Equality (for Ungagged 9)

The following is the text of my section of the Ungagged podcast "Looking Backward", which can be found at https://leftungagged.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/looking-backward/ and http://ungagged.podbean.com/e/looking-backward/ .

When Neil gave us the theme of equality, the first thing that came to my mind was the title of the sequel to the 19th century novel which was the 3rd best selling of that century in America, behind Ben-Hur: A Story of Christ and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  That novel was Looking Backward, written by Edward Bellamy, cousin of co-founder of the Society for Christian Socialism and Pledge of Allegiance author Francis Bellamy. 

Looking Backward has the distinction of being not only one of the first socialist-oriented novels in America but also one of the first utopian science fiction novels dealing with time travel.  The story of the movement inspired by that novel, which I will go into at another time, is one of the reasons why I have decided to start calling America Neverland instead of the Great Satan.

During the primary season, my son David was driving me somewhere and we were discussing the elections.  I had supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries which were so heavily rigged in favor of the would-be coronee, and was going off about all of my reasons, which included such things as drastic income inequality, rule by oligarchy, destruction of the social welfare system, etc.  When I finished, he told me, “You sound just like Johnny”.  His step-father, who liked Bernie but was supporting Donald Trump. 

Though there are certainly plenty of exceptions, I suspect that most of those voting for Trump, the “deplorables” as Clinton referred to them, did so for many of the same reasons as those voting for Bernie, the “basement-dwellers” as Clinton referred to them.  Much in the same way the foot-soldiers of the original Tea Party movement resembled in their grievances the foot-soldiers of the Occupy movement.

So, do not be afraid that with the election of Donald Trump that Neverland has become overrun with folks in white sheets waving Confederate flags and folks in khaki waving the swaztika, because many of them are folk just like me, and, I suspect, like you too.

In their Declaration of Independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, America’s so-called Founding Fathers wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”, meaning, of course, that they were male, white, landed property-holders, over the age of 21, and of the fourteen colonies that rebelled, Congregationalist in the colonies of New England and Anglican in the colonies from New York south, the only two of the fourteen not having religious requirements for voting being Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.  And yes, it was 14 colonies not 13, the tiny proprietary colony of Gardiner’s Island almost never being counted.

The tripartite motto of France— in its original form among the Cordeliers Clubs liberty, equality, fraternity, or death—was but one such triad passed around during that country’s revolution, all of which with but one or two exceptions included liberty and equality.  The country only adopted the triad as its official motto with the advent of the Third Republic in 1870. 

Another such triptych, likewise dating back to the French Revolution, made into the original version of Bellamy’s Pledge of Allegiance as “liberty, equality, and justice for all”.  As soon as he wrote it out, however, Francis realized that “equality” in the morning twilight of Jim Crow and in the face of then staunch resistance to women’s suffrage would not go over, so he dropped it before even submitting what he’d written.

As a social value, in the 18th and 19th centuries, “equality” meant equality of rights, specifically civil rights.  But equality thus defined and limited becomes destructive of itself.  I prefer Bellamy’s borrowed triptych to the French motto because without justice equality is incomplete.  Justice in this case means equity rather than criminal jurisprudence, what is often called social justice.  The boxes V mentioned in the post-US clusterfuck podcast demonstrate the difference between equality—all three game watchers standing on boxes of the same size—versus equity (or justice)—all three able to see the game over the fence with their eyes at the same level. 

In both, it occurred to me finally when looking at various spins on this theme, all three are equally outside.  Outside of those able to afford a seat in the stadium.  Outside those those considered socially acceptable.  Outside those considered human.  Even in the scenes showing equity between them, their only equity is with each other.  Like refugees in Europe, America, and Australia, standing on the outside looking in.  Or Palestinians outside colonies of their occupiers.  Or Native Americans outside

Much has been made of President-elect Trump’s declared intent to deport two to three million so-called “illegals” from Neverland.  Not as much note of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s saying, “Uh, no, actually, we have no plans to do that”, nor of the fact that by the time he leaves office, Barack Obama will have deported 3.2 million.

One of my favorite quotes on equality comes from American labor activist and socialist icon Eugene Debs, from his statement at his trial for sedition under the same law which the Obama administration has used to persecute and silence more whistle-blowers than any other president in American history.  “Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth.  I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” 

As long as our brothers and sisters do not have what we have, do not have what they need to not only survive but thrive, do not have available what should be readily available if all of us took only what we need until everyone has enough, and have to stand beyond the fence looking in no matter how many boxes they get to stand upon, then none of us are free.

Rifle pits, Missionary Ridge, and the doctrine of the military crest

One of the most common criticisms of Gen. Braxton Bragg on the Army of Tennessee defense of Missionary Ridge is that he ordered, or at least allowed to be ordered, the placement of the rifle pits, or trenches, along the actual crest of the ridge rather than the military crest, which would be on the side facing the enemy but just below the edge of the actual crest.  That particular criticism of Bragg is an unfair and inaccurate anachronism.  Two other known placements of rifle pits by commanders recognized for their tactical skill demonstrate that this placement of rifle-pits was the standard practice of the time. 

After the troops of Maj. Gen. Sherman’s command, mostly his own 15th Corps of the Army of the Tennessee, dug in the afternoon of 24 November 1863 on Billy Goat Hill, they did so along the actual crest.  You can still see the remains of these rifle pits along the crest of the ridge above Battery Heights, along with several well-preserved gun emplacements created at the same time.

