Professor Patrick Lumumba: Make Africa Great!

Professor Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba is a Kenyan who served as the director of Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission from September 2010 to August 2011 and is currently the director of The Kenya School of Law, a position he has held since 2014.

He is also an advocate of the High Courts of Kenya and Tanzania and law lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Nairobi.

Listen & learn...

How We Fight White Supremacy

 

Writers Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin explore the revolutionary possibilities of Black resistance - as a daily necessity in a culture entrenched in White supremacy, a source of solidarity and shared struggle, and an enduring critique of oppressive economic and social hierarchies at the core of American society. 

 Akiba and Kenrya wrote the book "How We Fight White Supremacy: A Field Guide to Black Resistance"

Fighting Fascism in an Era of Lies by Henry Giroux

We do not live in a post-truth world and never have. On the contrary, we live in a pre-truth world where the truth has yet to arrive. As one of the primary currencies of politics, lies have a long history in the United States. For instance, state sponsored lies played a crucial ideological role in pushing the U.S. into wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, legitimated the use of Torture under the Bush administration, and covered up the crimes of the financial elite in producing the economic crisis of 2008. Under Trump, lying has become a rhetorical gimmick in which everything that matters politically is denied, reason loses its power for informed judgments, and language serves to infantilize and depoliticize as it offers no room for individuals to translate private troubles into broader systemic considerations. While questions about truth have always been problematic among politicians and the wider public, both groups gave lip service to the assumption that the search for truth and respect for its diverse methods of validation were based on the shared belief that “truth is distinct from falsehood; and that, in the end, we can tell the difference and that difference matters." It certainly appeared to matter in democracy, particularly when it became imperative to be able to distinguish, however difficult, between facts and fiction, reliable knowledge and falsehoods, and good and evil. That however no longer appears to be the case.

Angels Among Us

.

A teacher from a remote, poverty-ridden, village in Kenya, Peter Tabichi, a member of the Franciscan religious order, won the 2019 Global Teacher Prize. He was announced as the world's best teacher and was awarded $1 million for his outstanding work with his students. This clip highlights his story.

The founder of the prize, Sunny Varkey, says he hopes Brother Peter's story "will inspire those looking to enter the teaching profession and shine a powerful spotlight on the incredible work teachers do all over Kenya and throughout the world every day".

Dr. Paul Street: Reflections on the Absurdity of the U.S. Constitution

“The nation is already descending into yet another preposterous, precisely time-staggered quadrennial major party big money candidate-centered electoral extravaganza—one that could very well re-elect an aspiring fascist leader to the imperial presidency. It is an apt moment to reflect on the all-too-rarely noted problem that the United States is authoritarian by constitutional design. U.S. politics and policy are poisoned beyond all democratic recognition by an explicitly anti-egalitarian charter drafted and passed by 18th Century slaveholders and merchant capitalists for whom popular sovereignty was the ultimate nightmare. Street will discuss how U.S. politics and policy are badly distorted by the nation’s exceptionally durable charter and how we might finally and productively stop playing “Simon Says” with militant anti-democrats like Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.”~~~Open University of the Left 

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

Paul Street is an independent radical-democratic policy researcher, journalist, historian, author and speaker based in Iowa City, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of seven books to date: Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004); Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York: Routledge, 2005); Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living Black Chicago History (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008); The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Paradigm, 2010); (with Anthony DiMaggio) Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics (Paradigm, 2011); and They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Paradigm, 2014). Paul writes regularly for Truthdig, Telesur English, Counterpunch, Black Agenda Report, Z Magazine and Dandelion Salad.

Poet's Nook: "When We Get Out of the Glass Bottles of Our Ego" by D.H Lawrence

                                      When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
   when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forests again,
    we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we do not know ourselves.

                                               Cool, undying life will rush in,
                                 passion will make our bodies taut with power,
                 we shall stamp our feet with new power and old things will fall down,
                      we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.


                

Musings

\  

Curious Sources Of Humanistic Religion by David Edwards

(Source: Media Lens)

Some comments so perfectly capture the blinkered naivety of corporate journalism that they remain fixed in the mind for years and decades. Twenty years ago, I was leafing through a copy of the Guardian when this jumped out at me from journalist Simon Hoggart:

'all religion is bonkers and irrational. If it wasn't bonkers and irrational, everyone in the world would believe it, and it would be called common sense'. (Simon Hoggart, 'Bad karma from Vlad the Impaler,' Guardian, 2 February 1999)

Like me, you may have a good deal of sympathy with the first part of this statement – most of what we call 'religion' is indeed 'bonkers and irrational'. But before we cheer too loudly, let's run the assertion past Noam Chomsky's All-Purpose Reality Checker for understanding 'mainstream' culture:

'The basic principle, rarely violated, is that what conflicts with the requirements of power and privilege does not exist.' (Chomsky, 'Deterring Democracy', Hill and Wang, 1992, p.79)

Chomsky's argument is that important facts, ideas, sources, indeed whole frameworks of understanding, are simply ignored by 'mainstream' media, politics and culture when they conflict with elite interests. Our media alert archive is packed with numerous shocking examples.

