Recent Posts

I do not apologize for daring to hope, but I am beyond disappointed and disgusted by Obama. This debt-ceiling fiasco is the absolute limit. The only positive light I can put on his behavior is to conclude that the United States is indeed ungovernable, totally co-opted by corporate interests.

We are 2 and a half years into the Obama administration. Is it perhaps time to revisit the assumptions of the election?

http://blackagendareport.com/content/phony-anti-war-movement

http://sfbayview.com/2010/when-we-say-democracy-we-have-to-mean-what-we-say/

“We are all equal – rich and poor – and we need a society where the people enjoy their rights. But once you speak this way, it becomes a good reason for you to be pushed out of the country or to be kidnapped as I was.” – President Aristide

It was American soldiers who kidnapped President Aristide and an American plane that flew him out of Haiti in 2003. The United States cannot talk democracy with one side of its mouth and subvert it with the other. Never again!

For the people of Egypt
Feb.11, 2011

to be all at once
for once and for all
unafraid

and with such clarity
the only place
to be-
Tahrir--
Liberation
squared,
a million sudden sisters
and brothers
in the thick of it
water cannon teargas
bat bullet rock
and you don’t stop

taking up the thin gold thread
woven through generations
“we must hang together
or surely
we shall all hang separately”
kin to beloved sages
and nameless sufferers
alike with desires so simple
so elemental the most human
of desires

unalienable despite facts
of history which seem to indicate
their expendability
and though the regimes of despots are fragile
their demise inevitable
there seems no shortage of despots
hawk-faced hucksters who trade in fear

but “there is something in the soul
that cries out for freedom”
that abides through oceans of broken bodies
and dread silence of extinguished voices,
that sprouts unlikely from blasted landscapes
something that ever will insist
 and persist

this day they chant “Allahu Akbar!”
shoulder to shoulder
on another it was “Amandla!”
on others “Viva!”

Amman, Riyadh, Damascus, Tehran, Tora Bora, take note.
The fear you’ve manufactured is all that stands
between you and the deluge. Fear turns
on a dime. It’s just a matter of time.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2008588,00.html

Thanks for this---the analogy is that he's like the anti-Castro Cubans...
good to know

I erroneously gave to Wyclef Jean's charity, not knowing these facts:

"Haitian musician Wyclef Jean used his celebrity, and the earthquake, to raise millions for his own Haitian charity.
We make no judgment on the allegations that its bookkeeping may be irregular. But it's worth noting that Wyclef Jean has family ties to the group of gangsters and thugs that the Clinton-era CIA installed in office when it removed Haiti's elected president, Jean-Betrand Aristide from office in the 1990s. Wyclef Jean has repeated the contemptible lie all over black radio that Aristide skipped the country with $900 million stolen from Haitians. We understand where this comes from. Wyclef's uncle was the Washington DC representative of the short-lived 1990s un-elected gangster government of Haiti. He runs a right wing rag of a Haitian newspaper dedicated to spreading outrageous and self-serving falsehoods against Lavalas, the only Haitian party capable of winning free elections in that unhappy country.  If Wyclef will lie about that, we wonder what else he'd lie about, and why we should trust him with our money."

source: http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/haiti-katrina-and-why-i-wont-give-haiti-through-red-cross

Now whether or not that makes Jean's organization "suspect" I don't know - but it is worth noting.

Also makes you wonder too why GW pardoned Fugees producer John Forte right before he exited the presidency:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1417325/fugees_producer_john_forte_pardoned.html

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2010/01/haiti-disaster-capitalism-alert-stop-them-they-shock-again

http://trueslant.com/rickungar/2010/01/18/leave-wyclef-jean-alone/