El Gringo Rumbero

New Blog Address

2009-12-28T08:37:00.000-08:00

After two year's hiatus I have decided to relaunch my Blog on Wordpress.

shourouq.wordpress.com

The new Blog is entitled "Shourouq" ("شروق") which means "sunrise" in Arabic.

Please visit soon.

Peace and love

El Gringo Rumbero

On Immigration Policy

2008-01-04T08:32:00.000-08:00

Before our white bothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminals. You can't have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys,and so we had no thieves. If a man was so poor that he had no horse, tipi or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give them away. We had no money, and therefor a man's worth couldn't be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorneys or politicians, therefore we couldn't cheat. We really were in a bad way before the white man came, and I don't know how we managed to get along without the basic things which, we are told, are absolutely necessary to make a civilized society.

(Lame Deer, John; Erdoes, Richard. Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions. Washington Square Press, 1994)

It's election time in the U.S. and the Republican candidates are in heated debates about who's going to be better at keeping Latin Americans, mostly Mexicans (just because these hypocrites mince words doesn't mean I have to), from entering the country illegally. They all seem to have conveniently forgotten that the U.S. was founded by illegal immigrants. The Europeans who came to the Americas, murdered its inhabitants and robbed them of their ancestral lands never asked for anyone's permission. Columbus did not ask the Taino chiefs in the Caribbean islands if he could enter their lands. Cortez never requested a visa from the Mexica (Aztec) authorities or the authorities of any of the neighboring peoples. The Englishmen who founded the Jamestown colony never applied for residency permits from the chief of the Powahatans. Moreover the illegal immigrants who founded the U.S., unlike most of the undocumented immigrants in the U.S. today, really were criminals! And we are talking here about the worst kind of murders, racketeers and thieves. They committed genocide and enslaved people. Now the descendants of these same scoundrels want to keep Latin Americans, most of whom (ironically) have indigenous ancestors, from moving north in search of better economic opportunities -- opportunities which might exist in their homelands if not for the exploitative neo-liberal economic policies which the U.S. establishment exports all over the world via the World Bank, World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund.

Towards the Unconditional Return of All Tribal Lands

2007-12-21T07:17:00.000-08:00

After over 500 years of European rule in the Americas and about 100 years after the last of the "wild" Indians were massacred at Wounded Knee, 150 in all including women and children, the tide may finally be turning for the Indigenous people of these lands.

Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, was recently elected to the presidency of Bolivia and has proposed a new constitution which would recognize the rights of the country's indigenous population to their tribal lands including natural resources (this is what really frightens the avaricious oligarchs in the wealthier provinces of the country -- not the lifting of term limits so often publicized by the U.S. news media which is actually not uncommon in many of Europe's democracies).

At the same time, further north, representatives of the Lakota Sioux Indians (including three veteran A.I.M. activists who were at Wounded Knee during the 1973 takeover) have declared independence from the U.S. citing years of treaty violations and other grievances. The delegation has already met with representatives of the Bolivian government which has expressed interest in the Lakota Sioux cause.

Hopefully this is just the beginning.

Stop the Genocide in Iraq!

2007-12-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

According to a study published in September 2007 by the U.K.-based Opinion Research Business (ORB), the number of civilian deaths in Iraq since the U.S. invaded in March 2003 has now exceeded one million. This number is nearly double the figure that came out of the Johns Hopkins study published in The Lancet in 2006. The authors of the Johns Hopkins study were not surprised, however, at the new estimate considering that it covers a broader time period. Moreover, having read the new report, the authors of the study published in The Lancet supported the new figure since the methodologies of both studies were essentially identical. Killing over a million civilians in a country of roughly 30 million is nothing less than genocide.

Petition of Protest Against the Annapolis Summit

2007-11-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

To: President Georg W.Bush, White House, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, United Nations, UK Government, Security Council

We the undersigned declare our rejection to Annapolis Summit for the following reasons:

First: we repudiate the exploitation of the Palestinian cause to conceal the United States' failure in its illegitimate imperialist invasion to Iraq.

Second: Arab governments attended this summit under the pressure of the United States. The governmental capitulation to the United States does not mean by any means that it articulates the will of Arab people. The United States is aware of the contradiction between Arab people will and its governments' gluttonies.

Third: The announcement and invitation to this conference, completely ignore the Palestinian right in the land of Palestine, the right of return of refugees, the establishment of a free, independent and sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Forth: Arab people resent racism, we do not recognize racist entities and we do not accept its existence in our region. As we reject racism which is spreading world wide along with the hegemony of Globalization culture, we refuse the United States endeavors to impose racist categorizations in our region. We insist on our negation to Israel, we do not recognize it as a state and we assert that we do not abide to treaties signed by illegitimate Arab governments supported by the United States.

Fifth: The main aim of such a summit is to form a front of Arab governments that disregards Palestinian rights, implements the American imperialist plot which titled as "The New Middle East" and to impose proxy war on our governments with Iran and resistance groups to serve American interests.

As we declare our rejection Annapolis Summit and to all American-Zionist-Imperialist schemes, we announce our demands as:

1- The comprehensive liberation of the complete Palestinian Lands and the establishment of an independent, liberated and sovereign Palestinians state with Jerusalem as its capital.
2- The return of all Palestinian refugees from the diaspora to the land of Palestine.
3- The departure of all occupation forces from all the countries of the region: Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE and the Golan.
4- Lifting of the siege on the Palestinian people.
5- Removing American domination from the region; We do not want American aid, we do not want American support for dictatorial governments in the region, we do not want American intervention, which give provokes sectarian sense in our region, and we do not want American intervention to protect the Zionist entity in the region, we do not want the American exploitation to our wealth and our resources, we do not want neither good or evil from the United States.
We want to build our countries depending on our human and natural resources without interference from any outside force. We want our right self - determination.
6- We refuse the establishment of a "Jewish" state in our region; we respect all beliefs and religions, and admit citizenship to all citizens, equally, regardless of their doctrines, religions, or races. We resent the Zionist entity and its violation of human rights: slaughtering our women and children, expelling natives from their mother lands and building racist settlements on it.

We demand our rights according to:

Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states:

Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
And according to:

Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, G.A. res. 1514 (XV), 15 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 66, U.N. Doc. A/4684 (1961).

Which Declares that:

1. The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.

2. All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

3. Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence.

4. All armed action or repressive measures of all kinds directed against dependent peoples shall cease in order to enable them to exercise peacefully and freely their right to complete independence, and the integrity of their national territory shall be respected.

5. Immediate steps shall be taken, in Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories or all other territories which have not yet attained independence, to transfer all powers to the peoples of those territories, without any conditions or reservations, in accordance with their freely expressed will and desire, without any distinction as to race, creed or colour, in order to enable them to enjoy complete independence and freedom.

6. Any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

7. All States shall observe faithfully and strictly the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the present Declaration on the basis of equality, non-interference in the internal affairs of all States, and respect for the sovereign rights of all peoples and their territorial integrity.

Sign Here

Sign the Petition to Free Samina!

2007-11-19T13:57:00.000-08:00

Justice for Samina Malik!

2007-11-09T06:34:00.000-08:00

Samina Malik is a 22-year-old Muslim Briton who was convicted yesterday under the U.K.'s Terrorism Act of 2000 for "owning terrorist manuals" ("articles likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism"). Evidence presented at her trial included poems she wrote. Apparently she is a prolific poet. Here's one of the poems the prosecutors presented at the trial:

How to Behead

Hold him
Tie the arms behind his back
And bandage his legs together
Just by the ankles
Blindfold the punk
So that he won't hesitate as much
For on seeing the sharp pointy knife
He'll begin to shake
And continuously scream like an eedyat
And jiggle like a jelly
Trust me – this will sure get you angry
It's better to have at least two or three brothers by your side
Who can hold the fool
Because as soon as the warm sharp knife
Touches his naked flesh
He'll come to know what'll happen

No evidence was presented at the trial to prove that Ms. Malik had actually committed or was even planning any violent actions against anyone. She was convicted for possessing certain types of literature and writing certain types of poetry. In other words she was convicted for merely thinking certain types of thoughts.

But I'd like to suggest that she was also convicted for thinking certain types of thoughts AND being the child of Asian Muslims. I have written much more violent poems than this one -- one of which was actually published in my High School literary magazine. It's hard for me to imagine that there are no other 22-year-olds in the U.K. who have written violent poetry and/or are in possession of books like "The Anarchist Cookbook" or "Guerilla Warfare" (Ernest "Che" Guevara). Ms. Malik was singled out because of her race and religion.

But never mind the issue of Racism for a minute since the dominant discourse disavows the existence of Racism in the world today. What about FREEDOM -- for which these English and U.S. imperialists claim to be committing genocide in the Middle East? And where is Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch? How come I have been able to find only one article defending Ms. Malik's right to freedom of thought? Has our new motto become (thanks Stephen Colbert) "'live free or do whatever it takes so I don't die"?

Greenland, Israel and the Osama Bin Laden video

2007-09-10T07:47:00.000-07:00

No doubt many among you have been wondering where I have been for the past couple of months (wrote the author to his imaginary audience of millions). Actually I have been wondering what to do with this blog. It's going no where. At present it's sole purpose is completely subjective. It helps El Gringo Rumbero cope. It needs to become an objective force in the world outside of my head.

But for the time being -- here's another self-indulgent tirade.

