29 October 2016

Dispatches from Tyranosauric Petroleum's Global Empire

AGAIN I DID no writing specifically for OAN this week, and again – this time due to voluntary albeit unavoidable interruptions – I missed my self-assigned deadline. But the comments I posted elsewhere on the Internet are nevertheless perhaps worth reading.

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DAPL Mississippi Stand Update: Protesters Arrested on False Pretenses and Illegally Searched”: The head, like the organization's name, is written with the customary millennial contempt for precise language and is confusing enough it fooled a Reader Supported News editor into captioning the accompanying photograph as having been made in Mississippi when in fact it was taken far to the north in Illinois. The “Mississippi” in question is the river, not the state. Nor is the acronym DAPL – Dakota Access Pipeline – defined anywhere in the text, an omission corrected in the picture caption by the same RSN editor who got the locale wrong. But the story itself  and the accompanying video are much clearer – and far more troubling than sloppy syntax and geographical confusion:

...Two of our comrades, Cameron Kennedy and James McBride, were arrested on false pretenses on the East bank of the Mississippi River yesterday afternoon near the drill pad in Illinois that bores underneath the river...DAPL private security spotted (Cameron Kennedy) and James (McBriide) on a public road near the linchpin drilling operation and within three minutes they were surrounded and blocked by multiple Hancock county squad cars as well multiple DAPL security cars...Cameron denied consent to a vehicular search by Police, but... Private DAPL security guards began conducting the search (as)...Hancock Sheriff Scott Bentzinger...said, "They are going to do what they want." These are the first known DAPL related arrests in Illinois...The money of big oil has seeped into small towns and counties across the United States and has effectively hired the police as enforcers of the Dakota Access agenda.”

HERE, I NOTED, THE EMPIRE IS OMINOUSLY HONEST: More than any confrontation in my lifetime (1940-201?), the Dakota Pipeline struggle reveals the true, unabashedly racist/fascist (actually neo-Nazi) nature of today's United States.

Thus we learn the valiant efforts of our kinfolk who died or were wounded or otherwise suffered to save humanity from the original Nazi threat were all in vain.

It also demonstrates the utter futility of peaceful protest – as if, as in Harry Turtledove's alternative-history short story, the German Nazis won World War II, conquered the world, and when Gandhi attempted peaceful protest against their brutality, they killed him and all his followers – just as in the real world the Nazis exterminated all of the German pacifist White Rose Society.

All we can do now is recall the words of another man murdered by USian fascists, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who in a comment increasingly applicable to the USian Empire and its own unique brand of Nazism, warned that “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”


It will not happen in my lifetime, and probably not in the lifetime of any person now living. The plutocracy – made genuinely omnipotent by its technology – is infinitely more powerful than the feudal order that tyrannized Europe for 1,441 years, from the fall of Rome until the Russian Revolution.

But eventually – if our species survives capitalism – we may evolve a revolutionary ideology with enough discipline to triumph.

WHAT I DID NOT SAY, because I was approaching the 1500-character limit that governs RSN posts, is the DAPL authorities' use of so-called “private security” as goon-squads parallels the often-deadly practice of 19th and 20th century capitalists and thus presages the same sorts of capitalism-in-action vigilante violence exemplified by the lynching of Frank Little,  by the Ludlow Massacre  and by the Battle of Blair Mountain,  known locally as the Logan County War.

A partial listing of the men and women murdered in the USian Empire for daring to challenge our capitalist overlords is here.  And let us not forget to add the name of Karen Silkwood to this roll-call of the heroic proletarian dead.

There is also the fact, relevant to any such discussion as this, that history shows successful revolutions whether peaceful (Gandhi) or violent (Marx, Lenin et al) have four prerequisites (scroll down),  none of which are present in today's USian Empire.