When the troops of Cleburne’s Division of the Army of Tennessee dug in at first on Trueblood/Tunnel Hill at the north end of Missionary Ridge across Ford’s Gap from Sherman’s troops, they likewise did so along the actual as opposed to what’s now called the military crest.

The reason for the later repositioning of Cleburne’s defences had more to do with the fact that his opponent came from the north instead of the west, necessitating the single brigade of his division in active combat (Smith’s) dig in perpendicular to the original trench in tighter formation just below the apex of the hill at Sherman’s Reservation where the cannons and plaques are now.

Recognized by anyone who knows very much about the Civil War as the best division commander of both armies, had placement of trenches along the actual crest not been standard military doctrine at the time, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ronayne Cleburne would not have employed it.  The remains of those initial rifles pits along the crest of Tunnel Hill are clearly visible at Sherman’s Reservation and better preserved than those at Billy Goat Hill.

The most-often cited as the best division commander of the Union army, by the way, is Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan, then of the Army of the Cumberland.

Notably, one of Bragg’s brigade commanders, Col. Arthur Manigault of Anderson’s Division, dissented in the placement of the rifle pits, only to be told by Bragg’s engineer Capt. John Green that Maj. Gen. Breckenridge, whom Bragg had charged with the belated construction of defense works, had ordered that they be dug along the actual crest. 

Disregarding those orders, Manigault had the rifle pits of his brigade placed along the “military crest” and futilely tried to convince the two commanders on either side as well.  As a result, Manigault’s line held while those of Deas and Tucker on either side collapsed, though his troops had to withdraw to keep from being overrun.

Two days later, Cleburne led his division holding the rear guard for the Army of Tennessee retreating to Dalton, Georgia, from Catoosa Station a mile east of Ringgold.  Knowing he would be facing the entire Union corps commanded by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, he placed his artillery in Taylor’s Gap with some infantry support and the bulk of his command atop Whiteoak Mountain on either side.  There, the men dug in at the military rather than actual crest of the ridge and held their positions, inflicting heavy casualties against the attacking forces.

It was, in fact, about the time of the Battles of Tunnel Hill, Tn., of Missionary Ridge, and of Ringgold Gap that the doctrine of a “military crest” came into being.  I posit that this change in military doctrine came about specifically because of the experience of the quick collapse of the Army of Tennessee’s line before the onslaught of the Army of the Cumberland on that day (25 November 1863) due in large part to the blind spots created by the traditional placement, followed by the proven success of their alternate placement two days later on Whiteoak Ridge at Ringgold Gap.

Remember Ronald Reagan?

Remember when Ronald Reagan opened his presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair, in the same community in which the three civil rights workers were murdered by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1964?

Remember when the week before Super Tuesday Ronald Reagan gave a “tough on crime” speech in Stone Mountain, Georgia, birthplace in 1915 of the Knights of the Ku Klux, Inc., flanked and backed by white Dixiecrats in front of ranks of black prisoners?

Remember how the Reagan administration sponsored legislation targetting primarily Afro-Americans which increased use of the death penalty, eliminated higher education for inmates, prohibited education assistance for felons, increased money for new prisons, gave money to states for keeping prisoners inside longer, supported the private prison industry, allowed for states to pass three-strikes laws, and barred ex-cons from public housing?

Remember how the Reagan administration sponsored legislation that “ended welfare as we know it” by placing a lifetime limit on welfare benefits, devolving responsibility for welfare to the states and handing them block grants of money, nd instituting a workfare-for-welfare program requirement, drastically cut back on the food stamp program, and all but abolishing Medicaid?

Remember how Reagan pressured his party’s national committee to drop from its platform statements expressing anti-monopoly sentiments that had been there since 1880?

Remember how the Reagan administration sponsored legislation that abolished the prohibition against a bank holding company in one state acquiring a bank headquartered in another state, allowed for media cross-ownership, deregulated broadcast and telecommunications markets, eased regulations on creditors and made it more difficult for clients to sue firms for securities fraud, loosened supervisory regulations over financial institutions and lessened creditor liability, overruled all state laws that regulated savings and loan credit activities, abolished the Glass-Steagall provisions separating commercial banks and investment firms, deregulated over-the-counter derivatives, attempted  to privatize Social Security and Medicare, made it harder of buyers to get out of lender required insurance on mortgages, and made it harder to consumers though not businesses to discharge debts through bankruptcy?

Remember how the Reagan administration sponsored legislation that defined marriage as being between one man and one woman and nothing else?

To all you neoliberals and other pseudo-progressives who have not yet gotten the joke, I have to point out that Ronald Reagan only did one of these things.  The rest came from “America’s first black president”, Bill Clinton, in partnership with his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.  So, you see, when true progressives and others whom the policies of the Clinton joint-administration have harmed withheld our votes from this year’s Democratic Party nominee or else voted against her, it was not because of misogyny, sour grapes, and contempt for her ability, rather it was because we highly respected her abilities but feared what she would have done with them.

Ronald Reagan may have started the change of the War on Poverty into the War on the Poor, but the Bill Clinton took it to Warp 10 and made it cool.  For liberals, the best gift from the Clintons was that they made it acceptable to be dog-whistle racism-spouting, poor-shaming bigots again and still call themselves “progressive”.

Also, it’s way past time for dynastic politics to end.  No more Rockefellers, no more Kennedys, no more Bushes, no more Clintons, no more of any families who have had several members in political office.  After having spent four years in the Philippines, I learned well what placing such a concentration of power in so few hands can do to a country.