Greenland's Ice Sheet is Melting

The impact of this development will be much greater than the melting of the polar ice caps. What else can I say? Oh yeah, and two-thirds of the global polar bear population will disappear by 2050.

Israel or occupied Palestine

The story about which I wrote in April of this year has finally made its way into the main stream media -- dozens of youths in Israel have been carrying out violent antisemitic attacks against their fellow citizens. The culprits are all Russian immigrants who were permitted to immigrate under Israel's racist "Law of Return" which allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to automatically become an Israeli citizen whether or not they themselves actually practice the Hebrew faith. Somehow most reporters have missed the bitter irony of the situation.

Osama Bin Laden Video

So the evil terrorist bogey man who supposedly planned the attacks of September 11, 2001 is actually part of that sect of radical militant Islam that's into making low budget videos.

Everyone should read the ABC News transcript (English of course) of what Bin Laden said in the latest video. Apparently he is not only into making low budget movies, but he's also into Noam Chomsky. He's also an ant-capitalist, anti-imperialist environmentalist. That is to say he's an independently wealthy, ant-establishment low-budget film-maker. He's boho chic.

The bulk of the transcript, after the usual praise of divinity which is always included in religious discourse, reads like a litany of the evils of capitalism and (especially) U.S. imperialism. The whole middle section is a fairly accurate criticism of the current situation right now. Hell! He even talks about the problems in Africa! But O.B.L.'s conclusion is that we ( U.S. citizens) should all become Muslims and build an Islamic theocracy here in the U.S.

I wonder who would benefit from making a video that equates anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist ideas with Islamic fanaticism?

Keep in mind that the source of the video was the SITE (Search for International Terrorist Entities) Website < http://siteinstitute.org/> which is run by Rita Katz who I suspect is an Israeli or U.S. intelligence agent (do a quick Google search on her and you'll see why). The video itself was then carried by pretty much every major U.S. news outlet complete with a full transcript in English from ABC.

Am I the only person who thinks this video is a complete fabrication designed to discredit any legitimate critique of the current world system and, worse, to equate it with "terrorism"?

If I were Noam Chomsky, who frankly isn't even that radical, I would seriously consider emigrating.

Why Turkey Will Never Be Allowed Into the European Union

2007-07-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the recent elections in Turkey we've been hearing a lot in the news media about Turkey's aspirations for membership in the European Union (EU) as well as the challenges it faces in achieving this goal. Reporters have been especially great at reiterating a lot of Orientalist discourse about Turkey not being "European" or a lot of Neoliberal bullshit about Turkey's human rights record and we're told that these are the primary obstacles to Turkey's entry into the EU. But is this really what's going on?

Let's look at what Nicholas Sarkozy actually said about the issue in his debate with Segolene Royale before the French presidential elections:

"Ceux qui souhaitent l’entrée de la Turquie en Europe sont ceux qui ne croient pas à l’Europe politique. C’est la mort de l’Europe politique" (Those who hope for the entry of Turkey in the EU are those who do not believe in a political Europe. It's the death of a political Europe).

Politics is about power. What Sarkozy said was that Turkey's entry into the EU would mean the end of the latter as a world power. Why?

I'll start my answer to this question by looking at the most prominent party among those who are hoping for the entry of Turkey in the EU. That's right, you guessed it, the good old USA.

Turkey's entry in the EU is part of the US's plan for rendering Europe completely dependent on a US-dominated energy infrastructure stretching from the Caspian through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. Turkey's entry into the EU would also be the last nail in the coffin in which plans fo any independent European military force would be buried. The US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), of which Turkey is a key member, would remain the sole guarantor of security on the continent and the EU would be nothing but a free-trade zone dominated by a hegemonic US in a unipolar New World Order.

Unfortunately for the US, like so many of the grandiose dreams of the US ruling class these days, this plan is all but dead. Russia has successfully secured all of the major gas and oil reserves in the Caspian (as of May 12, 2007) completely cutting out the US. In other words the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey pipeline is now empty. The EU's dependence on Russia for gas and oil is now solid and, unlike the US which seeks to weaken the EU and subordinate it to US interests, Russia supports a strong economic and political EU as a partner in its effort to push the US out of Eurasia.

Turkey could strengthen its economy and, more importantly, its sovereignty by looking eastwards to make strategic alliances -- Iran and Russia are two potential partners that come to mind. Otherwise, left out of the EU as well as the rapidly forming alliances in Asia (e.g. the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), Turkey will be just another pawn in the US' losing play for global domination.

Al Qaeda is a Metaphor

2007-07-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

First, on Tuesday, Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff wants us all to lock our windows and bolt our doors this Summer because he has a "gut feeling" that the evil Al Qaeda is coming to get us! Then, today, the Associated Press tells us that it's gotten hold of super top secret classified reports from U.S. intelligence agencies that Al Qaeda is the strongest it's been since before 9/11!

Holy shit man! I'd be soiling myself right now if I didn't know that Al Qaeda is about as real as my dream of spending a night with Bipasha Basu, Marylin Monroe, Vanessa Paradis, Ashwarya Rai and Natalie Wood.

Here's what Martin Scheinin (Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) has to say about Al Qaeda:

... I don’t see the global war between states and Al Qaeda as anything more than a metaphor. I don’t see Al Qaeda as qualifying as a global army that could be party of a global, never-ending armed conflict.

Scheinin, as a United Nations appointee, has to mince words. We don't. Al Qaeda is a metaphor that the U.S. government uses to inspire xenophobia (i.e. racism) among the people it controls. Al Qaeda is all people, especially people of color, who oppose U.S. interests whether they employ terrorist tactics or otherwise. What defines a terrorist act according to international law is a violent attack against the general populace. This is not the operative definition the U.S. government uses. When resistance fighters in Iraq attack U.S. soldiers they are not committing acts of terrorism as defined by international law. Yet, as far as the U.S. government is concerned, anyone in Iraq who opposes the U.S. military presence there is a terrorist -- hence the chimera ubiquitous in the U.S. news media known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. Ultimately we will be informed by our leaders that branches of Al Qaeda are firmly entrenched in every single region which is critical to the global hegemonic strategy of the U.S. ruling class.

Free Sami Al Haj!

2007-07-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

Five-and-a-half years ago -- on December 15, 2001 -- U.S. military personnel captured Al Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj while he was en route to Afghanistan in Pakistan. He has since been held, with no criminal charges against him, as an "enemy combatant" in Guantanamo Bay. Sami, who is a Sudanese national with distinctly African features, reported to his attorney who was finally allowed to see him in December of 2005 that:

he has been tortured (e.g. forced to remain seated, exposed to the tropical sun, deprived of sleep, subjected to sexual abuse, confined in rooms in which extremely loud music was played, etc.)
he has been interrogated with the use of threats more than 130 times
he has a throat cancer that is not being treated

Why are the imperialists doing this to a cameraman (besides the fact that he is Arabic, Black, and Muslim)? Here's a hint: according to the London-based Guardian newspaper -- on September 26, 2005 -- U.S. officials offered Sami his freedom if he would agree to spy on Al Jazeera.

In other words the U.S. government claims to support freedom of speech yet it is trying to destroy a news outlet because of its distinctly balanced approach to current events in Western Asia (in March 2003, Al Jazeera was awarded by Index on Censorship -- an international group which campaigns against censorship -- for its "courage in circumventing censorship and contributing to the free exchange of information in the Arab world"). This isn't the first time the U.S. military has struck violently against Al Jazeera:

The U.S. government claims to care about the genocide against Black Sudanese people yet it is torturing at least one Black Sudanese man as I write this.

The U.S. government claims to fight for Democracy and the rule of law yet it is currently holding countless prisoners without due process.

There is no Global Islamic Conspiracy! This is as much a work of racist fiction as was Hitler's Global Judeo-Bolshevist Conspiracy.

For more about Sami: http://www.prisoner345.net/
To sign a petition: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19079

Kosovo and the Battle for Eurasia

2007-06-07T12:22:00.000-07:00

Today's Kosovo is nothing but a criminal enclave led by terrorists and murderers… Kosovo "politicians" are bandits hired by the US in order to turn the territory into a US ground aircraft carrier. This was the main objective of the offensive against Yugoslavia, and this was why they needed to make Kosovo independent from Belgrade… The US, inspired by the chimerical goal of the global dominance, will soon crack down on Iran. A new global drama will begin.

Dmitriy Sedov, Strategic Culture Foundation (a prominent Russian think tank)

As I write these lines, the powerful Group of 8 is deciding the fate of a small province in Serbia known presently as Kosovo. The E.U. and U.S. want independence for Kosovo as quickly as possible while Russia has promised to oppose any moves towards independence without direct talks between Pristina (the administrative center of the province) and Belgrade (the capital of Serbia). Once again the lines are being drawn between opposing sides in an increasingly dangerous global situation.

Kosovo, also known as Kosovo and Metohija, has never in its history been an independent political entity. While most of its population is comprised of ethnic Albanians, there have always been significant Serbian, Bosniak, Turkish and Roma (Gypsy) minorities. In around 1995, a paramilitary organization financed by heroin and prostitution trafficking (as well as other criminal activities) called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged on the scene. The following year, the KLA provoked a full-scale war with Serbia by attacking Serbian police and civilians alike with the aim of full independence. This conflict was known as the Kosovo War and it lasted until 1999. That year, NATO carried out a military operation against Serbia bombing both military and civilian targets. NATO, spearheaded by President Clinton, claimed that the Serbian government was committing genocide in Kosovo and had to be stopped.