OTHER SIGNIFICANT ELEMENTS I did not have the space to include (1)-that Hillary's silence on the DAPL struggle is yet another indication of her typically-capitalist contempt and hatred for all of us in the 99 Percent; (2)-that Obama's refusal to halt the obvious violations of First Nations' treaty rights and protesters' constitutional rights is yet another confirmation of the tyrannical capitalist agenda evident in his federalization and militarization of local police into a de facto national police force; (3)-that the apparent equipping of the pipeline goons with automatic weapons, toxic gas and other military equipment prohibited civilians is – if indeed it is occurring as alleged – a flagrant violation of federal gun laws that exemplifies the Nazi-like realities of capitalist governance (absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent and its vassals; total subjugation for all the rest of us); (4)- that governmental use of private security forces as goon squads parallels Germany's use of the freikorps and later the Nazi SA   to enforce its tyrannies; and (5)-that an identical maximizing of the 99 Percent's defenselessness – indeed our reduction to mandatory pacifism and compulsory victimhood – is, like Hitler's forcible disarmament of Germany's Jews, socialists and Communists, the sole purpose behind Hillary's promised campaign of forcible civilian disarmament.


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Bernie Sanders: I'm Going to Make Sure Hillary Clinton Implements Progressive Policies: Sen. Bernie Sanders, a loyal soldier for Hillary Clinton  since he conceded the Democratic presidential nomination in July, plans to push liberal legislation with like-minded senators with or without Clinton’s support if she is elected — and to aggressively oppose appointments that do not pass muster with the party’s left wing.”

NOT SO, SAID I: Sanders' belief he can wrest “progressive” concessions from the war-mongering Goldwater Girl Hillary – whose fanatically fundamentalist Christian “Angel of Death” persona is revealed via her intent to start World War III – is the pre-doomsday equivalent of the rich German Jews' fatally deluded belief their wealth would reduce Hitler's antisemitism to mere posturing...

Hillary with her Goldwater Girl arrogance has the same morally imbecilic “USA uber alles mentality as the generals (President) Kennedy defied.

Remember it was Goldwater, an Air Force reserve major general and thus one of Curtis LeMay's proteges, who wanted to nuke North Vietnam, which would have triggered instant war with the Soviet Union.

Clearly, Hillary has some twisted sense of loyalty to her original ideological role model and is bent on fulfilling his apocalyptic fantasies of global conquest, never mind the USSR is long gone and there is no alleged provocation by today's Russia that even remotely approaches that of the Soviet thermonuclear missiles in Cuba. (Which, by the way, were emplaced in retaliation for US emplacement of anti-Soviet thermonuclear missiles in Turkey.)

Apropos LeMay, without whose patronage Goldwater would never have been made a general, he “argued that the United States should launch 5,000 missiles on the Soviet Union...During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, LeMay wanted to bomb Cuba.” 

Obviously, like LeMay and Goldwater, Hillary believes the US can conquer not only Russia but China as well, never mind the millions who would die as a result. Another belief undoubtedly driving Hillary is that most of humanity is 'surplus' – i.e., not exploitable for profit – and should thus be exterminated.

Such are the genocidal inputs that form the core of Hillary's apocalyptic ideology.


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Letter From El Salvador: 'I Was Jailed for a Miscarriage': nside the women’s prison in El Salvador, set on the outskirts of the capital in a dangerous neighborhood called Ilopango, at least 21 women are serving sentences for abortions they say they never had. All of these women claim they are jailed for miscarrying their babies

ALAS I WOULD EXPECT NO BETTER: Abrahamic religion – in this instance Christianity – and its misogynistic, sadistic god in action: not just the opiate of the masses, but the electric cattle prod that subjugates the masses as well.


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JILL STEIN: Many of our readers are strongly advocating the candidacy of Jill Stein. The problem is that, polling at 2% nationally, she has no chance whatsoever of being elected. In fact, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, running under the Libertarian banner, has triple the supporters Stein has, and he doesn’t even appear to be totally coherent. So it isn’t really a candidacy  at all that Stein’s supporters are promoting, it’s more of an ideal or a lecture on political responsibility. The candidacy provides the platform for the ideology.”

MY RESPONSE: Quoth Mr. Ashe: “Painting the Democratic candidate as the devil to achieve those ends is ludicrous.”

