Brown woman divorces Democrats

SUBHEAD: I’m a brown woman who’s breaking up with the Democratic Party.

By Saira Rao on 16 December 2017 for Huffington Post -
(https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brown-women-democratic-party_us_5a31a32de4b07ff75b001456)


Image above: What appears to be a selfie of Saira Rao during her college days with Hillary Clinton. From original article.

Dear Democratic Party:

You were the love of my life. I fell in love early and hard. I have been the kind of party loyalist ― the kind of sappy, soapbox-y, clichéd devotee ― that makes Fox News moonwalk with glee.

The first vote I ever cast, at 18, was for Bill Clinton. The last vote I cast was for his wife, Hillary. My adoration for Hillary bordered on mania.

In college, I named my ficus plant after her. Twenty years later, I canvassed, held fundraisers, dragged my 8-year-old daughter door to door, proudly wore HRC’s face on T-shirts and housed campaign volunteers in my home.

I loved you so much that I cried each time I voted. Thinking about the women who died fighting for my right to vote did it every time. I cried when I voted for Bill. For Barack Obama. I wept when I voted for Hillary. You’ve been that kind of mad love to me.

And now I want to break up.

I realize now that the love has been one-sided, unrequited. You’ve never recognized me, as a brown woman. You’ve taken my love, my money, my tokenism, with nary anything in return. You married the white woman and hooked up with me on the side.

Black Lives Matter is a second ― or third ― thought. Where is your outrage over the national epidemic of police brutality against black people?

You continue to call angry white men who commit mass murder “lone wolves.” But if someone who looks like me screams “Allah” and fires a gun, it’s “terrorism.” And you wonder why angry white men are gunning down innocent brown men at bars, in their yards, on the street.

For all your talk about Dreamers, there’s been little action. You don’t seem to give a crap about kids of color who will be kicked out of this country, the only country they know.

What if all those Dreamers were white? I suspect there’d be a very different outcome.

You spend a lot of time and energy wooing white voters, while giving short shrift to voters of colors and assuming we’ll always show up for you.

To be fair, there’s no reason for you to assume otherwise. We always show up for you. Take, for example, the special election in Alabama on Tuesday. Had black people not shown up, an accused child molester would be our newest senator.

What will Doug Jones do for the black folks who put him in the Senate? If history is any indication, very little.

This past year, I held and attended numerous fundraisers for your candidates. I donated money every time I was asked. I marched: for women, for children, for reproductive rights, for science. I traveled across the country for the March for Women in Washington, D.C.

It was there that I got the first hint that you weren’t that into me. The giveaway? The sea of white women in pink hats with brown and black women dotting the waves like debris. I let it slide but I kept my eyes and ears open.

My fellow brown and black sisters started to notice, too — and the chatter began, in whispered hushes at first, then loud and clear. You are a party of white feminists. Of white feminism, the kind of feminism that focuses on the struggles of white women.

It was the first time I’d heard the term, most likely because self-awareness is hard and I was a brown woman trapped in a white feminist’s world.

But then I woke up. I saw you with clear eyes for the first time.

For every Kamala Harris and Pramila Jayapal sticking their brown and black necks out for me, there are dozens of white female Democrats who want me to shut my trap.

Your advocacy for reproductive rights zeros in on wealthy white women. Women of color and other marginalized women get sidelined.

The gender pay gap is worse for black and Latina women than it is for white women. Women of color make up 64 percent of women in U.S. jails. Why isn’t the Democratic Party talking about this and trying to fix it?

My own “liberal” white congresswoman in Colorado has given me a hint as to why.

At the congresswoman’s town hall in February, Neeti Pawar, the brown female founder of the South Asian Bar Association of Colorado, was one of the only people of color in a room of nearly a thousand. She asked about immigration and DACA protections.

The congresswoman scoffed. When Pawar pressed on, she was told to remain silent or she’d be asked to leave. During a follow-up, staffers told Pawar that civil rights weren’t the representative’s “issue.” Brown and black people don’t have the luxury of sidelining civil rights. It’s life and death for us.

And it didn’t stop there.

I was organizing a fundraiser for a U.S. senator earlier this month, and had planned to use the opportunity to highlight women of color by having black women introduce him.

The congresswoman’s staff caught wind of the event and asked if she could introduce the senator. I explained my position but invited her to come as a guest. No response. When pressed on her stance on racial inclusion, her staff didn’t respond to me directly but tattled on me to the white women co-hosting the event.

I know there are some good ones among you. But for every Kamala Harris, Maxine Waters and Pramila Jayapal sticking their brown and black necks out for me, there are dozens of white female Democrats who want me to shut my trap, and say please and thank you. 

I should be grateful for scraps while white women enjoy a proper marriage with you.

I’m done with all that. And if you don’t want to lose more women like me, there are a few basic things you can do.

Pay attention to the reproductive health of women of color and other marginalized women. Do something, anything, to protect Dreamers. Or, if you’re really feeling bold, move forward on some form of reparations for black people.

Finally, mentor young people of color to run for office. Campaign for brown and black folks. Raise money for them. Show up for them. I’d come running back to you with open arms if you did even a few of these things.

In the meantime, I’ll be on the sidelines waiting, watching, hoping, praying. You broke my heart.

.

Dallas use of killer "robot" alarming

SUBHEAD: Legal experts raise alarm over shocking use of 'Killer Robot' for execution by Dallas police force.