For Veterans/Remembrance/Armistice Day

to strifemongers

to chickenhawks

to war-profiteers

to all those whose idea of patriotism

is sending out young people to die

trying to kill other young people

trying to kill them:

FUCK YOU.

to all those more concerned

with  the profits and interests of corporations

than the cost of permanent war

on individual humans and societies

including our own:

FUCK YOU.

to all those who sow strife and dissension

to divide humans from each other

within artificial invisible boundaries

created for the sole purpose of dividing turf

between wealthy and powerful elites

who then turn those same humans against other humans

on the "other side" of those artificial boundaries

humans who are likewise at the mercy

of wealthy and powerful elites

more similar to the elites on their side

than to humans on either side

including how they manipulate their humans

FUCK YOU.

to all who believe corporations are people

whose money is speech

whose rights to religious freedom trump

that of actual humans

FUCK YOU.

to all whose ideology trumps

concern for human welfare

for liberty, equality, and social justice

FUCK YOU.

And the horse you rode in on.

Rise Up and Abandon the Creeping Meatball

This is Chuck Hamilton, a Yank from Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, a poet, writer, historian, activist in various causes, and a Scottish nationalist for as long as I can remember.

Remember what Jean Shepherd said about creeping meatballism being the passive acquiescence of people who surrender to the demands of the consumer culture and collaborate in their own manipulation?  In the Great Satan back in the 1960s, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and three of their friends founded the counterculture-oriented Youth International Party whose slogan was “Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball”.  It’s in the yippie spirit, in fact, that I’m now referring to America as the Great Satan, certainly not out of any respect for that chicken-fucker Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who coined the term.  Uncle Sam may be the more common nickname, but in that guise America is the uncle comes to your bedroom at your parents’ house at night with its trousers unzipped.

I remember a story I heard on the radio (remember those), on National Public Radio, I think, about a couple who had this pet chimpanzee, a female they’d named Jane.  There came a point when they couldn’t care for her anymore, and thinking she should be with her own kind, they gave her over to the local zoo.  The first time they came to visit her, she became extremely excited, especially when they gave her a bunch of treats.  They came again and did the same, failing to notice the agitation from the other chimps.  When they returned the third time, Jane wouldn’t come near them, and had clearly been beaten.  Asking the zookeeper what happened, he explained that they should have brought enough for all of the group.

There’s a quote going around falsely attributed to Jody Foster that was actually a computer-generated meme.  Maybe machines are not as stupid as we thought.  The quote goes, “Attacking the rich is not envy; it is self-defense.  The hoarding of wealth is the cause of poverty.  The rich aren’t just indifferent to poverty: they create it and maintain it.”  That’s the end of the so-called quote, but if it had continued, the computer would’ve added that they maintain it through the power of the political state and informal means of social control such as the creation of patriotism and making the poor ashamed of the poverty inflicted upon them in order to maintain the wealth of the few, as if it is somehow their fault rather than the wankers and cunts who have thrust it upon them. 

Another meme I’ve seen in relation to the suffering visited upon Greece by the European Union which should make one have second thoughts about that body, that just because Brexiters were so obnoxiously bigoted does not mean the EU is a good thing anymore than Donald Trump makes Hillary Clinton a good thing or Donald Cameron and Theresa May make Tony Blair a good thing.  This meme, describing the chain of events leading to the crash of 2007 and the ongoing Great Recession, quite accurately describes austerity.

It goes like this: Rich people cause economic crisis.  Rich people demand bail out from state for causing the crisis.  Rich people do better than ever before.  Rich people demand austerity, which is a fancy word for cutting services for the non-rich, to pay for bailing out rich people.  Rich people blame poor people for the crisis they themselves have created, and become angry that poor people think they deserve better, calling for more sacrifice…sacrifice from the poor, that is.

So, the answer to the age-old question of why is there so much poverty in the world, as answered by a computer no less, is that there is poverty because there is wealth.  Wealth is, in fact, is the sole cause of poverty.  Without a greedy few amassing hoards of resources out of the reach of the rest of humanity, there would be more than enough for all.  The needs of the many should outweigh the greed of the avaricious few.

Much is made of the divide between the basement dwellers who supported Bernie Sanders and the deplorables who support Donald Trump.  The truth is that both sets of us are driven by the same underlying motivation; less and less available for the many as the few, the 1%, hoard more and more to themselves.  Like the grassroots of the Occupy movement vis-à-vis the rank-and-file of the Tea Party movement in its early days.  The differences are superficial and ephemeral, just like the illusory divide between grassroots supporters of Brexit and grassroots opposers of Brexit.  The more we buy into this division which is as artificial as any national border, the more we collaborate in our own manipulation and allow the meatball to creep on until it rolls over us like a boulder.  We can’t abandon the creeping meatball unless we first rise up and demand what all of us deserve, a cooperative commonwealth of the many, by the many, and for the many, even the then formerly wealthy whose hoards have been more fairly distributed.

