of slaughter, back to a time of terror and blood, back to the darkest regions of your heart, regions you wish did not exist. Life, on some days, is a simple battle to stay upright, to cope with memories and trauma that are unexplainable, probably unimaginable, to those seated across from you at the breakfast table. Families will watch these veterans fall silent, see the thousand-yard stare, and know they have again lost these men and women. They hope somehow they will come back. Some won't. Those who cannot cope, even by using Zoloft or Paxil, blow their brains out with drugs, alcohol or a gun. More Vietnam veterans died from suicide in the years after the war than during the conflict itself. But it would be a mistake to blame this on Vietnam. War does this to you. It destroys part of you. You live maimed. If you are not able to live maimed, you check out.
But what happens in a society where everything conspires to check you out even when you make the herculean effort to integrate into the world of malls, celebrity gossip and too many brands of cereal on a supermarket shelf? What happens when the corporate state says that you can die in its wars but at home you are human refuse, that there is no job, no way to pay your medical bills or your mortgage, no hope? Then you retreat into your private hell of rage, terror and alienation. You do not return from the world of war. You yearn for its sleek and powerful weapons, its speed and noise, its ability to abolish the lines between sanity and madness. You long for the alluring, hallucinogenic landscapes of combat. You miss the psychedelic visions of carnage and suffering, the smells, sounds, shrieks, explosions and destruction that jolt you back to the present, which make you aware in ways you never were before. The thrill of violence, the God-like power that comes when you can take a human life with impunity, is matched against the pathetic existence of waiting for an unemployment check. You look to rejoin the fraternity of killers. Here. There. It no longer matters.
There is a yawning indifference at home about what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. The hollow language of heroism and glory, used by the war makers and often aped by those in the media, allows the nation to feel good about war, about "service." But it is also a way of muzzling the voices that attempt to tell us the truth about war. And when these men and women do find the moral courage to speak, they often find that many fellow Americans turn away in disgust or attack them for shattering the myth. The myth of war is too enjoyable, and too profitable, to be punctured by reality. And so these veterans nurse their fantasies of power. They begin to hate those who sent them as much as they hate those they fought. Some cannot distinguish one from the other.
As I stared into the faces of the men from A Gathering of Eagles on Saturday at a protest calling for the closure of the Army Experience Center in Philadelphia, I recognized these emotions. These men had arrived on black motorcycles. They were wearing leather jackets. They had lined up, most holding large American flags, to greet the protesters, some of whom were also veterans. They chanted "Traitors!" at the seven people who were arrested for refusing the police order to leave the premises. They sought vindication from a system that had, although they could not admit it, betrayed them. They yearned to be powerful, if only for a moment, if only by breaking through the police line and knocking some God-hating communist faggot to the ground. They wanted the war to come home.
It is we who are guilty, guilty for sending these young men and women to wars that did not have to be fought. It is we who are guilty for turning away from the truth of war to wallow in a self-aggrandizing myth, guilty because we create and decorate killers and when they come home maimed and broken we discard them. It is we who are guilty for failing to defy a Democratic Party that since 1994 has betrayed the working class by destroying our manufacturing base, slashing funds to assist the poor and cravenly doing the bidding of corporations. It is we who are guilty for refusing to mass on Washington and demand single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. It is we who are guilty for supporting Democrats while they funnel billions in taxpayer dollars to sustain speculative Wall Street interests. The rage of the confused and angry right-wing marchers, the ones fired up by trash-talking talk show hosts, the ones liberals belittle and maybe even laugh at, should be our rage. And if it is not our rage soon, if we continue to humiliate and debase ourselves by begging Obama to be Obama, we will see our open society dismantled not because of the shrewdness of the far right, but because of our moral cowardice.
Re: [Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again!
Eja thanks for your post of Chris Hedges essay.
If truth be told, some of us are already "mad" enough... and you can also see that in the SNL sketches and critics who are not necessarily on either side of the political spectrum in any extreme sense.
Just curious, are you thoroughly familiar with Niall Ferguson's worldview and do you subscribe to them? I ask, because I see that you use his quotes... It is my experience that most Jews would not quote Nazis or Adolf Hitler in particular, no matter how poignant, profound and relevant
Niall Ferguson is of the same school of thought as was William F. Buckley and, personally, I would not quote Ferguson or Buckley or David Duke
Re: [Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again!