Alas, based on her oft-declared intent to start World War III (and thereby not only exterminate our species but reduce the entire planet to a radioactive death-sphere inhabitable only by cockroaches), Hillary truly IS “the devil.”

Worse, actually, because in the Abrahamic theologies (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), it's not the devil who inflicts the Apocalypse; its their sadistic god. With whom we know Hillary identifies because of her long association with the Family.

(Again the damning relevance of Jeff Sharlet's work, The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power [Harper: 2008]. Read it, acknowledge the endless nightmare Hillary and her fanatical fundamentalist co-conspirators intend to inflict on us all and be very, very, very afraid.)


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As Election Day Nears, Military Hawks Circle To Promote New Wave Of War: Though the hawkish stance of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has been too often ignored  this election season, new reporting on Thursday highlights how her presumed win in November will likely usher in a more aggressive, bipartisan foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond.”

HAD I SPOKEN ALOUD, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A SNARL: how many times must it be said before Moron Nation awakens to the apocalyptic truth? A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for World War III, the thermonuclear extinction of our species and the reduction of Planet Earth to a radioactive death-sphere habitable only by cockroaches.


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How Power Works: Heather Ann Thompson’s book Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy is a detailed study of the inner workings of America. The blueprint for social control employed before and after the crushing of the Attica revolt is the same blueprint used today to keep tens of millions of poor people, especially poor people of color, caged or living in miniature police states. Thompson meticulously documents the innumerable ways the state oppresses the poor by discrediting their voices, turning the press into a megaphone for government propaganda and lies, stoking the negative stereotypes of black people, exalting white supremacy, ruining the lives of people who speak the truth, manipulating the courts and law enforcement, and pressuring state witnesses to lie to obstruct justice. Her book elucidates not only the past but also the present, which, she concedes, is worse...Poor people of color have been robbed of the most elemental forms of justice and basic constitutional rights. But the state, in the age of deindustrialization, has no intention of stopping there. These forms of social control, so familiar to poor people of color, will bear upon all of us.”

TO MY APPLAUSE: Thus Mr. Hedges and Heather Ann Thompson confirm what has hitherto been denounced by ignorant or deluded pseudo-Leftists as a 'racist' notion: that the purpose of the Obama Administration's federalization and militarization of the local police and his mostly unreported but nevertheless devastating cuts in food stamps, Medicare. Medicaid and other elements of the socioeconomic safety net is the methodical reduction of impoverished or rebellious whites to the statutory wretchedness already imposed on the African-American, Hispanic and First Nations communities.

Meanwhile – now under obvious (and obviously clandestine) kill-orders – the federalized local police continue their campaign of murder against those minority communities – again blacks, Hispanics and First Nations – whose histories show they are most likely to rise up against the Empire's ever-intensifying savagery.

Such is capitalist governance in action: absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent and its Ruling Class vassals, total subjugation for all the rest of us – and death to any of us who dare resist.

(Thank you, Mr. Hedges and Ms. Thompson for daring to expose these hideous truths about what the United States has become, and thank you Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese for having the 24-karat chutzpah to publish their work. A clenched-fist salute to each of you.)


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US Soldiers Told to Repay Thousands in Signing Bonuses From Height of War Effort: In most cases, when an employer pays a signing bonus to attract new workers, that payment is understood to be essentially unrecoverable. But the Pentagon has a different understanding — and it's ordering the California National Guard to claw back thousands of dollars  paid to soldiers who re-enlisted to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.”


HENCE MY SUGGESTION: The One Percenters and their Pentagon vassals who are behind this outrage need to remember what happened when Tsar Nicholas II pissed off most of the soldiers in the Russian Army and most of the sailors in the Russian Navy as well...

Veterans are NOT people to screw over.

Indeed the primary reason the military draft was ended was the huge fear by the One Percent and its Ruling Class the draft was training the revolution.

And now the pompous plutocrats are alienating the very soldiers they hired to keep themselves and their obscene wealth secure?