By Nadia Prupis on 8 July 2016 for Common Dreams -
(http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/07/08/legal-experts-raise-alarm-over-shocking-use-killer-robot-dallas)


Image above: Kind of "robot" used by police and military often used in situations characterized as "terrorism". These are not really robots in that they are in no way autonomous. They are in fact remote control tank like vehicles often with articulated arms. From (http://www.deccanchronicle.com/world/america/080716/3-snipers-in-custody-negotiations-underway-police-chief.html).

[IB Publisher's note: It is been a problem for me that Americans often hear their leaders characterize "terrorists" as cowardly. Strapping a bomb around your waist and approaching a crowd of a "foreign enemy" (bazaar or mall shoppers) and setting it off is not "cowardly". A single person approaching a well armed uniformed group of "enemy soldiers" (soldiers or police) and initiating a suicide attack is not "cowardly". It may be "evil", "maniacal",  "insane", "suicidal", etc.  It is cowardly to kill people at a wedding ceremony with a missile fired from a drone flown from an air conditioned trailer thousands of miles away because a guest at the wedding might be a "terrorist". It is cowardly to use a remote controlled robot with a bomb to kill a crime suspect who is alone and hiding in a parking garage. I think the much of  the brutality of police directed at blacks in America stems from fear not bravery. Cowardice not Heroism. If you want to debate whether sniping is cowardly or heroic or some other thing, please add a comment below.]

The fact that the police have a weapon like this...is an example of the militarization of the police and law enforcement—and goes in the wrong direction.

As news emerges that police officers in Dallas, Texas used an armed robot to kill the suspected shooter in Thursday night's ambush, experts are warning that it represents a sea change in police militarization that only heightens risks to human and constitutional rights.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Friday morning during a press conference that police "saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate" where the suspect had taken refuge in a parking garage as police tried to negotiate with him, adding that he was "deceased as a result of detonating the bomb."

The suspect, identified as Micah Xavier Johnson, was killed around 2:30am Friday morning after an hours-long standoff with police.

The shootings killed five officers and left more than a dozen people injured. Johnson reportedly confirmed that he had acted alone and was not affiliated with any group.
Many noted that this appears to be the first time that domestic police have used a lethal robot to kill a suspect.

According to Marjorie Cohn, Professor Emerita at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law and editor and contributor to Drones and Targeted Killings: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues, it's a sign that U.S. law enforcement is continuing to go in "the wrong direction."

"The fact that the police have a weapon like this, and other weapons like drones and tanks, is an example of the militarization of the police and law enforcement—and goes in the wrong direction," Cohn told Common Dreams.

"We should see the police using humane techniques, interacting on a more humane level with the community, and although certainly the police officers did not deserve to die, this is an indication of something much deeper in the society, and that's the racism that permeates the police departments across the country. It's a real tragedy."

Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina, told The Atlantic on Friday, "This is sort of a new horizon for police technology. Robots have been around for a while, but using them to deliver lethal force raises some new issues."

As security expert and University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze noted on Twitter on Friday, numerous safety concerns about the robot's protocols—for example, how easily it might be hacked—remain unaddressed.

"How was the control link to the Dallas bomb robot secured? Stakes go *way* up when something like this is repurposed as a weapon," he wrote.

As Popular Science tech editor David Gershgorn also explained:

Repurposing a robot that was created to prevent death by explosion clearly contrasts with the way these machines are normally used. Bomb disposal robots are routinely used to minimize the potential of harm to officers and civilians when disarming or clearing potential explosives from an area. They are often equipped with their own explosive charges and other tools, not to kill, but detonate other potential bombs in the area.

Questions also arose regarding the necessity of the suspect's killing after he reportedly told police during negotiations that there were "bombs all over" downtown Dallas.


Image above: Policeman in body armor, helmet and armed with attack rifle stands near entrance of parking garage in Dallas during atttack by sniper. From (http://www.deccanchronicle.com/world/america/080716/3-snipers-in-custody-negotiations-underway-police-chief.html).

As Cohn noted, officers could have determined where those devices were located, "if in fact there are bombs," had they left the suspect alive. Moreover, she said, killing him violated his constitutional right to due process.

"Police cannot use deadly force unless there's an imminent threat of death or great bodily injury to them or other people. If the suspect was holed up in a parking garage and there was nobody in immediate danger from him, the police could have waited him out.

They should have arrested him and brought him to trial," Cohn said. "Due process is not just enshrined in our constitution, it's also enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. has ratified, making it part of U.S. law."

Likewise, Stoughton told The Atlantic, "Policing has a different mission [than the military]: protecting the populace. That core mission, as difficult as it is to explains sometimes, includes protecting some people who do some bad things. It includes not using lethal force when it's possible to not."

Many noted the connection between potentially the first use of an armed robot in domestic policing and the deployment of such tools in active war zones. Defense technology expert Peter W. Singer wrote on Twitter, "this is 1st use of robot in this way in policing. Marcbot has been ad hoc used this way by troops in Iraq."

Cohn said, "The same way that the Obama administration uses unmanned drones in other countries to kill people instead of arresting them and bringing them to trial, we see a similar situation here....As the technology develops, we're going to see the increasing use of military weapons in the hands of the police, which is going to inflame and exacerbate a very volatile situation."

"We can see that many of the weapons that are being used by the military are in the hands of the police," she added. "This is a very volatile situation, very dangerous situation, and is only going to make the tensions worse and kill people and violate constitutional rights."
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Clinton's NY lead drops 30%

SUBHEAD: New poll shows Clinton with 18-point lead over Sanders, compared to 48-point lead in mid-March.

By Andrea Germanos on 8 April 2016 for Common Dreams -
(http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/08/sanders-takes-30-point-bite-out-clinton-lead-ny)


Image above: Bernie Sanders speaking at a campaign rally in the South Bronx on March 31, 2016. Photo by Michael Vadon. From original article.

