License to Kill by Dmitry Orlov

The story is the same every time: some nation, due to a confluence of lucky circumstances, becomes powerful—much more powerful than the rest—and, for a time, is dominant. But the lucky circumstances, which often amount to no more than a few advantageous quirks of geology, be it Welsh coal or West Texas oil, in due course come to an end. In the meantime, the erstwhile superpower becomes corrupted by its own power.

As the endgame approaches, those still nominally in charge of the collapsing empire resort to all sorts of desperate measures—all except one: they will refuse to ever consider the fact that their imperial superpower is at an end, and that they should change their ways accordingly. George Orwell once offered an excellent explanation for this phenomenon: as the imperial end-game approaches, it becomes a matter of imperial self-preservation to breed a special-purpose ruling class—one that is incapable of understanding that the end-game is approaching. Because, you see, if they had an inkling of what's going on, they wouldn't take their jobs seriously enough to keep the game going for as long as possible.

The approaching imperial collapse can be seen in the ever worsening results the empire gets for its imperial efforts. After World War II, the US was able to do a respectable job helping to rebuild Germany, along with the rest of western Europe. Japan also did rather well under US tutelage, as did South Korea after the end of fighting on the Korean peninsula. With Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, all of which were badly damaged by the US, the results were significantly worse: Vietnam was an outright defeat, Cambodia lived through a period of genocide, while amazingly resilient Laos—the most heavily bombed country on the planet—recovered on its own.

The first Gulf War went even more badly: fearful of undertaking a ground offensive in Iraq, the US stopped short of its regular practice of toppling the government and installing a puppet regime there, and left it in limbo for a decade. When the US did eventually invade, it succeeded—after killing countless civilians and destroying much of the infrastructure—in leaving behind a dismembered corpse of a country.

Similar results have been achieved in other places where the US saw it fit to get involved: Somalia, Libya and, most recently, Yemen. Let's not even mention Afghanistan, since all empires have failed to achieve good results there. So the trend is unmistakable: whereas at its height the empire destroyed in order to rebuild the world in its own image, as it nears its end it destroys simply for the sake of destruction, leaving piles of corpses and smoldering ruins in its wake.

Another unmistakeable trend has to do with the efficacy of spending money on “defense” (which, in the case of the US, should be redefined as “offense”). Having a lavishly endowed military can sometimes lead to success, but here too something has shifted over time. The famous American can-do spirit that was evident to all during World War II, when the US dwarfed the rest of the world with its industrial might, is no more. Now, more and more, military spending itself is the goal—never mind what it achieves.

And what it achieves is the latest F-35 jet fighter that can't fly; the latest aircraft carrier that can't launch planes without destroying them if they are fitted with the auxiliary tanks they need to fly combat missions; the most technologically advanced AEGIS destroyer that can be taken out of commission by a single unarmed Russian jet carrying a basket of electronic warfare equipment, and another aircraft carrier that can be frightened out of deep water and forced to anchor by a few Russian submarines out on routine patrol.

But the Americans like their weapons, and they like handing them out as a show of support. But more often than not these weapons end up in the wrong hands: the ones they gave to Iraq are now in the hands of ISIS; the ones they gave to the Ukrainian nationalists have been sold to the Syrian government; the ones they gave to the government in Yemen is now in the hands of the Houthis who recently overthrew it. And so the efficacy of lavish military spending has dwindled too. At some point it may become more efficient to modify the US Treasury printing presses to blast bundles of US dollars in the general direction of the enemy.

With the strategy of “destroying in order to create” no longer viable, but with the blind ambition to still try to prevail everywhere in the world somehow still part of the political culture, all that remains is murder. The main tool of foreign policy becomes political assassination: be it Saddam Hussein, or Muammar Qaddafi, or Slobodan Milošević, or Osama bin Laden, or any number of lesser targets, the idea is to simply kill them.

While aiming for the head of an organization is a favorite technique, the general populace gets is share of murder too. How many funerals and wedding parties have been taken out by drone strikes? I don't know that anyone in the US really knows, but I am sure that those whose relatives were killed do remember, and will remember for the next few centuries at least. This tactic is generally not conducive to creating a durable peace, but it is a good tactic for perpetuating and escalating conflict. But that's now an acceptable goal, because it creates the rationale for increased military spending, making it possible to breed more chaos.