Originally Posted by I Love Nigeria
Just curious, are you thoroughly familiar with Niall Ferguson's worldview and do you subscribe to them? I ask, because I see that you use his quotes... It is my experience that most Jews would not quote Nazis or Adolf Hitler in particular, no matter how poignant, profound and relevant
Niall Ferguson is of the same school of thought as was William F. Buckley and, personally, I would not quote Ferguson or Buckley or David Duke
ILN, I have no illusions about where Niall Ferguson is coming from. However, I am not one to dismiss a person's opinion (or insights) just because of their world-view. As long as that world-view has a logical reason to exist, then I will not object to it. The most I will do is fight against its supremacy in arenas where it does not belong.
For sure Niall Ferguson is an unrepentant Eurocentric. However, I do not grudge him that because at this stage down the road of human history, I expect all people of European origins to be Eurocentric.
They have no other choice.
Thing to note is, some like Ferguson will come straight and lay out all their wares plain for everyone to see. Then there are others who will play a different hand; like their other brethren, these will also assign (as a matter of course), all great human virtues to the 'genius' of western civilization. They will then cloak their Eurocentricism and try to sell it as 'globalism'.
The people surrounding the askari Obama fall into this category and the worst thing about what they do is that they make it hard for ones to hear the voices of the genuine humanists in their societies.
As for comparing Ferguson to Hitler, I would not go that far. I have read his works and I have seen nothing in them that suggests he (Ferguson) would do as the German Nazi leader did if given a chance.
He is no orisha but as I said before, he has some very good insights into how certain historic events shaped the present global economic and political landscape and I appreciate that.
__________________ "Black Man, you are on your own." - Steve Biko (1946 - 1977)
Ki a wa omi ti a fi pa oungbe ki a to wa emu ti a fi se faaji.
"The lesser evil is still an evil." - Unknown
"Money is only worth what other people will give for it."- Niall Ferguson
"If its free, I'll take two." -
Re: [Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again!
Eja You are quite right in stating that is acceptable for Europeans to feel compelled to be Eurocentric. Just the same way Africans and peoples of African descent should feel compelled and obliged to be Afrocentric.
The only issue I that I take with Ferguson is his persistent attempts to make his stand the only right version and just as you put, we should reject it when as Ferguson does portray his stances as the superior and supreme version
The most I will do is fight against its supremacy
Ferguson is Eurocentric alright, and I think he goes beyond that... he engages in his Eurocentrism in derogation to my part of the world... and he seeks often, to justify European actions on the African continent.
Ferguson words about Africans and peoples of African descent, were he directing acerbic to Jews, such would earn him the label, anti Semite.
Additionally, perhaps you and I, can share glasses of your favorite wines, and debate whether we are better served by "in-your-face-racists or that we better off, with coy, sly and beneath the surface racists? You suggest it is better to know thy enemies as they say in the military, you should know your enemy's plans or strategies, in order to counter them effectively?
Known enemy... who declares his intent ... compared with the subtleties of the undeclared enemy? I take a universal precaution (All enemies are equal, until they establish credentials as non-enemies or as friends)? Openly racist versus under the radar racist are both racists?
Re: [Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again!
Originally Posted by I Love Nigeria
Eja You are quite right in stating that is acceptable for Europeans to feel compelled to be Eurocentric. Just the same way Africans and peoples of African descent should feel compelled and obliged to be Afrocentric.
The only issue I that I take with Ferguson is his persistent attempts to make his stand the only right version and just as you put, we should reject it when as Ferguson does portray his stances as the superior and supreme version Ferguson is Eurocentric alright, and I think he goes beyond that... he engages in his Eurocentrism in derogation to my part of the world... and he seeks often, to justify European actions on the African continent.
Ferguson words about Africans and peoples of African descent, were he directing acerbic to Jews, such would earn him the label, anti Semite.
Additionally, perhaps you and I, can share glasses of your favorite wines, and debate whether we are better served by "in-your-face-racists or that we better off, with coy, sly and beneath the surface racists? You suggest it is better to know thy enemies as they say in the military, you should know your enemy's plans or strategies, in order to counter them effectively?
