The Political Circuses
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
The Political Circuses
Both the
Republican National Convention in Cleveland Ohio and the Democratic National
Convention in Philadelphia are fraught with controversy and hypocrisy but with
recent events: the attempted coup in Turkey, the bombings in Nice and the
shooting of Blacks and police officers here in the US we will see just how
deranged corrupt and megalomaniacal the American political process really is.
The two major political parties are really two sides of the same coin a
corporate owned duopoly created and put in place to do the bidding of the 1%.
In Cleveland the Republicans
nominated Donald Trump a wealthy real estate mogul with no governance
experience whatsoever as their standard bearer. The Democrats will nominate the
consummate 1%er, Washington
insider and warmonger Hillary Clinton. Trump is the fly in the buttermilk for
the Republican Party. The ruling class hates Donald Trump because he openly
proclaims the system is rigged against working stiffs and routinely lambasts
D.C. politicians for their ineptitude, greed and malfeasance. He mocks their sacrosanct positions on war,
NATO, and the economy.
Trump
frightens Republicans with his off the cuff, ill thought out rhetoric. The
party even went against the will of the people, tried to dump him but failed.
How can a party that nominated an idiot like George W. Bu$h, who only won because
the US Supreme Court packed with Reagan and Bu$h appointees interfered with the
vote count fear someone like Trump? If the bland totally white bread
Republicans could nominate lames like John McCain and Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney
and Paul Ryan how in the world can they not want an attention grabbing, pop culture icon like Donald Trump? He's the
perfect circus ringmaster. Obviously the reason they fear Trump is because he is
an outsider, he's not one of the political class good ol' boys.
Hillery Clinton doesn't have that
problem. She is the consummate 1% insider, crook and warmonger. She is the
candidate of Wall Street, the military industrial complex, Big Pharma and fast
money. For her that's a problem and Trump will blast her to high heaven for it,
is her entitlement attitude and her long record of cronyism and deception.
Hillery
Rodham cut her teeth working for Barry Goldwater an ultra conservative who opposed
the 1964 Civil Rights legislation and all other progressive social legislation.
Ever the opportunist Hillary married Bill Clinton and embarked on a life of
"public service" that has made them rich beyond their wildest dreams.
As
president Bill Clinton sold out the traditional Democratic Party constituency:
organized labor, Blacks, women and progressives when he and Al Gore replicated
Nixon's Southern Strategy, courted corporate money and pivoted towards a
neoliberal globalist agenda that facilitated US jobs being shipped overseas.
That corporate partnership and their years of access to the rich and well
connected both legal and illegal have made Bill and Hillery super rich.
Both
national conventions are circuses. They will trot out their most eloquent
speakers, hoop, holler, lie and make promises they have no intention of
keeping. Both parties will attempt to soothe the angst, anxiety and contempt
the masses feel towards the political process. They will try to convince the
American people they are sincere, that they feel our pain and will make things
right again. They will put on a great show, spend lots of money then hit the
campaign trail determined to maintain the status quo.
Don't fall
for the okey-doke. Neither party has our best interests at heart. Neither party
is going to redirect the trillions currently going to the military industrial
complex to rebuilding the crumbling American infrastructure. Neither party is
going to reevaluate US foreign policy, to go from war to peace, neither party
is going to disengage the US from NATO and neither party is going to minimize
the influence of the NRA, Wall Street, AIPAC or other special interest group
money in politics. Neither party is going to embrace the desire for real change
or do something for the people for a change. Hey be happy the circuses will
give us some very entertaining moments.
Presumptions of Criminality
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Presumptions of Criminality
When
reporters asked Malcolm X to comment on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm defied Elijah Muhammad's
order not to say anything about the event and responded "It was, as I saw
it, a case of ‘the chickens coming home to roost.’ I said that the hate in
white men had not stopped with the killing of defenseless black people, but
that hate, allowed to spread unchecked, had finally struck down this country’s
Chief Magistrate.”
The recent shootings
and killings of police is another example of the chickens coming home to roost.
Martin Luther King Jr said in a speech exactly one year to the day before he was assassinated, "The greatest
purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government." The United States
is the most violent country on Earth. It was conceived in violence when
Europeans landed in this hemisphere and began brutalizing and killing its
indigenous inhabitants. That violence continued until Europeans claimed all of North America. Now their goal is to completely dominate
the world.
