Thinking 'Bout Boycotting the "Xenophobe State"?

HERE ARE SOME MAJOR Arizona corporations if you have an inclination to do
a little boycotting:

Apollo Group (University of Phoenix). Headquarters: Phoenix, Arizona

Cold Stone Creamery. Headquarters: Scottsdale, Arizona

Discount Tire Company. Headquarters: Scottsdale, Arizona

Go Daddy. Headquarters: Scottsdale, Arizona

Mesa Air Group (Mesa Airlines, Go!, Freedom Airlines). Headquarters:
Phoenix, Arizona

P. F. Chang's China Bistro. Headquarters: Phoenix, Arizona

Pet Smart. Headquarters: Phoenix, Arizona

U-Haul. Headquarters: Phoenix, Arizona

US Airways. Headquarters: Tempe, Arizona

Dispatch from Post-Constitutional Amerikkka

More "above the law" cop hijinks. Wonder if Boston has civilian oversight of their own police department, 'cause San Jo surely don't!

Renowned African-American Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested after being accused of breaking into his own home. Apparently, Mr. Gates accused the po-po of being "racist", which doesn't sit well with most bigot cops. They then did whatever the hell they fucking pleased, which is par for the course.--Pete

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr., professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Studies, was arrested on Thursday at his Cambridge home for disorderly conduct, according to a Cambridge Police Department report.
The report, obtained from the Cambridge District Court, said that the 58-year-old professor was arrested by Cambridge police shortly past noon for "exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior," during which he allegedly accused police officers at the scene of being racist. The report said that a woman had called police to the scene after seeing a man "wedging his shoulder in the front door [of Gates' house] as to pry the door open."

When a police officer arrived on the scene to investigate the tip, Gates was reportedly already having an altercation with another sergeant inside the home. The professor allegedly shouted "[t]his is what happens to black men in America" when asked for identification and repeatedly told the police officer that "[y]ou don't know who your [sic] messing with," according to the report.

The two then moved to the front porch, the report said, where Gates continued to shout that the sergeant was racist, catching the attention of roughly seven "surprised and alarmed" onlookers.

Joanne Kendall, Gates' assistant, said that the professor was away from Cambridge for the summer filming a documentary and would only be making periodic returns. Gates could not be reached for comment.

But according to an e-mailed statement from law school Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., a friend of Gates' who is now representing him, Gates was returning on Thursday from a week-long trip to China and tried to enter through his front door, which was damaged. Ogletree said that Gates had forced open the front door with the help of his car driver, who also helped carry Gates' luggage into the home, after first entering through a backdoor and turning off his alarm.

"I think that the charges should be dropped because Professor Gates was a suspect for being a burglar in his own home," Ogletree said in an interview with The Crimson. "This was precipitated on a false assumption that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time." He added that Gates has been "traumatized" by the entire affair and is now resting comfortably in his summer home in Martha's Vineyard.

According to Ogletree, Gates noticed a police officer on his porch while he was on the phone requesting a door repair from Harvard Real Estate Services, which owns the home. The professor reportedly stayed inside when the officer asked him to come outside, but provided the officer with both his Harvard identification card and his driver's license as proof that he lived at the home and taught at the University. Ogletree said Gates then asked the police officer for his badge number and name several times but received no response.

But the police sergeant who first arrived on the scene said he had told Gates his name multiple times when requested, and that Gates simply shouted over him. The sergeant said he was forced to step out of the home because of Gates' uncomfortably loud yelling, according to the report obtained from the Boston Globe. He said he told Gates that they could discuss the matter further outside, to which Gates allegedly replied, "ya, I'll speak with your mama outside."

The officer said he warned Gates multiple times that his behavior was becoming disorderly before the actual arrest, but Ogletree says the officer did not provide his name or give any indication that charges would be filed. Ogletree says the officer simply exited the kitchen to leave the home, and that Gates followed the officer to the front door only to see multiple other police officers standing outside. When Gates stepped onto the front porch to ask for the police officer's name, the officer said "thank you for accommodating my earlier request" and placed Gates under arrest, Ogletree said.

The police report says that Gates complained that the handcuffs were too tight and that he was "disabled," prompting officers to handcuff him with arms in front for comfort and to search for a cane in the home. Gates was held at Cambridge Police Station for roughly four hours before being released from custody Thursday evening, Ogletree said.

Ogletree declined to comment on whether he believes Gates was racially profiled, as some media reports have suggested, instead saying that his statement of events "speaks for itself." But other prominent black Harvard professors, including medical school professor S. Allen Counter and social sciences professor Lawrence D. Bobo, have suggested that race influenced the police actions. According to the Associated Press, the Reverend Al Sharpton has vowed to attend Gates' arraignment.

"This arrest is indicative of at best police abuse of power or at worst the highest example of racial profiling I have seen," Sharpton said. "I have heard of driving while black and even shopping while black but now even going to your own home while black is a new low in police community affairs."

Ogletree said that he and Gates believe the professor did not violate any laws and are hoping the matter will be resolved promptly. According to the police report, disorderly conduct carries a maximum penalty of a $150 fine.

The Cambridge Police Department declined to release further information, citing the ongoing investigation in the District Attorney's office. Corey Welford, a spokesman for the Middlesex District Attorney's office, declined to comment further on the arrest "unless and until an arraignment occurs." He said an arraignment has been scheduled for August 26.

The woman who reported the incident to police did not return a call to her cell phone on Monday.

Gates, who served as chair of the department of African and African American studies from 1991 to 2006, earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Cambridge after completing his undergraduate studies in history summa cum laude at Yale. Gates was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" in 1981 and was named one of Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans" in 1997.

He is one of roughly 20 Harvard faculty members who hold prestigious University professorships, which are given to honor academic achievements that cross disciplinary boundaries.

—Staff writer Peter F. Zhu can be reached at pzhu@fas.harvard.edu.

