Marian's Blog

$200/barrel Oil? Choosing sustainability

My cab driver, transplanted from Ethiopia, told me first. That was weeks ago. But I couldn't believe it till I read the headline of today's Independent (London): "Price of oil will double." Folks, we have now reached 'put up or shut up' time. Time to re-tool our out-of-whack, hyper-industrialised U.S./western lifestyle - much of which is so wastefully over-indulgent. Let's take the news as a wake up call, not doom-and-gloom. I prefer something akin to Lucile Alder's poetic view (Dancing toward the future, published in the same journal with Meadows, Meadows and Randers' 1992 follow-up to their 1972 The Limits of Growth). Make good use of age and even perhaps of wisdom. In short, finally learning, as human society, to wise-up while we have time.

"-- To become a dancer so late
To be determined so late to become
A dancer is to become part
Of the dream of the humble heart
Determined to dance to the beat
Of this one dawn becoming day
Caught by a great blush and throb
Of laughter at such a becoming
Such a desire to become a dancer
In the sense of one moving, clumsy
With effort, yet effortlessly becoming..."

Lucile Alder, Dancing toward the Future

Genuine Progress Indicator? Measuring economies as if society mattered

As so many consumer and exchange economies teeter on the brink, here's a fascinating index that could prove more useful to more people. Many of us are in the same time familiar with, yet put off by, words and terms like "GNP", "GDP", and "economic indicator." For over a decade a group called Redefining Progress has been working on what they call the "GPI" - the genuine progress indicator.

"... The GPI starts with the same personal consumption data that the GDP is based on, but then makes some crucial distinctions. It adjusts for factors such as income distribution, adds factors such as the value of household and volunteer work, and subtracts factors such as the costs of crime and pollution. Because the GDP and the GPI are both measured in monetary terms, they can be compared on the same scale. ..." - Redefining Progress

John Edwards knows it's the economy, not just Iraq

As the candidate said last night in New Hampshire, I too am on the John Edwards grassroots campaign bandwagon right through my ancestral South Carolina, called "the Black Primary", and the other 47, right up to the Democratic Party convention next August in Denver. John Edwards all along has been addressing what's touching, and crushing, the majority of Americans, middle- and working-class/working-poor and poor. I scoffed when I read a Washington Post headline quoting George Bush saying how 'good' the economy looked. I was wondering what planet he was visiting or what he'd been ingesting. That was only about ten days ago. Now Bush has backtracked, acknowledging there are issues with the economy, and today CNN (MSM - mainstream media) reports we're in a recession since the final quarter of 2007. I hear all the candidates. I'm supporting John Edwards.

Michael Moore leaning toward John Edwards?

I got an email today with a very interesting "letter" (article) from Michael Moore in which he's definitely leaning toward John Edwards. Moore's article is entitled, "Who Do We Vote For This Time Around? A Letter from Michael Moore." He writes:

"...  And then there's John Edwards. It's hard to get past the hair, isn't it? But once you do -- and recently I have chosen to try -- you find a man who is out to take on the wealthy and powerful who have made life so miserable for so many.

A candidate who says things like this: "I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy." Whoa. We haven't heard anyone talk like that in a while, at least not anyone who is near the top of the polls. I suspect this is why Edwards is doing so well in Iowa, even though he has nowhere near the stash of cash the other two have. ...

Then he writes:

"... For months I've been wanting to ask the question, "Where are you, Al Gore?"

And then Moore refers to the earlier Edwards quote.

"... On second thought, would you [Gore] even be willing to utter the words,
"I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy"?" 'Cause the candidate who understands that, and who sees it as the root of all evil -- including the root of global warming -- is the President who may lead us to a place of sanity, justice and peace. ..."

Well, shut my mouth. We'll have to wait and see which way Michael goes next.