I’d like to close out with a poem I wrote back in 1997 during the dark years of the Clinton machine’s first ascension to the throne of the Empire, which has a liberation theme of sorts.  It was one of my most popular on the local open mike circuit back then.  It’s about emancipation of the mind and the spirit.  It’s called,

Random Thoughts, the day after a really weird night that I spent at Kilroy's Coffeehouse, and no, I'm not on acid

I don't really care whether I go to heaven
Or whether I go to hell

I don't believe in that version of reality

Somehow I think the Otherside

If there is one, that is

Would blow the fucking minds

Of the purveyors of guilt and fear

But even if -- and that's a big IF

The truth does conform

To their mythological paranoid psychosexual fantasies

I'd rather burn with the righteous sinners

Than sing with the sanctimonious saints

At least the sinners are honest

About who they are

They're a whole lot more real

Than the ones who sit in judgment

Over the rest of us outside

Worrying about gossip

And what's "appropriate" and "polite"

Serving the capitalist Leviathan

And the conformist Behemoth

With the labor of their hearts and minds

Buying whatever the creeping meatball

Tells them they need

Eating vanilla food and having vanilla sex

Walking the line in the middle of the road

And getting their spirits squashed like a grape

Give me spice, give me pepper

Give me the odd, the strange, the wonderful

Give me the outrageous and offensive

Give me the culturally blasphemous

Give me the really weird

Give me cookies and cunnilingus

—oh wait....for me that's fellatio—

Give me true freedom and liberty

In all their anarchic, iconoclastic, orgiastic splendor

And speaking of hell

Since James Dobson is on such good terms

With the Almighty

Maybe he can tell me the answer

To a question that's just come to mind...

(And here, existing for a moment

In Never-Never-Land

We have to pretend

That heaven and hell are real)

This is my question:

Where does God send sinners who are masochists?

Certainly not to hell

Where await fire and brimstone

Assorted tortures and all manner of pain

The ultimate experience of S&M

An eternal orgasm stretching to infinity

And speaking of torture and pain

Brings to my mind the scourging,

The crowning with thorns,

And the crucifixion

Certainly Christians must all be sadists

Since seeing the crucified victim's agony

Brings them such orgasmic joy

As they torture themselves with

Autoerotic shame and mental emotional pain

Wouldn't it have been tacky

If the Big Boy himself had been a masochist

Bottom to Pilate's top?

And another thing…

If Jesus Christ really DID take all humanity's sins

Upon himself that day

(And good GOD....where would he fit THAT load)

Why do Christians these days

Give Satan such a bum rap

Laying all their sins

At his feet and at his door

How would you like to be the Devil

Hearing what they say?

A story in the Talmud teaches

That Satan is God's most loyal servant

Testing the faith of his children

By tempting them to sin

Courting ridicule, scorn, and outright hatred

And by offering them a choice

Making real their gift of free will

Courting ridicule, scorn, and outright hatred

Like the prostitute hired by the king

To test his heir and find out his worth

No, it's not false witness that they fear

Coming from the "Father of Lies"

But rather that he'll tell the truth

So they would condemn the Accuser

Who holds up the mirror

Showing them their true selves

Come on, people, grow up

Take some fucking responsibility

Don't scapegoat another, even Auld Hornie

After all, the serpent in the Garden

Was the only one who told the truth

I remember a quote from Isaiah's Song

"He was despised and rejected by men

Wounded for our transgressions

And bruised for our iniquities"

And I get a way far out idea

About an intriguing possibility:

If good and evil are really the same thing

Created by God when he formed light and darkness

Since that quote could apply with equal truth

Though perhaps for different reasons

To Lucifer, son of the morning

Or to Jesus, bright morning star

Maybe, just maybe

They're the same person

Census of Sapient Beings in the Universe, revised

(Revised according updated number of galaxies in the Universe.)

Life on Terra, Planet Earth, has existed 4.1 billion years.

The whole primate genus Homo has existed only 2.8 million years.  The entire H. sapiens species has been around just 200,000 years.  The H. sapiens sapiens race (subspecies), aka “modern humans”, is only 30,000 years old. 

H. sapiens sapiens is the only remaining race of the H. sapiens species, with the other races (H. sapiens denisova, H. sapiens idaltu, H. sapiens neanderthalensis), being extinct.  The other species of the genus Homo—H. naledi, H. habilis, H. erectus, H. rudolfensis, H. heidelbergensis, H. floresiensis—and other genera of hominids—Paranthropus, Australopithecus, Kenyanthropus, Ardipithecus, and Orrorin—have been extinct even longer.

Genetic testing has proven that “modern humans”, H. sapiens sapiens, mated and bred with members of earlier human species at least as old as H. habilis.

A single human of the H. sapiens sapiens race is, on average, 664 billionths (0.000000000664 or 6.64 x 10^-11) km³ in volume, with an average lifespan of 67.2 years. 

There are 7.3 billion H. sapiens sapiens individuals on Terra (Planet Earth).

Forty billion of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way support Class-M planets and 8-10 billion of these host sapient life analogous to humans.

If Terra’s current human population is the median, there are 61.6 quintillion (61.6 x 10¹⁸) sapient beings in our galaxy.

There are around 2 trillion galaxies in the Universe.

Hypothesizing the Milky Way’s sapient population as the median, there are 123.2 nonillion (1.23 x 10³²) sapient beings in the Universe at any one time.

Think about those statistics next time someone talks about, or claims to be or to follow, the Anointed One, the Chosen People, the Exceptional Nation, or the Elect Species.

A Nation of Our Own (for Ungagged 6)

A recent poll found that 23% of millennials in the USA would rather see a #GiantMeteor2016 hit the planet than either Trump or Clinton in office.  Of course, with either of the two major candidates, planetary extinction is still a possibility, especially with Clinton, whose statements on rebuilding America’s nuclear arsenal and repeated statements on the threat of Russia are eerily if unsurprisingly reminiscent of the bellicose rhetoric of her first political hero, Barry Goldwater.