Known enemy... who declares his intent ... compared with the subtleties of the undeclared enemy? I take a universal precaution (All enemies are equal, until they establish credentials as non-enemies or as friends)? Openly racist versus under the radar racist are both racists?
ILN, you have posed some questions that are very challenging. Of course it is never easy listening to people who stand for everything we dislike but, it is also best that every now and then, we try to see things as they see it (while never losing a grip on our own perspective).
In life (as individuals and as components of a collective) we will encounter two types of adversary: There will be the one whose sole purpose is to test physical and emotional endurance and, there will be the one whose sole purpose is to increase your knowledge (even if that is not his/her original intent).
Ferguson is a valuable type of western intellectual because he is one who knows his own people very well; he is extremely insightful on matters concerned with the growth of European Capital and the empires these nodes of capital incubated, gave birth to, sustained, and eventually caused to decline.
When one looks at it, what we are talking about here is actually about how we fight. In this, as in most human activities, there are conventional ways and there are unconventional ways. If we were fighting the conventional way against hegemonic Eurocentricism, we would automatically dismiss all ones like Ferguson has to say because of other things he once said that are denigrative to Africans. I take another view; I believe that it is possible to benefit from the brilliance of people like him on certain subjects as long as one remembers that they are as intelligent as two planks nailed together on other subjects - issues whose fullness they have been conditioned to never comprehend but, which their ingrained arrogance will compel them to form firm opinions about.
In short, I assure you that there is no part of me that expects an intellectual from the ranks Ferguson is drawn from to have any other intent aside from how to entrench a global Euro-hegemony. This means that from my perspective as one who sees no reason why my homeland should continue enriching aliens, he will never have any usable solutions. However, I will appreciate insights like the one I used in my signature. Believe me, if Obama said something that I considered wise, I would quote it (even though my view of him as a practitioner/enabler of high-level fraud would not change..).
__________________ "Black Man, you are on your own." - Steve Biko (1946 - 1977)
Ki a wa omi ti a fi pa oungbe ki a to wa emu ti a fi se faaji.
"The lesser evil is still an evil." - Unknown
"Money is only worth what other people will give for it."- Niall Ferguson
"If its free, I'll take two." -
Re: [Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again!
Eja, I am truly reassured by your comments here... I have thoroughly enjoyed our interactions here (yours and mine) I feel enriched with and by, my interactions with you.
You are an epitome and an exemplification of what I have always and still hope the Nigeria Village Square is and will be.
As you are on Obama, so I will be on Ferguson, I will read Ferguson's opinions with an open mind, then, read Ferguson opinions on Africans and peoples of African descent, while holding my nose with an handkerchief, but read him, nonetheless!
Re: [Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again!
Originally Posted by Eja
ILN, you have posed some questions that are very challenging. Of course it is never easy listening to people who stand for everything we dislike but, it is also best that every now and then, we try to see things as they see it (while never losing a grip on our own perspective).
In life (as individuals and as components of a collective) we will encounter two types of adversary: There will be the one whose sole purpose is to test physical and emotional endurance and, there will be the one whose sole purpose is to increase your knowledge (even if that is not his/her original intent).
Ferguson is a valuable type of western intellectual because he is one who knows his own people very well; he is extremely insightful on matters concerned with the growth of European Capital and the empires these nodes of capital incubated, gave birth to, sustained, and eventually caused to decline.
When one looks at it, what we are talking about here is actually about how we fight. In this, as in most human activities, there are conventional ways and there are unconventional ways. If we were fighting the conventional way against hegemonic Eurocentricism, we would automatically dismiss all ones like Ferguson has to say because of other things he once said that are denigrative to Africans. I take another view; I believe that it is possible to benefit from the brilliance of people like him on certain subjects as long as one remembers that they are as intelligent as two planks nailed together on other subjects - issues whose fullness they have been conditioned to never comprehend but, which their ingrained arrogance will compel them to form firm opinions about.
In short, I assure you that there is no part of me that expects an intellectual from the ranks Ferguson is drawn from to have any other intent aside from how to entrench a global Euro-hegemony. This means that from my perspective as one who sees no reason why my homeland should continue enriching aliens, he will never have any usable solutions. However, I will appreciate insights like the one I used in my signature. Believe me, if Obama said something that I considered wise, I would quote it (even though my view of him as a practitioner/enabler of high-level fraud would not change..).
