Tuesday, July 26, 2016

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.

Monday, July 18, 2016

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.

                                                            -30-

            

Saturday, July 09, 2016

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.

                                                            -30-

                                                            

Thursday, July 07, 2016

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.
                                                            -30-