Trump's War of Words Claims Real Victims: Can We Now See This Man for Who He Really Is? by Chauncey DeVega

Maya Angelou is correct. When a person shows you who they are, you better believe them. They know themselves much better than you do.

Donald Trump is a hero and flag-waver for racists and bigots.

Trump's life mantra is "never apologize." He followed this rule on Sunday. In response to last Friday's terrorist attack by a white supremacist against Muslims in New Zealand -- attacks whose perpetrator claimed Donald Trump as an inspiration -- Trump chose to publicly down on his racism and bigotry.

This began on Friday when Trump, speaking about conditions on the Mexican border told reporters, "People hate the word ‘invasion,’ but that’s what it is."

These words flow from the same political imagination as the manifesto of the alleged mass murderer in Christchurch, New Zealand. That is also the worldview shared by many of Trump's key advisers, past and present, including Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon,  Michael Anton and Sebastian Gorka, as well as a wide swath of Republican voters.

Later in the day Donald Trump minimized and downplayed the threat to the United States and the world represented by white supremacists and other right-wing terrorists, a hive mind of hate that national security experts are now describing as "White ISIS."

On Friday, Trump told reporters, "I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems." This is not true. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have described white right-wing domestic terrorism as a greater threat to the United States than radical Islamic terrorism.
On Sunday, Trump took to Twitter and continued to reaffirm his racist authoritarian bonafides, backing up embattled Fox News hosts Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson:

Bring back [Judge Jeanine.] The Radical Left Democrats, working closely with their beloved partner, the Fake News Media, is using every trick in the book to SILENCE a majority of our Country. They have all out campaigns against Fox News hosts who are doing too well. must stay strong and fight back with vigor. Stop working soooo hard on being politically correct, which will only bring you down, and continue to fight for our Country. The losers all want what you have, don’t give it to them. Be strong & prosper, be weak & die! Be true to the people that got you there. Keep fighting for Tucker, and fight hard for [Pirro]. Your competitors are jealous — they all want what you’ve got — NUMBER ONE. Don’t hand it to them on a silver platter. They can’t beat you, you can only beat yourselves!

This was more than cheerleading for two of his favorite Fox News propagandists. Trump's Sunday Twitter broadside actually fits into a much larger pattern of menace and violence.

 

Bernard Harcourt, a professor of law and political science at Columbia University, locates these new comments by Donald Trump in a broader context in an essay published last November by the New York Review of Books:

President Trump makes constant use of the language and logic of the “new right,” a toxic blend of antebellum white supremacy, twentieth-century fascism, European far-right movements of the 1970s, and today’s self-identified “alt-right.” And his words and deeds have empowered and enabled an upsurge of white nationalists and extremist organizations — from Atomwaffen to the Proud Boys to the Rise Above Movement — that threatens to push the country into violent social conflict.
Amplified by social media, this new right rhetoric is inciting unstable men to violence through pipe-bomb mailings and temple shootings. It is crucial for the American people to identify and oppose this radicalization, in order to steer the country back to a steadier path. ...
Everything about Trump’s discourse — the words he uses, the things he is willing to say, when he says them, where, how, how many times — is deliberate and intended for consumption by the new right.

The phrase "political correctness," used so often by Trump and his supporters, was first weaponized by influential white supremacist author and strategist William H. Lind.

 

Lind's version of "political correctness" is a conspiracy theory where "Marxists" seek to brainwash and manipulate (white) people (especially white men) into "surrendering" their supposed interests to nonwhites, gays and lesbians, non-Christians, women, and other "enemy" groups.

Sociologist James Scaminaci III, an expert on the tactics and strategies of the right-wing movement, discussed Lind's theory of "fourth-generation warfare," or 4GW, in a 2016 interview with Salon. This style of war is primarily psychological in character, and intended "to undermine and destroy the legitimacy of the state actor" and to use "psychological warfare techniques to remove affective support from the state actor."