JOHN EDWARDS in Iowa and beyond: 2008 - 'crunch time' for U.S. democracy

Looking back at the tampered 2000 and 2004 U.S. elections from today, Tuesday, January 1st, 2008, it is crystal clear we now are down to the wire for democracy in America. No joke, folks. We need John Edwards for president as a veteran progressive elected leader. Edwards is also the only Democrat in the primaries with close-up, personal life experience recognizing and fighting the down-and-dirty neo-Confederate political culture that now - with the help of their allies up North and out west - has been spread to the whole USA. Bottom line, if you're anywhere in or near Iowa, or able to go there to help out, please help call and get out Iowa's local voters for John Edwards. Donations from U.S. citizens also are most welcome at his site. Happy new year, everybody!! www.johnedwards.com

Don't bother USA with facts? Dalits: India's own "Black" population

In Minneapolis in the late 80s or early 90s, along with two other persons of colour (Vincent who is Dalit and a U.S. Latina lady from St. Paul whose name I don't immediately recall), I initiated an "emergency" panel made up of the three of us to engage and question the Brazilian pedagogist, Paulo Freire. Interestingly, Mr. Freire's wife also sat in on the panel, next to her spouse, but I think she listened. Freire is the author of the classic, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The occasion was the afternoon session of an all-day adult literacy conference and the venue may have been Augsburg College. Vincent, the Mexican American lady and myself appeared to be the only persons of colour in attendance. Or at least that's the way the whole thing came off, which is why I proposed to the organisers the change in the scheduled afternoon session which eventually was accepted. Fast forward. 21 June of this year Washington Post (finally) ran a front-page article on the ongoing suffering still inflicted by society upon the Dalit people of India. For years I've wanted to discuss this with people like Deepak Chopra, Ravi Shankar, Sonia Gandhi (who is italiana, by the way), and all the "shris", yogis and yoginis running around Europe and the U.S. A couple of years ago I learned from a young Asian Indian woman living in the US that "desi" is a term by which some Indians and other south Asians prefer to call themselves these days. In certain circles - Silicon Valley par exemple - people from India have become quite "popular", along with yoga, the domestically infamous H1B U.S. immigration visas and 'outsourcing' of all kinds of formerly domestic consumer services, to places most of us never will see.

WAR as "tax", only worse, & the U.S. 2006 elections

We're into the countdown to the 2006 U.S. mid-term elections. Tuesday, Nov 7, is election day, and if you're registered, I urge you to vote. On t.v. one of the usual political talking heads tries to "remind" us that "if Democrats win, they'll institute taxes."

What the heck?! Is that supposed to be an argument?

Isn't war a huge, bloody, tax???

No amount of taxes or other money that any of us pays will bring back one life lost in this war. Don't forget to add in billions going to some rather shadowy private corporations to "rebuild" the country where the war is. Then we hear not much really is being built. So we don't even know where the money has gone. "Your tax dollars at work." But in the Washington, DC metro area - mainly suburban Maryland and northern Virginia - you hear from reliable sources that so many of the people with money to buy big homes work (or do contracting) for Defense Department and "Homeland Security". So please don't talk to me about Democrats and "taxes". Let's vote.

Caribbean heritage: "I met History once but he ain't recognize me"

Recently I read somewhere a scholar's observation that if you want to understand Britain's early colonies in the Americas you cannot make a distinction between life in the British colonial Caribbean and life on the British colonial North American mainland. Charleston, South Carolina's deep connections to St. Catherine's (now St. Kitt's) and Nevis are just one example. The people and their interactions were so totally linked. Part of what our histories and heritages tell me is we have a lot of "re-discovering" to do - not only of each other but of ourselves. I found a few things I like on this site of professor A. Waller Hastings - including Derek Walcott's quote. I feel I know what he's talkin' about:

“I met History once, but he ain’t recognize me” (Derek Walcott, “The Schooner Flight”). And an 1882 quote from British politician Sir John Seeley: "We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind."

A whole history of the things Britain (and France and Holland and Spain and Portugal, etc., etc.) did - not to mention the hard cash they stashed - but of which she now has so little conscious memory. I say this as one of tens of millions of people of colour from the Americas (and elsewhere) with what I'll call "our unclaimed ties to Britain" (i.e., ties Britain thusfar seems to refuse to recognise). So Seeley's quote sounds accurate to me.

Nor is all the Caribbean English-speaking or linked to colonial Britain: "... one of the early revolutionary critiques of colonialism, [was] that of Frantz Fanon, a French writer born in Martinique [part of the Caribbean] and educated to conceive himself as French.  However, his education in France and confrontation with French racism made him aware of the disorientation he experienced as a black man taught to behave “white,” and he responded in part by writing his influential tract, Black Skin, White Masks (1952). ..."

