Mom & the Sioux People

The victory, which any right-minded person would hope holds, of the Standing Rock tribe over the corporations building the Dakota Access Pipeline is something to cheer in these bleak days for the U.S. Let's hope that it leads to scrapping the project altogether, since there's no way to realize it without crossing the Missouri River somewhere.

Can't help remembering how our mother, who had plenty else to think about keeping a household with four kids together, abidingly and nearly silently lent support throughout her life to the Sioux Nation. She knew that the people white conquerers, ravenous commerce & Capital had shafted the most were the Native people. Her donations were perhaps not much, but they were tokens of her consciousness of that fact. We miss you, Mom.

Fidel et Ali

The death of Fidel Castro conjures up the memories of nearly a lifetime for nearly everyone. And for dissident leftists everywhere, the brutality that comes with dictatorship – no matter how congenial the ideology behind it. But when I see the jubilation of all those pale-faced denizens of Little Cuba, I have to credit Fidel for all the revolution brought to the poorest of the poor on the island nation. Part of the exercise in reminiscence has brought me back to Muhammad Ali and his courageous resistance against the "good old American values" of war and racism. We all knew his quip regarding the Vietcong and name-calling to justify his draft resistance, I'd never heard this poem he read in 1971 on RTÉ.

Trumpland "diversifies"

In naming Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, Donald J. Trump is guaranteeing that secular U.S. education further declines, producing even more citizens with deficient learning to make reasoned choices for their future. As the NYT reports, DeVos is a militant advocate of vouchers for private and prochial schools, loves charter schools, and has "tried to strip teacher unions of their influence." And, of course, she has the time to do it, since she's married to the heir to the Amway fortune.

Meanwhile, on the diplomatic front, Trump is putting Nikki Haley up for U.N. ambassador. The South Carolina governor has virtually no international experience except if the fact that she's the daughter of immigrants.

But the Groper-in-Chief has diversified his rollout of cabinet choices at the level of gender. And the forces of the politically correct will toil to suppress any criticism, based on the mere fact of Haley and DeVos's sex.

Tim Wise to his 12-year-old daughter

One of the millions of expressions of the sadness people all over the country feel, but one that maps out once again the work to be done. Dry your tears, little one.

No Justice: No Peace

Nice job! Fifty years after Medgar Evers, we've now got Trayvon Martin killed with the killer free. So much for the "post-racist America" charade. –At least The New York Times has something on its front page this morning to comfort me about being from Oakland. –Oh, and Happy 14 juillet, France. Although you aren't much better on the social justice agenda. –What a world. "Humans."

Turkey & the "patriot" Act

So these two entities, as they are manifesting themselves in current event, have kick-started this blog. The courage of secular free-thinkers in Turkey heartens me. And the blatant audacious hypocrisy of the U.S. as it tries to justify its policy of integral surveillance sickens me. These two thing combined spur me to vent. So vent I will. Quote of the day (note to self: "Make a rubric for this as soon as you can figure out how to use this damned thing): Robert Mueller, FBI chief, in congressional testimony: "There are no American names in that lockbox. There are only numbers in that lockbox."

Snowden Fallout

So first we are reassured by Obama that they're not trawling content and now, today, we're told by NSA chief, Gen. Keith Alexander, that the outed program has foiled just dozens of terrorist plots.

Right, by analyzing metadata only?

Yeah, we're stupid and naive.