In April of 1999, while NATO was bombing Serbia's cities, the U.S. state department announced that the genocide against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had taken as many as 500,000 lives and compared the the ethnic cleansing to the Nazi Holocaust. In May that figure had somehow fallen to 100,000 -- according to the Department of Defense. Strangely, after NATO occupied the region and place it under the governance of the U.N. in June, the number shrank to 10,000 -- this time according to the British Foreign Office. No reports have ever stated how the British Foreign Office arrived at this figure and to this day it has never been objectively confirmed.

The fighting ended in October and by November, most of the ethnic Albanian refugees who had fled during the conflict returned to their homes. However, much of the remaining Serbian population population -- some 250,000 people -- fled and have never been able to return. The Roma (Gypsy) population was also forced to flee after being brutalized by the KLA.

After the war, reports began to surface which revealed that British and U.S. (CIA) intelligence agents had been in constant contact with the KLA since at least 1996 and that they had been providing advice and training to the KLA throughout the war. These reports further undermined the official pretext for the NATO invasion since the putative "genocide" of ethnic Albanians had not begun until well after the CIA made contact with the KLA. While, most people in the U.S. and Europe probably still believe the genocide story and that the U.S. got involved in the Balkan wars of the 1990s for humanitarian reasons, it is fairly clear that the NATO bombing of Serbia was in fact the final phase of the U.S.'s plan for Yugoslavia after the death of General Tito -- dissolution and the establishment of a permanent air base in the region.

Slobodan Milosevic was the antagonist in the official U.S. story about Yugoslavia not because of his war crimes or his responsibility for ethnic cleansing but simply because he opposed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. The wars in the Balkans were wars amongst thieves scrambling for the scraps of what was once a major regional power and war crimes were committed on all sides. Slobodan Milosevic was different from the other forces in the region mainly because his aim was to maintain the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia (he is arguably the least evil of the players involved ). Every step of the way, since the death of General Tito, the U.S. and its junior partners in Europe supported the forces of fragmentation and Slobodan Milosevic stood in their way.

Kosovo, now controlled by the heroin and prostitute trafficking KLA, would be an excellent location for a U.S. air base. It would serve as a strategic base for any air offensive against Iran and is another step towards the goal of encircling Russia and dominating Eurasia.

Of course Russia is opposing Kosovo's independence just as it opposes U.S. missile defenses in Eastern Europe. Moreover, Russia is making its own power moves. Recently Russia secured natural gas deals with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan -- deals which will increase the energy dependence of Europe on Russia. Meanwhile, the efforts of the U.S. and Europe to build a Trans-Caspian oil pipeline that would allow them to bypass Russia are all but dead in the water.

Unlike the Cold War we are no longer in a situation where the major players recognize the line between "yours" and "mine". The U.S. wants Eurasia and a unipolar world while Russia wants to maintain its position as a regional power-broker with China as an equal partner in a multi-polar world. Either they will come to an agreement or they will go to war.

There Won't Be Another Cold War

2007-06-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

It's the joke of the year since Iranian missile cannot reach Europe... these days, the Americans tell a lot of jokes. Iranian missiles are incapable of reaching Europe and it is very unlikely that they (the Americans) do not know this.

Ali Larijani, Secretary of Supreme National Security Council, Iran

Iran simply does not have the ability to launch a missile attack against Europe. Moreover, since the E.U. is Iran's biggest trading partner, an Iranian missile strike against Europe wouldn't make any sense. Larijani is wrong about one thing though. This isn't the joke of the year. The idea that North Korea could launch a missile attack against Europe is even funnier.

Side note: the utter contempt with which the current U.S. administration holds the general public is infuriating. They really expect us to swallow these lies?! Well, as Adolph Hitler wrote in 1925, people are most likely to believe a big lie since the average person cannot fathom that anyone would go to such lengths to distort the truth.

So, if the official justification for building missile defenses in Eastern Europe is a lie, then why is U.S. building them? When examined through the lens of the U.S. policy toward Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, the answer to this question becomes obvious. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has pursued policies designed systematically and ruthlessly to destroy Russia.

The first Bush and Clinton administrations carried out the initial phase of the effort -- the looting of the Russian financial system. Under the auspices of the IMF and with the assistance of corrupt Russian politicans (e.g. Boris Yeltsin) and businessmen (i.e. gangsters), billions of dollars were funneled out of Russia and into U.S. banks.

Simultaneously and continuing into the present, the U.S. government has sought to fragment the countries of the former Soviet Union into as many little countries as possible, since little weak countries are easier to dominate than larger ones. The obvious supplement to this strategy has been the support of anti-Russian, pro-U.S. governments in the former Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe. Altogether, these are the newly independent states of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, many of which are governed by corrupt, religious fundamentalist and/or right-wing politicans whose only mark of distinction is that they hate Russia and love Uncle Sam.

Side note: NATO absorbed the Baltic States and Poland during these years. The governments in these countries are now openly working to rehabilitate Nazism and demonize the Red Army which was largely responsible for the Nazi defeat in Europe. I wrote about this in a post last month.

The final phase of the plan is to encircle Russia with missile defenses using the pro-U.S. countries of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact as bases. This, theoretically (since missile defense systems have not been proven to actually work), would allow the U.S. the liberty to launch a nuclear attack against Russia without fear of reprisal.

But why would the U.S. want to do all this to Russia? As Zbigniew Brzezinski -- probably the most influential geo-strategist since Henry Kissinger -- wrote:

The most immediate task [in the wake of the Cold War] is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role (page 198, The Grand Chessboard, 1997).

Why is Eurasia so important?

Eurasia is the globe's largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources (page 31, The Grand Chessboard, 1997).

In other words the U.S. ruling class must neutralize Russia in order to dominate Eurasia -- the key to global domination.

Russia is still able to challenge the U.S. despite its severe financial handicap and the loss of much of its former territorial influence thanks to its massive wealth of energy resources defended by its gigantic nuclear arsenal. Moreover, the war in Iraq has served to increase Russia's wealth by driving global energy prices to historical heights and strengthen its influence in the world by utterly wrecking the U.S.'s credibility.

As is normally the case, it's the masses of Russian people who have suffered the worst effects of Washington's policy towards Russia. Moreover, if the U.S. ruling elite's quest for global domination precipitates a global war, it will be the masses of people who pay the cost.

Venezuela Blows Up the D.E.A.'s Spot

2007-05-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

Estaban haciendo una gran cantidad de traslado de droga bajo la figura de entrega vigilada... nosotros pudimos determinar que estábamos en presencia evidentemente de un nuevo cartel (they were making a large quantity of drug shipments under the pretense of monitoring them.. we were able to determine the presence of a new drug cartel).Pedro Carreño, Minister of the Interior, Venezuela

Last year I wrote about the the so-called "War on Drugs" in Latin America and how it is in fact a cover for the U.S.'s drug wars to protect its financial interest in cocaine trafficking. What I neglected to mention was that the U.S.'s drug wars are part of a political strategy as well. Fortunately Chavez's government called the U.S. out on this issue earlier this month in response to criticism from the White House that Venezuela was not cooperating with the U.S. in curbing cocaine smuggling. Minister of the Interior Pedro Carreño explained to the Associated Press that his government ended its cooperation with the U.S. D.E.A. in 2005 because the agency wasn't making any arrests or smashing any cartels. Instead it was smuggling huge amounts of blow through the country. In effect the D.E.A. was itself operating as a drug cartel. Morever the authorities in Venezuela discovered that the U.S. D.E.A. had infiltrated government intelligence agencies and represented a threat to national security. Thus it would appear that the U.S. D.E.A. serves two functions: (a) as a an instrument of espionage it serves to protect U.S. strategic political interests; and (b) as an enforcement agency it serves to protect the U.S.'s financial interest in cocaine trafficking.

Post-May Day Rant

2007-05-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the world is just so fucked-up that El Gringo Rumbero prefers to tune it out and immerse himself in simple pleasures without yielding too much to his many vices. Then he throws cold water on his face, slips on his mouth guard and comes out from his corner swinging!

The Pope is a wicked man. Never mind the fact that he is the master of an institution which bleeds the poor while its leaders, especially the Pope himself, live lavishly. Never mind that the Catholic Church as an institution, throughout its entire history, has done absolutely nothing to alleviate the suffering of the masses of people of the world -- on the contrary it has most often played an intrumental role in oppressing and even murdering people in mass. Just look at the history of this Pope in particular.

1941: Pope Benedict XVI, née Joseph Alois Ratzinger, joins the Hitler Youth. His excuse that he had to join because membership was legally required at the time is not satisfactory from a man who is supposedly the representative of Jesus Christ on earth. Jesus (née Yeshua Ben Yusuf) would not have even been allowed to join the Hitler Youth so I think we know what he would have done in such a situation!

1943: Pope Benedict XVI, née Joseph Alois Ratzinger, is drafted into the German Army. Again, the man who is currently the supreme master of the universal church of Jesus Christ does not resist but willingly joins an organization that is responsible for the deaths of millions of people -- mostly fellow Christians.

Now this man, who we see is not exceptional in any way and certainly not especially Christian, is applauding the Spanish Conquest and "conversion" of the indigenous people of the Americas while denouncing both Marxism (true to his Nazi roots) and Capitalism (while he prances around in gilded robes). Behold, the Antichrist!