A poll released Friday shows that Bernie Sanders has significantly narrowed the lead Hillary Clinton once claimed in New York.

The new Emerson College poll (pdf) shows Clinton leading Sanders among Democratic primary voters in the state by 18 points—56 percent to 38 percent. That marks a significant drop in support for the former secretary of state since the same poll was taken less than one month ago.

The mid-March Emerson poll showed Sanders trailing Clinton by 48 percent; she claimed 71 percent compared to his 23 percent.

The new results also show Sanders having gained 6 points with African Americans and 23 points with Hispanics since the previous poll. The one group Sanders claims a lead over is young voters, having 60 percent of support from those aged 18-34 compared to Clinton's 36 percent.
The new poll was conducted April 6 and 7 and has a margin of error of +/ - 5.4 percent.

Referring to the April 19 primary in New York, CNN political commentator and former green jobs adviser to President Barack Obama Van Jones told Democracy Now! on Wednesday, "this is the war to settle the score." Jones also cautioned against assuming Clinton would win in what he called her "third declared home state" after Arkansas and Illinois.

New reporting by the New York Times looks at what's at stake in the state as well. "The state has 291 delegates, including 247 pledged delegates up for grabs. (There are also 44 superdelegates.)

Even with his recent wins in Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Hawaii and Wisconsin, Mr. Sanders would need an estimated 56 percent of the remaining pledged delegates nationwide to overtake Mrs. Clinton, who maintains a lead of 219. A win for Mr. Sanders in New York would not only buoy his candidacy, but it would also be an embarrassment to the former senator from New York."

Days ahead of the state's primary, the two Democratic candidates will square off for a debate in Brooklyn.>

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Trouble with the King's english

SUBHEAD: What ever language you speak should be spoken with some mastery and art. 

By Juan Wilson on 2 November 2015 for Island Breaeth -
(http://www.countercurrents.org/irwin021115.htm)


Image above: Graphic for Cab Calloway's "Are You Hip to the Jive" record set with 22 tracks.  From (http://region5.herbzinser08.com/dir/index.php/blog28/hydrocarbon-gasoline-asks-carbon-black).

I read the two articles below this morning with some amusement. Jerome Irwin and James Kunstler are both correct in thinking that using English without some mastery of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation leads to weakened ability to communicate as well as think clearly. In Irwin's example it is the drunken slur of Australian whites, and in Kunslter's case it is the jive street talk of American blacks.

The mastery out English language leads to higher education, professional accreditation, solid employment. The lack thereof leads not only to fuzzy thinking, but poverty.

However, neither Irwin or Kunstler address issue of any cultural or social advantages to those populations that speak a dialect. Nor due they evaluate in any depth the culture identity of those who speak a dialect. Both the Briritish whites originally exiled to Australia and the African blacks brought to slavery in America have been   "associated with "violent criminality and other anti-social behaviors."

Both the Australian criminals and African blacks had a reason to have their own "secret" language.

Another point not mentioned is that other languages than English describe other realities for other cultures. Those who identify as Americans here in Hawaii often complain about Pigeon English spoken by Polynesians and their descendants.

A bit like Spanglish,  Pigeon English is a mixture of English and another language - here in Hawaii that language would be Hawaiian.

The Hawaiian culture was one carried by the spoken word - without a written language.  It was a rich culture that mastered sailing the Pacific Ocean a millennium before English the speaking British and Americans.

That meant that all their culture as well as technology was carried through the spoken word - navigation, engineering, agricultural practice, etc. The Polynesians thrived on the Pacific Ocean islands for centuries without bringing on the level of destruction we see today.

The little I know of the Hawaiian language has shown me that every word seems to have several meanings even in context, thus mixing the profane with the spiritual and the serious with the amusing.

It does pay to know your own language and speak it with some mastery and art.

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Linguistic Attack In Australia

SUBHEAD: Linguistic and Cultural Diversity Under Attack in Australia

By Jerome Irwin on 2 November 201 for Counter Culture -
(http://www.countercurrents.org/irwin021115.htm)

Dean Frenkel – a singer, voice coach and public speaking-communication lecturer at Melbourne Australia’s Victoria University – is on the hot seat for a controversial theory he recently put forth (“Australia, we need to talk about the way we speak”, The Age, October 26th, 2015).

The gist of Frenkel’s theory is that the by now infamous “G’Day Mate” drawl, that has come to embody the essence of Australian culture, is actually nothing more than a ‘lazy’ accent caused by the ‘alcoholic state’ of Australia’s heavy rum-drinking early settlers who regularly got drunk together on their new-found Down Under continent.

According to the laments of Frenkel, this original drunk-induced linguistic trait has since been passed down from generation to generation by all those descendants who, whether drunk or sober, have unknowingly added an alcoholic slur to the fact that they only use two-thirds of their mouth to speak and hence has become part of the Aussie national speech pattern.

Frankel contends that consequent sweeping effects have occurred as a result: poor communications is evident among all sectors of Australian society; a gaping hole in rhetorical training has been created in the Australian educational system; a subsequent diminishment has occurred in critical thought-processes, problem-solving, judgment and poor speech skills that have led to a lack of confidence and the internalization of emotions and thoughts that have contributed to difficulties in relationships, loneliness and stalled development.

In short, Frenkel’s theories hold that Australia’s linguistic accents, moulded by booze, have led to a general inarticulateness among the people as a result.

By contrast, Frenkel holds up the example of the ancient history of Australia’s aboriginal peoples spoken word and storytelling abilities that otherwise artfully uses rhetoric as an integral part of the recounting of the Australian Dreamtime to pass on to each generation their special spiritual and survival knowledge.