Astounding!

Maybe the Empire truly is teetering on the brink of collapse.


LB/27 October 2016


-30-


24 October 2016

Hillary Clinton's War of Extinction or Donald Trump's Holocaust: Either Way the United States Is Doomed

NO WRITING SPECIFICALLY for OAN this week – and my apology for the fact I unavoidably missed my self-assigned Thursday 20 October deadline – but it's been one hell of an interlude. First the National Weather Service forecast a “historically significant” hurricane-force storm for 15-16 October that alarmed some house-owning friends of mine enough they asked me to stay with them so that – should the weather have materialized as destructively as forecast – I would not have been subject to the post-Katrina horrors of survival in a low-income housing facility that would no doubt have been deliberately abandoned by our governmental overlords in (yet another) act of opportunistic genocide.

Spawned by Typhoon Songda, the storm veered away from Tacoma but inflicted major damage elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

Next there was the dreadful head-and-chest cold – the most debilitating cold I have had in years – I caught from a charmingly loquacious three-year-old, the youngest member of a two-child-plus-mother-and-father family who were also staying with my friends because the roof of the family's rental house had begun severe leakage just at the onset of the storm and the landlord's response, typical for tenants-have-no-rights Washington state, was the usual “fuck you if you don't like it move elsewhere.” Again my apology for the delay, but such is life amongst the lower quartiles of the 99 Percent.

That said, here below are links to eight Internet reports and comment-thread responses that may be of some significance in the final approach to this election in which we the people are asked by our capitalist overlords to make the impossible choice between the national doom of the new Holocaust proposed by the Republican Party's Donald Trump or the planetary doom of the thermonuclear apocalypse threatened by the Democratic (sic) Party's Hillary Clinton.

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Dennis Kucinich, the outspokenly pacifist, Left-leaning Ohio congressman whose seat was maliciously gerrymandered out of existence by Democratic (sic) and Republican collaborators, has penned a scathing denunciation of Hillary  entitled simply “War or Peace.” Originally appearing on the World Without War website,  where it is available in any number of languages including Russian and Chinese, it was surprisingly re-published by Reader Supported News, a nominally bold alternative website that since the Democratic (sic) National Convention has become disappointing for the censorious support it has provided Clinton, but now may finally be – or let us hope – returning to its former courageously open-minded self. Whatever, “War or Peace” is by far the best – that is, the most pointedly revealing and succinct – work of its kind this abysmal presidential campaign has yet generated:

The most consequential statement by Secretary Clinton...was her pronouncement that a no-fly zone over Syria could “save lives and hasten the end of the conflict,” that a no-fly zone would provide “safe zones on the ground,” was in “the best interests of the people on the ground in Syria” and would “help us with our fight against ISIS.”

It would do none of the above. A US attempt to impose a no-fly zone in Syria would, as Secretary Clinton once cautioned a Goldman Sachs audience, “kill a lot of Syrians,” and, according to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dunford, lead to a war with Russia. If the US has not been invited into a country to establish a “no-fly zone” such an action is, in fact, an invasion, an act of war.

It is abundantly clear from our dark alliance with Saudi Arabia and our conduct in support of jihadists in Syria that our current leaders have learned nothing from Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya as we prepare to plunge head-long into the abyss of a world war.


THE ENSUING DISCUSSION,  inexplicably ignored for several hours by Hillary's disruptive legions of paid trolls, was thus fondly reminiscent of the mutually informative dialogues that characterized the pre-presidential-campaign RSN at its best. I contributed the following:

Frankly I think Hillary is truly mad – insane – with a combination of Goldwater Girl ambition (to be the first ever conqueror of Russia) and a fanatical vision of herself as the angel of death triggering the Christian Apocalypse (“better dead then Red” because this way – so they believe – all their sadistic god's chosen zealots go directly to heaven).


No, I am not exaggerating: read pages 272-277 of Jeff Sharlet's The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Governance (Harper: 2008), which expose Hillary's clandestine collaboration with Sam Brownback (and therefore presumably also with all the other JesuNazi fanatics in the fundamentalist leadership cabal).