What's going on in Estonia? At the end of April, a lot of ink was spilled over clashes between protesters and police that ensued when the Estonian authorities attempted to dismantle a monument to the Red Army commemorating the defeat of the Nazis. As usual, the Western news media neglected to report anything that would allow readers to understand the situation. The current government of Estonia, which is a member of NATO, has been systematically trying to rewrite history to rehabilitate Nazism in the country -- all without a peep from fellow NATO members.

Why would Estonians want to rehabilitate Nazism? Answering this question requires one to look at the history of Estonia and its Baltic neighbors during the period. The governing bodies of the Baltic States, as well as the majority of their populations, were sympathetic to the Nazi cause. So it's no surprise that the Estonians were generally unhappy when the Soviet Union occupied the country in 1940 after the infamous 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (this pact was more than anything a way for the Russians to buy time before the inevitable Nazi onslaught). The primary accomplishment of the Soviet Occupation was saving most of the country's Jewish population from the Nazis by deporting them to Eastern Russia. The attempt to cleanse the country of Nazi sympathizers was really a lost cause since most of the population was down with the Nazi program. That's why most Estonians remember the Soviet Occupation as particularly harsh and oppressive. On the other hand, the Nazi occupation (which began after the German Army took the Baltic States in 1941) was a cake-walk. The Estonians basically welcome the conquering army with open arms and the Nazis, in turn, favored the people in the Baltic region among Eastern Europeans for their pro-Nazi sympathies and their Nordic features. After the Nazis lost the war it was all downhill as far as Estonia is concerned. They were on the wrong side of the war… and 60 years later we are still seeing the repercussions.

Zionists Spread Anti-Semitism to Palestine

2007-04-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

Last year I wrote an entry on Israel's racist (i.e. white supremacist) ideology regarding the definition of a Jewish person. I told the story of the Jin family who could prove that their family had been Jews for centuries and yet the Israeli Government still refuses to recognize them as Jews even after they underwent an Orthodox conversion in Israel. Moreover they are the only members of China's ancient Jewish community who have been allowed to immigrate to Israel (others have tried). I used the example to illustrate how the Zionists use a racist definition of a Jewish person to turn Palestine into a "White Man's Land".

Apparently, in a strange twist of fate that is giving me an evil kind of pleasure, the policy has backfired! Israeli citizens – even IDF soldiers – have been carrying out vicious anti-semitic attacks inside Israel! As I explained in my entry last year – White people (unlike people of color like the Jin family) need only produce a single Jewish parent or grandparent in order to fulfill the official definition of a "Jewish person" and thereby automatically become Israeli citizens. This policy has resulted in the immigration of over one million Russians to Israel since the 1990s. Unfortunately recent survey data reveal that at least 300,000 of these people do not even consider themselves to be Jewish! It's not surprising then that those responsible for all of these attacks have been "Russian Jews". In fact, according to the Dmir Centre which has been monitoring these attacks, there are now dozens of neo-Nazis in every city in Israel. Not surprisingly -- since the Zionist state's raison d'etre is to save Jews from anti-semitism -- the Israeli government is keeping this story under wraps. The authorities do not even record the attacks as instances of anti-semitism at all even though the attackers use anti-semitic epithets as they beat their victims and have swastikas tatooed on their arms. Thus, in its attempt to create a "White Man's Land" in the Middle East, the Zionist enterprise has actually spread old-fashioned European anti-semitism to Palestine!

Post-Earth Day Musings

2007-04-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

New Yorkers were blessed yesterday -- "Earth Day" -- with unseasonably warm weather and not a cloud in the sky. I took advantage of the hot sun and cool breeze by running a few miles in the park and soaking up some of that rich ultra-violet radiation. But I really had to struggle to escape persistent thoughts about how miserable we have made the world over the past couple of centuries -- how we took the gifts of the earth for granted. Actually so-called "civilized man" has, for the past 200 years or so, treated the earth with nothing less than contempt. The earth has been for civilized man a kind of enemy or, at best, an obstacle to be overcome and mastered through man's superior ingenuity. And, of course, man's hatred of the earth has ultimately resulted in his own suffering -- suffering for some more than others thanks to the elegant machine of his civilization. This cycle of pain is not so wondrous when one considers that humans are, after all, of the earth and that hidden in man's contempt is necessarily his own self-loathing and shame. Thus human suffering and, very possibly, extinction is the inevitable result of man's poisoning of the environment. How short-sighted is modern civilization that it cannot find the motivation to cherish and protect the earth in the most basic instinct of self-preservation?

Virginia Tech

2007-04-18T12:12:00.000-07:00

For nineteen years I have been put in your man's world and was forbidden to touch anything and you made me think that all was going very well and that I did not have to worry about anything but putting flowers in vases. Why did you lie to me? Why did you keep me ignorant, if it was to admit to me one day that this world is cracking and that you are all powerless and to make me choose between a suicide and a murder?

-- Jean-Paul Sartre

Bill O'Reilly: El Gringo Rumbero, do you hate America?
El Gringo Rumbero: Hell yeah!

Why is it such a big deal that the shooter was Asian? Conversely -- why wasn't it such a big deal that the shooters at Columbine were White? How does his being Asian have so much explanatory power? Could it be that the U.S. is still a nauseatingly racist country?

Here's my hypothesis about the shootings:

This guy killed all of those people because a lot people in this country are fucking annoying and anyone who has never fantasized about just going all out and fucking buck wild and putting gaping holes in his fellow Americans is either extremely Buddha-like and Saintly or just plain stupid and insensitive to the world. In fact the guy said he was sick and tired of the students at Virginia Tech whom he viewed as rich and debauched. In other words -- it aint that deep, people! Stop hiding your racism behind pseudo-anthropology and look at the world around you!

This guy killed all of those people because it's so fucking easy to get a firearm in this country! You can get one at Wal-Mart. The kid had two nine-millimeter pistols that he obtained legally! Had he stayed in Korea -- where it is virtually impossible for civilians to procure firearms (legally or illegally) -- he probably would just have gotten wasted and, in the worst case, gotten his ass beat in a drunken brawl. Instead he was in Blacksburg (VA) where -- unlike in Korea -- any demented psychopath or his retarded cousin can easily and legally procure lethal firearms.

And where's the memorial address for the 650,000 dead Iraqis Mr. President?! Why are the lives of 650,000 dead Iraqis worth exponentially less than the lives of 32 Americans?!

The War On Drugs (Revisited)

2007-04-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

Acknowledged or not, consciously or unconsciously, the poetic state, a transcendant state of life, is fundamentally what the public seeks through love, crime, drugs, war or insurrection.

-- Antonin Artaud

When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky?

-- Ernest Hemingway

From New York to Tehran the world is getting high, high, high. Why? That's a rhetorical question isn't it? Why can't we all just get high on life? Let's face it: if life were a drug, it would be rubbing alcohol. It may get you a little drunk sometimes but, ultimately, it's just going to make you go blind or just kill you. For most people in this world, life is about figuring out where the next meal's coming from and for most of the rest it's about drudgery. We spend our time circulating commodities -- consuming them, manufactuiring them and selling them even though some of us wake up to the painful realization that we ourselves have become mere commodities, merely means by which this absurd machine perpetuates its murderous existence. So we get tipsy, twisted and tight trying to attain that sweet perfection that eludes us when sober. We look for the sublime through the eye of a hypodermic needle or try to inhale it -- hot, dry and ethereal -- through the stem of a glass pipe. But let me tell you, I checked and double-checked, baby I've done research and nobody ever found nirvana between the folds of a glassine envelope. Nobody ever found paradise at the bottom of a brandy snifter. What drugs provide is simulation and, as with all simulacra, you have to pay. Drugs are money, they cost money, and the high you get from them is the manifestation not of creativity, not of the reality that makes us all live but of the qualitative experience of a discrete quantity of money. And as with all money, someone had to die for those drugs, someone like the people of Afghanistan and Colombia. So to escape the misery of life in the Babylon system we took drugs and by taking those drugs we only augmented our complicity in the system that creates our misery. The same system that provides those drugs to slake our appetite for the sublime while securing surplus cash-flows and circumventing insurrection. Still we get no satisfaction. Instead we have crime, drugs and war ... and with so little love left in the world, maybe it's time we tried an insurrection.

"300": The Banality of Fascist Art

2007-03-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

Finally, American cinema has never ceased to make and remake the same fundamental movie, that is Birth of a nation-civilization, of which Griffith made the first version.
Gilles Deleuze, 1983

Fifteen years after its coronation as global leader (with the fall of the Soviet Union), America is becoming a fearful and lonely democracy in a politically antagonistic world.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, 2007

On Saturday I shelled out 18 bucks for me and my date to see "300" -- Warner Bros.' production of the Frank Miller graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC). Since then I have been in a persistent state of of silent panic. No one in the audience booed as did the audience at the Berlin Film Festival last month after the screening of 300. There was intermittent laughter but no anger at such a blatantly fascist, racist and sexist spectacle. I can't believe that there could possibly be any question about the nature of this film. Here's a synopsis -- the world is being engulfed and overwhelmed by degenerate, diseased effeminate dark-skinned people from Africa and Asia and the only thing that stands in their way are 300 White Super-Men from Sparta which represents "freedom" (a word that, thanks to the U.S., now is devoid of any meaning whatsoever), masculinity and physical fitness (i.e. Whiteness as configured in the movie). Thus we are not talking about a hidden message here. Where is the outrage? D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation was met with significant protests all across the country upon it's release about a Century ago. Where is the protest now? After 100 years of replaying the same fascist and racist scenario to the public it would appear that the majority have finally internalized the illusion such that, as one blogger put it, "it's ok that it has a fascist aesthetic... so long as you know it's there." I would argue that this is in fact the hallmark of culture that has become rigorously fascist. When the elements that comprise fascist ideology -- denigration of life in and for itself, glorification of death in war, racism and sexism -- become banal then you can be sure that you are living under a fascist regime.