 

A sub-component of 4GW is William Lind’s conspiracy theory of the internal war for supremacy between what he called “cultural Marxists” and their ideology of “Political Correctness” or “multiculturalism” and the “traditional American culture” or “Judeo-Christian culture.” Lind argued that “cultural Marxists” hate America’s “Judeo-Christian culture” and were seeking to destroy it. The losers were to be rich, white, conservative, Christian, heterosexual men.
This is where religious supremacy and white supremacy link up, and where Trump is attempting to fuse in his own person.
Internally, this clash of cultures is weaponized as propaganda campaigns designed to delegitimize whole classes of peoples:  Blacks and civil rights and voting rights; women and reproductive rights; the LGBTQ and gay rights; workers and labor rights; environmentalists and environmental laws and science.
Outside the country, the clash of civilizations is between Christianity and Islam. ... One can draw a straight line from the anti-Muslim views of ... Lind in the early 1990s to the Islamophobia of today.

Trump's Twitter broadside on Sunday was just the most recent of many obvious and direct threats of political violence made by him against his (and by extension his supporters') "enemies."
Several days before that, Trump (again) threatened violence if he is removed from office, does not win the 2020 presidential election, or his agenda is somehow stopped by the Democratic Party. He told the right-wing website Breitbart:

I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.

In his Sunday Twitter proclamation Donald Trump defended Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro because he shares their hateful values.

 

Carlson has been widely criticized and condemned for the racist, sexist and misogynist comments he made on a morning drive-time radio show between 2006 and 2011, as recently discovered by the watchdog group Media Matters.
Carlson described Iraq as "a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semiliterate primitive monkeys -- that’s why it wasn't worth invading."
Encouraged by this "safe space" for racism and sexism, Carlson summarized his view of human history:

 

The country's so fucked up on the subject that getting a white man, I mean everyone's embarrassed to be a white man I guess, that's a bad thing.... I don't have a problem with it. I don't really think of the world in those terms but, you know, white men, you know, they've contributed some, I would say... Well, I mean creating civilization and stuff. ...

Carlson professes to believe the ludicrous lie that "white men" created "civilization," which is the central premise and foundation of the white supremacist ideology that motivated one man in New Zealand to kill 50 people last Friday at their houses of worship.

As for Jeanine Pirro, she is under fire for her part in the controversy surrounding Rep. Ilhan Omar. Last week on the latest episode of "Justice With Judge Jeanine," she said: "Omar wears a hijab, which according to the Quran 33:59, tells women to cover so they won’t get molested. Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?"

This is textbook prejudice and bigotry against Muslims, as well as a willful misreading of the Constitution. Pirro's show has been temporarily suspended by Fox News, which presumably fears another expensive backlash against the network and its advertisers.
As Harcourt warns in his New York Review of Books essay:

 

We are watching, in real time, a new right discourse come to define the American presidency. The term "alt-right" is too innocuous when the new political formation we face is, in truth, neo-fascist, white-supremacist, ultranationalist, and counterrevolutionary. Too few Americans appear to recognize how extreme President Trump has become — in part because it is so disturbing to encounter the arguments of the American and European new right. But we must — and we must call Trump out for deploying them to gain power. ... Trump is methodically engaging in verbal assaults that throw fuel on his political program of closed borders, nativism, social exclusion, and punitive excess.

Donald Trump's presidency has been described as a vacuum of leadership, a deficit and emptiness that is most apparent during times of tragedy and crisis. Such an observation is imprecise. It is true that Donald Trump is a nadir in the history of the American presidency and the country's democracy. However,  his regime is not an emptiness or a void but rather the embodiment of everything wrong with America's political culture, society, collective values and psyche, as well as the personal and moral failings of too many millions of its citizens.
______________________________________________________________________________
Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

Why The World Needs an African Ecofeminist Future by Fatimah Kelleher

  


We need an “African ecofeminist future”. And by we, I don’t just mean Africa, I mean everyone.
I say this for two reasons. Firstly, Africa is now the “final frontier” for economic models that have already ecologically compromised the rest of the planet. Not long ago touted as the world’s “basket case” but now covetously viewed as its future breadbasket, a sustainable alternative in Africa is possibly the final bastion against global environmental degradation.

Secondly, women and feminist activists are already on the front line of the battle for ecological sustainability on the continent. Their everyday struggles, uncompromised commitment, and willingness to envision a radical future in which justice, equity and rights harmonise with environmental sovereignty have the potential to save us all.

So what is ecofeminism, and why African ecofeminism specifically? Ecofeminist activism grew out of feminist, peace, and ecology movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Intersectional ecofeminism also underscores the importance of gender, race, and class, interlinking feminist concerns with human oppressions within patriarchy and the exploitations of a natural environment that women are often more reliant upon but also its guardians in many cultural contexts.

But whilst the broader movement has sometimes been bogged down in a divisive debate over whether gendered associations with nature essentialise women, movements engaged in feminist and ecological activism in Africa have simply gotten busy building strategic and political alliances between women, nature, and protection of the environment.