"... Among the first British colonies were those that later formed the United States, and foremost among these was Virginia (est. 1617) [actually it was 1607, with major retrospective activities in 2007] where the cultivation of tobacco, previously unknown in Europe, proved a boon to the British economy. Virginia contributed enormous amounts of revenue to the crown; .... duties on tobacco amounted to £421,000 pounds in the two-year period between 1699 and 1701 - one-fifth of all customs revenue during that period (7). ... Britain also developed economic interests in the West Indies. The first British settlement was in Barbados (est. 1627), which struggled at first until the possibilities of the sugar trade became apparent. The sugar economy led to other West Indian colonies, but the climate of the region made it unattractive to British settlers; even indentured servants and deportees lacked the physical stamina needed, so the slave trade was introduced to provide an appropriate labor force (the local population having already been devastated as a result of being the first point of contact with European civilization). ..." We come from this history that once was whole and now we and it are fragmented. And so it goes. Happy Caribbean American Heritage Month to all of us connected to this common history.

Immigration: the "one size fits all" problem

The other day a white American man "confided" to me, unsolicited, how he knows a number of other white Americans who he says "would sooner hire immigrants" than hire Black Americans. He added he didn't think this was happening "by accident"; that many or even most of these people know exactly what they are doing.

This reminds me of a conversation years ago in Minnesota. Another white American described to me how certain white Minneapolis & St. Paul employers were hiring Black Americans, Native Americans (American Indians), and Latinos in order to pay less than the hourly wage they would pay most whites.

These attitudes - de facto policies of not hiring Black Americans, and paying people of colour lower wages than whites for the same work - are not based on any consideration of "individual abilities" but are two related versions of the same old racism. In the national immigration debate who is discussing or even talking about this? The white American I quoted first is now in the U.S. but says he has lived abroad a lot - in Africa, and not as U.S. military. I suggested he find the courage to speak publicly about what he already knows that he knows.

This immigration morass is more complicated and more compelling than many let on, which makes it definitely worth thinking hard about and discussing and acting on with all the affected parties at the table, including Black Americans. So far this does not seem to be what is happening - certainly not enough. And though next to American Indians, Black Americans have been in America longest and have so much at stake, most of us are not being included in the public discussion and most of us are not in the highly charged politicking and lobbying process.

Color of wealth: what's the racial wealth divide?

The Color of Wealth is available June 2006. Subtitled "The Story Behind the US Racial Wealth Divide", authors include my girl Rose Brewer along with Rebecca Adamson, Meizhu Lui, Barbara Robles and Betsy Leondar-Wright.

Woman of colour and M.I.T.-trained economist Julianne Malveaux reviews TCoW: "... shows how contemporary wealth differences evolve from pivotal points in our history, and explains how public policy, even when well meaning, reinforces existing inequality. This book is an important contribution to critical work on race and economics.” Julianne's most recent book is Wall Street, Main Street and the Side Street: A Mad Economist Takes a Stroll.

The Color of Wealth press release explains that for every 100 cents (dollar) owned by an "average" US white family, an "average" US family of color has just 18 cents. "Why do people of color have so little wealth? The Color of Wealth lays bare a dirty secret: for centuries, people of color have been barred by laws and by discrimination from participating in government wealth-building programs that have benefited white Americans." This includes, for example, "post–World War II GI Bill programs [that] helped whites only—The Color of Wealth is the first book to demonstrate the decisive influence of government on Americans’ net worth."

"Great Society" Speech, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, Univ Michigan May 22, 1964

Friday, 22 May 1964 "... the "Great Society" is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor. ..." - Lyndon Johnson, 36th president of the United States of America

National Archives: Congressional records on slavery and the international slave trade

Interesting reading here; a link to the National Archives' holdings of US Congress records on American slavery and the international slave trade. If you want to know what the Continental Congress thought about enslaving Black people, or what congressmen said - on the record - about Haiti's fight for independence (doing just what the US already did), it's here.

