Web Letters | The Nation

'Drones, Missiles and Gunships, Oh My!' Welcome to the 2012 London Olympics

Better protest!

I walked my bike over to a BP gas station, to fill up my tires. You guessed it, they wanted $$$ for their air. Screw that… but as I walked away, pushing my bike, I saw an ad for winning a free trip to London for the Olympics at the gas pumps. I walked two more blocks and filled up my tires for free at Union Cab (a worker-owned and -operated taxi company). On my way back, I stopped at BP (big polluter) and found out that in order to win the trip you have to purchase $10 of gas. Then I thought, no way BP (big pigs) is an official sponsor. Then I read Zirin’s post! Once again, thank you, Dave. Recall Walker!

Defending Israel (and Waiting for a Miracle)

The end of a “miracle”

By any standard the establishment of Israel in Palestine was an outstanding, unprecedented and a never-to-be-duplicated political cum military achievement for the twentieth century!

An unprecedented Judeo/Christian Zionist/colonialist/imperialist alliance—with Jews of divergent-to-conflicting political orientations from all over the world joining forces with declining colonialist and rising imperialist states of divergent political persuasions ranging from American imperialist to the communist USSR—provided Jews with a “safe haven” or an “advanced military base” in the geographical and spiritual midst of of the Middle East: Palestine.

The Zionist/Jewish dream cum imperialist long-term historical Western-Christian strategic objective was implemented through the dislocation, dispossession, disfranchisement and subjugation (DDD&S) of the majority of the indigenous population of the coveted land: Muslim and Christian Palestinian Arabs, 80 percent of the pre-conquest total population!

Israeli colonialization of Palestine launched and announced a new form, a new mode, for the birth of states and nations, which added to DDD&S the twin novelties, untried by apartheid South Africa, of importing emigrants after racial/confessional pre-selection and the denial of the indigenous population’s right to return to their homeland and to repossess their homes therein.

The impact of this “achievement” was cataclysmic and earth-shattering to  the region’s Arab population, with after-shocks that overran and traveled further unto the whole Islamic world community, leading to a case of unprecedented world polarization: Arab-Muslim/Jewish-Christian Western (imperialist); the very nemesis of the alliance that supported the colonization of Palestine in the first place.

I contend Israel will vanish through the same mechanism that gave it birth in the first place: a universal doctrinaire alliance in a severely polarized world.

As much as Israel’s birth gave rise to joyous celebrations and untold human suffering, its demise will give rise to joyous celebrations and major suffering, while proving an ipso facto biological/historical premise: the inevitable failure, the inevitable rejection of the transplant of alien bodies, by non-compatible indigenous recipient bodies.

Should history, geography and demography turn out to be the only decisive and life-giving and life-sustaining factors in the rise and death of nations, Israel will cease to exist sooner or later!

Wisconsin's Recall

Defeating Walker’s divide-and-conquer strategy

As I read and listen to folks around our great state talk about what they want for Wisconsin, there are many common threads. However, Governor Walker’s closed-door government by special interests is not our idea of a democratic government. Their goal is to grab power, control the government, and grab all the money for just a few people, while selling this as a means to benefit us all. Like most of us, I want an open government where ideas to move our state forward are offered up to us for discussion so that we may all ponder them and offer our ideas to improve them to make them the best laws possible for all of us Wisconsinites. Being open to ideas is also how we will create jobs.

This June recall election will simply give us Wisconsinites the feedback on how many people have woken up enough to recognize the current agenda of tyranny that Governor Walker adopted from the out-of-state right wing. Whatever the June election results, I have complete faith that, as time moves on, more and more people in our great state will wake up to the reality behind the current political deception.

Governor Walker’s divide-and-conquer strategy has historically worked for many groups in the United States. Governor Walker and his like have negatively messaged to us the term “public employee,” who is supposed to be an enemy to all. Though this message is working for some right now, I think we Wisconsinites are smarter than the present Republican-ultra politicians give us credit for. More and more folks are realizing that a “public employee” is really the police officer, the teacher, the librarian, the firefighter, the highway worker, the human services worker, etc. These people are not our enemies, they did not create the financial mess; they are our community… our first line of help and hope. These people are our neighbors and our friends. I ask you, What kind of person would try to make them our enemies?