Imperialist Discourse and Neo-Fascism in Japan

2007-03-08T12:09:00.000-08:00

Another unspoken rule of the dominant discourse: It's alright to deny one's responsibility for past crimes against humanity -- as long as the people against whom those crimes were committed were not White.

Case in point – Last week Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe publicly denied that the Japanese Government was responsible for the system of forced sexual slavery maintained in the areas of East Asia under Japanese control during World War II:

There is no evidence to prove there was coercion, nothing to support it... So, in respect to this declaration, you have to keep in mind that things have changed greatly.

The declaration Prime Minister Abe referred to was the one the Japanese Government made on August 4, 1993 in which it admitted playing an unspecified role in the maintenance of brothels – the so-called "Comfort Stations" – while denying any responsibility and denying that any war crime had been committed. This declaration came largely as a response to pressure from a movement led by some the few survivors of the Comfort Stations. The stories of these women – so-called "Comfort Women" who came from all over East Asia but mainly from Korea – are horrific. The following is the testimony of Chong Ok Sun:

I was born on 28 December 1920, in Phabal-Ri, Pungsan County, South Hamgyong Province, in the north of the Korean peninsula.

One day in June, at the age of 13, I had to prepare lunch for my parents who were working in the field and so I went to the village well to fetch water. A Japanese garrison soldier surprised me there and took me away, so that my parents never knew what had happened to their daughter. I was taken to the police station in a truck, where I was raped by several policemen. When I shouted, they put socks in my mouth and continued to rape me. The head of the police station hit me in my left eye because I was crying. That day I lost my eyesight in the left eye.

After 10 days or so, I was taken to the Japanese army garrison barracks in Heysan City. There were around 400 other Korean young girls with me and we had to serve over 5,000 Japanese soldiers as sex slaves every day - up to 40 men per day. Each time I protested, they hit me or stuffed rags in my mouth. One held a matchstick to my private parts until I obeyed him. My private parts were oozing with blood.

One Korean girl who was with us once demanded why we had to serve so many, up to 40, men per day. To punish her for her questioning, the Japanese company commander Yamamoto ordered her to be beaten with a sword. While we were watching, they took off her clothes, tied her legs and hands and rolled her over a board with nails until the nails were covered with blood and pieces of her flesh. In the end, they cut off her head. Another Japanese, Yamamoto, told us that 'it's easy to kill you all, easier than killing dogs'. He also said 'since those Korean girls are crying because they have not eaten, boil the human flesh and make them eat it'.

One Korean girl caught a venereal disease from being raped so often and, as a result, over 50 Japanese soldiers were infected. In order to stop the disease from spreading and to 'sterilize' the Korean girl, they stuck a hot iron bar in her private parts.

Once they took 40 of us on a truck far away to a pool filled with water and snakes. The soldiers beat several of the girls, shoved them into the water, heaped earth into the pool and buried them alive.

I think over half of the girls who were at the garrison barracks were killed. Twice I tried to run away, but both times we were caught after a few days. We were tortured even more and I was hit on my head so many times that all the scars still remain. They also tattooed me on the inside of my lips, my chest, my stomach and my body. I fainted. When I woke up, I was on a mountainside, presumably left for dead. Of the two girls with me, only Kuk Hae and I survived. A 50-year-old man who lived in the mountains found us, gave us clothes and something to eat. He also helped us to travel back to Korea, where I returned, scarred, barren and with difficulties in speaking, at the age of 18, after five years of serving as a sex slave for the Japanese.

The establishment of Comfort Stations in the areas of East Asia controlled by Japan began as early as 1932, became a widespread and regular practice by 1937 and continued until the Japanese surrender in 1945. Japanese Government documents, uncovered in 1992, reveal that military personnel – either directly or via middlemen – procured women for the brothels using coercion, deception and brute force. As the testimony of Chong Ok Sun and other survivors reveals, as well as the investigations of the United Nations and the International Commission of Jurists, the Comfort Stations were a system of Concentration Camps akin to the Lagers in Germany at the same time (in fact the SS also maintained "Joy Divisions" or "Womens Camps" in Auschwitz and other locations near the Eastern Front in which both Jewish and Non-Jewish women were forced into sexual slavery although the system was not as widespread as in the case of the Comfort Stations). Moreover, considering that most of these 200,000 women did not survive their enslavement, the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights stated in 1996 that the Japanese Government's establishment of the Comfort Stations should be considered an act of genocide.

Now imagine what kind of outrage would result if the Prime Minister of Germany were to declare that the German Government during World War II was not responsible for the Holocaust, that there never was a genocide and that the government was changing its position on the issue!

Remember how the news media of the core imperialist nations demonized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning the historical veracity of the Final Solution and the Lagers? And Iran wasn't even responsible for the Lagers! Here we are talking about the very same country responsible for the forced enslavement and murder of nearly 200,000 women now denying its responsibility for the crime and denying that any crime was committed at all! Where are all the noisy reporters who were so upset about the President of Iran now?

The Finned Ones, Four-Legged Ones and Winged Ones

2007-02-26T12:08:00.000-08:00

"What do they know - all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."

Isaac Bashevis Singer

About five years ago I went to a calf auction in the heart of New York State somewhere between Albany and Syracuse. It was early spring so the air still chilled to the bone and the sky hung dark and low. Everything was damp and muddy and a cold drizzle fell continuously from the thick dark clouds above. The auction was a compound of several wood-frame barns with muddy floors, whose red and white paint was peeling to reveal the rotten wood underneath. Trailers with rows of thin slits in the sides were parked in a muddy lot outside the barns. The calf auction was held inside the main barn through a small door in the back, past a narrow hallway in a small brightly lit room with a very low ceiling, a dirt floor and three rows of short wooden benches. On one side of the small floor space, to the left, were several very small doorways through a divider. There was a scale in front of one of the doors. The auctioneer stood on the side of the floor opposite the scale while a man in overalls took up a position near the scale. I sat in the last row of benches behind men in sports jackets who sat in the front row. From this vantage point I could see over the divider on the left. All of the doorways led into empty stalls with doors at the far ends that led out into the lot where the trailers were parked.

Inside the trailers were thousands of calves, born only the day before, waiting to be auctioned off to the dealers – the men in the sports jackets. Even before coming to the auction I knew the facts – that calves were a by-product of the dairy industry and that New York State, as one of the leading dairy-producing states in the U.S., was also one of the leading producers of calves. Dairy farmers had to fertilize their cows in order for them to produce milk and to inject them with hormones to keep them producing milk for as long as possible. But the calves had to be sold as soon as they were born so that they would not consume any of the milk. The very day following their birth, they are torn from their mothers' teats, loaded into trucks and brought to market.

The auctioneer rang a bell and the first calf was brought onto the scale and then pushed into the ring. It was a very small frail creature with bulging eyes and protruding rib cage. The hair on its body was still matted from the fluid in its mother's womb. It cringed and scurried to and fro across the ring and cried out. As I gazed into its eyes which were already yellow from malnutrition in the glaring light it occurred to me that something terrible was taking place in that room. The look in the animal's eyes was a fear so uncanny it made my guts tighten. It was the fear of an infant born only the day before whose sole experience is cold and hunger – the terror of a brand new life being ground into nothing. And while I began to panic inside as the animal cried out, the dealers in the front row began to kick and prod the creature with their mud-encrusted boots. The little beast tried in vain to avoid the blows in the tiny space but each way it turned it met another boot which pounded its hollow rib cage and sometimes knocked it off its unsure hooves. While this was happening, a string of unintelligible words streamed quickly from the auctioneer's lips until finally the man in overalls grabbed the calf by the neck, painted a number on its back and pushed it through one of the doors. This ordeal was repeated for several hours until the trailers were empty, when all the calves had been selected either for the veal farm or for slaughter. At the slaughterhouse the calves are ground into dog-food or frozen veal patties and there is no need to describe here what happens at the veal farm as enough has been written about these sordid facilities.

This is the role Civilized man has reserved for the finned, four-legged and winged ones – the animals. Animals are fair game. Man raises them for slaughter and even hunts them to extinction. And, since men are – after all – animals (we must eat, fuck and shit), one need not wonder at how men butcher entire villages, murder women and children and implement Final Solutions.

The Gringo You Love to Hate

2007-02-12T12:06:00.000-08:00

It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.

Mao Zedong, 1939

People hate El Gringo Rumbero? Believe it! Every now and again I run a Google search on my square moniker to make sure no one is surfing the Web using my government name to cruise for jail-bait or solicit assault weapons or narcotics (since, obviously, i never do that shit). This morning I ran my regular search and, lo and behold, my birth-name comes up on the "Pro-raghead terrorist and communist filth list" posted by some responsible U.S. citizen doing his part to protect the precious homeland. Okay so maybe some drunk adolescent Internet user from Indiana enjoying his first pickup truck with a gun rack blasting Christian Rock is not exactly what Mao had in mind when he wrote about "the Enemy" but hey -- I'm an Armchair Revolutionary!