Wangari Maathai and her Green Belt Movement arguably epitomise the essence of African ecofeminism and the collective activism that defines it. As the first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2004, Maathai highlighted the close relationship between African feminism and African ecological activism, which challenge both the patriarchal and neo-colonial structures undermining the continent. Lesser -known activists, however, have also long been at the intersection of gender, economic, and ecological justice.

Ruth Nyambura of the African Eco Feminist Collective, for example, uses radical and African feminist traditions to critique power, challenge multinational capitalism, and re-imagine a more equitable world. Organisations like African Women Unite Against Destructive Resource Extraction (WoMin) campaign against the devastation of extractive industries. Meanwhile, localised organising is also resisting ecologically-damaging corporatisation: in South Africa, Women Mapella residents fought off land grabs by mining companies; in Ghana, the Concerned Farmers Association, led largely by women, held mining companies accountable for pollution of local watersheds; and in Uganda, women of the Kizibi community seed bank are preserving local biodiversity in the face of the commercialisation of seeds by corporate multinationals.

These activists on these front lines are fighting back, but they are also offering visions of alternative development models that demand both gender and economic justice. In doing so, they ask us all to reconsider what constitutes “progress” in the first place.

Women, the environment and biodiversity

African women are often at the heart of communities dealing with huge changes related to economic development and shoulder the burden of environmental mismanagement. These concerns are multi-layered, and range from agrarian justice through to extractivism, but one issue that particularly clearly demonstrates the importance of African ecofeminism today is the threat to seed biodiversity.

This is an increasingly worrying concern. In the 20^th century, an alarming 75% of crop biodiversity was lost, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, and this trend has continued since. In the last decade, for example, Europe and Central Asia have seen 42% of their terrestrial animal and plant species decline in population size, partially due to intensive agriculture and forestry practices, with more natural resources being consumed than produced.

Currently, the Green Revolutions seen in Europe, the US and, more recently, parts of Asia – which have involved moving from subsistence agriculture to industrialised farming, cash cropping and mono cropping – remain at the forefront of thinking around economic growth and food security. However, there is increasing evidence that this corporate-driven vision, which has dominated development trajectories over the last century, has failed on several fronts.

Not only has it failed to address hunger despite overproduction, it has indirectly reinforced biodiversity losses and therefore nature’s more holistic contributions to a sustainable environment. Before the Green Revolution in India, for example, there were roughly 50,000 varieties of rice. Within 20 years, this dropped to just 40. This has resulted in the loss of crops once part of diverse food baskets as well as a degradation of farmers’ ownership and control over seeds.
Seed sovereignty is therefore a key pillar of ecofeminism, and the relationship between seed biodiversity and women is particularly critical. Women, who are often central to domestic food production, are also frequently the custodians of seeds that reproduce balanced, varied and nutritional diets. In Africa, female farmers often preserve diverse (and indigenous) crops that remain off the cash-cropping agenda, from myriad varieties of spinach and cassava to the less well-known acha, a paleo grain native to parts of the Sahel.

Among other things, women’s indigenous knowledge around seeds and their selection, storage, and planting of diverse and often hardy crops increase climate resilience, placing them right on the frontline of the battle against climate change. By contrast, extensive mono-cropping has actually made agriculture more vulnerable to pests, disease and drought, often leading to a dependence on the pesticides and fertilisers produced by the same companies that sell the commercial seeds now being pushed across Africa.

Indeed, commercial seed capture on the continent is on the rise, with corporate-invested pushes towards regulations that authorise the planting of only selected seeds. Hybrid seeds aimed at maximising yields in particular are being prioritised. This is deeply problematic as hybrid seeds cannot be replanted, meaning farmers must buy new ones each season. Through this, farmers lose their autonomy, while the women who’ve been custodians of seed knowledge for centuries are disempowered. The commercialisation of seeds is therefore not just reducing variety and undermining climate resilience, but also compromising food sovereignty as a small cabal of multi-nationals monopolise the market.

Visioning something better

An info-graphic making the social media rounds a few years ago highlighted that if everyone on the planet consumed like in the United States, we would need 4.4 Planet Earths. The reality that accepted models of development are unsustainable is no longer news to most. Meanwhile, there is a growing public awareness around threats to biodiversity and climate resilience as well as of the tensions that have arisen as a result of corporate-driven agricultural agendas.