Entreaty to condemn racism at Philadelphia pool from ColorOfChange.org

Dear friends,

Two weeks ago outside Philadelphia, sixty-five children from a summer camp tried to go swimming at a club their camp had a contract to use. Evidently, the club didn't know the kids were largely Black.

When the campers entered the pool, White parents took their kids out of the water, and the swimming club's staff asked the campers to leave. The next day, the club told the summer camp that their membership would be canceled and that they would refund their money. When asked why, the club's leader said the "kids would change the complexion ... and the atmosphere of the club."

A "Whites only" pool in 2009 should not be tolerated. The club's actions appear to be a violation of section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act. Whether or not any laws were violated, a "Whites only" pool should be something every American condemns.

I've just joined ColorOfChange.org in doing exactly that -- will you join me, and email your friends and family asking them to do the same? We're also calling on the Department of Justice to evaluate suing the facility under federal law. It takes just a moment to do both, here:

http://www.colorofchange.org/swim/?id=2509-157502

Obama is President but that doesn't mean that suddenly all is fine when it comes to race in America. This is a vivid reminder of what we know still lies beneath the surface.

We all know stories like this one -- similar incidents play out quietly every day in different communities across the country. The difference in this case is that folks got caught and there was a contract in place that makes for a potentially illegal act.

Standing up now isn't just about making things right for these kids in Philadelphia or bringing consequences to this swim club (called the Valley Swim Club). It's about creating a climate of accountability everywhere. If we can publicly shame the Valley Swim Club and hold them accountable for this incident, it will make others think twice before engaging in this kind of discrimination.

Please join me in condemning the Valley Swim Club's blatant discrimination and calling on the Justice Department to investigate whether they violated civil rights laws. And please ask your friends and family to do the same.

http://www.colorofchange.org/swim/?id=2509-157502

Thanks.

Here are some links to more info:

"Pool Boots Kids Who Might 'Change the Complexion,'" NBC Philadelphia, 07-08-09
http://bit.ly/90Zyr

"60 Black Kids Booted from Philly Pool For Being Black -- Speak Out," Jill Tubman at Jack and Jill Politics, 07-08-09
http://bit.ly/GkJTs

"Valley Swim Club: Day Two," Adam B at Daily Kos, 07-08-09
http://bit.ly/qbpSA

"Section 1981 Summary," Employment Law Information Network
http://www.elinfonet.com/1981sum.php

Domestic Terrorist Threats! Time to call out the National Guard and raid the churches in pre-emptive attacks!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Rest of Paul Harvey's Story

Paul Harvey is an American icon. I must admit that my introduction into the world of journalism and radio news media in particular was shepherded by Harvey, since I began to listen to KGO in 1979 while slaving away at Shugart Associates, building floppy-disc drives. I did find his voice and his little homilies quite comforting - until I started to listen closely. Over the two-year period that I worked there and listened to Paul Harvey's broadcast every day, I began to realize that he was extremely conservative and possibly fascist. I became very critical of every show, including his shameless shilling for whoever was paying him the most to advertise their product, and came to realize that I really didn't like his ideology at all. I will still thank him for the beginnings of my political education, however. This post from FAIR lays out Mr. Harvey's world-view quite succinctly.--Pete

by Jim Naureckas, FAIR

On the death of radio's Paul Harvey, it's hard for me not to think of his June 23, 2005 broadcast as his most revealing moment.

That's the episode where he delivered this memorable rant (Extra! Update, 8/05):

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill said that the American people…he said, the American people, he said, and this is a direct quote, "We didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy."

And that reminder was taken seriously. And we proceeded to develop and deliver the bomb, even though roughly 150,000 men, women and children perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With a single blow, World War II was over.

Following New York, September 11, Winston Churchill was not here to remind us that we didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy.

So, following the New York disaster, we mustered our humanity...and we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons in our silos.

Even now we're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive, because we’ve declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies--more moral, more civilized.

Our image is at stake, we insist.

But we didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy.

Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.

And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves.

So it goes with most great nation-states, which--feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.

To Harvey, in other words, failing to use nuclear and biological weapons because we feel guilty about genocide and slavery means that we're "made of sugar candy." And this will mean the end of U.S. civilization.

It's hard to know how to respond to that worldview, or to the fact that the person who promulgated it was one of the most popular and longest-running personalities, other than to note that he was taking Churchill out of context. Churchill followed up his observation--which was made about the "peoples of the British empire," not about Americans--with the vow that "we shall never descend to the German and Japanese level," meaning the Nazis and the World War II-era Japanese Empire. Harvey seemed genuinely worried that we wouldn't descend to that level soon enough.

See also Extra!: "The Right of the Story: Harvey Peddles Tall Tales--With a Conservative Kick" (9-10/97) by Dan Wilson.

Inhumane Sheriff Arpaio finally taken to task for his crimes

AlterNet: Finally, the Law Goes After Joe Arpaio -- the Most Abusive Sheriff In America
By Emptywheel, Firedoglake
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/rights/126986/
You have probably heard of the shamelessly self professed "Toughest Sheriff in America", Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. For years he has been making a PR spectacle of himself, all the while running an unconstitutionally deplorable jail system, letting inmates die under tortuous conditions, and violating the civil rights and liberties of everybody in sight, especially minorities. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee made public a critical and public step to rein in the Most Abusive Sheriff In America.

From the HJC press release:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), and Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.-my representative! Yay!), Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) called on Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to investigate allegations of misconduct by Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Sheriff Arpaio has repeatedly demonstrated disregard for the rights of Hispanics in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Under the guise of immigration enforcement, his staff has conducted raids in residential neighborhoods in a manner condemned by the community as racial profiling. On February 4, 2009, Arpaio invited the media to view the transfer of immigrant detainees to a segregated area of his "tent city" jail, subjecting the detainees to public display and "ritual humiliation." Persistent actions such as these have resulted in numerous lawsuits; while Arpaio spends time and energy on publicity and his reality television show, "Smile… You're Under Arrest!", Maricopa County has paid millions of dollars in settlements involving dead or injured inmates.
...
It is time for the federal government to step in and uphold the rule of law in this country, even in Maricopa County."
"Law enforcement is not a game or a reality show, it is a public trust," said Scott. "There is no excuse for callous indifference to the rights of the residents of Arizona, whether in their neighborhoods or as pretrial detainees."