For those of you who do not know, Barry Goldwater also introduced into the American national political arena in 1964 the dog-whistle racism which featured so prominently in the legislation, policy, and campaigns of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their allies in the 1990s.  Say what you will about the Clintons, they made it acceptable for white American suburban professionals to be white supremacist poor-shaming bigots again and to still call themselves “progressive”. 

Hillary calls herself a “progressive who gets things done”.  Let’s fact-check that statement by looking at the record of the Clinton administration, both acting directly and working through its allies in the U.S. Congress.  Although Bill held the office of President from 1993 to 2001 and made the final decisions in the administration, Hillary was his near-equal partner every step of the way.  It is therefore not unfair to ascribe to her the same blame or credit as Bill for its results. 

The Clinton administration rammed NAFTA through Congress, the first major international so-called free trade pact which devastated the working people of both the United States and Mexico and did not very much for those in Canada either.

It laid the groundwork for the mergers and acquisitions of the 1990s and 2000s, resulting in the current state of six gigantic corporations controlling America’s money supply.

It passed legislation eliminating higher education for prison inmates, prohibiting education assistance for felons, increasing money for new prisons, prohibiting felons from residing in public housing, giving money to states for keeping prisoners longer, supporting private prisons, and allowing for states to pass three-strikes laws.

It passed legislation easing regulations on creditors and making it more difficult for customers to sue firms for securities fraud.

It loosened supervisory regulations over financial institutions and lessened creditor liability to the significant disadvantage of clients and consumers.

It overruled all state laws regulating savings and loan credit activities.

It placed a lifetime limit on welfare benefits, devolved responsibility for welfare to the states, instituted a punitive, demeaning “workfare-for-welfare” program, and greatly restricted the food stamp program in addition to adding similar “work” for the people receiving those.

It deregulated telecommunications markets and broadcast media in a way that allowed mergers to take place that have led to just four corporations controlling all media in the country.

It defined marriage as between one man and one woman, which Hillary vehemently defended as late as 2014.

It attempted to privatize Social Security, but the effort was cut short by the Monica Lewinsky scandal and its aftermath.

It destroyed the remaining provisions of a Depression-era law that distinguished between investment banks and commercial banks, causing the wave of megamergers that lead to the crash of 2007.

It deregulated over-the-counter derivatives trading, opening the door to an explosion in unregulated securities, including the credit default swap.

It made it harder for consumers to get out of lender-required insurance accompanying mortgages.

It almost made it far harder for consumers (but not businesses) to discharge debts through declaration of bankruptcy.  However, Hillary, then running for Senate, convinced Bill to let it die through a pocket veto.  As Senator the very next year, Hillary voted in favor of the bill when it came up again, though it failed due to opposition from her fellow Democrats.  It passed in 2005.

To paraphrase Marx, if this is progressivism, all I can say is that I am not a progressive.

And none of this even begins to touch on her horrific record in regards to Latin America, North Africa, and Southwest Asia as Secretary of State.

Voting for Hillary places a seal of approval on all of the above.  Doing so with the intent of stopping Trump does not change that any more than Obama’s signing statement protesting the provision allowing for the indefinite detention of American citizens without charge in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 changed the fact that he refused to veto like he did the bill allowing victims to sue Saudi Arabia over 9/11.

As paraphrased by activist Marty Jezer, storyteller Jean Shepherd said that creeping meatballism represents the passive acquiescence of people who surrender to the demands of the consumer culture and collaborate in their own manipulation.  Both major parties view the human members of the American electorate not as citizens but as consumers, the Democratic National Committee explicitly so as we now know from the Wikileaks of their emails which refer to “Hispanics”, their word not mine, as “brand-loyal consumers”. 

America is not a democracy but an oligarchy, one not of the people but of the 1%, not for the people but for the corporations, not by the people but by the paid servants of those corporations.  Under current conditions, voting in elections is nothing more than the means by which the people lend legitimacy to that oligarchy.  As long as American citizens keep playing the game of Republicans versus Democrats, they will always end with more of the same.

At the end of the 1983 movie War Games, which premiered the same year the USA and the USSR went to and remained at DefCon 2 worldwide for two weeks, Matthew Broderick’s character David Lightman has the computer Joshua, which has taken control of the entire American missle defense system, play itself in tic-tac-toe knowing that it will then extrapolate those results to the program it is currently running, “Global Thermonuclear War”.  After going through every possible scenario with all resulting in the destruction of the entire planet, the computer shuts down, then reboots, saying (to its inventor), “Interesting game, Professor Falken.  The only way to win is not to play”.

America desperately needs a third party, maybe even more than one.  No third party is ever going to have a chance on the national level if citizens do not vote for third parties.  Sure, if enough people vote third party this election, Trump may come to power.  For the United States, this may be a disaster, but for the world, Clinton will be far, far worse.

Recently, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Reporters Without Borders to Americans, rejected the offer of Big Pharma outlet Pfizer of one million pneumonia vaccines because accepting it would give that corporation cover for charging the outrageous fees it currently requires.  That takes courage, that takes character, that takes honor.  I ask those listening to do like Joshua the computer and extrapolate.  Build a third party, a party of the people, by the people, and for the people, even if it involves short-term setback and personal sacrifice.  Then maybe, just maybe, one day we will have something none of us have never had before: an actual democracy, a nation of our own.

Finally, I want to call out John Oliver for knowingly and deliberately misrepresenting the position of Green Party candidate Jill Stein on student debt and that of her running mate Ajamu Baraka on prisons.  Shame on you, John; your credibility is shot.