And yet, most African governments remain anchored to the idea of a Western-inspired green revolution, and are beholden to donor support (from the West as well as China) that is often invested in agribusiness expansion. Policy spaces still rarely welcome the voices of smallholder farmers and those working at the grassroots, leaving alternative positions and challenges to orthodox models of economic development on the margins of regional and global tables where decisions are brokered.
Undeterred, however, ecofeminists continue to fight at the coalface of this struggle. From Ghana to South Africaand beyond, women-organised seed-sharing initiatives continue to resist corporatisation. Activists like Mariama Sonko in Senegal continue to lead on agroecological farming initiatives for localised and sustainable food production.

Ultimately, the crisis of Africa’s current trajectory is a crisis of visioning: the inability of the continent’s leaders to imagine a process of development less destructive, more equitable, less unjust, more uniquely African, and – quite simply – more exciting. The positions, passions, and holistic approaches offered by African ecofeminism provide key ingredients for an alternative to the capital-centric ideals of economic growth that have defined progress so far. These have not only wreaked havoc on global ecological sustainability but have failed to deliver a genuinely equitable or just society anywhere. It’s time to start dreaming and delivering an African future that can do better than that.

{Source: African Arguments}

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

Fatimah Kelleher is an international women’s rights and social development consultant  working with a variety of international, regional, and national stakeholders in Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean.
Twitter:@fatimahkelleher

Musings

                                         

On the question of his own Enlightenment the Master always remained reticent, even though the disciples tried every means to get him to talk.


All the information they had on this subject was what the Master once said to his youngest son who wanted to know what his father felt when he became Enlightened.

The answer was:  "A fool."

When the boy asked why, the Master had replied, "Well, son, it was like going to great pains to break into a house by climbing a ladder and smashing a window and then realizing later that the door of the house was open.

                                                    Source: Anthony de Mello

How The Military Industrial Complex is Driven by Capitalism

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Poet's Nook: "Comment#1 (Who Will Survive in America?)" by Gil Scott Heron

The time is in the street you know. 
Us living as we do upside down. 
And the new word to have is revolution. 
People don't even want to hear the preacher spill or spiel 
Because God's whole card has been thoroughly piqued. 

And America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey. 

THE NI#@A FACTORY: HOW TO DESTROY A PEOPLE

 “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ― George Orwell

Over the years, I have engaged many young folks about the state of Hip Hop & how it has in some ways gotten better in terms of production/mixing  techniques, but in other ways worse (commercially speaking) in terms of its one-dimensional lyrical content & hyper-sexualized & violent images projected & disturbingly normalized worldwide. Many of our young defend it by saying things like, “I don’t care about the lyrics, it’s the beat, man!”, “You’re too serious! It’s just music” , ” That’s just how things are in the streets–it’s real no matter how ugly it is so accept it as is” or this, which is oftentimes true, “Progressive rap is OK but the beats are whack so I don’t care for it”.

I gotta breathe….feels like we’re under attack…know what I mean?

I stumbled upon this excellent presentation produced by Arrested Development’s Speech last night & was quite impressed with it. This three part series exposes what he considers to be the deeply destructive campaign to devalue the perception of Blacks not only in the US, but across the world.
I was curious about the title of this series & did a little digging. I discovered that the late great poet/musician/activist Gil Scott-Heron (considered to be the Godfather of Rap by many music historians) wrote a book with the same title in 1972.  The Nigger Factory is a powerful parable of the way in which human beings are conditioned to think. I am sure when Speech did this series, he had this book in mind as the parallels are striking, thematically.

I would highly recommend to all to share this series with the younger generation. We have to shift the direction we’re heading in….feel me?

Seeds of Destruction

 


F. William Engdahl is an American German freelance journalist, historian and economic researcher. In the eye-opening lecture, he goes into some detail about GMO - genetically modified organisms; Monsanto; international politics of patenting plants and animals; central governance of all food production; controlling human birth rates and depopulation programs 

 To understand the real causality to the state of the world today, we need to understand the bigger picture of of the global governance and the motivation behind the economic and political systems in order to align the choices and actions we as human beings make in our everyday lives.

To contact Mr. Engdahi, click here

In Conversation: Chauncey DeVega & Chis Hedges

Chris Hedges on Bernie Sanders' "Race Problem" and America's Broken Politics of Spectacle and Corruption 

 In yet another thought-provoking episode of the Chauncey Devega Show , one of my favorite public intellectuals, Chris Hedges, explains how the Michael Cohen hearings before Congress are just another symptom of how America's political leaders--both Democrats and Republicans--are corrupt and live in their own reality, why Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are hated for telling too much truth, and warns about the strangle hold that Christian fascists have over the United States through theor unholy alliance with Donald Trump. 

 And Chris Hedges is also very direct about how Bernie Sanders has a "race problem", one that is fundamentally rooted in the fact that most white liberals actually have no real and meaningful relationships with black people or other nonwhites. 