The full official text of the letter to Napolitano and Holder is here.
It is high time that somebody on the national scene notice, and the Federal government take action on, the egregious and violative conduct of Joe Arpaio.

Joe Arpaio is a two bit carnival barker and huckster, not a dedicated law enforcement official. The opportunistic man came into office running against a fellow Republican and incumbent Maricopa County Sheriff, Tom Agnos, by bad mouthing Agnos and arguing that the entire Maricopa County Sheriff's Department needed to be cleaned up. In fact, Arpaio's winning campaign was predicated upon his willingness to mock the very department he was running to lead and promise to expose the dirty laundry of Agnos and the Sheriff's Department for its involvement in the infamous Buddhist Temple Murder case (link is a fascinating three part story), a seminal case in textbooks on coerced confessions (from the fact that four separate coerced false confessions were obtained to a single crime). Arpaio promised to restore honor to the department, and also swore he would serve only one term in office. Five terms and seventeen years later, Arpaio has failed miserably on both promises.

Read Entire Article

Coulter flies her bigot flag...again.

Columnist Ann Coulter Defends White Supremacist Group | Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center

Columnist Ann Coulter Defends White Supremacist Group

Posted By Mark Potok

Rabid far-right commentator Ann Coulter is known across America for [1] sliming everyone and everything she disagrees with. Al Gore is a “total fag” and another one-time presidential candidate, John Edwards, is the same. Democrats are “gutless traitors” and their convention a “Spawn of Satan” gathering. Muslims are “ragheads” and America should “kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Jews are people who need to be “perfected.” The New York Times building and its editorial staff should be bombed. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens should have “rat poisoning” mixed into his food. Princess Diana “ostentatiously [had] sex in front of [her] children.” The Rev. Al Sharpton is “a fat, race-baiting black man.” President Bill Clinton was “a very good rapist,” and North Korea should be “nuked.”

But despite denouncing school desegregation as a “spectacular” failure, Coulter has generally avoided bolstering white supremacist hate groups. Until now, that is.

In her latest foaming-mouth tome — Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America, released on Jan. 6 — Coulter spends the better part of three pages defending a group called the [2] Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which The New York Times had described as a “thinly veiled white supremacist organization.” Coulter begs to differ. The CCC, Coulter opines, is “a conservative group” that has unfairly been branded as racist “because some of the directors of the CCC had, decades earlier, been leaders of a segregationist group.” “There is no evidence on its Web page that the modern incarnation of the CCC supports segregation,” she says. “Apart from some aggressive reporting on black-on-white crimes — the very crimes that are aggressively hidden by the establishment media — there is little on the CCC website suggesting” that the group is racist. Indeed, its main failing is “containing members who had belonged to a segregationist group thirty years earlier.”

Coulter could hardly be more wrong. And even if she can’t find time to read beyond a page of the CCC’s website, she really ought to know — after all, the organization where she frequently speaks, the Conservative Political Action Committee, has publicly banned the CCC from its annual gathering because it is racist. Also in the late 1990s, Jim Nicholson, then-chairman of the Republican National Committee, asked GOP members to stay away from the CCC because of its “racist and nationalist views.”

How could conservative Republicans be inspired to say such ugly things? Let us count the ways.

The CCC’s columnists have written that black people are “a retrograde species of humanity,” and that non-white immigration is turning the U.S. population into a “slimy brown mass of glop.” Its website has run photographic comparisons of pop singer Michael Jackson and a chimpanzee. It opposes “forced integration” and decries racial intermarriage. It has lambasted black people as “genetically inferior,” complained about “Jewish power brokers,” called gay people “perverted sodomites,” and even named the late Lester Maddox, the baseball bat-wielding, arch-segregationist former governor of Georgia, “Patriot of the Century.”

One day, the CCC ran photos on its home page of accused Beltway snipers John Muhammad and John Malvo, 9/11 conspirator Zacharias Moussaoui and accused shoe-bomber Richard Reed. “Notice a Pattern Here?” asked a caption underneath the four photos. “Is the face of death black after all?” On another occasion, its website featured a photo of Daniel Pearl, the “Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter” who had just been decapitated by Islamic terrorists. In the photo, Pearl was shown with his “mixed-race wife, Marianne.” The headline above the couple’s picture was stunning even for the CCC: “Death by Multiculturalism?” The CCC Arkansas chapter ran an essay waxing nostalgic for the days “when racial separation was the norm.”

But to Ann Coulter, there is “no evidence” on its website that the CCC “supports segregation.” Mostly, she says, the group — which was formed from the debris of the White Citizens Councils that Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once called “the uptown Klan” — is about “a strong national defense, the right to keep and bear arms, the traditional family, and an ‘America First’ trade policy.” Indeed, she says, The New York Times and other critics of the CCC are simply liberals “who have no principles.”

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: Media Flock to Fox Star Spectacle of Human Degradation

This guy is bigotry and ignorance personified. That he has a loyal following diminishes my faith in the collective intelligence and compassion of humankind. We simply cannot treat our fellow humans as chattel and slaves, no matter the circumstance. These immigrant convicts have already been sentenced to their punishment, and statistics show that some may have been wrongly convicted. That fact alone indicates that they all must be treated humanely, at the very least. The sheriff's desire for publicity causes him to further disregard human and civil rights. Arpaio's karmic debt is massive, indeed.--Pete

02/07/2009 by Gabriel Voiles, FAIR

La Frontera Times reporter Alfredo Gutierrez has the latest (2/6/09) from new Fox reality show star Joe Arpaio. The Arizona sheriff, under FBI investigation for violating civil rights in his crusade against immigration, recently marched all of the Maricopa County immigrant detainees--chained together in full prisoner uniforms--down the street "from the Durango Jail to the [new segregated] facility":

The parade was on a public road, Gibson Street in Phoenix, but the road was closed to all but the press. The press was notified of the public spectacle the day before and arrangements were made for all media to be present and photograph and film the prisoners. All the major television stations were present as were newspapers and radio and television helicopters hovered overhead. The forced march though short had one intended effect: it was a publicity orgy for the sheriff.

