Op-Ed

Iraq was saved from ignorant subhuman barbarism by a gentlewoman named Gertrude at the time that the civilized nations of the world were, in a quite advanced and sophisticated manner, slaughtering their young men in a project now called the First World War. 

Because the Arabs were too backward to be allowed to govern themselves, or even to contemplate creating a world war, and because tribes and ethnicities and religions never really garner much loyalty or support that can't be wiped away with a good cup of tea or a few clouds of poison gas, and because the French were too dumb to know where the oil was, it became necessary for the British to install an Iraqi leader who wasn't Iraqi, through a democratic election with one candidate running.

Every juvenile prison must be immediately closed and all of its prisoners freed.

Oh. Oh. Oh! That sounds too drastic and simplistic and revolutionary.

We talk about being reformist or revolutionary as if it were a personality choice. Yet we also talk about being scientific, about being reality-based. Unlike reactionary climate-denying racist creationists we claim, most of us, to recognize such phenomena as climate change and to act on them (leave aside for the moment whether we're really acting appropriately on that one).

The science has long been crystal clear: juvenile prisons are worse than nothing.  They increase rather than reducing crime.  In our failure to abolish them, we -- and not the children we torture -- are the seemingly hopeless recidivists.  

We spend in the United States $88,000 on average per year to lock a child up, compared to $10,652 to educate a child.  We have over 66,000 children locked up, 87% of them boys, and our police arrest 2 million juveniles each year.

If war were inevitable, there would be little point in trying to end it. If war were inevitable, a moral case might be made for trying to lessen its damage while it continued. And numerous parochial cases could be made for being prepared to win inevitable wars for this side or that side.

Writing recently in TheNation, Chris Hayes drew an intensely unnerving parallel between the use of fossil fuels as an energy source and the use of slave labor — not a moral parallel, but a financial one, though money and morality have a perversely symbiotic relationship. Where there’s money to be made — especially enormous quantities of it — moral justifications come awfully cheap.

Hayes points out that the movement to end dependence on fossil fuels, drastically reduce carbon emissions and reverse global warming faces a financial hurdle of staggering proportions: “. . . the total amount of known, proven extractable fossil fuel in the ground at this very moment is almost five times the amount we can safely burn,” he writes. Possession of this unexcavated carbon is claimed by global corporations: It’s theirs to pull out of the ground, and it’s worth . . . uh, somewhere between $10 and $20 trillion.

The American Condoleezza Rice, 60, Iraq War architect, and the French Christine Lagarde, 58, International Monetary Fund managing director, have little in common beyond being women of power who have contributed to the misery of millions of people they never cared to meet. And now they have another quality in common, cowardice under fire, albeit only verbal fire after they were invited to speak at college commencements.

Rutgers University invited Rice to speak (for $35,000 and an honorary degree) and Smith College invited Lagarde (compensation undisclosed).

Last month, they emptied the storage locker and took all the displays to individuals’ homes. On Saturday, an immense funeral pyre consumed the
6,800 wooden tombstones.
 
Members of the Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition  (NWOPC) have decided they will no longer mount their “Arlington Midwest” memorial to the Iraqi and Afghan civilians and American soldiers killed in over a  decade of war and occupation.
 
It cost about $1,000 a year to store the massive display, but mostly it’s ending because for some time now, nobody with a highly visible acre of land has been willing to offer their property to set it up.  Fact is, when you ask people on the street, just about everyone says the  wars are over – except for a heartbreaking number who respond, “What war are you talking about?”
 

Georgia State Jim Crow Style Graduations

The systematic practice of discriminating against and segregating Black people, especially as practiced in the American South is called “Jim Crow”. This practice is still alive and well in Georgia. How do I know this you say? In 2009 the Montgomery County High School in GA continued to have two prom nights, as all the years before with the first prom night for “White Only” students and the second prom night for “Black Students”. The Black students, of course, weren’t allowed to attend the “White Only” prom (remind you this was in 2009) however the White students could and some did attend the “Black Prom” against their parents’ wishes. The white parents of Montgomery County High School have made it clear that they don’t want their white children “mixing” with black children in a “social environment”. One white mother stated “those niggers aren’t going to grind on my daughter”. Another said “We’re not having any mixed children in our family”. This was said at a “meeting” at one of the white parents’ home to discuss the situation with several students/parents.

For those of you who don’t know it, aftermath means: result, consequences, outcome, upshot, repercussion, and the after effects of an event or action. In other words…what happens after a thing occurs.

The aftermath of electing a Black President in America should come as no surprise to anyone. At least not to those who haven’t been wearing blinders to the fact that racism is and has been alive and well in America regardless of the outward appearances to the outside world and even they aren’t fooled.

The rise in the number of different hate groups in America has risen so much that, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2012 the KKK chapters dropped from 221 to 152 in one year. Did you know that the Ohio-based Brotherhood of Klans was the second-largest Klan association in the country, with 38 chapters? And to think President Obama won Ohio electoral votes both times.