He contends that Australia’s western-centric civilization has instead created a “dumbing down” of speech in Australia that has “created holes in our education system that reflects holes in our culture.” Frankel declares, “Australia, It is time to take our beer goggles off. It’s no longer acceptable to be smarter than we sound.”

Yet whether Frenkel, as essentially a singer and voice coach, is qualified to theorize on such sweeping historical-sociological-psychological matters is a bone of contention.

In 2011, Aidan Wilson, a PHD graduate student at the University of Melbourne, challenged Frenkel’s qualifications to assess Australian politician’s qualities based upon their accents (“Beware of speech experts bearing science”, Crikey, Nov 2, 2011 & Oct 29th, 2015). At the time, this spawned a language blog debate between the two. (“A Reply from Dean Frenkel”, Crikey, Nov 7th, 2011).

Yet a far more important question exists behind such professed theories.

Is the ultimate objective in Australia, or wherever else in the world, to eventually get the entire world’s populace to speak in some uniform, standardized, sanitized “General Australian”, “General American”, or “General Whatever” way?

The obvious continuing mass disappearances of regional accents worldwide, and the negative attitudes of lower social class status and inferior traits that are often attributed to regional accents, symbolize what is a constant attempt by certain controlling forces in the world who are intent upon constantly reducing or utterly eliminating all such cultural human uniqueness or biological diversity on the planet.

During the 19th & 20th centuries, in Australia in particular, the attempt was made by still others to perpetuate an inferior cultural mentality in the people in relationship to their original British origins. Those who ever attempted to excel in whatever endeavour were shown resentment or ridicule with such pejorative terms as, “stop trying to be a tall poppy” or “you’re just another Plastic Brit.”

From the very beginning of the literary arts, Australian writers were decried as mere plagiarists of some Rudyard Kipling or Robbie Burns.

In 1950, A.A. Phillips, the Melbourne critic and social commentator, coined the term “cultural cringe” to describe the post-colonial literary arts in Australia as being deficient when compared to the work of their British and European counterparts.

Back then, Australia was being made out to be synonymous with failure, just as theorists like Frenkel now attempt to reduce Australian’s speech patterns down to the level of the hard-drinking drunkards of Australia’s early colonial days.

Apparently, as some would have us believe, the only way that Australian’s now can build themselves up in the eyes of the world, and especially in the ears of elocution experts like Frenkel who speak the British mother tongue, is to learn to pronounce proper “King’s English”. Is the intended net effect to encourage Australian’s to once again redefine their cultural heritage not only as convict stained but now as drunken stained?

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Good Little Maoists

SUBHEAD:American education does not put enough emphasis on teaching standard spoken English.

By James Kunstler on 2 November 2015 for Kunstler.com - 
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/good-little-maoists/)


Image above: From ().

ometimes societies just go batshit crazy. For ten years, 1966 to 1976, China slid into the chaotic maw of Mao Zedong’s “cultural revolution.” 

A youth army called the Red Guard was given license to terrorize authorities all over the nation — teachers, scientists, government officials, really just about anyone in charge of anything. They destroyed lives and families and killed quite a few of their victims. 

They paralyzed the country with their persecutions against “bourgeois elements” and “capitalist roaders,” reaching as deep into the top leadership as Deng Xiaoping, who was paraded in public wearing a dunce-cap, but eventually was able to put an end to all the insanity after Mao’s death.

America’s own cultural revolution has worked differently. It was mostly limited to the hermetically-sealed hot-house world of the universities, where new species of hierophants and mystagogues were busy constructing a crypto-political dogma aimed at redefining status arrangements among the various diverse ethnic and sexual “multi-cultures” of the land.

There is no American Mao, but there are millions of good little Maoists all over America bent on persecuting anyone who departs from a party line that now dominates the bubble of campus life. It’s a weird home-grown mixture of Puritan witch-hunting, racial paranoia, and sexual hysteria, and it comes loaded with a lexicon of jargon — “micro-aggression,” “trigger warnings,” “speech codes,” etc — designed to enforce uniformity in thinking, and to punish departures from it.

At a moment in history when the US is beset by epochal problems of economy, energy, ecology, and foreign relations, campus life is preoccupied with handwringing over the hurt feelings of every imaginable ethnic and sexual group and just as earnestly with the suppression of ideological trespassers who don’t go along with the program of exorcisms. 

A comprehensive history of this unfortunate campaign has yet to be written, but by the time it is, higher education may lie in ruins. It is already burdened and beset by the unintended consequences of the financial racketeering so pervasive across American life these days. But in promoting the official suppression of ideas, it is really committing intellectual suicide, disgracing its mission to civilized life.

I had my own brush with this evil empire last week when I gave a talk at Boston College, a general briefing on the progress of long emergency. The audience was sparse. It was pouring rain. The World Series was on TV. People are not so interested in these issues since the Federal Reserve saved the world with free money, and what I had to say did not include anything on race, gender, and white privilege.

However, after the talk, I went out for dinner with four faculty members and one friend-of-faculty. Three of them were English profs. One was an urban planner and one was an ecology prof. All of the English profs were specialists in race, gender, and privilege. Imagine that. You’d think that the college was a little overloaded there, but it speaks for the current academic obsessive-compulsive neurosis with these matters. 