Remarking on "a particular sadness in witnessing this spectacle of human degradation," Gutierrez writes that "the symbolism was unmistakable, the men of color, the public humiliation, the forced march, the segregated camp"--but for the ever-sensationalistic U.S press, the only symbol that really matters is a dollar sign.

Protests of the corporate media embrace of bigotry and of Sheriff Arpaio directly are afoot across the U.S. and online.

More really scary McCain/Palin supporters

Wow! I'm speechless...

Obits For Opposites

By Saul Landau
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3567

In 1977, James Abourezk (D-SD) had just returned from Cuba. He and his fellow South Dakota Solon, George McGovern, had sought to use basketball diplomacy. The University of South Dakota's team played Cuba's national team. President Carter had supported the effort since it coincided with his own initiative to gradually restore relations with Cuba. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) tried to stop this process.

On the Senate floor, beside the presiding officer's desk, Abourezk beseeched Helms to lighten up. "You ought go and see for yourself what's going on down there," Abourezk said.

"You oughta go to Chile and see what's going on down there," Helms replied. His reference reminded Abourezk of a conversation he'd had recently with Helms' soul mate, Senator James Eastland (R-MS).

"I told Pinochet he oughta hang all the Communists and put the socialists in jail," Eastland smirked. "And Pinochet told me 'that's exactly what I'm doing.'"

"Helms was a mean son of a bitch," Abourezk offered as his obituary comment. "The Senate was a lot more collegial before he arrived."

Helms was the quintessential Cold War, bible-thumping Senator and his conversation with Abourezk was so Twentieth Century. In case anyone failed to grasp his sentiment on Cuba, in the mid 1990s Helms sponsored the Helms-Burton Bill tightening and codifying the embargo. "Let me be clear," Helms pronounced. "Whether Castro leaves Cuba in a vertical or horizontal position is up to him and the Cuban people. But he must -- and will -- leave Cuba."

Helms assumed horizontal posture before Castro, who remains in Cuba. But Helms' decades of public and private utterances did demonstrate George Carlin's insight: "Bullshit is the glue that binds this nation."

Carlin (71) and Helms (86) -- polar opposites of U.S. culture -- died within weeks of each other. Carlin taught critical thinking through stand-up comedy. Helms represented unquestioned authority -- of the past. Lest anyone think Helms was always dour and serious about his love for all things reactionary, those who knew him told stories of his inventive sense of humor. This included the "good old boys" sense of humor.

In 1993, shortly after he made an impassioned speech about the virtues of flying the Confederate flag, Helms shared the Senate elevator with then Senator Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) and his buddy and still Senator, Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah).

"Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry," he chortled to the ever agreeable -- to reaction -- Hatch. "I'm going to sing Dixie until she cries." He then sang it. Moseley Braun retorted, "Just the sound of you singing is enough to make me cry." (Time, 8/16/93)

Helms built his right wing reputation on combining hatred for communism with contempt for integration. In 1983, Helms attacked the bill establishing Martin Luther King Day. King, he charged, had close communist advisers (he actually named two of them) and he was well known for his promiscuity.

The die hard Dixiecrats understood Helms' illusions and had not forgotten that twenty years before during the early civil rights protests, Helms, then a radio and TV commentator, had declared that "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights." (WRAL-TV commentary, 1963)

Helms' combined his pet hates into another "joke," by referring to the reputedly liberal University of North Carolina (UNC) as the "University of Negroes and Communists." (Charleston Gazette, 9/15/95)

He included the Hispanic population in his colored-based aesthetics. "All Latins are volatile people," Helms declared on a less than totally friendly visit to Mexico in 1986. "Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction."

Helms combined acidity for people of less than white hue and those of the liberal persuasion with a sense of nostalgia for the banalities of his youth. In a 1956 newspaper column he wrote: "I shall always remember the shady streets, the quiet Sundays, the cotton wagons, the Fourth of July parades, the New Year's Eve firecrackers. I shall never forget the stream of school kids marching uptown to place flowers on the Courthouse Square monument on Confederate Memorial Day."

Helms, a close ally of right wing Christian preachers, accused gays and lesbians for causing "the proliferation of AIDS." He sneered that "there's nothing gay about them." In 1993, Clinton appointed Roberta Achtenberg Assistant Secretary for Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Helms called her unqualified and tried to block her confirmation "because she's a damn lesbian."

Why did he get so vitriolic? Was Helms, like so many of his political ilk, really a closet queen? In 1974, a Helms staffer ushered me past some blue haired ladies into a room full of aides, a couple of them straight and others down-right flamers. Imagine my surprise when Helms claimed that the "New York Times and The Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian."

As part of his anti-gay, anti-black and all other colors, anti-liberal and pro gun credo, Helms also belonged to the "Proud to be an American" club, the association of people whose bumpers bear the sticker: "Proud To Be an American."

I never shared that sentiment; nor pride in being Jewish or coming from New York. George Carlin analyzed such statements of pride as bullshit. "Pride should be reserved for your achievements, not accidents of birth like being American or Irish or Italian."

God Bless America, repeated Helms and thousands of other politicians. "Is that a request, a demand or a suggestion," asked Carlin? "Imagine, God singles out one country for his blessings because -- well you go figure."