Recently a retired US general went on television to declare that what's needed to turn around the situation in the Ukraine is to simply “start killing Russians.” The Russians listened to that, marveled at his idiocy, and then went ahead and opened a criminal case against him. Now this general will be unable to travel to an ever-increasing number of countries around the world for fear of getting arrested and deported to Russia to stand trial.

This is largely a symbolic gesture, but non-symbolic non-gestures of a preventive nature are sure to follow. You see, my fellow space travelers, murder happens to be illegal. In most jurisdictions, inciting others to murder also happens to be illegal. Americans have granted themselves the license to kill without checking to see whether perhaps they might be exceeding their authority. We should expect, then, that as their power trickles away, their license to kill will be revoked, and they find themselves reclassified from global hegemons to mere murderers.

As empires collapse, they turn inward, and subject their own populations to the same ill treatment to which they subjected others. Here, America is unexceptional: the number of Americans being murdered by their own police, with minimal repercussions for those doing the killing, is quite stunning. When Americans wonder who their enemy really is, they need look no further.

But that is only the beginning: the precedent has already been set for deploying US troops on US soil. As law and order break down in more and more places, we will see more and more US troops on the streets of cities in the US, spreading death and destruction just like they did in Iraq or in Afghanistan. The last license to kill to be revoked will be the license to kill ourselves.

               ***********

OneLove

:::MME:::

COINTELPRO — The FBI’s War On Black America

Through a secret program called the Counter Intelligence Program or ‘COINTELPRO’, the United States government set out to “disrupt dissident political organisations using infiltration, psychological warfare, harassment through the legal system and extralegal force and violence”. Groups such as the Black Panther Party and others throughout the civil rights movement were targets of the program.

COINTELPRO — The FBI’s War On Black America establishes a historical perspective on the measures initiated by the FBI which aimed to discredit black political figures and forces of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Combining declassified documents, interviews, rare footage and exhaustive research, it investigates the government’s role in the assassinations of Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and Martin Luther King.

Funny how things change yet they always stay the same...

OneLove

:::MME:::

Our System..Our Structure..Our Illusion

..you can't free a slave unless he knows he's in bondage.. 

This film presents an alternative outlook of contemporary society, in particular UK & US, however parallels can be made to nearly every society that exists today. Are we economic/corporate slaves to a monetary system? The film challenges 'established' beliefs, values and structures imposed on many, as well as people's attachment to the roles they play in this.

 OneLove

 :::MME:::

How Television Affects Your Brain Chemistry

..add to this the hours spent on mobile devices and what you get is a whole lot of scrambled brains! An essential condition to keep the population passive, weak & distracted which enables things to stay as fucked up as they are right now.....

OneLove

:::MME:::

Empire and Colonialism: Rich Men in London Still Deciding Africa’s Future by Colin Todhunter

Some £600 million in UK aid money courtesy of the taxpayer is helping big business increase its profits in Africa via the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. In return for receiving aid money and corporate investment, African countries have to change their laws, making it easier for corporations to acquire farmland, control seed supplies and export produce.

Last year, Director of the Global Justice Now Nick Dearden said:

“It’s scandalous that UK aid money is being used to carve up Africa in the interests of big business. This is the exact opposite of what is needed, which is support to small-scale farmers and fairer distribution of land and resources to give African countries more control over their food systems. Africa can produce enough food to feed its people. The problem is that our food system is geared to the luxury tastes of the richest, not the needs of ordinary people. Here the British government is using aid money to make the problem even worse.”

Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Nigeria, Benin, Malawi and Senegal are all involved in the New Alliance.

In a January 2015 piece in The Guardian, Dearden continued by saying that development was once regarded as a process of breaking with colonial exploitation and transferring power over resources from the ‘first’ to the ‘third world’, involving a revolutionary struggle over the world’s resources. However, the current paradigm is based on the assumption that developing countries need to adopt neo-liberal policies and that public money in the guise of aid should facilitate this. The notion of ‘development’ has become hijacked by rich corporations and the concept of poverty depoliticised and separated from structurally embedded power relations.

To see this in action, we need look no further to a conference held on Monday 23 March in London, organised by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This secretive, invitation-only meeting with aid donors and big seed companies discussed a strategy to make it easier for these companies to sell patented seeds in Africa and thus increase corporate control of seeds.

Farmers have for generations been saving and exchanging seeds among themselves. This has allowed them a certain degree of independence and has enabled them to innovate, maintain biodiversity, adapt seeds to climatic conditions and fend off plant disease. Big seed companies with help from the Gates Foundation, the US government and other aid donors are now discussing ways to increase their market penetration of commercial seeds by displacing farmers own seed systems.