 Chauncey's wit it hilarious & always on point. If you're pressed for time, skip to the 24:40 mark in the link above to go straight into the conversation.

Musings

"The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim - nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements [BIS] in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations ... Each central bank sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

~~Carroll Quigley , "Tragedy and Hope"

What Does It Take to Destroy a World Order? (How Climate Change Could End Washington’s Global Dominion) by Alfred W. McCoy

Once upon a time in America, we could all argue about whether or not U.S. global power was declining. Now, most observers have little doubt that the end is just a matter of timing and circumstance. Ten years ago, I predictedthat, by 2025, it would be all over for American power, a then-controversial comment that’s commonplace today. Under President Donald Trump, the once “indispensable nation” that won World War II and built a new world order has become dispensable indeed.

The decline and fall of American global power is, of course, nothing special in the great sweep of history. After all, in the 4,000 years since humanity’s first empire formed in the Fertile Crescent, at least 200 empires have risen, collided with other imperial powers, and in time collapsed. In the past century alone, two dozen modern imperial states have fallen and the world has managed just fine in the wake of their demise.

Black Sheep

.

A ten-year-old Nigerian boy was stabbed to death on his way home from school one day in London. This mindless act of violence in the neighborhood stirred up fear within the heart of another Nigerian mother of two young boys. She knew that the victim could easily have been one of her sons. And so it was that two months later, the small family moved out of London in search for a better place to live where the boys would be ‘safe’.

Once at the new location, Cornelius noticed that the people in the neighborhood were all white and they openly stared at him with disdain as if he were in the wrong place. One little boy took it a step further and called him names and made monkey sounds as he walked by.

It didn’t take long for young Cornelius to realize that the area was run by two families who were openly racist with clear Nazi tendencies.

After getting beat up while a group of onlookers cheered, Cornelius decided that the only way he would survive was by becoming one of them. And so he went to extreme measures and changed himself physically in order to try to fit in and be accepted by them. It wasn’t that he hated his blackness; he just didn’t want to be rejected because of it.

Eventually he became friends with the racists and they no longer saw him as a black person but as one of their group because he channeled his anger in the same way that they did. 

Poet's Nook: "Revelation" by Dag Hammarskjöld

(


From Markings) 


In the point of rest at the center of our being, 
we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. 

Then a tree becomes a mystery, 
a cloud a revelation, 
each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses.


The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us
 a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.

We Know What Hate Looks Like: Standing With Ilhan by Abby Zimet

 


Amidst the ongoing, breathtaking hypocrisy of rabid charges of anti-Semitism - aka daring to criticize America's toxic complicity with Israeli war crimes - heedlessly leveled against her, often from down-and-dirty bigots, Ilhan Omar is all done apologizing. And well she should be. Even as the outrage machinery grinds on, African-Americans, progressive Jews and many others have rallied to support her. The House reportedly still plans to issue its hollow, ugly rebuke of "anti-Semitism," but pushback has grown, it's been delayed, and thanks to the Congressional Black and Progressive Caucuses it may also condemn anti-Muslim sentiments, because today we evidently have to say these things. The Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of over 50 organizations, have charged that criticisms of Omar, Angela Davis and other black progressives speaking out for Palestinian rights seek "to regulate behavior (and) mute independent Black political voices." Others have called out the willful inaccuracies of Omar's critics, noting that AIPAC is of course a Zionist, not Jewish lobby whose politics are abhorrent to many Jews. From Deadspin's David Roth, "Pay attention to who the people are pretending not to understand that."

Above all, argues Phylllis Bennen, the criticisms are "a travesty" because they are unsupported by fact. To understand that, we have only to listen to what Omar said, first defending herself to colleagues - "I am told everyday that I am anti-American if I am not pro-Israel. I find that to be problematic and I am not alone. I just happen to be willing to speak up on it" - and at a progressive town hall at D.C.'s Busboys and Poets, where she was joined by Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Pramila Jayapal and Mark Pocan to "represent the voice of the people who have been silenced for many decades." As a Muslim, a refugee, a black woman, Omar stresses, "I know what intolerance looks like." She describes death threats, mosque bombings, gas stations in her state where the bathroom walls read, “Assassinate Ilhan Omar.” "I know what it means to be someone whose ethnicity is vilified. And so, when people say, 'You are bringing hate,' I know what their intention is. Their intention is to make sure that our lights are dimmed...That we lower our face and our voice...What people are afraid of is that there are two Muslims in Congress that have their eyes wide open, that have their feet to the ground, that know what they’re talking about, that are fearless."