Carlin mocked the religious pap that Helms and the vast Christian fundamentalist right wing accept as God given. "Religion even requires people to swear on the Bible when they testify in court," explained Carlin. "Why should swearing to God on the Bible mean you're telling the truth? As kids, every time we wanted to disguise a whopping lie, we'd say 'I swear on the Bible' or I swear on my mother's tits.' Swearing on the Bible never induced a cop to tell the truth on the witness stand. They lie routinely when they take the stand just to insure a conviction. The Bible is America's favorite theatrical prop."

Indeed, Carlin questioned everything, analyzed words, and splintered customs with knife-like logic. "You go to a baseball, football or basketball game and they begin with the Star Spangled banner. And all the men -- not the women -- have to remove their hats. What's the relationship between a hat and patriotism? Why not take off your pants to show you love this country?"

Helms would have thrown Carlin in jail for using "dirty words." How can a word be dirty, asked the late Lenny Bruce? "You take a word and rub dirt on it?" Carlin enjoyed playing with words and phrases that you can't say on television. "You can prick your finger, but you can't finger your..."

For Helms, such language insulted God. For Carlin, "using God is the last refuge of a man who has no argument. If God was looking out for us he would make sure all of us had food and houses. As a kid I was taught that disobeying God would mean I'd burn in the hottest of Hell, endure the most horrible pain. God routinely punished us by causing tornadoes, hurricanes and such. He gave the disobedient cancer and other hideous ailments. But don't worry. God loves you."

And for the gun and God loving, Carlin's question had particular significance. "If God was looking out for you would He have given you a gun to kill your girl friend?"

I know Carlin isn't in Heaven looking down and smiling at those who remember him fondly. If there was such a place "up there," he would have better things to do. Unfortunately, Jesse probably isn't "down there" either.

But imagine the Devil giving the important Jesse three choices. One option he offers would be to join Reagan swimming in boiling water, but not able to reach the shore. Helms refuses. Next, he sees Nixon breaking an interminable pile of rocks. Nope!

For his third option, the Devil opens a door and Helms sees Clinton seated, facing him with Monica on her knees in front of the former President and -- well, doing her thing. The pious Helms grimaces, but finally chooses this as the least horrible option. The Devil then says: "Okay, Monica, you can go now."

Saul Landau once wrote plays for the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

BEING DEMONIZED FOR OTHERS' INCOMPETENCE AND CRIME

The mayor and police chief of Washington DC established unconstitutional check points in the city's Trinidad neighborhood which has raised considerable objections from the city council and others who still believe in constitutional government. Chief Lanier gained some of her views on policing while being trained by Israeli apartheid operatives. She would have done better learning from 27-year-old Naji Mujahid, whose impressive testimony to the DC city council follows:

NAJI MUJAHID, BLACK AUGUST PLANNING ORGANIZATION - My name is Naji Mujahid, I'm 27 years old, I was born in the district and I've lived here all of my adult life; I spent most of my childhood in Prince George's County, MD. I do not live in Trinidad, I live in Ward 7, in the Marshall Heights area. . .

Crime in our community should absolutely be of [our] foremost concern and its something that those of us that are most affected by it should be dedicating ourselves to minimizing and eliminating. When we examine the statistics of the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of our residents, it becomes clear the we have [either] an innate inclination towards sociopathic behavior or there is a systematic flaw in the administration of our community affairs.

The first that any intelligent person does when confronted with a problem is to critically analyze the cause of that problem. And when we look closely at our community I believe that what we witness is not a haven for a degenerate species of human beings, but we see reflections of ourselves reacting to the criminally and sadistically poor social conditions of their environment. The poor education, the poor economics, the lack of opportunities, the broken homes, etc., which is the result of either a protracted plan to keep us as a dependent, subservient, and easily exploitable under-class or of endemic malfeasant and contemptuous neglect by our elected officials and those in league with them. In other words, we refuse to be demonized for the incompetence and criminality of others.

One example I'd like to point out is the existence of drugs in our communities as a catalyst for crime. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that a suffering people are likely to self-medicate with substances that make their conditions easier to deal with (I could just as easily be talking about Prozac as crack/cocaine) and when those substances can be provided with the incentive of monetary gain for the provider (I could just as easily be talking about Merck Pharmaceuticals as your local pusher man), particularly when economic opportunities are scarce. . . the outcome of those given dynamics should not be surprising; crime follows.

What should be kept in mind and considered is where the drugs in our community came from. And it has been documented by Journalist Gary Webb in his expose 'Dark Alliance,' by former DEA agent Celerino Costillo III in his book 'Powderburns', and by Professor Alfred McCoy in his book 'The Politics of Heroin', that there has been undeniable government complicity and participation in the global and local drug trade; [facilitating] the influx of illegal drugs into our communities.

As the police are deployed into our communities to seek and destroy crime - crime as defined by outsiders who stand to benefit from our arrest and incarceration - they themselves become criminals as they follow questionable orders without question. They become the antagonists in this tragedy. With their claims of protecting our well being, they become similar to an abusive spouse with a literary gift for writing love sonnets. The police are the government's answer for their inability to provide our community with the establishment of justice, the insurance of domestic tranquility, the provision of a common defense, the promotion of the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty. Once again, we refuse to be demonized for the incompetence and criminality of others.

Last year a 14 year-old was shot to death by the police with impunity of the law. Over the past two years, surveillance cameras have sprung up across our communities. This year the police initiated a door-to-door search program and resolved to arm the department with high-powered military assault rifles, AR-15s (at a time when the government is fighting against the right of law abiding citizens to arm themselves). And we are joined here today to discuss the new initiative of check points being used in our communities. This is clearly the development of a police state designed under the guise of ensuring public safety and securing our communities from the criminal element in our midst, while ignoring the real criminal element outside of our midst. When will this stop? At what point have the police crossed the line from security to intrusion [. . . .to occupation]? This is unacceptable and I repeat for a final time that we refuse to be demonized for the incompetence and criminality of others. Thank you for your indulgence.