Animal Farm? Pollution from livestock megafarms

How do people - and companies - raise pigs, chickens and dairy in Canada, France, Britain, Italy and Japan compared to the US? What would George Orwell ("Animal Farm") say about the impact that megafarms are having in the US? The US govt is starting a study to measure air pollution from chicken, hog and dairy farms. It's been a several years since news reports of pig farm pollution in North Carolina. It sounded pretty nasty and makes you wonder about the working conditions and who are the workers in this business. Are they low-income with families? Are there large numbers of women and/or Black Americans, Latinas and Latinos or maybe foreign nationals? This whole thing could help recruit a few new members to PETA or at least give us all an appreciation of vegetarianism and veganism. Or maybe part-time vegetarianism.

State of the Black Union on CSPAN!

My brother just shared with me that the annual, public, free SOBU conference - the State of the Black Union - sponsored by broadcaster Tavis Smiley, is now being televised on CSPAN. Tavis says there are 5,000 persons attending the conference in Houston, Texas, plus scores more watching nationally and internationally via CSPAN. Thanks bro. Check it.

Impostor: Richard Nixon, George Bush - What's the difference?

Now for a history moment. What's the difference between George Bush and Richard Nixon? In my book - Nixon was impeached. In November 1973 Nixon spoke to a large group of Associated Press editors in Florida, stating, "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook...." He added he was "not a crook." The American public disagreed. In 2006 it would seem reasonable that US citizens have a civic responsibility to be interested in knowing not only whether their president is a 'crook' but also whether he is competent. US citizens need to know whether our legislative branch (Congress) and the judicial branch (Supreme Court) of government are even exercising their check and balance functions. We're supposed to know who actually is running the US government, and whether or not those actions truly represent the will of the American people. If the answer to any of those things is no, we're in it deep. In October 1973 the Nixon administration appointed special prosecutor Archibald Cox to investigate the break-in at Democratic Party national headquarters then located in Washington's Watergate complex. (The late Frank Wills was the security guard who discovered the break-in.) Within days Nixon had decided to fire Cox. This led to October 20, 1973's "Saturday Night Massacre." The firing was temporarily halted by US Attorney General Elliot Richardson and deputy AG William Ruckelshaus as both chose to resign rather than obey the order to fire Cox. These days who would have that much integrity? Let's not mention courage. Enter Robert Bork, Nixon's Solicitor General in 1973. Later as Supreme Court candidate he was "borked."  After the demission of Richardson and Ruckelshaus, Bork voluntarily carried out the order to fire Cox. That was then and this is now, as another conservative by the name of Bruce Bartlett has published a rousing book titled Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. I have absolutely no nostalgia for Mr. Reagan or his "legacy", but unfortunately before long more of us probably will agree with the first part of Bartlett's premise. - "Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people." - Archibald Cox

"What About the People Who Can't Eat?"- The Injustice Index, Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

"With all due respect to gay rights or abortion - What about the people who can't eat??!" - Kristina Borjesson, Feb 3rd, 2006, speaking to a small, live audience at New York Open Center, broadcast on CSPAN2 Book TV. Editor of Feet to the Fire - The Media After 9/11: Top Journalists Speak Out.

Injustice Index US domestic stats from Drum Major Institute for Public Policy:

*pounds lost by George W. Bush in first 7 months of 2005: 8

*growth in number of hungry US households since 1999: 43%

*income at which a US family of 3 qualifies for food stamps: $20,376

*average yearly wage of "sales associates" at Wal-Mart: $14,787

*number of Wal-Mart employees in USA: 1.2 million

*net worth of five (5) Walton family heirs to Wal-Mart fortune: $77.9 billion

What if FDR met Bush?

A curious thought crossed my mind recently. What might Franklin Delano Roosevelt have thought had he ever met George W. Bush and engaged him in, um, conversation? Possibly even one about public social policy. Can one imagine the elite but also seriously social justice activist (especially in her appreciation of Black Americans and especially right there locally in Washington, DC) Eleanor Roosevelt in the same setting with Laura Bush? Equally fascinating considering that FDR and G.W. Bush share the same East Coast American social class (and no matter how much others constantly spin Bush's 'nouveau working class-cattle ranch' socio-economic and geographic pretentions), President Roosevelt must've known - or at least at some distance - the reportedly rather notorious Bush grandfather, Prescott, who allegedly organised and provided material financial and industrial support to Nazis in Germany - until some branch of the U.S. government "intervened". Are those accounts true? So many questions, so few answers, so little public discussion.

