Violence

I would have subtitled this video "America's New Civil War".

From the production company :
The New York Times and the Washington Post have recently reported on the "System of Neglect," namely, the state of immigration detention center conditions. As told by her sister June Everett, watch the story of Sandra Kenley, a 52- year-old grandmother, who after living in the U.S. legally for 33 years, was subjected to these very conditions and died in immigration detention.

I was having a short discussion the other day on Twitter about sexism and it seems that Natasha Chart over at MyDD, that bastion of feminism, has taken it out of context to make a point about sexism.

Lovely.

This is the comment I left :

So let me get this straight : You take a comment that was part of a whole conversation about how our culture imposes the tyranny of homogeneity instead of respecting difference and looking at diversity as an asset and you twist it to prove a point about sexism?

that conversation was about how aggressiveness and violence are not necessarily nature. that as a mother of two boys and someone who has taken care of many of my friends girls, i can see how their energies can by nature, be vastly different.

the issue is of holding male energy as the standard of what is good and by assertion, female energy being bad or weak. just as how whiteness is held up as the standard and everything that is not "white" then becomes diminished, poor, disadvantaged, underdeveloped, or plain old not good enough.

but you took that one quote and you built a whole post about how everything about this campaign was sexist attacks that cost Clinton the nomination.

we've had this conversation before online and am going to say it again, it's not the reason why. there's 100 reasons, none having to do with sexism, that cost Hillary Clinton the nomination.

get over it.

and, by the way, this link was sent to me. if you're going to quote me, have the tact next time of emailing me the link.

i take cause with how you present my words here.

there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING wrong not wanting to [be] like men and finding power in that.

I had to use Summize to go back on the twitts of yesterday and find the conversations I was having. I can identify 6 different conversations all revolving around different discussions of sexism.

One of them was with Shannon McKarney of EcoChic, who had this to say :

I wrote that piece last year+believe it more strongly now. Women have to become more "male" to be successful

That's where the whole discussion of homogeneity vs. difference started. That's where I ssaid that I strongly disagree with women needing to be like men to be successful just as I strongly believe this to be one of those sticking points for a lot of feminists of color.

The whole discussion of women vs. men pits oppressed people in many communities of color against each other. Yes, colored men can be sexist and even ruthlessly misogynistic but is that the root of our problems or is it a symptom of a larger structure of violence and exploitation that women and men of color need to unite against?

Last night was a truly historic moment and Hillary Clinton made history for all the wrong reasons. Instead of conceding to Barack Obama, instead of declaring him the rightful winner and instead of turning her followers' attention to him as the legitimate nominee, she chose to turn the moment into a show of force against Obama.

Jeffrey Toobin of CNN described it as a moment of "deranged narcissism" while Carl Bernstein described it as "another Clinton foundling drama".

What's makes the picture of a derange narcissist worse is the arrogance with which many a defender would describe her "non-concession" speech : that she needs to take her time, that she needs space, that she's earned her right not to concede immediately, that Obama needs to watch out and make sure he doesn't hurt her feelings or slight her or say the wrong thing, etc. etc.

And let's not even get into the psychopathic ruse of claiming she's won 18 million votes in the course of this election.

1. Get a former CIA Psy Ops agent to do the dirty work of smearing your opponents wife even with the fear of a taped racist rant that doesn't really exit.

2. Have your husband say on the campaign trail it's his last day of doing anything like this, especially after it was reported it cut into his boinking time with Gina Gershon.

3. Have your campaign manager say the morning after on TV that you'll concede "if the right amount of numbers are in today or tomorrow".

4. Then have your other campaign manager go on the record as saying you are not conceding at all.

Can you believe that after Hillary Clinton's assassination remark, her campaign spinned the comment as an attempt by Barack to make her look bad? Yes, Hillary Clinton and all her boot lickers blamed Barack for the words she herself uttered on her own accord not once, not twice but now four times during the course of the campaign.

They blamed him for blowing the thing out of proportion and yet, as I've told many, many people since this happened HOW DARE YOU TELL US THIS IS NOT A BID DEAL! How dare you tell us that putting the words ASSASSINATION and BARACK on the same page is not cause for concern?

Well, the Huffington Post has an amazing chronicle of one of Michelle Obama's campaign stops. This is what happened :

She called on another supporter, whose voice quivered and broke with barely contained emotion as she explained how important it is to her, personally, that our country change course. She explained that she had just returned from Oregon where she campaigned for Obama and attended the 75,000-person rally by the river. She had noticed, she said, that the Secret Service had increased security dramatically for Barack Obama's rallies since the Phoenix rally in January.

The room collectively gasped and murmured, some aghast that these fears were being spoken aloud directly to Barack Obama's wife. Some nodded, concern and fear on their faces. Others shifted on their feet, displaying a range of emotions -- concern, discomfort with the topic, indignation.

This is not a pundit spewing or a campaign boot licker spinning. This was a common woman, who has volunteered to get the man she believes will bring change to this country. This is not a political expert lost in a moment of bobble-head theatrics but a real woman shaken by Hillary Clinton's words.

And yet, with the poise and class that Hillary nor Bill Clinton have, Michelle Obama told this shaken woman and the rest of the audience this :

Yesterday I wrote the following about Hillary Rodham Clinton :

Shameless.

Despicable.

Unfit to be President of the United States.

My words hit the front pages of both Daily Kos and The Moderate Voice. By evening Keith Olbermann had the following to say about Hillary Clinton's latest "gaffe" :

The most important part of the transcript is after the jump :

That is all.

Today the United States marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of one of it's giants : Martin Luther King, Jr.

The video that I present here is of Robert Kennedy announcing the tragedy to an Indiana crowd that had rallied to support his bid for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

Full text of the speech :

Screenshot from icasualties.org

On Wednesday, March the 19th many of us did not mark the 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq. It was another day in which we did not remember the secrets and lies that got us into Bagdad. We don't even remember the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction nor no Al-Qaeda to be found.

As to the Democratic Party's refusal to advance the impeachments of George Bush and Dick Cheney because it will cost them elections? Well, we already knew that the majority of Democrats aided and abetted the Bush-Cheney duo's dream of imperial power.

As long as the Democrats want to get their hands into the White House, there will always be another day to think about the death and ruin brought to this country by the war.