Police in America Can Kill Some People With Impunity

By Cynthia McKinney, Counterpunch

"[T]he legislation and histories of the time, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument. . . . [A]ltogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

And with that, the United States Supreme Court ensured that the 20th Century would be defined, as W.E.B. DuBois wrote, by the color line. So, while we might be outraged at the Sean Bell decision itself, it comes directly from the flawed jurisprudence that gave us the Dred Scott Decision in 1857, Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, Bakke in 1978, Croson in 1989, Adarand in 1995, Gratz in 2003, and all of the Ward Connerly-inspired attacks on the very same affirmative action hard won by students facing water hoses and dogs; men and women facing jail, lynch mobs, and death.

Interestingly, according to Attorney Roger Wareham of the December 12th Movement's International Secretariat, the criminal justice system in this country "always finds a rationale for letting off cops who kill black and brown people." Indeed, police officers seem to know that they can kill certain people with impunity.

Just in New York City alone, Wareham rattles off the murders that have defined police-"communities of color" relations over two generations:

Clifford Glover, 1972

Louis Baez, 1978 shot (22 times)

Randolph Evans, 1979

Eleanor Bumpers, 1985 (a grandmother)

Amadou Diallo, 1999

Patrick Dorismond, 2003

Sean Bell, 2006

Sadly, New York City isn't the only city, with this plague. In 2001, the Dayton Daily News reported that Cincinnati topped the list of police killings of Blacks, having had 22 people shot, 13 fatally. All black men. Three unarmed. Plus two additional deaths due to police use of chemical irritants.

The 2001 "Cincinnati Intifada" lasted for three nights after a white police officer murdered an unarmed black teenager. Timothy Thomas was the fifteenth black male killed by Cincinnati police over a six-year period. I traveled with Ron Daniels and others to Cincinnati to support the call by black residents, including Reverend Damon Lynch III and 36 other ministers, for a boycott of that city. Still reeling from the effects of the boycott, Cincinnati made headlines again in 2003 when the world watched as one black and five white police officers repeatedly beat Nathaniel Jones with batons and then left him in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, only to be pronounced dead later at the hospital.

The "Benton Harbor, Michigan Intifada of 2003" lasted two nights after the murder of an unarmed black motorcyclist by white police officers. Adding insult to injury, the residents of majority-black Benton Harbor are reeling under an attempted takeover of the last "undeveloped" beachfront property on Lake Michigan. The residents are under attack by the Whirlpool Corporation, that wants to develop "Benton Shores" and move all of the residents completely out of the town. The purported goal of the development is to turn Benton Harbor into one of the "hottest vacation destinations in the country," to include a members-only indoor water park, and a Jack Nicklaus golf course. According to Reverend Edward Pinkney, the valiant leader who is trying to save Benton Harbor for the people, Harbor Shores will result in a complete takeover of Benton Harbor, a city that is 96% Black. Reverend Pinkney has been in jail since December 14, 2007 on trumped- up charges including violation of probation, for writing an article calling the chief judge racist. Mrs. Pinkney called the Office of Michigan Congressman John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee to ask for justice for the residents of Benton Harbor and for her husband. Shockingly, Chairman Conyers refused Mrs. Pinkney's plea to get involved in this heroic struggle of a 96% Black community in his own state. When I visited Benton Harbor, it was clear to me that Reverend Pinkney has the full support of the area's residents, black and white, as they struggle to maintain the character of their community. Reverend Pinkney is recognized by the people as true hero and occupies a jail cell because of it.

Finally, however, someone broke the silence and admitted it. Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper wrote in his book, "Breaking Rank," that white police officers are afraid of Black men. He develops this theory in a chapter of the book entitled, "Why White Cops Kill Black Men." Finally: a hint of truth coming from the other side. In a June 16, 2005 interview with the Looking Glass News, Stamper says that he personally believes "that white cops are scared of black men. The bigger or darker the man, the more frightened the white cop. I can't shake that; it's a belief I will take to the grave."

So while the corporate press would have us believe that reporting on what a former Vice Presidential nominee says about a Presidential candidate is a discussion of race, the prospects are that black and brown men and women will continue to be murdered by police officers who, fundamentally, seem scared of black people. That fear apparently extends to the larger community because juries construct ways to let murderous police officers escape just punishment.

Roger Wareham, and the December 12th Movement International Secretariat raise, inside the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, the details of the type of police abuse in which a 92-year old grandmother, Kathryn Johnston, is murdered by police in Atlanta, Georgia and her family still has not seen justice or been made whole. Or where a young black male, also in Atlanta, can be sitting in his mother's car and is murdered because the police presume that the car is stolen.

The December 12th Movement has asked for United Nations Rapporteurs to come to the U.S. on fact-finding missions so that the U.S. can finally be listed as a major human rights abuser and a Rapporteur assigned to this country.

Already, the Special Rapporteur on Racism and Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance is coming to the U.S. from May 18 - June 6 and will be in New York City on May 21st and 22nd. The December 12th Movement is scheduled to have a hearing for him at the Schomberg Center where the issue of police killings will be raised. The Rapporteur is also scheduled to visit DC, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, and San Juan.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Summary and Arbitrary Executions, Mr. Phillip Alston, is conducting a Mission to the U.S. in June. The Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is also interested in reports of police abuse. If a consistent and systemic pattern of abuse exists (which it clearly does in the United States), the United Nations General Assembly can pass a resolution which helps creates international public opinion and perhaps the political will to stop it.

Certainly, doing the same thing--a cycle of protest without punishment--will net the same results. Something different must be done. That's why I authored legislation to deny federal funds and the use of federal equipment to any law enforcement unit found to have violated the civil rights of the people it is organized to protect and serve. Imagine if we had the laws on the books and the apparatus of enforcement. Imagine if juries wouldn't grant impunity to killer cops.