Anyway, on the way to restaurant I was chatting in the car with one of the English profs about a particular angle on race, since this was his focus and he tended to view things through that lens. The discussion continued at the dinner table and this is what ensued on the Internet (an email to me the next morning):  On Oct 29, 2015, at 4:37 PM, Rhonda Frederick wrote:

Jim— This is what I posted on my social medias, am sharing with you and your agent. Yesterday, novelist/journalist James Howard Kunstler was invited to give a talk at BC (see his bio at http://www.bc.edu/offices/lowellhs/calendar.html#1028). At the post-talk dinner, he said “the great problem facing African Americans is that they aren’t taught proper English, and that … academics are too preoccupied with privilege and political correctness to admit this obvious fact.” No black people (I presume he used “African American” when he meant “black”) were present at the dinner. I was not at the dinner, but two of my friends/colleagues were; I trust their recollections implicitly. Whether Kunstler was using stereotypes about black people to be provocative, or whether he believed the ignorance he spouted, my response is the same: I cannot allow this kind of ignorance into my space and I am not the one to cast what he said as a “teachable moment.” I do think there should be a BC response to this, as the university paid his honorarium and for his meal. Here’s some contact information for anyone interested in sharing your thoughts on how BC should spend its money: Lowell Humanities Series at Boston College (http://www.bc.edu/offices/lowellhs/about.html)

Rhonda— That is not quite what I said. I said that teaching black Americans how to speak English correctly ought to be the most important mission of primary and secondary education for blacks in order for them to function successfully in our economy. Moreover, I said that anyone mounting an argument against this was hurting the very people they pretend to help. I stand by those statements. Your attempt at Stalinist thought policing is emblematic of something terribly wrong in higher education, especially since you were not present. James Howard Kunstler “It’s All Good”

So I was subjected to attempted character assassination via social media by this Rhonda Frederick person — faculty or student, she did not say — who admits to not having been present at the incident in question. This is the new fashion in academia: slander by Twitter and Facebook. It is fully supported by the faculty and administration. While they have been super-busy constructing speech codes and sex protocols, it seems they haven’t had any time for establishing ethical norms in the use of the Internet. 

As it happened, I offered to come back and publically debate my statements about the benefits of teaching spoken English to black primary and secondary students — they’d have to pay me, of course — but received no reply on that from Rhonda Frederick. I also received no reply from James Smith (smithbt@bc.edu), director of the Lowell Lecture Series, when I emailed my objection to being vilified on the Web by his colleague.

Now, as to the substance of what I said to this table of college professors. I’ve written before in books and blogs about the issue of spoken English and the black underclass, but for the record I will try to summarize some of my thoughts about it (trigger warning).

True, there are various dialects of English among us, but it must be obvious that they have different merits and disadvantages. There is such a thing as standard grammatical English. It evolves over generations, for sure, but it shows a certain conservative stability, like the rule of law. It tends to be spoken by educated people and by people in authority. 

This implies people in power, of course, people who run things, but also people at large in the professions (medicine, engineering, etc.) and the arenas of business and government. Standard grammatical English tends to be higher status because competence in it tends to confer the benefits of higher living standards.

It also must be self-evident that there is such a thing as a black English dialect in America. With perhaps a few lingering regional differences, it is remarkably uniform from Miami, Florida, to Rochester, New York, to Fresno, California. It prevails among the so-called black underclass, the cohort that continues to struggle economically. 

Despite its verve and inventiveness, this black dialect tends to confer low status and lower standards of living on those who speak it. In popular mythology and culture, it is associated with violent criminality and other anti-social behaviors. If you don’t believe this, turn on HBO sometime.

I argue that black people who seek to succeed socially and economically would benefit from learning to speak standard grammatical English, not solely because it is associated with higher status and living standards, but because proficiency with grammar, tenses, and a rich vocabulary helps people think better. 

After all, if you employ only the present tense in all your doings and dealings, how would you truly understand the difference between now, tomorrow, and yesterday? I submit that it becomes problematical. You may not be able to show up on time, among other things.

Some of my auditors have argued that “code switching” allows black Americans to easily turn back and forth for convenience between two modes of speech, black and “white” (i.e standard grammatical English). I’d argue that this is not as common as it is made out to be. 

Not everybody has the skill of entertainer Dave Chapelle, a master amateur linguist (whose parents were both college professors).

It’s my opinion that American primary and secondary education does not put enough emphasis on teaching standard spoken English to those deficient in it. The pedagogues have been hectored and browbeaten by the hierophants in higher ed not to press the matter. It is not regarded as important (probably because the task seems too painful and embarrassing and may hurt some feelings). The results are plain to see: academic failure among black Americans. (Not total but broad.) 

Instead, we concoct endless excuses to explain this failure and the related economic failures, the favorite by far being “structural racism” (despite having elected a black president who speaks standard grammatical English).

Now to the touchier question as to why this is. After all, other ethnic groups in America are eager to fully participate in the national life. For example, I gave a talk to a large honors freshman class at Rutgers University a year ago. 

Due to the current demographics of New Jersey, the class was overwhelming composed of Indian (Asian, that is) youngsters, many of them as dark-skinned as Americans of African ancestry. They had uniformly opted to speak standard grammatical English. 

They were all succeeding academically (it was an honors class, after all). They were on a trajectory to succeed in adult life. What does this suggest? To me it says that maybe some behavioral choices are better than others and the color of your skin is not the primary determinant in the matter.

Here’s what I think has happened to get us where we are today (second trigger warning). I think the civil rights victories of the mid 1960s generated enormous anxiety among black Americans, who were thereby invited to participate more fully in the national life after many generations of hardship and abuse. (If you argue that this was not the sum, substance, and intention of the Voting Rights Act and Public Accommodations Act of 1964-65, then you are being disingenuous.) 

However, they were not comfortable with the prospect of assimilating into the mainstream culture of the day. They either didn’t believe in it, or feared it, or despised it, or worried about being able to perform in it.