@ Eja....Alleluya....Both you and Ferguson, are two sides of the same hateful coinage all the same.
As it is with holders of extreme positions, of opposing ideologies, Your positions actually end up sharing common ground. Eja Mr Counterfactual of NVS.
Re: [Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again!
Liloldlady wrote, among other things, that...
Alleluya....Both of you, are two sides of the same hateful coinage all the same.
Ma'am, how did you arrive at such audacious conclusions? Even as you neglected to opine your assessment of Ferguson, (upon which, Eja and I) had have our exchange... Ferguson is the the subject matter here!
Re: [Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again!
Originally Posted by I Love Nigeria
Liloldlady wrote, among other things, that...
Ma'am, how did you arrive at such audacious conclusions? Even as you neglected to opine your assessment of Ferguson, (upon which, Eja and I) had have our exchange... Ferguson is the the subject matter here!
It’s been a year now since Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, thus becoming the first African American elected to this office. This colossal achievement will be talked about, debated and discussed in the coming weeks as pundits, reporters and analyst assess the president’s first year in office.
A question that I would like the African American community to consider is this: Have we seen, or do we expect to see, a change in black life under the Obama administration?
My immediate answer is no.
During the campaign, Obama went out of his way to avoid the issue of race, and addressed it only when the controversial sermons of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, surfaced. In response, Obama delivered his race speech in February 2008, which Adolph Reed, a noted political scientists, characterized as the “Philadelphia Compromise,” to assure white people that Obama was not like other black leaders who focused on racism and discrimination in America.
This speech quickly distinguished Obama as a post racial black leader whose concerns were not limited to the African American community but to the entire American electorate.
Agreeing with this line of logic, much of black America seemed to go along with Obama and supported him wholeheartedly while demanding or requesting little from him politically. One of the more shameful things that I have witnessed is some black people contending that Obama owes nothing to black America and that we should look to ourselves for assistance (a message that Obama continues to preach to African and African Americans).
Interesting enough, other lobby/interest groups reject this approach and petition -- and sometimes demand unapologetically -- attention to their causes. Yet somehow we are the only ones arguing for personal responsibility.
Sadly, Obama is not the first or only black elected official who ignored or did nothing to improve the lives of black Americans. Over the past 20 to 30 years, we have seen numerous black mayors, governors, state and national congressional representatives do the same thing. What is even more interesting is that when we look at the evolution of African American elected leadership and its correlation to black advancement (or decline), there is troubling evidence to suggests that the more black folks are elected the worst off the black community fares.
Over the past 30 years we have seen major educational problems in black children regarding dropout and graduation rates. Additionally, we have seen a tenfold increase of black men/women in prison and jails, as well as discriminatory sentencing practices that have disproportionately impacted our community. We have seen an increase in health disparities in the areas of HIV, cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Finally, we have seen the black community hit hard by the housing crises and unemployment, which hovers around 20 percent for African Americans.
All of these problems existed simultaneously as black elected officials were in power at local, state and national levels.
Therefore, as we reflect on Obama’s election victory a year ago, I have one question for black America: If the quality of black life continues to decrease as it has over the past 30 years, how will black America be able to reconcile this occurrence under the tenure of a black president?
I am not suggesting that Obama focus only on black America’s problems, but I would hope that by the end of his tenure he is able to address at least one issue that plagues African Americans.
Is this an unreasonable request?
The African American freedom struggle was fought by our elders and ancestors for collective freedom, not the freedom of some to advance their career and status while the rest of the race suffered. However, as a scholar-activist, I am rational enough to know that it is up to us to challenge brother Obama to make sure he addresses the various problems in our community.
At the end of his tenure, what will we have to celebrate -- the fact that we had a black president or the fact that this black president did something to improve the quality of life in the black community?
Personally, I believe that we will have to be the ones to make our destiny by demanding and creating change in our community, because recent history has shown that most black elected officials are more concern about winning than losing their race.
Joseph L. Jones, Ph.D., is a professor of political science at Johnson C. Smith University.
[Article Comment]Obama My Brother The President, Again! 
).
Both you and Ferguson, are two sides of the same hateful coinage all the same.
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