Violence escalated once Africans were imported
here to do the back breaking labor to make America profitable. The history of
gun ownership here is based upon the need for whites to have guns, not to
protect themselves but to facilitate the theft, appropriation and conquest of
the Native Americans' lands and to keep the Africans they imported passive and under
control.
Organized
militia patrolled and protected the colonies. The Sheriffs were colonial
administration officers with duties similar to those of sheriffs in England.
Standing armies cost money and the colonists didn't have money to pay. Sheriffs
and Constables served warrants and did other non law enforcement duties once
the United States
was founded. Police departments didn't come into existence until the 1830's.
Read the
late Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr's well researched and written books In the Matter of Color Race and the
American Legal Process, The Colonial Period and Shades of Freedom Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American
Legal Process and you'll understand the roots of the presumptions of
racial inferiority and criminality woven into the US legal system and enforced
by the police. Constitutionally sanctioned slavery, color peonage and Post
Civil Rights America still remain stuck in those notions. US police departments
were originally created and used to maintain social order and control for the
ruling classes to keep European immigrants, and people of color in check. Connect
the historical dots and you'll realize the causes of what is happening today.
Police
brutality has existed since police have been around. In addition to patrolling neighborhoods,
police were primarily tasked with being the guardians of the ruling class and
their property. If you are old enough to remember the '60's and 70's police
brutality was a contentious and volatile issue. Following the passage of the
Voting Rights Act and the subsequent murder of Martin Luther King Jr more Black
Sheriffs were elected, more Black police officers were hired and more Blacks
became chiefs. Yet the presumptions of inferiority and criminality Judge Higginbotham
described still remain.
Due to the recent shootings of police
officers, police, politicians and pundits are demonizing the Black Lives Matter
movement. They claim BLM is a hateful anti-police movement. In their haste to defend their actions, the
police deny tensions between police and the Black community have always existed.
They focus on the small number of Blacks killed by police, admitting police
shoot and kill more whites than Blacks.
This is
a complex issue. See http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/police-reasonable-force-brutality-race-research-review-statistics.
Ironically, the police are resorting to the same presumptions of inferiority
and criminality Judge Higginbotham wrote about. They are attempting to sweep
police brutality and misconduct under the rug. The chickens are coming home to
roost.
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Strategy of Tension
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Strategy of Tension?
The recent
shootings in Dallas Texas
and Orlando Florida
are being compared to an ongoing Post WWII clandestine operation in Europe
initiated by the US
and its NATO allies to prevent the rise of independent regimes. That campaign
was/is widespread, ongoing and current.
In Italy
it was called Operation Gladio. For
an historical synopsis of this program go to http://www.globalresearch.ca/operation-gladio-cia-network-of-stay-behind-secret-armies/9556,
it will give you another perspective on how the ruling elites operate.
You ask
what does a clandestine network operating in Europe and the "Middle East" have to do with us? That's a valid
question. The underlying agenda of the global elite is to control the world by
creating false flag operations to discredit, undermine or in the case of the
recent color revolutions in the North Africa and Ukraine destabilize existing
governments via regime change. These governments are then replaced with pliable
puppet "leaders" and reduced to vassal status.
Many are
speculating the 1% have upped their timetable for the total implosion of America
using their tried and true "strategy of tension" of exacerbating
existing socio-economic divisions. A major goal of the ruling elite is to
disarm the populous. Gun ownership has
been sacrosanct in the US
(except for Black folks) going back to European settlers' theft of the lands
and the genocide of the indigenous people of this hemisphere. Not having
standing armies or peace officers they depended on armed citizen militias for
"protection", to monitor and control lower class whites and their
African slave populations.
A well armed populous posses a serious threat
to the 1%'s plans to replicate Nazism and Stalinism in the US. So they
stage events like the Oklahoma City
bombing (the FBI was involved), 9-11, the Boston Marathon bombing, Orland,
Dallas and others as the means to advance their police state agenda.
The globalists
always work on simultaneous fronts. The only way they can impose their will and
agenda on the masses is to keep us duped, divided, disorganized, discombobulated
and at each other's throats. So events are planned using agent provocateurs, patsies,
stooges and Manchurian Candidate mind controlled individuals in well orchestrated events like
9-11. The corporate media does its part by serving as uncritical and pliant
stenographers for the ruling class.