Many would attribute this anxiety to the legacy of slavery. Can a people get over a particular historical injury? American blacks are not the only group traumatized by circumstance. 

When do you decide to move forward? Or do you nurse a grievance forever? Anyway, it was not a coincidence that in the mid 1960s a new wave of black separatist avatars arose around the time of the civil rights legislative victories. Malcolm X, Stokely Charmichael, the Black Panthers, to name a few. 

That was the moment when much of the black population slid into what has become essentially an oppositional culture, determined to remain separate. Language is part of that picture.

The diversity cult of the day is a smokescreen to disguise this fundamental fact of American life: much of black America has simply opted out. They don’t want to assimilate into a common culture — so common culture has been deemed dispensable by the confounded keepers of the common culture’s flame, the university faculty. 

Much of black America doesn’t want to play along with the speech, manners, rules, or laws of whatever remains of that common culture after its systematic disassembly by the professors, the deans, and their handmaidens in progressive politics — heedless of the damage to the basic social contract. We remain very much a house divided, as Lincoln put it, and he could see clearly what the consequences would be.

Is it racist to try to air these abiding quandaries in the public arena? Apparently so. And why is that? Because of the awful embarrassment of political progressives over the disappointing outcome of the civil rights project. 

Black news pundits such as Charles Blow of The New York Times constantly call for “an honest conversation about race,” but they don’t mean it. Any public intellectual who ventures to start that conversation is automatically branded a racist. 

Hey, I couldn’t even have a conversation at a private dinner on the merits of speaking standard English with three college professors whose life-work centers on race. They had a melt-down and used a proxy (who wasn’t even there) to slander me on the Internet.

They are cowards and I am their enemy.
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Bang Your'e Dead

SUBHEAD: What used to be working class is now an idle class only dreaming of what it means to be a man.

By James Kunstler on 12 October 2015 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/bang-youre-dead/)


Image above: This is a surveillance camera still of is of twelve year old Tamir Rice as a police car approaches the playground pavilion he stands in.  Rice, who had been reported brandishing a realistic toy gun on the sidewalk. Police were called. As the cruiser nears the site Rice is seen approaching them. This frame is from three seconds before the cruiser come to a stop and five seconds before Rice is shot to death. From (http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/cleveland/2014/11/26/tamir-rice-shooting-video-released/19530745/).

Apropos of the recent Roseburg, Oregon, school massacre that left nine dead, President Obama said, “we’re going to have to come together and stop these things from happening.” 

That’s an understandable sentiment, and the president has to say something, after all. But within the context of how life is lived in this country these days, we’re not going to stop these things from happening.
 
And what is that context? A nation physically arranged on-the-ground to produce maximum loneliness, arranged economically to produce maximum anxiety, and disposed socially to produce maximum alienation. 

Really, everything in the once vaunted American way of life slouches in the direction of depression, rage, violence, and death.

This begs the question about guns. I believe it should be harder to buy guns. I believe certain weapons-of-war, such as assault rifles, should not be sold in the civilian market. 

But I also believe that the evolution of our Deep State — the collusion of a corrupt corporate oligarchy with an overbearing police and surveillance apparatus — is such a threat to liberty and decency that the public needs to be armed in defense of it. The Deep State needs to worry about the citizens it is fucking with.

The laws on gun sales range from ridiculously lax in many states to onerous in a few. Yet the most stringent, Connecticut, (rated “A” by the Brady Campaign org), was the site of the most horrific massacre of recent times so far, the 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting. 

The handgun law in New York City is the most extreme in the nation — limiting possession only to police and a few other very special categories of citizens. 

But it took the “stop-and-frisk” policy to really shake the weapons out of the gang-banging demographic. 

And now that Mayor Bill deBlasio has deemed that “racist,” gang-banging murders are going up again.

Which leads to a consideration that there is already such a fantastic arsenal of weapons loose in this country that attempts to regulate them would be an exercise in futility — it would only stimulate brisker underground trafficking in the existing supply.

What concerns me more than the gun issue per se is the extraordinary violence-saturated, pornified culture of young men driven crazy by failure, loneliness, grievance, and anger. 

 More and more, there are no parameters for the normal expression of masculine behavior in America — for instance, taking pride in doing something well, or becoming a good candidate for marriage. 

The lower classes have almost no vocational domain for the normal enactments of manhood, and one of the few left is the army, where they are overtly trained to be killers.

Much of what used to be the working class is now an idle class that can only dream of what it means to be a man and they are bombarded with the most sordid pre-packaged media dreams in the form of video games based on homicide, the narcissistic power fantasies of movies, TV, and professional sports, and the frustrating tauntings of free porn. The last thing they’re able to do is form families. 

All of this operates in conditions where there are no normal models of male authority, especially fathers and bosses, to regulate the impulse control of young men — and teach them to regulate it themselves.

The physical setting of American life composed of a failing suburban sprawl pattern for daily life — the perfect set-up for making community impossible — obliterates the secondary layer of socialization beyond the family. 

This is life in the strip-mall wilderness of our country, which has gotten to be most of where people live. Imagine a society without families and real communities and wave your flag over that.

President Obama and whatever else passes for authority in America these days won’t even talk about that. They don’t have a vocabulary for it. They don’t understand how it works and what it’s doing to the nation. 

Many of the parts and modules of it make up what’s left of our foundering economy: junk food, pointless and endless motoring, television. We’re not going to do anything about it. 

The killing and the mayhem will continue through the process of economic collapse that we have entered. And when we reach the destination of all that, probably something medieval or feudal in make-up, it will be possible once again for boys to develop into men instead of monsters.