Some of you have written to me suggesting that we do something different: perhaps a full-scale boycott. Perhaps a full-scale, all-out political response--something many in this generation have never done before.

Bobby Kennedy always said, "Some men dream of things that are and say why. I dream of things that never were and say why not."

It is not impossible for us to have justice. We don't have to lose any more people to police abuse, brutality, or murder. But, in order to change things, we're going to have to do some things we've never done before in order to have some things we've never had before.

Are you willing to entertain that idea? Today? Right now? If we demand more of our elected representatives, I'm convinced we will get it. And it should be clear exactly what is needed if we don't get what we demand.

Cynthia McKinney is seeking the Green Party's nomination for president. She can be reached through her website.

Scared White Guy Shoots Black Teens: No Charge; Scared Black Guy Shoots White Teen: Manslaughter

An example of institutionalized legal bigotry--Pete

By Rend Smith, ColorLines RaceWire
Posted on April 8, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/rights/81704/

Friday night, ABC's 20/20 ran a piece on John White, the African-American Long-Islander convicted of killing Daniel Cicciaro Jr, a white 17-year-old.

If you're not familiar with the case, here's a quick and dirty summary. Cicciaro, known to his friends and family as Dan-o, showed up in front of White's house one night, spoiling for a fight with White's son, evidently over a girl.

Cicciaro, drunk and angry, was accompanied by 4 friends.

The Whites maintain that the teenagers blocked the driveway of their suburban home while making threats and using the N-word, and that the group of teens resembled a lynch mob, prompting father and son to grab weapons and attempt to drive them off.

During the confrontation, White's unregistered, heirloom pistol -- passed down to him from his grandfather -- was fired, and Cicciaro fatally shot. White says it was an accident.

The jury didn't agree, the 54 year-old was convicted of manslaughter. Later, a seemingly sympathetic judge sentenced the construction worker to 2 to 4 years in prison. His lawyers are appealing.

Evidently, some black activist believe that the amount of years White should spend in prison are exactly 0. 20/20's b-roll showed a substantial crowd of African-American protesters chanting "Free John White."

But for us black, liberal, anti-violence-rally-types, White, like all other 2nd amendment cowboys, is guilty of a personal militant-ism that we prefer our courts stamp out(even if it has to be done one case at a time).

That is, as long as it's done with fair impartiality.

Much has been written about White's case, nothing better, in my opinion, than Calvin Trillin's New Yorker article, Letter from Long Island, The Color of Blood: Race, memory, and a killing in the suburbs.

"To convict someone of second-degree manslaughter in the state of New York," Trillin writes, "the prosecution has to prove that he recklessly caused the death of the victim--"recklessly" being defined as creating a risk so substantial that disregarding it constitutes "a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe"--and that he had no justification. In its decision in the case of Bernard Goetz, the white man who in 1984 shot 4 young black men who had approached him on the subway demanding money, the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, ruled that justification could have a subjective as well as an objective component--fears raised by the defendant's past experiences, for instance."

We forgot about that Subway Vigilante guy: the white dude who shot 4 black teens who may or may not have been trying to rob him, who mowed them down with an unregistered Smith and Wesson (that wasn't inherited from his grandfather) and who said a whole bunch of cavalier things afterwards.

In 1984 Goetz became a kind of perverted, "Mcgruff the crime dog" mascot for paranoid New Yorkers. Following the shootings, he did 250 days on a weapons charge.

We thought White got off easy.

Human life is invaluable, and nothing to become too politically clever (or flippant) about. But what do we do, we anti-gun liberals, when faced with the behaviors of a legal system, that, when it comes to race, displays all the scruples of a psychopath unloading bullets into a horrified crowd? I say we do the only thing we can do in situations of contradicting values and paradoxical facts: we slowly come to the defense of sanity, even if at our next anti-violence-rally, we're forced to chant something convoluted and clunky like, "Free John White ... or either er ... arrest Bernard Goetz ... "

Rend Smith is a freelance writer who has been employed by the Antioch Review, the Dayton City Paper, and the Hill Rag. He has won several awards and two grants in connection with his work.

© 2008 ColorLines RaceWire All rights reserved.

Woody Guthrie to Judge Thayer: No Sweet Music

ZNet Commentary
By Cynthia Peters
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-08/22peters.cfm

Readers of ZNet know how the "system" works, but who among us has not wanted to take certain individuals by the shoulders and force them to face the consequences of their actions. When I was a kid, we used to have a dog that would occasionally relieve himself right in front of the TV set. To punish him, my mother used to force his nose to within millimeters of the offensive steaming heap. "Look what you've done," she would say. And there'd be no way to gloss over the fact of the situation. He had created a great big pile of shit.

Eighty years ago today, on August 23, 1927, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were murdered by a corrupt legal system and a racist and xenophobic political culture. These two working men - Italian immigrants, World War I draft dodgers, anarchists - were accused of armed robbery and murder and sentenced to die by a court that needed a scapegoat more than it wanted justice. However, it was not only a faceless, nameless system that was responsible for denying appeals, ignoring testimony, and signing off on executions. There was a person behind the pen, and in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, it was Judge Webster Thayer.

To honor the legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti on this, the eightieth anniversary of their death, I am reprinting a letter I came across in the liner notes of the Smithsonian Folkways "The Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti." (http://www.akpress.org/2000/items/balladsofsaccovanzetti) It is by Woody Guthrie, and it is addressed directly to Judge Thayer, and it is a most brilliant, poetic, poignant cry of "Look what you've done."

According to the liner notes, the letter was probably written in 1947, 14 years after Judge Thayer died. It is testimony not only to how deeply Guthrie felt the tragic loss of Sacco and Vanzetti, but how he understood the way that power dehumanizes the master as well. It is a raw, unedited soliloquy against those who choose a "tiptoeing life on rugs and carpets," who "escape through varnished doors," and who live in such a state of fear and mental shut-down that they are, in fact, "never alive."