Corporate sold hybrid seeds often produce higher yields when first planted, but the second generation seeds produce low yields and unpredictable crop traits, making them unsuitable for saving and storing. As Heidi Chow from Global Justice Now rightly says, instead of saving seeds from their own crops, farmers who use hybrid seeds become completely dependent on the seed, fertiliser and pesticide companies, which can (and has) in turn result in an agrarian crisis centred on debt, environmental damage and health problems.

The London conference aimed to share findings of a report by Monitor Deloitte on developing the commercial seed sector in sub-Saharan Africa. The report recommends that in countries where farmers are using their own seed saving networks NGOs and aid donors should encourage governments to introduce intellectual property rights for seed breeders and help to persuade farmers to buy commercial, patented seeds rather than relying on their own traditional varieties. The report also suggests that governments should remove regulations so that the seed sector is opened up to the global market.

The guest list comprised corporations, development agencies and aid donors, including Syngenta, the World Bank and the Gates Foundation. It speaks volumes that not one farmer organisation was invited. Farmers have been imbued with the spirit of entrepreneurship for thousands of years. They have been “scientists, innovators, natural resource stewards, seed savers and hybridisation experts” who have increasingly been reduced to becoming recipients of technical fixes and consumers of poisonous products of a growing agricultural inputs industry. So who better than to discuss issues concerning agriculture?

But the whole point of such a conference is that the West regards African agriculture as a ‘business opportunity’, albeit wrapped up in warm-sounding notions of ‘feeding Africa’ or ‘lifting millions out of poverty’. The West’s legacy in Africa (and elsewhere) has been to plunge millions into poverty. Enforcing structural reforms to benefit big agribusiness and its unsustainable toxic GMO/petrochemical inputs represents a continuation of the neo-colonialist plundering of Africa. The US has for many decades been using agriculture as a key part of foreign policy to secure global hegemony.

Phil Bereano, food sovereignty campaigner with AGRA Watch and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington says:

“This is an extension of what the Gates Foundation has been doing for several years – working with the US government and agribusiness giants like Monsanto to corporatize Africa’s genetic riches for the benefit of outsiders. Don’t Bill and Melinda realize that such colonialism is no longer in fashion? It’s time to support African farmers’ self-determination.”

Bereano also shows how Western corporations only intend to cherry-pick the most profitable aspects of the food production chain, while leaving the public sector in Africa to pick up the tab for the non-profitable aspects that allow profitability further along the chain.

Giant agritech corporations with their patented seeds and associated chemical inputs are ensuring a shift away from diversified agriculture that guarantees balanced local food production, the protection of people’s livelihoods and agricultural sustainability. African agriculture is being placed in the hands of big agritech for private profit under the pretext of helping the poor. The Gates Foundation has substantial shares in Monsanto. With Monsanto’s active backingfrom the US State Department and the Gates Foundation’s links with USAID, African farmers face a formidable force.

Report after report suggests that support for conventional agriculture, agroecology and local economies is required, especially in the Global South. Instead, Western governments are supporting powerful corporations with taxpayers money whose thrust via the WTO, World Bank and IMF has been to encourage strings-attached loans, monocrop cultivation for export using corporate seeds, the restructuring of economies, the opening of economies to the vagaries of land and commodity speculation and a system of globalised trade rigged in favour of the West.

In this vision for Africa, those farmers who are regarded as having any role to play in all of this are viewed only as passive consumers of corporate seeds and agendas. The future of Africa is once again being decided by rich men in London.

                                                               ****************

OneLove

::::MME::::

Noam Chomsky: Nuclear Weapons and Unchecked Climate Change Are Leading Us Toward Doomsday

Heed the words of the wise ones..... 

 OneLove

 :::MME:::

The Poor Get Prison: The Alarming Spread of the Criminalization of Poverty by Karen Dolan

Poor people, especially people of color, face a far greater risk of being fined, arrested, and even incarcerated for minor offenses than other Americans. A broken taillight, an unpaid parking ticket, a minor drug offense, sitting on a sidewalk, or sleeping in a park can all result in jail time. In this report, we seek to understand the multi-faceted, growing phenomenon of the “criminalization of poverty.”

In many ways, this phenomenon is not new: The introduction of public assistance programs gave rise to prejudices against beneficiaries and to systemic efforts to obstruct access to the assistance.