Bush, Inc: GOPgate - Haven't We Had Enough Already??

Mr. Bush - there's a lot more than 'background noise' going on over your head! Those two words are from yet another "brilliant" (...snicker...) George Bush performance to stonewall a journalist. This one occurred just yesterday in DC. I don't have the original question but Bush replied: "There's some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of speculation and opining. But the American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to." Maybe there really are still one or two Americans out there actually waiting for Mr. Bush to start. His job that is. Bush may be meeting certain expectations of his self-described "base" - the "haves and have mores" - but alot of us are sure he is not working on behalf of "the American people." If you happen to be an American - do you consider yourself better off today than you were five years ago? Yesterday I was reading a blog which alleges George and Jeb (Bush) are waiting for Wilma - the latest mega-storm bearing down on the southern US - to strike, presumably in Florida, in order to further distract the American public from the (constitutional?) crisis metastasizing in Washington. I was calling this Whitehousegate but it goes deeper so I'll call it GOP-gate. Much of the so-called 'Republican revolution' was engineered over the past three, even four decades, but it ramped up big time once Newt Gingrich jumped into the saddle with the 1994 Republican Contract with On America. The Grand Old Party doesn't seem to need to speak of that one anymore. Today's citizen anger inside the US is not only about Iraq nor just about the leak of classified information - i.e., the name of a US intelligence agent - and evidently by sources right there inside the White House, no less. This is not just about government-sponsored perversity at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib nor just Commander in Chief Bush's time-delayed response to a storm called Katrina. It's also not just war-making so elegantly combined with massive contracts gifted to political cronies, nor is it just the related hemorraging of the United States budget. It's not even just those fishy outcomes of two - count 'em 1, 2 - US elections. The problem is all these and more. Haven't Americans had enough of the dullard 'press conferences' combined with the lying, smirking, self-serving arrogance? And why has the outrage about this - overall - been far stronger in societies and countries other than our own??? Answer me that one. I'm checking a site, After Downing Street, where someone posted Bernard Weiner's fascinating piece, "Arguments for an Impeachment Resolution." Weiner has a site called The Crisis Papers. And I particularly like Jane Hamsher's quote at Huffington Post from one of her recent articles on investigator Patrick Fitzgerald where she remarks that Fitzgerald "... sees into the ugly, greedy, oozing heart of the NeoCon kleptocracy, its mafia-like structure and the all-too-cozy overlap between the war party and the profiteers..." Like I asked, haven't enough of us had quite enough of all this yet??

"After New Orleans" - Bush and his 'Haves' and 'Have Mores': Race and Class in the US, Americas, the World

“... Here we have the haves and the have mores. Some call you the elite; I call you my base.” That was George W. Bush announcing his truth at a Republican black-tie event in 2000. Try to visualise the past week if a few dozen of Bush's "base" had been trapped in post-Katrina New Orleans. A lot is being said - ANO ("after New Orleans") - about "race" and "class." A few folks and even a few Blacks are talking as though race and class were unrelated. What folly. Who's kidding whom? From Austria to Aruba to Asheville, NC - not only would that premise be untrue, it's what some of us call a bald-faced lie. This is not to say there are no upper middle class or rich Black folk in the USA. (Are those Black Americans "upper middle class" or "rich" compared to the majority of other Blacks? Or to Whites? ... A huge difference.) But a wealthy minority among Black Americans is another topic. And compared to rich whites, almost no rich Black Americans have inherited wealth. Most of them (not every last one) worked, saved, and invested for their wealth. They also must've been lucky. In a more global context, by and large, unlike some wealthy white Americans living abroad, those affluent Blacks buying exclusive real estate in Paris, Zurich or Central London are not Black Americans. I'm guessing most are continental Africans. Perhaps some are of Caribbean origin. Perhaps also Arab Blacks. I digress once again. The last thing is not the main point but I want to ask: Was even one Black person - one Black American from the USA (other than maybe a waiter) - in the room the night Bush bragged to his haves and have mores? I seriously doubt it. There is video of that crowd. The most famous version is included in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. I'm sure there's a list; somebody knows who was there. In the context of a "Who's Who of Class in America", some of us would be darned curious to know who was there.