Thig ar latha.  Alba gu brath.

The Evil of Two Lessers (Ungagged 4)

My section of Ungagged 4: The Zarjaz Spirit of Independence and Rebellion.

Here is the link to the entire podcast:
http://ungagged.podbean.com/e/the-zarjaz-spirit-of-independence-and-rebellion/

Here is the text of my segment:

If the U.S. election for President this year were limited to the candidates of the two so-called major parties, the choice before American voters would be between sugar-coated shite and fudge-covered feces. 

I’ve been rather impressed, but not surprised by, the level of uniform screechiness from the supporters of the Clinton camp this election attempting to bully, scare, and otherwise intimidate progressives into falling in line behind a candidate they detest.  America hasn’t witnessed such a unified chorus echoing mindless insincere self-serving obsequieous crap since the Manson Family appeared in court.  This is a cycle that has been repeating every four years for over three-and-a-half decades.

In 1980, they told us, ‘Yeah, we know about Carter, but we have to keep Reagan out of the White House.  Maybe next time we can have real change’.

In 1984, they told us, ‘Yeah, we know about Mondale, but we have to get Reagan out of the White House.  Maybe next time we can have real change’.

In 1988, they told us, ‘Yeah, we know about Dukakis, but we have to keep Bush out of the White House.  Maybe next time we can have real change’.

In 1992, they told us, “Yeah, we know about Clinton, but we have to get Bush out of the White House.  Maybe next time we can have real change’.

1n 1996, they told us, ‘Yeah, we still know about Clinton, but we have to keep Dole out of the White House.  Maybe next time we can have real change’.

In 2000, they told us, ‘Yeah, we know about Gore, but we have to keep Bush out of the White House.  Maybe next time we can have real change’.

In 2004, they told us, ‘Yeah, we know about Kerry, but we have to get Bush out of the White House.  Maybe next time we can have real change’.

In 2008, they told us, ‘Yeah, we know about Obama, but we have to keep McCain and Palin out of the White House.  Maybe next time we can have real change’.

In 2012, they told us, ‘Yeah, we still know about Obama, but we have to keep Romney and his healthcare plan out of the White House.  Maybe next time we can have real change’.

Now, in 2016, they tell us, ‘Yeah, we know about Clinton, but we have to keep Trump out of the White House.  Maybe next time we can have real change’.

Bernie the Sheepherder, currently appearing beside the woman who cheated him out of the nomination and in doing so robbed his supporters of their votes, tells us we have to vote for the Goldwater Girl because we have to defeat Trump, and in the meantime be grateful from the scraps tossed to us from the table.  It’s the equivalent of telling us, ‘Yeah, we know about Hitler/Stalin, but we have to keep Stalin/Hitler out of power’.

For socialists and other progressives and leftists, there is no such thing as a greater and lesser evil looking at these two candidates.  The difference is not one of greater or lesser evil but of ordered evil, in the case of Clinton, versus chaotic evil, in the case of Trump.  The level of evil is equal in measure and banality, the only difference is in coherence.

One of the points Bill pressed over and over again during the 1992 was that electing him would get us a two-for-one, because Hillary would be his equal partner.  And she was, every step of the way, in every disastrous consequence for poor people and Afro-Americans.  The Clinton administration was unquestionably the most racist since Woodrow Wilson’s and the most viciously anti-poor since Herbert Hoover’s, turning the War on Poverty into the War on the Poor and setting civil rights back decades.

To give you a picture of who the Clintons are, hear this.  Just before the Super Tuesday primaries in 1992, on 10 March, Bill Clinton announced his “get tough on crime” initiative, always a favorite of his target audience since Barry Goldwater’s campaign proclaimed “You Know You Agree With Him”.  To make clear to whom his remarks were aimed, Bill held this charade at Stone Mountain, Georgia, birthplace in 1915 of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, with un-Reconstructed Dixiecrats Zell Miller and Sam Nunn flanking him and ranks of almost all black prisoners behind him as background while Jeff Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson carved in stone looked down on the proceedings with approval.

As for Hillary, rap singer and political activist Sister Souljah wrote during an interview Daniel D’Addario in November 2015 that, “She reminds me too much of the slave plantation white wife of the white ‘Master.’  She talks down to people, is condescending and pandering”.

The entire legislative agenda of the Clintons and their congressional allies, including the current Vice President, by the way, severely and deliberately sliced away at the rights, protections, and opportunities of Afro-Americans and poor and working people on the one hand, and set free Corporate America to rob, plunder, and pillage with impunity on the other, setting up the world economy for the crash in 2007 and the Great Recession from which we still have not yet recovered.  The result of this is desperate, resentful, angry people here turning to someone like Trump, about whose own deficiencies most Scots are too well aware, and people in Europe too often turning to their own corollaries while the Labour Party in UK, Socialist Party in France, Social Democrats in Germany, etc., tell people they need to sacrifice more, just like the Democratic Party in the USA.

As Calgacus said of the Romans, “A rich enemy excites their avarice, a poor one their ambition.  To robbery, murder, and plunder, they give the lying name of government; they create a wasteland and call it peace”.

The Democratic Party establishment of the 21st century may call themselves the “New Democrats”, but what they really are is the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in white tuxedoes instead of white sheets.

Libya and the Western Left (Ungagged 3)

The text of my segment of the 3rd episode of the Scottish pro-independence podcast Ungagged called "Yes2, the Internationalist Butterflies, and the Screams of the Traditional Media!".