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Enter Jeb and Hil

SUBHEAD: A race between stupidity and insincerity. Only missing was Hillary's cape for her blue pantsuit. 

By James Kunstler on 15 June 2015 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/enter-jeb-and-hil/)


Image above: Hillary Clinton announces 2016 bid for president in Superwoman costume. Mashup by Juan Wilson. Click to embiggen. From (http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/5-takeaways-from-clintons-relaunch-rally-118976.html?hp=t1_r).

The Floridian clod seeking to don the mantle of Millard Fillmore made an amazing foreign policy speech at an economic conference in Berlin last week. Inveighing against Russian President Vladimir Putin, he gave a very vivid impression of a man who has no idea what he is talking about.

“Russia must respect the sovereignty of all of its neighbors. And who can doubt that Russia will do what it pleases if its aggression goes unanswered?”

Jeb Bush was averring elliptically to the failed state formerly known as Ukraine, trying to put over the shopworn story that Russia was needlessly making war on its neighbor (and former province).

“Bush called for increased clarity on what type of sanctions would be imposed on the country if Prime Minister Vladimir Putin does not back down against a united international front…. ‘I don’t think we should be reacting to bad behavior [Bush said]. By being clear what the consequences of “bad behavior” is in advance, I think we will deter the kind of aggression that we fear from Russia. But always reacting, and giving the sense we’re reacting in a tepid fashion, only enables the bad behavior of Putin.’”

Note, by the way, that here is yet another scion of the Bush clan who was inexplicably brought up speaking Ebonics: “What the consequences… is?” Say what?

Ukraine became a failed state due to a coup d’état engineered by Barack Obama’s state department. US policy wonks did not like the prospect of Ukraine joining Russia’s regional trade group called the Eurasian Customs Union instead of tilting toward NATO and the European Union. So, we paid for and enabled a coalition of crypto-fascists to rout the duly elected president. 

One of the first acts of the US-backed new regime was to declare punishment of Russian language speakers, and so the predominately Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine revolted. Russia reacted to all this instability by seizing the Crimean peninsula, which had been part of Russia proper both before and through the Soviet chapter of history. 

The Crimea contained Russia’s only warm water seaports and naval bases. What morons in the US government ever thought Russia would surrender those assets to a newly-failed neighbor state?

Was Vladimir Putin acting irresponsibly in this case? The opposite would be a much more logical conclusion. And what interest does the United States have in Ukraine? Surely no more than Russia would have in Texas. 

And when else in the entire history of the USA all the way back to George Washington did any government official declare Ukraine to be America’s business? Answer: Never. Reason: we have no legitimate interests in that corner of the world. 

So why in the early 21^st century are we making this such a sore spot in our foreign relations? Because our waning influence in the world, in turn a product of our foolish inattention to our own economic problems and failing polity at home, is driving America batshit crazy.

The rest of the world sees this for exactly what it is, friends, former friends, and adversaries alike. I wonder what the Germans thought of Jeb’s intemperate and idiotic speech. Eyes must have rolled in the meeting hall. After all, Russia is their natural major trading partner. 

How do US-orchestrated economic sanctions against Russia work in their interest? Answer: they don’t. 

The Germans have been making a lot of discreet noises the past year about dissociating from America’s stupid program of antagonizing Russia. Perhaps Jeb’s jingoistic utterances in Berlin will finally push them over the line.

Meanwhile, Hillary (no last name required) steps out of the starting gate this week, too, pretending to be the incarnation of Robin Hood, as if she would ever shut down the financial rackets that have at once impoverished the former middle-class and enriched grifter opportunists such as Hillary herself. 

Her event on Roosevelt Island, New York City, looked like unintentional self-satire, as if it were staged by the late-great director Robert Altman for one of his wacky political movies. Hillary’s handlers missed one touch though: a cape would have gone nicely with that electrifying blue pant-suit. 

As for the speech itself, a bigger bundle of platitudes and insincerities has not been served up since the heyday of Nixon. 

As the politicians are so fond of saying these days, make no mistake, Hillary is the New Nixon.

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Building trust with police

SUBHEAD: Cops can get into a state of mind where they're scared to death and they panic and they act out on that panic.

By Steve Inskeep on 5 December 2014 for NPR News -
(http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/12/05/368545491/civil-rights-attorney-on-how-she-built-trust-with-police)


Image above: A young man kneels before a line of Los Angeles police officers about to charge at protesters reacting to a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer who shot dead an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. From (http://online.wsj.com/articles/what-it-felt-like-to-be-a-suspicious-black-teenager-1416956319).

[IB Publisher's note: Listen to this story at (http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/12/05/368545491/civil-rights-attorney-on-how-she-built-trust-with-police).]

As a civil rights attorney, Constance Rice became known in the 1990s for, as she puts it, going to war with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Rice filed lawsuits against the department, mainly over their treatment of minorities in underprivileged communities.

Following the recent decisions not to indict white cops in the deaths of two black men — President Obama has said one of his top priorities is building trust between minority communities and local police.

Rice's time battling the LAPD, and specifically captain Charlie Beck, who is now LA's police chief, eventually led to a place where there could be trust. They worked together to reform the department.
Some of that change included LAPD officers going into projects to set up youth sports programs and health screenings, things that made people's lives better and brought police and predominantly black communities closer together.

Here are some interview highlights:

On use of police force on minorities:
Cops can get into a state of mind where they're scared to death. When they're in that really, really frightened place they panic and they act out on that panic. I have known cops who haven't had a racist bone in their bodies and in fact had adopted black children, they went to black churches on the weekend; and these are white cops. They really weren't overtly racist. They weren't consciously racist.