To Bush and Cheney, then, and to the corporate executives and mercenaries, and to all the board-room-dwelling paper-pushers whose pens rob and kill as surely as any weapon or electric chair, put your nose in this:

"To Judge Thayer" by Woody Guthrie

I would like to paint you a picture with strokes of electricity, to make you see, Judge Thayer, the wrong thing that you done. It would take something faster than firesparks to send this picture around the world, but the blood of Sacco and Vanzetti did flow around the world, and the picture was in the minds of people before that hand of your button pusher could push your electric button and take his finger away again.

I say the blood flowed, but it was not the blood that ran, because you did not hang them, you did not shoot them, but you did torture them, you did insult and abuse them, you made comics and puppets out of them to dance and to dangle in front of your sad eye. You set their souls free with a spark of Massachusetts electricity because you were so unwise as to think that this would hold and silence their voices.

You killed Bartolomo [sic] Vanzetti, a poet and a fighter, and you killed Nicolo [sic] Sacco because he taught workers how to get together and talk about their work. The reason that you killed these two men was because you lost your spiritual connection with all men, and you did not believe that there was any such a thing as a spiritual connection between any men. You did not believe in the mental ability of the ordinary workingman and woman to stand together and to meet together, to speak their problems over in a free land together.

This is a rough way to try to tell you because you are used to nicer and politer ways, ways memorized out of books, ways learned in your college buildings, and in your schools. You have taken your hide and shelter in these halls of learning for a long time, but I would not call you a man that has learned anything. You fell onto the patter of action that you used over and over till you wore your mind out, and then you thought that this same calamity had happened to everybody else. You lived a quiet life, a tiptoeing life on rugs and carpets. You found some kind of dark world there in your caverns with your stalagmites and you wanted to hang on to whatever little nervous nightmare that you were having. You did not want to be kicked out, nor relieved, nor have somebody else take your bench and judge people from it. You wanted to keep on stepping down your back stairways, through your varnished doors, yes. You certainly did not want any wild gang of illiterate workers busting into your court room nor into your house and telling you that you had lost your job. You somehow got scared, then to make out like you were not scared, you walked all around and shouted that you were not scared. (People knew that you were because you yelled that you were not.)

You got afraid of people all around you. You really felt afraid of every person that came close to you. You did not always say this out loud, but you know very well that you felt this way every hour of every day. You felt it even worse after dark. You did not even tell your wife nor your closest friends how scared you were. You were not only afraid of people, but the tides and the seasons scared you and you came to be afraid of the weather. Your seasons were things of locks and keys and your sleep was a wild running nightmare, but you used all kinds of tricks to make your face look like it was not afraid of the people. You feared the working people. You feared the business people. You feared the idle classes and you feared the racketeers. The world was a puddle of manure and mud and all of the faith on this planet could not change human nature's greed.

I don't know tonight as I write this whether you are alive or dead. It had been a long time since you pulled the electric trigger on Sacco and Vanzetti, but it could be that you are still dwelling in your same body. I had rather be dead than to be a man of your cut and caliber. It would be wrong for me to wonder if you are living or dead because it is truer to say that you never was alive. I mean warm alive like most of all my loud and noisy neighbors around me here in Coney Island.

If your spirit is out of your carcass, I certainly would not blame it, for if I was a spirit I would not dwell for long in any such a body as you own. If I was a body I would not live with any such a spirit as yours. If I was a mind I would not play any sweet music inside your brain, and if I was a soul I would not bring any very big visions into your heart. If I was the Creator I would undo you and if I was the Maker I would unmake you and take the clay and try again. I cannot curse your soul too much because you may be remolded into a union organizer. I cannot curse your clay too much because you will fertilize some nice corn and grain and drift out across some dandy pasture lands where horses nicker and the cattle graze.

You did not wish for Sacco nor Vanzetti neither one to dwell on our planet here, and so you schemed and you figured out a way to take them away. If you had been a true man wise or unwise you would have never let your drunkest and scaredest nightmare cause you to do such a deed. You would have known that you would wake up ten million souls around the world to fight to enter into their union. You would have known that you were not only kicking your own pants off of the judging bench, but several hundred thousand judges and shysters of your stripe and breed. You would have known this if your mind had not been so completely blind. I cannot rile myself too much to curse you because I am not too much of a curser, and I know that you did, in one way, wake the workers of the world up, but you did it in the craziest, greediest and most terrible way that you could. You called our attention to the fact that if it was geniuses of your level who own and rule our world and make its laws, judge us good and bad, to be alive or to be dead, then, well, this was the one thing that put us on the move and tore your world down faster than ten grenades would have.

You are a big judge. You may be living and you may be dying. You may already be dead. No matter what your natural estate (sp????????) may be, I realize that I must speak to you polite and nice even if I hate your royal guts. And so this (is/?????????) why tonight I hold my criticism down to just the one single planet called the earth. If I was to let my words fly at you like I really feel I ought to. I would chase you up one universe and down the next, up one glacial age and down the next, up one history book and down the other, over several icebergs and out through several jungles. I would rail you and scale you, jail you and bail you, I would mail you and nail you and assail you and frail you. I would run you ragged and craosseyed, cockeyed and whopperjawed. I would not let one drop of your blood rest easy nor one cell of your brain miss my trimming. I think of your old age and your natural condition of a tablet of salt, and I will not try to take your coyote heart out of you because in all of your horror and terror you have ignorantly defeated your own self and your own class. You have done the only earthly thing that could undo your entire class, and it might well be that you were created just to perform this one act and then no more. Oh, I know that you performed a lot of other lesser and smaller acts, but they just broke the ground for the deed that you did to Sacco and Vanzetti.


For more information about the Sacco and Vanzetti case, see ZNet's excerpt of Howard Zinn's book A Power Governments Cannot Suppress (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=12575) and an interview with him by Sonali Kolhatkar and Gabriel San Roman (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9551).