With regards to the recent rebuke by Parliament of David Cameron for the intervention in Libya, I think the MP’s were quite correct to point out the the disorganization and the lack of follow-up.  One of the main problems with interventions by the West is that most share those faults.

However, I have to counter the idea that the intervention in 2011 led to the current civil war in Libya.  People tend to forget or ignore because it is inconvenient the fact that there was a civil war going on in Libya at the time, one begun by Qaddafi against his own people when they came out into the streets like the citizens of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Algeria were doing or had done at the time.  His forces’ response was to fire into the crowds. 

While there is no question the action taken in 2011 should have been more coherent and included measures to help the country put itself back together in the aftermath rather than just handing everything over to the strongest warlords, if nothing at all had been done, the bloodshed in Libya would have far exceeded that in Syria and Europe would be wishing that the refugee crisis were at the level it is now rather than what it would have been.

As for the current civil war, the one that started in 2014, yes, some of this involves leftovers from 2011.  But it’s mostly due to meddling by forces in the region, with Qatar along with Turkey and Sudan supporting the the Tripoli-based General National Congress (led by the Muslim Brotherhood) and the forces loyal to it with UAE (United Arab Emirates) along with Russia and Egypt supporting the Tobruk-based Council of Deputies and the forces loyal to it.

The General National Congress was the coalition government established after the revolution, in which the Muslim Brotherhood were a minority.  They gained a majority by getting a law passed forbidding everyone who had held any position in the Qaddafi regime at any level from holding office.  They did this by having armed militias invade ministries and offices demanding the law be passed.  Once they were in power, they approved sharia law being imposed on the country, with severe repression of women’s rights.

The mandate for the GNC was supposed to end at the close of 2013, but the Brotherhood refused, instead voting themselves a year’s extension.  In mid-February, Gen. Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army, ordered the GNC to conduct the elections for the permanent Council of Deputies that was supposed to replace the GNC as prescribed by law.  The GNC ignored him, but he gave them three months before launching this second civil war.  A week later, the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated GNC announced elections for June, which they lost.  To the surprise of almost no one, they refused to recognize the election.

In Egypt, events happened in much the same way.  Though somewhat more low-key, Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies in the Egyptian parliament were on their way to establishing the same kind of rule in that country.  Like the MB in Libya, he ruled autocratically by decree, ignored court orders, and issued a proclamation that his decrees could not be challenged.

What happened in June 2013 was a revolution, followed almost immediately by a military coup against that revolution. 

The series of events in both these cases is much more complex and convoluted than I’ve made it sound, but I only have so much time. 

I’m trying to illustrate several things here. 

First, just because an individual or group is elected democratically does not make them democratic, especially if they just ride the streetcar as far as they need and then get off. 

Second, when elected officials betray democracy as badly as in these two cases, they deserve to be removed. 

Third, those of us on the Left in the West need to look carefully at such situations before making knee-jerk comments about Western imperialism on behalf of figures and groups such as these merely because they are “anti-Western”.  Otherwise we might find ourselves in the position of Hugo Chavez when he embraced Ahmadinejad of Iran as a paragon of anti-imperialism and lost a huge amount of credibility regarding his own politics, putting everything he had achieved at risk, a mistake that the fruits of which we are seeing in Venezuela today.  We also run the risk of being useful fools for folks as nasty as Vladimir Putin.

Speaking of nasty bastards elected democratically then betraying democracy, I have to say that Digong has piled up a rather impressive body count.  I’m speaking of course of Roderick Duterte of the Philippines.  Three thousand dead since the election results were announced just this past June.  That’s equal to the death total  in the Six Counties of Northeast Ulster during the thirty years of The Troubles.  Or in the attacks here in America on 9/11.  When I was over there in the late 1980s and early ‘90s and he was mayor of Davao, he was one of the two nastiest pieces of work that I knew of.  Regarding the former hitman for the Davao Death Squad currently testifying before the Philippine Congress, I have do doubt every word he says about Digong is truthful and accurate.

The other was then Maj., later Maj. Gen., Jovito Palparan of the AFP’s Special Operations Battalion.  His troops were responsible for gross tortures and murders in the name of counterinsurgency against the New People’s Army while I was there, including one of my in-laws named Bong Concepcion.  At the time I was at Clark Air Base, the SOT was stationed in San Fernando, Pampanga, and his methods were so brutal that the U.S. Army Special Forces detachment at Clark pulled enough strings to get him moved out of area.

Turning to Scotland, one of the fears I’ve heard is that with Brexit Scots and other people in the UK will lose visa-free travel.  The visa-free travel follows under a separate treaty, the one called Schengen, out of which UK, Ireland, the Isle of Mann, and the Channel Isles have all opted.  Two things here.  First, the warnings of refugee hordes overrunning the country were a false-flag; second, four non-EU countries in Europe—Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein—are part of Schengen, so Scotland should be able to do the same after independence.

In closing, let me say kudos to Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Parliament for banning fracking.

Link to the podcast: http://ungagged.podbean.com/e/yes2-the-internationalist-butterflies-and-the-screams-of-the-traditional-media/

For BDS and ODS (Ungagged 2)

The text of my segment of my first episode, their 2nd, of the Scottish independence-oriented podcast Ungagged, called "Two Furra Pound".