North America on ICE

2007-02-06T12:05:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time… I shouldn't have left you… without a strong rhyme to step to

Eric B. & Rakim, 1987

A lot's gone down during my hiatus. For example: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been hard at work deporting hundreds of Mexican people who are in this country illegally.

You all know about ICE right?

ICE is the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). And, as ICE is charged with the enforcement of over 400 federal statutes, ICE Special Agents quite possibly possess the broadest investigative authority in the United States Government. Also ICE is the largest special weapons and tactics (SWAT) unit that has ever been mobilized!

But why is the Department of Homeland Security, whose stated mission is to prevent and deter terrorist attacks, throwing so many resources behind an agency whose activities have little or no connection to "terrorism" at all?

The answer is clear: there is no terrorist threat. Why throw money and resources at an imaginary problem?

Okay but wait… if there's no terrorist threat, then what the hell is the DHS for?! The answer to this question should be obvious but many of us are too consumed by fear (fear spread by the DHS itself) to realize it. Think of the words "Department of Homeland Security" carefully. It tells us our home is in danger and we need this state institution to protect us. But we don't need it to protect us from foreign invaders since we have the Department of Defense for that. We need it to protect us from the evil terrorists! But who are the evil terrorists?

Consider that, in immigration raids now, ICE Special Agents are using the classic "darker than a grocery bag test" to separate the illegal from the legal immigrants. Moreover, in their press releases, ICE personnel have been equating illegal immigration with crimes that are much more repulsive to the public at large and that have long been associated in the news media with people of color -- like dope peddling, murder, rape, sexually abusing children and theft. Right now the line is that they are going after criminals and illegal immigrants but, given the Patriot Act, the terrorism law and the investigative powers ICE possesses, it is likely that the definition of a "terrorist" will grow increasingly broader.

In other words, the purpose of the DHS is to continuously create and violently suppress "terrorists" whenever the need arises, in the interest of ensuring the power of the state. That is to say that the DHS is nothing less than a terrorist institution. The most obvious parallel here is with the original terrorist body, the notorious Committee of Public Safety (Comité de Salut Public) of the Jacobins which presided over the infamous Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Both institutions use fear and violence to maintain order and, ultimately, to suppress dissent and preserve power. Another such organization that comes to mind is the Ku Klux Klan.

So when John Kerry says he "will hunt down and kill the terrorists," he is not only supporting actual terrorism abroad in the form of military interventions in the countries of Asia and elsewhere, but he is also supporting actual terrorism right here in the 50 states. It's time to recognize that the discourse of anti-terrorism in facts supports the biggest agent of terror in the U.S. and the world, the U.S. Government, which executes its reign of terror through the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, and justifies it principally by racism.

Spread Love

2006-11-08T12:04:00.000-08:00

Ladies say: "El Gringo Rumbero is all about the love." It's true. But most people in this town don't have time for love. We are so caught up in the rat race, the seemingly endless cycle of production and consumption, that we have forgotten about the big picture -- the broader cycle of life, death and rebirth. Love may not conquer all but it is the life experience par excellence -- through love you truly experience being in the world and you have knowledge of that which makes us all live. In love both of the fundamental ontological elements come together -- ecstasy and agony. Also in love you feel intense, strong and powerful while at the same time utterly insignificant, banal and subject to the whims of that which makes us all live. In love you bravely submit to your fate.

The other day I was riding the subway downtown when a man boarded the train with a guitar. He raised the guitar to his chest, threw his head back and began to play. And as his eyes rolled back into his head he began to sing. His songs were devotional hymns that he himself had written (I checked later and couldn't find them on the Internet) and they were love songs. They expressed the joy and suffering that is the fundamental intuition of life -- existence at its core -- the truth one finds in love. Suddenly I understood why love songs are rooted in spiritual hymns and chants. That strength that is realized only in unconditional submission that comes through in hymns is identical to love. His songs were those of the human being in its crudest most raw form, the human being at ground zero, the human being in all its wretchedness but also in all its glory since it's only then that the human is indistinguishable from the rest of the universe and closest to the sublime -- in love. When the man finished his last song he dropped his guitar, opened his eyes and looked at all of the passengers who were all holding forth crisp green bills in their hands for the musician. Looking at each one in turn he said in a slight Jamaican accent, "thank you ladies and gentlemen... I hope that my music has brought peace and love into your hearts." And, as the train came to a stop and the doors opened, he turned without taking any of the money and left the train.

The Pocahontas Myth

2006-10-30T09:26:00.000-08:00

Frederic W. Gleach, Ph.D. (Senior Lecturer and Curator, Anthropology Collections, Cornell University) wrote a fascinating feature in this month's issue of Natural History Magazine. His argument runs as follows:

The Powhatans (the American Indians encountered by the Jamestown colonists in 1607) adopted the English into their social and political world. While they could have easily exterminated the English in a sustained campaign, the Powhatans instead made the colonists part of the collectivity. The English could not understand this and viewed it as a sign of weakness. They continuously broke the compact they had forged with the Powhatans which provoked the occasional punishment from the Powhatans.

Captain John Smith was an integral part of the contract forged between the Powhatans and the English since the latter viewed him as the English "War Chief." This explains the change in relationships after he returned to England.

Pocahontas was acting in a traditional role as a cultural mediator in symbolically saving Smith's life so that he could be reborn into the Powhatan world. In other words the execution of Smith was staged as part of the ritual the Powhatans performed when welcoming outsiders into their social body and Pocahantas was just playing her role in the ritual as the chief's daughter.

In short -- the Pocahontas story is a myth to dress up the reality of theft and genocide in the pretty garb of an insipid love story that establishes the superiority of Anglo-American Masculinity. The only love in reality is that which the Powhatans showed the English when they greeted them at the Coast while they could have massacred them. Love the English viewed as weakness and reciprocated with continuous attempts to seize more land than they needed. And the only explanation for the English conquest is not their intellectual, military or moral superiority but their willingness to lie, murder and rob the very people who saved their miserable lives from starvation and death.

Israel Is A Racist White Supremacist State

2006-10-16T09:09:00.000-07:00

Chinese Jews?! Chinese food in the Holy Land! You'd think any Jew would be thrilled. Not so. Of the 600 or so families in Kaifeng who claim to have been Jews for generations, only one of them (the Jin family) has been able to make the so-called "return" (Aliyah) to the Holy Land. And they had to undergo an Orthodox conversion to do so. And even then they were not granted legal status as Jews by the State. You see the members of the ancient Jewish community of Kaifeng (established in at least the 10th Century), like the rest of the communities in the Jewish Diaspora, look like their neighbors (i.e. they look Chinese). Here's a picture.

In Israel, "Jew" clearly equals "White," although they can't say it. But this is ridiculous. According to Israeli law, I could make the Aliyah without a problem because I am White and can prove that all of my ancestors for many generations have been Jewish. Yet a recent DNA test my father took revealed that none of my paternal genetic markers can be traced to the Middle East. In fact on my father's side I have more in common with an Irishman or a Spaniard than an Ancient Hebrew. In other words, Judaism is not a race! It's a religion. And a Jew can be African, Arab, Chinese, European or what have you. But what the example of the Chinese Jews shows, as well as the experiences of all people of color in Israel, is that the Zionist State has nothing or very little to do with religion. The Jin family produced official Chinese documents showing that they were descendants of Jews. But that was not sufficient (as it would have been in say, my case). So they underwent an Orthodox ritual conversion. But that still wasn't sufficient. So if the Jew angle isn't about religion then what is it about? It's a con. How else do you justify the establishment of a new colonial entity based on White Supremacy after the whole world recognized the right of the formerly colonized people to independence after World War II? But that's another story.

Nobody Ever Wacks The Fascists!

2006-10-10T09:08:00.000-07:00

Okay so the Columbia University student Republicans invited the leader of the Minutemen to speak at the school last week and the audience shouted him off the stage (<http://www.youtube.com/v/cfnn7wTgoE8>). Not a huge deal but commendable nonetheless and a feel-good moment for decent-minded citizens considering no one got hurt. Unfortunately the university administration doesn't see it that way. They want to discipline the students. Now, for those who may not know, the Minutemen are an armed militia that patrol the southern border of the U.S. and kill people who try to cross it from Mexico. Now if my last blog post sounded crazy to you then consider this: Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X -- men whose only crime was fighting for equality, freedom and justice -- were assassinated and their murderers went unpunished. Jim Gilchrist, who is guilty of inciting racist murders, was prevented from giving a speech and those responsible have been targeted for punishment (they might not if you sign this petition). And have you noticed that fascists like Gilchrist and his ilk hardly ever seem to pay for their crimes? Most die of natural causes. What the fuck is that?!