The
megalomaniacal elites also take advantage of
man made and natural disasters like 9-11 (an inside job) and Hurricane
Katrina to further their agenda for an imperialist grab of natural resources or
the ethnic cleansing of a whole city. We see how they used Hurricane Katrina to
dislocate and displace thousands of Black folks out of New Orleans. We know Bu$h had foreknowledge
of the 9-11 attacks, allowed it to happen to justify their pre 9-11 plans to
invade Afghanistan, launch their bogus global war on terrorism and pass a
series of Draconian laws like the USA PATRIOT ACT which was written way before
9-11 happened!
All of us
have been impacted by these events. The Orlando
shootings was a staged event that went sour (most of the people in the nightclub
were killed by the SWAT officers). The Dallas
shootings are being used to escalate the tension between the Black Lives Matter
movement and police, Blacks and whites and of course promote gun control. Dallas was working hard
to improve community police relations and overcome the distrust; perhaps that
is why it was selected for this event. Remember JFK was assassinated in Dallas by the 1%.
Dallas was
almost an exact replay of what happened in Kiev Ukraine. See http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/07/08/ffwn-dallas/
and http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=42566 to get a global perspective on
current events. Don't fall for their okey-doke. Review the evidence for
yourself, keep an open mind, think for yourself and act accordingly.
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The Realities of Resistance and nNationhood
From The Ramparts
The Realities of Resistance
and Nationhood
Junious Ricardo Stanton
"Quilombo dos
Palmares was a self-sustaining republic of maroons located in 'a region perhaps
the size of Portugal in the
hinterland of Bahia' (Braudel 1984). The Bahia
- Alagoas region of Brazil
is where this free African settlement was located. At its height in the early
1600s, Palmares had a population of over 30,000. By 1630, it was described
by the commentators as 'the Promised Land' for escaped African slaves. King
Ganga Zumba of Palmares offered emancipation for slaves entering its
territories." http://www.blackhistoryheroes.com/2010/05/zumbi-dos-palmares.html
The consequence of centuries of European imperialism
which have caused massive death, social disruption, continuous conflict,
kidnapping and forced relocation of indigenous peoples has caused numerous
thinkers, idealists, activists and pioneers over the years to take the
initiative to start their own society or settlements to escape the oppressive
domination of Europeans. Some of the most famous were: the Quilombo dos
Palmares in Brazil in 1605, the
Haitian revolution, the various Maroon societies in the Caribbean, South and
North America and resettlements in Africa and
elsewhere. These were self-sustaining communities founded by Africans seeking
relief and escape from European bondage and slavery.
The Maroon communities varied in size, scope and
effectiveness. Some were small bands of escapees, others covered larger
territory and were able to fight to maintain their independence and sufficiency
for decades and in the case of Haiti
for centuries. Looking at an overview of
these communities, we must remember that while each was unique they held
several elements in common. "Ranging from small nomadic bands to
extensive settled communities of thousands of people that endured for decades,
even centuries, on the fringes of the plantation economy, Maroon societies came
into existence almost as soon as African slavery in the Americas did.
Most of their members were African-born, as they reproduced many of the social
and cultural features of their homeland in their new surroundings... Often
mixing with indigenous groups and allying with their slave masters’ enemies,
Maroon communities displayed tremendous resilience in the face of persistent
efforts to eradicate them and horrific punishments meted out to captured
runaways, which included castration, amputation of limbs, branding, garroting,
and burning alive.
The hinterlands of plantation economies
throughout the Caribbean, Mexico,
Brazil, North
America, and elsewhere witnessed the formation of Maroon societies
alongside the very introduction of slavery. In British North America and, after
1783, the United States of America, Maroon
societies formed and reformed repeatedly. There is evidence for at least 50
such communities during the period 1672–1864 in the mountains, forests, and
swamps from Florida to Louisiana
to Virginia. Most
notable among these were those in the Dismal Swamp
area in the Virginia–North Carolina borderlands, where thousands of runaway
slaves and their descendants survived repeated efforts to capture and subdue
them. Sometimes Maroons allied with local Indians, forming mixed communities of
Indians and fugitive slaves. Other times Indian individuals and polities allied
with Euro-American authorities, assisting them in their eradication efforts, as
occurred among the Notchee Indians in South Carolina in 1744, in Georgia in
1772, and in other places." http://epicworldhistory.blogspot.com/2012/05/maroon-societies-in-americas.html
African resistance
to slavery was instantaneous, ongoing and sustained varying as individual acts
of defiance and resistance to countless collective and organized initiatives. On
the continent several African kingdoms and whole regions like Angola and Upper Guinea
fought against the Europeans to defend their territories and prevent the
kidnapping of their people. Once the
slave trade was established a myriad of ways to resist were employed. Revolts
were common on the slave ships as many as one in ten slave ships experienced
some form of organized revolt, unfortunately for the captives, rarely were they
successful.