This form of criminalizing poverty — racial profiling or the targeting of poor black and Latina single mothers trying to access public assistance — is a relatively familiar reality. Less well-known known are the new and growing trends which increase this criminalization of being poor that affect or will affect hundreds of millions of Americans. These troubling trends are eliminating their chances to get out of poverty and access resources that make a safe and decent life possible.

In this report we will summarize these realities, filling out the true breadth and depth of this national crisis. The key elements we examine are:

• the targeting of poor people with fines and fees for misdemeanors, and the resurgence of debtors’ prisons – the imprisonment of people unable to pay debts resulting from the increase in fines and fees;
• mass incarceration of poor ethnic minorities for non-violent offenses, and the barriers to employment and re-entry into society once they have served their sentences;
• excessive punishment of poor children that creates a “school-to-prison pipeline”;
• increase in arrests of homeless people and people feeding the homeless, and criminalizing life-sustaining activities such as sleeping in public when no shelter is available; and
• confiscating what little resources and property poor people might have through “civil asset forfeiture.”

Read the full report [PDF].

Karen Dolan is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and directs the Criminalization of Poverty Project. Karen also assists the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

OneLove

:::MME:::

15 To Life: Kenneth's Story

Does sentencing a teenager to life without parole serve our society well? The United States is the only country in the world that routinely condemns children to die in prison. This is the story of one of those children, now a young man, seeking a second chance in Florida. At age 15, Kenneth Young received four consecutive life sentences for a series of armed robberies (master-minded by an adult). Imprisoned for more than a decade, he believed he would die behind bars. Now a U.S. Supreme Court decision could set him free. 15 to Life: Kenneth’s Story follows Young’s struggle for redemption, revealing a justice system with thousands of young people serving sentences intended for society’s most dangerous criminals.

OneLove

:::MME:::

Drop in the Ocean?

In less than 50 years, ocean life as we know it could be completely done for. This not only means dead oceans, but a dead ecosystem, and mass deaths of all who depend on it. That means us. Does this sound far flung? So does the idea that vertebrate life in the oceans has decreased more than half in the past 40 years, but those are the statistics released by the World Wildlife Foundation's 2014 Living Planet Index. In 1990, governments began to meet and discuss what we can do to reduce carbon emissions and avoid global warming.

 According to information provided in a Drop in The Ocean, there are now 61% more carbon emission in the air than there were back then. What does it all mean, and what can we do now to improve things for ourselves and generations to come? These are the questions examined in this film. 

As the film points out, many modern luxuries like global travel and the production of technology contribute to global warming. Should we give these up, or are there smarter approaches to take towards reducing carbon emissions? What might those approaches be, and how can governments get on board, inevitably leading countries full of citizens who have already expressed interests in these sorts of activities on the same path? The answers exist, at least partially, in the form of major institutions such as hospitals that use immense amounts of energy, and small towns where community run wind industries can offer real solutions to those who would opt for natural energy alternatives but simply can't afford them at the going rate. 

There is as much scientific evidence behind the dangers of climate change as there is behind the link between smoking cigarettes and cancer. While authority figures can deny climate change all together, or at least put off any direct action to improve things until it serves them some sort of direct benefit, the reason most everyday people donќt carry climate change issues at the forefront of their minds is quite different. Think about it, how often are we affected by what happens in the natural world, and to what extent? 

Ireland being close to, and in some places, (including its ports) at sea level means that it is at a particular risk, but it is not the only place. Factual information being relayed to everyday people and direct action from our governments can change things. Those who stand to benefit from a system that means financial gain for the few at the cost of dangerous climate change and rising oceans for all of us have different priorities than the great many of us. Whatever end of the spectrum you fall on, this is a film worth watching, and a conversation worth engaging in.

                                                        *************

OneLove

:::MME:::

Another World Is Possible, Without the 1% by Winnie Byanyima

If you are in the top 1 percent of the global wealth stakes, our economic system works exceptionally well. Since the financial crisis in 2008, most of the wealth created in the world has ended up in your bank accounts. By next year, you could own more wealth than the rest of the world put together.

This is not just a global phenomenon. The growing gap between rich and poor is a reality for seven out of ten people on the planet. Last week the World Bank calculated that ten Africans own more wealth than half the continent. Statistics like these are actually a cold shower on people’s natural, positive aspirations to improve their lot – they’re telling us the 99 percent won’t get there, or anywhere close. 

