October 31, 2017

Mighty Funny How There's A Terrorist Attack The DAY AFTER Indictments Are Announced....

Where's the tin foil hat?

I'm serious though, the biggest news story of the year has just been swallowed by a terrorist attack. The only thing that ISN'T unusual is that one happened. Sadly they happen so often, there's bound to be another one sooner or later. But the DAY AFTER though? Or is the MSM just focusing on this to take people's attention off of the Trump WH to give Trump some breathing room?

April 9, 2017

The Antiwar Movement Disappeared Under Obama - Let's Make It Great Again

https://blackandintellectual.com/blog/the-antiwar-movement-disappeared-under-obama-lets-make-it-great-again

"War has always been ugly and arguably it's always been a racket. Two-time Medal of Honor recipient General Smedley Butler said as much as he toured the United States in the early 1930's. Butler had participated in the U.S. takeover of the nation of Haiti in 1915 that led to a 19 year occupation and the installing of a dictatorship led by numerous U.S.-backed strongmen. The original reason behind American involvement was to prevent a leader from coming into power who might have hurt U.S. business interests on the island.

On April 4, 1967, an exact year before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'Beyond Vietnam' speech. It's one of those MLK speeches that you never hear and a lot of his supporters (white and black) at the time didn't like that he gave it. They thought it was a little "too radical." Mere days earlier on March 25, 1967, King had led a 5,000 person march against the Vietnam War in Chicago. In the speech, among other things, King stated...

“Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.
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If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.

Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.
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In more recent times, the antiwar movement has mostly manifested against the Iraq War. The movement began in 2003 and continued throughout both Bush terms and into the Presidency of Barack Obama (but became noticeably weaker and inconsistent). One of the largest antiwar protests occurred during the 2004 Republican National Convention where between 500,000 - 800,000 antiwar and social justice activists protested throughout the day of the RNC convention. Another large antiwar protest occurred in 2005 in Washington D.C. where nearly 300,000 Americans participated. While yet another in 2007 , organized by United For Peace and Justice, attracted roughly 500,000 peace activists.

2007 was the last year really massive antiwar demonstrations were organized, that was a decade ago now."

March 29, 2017

Every Major GOPer Is Involved in the Russia Coverup

Paul Ryan, Jason Chaffetz, Nunes...they're all in on it and making themselves complicit in a crime. If it weren't obvious there was collusion with Russia before, it's crystal clear now.

March 27, 2017

I'm agitated about the NC General Assembly

So a Republican won in my county in the 2016 General Election and helped maintain the right-wing tilt of the NC General Assembly. What's crazy is Hillary Clinton won my County...and by a healthy margin too! So how the hell does a Republican beat a Democrat by over 9,000 votes in a county that went Blue?

Answer: Apparently only about 70,000 people took the time to vote for the NC State Senate out of 121,000 people who voted overall in the County!!! If a couple percentage more had voted for the Democrat, we wouldn't have a Rethug state senator!!! We have GOT to find better ways to inform people about local and state candidates because people are winning PURELY because enough people don't check off every slot and only vote for certain positions. There's no reason a Republican should be the state senator in an otherwise deep blue county....

February 19, 2017

This Whole Discussion Around Free Speech and Milo Yiannopoulos is Causing a Rift on the Left

There is clearly a rift on the Left over the discussion of free speech and whether or not leftists should protest people like David Duke, Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos. I disagree with the notion that these people can simply be ignored. The Left has been ignoring them for decades and now right-wing extremism and xenophobia are resurgent. Not only are these ideas making a bold comeback, but they're also being given major spotlight by some on the Left...most notably recently Bill Maher. I don't think Maher should've had Milo on his program and Maher's weak reaction to him and almost "buddy-buddy" kidding and laughing with him is exactly why. It shows that he and Milo agree on a few things which begs the question...are people really trying to protect free speech or just trying to create a safe space for hate speech in the 21st century?

Protesting is protected by the 1st amendment as well and there's nothing that says citizens have to sit by and accept hate speech. So IDK how one can be accepting of the free speech rights of the Milo's of America, but want to silence the free speech of protesters. There's a breakdown in logic there.

I came across the website on Twitter...it appears to be a progressive blog, not a news website...but the author makes several good points about free speech being a two-way street. https://blackandintellectual.com/blog/2017/2/14/freedom-of-speech-is-a-two-way-street

There's also a really good article from Truthout that elaborates on the same concept as the linked website above...http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/39412-shutting-down-milo-s-talk-at-berkeley-thoughts-on-hate-speech-protest-and-masks

I just think there are a difference of opinions out there and people who are free speech absolutists should factor in the threat of dangerous speech because I hardly ever see any free speech absolutists even acknowledging the existence of it.

February 17, 2017

I Find It Very Difficult Not to Be Completely Disrespectful Towards Trumpsters on Social Media

I know it's not the right way to be, but we're not in normal times. We have Americans openly co-signing un-American policies. These people are hands down the biggest hypocrites in the country. These are the same ones waving the flag in acts of over-the-top fake jingoism, but they're perfectly fine with Herr Trump being in bed with the Russians. I've noticed another trend that has become common on the Right and that is to take attacks the Left use against them and co-opt it. They've been doing this for a while, but it's being taken to another level now.

They hijacked the BLM hashtag and created All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter
They hijacked the very real charge of racism against the Right and came up with "reverse racism."
They have hijacked the fascism charge that is also very real from the right-wing and misuse the term to call the Left fascist when we protest the proliferation of hate speech

I can go on and on...now it's fake news. There was a mountain of fake news leveled against Hillary Clinton and now the Right calls everything they disagree with "fake news."

I don't know what's more annoying and dangerous, Right-wing delusions and the alternate reality they live in or the fact that they will apparently defend and apologize for every little thing he does.

November 8, 2016

I think Immigrant Voters Will Win This Election

Huge turnout in FL and NV, and possibly NC by Latino voters. You can forget about other immigrants from the Island nations and South America and Asia coming out in huge numbers too.

November 8, 2016

JUST VOTED IN NC!!!

Straight DEM ticket. Hillary, Deborah Ross and the person running against Burr. Hoping for 3-0 tonight!! Cmon NC Independents.

November 5, 2016

My Mom Just Voted Straight DEM Ticket in NC!!!

I think Hills takes NC and FL. If she does...that's the election.

November 4, 2016

The FBI Being "TrumpLand" Shouldn't Come As a Surprise

It really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. We already know LEO around the country are pro-Trump BIGLY! The FBI is the crème de le crème of LE. Look at the right-wing propaganda that comes out of the FBI about the "Ferguson Effect." Something that has been disproven by multiple sources.