Once on
land, resistance took new forms from feigned sickness, poisoning the whites, malingering,
sabotage, escape to organized open warfare. In many cases the runaways formed
new settlements called Maroons. One common element within the collective
resistance, escape and resettlement paradigm was the early escapees (and in the
case of Haiti's
slave population) unabashedly retained their African identity and cultural
traditions. Deeply embedded within their African cultural identification was
their will to be free or to at least hold onto some semblance of their humanity
at all costs.
" The importance of African culture
– names, craftsmanship, languages, scientific knowledge, beliefs, philosophy,
music and dance, was that it provided the psychological support to help the
captives resist the process of enslavement. The act of enslavement
involved attempts to break the will and ignore the humanity of slaves in what
was known as 'seasoning'. Obvious examples would be the use of Vodun (Voodoo)
religious beliefs in the Haitian Revolution and the employment of Obeah to
strengthen the Jamaican Maroons in the struggles against the British. Rebel
leaders such as Nanny in Jamaica
and Boukman and Mackandal in St Domingue (Haiti) were also religious or
spiritual leaders. Religious beliefs should perhaps be seen as also providing
the enslaved Africans a way of understanding the world and giving them
simultaneously a whole belief system, a coping mechanism and a means of
resistance." http://www.understandingslavery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=310:resistance-and-rebellion&Itemid=222
Maroon
survival depended upon unity, cooperation, ingenuity, and the willingness to
fight to the death to remain free. Daring initiatives varying from raiding
parties, guerilla campaigns to organized open warfare against the Dutch, Spanish,
French, English and Americans were recorded. These communities were self
regulating and self governing; some had chiefs, others Kings while others were
administered by councils. In numerous instances run-away Africans merged with
indigenous peoples of Mexico,
South and North America to form integrated
communities of resistance to European settlement and hegemony.
European
anger at and fear of African defiance intensified the ferocity of the conflicts
resulting many times in the Maroon communities being totally destroyed. But
quite often the Maroons prevailed militarily, forcing the Europeans to relent
and negotiate treaties and agreements with the larger maroon communities.
Forming self-sustaining communities to escape
the barbarity of European domination has been on ongoing dream/option for
centuries. In the US in addition to the Maroon communities in Florida,
Virginia/North Carolina, following the War Between he States and the end of
Reconstruction many Blacks called Exodusters left the South to establish
communities in the US Mid- West and West. "The Exodus of 1879 (also known
as the Kansas Exodus and the Exoduster Movement) refers to the mass movement of
African Americans from states along the Mississippi River to Kansas in the late nineteenth century, and
was the first general migration of blacks following the Civil War. One of the
most important figures of the Exodus was Benjamin "Pap" Singleton. To
escape the Ku Klux Klan, the White League and the Jim Crow laws which continued
to make them second-class citizens after Reconstruction, as many as forty
thousand Exodusters left the South to settle in Kansas,
Oklahoma and Colorado. In the 1880s, blacks bought more
than 20,000 acres (81 km2) of land in Kansas,
and several of the settlements made during this time (e.g. Nicodemus, Kansas,
which was founded in 1877) still exist today. This sudden wave of migration
came as a great surprise to many white Americans, who did not realize that
black southerners were free in name only. Many blacks left the South with the
belief that they were receiving free passage to Kansas,
only to be stranded in St. Louis,
Missouri. Black churches in St. Louis, together with Eastern philanthropists, formed
the Colored Relief Board and the Kansas Freedmen's Aid Society to help those
stranded in St. Louis to reach Kansas."
https://www.geni.com/projects/Exodusters-Black-Migration-to-Kansas-after-Reconstruction/9276
Over the
years Africans seeking solace from white barbarism left for Africa, Canada and Nova Scotia to free themselves from white
domination. In the mid twentieth century there were calls for separation from
whites. Blacks were urged to migrate to land that would be given to Blacks by
the US
government as a form of reparations. These demands were made over the years by
Elijah Muhammad head of the Nation of Islam, The New Republic of Afrika, the
Black Panther Party and others. The US government has never even
replied to these demands.