But you know what they had in their minds that made them act out and beat a black suspect unwarrantedly? They had fear. They were afraid of black men. I know a lot of white cops who have told me.

And I interviewed over 900 police officers in 18 months and they started talking to me, it was almost like a therapy session for them I didn't realize that they needed an outlet to talk.

They would say things like;

"Ms. Rice I'm scared of black men. Black men terrify me. I'm really scared of them. Ms. Rice, you know black men who come out of prison, they've got great hulk strength and I'm afraid they're going to kill me. Ms. Rice, can you teach me how not to be afraid of black men." 

I mean this is cops who are 6'4". You know, the cop in Ferguson was 6'4" talking about he was terrified. But when cops are scared, they kill and they do things that don't make sense to you and me.

On whether or not racism plays a factor in police force:
He doesn't feel like it's racism. The black community experiences it as racism, that's very clear. So what I'm saying is that for people who have to be in the business of solving this dilemma you have to be able to step into the frightened tennis shoes of black kids; black male kids in particular.

You have to be able to step into the combat boots and scared cops, and racist cops, and cruel cops, and good cops. You have to be able to distinguish between all of those human experiences and bring them together. On a single platform of we're going to solve this by empathizing. We're going to solve it with compassion and we're going to solve it with common sense.

On whether improving life in poor neighborhoods causes police to be less fearful:
Not only does it cause cops to be less fearful, it causes the community to embrace them. I have taken a group of 50 cops and the chief (Charlie) Beck let me train them.

I trained them in what I community partnership policing. The first thing I tell these cops is that you are not in the arrest business; you are in the trust business. We are going to train you in Public Trust Policing. It goes beyond community policing.

What it does is it puts police in a position of helping a community solve its problems. These cops come into the black housing projects and they said to these populations who hate them "We know you hate us, but we're here to serve. We're going to win your trust."

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Darren Wilson killing Michael Brown

By Juan Wilson on 5 December 2014 for Island Breath - 
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2014/12/building-trust-with-police.html)

There are several eyewitness accounts of how Officer Darren Wilson shot to death Michael Brown. Most of the details I have heard or read isolate detail of accounts to highlight conflicting testimony.

It seems to me the the conduction of the Grand Jury was quite unusual. setup with a deal. Eyewitness testimony was presented as being unreliable. One could only rely on the testimony of Wilson himself.

My opinion is that Wilson’s resignation was baked into the cake if he was not indicted. Anyway,

A good article in the Atlantic on the subject is (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/11/major-contradictions-in-eyewitness-accounts-of-michael-browns-death/383157/)

Brown attacked Wilson
Brown ran from Wilson
Brown had his hands in the air
Brown did not have his hands in the air
Brown tried to surrender to Wilson
Brown did not try to surrender to Wilson

What makes sense?

All of it might!

If one does not discredit the eyewitness testimony - and for the sake of attempting to find some clarity - one tries to sew together a narrative that makes sense  - then a whole new characterization of events might emerge.

Here’s one way of looking various details. I am only including actions between Brown and Wilson. Brown was with a friend but I have eliminated him from the action.

Wilson driving his patrol car came upon Michael Brown walking down the middle of the street. There was a police radio report about a nearby store theft by some fitting Brown’s description.

Brown was 19 but huge at 6’-5” and weighing almost 290 pounds. A physically intimidating individual to take on. Wilson was alone in the patrol car. As he neared Brown he made is service revolver available for immediate use if necessary.

Wilson in the patrol car, with is driver window down, stopped Brown walking in the middle of the street. Upon being questioned Brown gave the officer a wise-ass response. Wilson commanded Brown off the road. There was more back talk from Brown. As if to intimidate Brown Wilson showed the gun to Brown.

Brown told Wilson he was too much of a pussy to shoot him. Brown may have reached for the gun. Wilson fired the revolver, hitting Brown in the right shoulder. There was some blood in the car. Brown momentarily pulled back not knowing if he was badly hurt or not.

Brown did not want to be shot again. A struggle for the gun ensued. They wrestled for control. Wilson was punched. Without getting control of the gun Brown made a decision to flee and took off. Wilson makes a radio call that shots have been fired. Brown ran a short distance away as Wilson got out of his car.

Wilson yells at Brown to get on ground. Brown turned to Wilson with the gun pointed at him but did not get on the ground.  Brown may have partially raised is arms to surrender saying “I don’t have a gun.Stop shooting!”

He may not have been able to raise his right arm fully. Brown tucked his wounded right arm in his waist band of his pants. More shots were fired. His right arm was hit more times.

Brown realized he was likely going to be shot to death and decided to make a rush to stop Wilson from killing him. As he ran at Wilson another volley of shots hits Brown from a few few dozen feet away. One shot hit Wilson in the right side of his neck. After that Brown walked toward Wilson without menace.

Brown fell to the ground and onto his face. Wilson shot Brown through the top of his head.

I think Darren Wilson feared Michael Wilson on sight. His fear pulled the trigger...many times.

Conclusion:
Michael Brown may have been a small time criminal and a brutish thoughtless kid. Darren Wilson was not the person to deal with that. Darren was playing Grand Theft Auto Five with a real patrol car and real gun. He should have stayed in the basement with his XBox 360.

Darren Wilson should never again have a loaded gun in his hand.

See also:
Island Breath: KPD need bikes not riot gear 4/5/08
Island Breath: The Kauai Police Mission 5/15/08
Island Breath: The future KPD we want 5/28/08
Island Breath: KPD alternatives to patrol cruising 6/7/08
Island Breath: TGI column cancelled by KPD 6/18/08

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