Beyond Stop-and-Frisk: Toward Policing That Works

Zimmerman and the NYPD

While it is always nice to hear politicians discussing problems that actually matter, especially during a presidential election cycle during which meaningful conversations are typically overshadowed by polarizing party touchstones that matter little to the general population, Mr. Stringer’s April 23 article on The Nation’s website about Stop and Frisk misses some important points. Stringer, like many political figures in New York City—de facto or elected—is unwilling to train his critical eye on certain events closer to home.

A few weeks before the death of Trayvon Martin, a different unarmed African-American teenager in the Bronx, NYC, was racially profiled, deemed suspicious, chased down and then executed in his own home, while on his knees, in front of his grandmother and 6-year-old younger brother. His murderer, though, was one of New York’s “Finest”—an officer from the NYPD. This is not to minimize the death of the young Mr. Martin, but if we are talking about policing, why do we feel the need to tortuously seek out incidences of vigilantism when the state and city provide plenty of useful examples already? Is Ramarley Graham’s death somehow less heinous, perhaps even justified, because he was killed by a white policeman? An officer who, by the way, is still getting a paycheck from the city? How can a would-be mayoral candidate support New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg in the latter’s condemnation of Stand Your Ground, when the police department that he seeks to control is trained to shoot first and ask questions later?

Trayvon Martin’s murder was not an isolated incident. US society fears young men of color, and this fear is reinforced by state practices like stop-and-frisk that deem all young men of color reasonably suspicious and therefore not entitled to basic human rights and freedoms. Although there is no empirical evidence supporting claims that stop-and-frisk prevents crime, in fact the only empirical evidence on the subject supports the view that the policy has a negligible effect, the NYPD makes it a standard practice perhaps because it improves the perception of safety, no matter how flawed that perception might be. It is incumbent on all of us to insist that our perception of safety is not worth the death of these young men, nor the loss of their human rights. Giving the police complete immunity, both under the law, and by not holding the department or officers accountable for violent misdeeds, means that even if stop-and-frisk, as a policy, is eliminated, the NYPD will continue to operate in a way that protects the white supremacist sociopolitical structures that exist today.

Trayvon Martin: What It's Like to Be a Problem

Sorrow, dread and frustration

Thank you so much for your compelling and insightful piece. I don’t often respond to editorials; however, Harris-Perry’s words rightly capture the sorrow, dread and frustration I’ve felt as a black person since I was 14 years old. Now at age 58, I never thought that I would still be pulled over while driving, still followed in stores even after I purchased something and still looked upon with suspicion when walking the streets. So angered I am at being treated as something fearful while black, I was compelled to stage my own protest.

Because deaths like Trayvon’s occur so regularly, I’ve become desensitized by it, which is why I’m writing to thank you for this article. I don’t like to blame the media for our social ills; this article helps me to maintain this stance. However, it is typical, but no less frustrating, to witness media that deflect the reality of racism that frames Trayvon Martin’s killing by constantly offering that Zimmerman is Latino and has black friends, so, therefore, the shooting couldn’t possibly be racially motivated, or, worse, that Trayvon shouldn’t have worn what he was wearing and shouldn’t have been walking where he was walking. On the local front, as a child advocate who lives in Philadelphia, I was deeply troubled by the decision of Mayor Nutter and Police Chief Ramsey to impose a curfew on teens as a way to crack down on the so-called flash mob incidents our city has experienced over the past few years. That their only recourse is to attack the symptom with heavy policing, stop-and-frisk and incarceration, rather than to address the motivations that contribute to these incidents shows a lack of vision, as well as revealing their fear of our children. How do we wage war on our children? On the other end of this public expression is the gentrification of flash mob activities by well-heeled and presumably upstanding citizens as they engage public spaces with songs and dance numbers, some of whom are able to secure grants to do so. They don’t address our youth’s frustration of having nothing to do, no money to do it, and no one to hear them. Must our youth do a song and dance to be accepted? Neither of these tactics address the racism that continues to mark black bodies as a problem and, sadly, neither do our leaders.

Food Fights

Recommended reading

For a somewhat different looks at much of the same issues, check out Bloodlands, by Timothy D. Snyder, which is about the mass killing of an estimated 14 million non-combatants by the regimes of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany between the years 1929 and 1947 in a region that comprised what is modern-day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and the Baltic states. I suspect these two book would work well together, if you want to give yourself nightmares. It is a compelling and disturbing read.