Were she not herself a secret believer in the Christian “End Times” dogma, she would never have been accepted by Brownback and his ilk.


Moreover, were the cause of her war-mongering merely her debt to the military-industrial complex, she would want to perpetuate the profits generated by the new Cold War she and Obama have started. But instead – her intent undeniable – she wants thermonuclear Armageddon: that is, the end of all sentient life on this planet.


As I said, her warmongering proves she is insane: a homicidal maniac with her finger moving ever closer to the doomsday button.


And – yes – I am frankly terrified, many times more so than during the Cuban Missile Crisis: not for me, as I am old and chronically ill, but for all the world's children and young adults.

Later, in response to a fellow poster's observation Hillary is “deeply hypnotized by the patriarchal mindset,” I added my “hear, hear” of agreement: 

Were I a believer in alien visitation, which I most assuredly am not, I would have to regard the sudden imposition of patriarchy (via talking snakes, “divinely” inscribed tablets, burning bushes, fiery wheels, etc. ad nauseam) as the intergalactic equivalent of the smallpox-infested blankets with which European Christians began the destruction of the American First Nations. In either case, the result is deadly: in the latter to the indigenous cultures of the American continents, in the former – unless we are saved by some genuine miracle – to all sentient life on this planet.


(If perhaps the UFO-philes are correct in their assumptions, then it follows logically the creatures who infected us with the toxins of patriarchy are some species of super-cockroach, since only roaches can survive in the thermonuclear wasteland the suicidal madness of patriarchy now threatens to make real.)


All of which, whether one rejects or accepts the notion of extraterrestrial intervention, raises the most valid question of this entire election: who – or what – does Hillary Clinton truly serve?


And no, I am not being the least bit facetious.

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Stephen Eric Bronner, a political science professor at Rutgers University, acknowledges in his “Our Hillary” she stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders and represents a dire threat to world peace. But he claims she will “support equal pay for equal work, a woman’s right to choose, civil liberties...an attack on Citizens United...fund Planned Parenthood, restrict gun sales, and inject a degree of civility into a polarized environment. There is also,” Bronner asserted, “symbolic importance in electing a woman to the highest office,” never mind her presidency could in fact mean the end of all life on earth. Hence Bronner insists “any rational person (should) vote for Hillary.”

I RESPONDED ACCORDINGLY:  Hillary's feminism is entirely bogus, a Big Lie to win the votes of identity-politics zealots and (tragically misinformed) women.


The truth is that Hillary clandestinely collaborates with Sam Brownback and others of his JesuNazi ilk for “tunneling beneath...the wall between church and state” (Sharlet, ibid., page 275).


In other words – again the difference between her public and private positions – Hillary is a closet theocrat, a secret fanatic intent on imposing the Christian version of Sharia on the United States, complete with zero-tolerance prohibitions of abortion, extra-marital sex, homosexuality, trans-sexuality and gay marriage (which let us not forget she publicly opposed until she changed her public position in 2013).


As to her private position, since she still regularly attends prayer meetings with the Family, we can assume it is at least as hostile to women and sexual minorities as it was prior to 2013.


Relevant links providing additional data on Hillary's 24-year association with The Family and its unabashed reverence for Adolf Hitler are herehere,  and here.

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Plutocratic Forces Crippled Democracy, And Why It’s Up To Us To Fight Back” The following is an excerpt from Ralph Nader's new book, Breaking Through Power (City Lights: 2016). In the 1920s, near the end of his spectacular career as our country’s most prominent fighter for working people, labor leader, presidential candidate, orator, and all-around progressive Eugene Debs was asked by a reporter: 'Mr. Debs, what do you regret the most in your lifelong struggle for justice?' Debs looked at him and replied: 'What do I regret the most? I regret that the American people can have almost anything they want under our Constitution, but they seem not to want much of anything at all.'”