Wealth is used to entrench inequality, not to trickle down and solve it. Our research shows how pharmaceutical and financial lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of dollars to influence government legislation in their industries’ favour, saving them billions of dollars, for instance by securing the banks’ huge state bailouts. Across the world, we see that great money doesn’t only buy a nice car or a better education or healthcare. It can buy power: impunity from justice; an election; a pliant media; favourable laws. With the privatisation of our universities it can even buy the world of ideas.

There will be no victory in the fight against poverty unless this trend of worsening inequality is reversed. This is recognised by figures as diverse as the Managing Director of the IMF and the Pope. But we cannot win it under the current broken economic system.

This is a system that sees a world possessed of huge wealth nevertheless leaving the vast majority of humanity behind with virtually nothing at all. One where women are systematically exploited; at the current rate of progress it will take 75 years before women are paid the same as men, never mind that women’s unpaid care work continues to remain invisible. And it is a system that is leading us to runaway climate change.

Yet the 1 percent are quick to tell us that there is no real alternative. Sadly, they say, nothing is ever perfect and of course there will be winners and losers (and typically, by implication, talented winners and feckless losers). But that we should be grateful – it’s the best we can hope for.

What an appalling failure of imagination. What a shocking lack of faith in human invention, ingenuity and spirit. I am sure of two things. One is that another world is possible; the second that it cannot be imagined or created by the 1% – it is up to us.

I believe we can build a human economy where people are the bottom line. We need a world where people do not have to live in fear of the economic repercussions of getting sick, or losing their home or job. Where every child gets to fulfil their potential. Where corporations pay their fair share of taxes and work for the good of the majority, not just their shareholders.  Where the planet is preserved and sustained for our children and their children’s children.

This is not an impossible dream, it is a practical possibility, well within our reach. To get there we need to organise. We need to harness the boundless energy and creativity of our youth. We are many, they are few.

              

Winnie Byanyima is the executive director of Oxfam International.

                                                                           

                                                                *********

:::MME:::

Poet's Nook: "Behind The Screen" by Fakhruddin Iraqi

Love plays its lute behind the screen - 
where is a lover to listen to its tune?

With every breath a new song,
each split second a new string plucked,

The world has spilled Love's secret -
when could music ever hold its tongue?

Every atom babbles the mystery -
Listen yourself, for I'm no tattletale!



(from Divine Flashes)

OneLove

:::MME:::

Musings

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

-Pres. Woodrow Wilson from The New Freedom

                                                      *************

OneLove

:::MME:::

The Necessity of Meditation

Thousands of researches suggest that meditation doesn’t just decrease stress levels but that it also has tangible health benefits such as improved immunity, lower inflammation and decreased pain. Additionally, brain-imaging studies show that meditation sharpens attention and memory. Perhaps most importantly, it has been linked to increased happiness and greater compassion. In the above video, Dan Harris, an ABC News correspondent, explains the neuroscience behind meditation, but reminds us that the ancient practice isn’t magic and likely won’t send one floating into the cosmic ooze. He predicts that the exercise will soon become regularly scheduled maintenance, as commonplace as brushing your teeth or eating your veggies. Harris himself was turned on to mediation after a live, on-air panic attack. (Source)

OneLove

:::MME:::

InRealLife

                              =====>  InREALLIFE DOCUMENTARY <====



Never in the history of the world have the merchants of obscenity – the teachers of unnatural sex acts – had available to them the modern facilities for disseminating this filth." So says the middle-aged presenter with the stern expression, fighting in vain like a knackered Luddite to hold back the tide of technological advancement. The film is Perversion For Profit, a 1965 propaganda short on the dangers of the modern printing press, but it could just as easily be taken from this documentary. InRealLife.

Backed by the kind of gloomy, discordant soundtrack, the film delves into the online lives of a select group of teenagers, discovering to its horror that most of them would rather play videogames, take selfies and lust after the opposite sex than straighten up, fly right and do their chores. And no, the dramatic revelations don't end there. Over the course of 90 minutes, you'll be stunned to learn that online data isn't actually stored in clouds (yes, people really do believe this, literally!!)

Stay awake..

OneLove

:::MME:::

Freedom Next Time

Australian journalist, author and film maker John Pilger speaks about global media consolidation, war by journalism, the US military and its quest for domination/hegemony in the post 9-11 era and the false history that is presented in the guise of ‘objective’ journalism… 

You cab skip the first 2:25 mins to get into the meat of this brilliant speech by one of my favorite journalists/intellectual heroes. Too many folks have been dumbed down/blinded by mainstream journalism. Courageous souls like John Pilger are here to provide the antidote....listen carefully.