George Bush's take-charge-white-guy dog & pony trip to New Orleans & Gulf Coast

Photo op time again. Right this minute my TV screen is filled with nine (count 'em, 9) take-charge-white-guys. Bush has just said that "out of the ruins of Trent Lott's house there's going to come another great house" and - I kid you not - "I'm gonna look forward to sitting on the porch." George Bush. His "bud" (buddy) and ex-chair of the mighty GOP - Haley Barbour - is now Republican governor of Mississippi. Oh yeah. Mississippi. Where a Black 14 year old, Emmett Till, was tortured and murdered, and where civil rights workers Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman were murdered, along with a whoooole lot of other Black Americans terrorised, raped, killed and chased from their homes. So I'm pretty sure Bush won't be rubbing shoulders with many average Black Mississippians. And I don't think they'll be protesting in the street. New Orleans could prove to be a very different story.

Katrina: Yet Another Bush news conference: "Don't buy gas if you don't need it"?

This must be the first time "Texas" 'oil man' George Bush has ever uttered these words: "Don't buy gas if you don't need it." These were his exact words as he stood alongside his Poppy (Bush) and that Democrat Bill Clinton, neither of whom spoke. Exactly what does this mean and for how long does Bush "mean" it? This really goes against "leave me alone" capitalism which reasons, "If you got the money - go for it." Nothing about water, food, and medicine being passed out to the desperate right this minute today. George Bush is as brilliant today as he was 2 whole days ago when he was still on vacation.

Bush Shamelessly takes Republican "New Southern Strategy" to Indiana Black Expo - and to Latinos

Today George Bush and GOP Chair Ken Mehlman took their 'dog-and-pony' show to Indiana and Indiana's Black Expo. Since I have family ties there Indiana also is a home to me. The Bush-Mehlman junket was part of what I'm naming the New Republican Southern Strategy. The 'strategy' seems pretty much to be an attempt to dilute or neutralise the Black vote while organising dissatisfied Whites. Those too are my own words. The tantalising question of what some White Americans may be or ought to be upset about - and at whom - will be subjects for future posts on this blog. The New Republican Southern Strategy extends well beyond the US South, though Indiana, which borders the state of Kentucky, culturally is not completely "Northern." The Bush-Mehlman Hoosier trip was arrogant and anti-historical in the way it targeted Black Americans. These are the same people who violated the voting rights of thousands of Black Americans before and on Election Day 2000. Now George Bush and Ken Mehlman have the gall to stand before Black Indianans asking for a political blank check. Forget it George. And by the way, since Republicans have yet another "strategy" to woo Hispanics - and try to divide them from Blacks - FYI - Latinos are not monolithic... and just to re-iterate: with most Black Americans THE GOP IS STILL BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE.

U.S. militarism

I've never lived in any other country as militarised as the US. Is constant, full-blown 'military preparedness' a normal way to live? Do Americans realise the tentacles being spread across the world in their names? We're busy waxing our SUVs and such. In some countries I've lived in the biggest military presence is the USA, though it's not US soil. I remember 1950's president Dwight Eisenhower's seemingly unheeded warning: Americans beware of "the military-industrial complex" (1961). Deaf ears... apparently drowned out by surround sound. I was deciding whether or not to blog this when what popped on the telly this a.m. but two - 2 - military commercials all in a row. These weren't your average, overkill ads for recruitment. The first was 'soft': a string of mostly middle aged to elder faces saying things like, "I'll never forget him," meaning others who died on military duty. Among the men was a single lady who managed reference to a 'her'. At the end was the word "Boeing" since they sponsored the spot. Next was a straight up, hardcore Northrup Gruman ad - not disguised by sentimentality. It showed 'men at work' on an aircraft carrier. It advertised "being ready" and some kind of high tech weapon system. In the past 40 years how much "ready" has ever been enough? They used gibberish techie jargon the ordinary public, including me, would not understand, though our taxes cover part of the bill. All this in less than 5 minutes. But we never see ads of our public schools that stand in ruin - with our children inside. Of American neighborhoods - mostly Black, whether middle, poor, or working class - disinvested and abandoned by Big Capital during the same last 40 years but now invaded by wealth and outsiders who by far are not Black. I'm sick of it all. Those of us who care have to change these things for the better.

U.S. President Eisenhower, 1961 - This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a