My name is Chuck Hamilton, and I’m from Chattanooga, TN, USA.  I’m 53 years old and have favored Scottish independence most of my life, joining the SNP in 1997 just before the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Stirling Bridge and the devolution referendum.  I had to leave that body after the Westminster Parliament voted to dissallow foreign membership in UK political parties in the early 2000s but have been associated with the SRSM and have friends who are members and ex-members of the SSP.  Personally, I would like to see Scotland completely independent as a republic, preferably a democratic socialist republic.

Here on this side of the Atlantic, I was with the Democratic Party until the 1990s when the neo-Dixiecrats of the Democratic Leadership Council took it over and turned it into the neoliberal cabal it is today.  Since then I have been a member of a few socialist parties until joining the Green Party USA and changing support to Jill Stein a few weeks before Bernie Sanders did to the movement which supported him what Mir Hussein Moussavi did to the Green Movement in Iran in 2009.  Among other things, I have also been involved since the 1990s to varying degrees over the years with a local group founded by Maxine Cousins and Lorenzo Ervin in 1983 called Concerned Citizens for Justice, now serving as the local branch of Black Lives Matter, which very openly supports the Palestinian people.

Speaking of the Green Movement, I’d like credit to go where credit is due with regards to the conversation Neil and Kevin had on Independence Live about Facebook becoming a tool for political activists in terms of educating, agitating, and organizing.  While there had been some small-scale activity politically, it was the Iranian Green Movement which pioneered doing that on a mass-scale during the events of 2009, the following year, and into 2011, when the events of the Arab Spring, the Israeli social justice movement, the indignado movement in Spain, and the Occupy movement took over the center stage.  I should point out, by the way, that almost everyone active in the Green Movement and posting to Facebook back then still is and is still doing so.

It was in 2011 that I became involved with the Palestinian anti-apartheid movement.  I had traveled to Paris to meet and spend time with the French Iranian woman with whom I was having a relationship, mostly over Skype, leaving the day after 300 tornadoes had struck the Southeast USA.  After we’d spent a week together, she and I took a boat tour and met two fellows, one a Palestinian Arab and the other an Israeli Jew, who were in the city attending a conference of anti-apartheid activitists from Palestine and Israel.  A photo we had taken of the four of us together (with the caption “A Palestinian, an American, an Iranian, and an Israeli got onto a Batobus tour boat on the River Seine in Paris”) serves as the cover for my Facebook newsgroup, Terran News.

The Jewish, or, to be more exact, Judaicist, State of Israel in the Levant (JSIL) is a sectarian ethnocracy engaged in widespread racial discrimination, ethnic-cleansing, deliberate cultural destruction, vicious apartheid that would make even the most hardcore white supremacist in South Africa (or in the American South, for that matter) cringe with embarrassment, and occasionally outright genocide in the narrower definition of the term.  By the definition of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jew who coined the term, all of those things are genocide.  As a genocidal entity, Israel does not have a “right to exist” as a state.  Its people do, no matter how bigoted many of them are, but they do not “have the right” to their own state apparatus with which to manifest the fruits of that bigotry upon its targets while at the same time denying those targets, their fellow humans, equal access to that same apparatus to use in their defense, as is the case, now and since 1948.

As great as the atrocities suffered by the Palestinians of the West Bank, and Palestinian citizens of Israel for that matter, are, those still pale in comparison to the situation of those in the Gaza Strip, which would be more accurately called the Gaza Ghetto.  It is the world’s largest prison camp, the largest in the entire history of the world.  Within its walled, barbed wired, machine gun-equipped towers are 1.82 million people crammed into a mere 138 square miles.  That’s 13,188 humans per square mile, the highest density in the world.  Even that is being generous; the loosely-defined buffer zone around the prison walls reduces the available territory even more.

Imagine if Scotland won independence and enacted a constitution granting full citizenship only to those who could prove descent from one of the historic Highland clans, Lowland houses, or Border grains, and, furthermore, were registered Protestant Christians.  The only difference would be a lack of native population to ethnically cleanse and condemn to years of occupation and harsh oppression.  The fairest solution, the only fair and just solution, is to dissolve both JSIL and the PA (Palestinian Authority) and establish in its place One Democratic State that is completely secular and guarantees to all its people equal rights before the law.  Now, I know working out the details would be a wee bit hairy and face more than a few obstacles to overcome, but that is the only solution to the situation in the Southern Levant.

Yeah, I know, ODS (One Democratic State) seems like a dream.  But thirty-five years ago it seemed as if the situation in apartheid South Africa, a state strongly supported by Israel, mind you, even to the point of sharing it nuclear weapons technology, would go on for decades or even a century.  Ten years ago, no one envisioned that Burma, or Myanmar, would have a mostly elected civilian legislature or that Aung San Syu Kyi would be first minister in all but name.  I know that in most countries where it took place the Arab Spring has stumbled or collapsed, but no one at the time thought any of the regimes against which the people rose would be removed from power.  Two years ago, most people thought another indyref was years or decades in the future.  Until Brexit happened.

The way the people of the world can support Palestinians and the Israelis fighting for their human rights is to support the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement, and to make their support known on Facebook and other avenues of education and agitation.

The name of my Facebook newsgroup, Terran News, comes from a saying I had posted on my old Yahoo360 page when that still existed.  “I am a Terran, a citizen of Earth.  The whole world is my home, and all its people my brothers, sisters, and cousins.”  There’re no exceptions to that last bit. 

In closing, I’d like to say to my Palestinian friends, Sayati yawm’lana, and to my fellow Scots nationalists, Thig ar latha.  Alba gu brath.

Link to the pocast: http://ungagged.podbean.com/e/two-furra-pound/