Sarah Kendzior, The View From Flyover Country

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A scholar and journalist based in St. Louis, Kendzior was alert to the struggles of America’s disaffected heartland well before the 2016 election. Writing on income disparity, labor exploitation, racism, xenophobia, and other conditions of the post-employment economy, Kendzior so acutely identified the conditions that led to Trump’s victory that she’s been credited with being the first to predict it.

Originally published in 2015 as an ebook, this collection of essays written for Al Jazeera English between 2012 and 2014 has been updated to reflect the transformation of the U.S. under the Trump administration, including considerations of authoritarian tactics, the media, voting rights, technology, and Russian interference. Throughout her penetrating critique, Kendzior reminds us that to solve our problems we must first discuss them openly and with compassion.

The Sacredness of Donald Trump by Dan Corjescu

Emile Durkheim in his The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, revealed the profound insight that society under the guise of religion worships itself.

Thus, Egyptian pyramids, Greek temples, Roman basilicas, Medieval cathedrals, Renaissance churches, and many other religious artifacts of all times and places are testaments to humanity’s thinly veiled delusions of self-love.

But what of our time? What is sacred to us? Whom do we worship?

Another insight of Durkheim’s that might help us answer this question is his assertion that as traditional religions’ influence waned a “cult of the individual” took its place. In other words, society began to attach sacred significance to the singular status of the individual in society. Interestingly, this idea finds its nuanced counterpoint in the Hegelian notion that, over historical time, mutual respect and individual rights accrue to the individual ultimately giving expression to higher forms of rationality both in individual life and, crucially, in a well organized state itself in harmony with the emancipated individual.

Alas, it seems that Durkheim’s vision has proven more prophetic than Hegel’s.

Thus, the ubiquitous social practice of taking a “selfie” would probably not have surprised Durkheim very much. In it, he would have quickly apprehended an advanced state of the “cult of the individual”. Indeed, a hypertrophied sociological state of obsessive self-involvement. A culture whose members have fallen through their own mirrors and have erected themselves as the ultimate idols at the other side.

Yet, when not digitally adoring themselves our macro-manipulated and micro-manipulating fellow mini-idols occasionally do take the time to worship “officially” sanctioned idols such as “movie stars”.

These stars represent the desires, dreams, fears, aspirations, and ambitions of millions if not billions of people on this planet. Such are some of the functions of Gods.

One of these lesser stars, Donald J. Trump, through his signature brashness, flashiness, and gladiatorial glitz captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of disgruntled mini-idols. They too wished to publicly strut their frustrations with what they perceived to be the state of the nation and society. They dreamt of a simpler time of patriarchy and power. No matter that they themselves were often the victim of these twin evils; but through a careful orchestration of the symbols of hearth and heart it all feels good. Thus, the capture of narcissistic emotions trumps rational argumentation in the Age of the Selfie.

Narcissism and Nostalgia are the twin sacred pillars of our Pontifex Maximus (a term used by Roman Emperors) Donald J Trump. He is a virtuoso in their use and misuse. Most importantly, however, his grotesque inauthenticity validates the white-hot authentic feelings of his followers. The warped mask of the grand clown ignites the bonfires of righteous indignation of the mini-idols raging against their growing societal marginalization and cultural impotence.

Wrong or right, they, in a sense, worship Trump, although they would be the first to deny such an assertion as preposterous and even blasphemous. Yet, in an age of the apotheosis of the self-obsessed individual is it so surprising that the collective Id of the disgruntled should have found a mocking self-image and sadistic substantiation of itself in the repressive (not so small) hands of power and plutocracy?

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Dan Corjescu is a Romanian-Brazilian poet living in Sofia, Bulgaria who writes verse in English as well as in other languages. You can reach him at  @dan_corjescu

Poet's Nook: "The Devil Teaches Thermodynamics" by Roald Hoffmann

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(In this poem the Nobel-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann — who was also a literary artist — addresses the human longing for permanence, and religion’s illusory assurances thereof, in a universe we know to be governed by impermanence and entropy~~Maria Popova)

My second law, your second law, ordains
that local order, structures in space
and time, be crafted in ever-so-losing
contention with proximal disorder in
this neat but getting messier universe.
And we, in the intricate machinery of our
healthy bodies and life-support systems,
in the written and televised word do declare
the majesty of the zoning ordinances
of this Law. But oh so smart, we think
that we are not things, like weeds,
or rust, or plain boulders, and so
invent a reason for an eternal subsidy
of our perfection, or at least perfectibility,
give it the names of God or the immortal
soul. And while we allow the dissipations
that cannot be hid, like death, and — in literary
stances — even the end of love, we make
the others just plain evil: anger, lust,
pride — the whole lot of pimples of the spirit.
Diseases need vectors, so the old call
goes out for me. But the kicker is that the struts
of God’s stave church, those nice seven,
they’re such a tense and compressed support
group that when they get through you’re really
ready to let off some magma. Faith serves up
passing certitude to weak minds, recruits for
the cults, and too much of her is going to play
hell with that other grand invention
of yours, the social contract. Boring
Prudence hangs around with conservatives,
and Love, love you say! Love one, leave
out the others. Love them all, none will love
you. I tell you, friends, love is the greatest
entropy-increasing device invented by God.
Love is my law’s sweet man. And for God
himself, well, his oneness seems too
much for natural man to love, so he comes
up with Northern Irelands and Lebanons…