Pessimism

2006-09-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

Pessimism easily seduces even the most minimally perspicacious observer of the world. The most beautiful creatures among us die too soon and in mass while ugliness flourishes across the surface of the planet. Wickedness is rewarded and righteousness is punished such that we now live in a world ruled tyrannically by the most wicked people imaginable. Genocidal murderers, dope traffickers, money launderers, child murderers, war mongers are words that come to mind when seeking to characterize the personalities that now rule the world. And our leaders are not content to destroy the best of their own species either. The most beautiful, most elegant, wise and graceful animals are quickly being cleansed from the face of the earth due to the policies of our leaders. The luscious diversity of plants, insects and all forms of life with which Creator lavished us is rapidly disappearing. The air is polluted and most people in the world no longer have access to potable water. Our leaders lie to us, they use us, abuse us, trick us, rob us of our children and generally add to the endless trail of corpses that essentially represents the past five centuries of history. Perhaps it is as Leslie Silko says, that we are living under the reign of the Death-Eyed Dog where blood-sucking sorcerers hold sway and bleed the people and destroy the land to satisfy their vile appetites. Perhaps these are the seven generations that Lakota medicine men spoke of, during which the Wasichus rule as tyrants over the land destroying the Buffalo Nation and massacring the people. And perhaps one day the White Buffalo Calf Woman will return and restore peace, harmony, justice, equality and freedom to the land. I pray that she does come or that something happens; that a change comes and soon, because this is not the way to live! It can't be that Creator put us here to endlessly circulate capital, to persuade others that "Brand X" doesn't suit their lifestyle, to live our lives as ideological automatons, to poison our brothers and sisters or even to murder them in mass! We obviously live in HELL and it's ruled by blood-sucking DEMONS! We must GET OUT! This imperative is the sole response I have been able to articulate to the pessimism that threatens to consume me.

"US Lets Liquids Bought Beyond Checkpoints on Planes"

2006-09-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

Either the U.S. government is comprised of a bunch of absolute morons or there is no terrorist threat. These are the only two explanations for why the government would release things like this to the news media. This is essentially telling any would be "terrorists" that if they want to take liquid explosives onto airplanes -- now's the time to do it. It's the same with the Department of Homeland Security threat levels. Why would you want to announce to the world the level of security at airports and so forth if you were actually trying to prevent a terrorist attack? Now I am not among those who believe that U.S. government officials are a bunch of imbeciles. I think a lot of liberals find solace in the notion that they are smarter than the people who run this country and that is probably a big reason for their opposition to the government. In other words they think they could do a better job of running things and the only reason they are powerless losers is because they "chose" to be so -- not because they actually don't have the ability to be in power. I think that government officials are actually very good at what they do and frighteningly effective. So I think that there is in fact no terrorist threat outside the one posed by the U.S. itself in the form of its military arsenal and that all of this code orange and no liquids on airplanes bullshit are purely and simply scare tactics to create a level of mass paranoia sufficient enough to sustain and endless series of wars, a steady flow of terrorist acts, against the peoples of Asia.

"Ayer Vine El Diablo Aqui"

2006-09-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

Okay. I don't care what anybody says -- Hugo Chavez is ill. He called George Bush the devil in front of the whole world, crossed himself and said it still smelled like sulfur! And people applauded and laughed. Keep in mind that the audience is not supposed to respond to speeches made before the General Assembly of the United Nations -- but people laughed and clapped anyway. He then went on to denounce U.S. imperialism and the continuing military violence perpetuated by the U.S. against the people of the South. I encourage anyone who reads or understands Spanish to check out the text of this speech or to watch the video. The English translation will hopefully be made available soon for those who don't. Chavez just said what the rest of the world's leaders were thinking but didn't have the balls to say. I.e. that the people of the world are not down with the program of U.S. imperialism.

Entertain The Notion

2006-09-11T08:33:00.000-07:00

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Aristotle

Rest in peace to all of those who have lost their lives since the U.S. launched its war for global domination on September 11, 2001, the hundreds of thousands who needlessly lost their lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and New York City. Pour out some liquor.

What happened on September 11, 2001 was the Reichstag Fire of the present era. The pivotal event that signaled both the end of the last economic expansion of U.S. capitalism and the beginning of the present phase of U.S. imperialism -- the quest for domination of the entire planet. And, like the Reichstag Fire, it was an inside job. People with many more, and more impressive, credentials than I share this view. Robert M. Bowman (former Director of the U.S. "Star Wars" Space Defense Program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and a former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with 101 combat missions), Andreas von Buelow (former assistant German defense minister, director of the German Secret Service, minister for research and technology, and member of Parliament for 25 years) and Michael Hugh Meacher (senior Labour member of the U.K. Parliament and former environment minister) are among the long list of distinguished individuals that question the official story.

While you pay your respects to the dead, entertain the notion, do the research and examine all the angles. If I am wrong then you've lost nothing. But if I'm right then wouldn't you want to know?

North Korea

2006-08-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

"Before a journalist starts to cover foreign policy issues, he or she should first be required to report on car accidents."

John Feffer, Co-Director, Foreign Policy In Focus and Director, Global Affairs, International Relations Center

Most journalists in the U.S. are simply mouthpieces for the foreign policy of whatever administration happens to be in office at the time. The notion that there exists an opposing view must strike them as utterly alien. It must be nice to get paid not to think. This is blatant when it comes to North Korea. We, the mentally retarded U.S. public, are told that the leaders of North Korea are a bunch of irrational lunatics just aching to shower us with nuclear weapons. Never mind that North Korea has had large stockpiles of chemical weapons for decades, and perhaps biological weapons as well, but has never used them. And never mind that the country has maintained its sovereignty for over 50 years! They're just a bunch of psychopaths. We're also fed a big juicy line on how our leaders just want to spread Democracy and Freedom to North Korea! Pardon me while I go somewhere private to vomit. Let's think about some of the great things the U.S. has done for Korea since World War II:

August 6 and 9, 1945 -- The U.S. drops nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ultimately killing hundreds of thousands of people including at least 60,000 Koreans mostly brought to Japan forcibly as laborers.

August 15, 1945 -- The U.S. authorities in the South support reactionaries who collaborated with the Japanese. These men formed the kernel of the government of South Korea which would eventually include military dictators like Park Jung Hee who used techniques to suppress dissent that they had learned from their Japanese masters before liberation.

Korean War -- U.S. forces, likely as a result of General MacArthur's view of all Koreans as "defeated enemies" as well as the knowledge that the North enjoyed widespread support among the people, are under orders to view any unidentified person on the battlefield as hostile.

Korean War -- The U.S. uses chemical weapons, especially napalm, extensively during the conflict.

July, 1950 -- Elements of the Second Battalion, U.S. Seventh Cavalry Regiment, massacre hundreds of civilians (mostly women and children) at No Gun Ri.

May 1980 -- The U.S. government approves the use of force against pro-Democracy demonstrators in the city of Kwangju and commits to direct intervention if the situation gets out of hand. A massacre ensues, the notorious Kwangju Massacre, that results in the deaths of between 500 and 2000 (the final death toll is still unknown because the military dumped bodies in mass graves and lakes) civilian demonstrators at the hands of the U.S.-backed South Korean military.

Now let's add that to all the other fucked-up shit the U.S. has done and continues to do all over the world and let's wonder why on earth the government of North Korea, which the President included in his "axis of evil" speech, would want to acquire nuclear weapons!

Gangland and Philosophy, Brooklyn-Style

2006-08-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

Everyone from Brooklyn has a mob story. I have a few but I 'm not going to tell them today. Today I want to talk about the real crooks -- the ones whose racket is so bad that they are playing all of us for suckers. These hoodlums are so hip that they have all us all thinking that their racket is legitimate and, even worse, they have us all carrying on about small time hustlers and how they should be locked up. Every year each and every one of us kicks up about three tenths of his or her income to the U.S. Treasury Department. Why? Ostensibly that money goes to maintenance of the government, infrastructure, the military and social programs. But if you look at the Federal budget for Fiscal 2007, you'll see that about 49 percent of the budget is going to the military. And if you include spending on Homeland Security and NASA (basically a military program), the portion of the budget devoted to military operations swells to well over 50 percent. You don't have to be the hippest wise guy on the block to see that the U.S. government is essentially a protection racket. Hence, our politicians are always telling us that we need to spend more on military because of this or that very frightening enemy. Today it's the crazy Arab terrorists tomorrow, who knows what it'll be, or whether there'll be a tomorrow... But it's a little more sophisticated than your typical protection racket because the government really is spending the money on weapons and so forth. They're not just shaking us down to line their pockets like your typical street hustler. We know because they've got hundreds of thousands of our young men overseas and they're tapping our telephones. So whoever's behind this racket is putting the squeeze on us, taxing us in sweat and blood, to fight turf wars to control valuable foreign markets (mainly dope and petroleum) while making sure none of us squares at home gets wise to the lovely set-up. If you think about it, this is much worse than your typical mobster. Your typical gangster may shake you down for "protection" every week but he doesn't make you send your son to fight for him two blocks down. Also your typical lowlife doesn't tell you that Arab terrorists or some such bullshit are trying to burn down your store. And if you don't pay, they don't fly fucking airplanes into your store and demolish the joint and then blame it on some Arab guys with ceramic box cutters who the local newspaper reports were one thousand miles away when it all went down. Sure they may beat you up and send you to the emergency room, but you know damn well who it was. Usually it's the same guy who asked you to pay up the first time. The point is that we are all the big-time suckers in a really gruesome mob story and it's time we got wise.

The Truth About Iran

2006-08-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

"Reactionaries hate the truth and the world's rulers fear it; but it embarasses lberals, perhaps because they can't do anything about it."