OneLove

:::MME:::

The Global Struggle For A Living Wage

The history of wage struggle in Cambodia is a case study for the history of global capitalism as a whole. Here's how it works: Multi-national corporations exploit workers in the most exploitable countries - from Africa to South America to the Caribbean- producing goods at rock-bottom prices that are sold for sky-high profits in affluent countries. When the workers protest the injustice, the armed force of the state always intervenes to protect the interests of the capitalist ownership class and maintain the on-going exploitation. This is why many workers around the world know capitalism viscerally as a system that rob workers at gun point. This capitalist system of exploitation could not continue to exist without the armed intervention of the state. Without the police brutally cracking down on workers, businesses would have long ago started paying workers living, dignified wages and many would likely become worker-owned and managed. So much for free markets. 

 The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
-Smedley Butler

OneLove

:::MME::: 

Naomi Klein: This Changes Everything

This is an edited excerpt from a work-in-progress. The feature length documentary This Changes Everything will be completed and launched later this year. 

OneLove

 :::MME:::

MME's Jam of the Day

Kendrick Lamar recently released "To Pimp a Butterfly" which I think will go down as a  Hip Hop classic. It is a lyrically creative & sonically powerful album & leaves most current Hip Hop albums in the dust . Of all the gems on this release, "How Much A Dollar Cost" stands out for me.  Here Kendrick raps about running into God in the form of a homeless man at a South African gas station. Throughout the song, Kendrick recounts his interactions and feelings towards the homeless man spanning guilt, sympathy and resentment. Kendrick’s selfishness, to which he attributes his success, eventually comes out most in his interactions with the homeless man. At that point, the man reveals himself to be God.

Kendrick reveals his struggle with fame and the environment that made him become who he is today. While it may be true that Kendrick paved his own path and arrived at where he’s at on his own accord, his success begs the question of whether he could have made it without having grown up where he did. It also begs other questions such as whether he really could have made it all on his own without the support of family, friends, teachers...... But having now made it, what should Kendrick do with his fame and power? Should he continue on the pursuit to more fame and money or should he use his platform to make a statement, & give back? This is the conundrum that many successful people encounter, but sadly, most choose to stay in their lane with seldom a thought to help the less fortunate or rise above their material obsessions. Selfishness rules....yet deep inside, a little voice whispers, "change your ways..." which is where Kendrick finds himself  at the end of the featured song. Poetic brilliance.....The journey towards this point makes this album a riveting story from beginning to end....


How much a dollar really cost?
The question is detrimental, paralyzin' my thoughts
Parasites in my stomach keep me with a gut feeling, y'all
Gotta see how I’m chillin' once I park this luxury car
Hopping out feeling big as Mutombo
20 on pump six dirty Marcellus called me Dumbo
20 years ago, can't forget
Now I can lend all my ear or two how to stack these residuals
Tenfold, the liberal concept of what men'll do
20 on 6, he didn't hear me
Indigenous African only spoke Zulu
My American tongue was slurry
Walked out the gas station
A homeless man with a semi-tan complexion
Asked me for ten rand, stressin' about dry land
Deep water, powder blue skies that crack open
A piece of crack that he wanted, I knew he was smokin'
He begged and pleaded
Asked me to feed him twice, I didn't believe it
Told him, "Beat it"
Contributin' money just for his pipe, I couldn't see it
He said, "My son, temptation is one thing that I've defeated
Listen to me, I want a single bill from you
Nothin' less, nothin' more"
I told him I ain't have it and closed my door
Tell me how much a dollar cost


It's more to feed your mind
Water, sun and love, the one you love
All you need, the air you breathe

He's starin' at me in disbelief
My temper is buildin', he's starin' at me, I grab my key
He's starin' at me, I started the car, then I tried to leave
And somethin' told me to keep it in park until I could see
The reason why he was mad at a stranger
Like I was supposed to save him
Like I'm the reason he's homeless and askin' me for a favor
He's starin' at me, his eyes followed me with no laser
He's starin' at me, I notice that his stare is contagious
Cause now I'm starin' back at him, feelin' some type of disrespect
If I could throw a bat at him, it'd be aimin' at his neck
I never understood someone beggin' for goods
Askin' for handouts, takin' it if they could
And this particular person just had it down pat
Starin' at me for the longest until he finally asked
Have you ever opened up Exodus 14?
A humble man is all that we ever need
Tell me how much a dollar cost