The argument to be made is not
for your run-of-the-mill degeneracy, my
stereotype. No, I want us to awake,
join the imperfect universe at peace with
the disorder that orders. For the cold
death sets in slowly, and there is time,
so much time, for the stars’ light to scatter
off the eddies of chance, into our minds,
there to build ever more perfect loves,
invisible cities, our own constellations.

Sociopath in the White House

  

Lance Dodes is a contributor to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. His chapter makes the case that Trump suffers from a dangerous sociopathic disorder. He sits with Raw Story's Tana Ganeva for this eye-opening interview:


Tana Ganeva: Following what was largely seen as a failed summit with Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump said he believed the dictator when he said he hadn’t known about Otto Warmbier. Do you see strains of Trump’s sociopathy in this?

Lance Dodes: Mr. Trump is a sociopath, in that he meets every diagnostic criterion for the official diagnostic term “Antisocial Personality Disorder.” The fact that this is a personality disorder, rather than simply a single symptom such as anxiety or depression, means that all his actions are signs of this severe, continuous, mental disturbance.

To understand his actions, it is essential to keep in mind that sociopaths have only one goal: to enhance themselves, and that in pursuing their self-interest, they lack both normal human empathy for others and a normal human conscience. Cheating, conning, lying, stealing, threatening are all done with no remorse.

When stressed with facts that would require them to admit failure, or even that others know more or are more capable than them, sociopaths lose track of reality, becoming delusional with insistence on the truth of what they psychologically need to maintain their superior view of themselves. Indeed, nobody matters except to the degree they can serve the sociopath’s personal needs.

That’s why loyalty is demanded, but as soon as an associate disagrees, the sociopath turns on them with a fury; there was never a real relationship to begin with.

Mr. Trump’s denial of the facts about Mr. Warmbier is consistent with his sociopathy. He ignores reality, is unremorseful about lying and does not hesitate to sacrifice the feelings of others such as Mr. Warmbier’s family. We don’t know exactly why he lied in this case, but one possibility is that Mr. Trump has heavily promoted his relationship with Kim as evidence of his superior ability to manage world tensions and thinks that confronting Kim would interfere with that, hence personally diminishing Mr. Trump. In any case, Mr. Trump’s absence of feelings for Mr. Warmbier or his family is the same as his absence of feelings for the disabled reporter he mocked, for religious and racial minorities, for children separated from their parents at the border and on and on.

Tana Ganeva: What made you first consider that Donald Trump is a sociopath?

Lance Dodes: Mr. Trump has a long history that proves his diagnosis. If you consider the 7 traits that define Antisocial Personality Disorder in the DSM-5, he meets every one of them:

1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors.

2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying … or conning others for personal profit or pleasure

3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead

4. Irritability and aggressiveness

5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others.

6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations

7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

Tana Ganeva: What’s the danger of having a sociopath in charge of the US?

Lance Dodes: Sociopathy is the most serious mental disability possible for the President. Other conditions do not lead to continual disregard for the welfare of others, lying, cheating, and repeated loss of reality under stress.

The bogus argument made by some that Abraham Lincoln is known to have suffered with depression, so Mr. Trump is not different, fails on this point. Lincoln’s depression did not make him cruel or indifferent to the feelings of others, cheat, lie, lose track of reality when stressed, or have a need to be an absolute ruler over everyone.

There are two major risks from Mr. Trump.

First, there is a serious risk that he will start a war to distract the country from his multiple failures and his attempts to become a one-man ruler. This is most likely to occur as he is stressed by challenges to his position as President. Other tyrants have plunged their nations into war, sometimes by creating an international incident as an excuse, to avoid internal disputes and solidify power.

Second, there is a serious risk of his destroying democracy in this country. He has already eroded it by attacking the principle of balance of powers, attacking the judicial system and the Congress, attempting to gather all power to himself. He has tried to destroy our free press by claiming that its criticisms of him are “fake news” and that a free press is the enemy of the people. These are well-known tactics of would-be tyrants, and are signs of sociopathy with his single-minded concern for himself and absence of conscience or concern for the feelings or lives of anyone else.