Chester Himes

On Wednesday, the Royal Institute of International Affairs -- a.k.a. Chatham House (a major British think tank) -- released a report that presented the following conclusion (a conclusion of which most of us who have been following the situation in Western Asia from a truly international perspective were already aware): "there is little doubt that iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the middle east..." Nonetheless this would blow up the happy little illusion that many in the U.S. have of their country's position in the world if they actually paid any attention. When it comes to Iran, the right and the left in this country like to clamor about political Islam (as if this country wasn't ruled by political Christianity), the absence of Democracy (as if this country were a Democracy), gender inequality (how many women presidents have we had here?) and the race for nuclear weapons (okay -- which country is the ONLY country to have ever used nuclear weapons TWICE on CIVILIANS?) but neither side wants to face the truth: that the leaders of Iran have played this thing out exceptionally well. Iran is now very tight with pretty much all the key players in Asia (excluding the U.S.) -- especially China and Russia. It is unlikely that any serious sanctions against Iran will get past a veto from either or both of these countries. Iran is not the pariah state here -- the U.S. is, along with it's principal ally in the region, the notorious Zionist colonial apartheid state, Israel. The U.S. politicians like to make a big fuss over the few countries that actually support their position against Iran -- namely France, Germany and the U.K. -- while downplaying the fact that all of the other players do not. Even Japan, the only real ally of the U.S. left in Asia, only half-heartedly supports the U.S. in this -- after all, Japan needs oil. A military attack on Iran at this point could easily precipitate armageddon given the players involved and what's at stake (i.e. Asia -- home of most of the world's population and remaining energy reserves). If the so-called left in this country really wants to make a positive impact here, rather than worrying about whether or not Iran is going to get nuclear weapons, they'd do a lot better making some kind of effort to make sure their own government or one of its key allies (i.e. Israel) doesn't end up nuking someone pretty soon! They do a lot better to recall that most of them supported the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and to make sure that they don't turn around and end up supporting a nuclear attack on Iran!

Rebellion in Oaxaca!

2006-08-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

In May the teachers in Oaxaca staged a massive strike in response to the Governor's refusal to raise funding for teachers and rural schools. See he needed those funds to keep his and his friends' pockets nice and fat. His response to the strikers was three thousand pigs who proceeded to beat the people down -- sending over one hundred people to the hospital. So then the people got organized and really got down. In June they formed the Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca (APPO) out of regional and municipal organizations, unions, non-governmental organizations, social organizations, cooperatives and parent groups and took over the center of Oaxaca city. Isn't it amazing what the people can accomplish when they get it on and show they ass? The New York Times doesn't think so. That rag finally reported these events yesterday only to decry the protesters' violence (not the pigs') and to echo the Governor's call for Federal intervention! In other words, in all seriousness, the fucking hypocrite was denouncing the violence of the People while advocating more violence on the part of the State. Meanwhile, the Governor has been sending out paramilitary units to murder protesters. All the Times reporter was really concerned about were the fucking tourists trapped in their hotels. You gotta love how traumatized these bourgeois fucks get when confronted with actual Democracy and Freedom!

The War on Drugs

2006-08-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

First of all there is no war on drugs -- there is a drug war. Second of all the U.S. is not trying to stop the production and traffic in cocaine and heroin -- it's simply trying to maintain control of the racket. This should be obvious to anyone who read Juan Forero's excellent report on the front page of Saturday's New York Times. Naturally you had to read the entire article to get the entire picture but it's something like this. The U.S. has spent the past six years and $ 4.7 billion supposedly trying to eradicate cocaine production and trafficking in Colombia. However production and price have remained pretty much the same as they were before Clinton launched the program (yes -- this is a Clinton program). And, the reporter mentions at the very end of the piece, the effort has had the effect of furnishing the control of the drug trafficking routes to the right-wing paramilitary commanders instead of the left-wing insurgents. Is it just me or is this just so obviously a racket that you just want to go fucking nuts? Basically the U.S. sent the military into Colombia to wipe out the traffic in blow only they didn't wipe it out -- they just shook down the competition. Now you've got the degenerate children of the U.S. and international bourgeoisie living it up in the night clubs of Los Angeles and New York City run run running to the yayo while U.S. prisons fill up with Black and Latino men who got pinched for allegedly hustling relatively tiny quantities of dope while the U.S. military is maintaining a Civil War in Colombia to keep that coke money flowing. Because it is all about the money. Every year between $ 500 billion and one trillion dollars of drug money is laundered through U.S. banks and companies [see US Senate, (1999); Minority Staff Report for Permanent Sub committee on Investigations, US Senate Committee on Government Affairs, November 9, 1999 and US Senate, (2001); Minority Staff Report for Permanent Sub committee on Investigations on Correspondent Banking: A Gateway for Money Laundering, Senate Committee on Government Affairs, February 5, 2001]. It is this continuous flow of cash money that has kept the U.S. stock market strong despite the dwindling competitiveness of U.S. companies in the world market. Nothing helps financial liquidity like an annual influx of several hundred billion dollars in cash. The leftist insurgents (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) plan to decriminalize the production of coca once in power. Legal proceeds don't need laundering. So Uncle Sam's got to move against them.

Is Pluto a Planet?

2006-08-17T08:21:00.000-07:00

Whether or not Pluto is labeled a planet (the big debate this week at the annual meeting of the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union ) has more to do with politics than astronomy. Pluto is a cold spherical rock that has been orbiting the sun for billions of years and what the blood-sucking devils who rule this planet call it is insignificant. However, Pluto is the only planet to have been "discovered" and named by a U.S. scientist (Clyde Tombaugh in 1930). What's at stake is the position of the U.S. as a global power, not only militarily, but culturally. Science has little to do with it. Labeling Pluto as a planet will force the inclusion of potentially hundreds of solar system objects into the planet category and unnecessarily complicate the taxonomy of astronomy. But, considering that the U.S. is willing to murder hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women and children to exert its military might, it makes sense that it would fuck up astronomy to exert its cultural hegemony.

Interestingly enough, like the "discovery" of the Americas, the "discovery" of Pluto was an accident that resulted from a faulty hypothesis. Tombaugh believed that only the existence of a ninth planet could explain the anomalies he was observing in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. However, in fact, Pluto has no role in the anomalies he observed.

Cuba Before The Revolution

2006-08-14T08:23:00.000-07:00

For about 20 years, from 1939 until the revolution in January 1959, Cuba was run by gangsters. Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano and Santos Trafficante, Jr. owned the Havana casinos and Fulgencio Batista or whomever was president got his cut. Havana was the location of the notorious Havana Conference -- one of the most important meetings in the history of organized crime in the U.S. The list of attendees reads like a "Who's Who" of the syndicate at the time -- all the original leaders of New York's five families and their closest associates were there -- Bumpy Johnson was there too. Cuba is the link between the Kennedy assassination and the mob. The syndicate, represented at the time by Trafficante, was furious that Kennedy failed to support the Bay of Pigs invasion with the Air Force and the Marines (among other things) even though the latter were stationed offshore and ready to land at a moment's notice. Jose Aleman (Cuban exile and F.B.I. stool pigeon), in his testimony before the U.S. Senate, said that Trafficante told him that Kennedy was going to get hit.

Hezbollah Kicks Ass!

2006-08-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

Okay now before you get all excited let me just say that I am strongly opposed to political Islam because it's basically a theocratic, neoliberal ideology that represents various elements of the ruling class who are out to to oppress and bleed the people (for an intelligent critique of political Islam, see this essay by Samir Amin). At the same time, I gotta recognize the outstanding performance of this small band of fighters against a larger, much better-equipped opponent. Just look at the numbers, according to the Associated Press, as of earlier this week: Lebanese dead total at least 642, including 558 civilians, 29 Lebanese soldiers and only 55 Hezbollah fighters while Israeli dead total 97, including 61 soldiers and only 36 civilians. So basically, the vast majority (86 percent) of Israeli kills have been civilians, mainly women and children, while soldiers account for almost two-thirds (63 percent) of Hezbollah kills. And keep in mind that Hezbollah's weapons, like the notorious Katyushas, are inaccurate while Israel's can hit very precise targets. People all across the region, even in the pro-U.S. strongholds of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as well as the Lebanese Christian communities, are giving the Hezbollah guerrillas their props even if it's only because they're bringing it to the Zionist army hard core!

Cynthia McKinney: the Ballot or the Bullet

2006-08-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

People who still think the U.S. is a two-party system should have gotten their wake-up call yesterday when Cynthia McKinney lost her seat in Congress for the second time. Not only was her ouster the result of a bipartisan effort, as clearly evidenced by the reaction of her fellow Democrats to her constant harrassment by the white members of the Capitol Hill police force, but also the entire U.S. news media is united -- Conservatives and Liberals alike -- in their glee at her defeat. Cynthia McKinney was a radical anomaly in Washington. Not content to focus on the petty squabbles that divide the U.S. ruling class, largely tactical issues on how best to bleed the people at home and perpetuate U.S. hegemony abroad, McKinney used her position in Congress to fight for REAL equality and justice. Her only mistake was that she believed she could lead the struggle within a political apparatus whose raison d'etre is to maintain a system of inequality and injustice. It's hard to believe that she really harbored any illusions about the system, however, since she suspected that the U.S. government had a hand in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the murder of Tupac Amaru Shakur and the attacks on September 11, 2001. I think the last straw was her persistence in denouncing Israeli war crimes and supporting the Palestinian cause -- strictly forbidden in U.S. politics. She probably would have gotten wacked outright if the man weren't so good at rigging elections these days. It looks like 2007 might turn out to be a repeat of 1964, like Malcom X said, the ballot or the bullet. What can the man use now to fool us after he kicked Cynthia McKinney out of Washington?