Obamacare: Not Dead Yet

Obamacare—maintaining the nation’s canon fodder

I am only modestly surprised that no one has raised the argument that the federal government has a substantial interest in requiring not only healthcare insurance but healthcare itself for those most likely to be conscripted to invade the next oil-rich country. The Selective Service System points out in its website: “When the all-volunteer force was established, it was not intended to stand alone in time of national emergency. If, by law, it is determined that a return to the draft is required, the Selective Service System would be responsible for supplying manpower through the induction process to fill vacancies that could not be filled through voluntary enlistments.” Any right-thinking patrician has sense enough to maintain a healthy stable of ponies for the next match.

Promised Lands

Alterman vs. Nader

I used to enjoy Alterman’s articles, but I saw An Unreasonable Man last night and I no longer trust his judgment. Alterman’s rant in the movie against Ralph Nader, a man who has saved millions of lives worldwide, just turned me off. Gore rolled over and let Bush steal the election. He is a pushover who picked a neocon to run with. Even if the belief that Nader cost Gore the election were true, does Alterman think Lieberman would have kept us out of Iraq and AfPak, when all he wants now is to bomb Iran? Gore just fired Keith Olbermann, so any liberal credentials he may have had are fast disappearing as his bank account grows. It seems that the more money and power one has to conserve, the more conservative one seems to get. With few exceptions like Nader, we can’t expect the rich to stand up for the poor and middle class any more. Mr. Alterman, when you accomplish half of what Ralph has, you may earn the right to criticize him. Until then, STFU.

Trayvon Martin: What It's Like to Be a Problem

Equality and justice for all or equality and justice for none

A nation that calls itself the world’s only superpower cannot be a superpower if it deprives its citizens of their civil rights because of the color of their skin. America is 236 years old, yet for the very first time in our nation’s history, the haters are questioning the president’s place of birth, the loyalty to our country of the president and first lady, and trying to deny, belittle and denigrate all of the president’s achievements.

If a white man had been elected president in November 2008 and he had ended the war in Iraq, helped save America from a depression, extended healthcare to 30 million people who never had it before and saved the US automobile industry from collapse, he would be winning this November’s election in a landslide.

We may think we have come so far but we have a very, very long road yet to travel before Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of judging a person by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin becomes a reality. Only when that happens will America truly become a superpower. A superpower is not judged solely by the size of the military or economic output but, much more importantly, by how they treat their citizens.

When some citizens are denied their civil rights and denied justice, all of us, no matter where we were born, no matter what the color of our skin is, no matter what God we believe in, and no matter what language we speak, are all diminished.

Obamacare: Not Dead Yet

No free ride

David Cole's excellent pep talk for Obamacare fans relies on a misstatement offact repeated so many times in the debate it has been accepted by judicial notice as a fact. No, the uninsured do not get free emergency room services. In fact, and there have been articles written about this, even not-for-profit charitable hospitals that receive funds for charity care relentlessly pursue to bankruptcy uninsured patients. Only those who meet the criteria for charity care are given a free ride; mere lack of insurance does not excuse payment.

Furthermore, the uninsured are charged far more than insurance companies and Medicare, who negotiate fees with healthcare providers.

Being uninsured has a major impact on interstate commerce: serious illness contributes to high personal bankruptcy rate, work abscense or loss of jobs and the need to seek SSD; it discourages seeking medical attention until illness progresses to costly stages and results in higher non-negotiated medical bills.

There is a constitutionally limiting factor: the government intrusion must have a reasonable relationship to the need. Healthcare costs are a major and growing segment of our economy, threatening to cripple the federal budget. A large percentage of our society is not insured and is thus subject to poor health and a cost to society. The mandate is a cog in the ACA wheel that makes it workable. Without it, insurers would likely not participate.

This prinicpal can be applied to the broccoli and funeral insurance mandates. If broccoli imparted a natural immunity to swine flu, and an epidemic was raging, it would be reasonable to require everyone to eat broccoli. If zombies were stalking the streets… well, it would be best that we all carry funeral insurance to bury the undead.

Lets hope the mandate is equally "undead".