Guilt trippin' and feelin' resentment
I never met a transient that demanded attention
They got me frustrated, indecisive and power trippin'
Sour emotions got me lookin' at the universe different
I should distance myself, I should keep it relentless
My selfishness is what got me here, who the fuck I'm kiddin'?
So I'ma tell you like I told the last bum, crumbs and pennies
I need all of mines, and I recognize
This type of panhandlin' all the time
I got better judgement, I know when nigga's hustlin'
Keep in mind, when I was strugglin', I did compromise
Now I comprehend, I smell grandpa's old medicine
Reekin' from your skin, moonshine and gin
Nigga you're babblin', your words ain't flatterin', I'm imaginin'
Denzel be lookin' at O'Neal
Cause now I'm in sad thrills, your gimmick is mediocre, the jig is up
I seen you from a mile away losin' focus
And I'm insensitive, and I lack empathy
He looked at me and said, "Your potential is bittersweet"
I looked at him and said, "Every nickel is mines to keep"
He looked at me and said, "Know the truth, it'll set you free
You're lookin' at the Messiah, the son of Jehova, the higher power
The choir that spoke the word, the Holy Spirit, the nerve
Of Nazareth, and I'll tell you just how much a dollar cost
The price of having a spot in Heaven, embrace your loss, I am God"

I wash my hands, I said my grace
What more do you want from me?
Tears of a clown, guess I'm not all what is meant to be
Shades of grey will never change if I condone
Turn this page, help me change, so right my wrongs

                                                             ************

OneLove

:::MME:::

Noam Chomsky: Slavery and White Fear of Revenge 'Deeply Rooted in American Culture'

American culture is imbued with fears that African Americans will someday repay the violence and oppression that has marred their history in this country, according to linguist and cultural critic Noam Chomsky. Speaking with philosopher George Yancy about the roots of American racism, from Native American genocide to anti-black discrimination, Chomsky emphasized the ongoing impact of black enslavement and subjugation in the U.S., saying “fears that the victims might rise up and take revenge are deeply rooted in American culture, with reverberations to the present.”

Chomsky was speaking with Yancy as part of an ongoing New York Times series of discussions around race. Early in the conversation, Yancy noted that contemporary American conversations about terrorism often omit “the fact that many black people in the United States have had a long history of being terrorized by white racism.” Chomsky cited the fact that slaves had arrived in the colonies 400 years ago, and were largely responsible for America’s early economic strength.

“We...cannot allow ourselves to forget that the hideous slave labor camps of the new “empire of liberty” were a primary source for the wealth and privilege of American society, as well as England and the continent. The industrial revolution was based on cotton, produced primarily in the slave labor camps of the United States.”

With the end of slavery came an immediate need to criminalize African Americans to ensure a bustling—and free—labor force. Chomsky notes “that blacks were arrested without real cause and prisoners were put to work for these business interests. The system provided a major contribution to the rapid industrial development from the late 19th century.”Slaves were highly efficient producers, Chomsky states, and “[p]roductivity increased even faster than in industry, thanks to the technology of the bullwhip and pistol, and the efficient practice of brutal torture.”

More recently, Reagan helped drive this process of profiteering off the criminalizing of black bodies through the war on drugs. Chomsky says the policy “initiated a new Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander’s apt term for the revived criminalization of black life, evident in the shocking incarceration rates and the devastating impact on black society.”

Chomsky also discussed America’s long history of atrocities toward its native population, and the historical revisionism of figures such as Teddy Roosevelt, who pretended that white colonizers had been benevolent invaders. He noted that in reality, America’s native peoples had been "extirpated” or "expelled to destitution and misery.”

“That’s only a bare beginning of the shocking record of the Anglosphere and its settler-colonial version of imperialism, a form of imperialism that leads quite naturally to the “utter extirpation” of the indigenous population, and to “intentional ignorance” on the part of beneficiaries of the crimes.”

The refusal to acknowledge this history of oppression, violence and genocide may be the most disturbing and terrible tendency of America’s dominant culture. “Perhaps the most appalling contemporary myth is that none of this happened,” said Chomsky. He added:

“There is also a common variant of what has sometimes been called “intentional ignorance” of what it is inconvenient to know: “Yes, bad things happened in the past, but let us put all of that behind us and march on to a glorious future, all sharing equally in the rights and opportunities of citizenry.” The appalling statistics of today’s circumstances of African-American life can be confronted by other bitter residues of a shameful past, laments about black cultural inferiority, or worse, forgetting how our wealth and privilege was created in no small part by the centuries of torture and degradation of which we are the beneficiaries and they remain the victims.”