MR. NADER, I responded, has written the best historical summation I have yet seen of how capitalism triumphed to become the most lethal tyranny in our species' history. Indeed he proves beyond argument the essence of capitalism is both genocide and ecocide. We should all salute him for his courageous text and salute Popular Resistance for the bravery required to publish it.

That said, what is tragically missing here, most assuredly not from Mr. Nader's text but obviously, just as Eugene Debs observed, from the USian majority's will, is any truly effective spirit of resistance. Now, with USian fascism an undeniable reality, only the smallest minorities – most of them non-white – are sufficiently disciplined to believe and act upon the notion “It's Up To Us To Fight Back.”

Meanwhile the vast USian majority is obviously so utterly subjugated they in their craven submissiveness are increasingly indistinguishable from the “Good Germans” whose submission to Adolf Hitler led to our species' deadliest war to date. And now, in the likely outcome of the 2016 presidential election, we the (methodically disempowered) people are being led by an unabashed tyrant into a war from which there will be no survivors save cockroaches..

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Extremist Militias Recruiting in Fear of Clinton Winning Election, Activists Say: Dwindling services lead to a sense of abandonment. The right can easily step in and provide both a clear political narrative to explain this, and a set of simple-seeming solutions...'The Patriot movement is attracting people who feel disenfranchised...The same dynamic has been driving the election.'”

MY RESPONSE WAS blunt and to the point: There would be no “Extremist Militias” had the Democratic (sic) Party not betrayed the 99 Percent by becoming the party of forcible-disarmament Republicans.

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Half of US Adults Are Recorded in Police Facial Recognition Databases, Study Says:” Whether they are suspects or not, “about half of all Americans are pictured in a digital 'perpetual line-up,'  composed of databases handled either by the FBI or local police departments, the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law Center finds in a new study published Tuesday.”

MY (PREDICTABLE) RESPONSE: How many times must it be said? The ONLY reason for the uniformed police and the secret police to have this technology is to facilitate mass arrests.

Wake up, people! THINK. What does that technology – particularly in combination with Total Surveillance – tell us about the the intentions of our overlords?

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Black Children Punished for Anthem Protests: After young 11 and 12-year-boys of the Beaumont Bulls football knelt during the (national) anthem to protest police violence against Black youth, their local executive board canceled their entire football season, suspended the coaching staff, and threatened to arrest their parents if they attended any future games, practices or events.”

I HAD NO comment – what could I possibly add to this report beyond pointing out it is yet another defining moment in the USian Empire – but I post it here because a friend rightfully sent it to me and asked me to disseminate it to as many persons as possible.

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New York Police Sergeant Shoots Dead Mentally-Ill Black Woman: In the latest incident of police killings of Black people in the U.S., a New York officer Tuesday evening shot and killed 66-year-old Deborah Danner, who was mentally ill, because she was waving a baseball bat at him to which he responded with deadly force instead of following protocol and firing his taser gun to neutralize her.

NOT MUCH TO say in response to this atrocity either, save to point out its similarity to a notorious incident that occurred while I still lived and worked in the City:

Sounds like another Eleanor Bumpurs case.  And I would bet it has exactly the same outcome. 

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Watchdog: EPA Action to Protect Flint Residents From Lead Was Delayed 7 Months: The Environmental Protection Agency had the authority and information to issue an emergency order protecting residents of Flint, Mich., from lead-tainted water a full seven months  before it did so, an EPA internal investigation has concluded. 'It is clear that EPA intervention was delayed,' the report from the EPA's inspector general states.”

SAID I: ANOTHER classic example of how the Obama Regime “protects” cities with African-American majority populations – with exactly the same genocidal opportunism we saw demonstrated in the Bush Regime's post-Katrina “protection” of New Orleans.


Where then – from the perspective of those of us who are black, Hispanic, First Nations or merely chronically impoverished – is there any difference, particularly in the body count, between what the Democratic (sic) Party does to us and what the Republican Party does to us?


Really, what does it matter who wins the White House, the wanna-be Hitler named Trump or the wanna-be Hitler named Hillary? We the (lower-income) People are dead either way.

LB/23 October 2016