Every year
attempts to get a bill to merely study the feasibility of reparations never gets
discussed so it can get out of committee. In the Sixties following the passage
of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act which finally (on paper)
allowed Blacks to participate in the political process, many Black activists
attempted to forge a Black political party. They experienced limited success.
Out of that movement came the push for Black political control in the South and
in cities in the North and West where Blacks held a significant population
edge. This movement has produced more Black elected officials: mayors,
commissioners, judges, sheriffs, district attorneys, state and US legislators
than any period in US
history. Yet conditions for the vast majority of people of color in this
country have not improved. In fact the financial crash of 2008 obliterated
billions of Black and Brown homeownership
and real estate wealth that will not be recouped!
"The
historic significance of this momentous economic crisis is not only the overall
size of this housing market impact, but also the central role played by
long-standing inequitable practices and policies that have seriously limited
economic opportunities and wealth building for non-white groups in this
country. The subprime targeting of Blacks and Latinos within the housing market
is one more recent example of such practices and policies. What Americans of
all backgrounds must come to appreciate is that the current unequal impact of
the crisis on Black and Latino homeowners severely threatens the future
recovery of the entire national housing market, and thus, the economic health
of the country. The Black and Latino experience is crucial for understanding
both the origins and resolution of the current crisis in a way that establishes
a prosperous middle-class based economic recovery. In essence this crisis
raises the fundamental question concerning the future viability of the United States
as a middle class economy in the 21st Century; one with the ability of
creating, expanding and transmitting wealth not only between generations but in
the context of a dramatic changing demographic transformation." http://wcvi.org/data/pub/wcvi_whitepaper_housing_june2009.pdf
Now the 1 %
political duopoly have so rigged the game, the 99% are awakening to the stark
reality we live in a banana republic, with rigged elections, rigged
"justice" system and a big brother surveillance police state with
ever tightening restrictions. So where do we go from here?
The reality
is most of our people are not going to emigrate back to Africa.
Some of our people have returned but the
masses of our people will remain where they are for the rest of their natural
lives. Some folks have returned South to reside on family heir property or for
better employment opportunities. But on
a macroeconomic level we as a people have fewer banks, fewer insurance
companies and businesses in our local communities than we had one hundred years
ago. In the 1980's and 90's white corporations gobbled up profitable Black
business to increase their bottom line and add to their profitability.
The AmeriKKKan
empire is waging a world war under the bogus claim of
"anti-terrorism". Sovereign nations around the globe are threatened,
invaded and bombed, their economies undermined by bankster collusion, sanctions
and currency wars. No one is safe. The New World Order threatens the planet
with ecocide, war, devastation, economic peonage and demonic hegemony. Other
than the South Pole where can we go that these psychopaths don't hold sway?
Our only hope is to start wherever we
are, to organize, develop strategies, plans for survival: ways to create a need
based economic infrastructure so we can feed ourselves, create distribution
networks so we can trade and exchange goods between communities just like other
ethnics do.
Go to your
local Chinatown or to an ethnic enclave near you and look at the businesses and
service providers there that look just like the people who live in that
community. All too often in our communities we don't see this.
We need to
develop as Jim Clingman tells us all the time an ethnocentric approach to
living in a very cliquish and clannish pluralistic society. We have to think
Black and by that I mean in a righteous way, collectively beneficial, not
trying to rip each other off!
We need new
dynamic leadership with a better vision for us as a people. We have to trust
each other enough to get back to creating pools of capital to generate the cash
to invest in projects that benefit our whole neighborhood. We have to work to
use the real equity and collateral we already have in our communities (like our
churches, social organizations etc) to our advantage. The times demand a new
way of thinking. I certainly don't profess to have all the answers but one
thing I do know is, we can learn from our history. History is an important
teacher. We can learn from the Maroons, we already know what made them
successful. We just have to cultivate the will and determination to modify and
apply those lessons to our circumstances today.
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