Chomsky and Yancy touched upon Ferguson, Gaza, and the similarities between the two, and Islamophobia in the post-9/11 age. As they closed, Yancy asked Chomsky about possible ways of putting an end to racism.

“Racism is far from eradicated, but it is not what it was not very long ago, thanks to such efforts,” Chomsky said. Cautiously hopeful, he added: “It’s a long, hard road. No magic wand, as far as I know.”

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OneLove

:::MME:::

In Our Horrifying Future, Very Few People Will Have Work or Make Money (Think you're safe because you're a professional? Think again).

It’s now possible to sell a new product to hundreds of millions of people without needing many, if any, workers to produce or distribute it.

At its prime in 1988, Kodak, the iconic American photography company, had 145,000 employees. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy.

The same year Kodak went under, Instagram, the world’s newest photo company, had 13 employees serving 30 million customers.

The ratio of producers to customers continues to plummet. When Facebook purchased “WhatsApp” (the messaging app) for $19 billion last year, WhatsApp had 55 employees serving 450 million customers.

A friend, operating from his home in Tucson, recently invented a machine that can find particles of certain elements in the air.

He’s already sold hundreds of these machines over the Internet to customers all over the world. He’s manufacturing them in his garage with a 3D printer.

So far, his entire business depends on just one person — himself.

New technologies aren’t just labor-replacing. They’re also knowledge-replacing.

The combination of advanced sensors, voice recognition, artificial intelligence, big data, text-mining, and pattern-recognition algorithms, is generating smart robots capable of quickly learning human actions, and even learning from one another.

If you think being a “professional” makes your job safe, think again.

The two sectors of the economy harboring the most professionals — health care and education – are under increasing pressure to cut costs. And expert machines are poised to take over.

We’re on the verge of a wave of mobile health apps for measuring everything from your cholesterol to your blood pressure, along with diagnostic software that tells you what it means and what to do about it.

In coming years, software apps will be doing many of the things physicians, nurses, and technicians now do (think ultrasound, CT scans, and electrocardiograms).

Meanwhile, the jobs of many teachers and university professors will disappear, replaced by online courses and interactive online textbooks.

Where will this end?

Imagine a small box – let’s call it an “iEverything” – capable of producing everything you could possibly desire, a modern day Aladdin’s lamp.

You simply tell it what you want, and – presto – the object of your desire arrives at your feet.

The iEverything also does whatever you want. It gives you a massage, fetches you your slippers, does your laundry and folds and irons it.

The iEverything will be the best machine ever invented.

The only problem is no one will be able to buy it. That’s because no one will have any means of earning money, since the iEverything will do it all.

This is obviously fanciful, but when more and more can be done by fewer and fewer people, the profits go to an ever-smaller circle of executives and owner-investors.

One of the young founders of WhatsApp, CEO Jan Koum, had a 45 percent equity stake in the company when Facebook purchased it, which yielded him $6.8 billion.

Cofounder Brian Acton got $3 billion for his 20 percent stake.

Each of the early employees reportedly had a 1 percent stake, which presumably netted them $160 million each.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will be left providing the only things technology can’t provide – person-to-person attention, human touch, and care. But these sorts of person-to-person jobs pay very little.

That means most of us will have less and less money to buy the dazzling array of products and services spawned by blockbuster technologies – because those same technologies will be supplanting our jobs and driving down our pay.

We need a new economic model.

The economic model that dominated most of the twentieth century was mass production by the many, for mass consumption by the many.

Workers were consumers; consumers were workers. As paychecks rose, people had more money to buy all the things they and others produced — like Kodak cameras. That resulted in more jobs and even higher pay.

That virtuous cycle is now falling apart. A future of almost unlimited production by a handful, for consumption by whoever can afford it, is a recipe for economic and social collapse.

Our underlying problem won’t be the number of jobs. It will be – it already is — the allocation of income and wealth.

What to do?

“Redistribution” has become a bad word.

But the economy toward which we’re hurtling — in which more and more is generated by fewer and fewer people who reap almost all the rewards, leaving the rest of us without enough purchasing power – can’t function.

It may be that a redistribution of income and wealth from the rich owners of breakthrough technologies to the rest of us becomes the only means of making the future economy work.

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OneLove

:::MME:::