On Columbus Day 2009

Observations of Columbus Day have split in to two camps: One of celebration and one of mourning. Those celebrating the discovery of the “new world” – which tells you exactly for whom it was “new” – and all the richness of progress the Americas have made for freedom, independence and equality for all. As long as “all” of you are Christian god-fearing, land-owning white males. But, you have to start somewhere. The other camp is one of sadness and anger, mourning the deaths of innumerable people, the loss of culture, land, and marginalization of a slow-burning American holocaust.

One cannot deny the contributions to the story of humanity the Americas have made. Out of the post-colonial western hemisphere have come people of ingenuity, compassion, sacrifice, and courage. Some music, art, science and ideals of liberty and freedom are uniquely American and invaluable today. Of pre-colonial Americas, we know little about. Which brings me to the other camp…

History is written by the victors, and the survivors whom the conquering have not yet silenced. Some indigenous peoples of the “new world” were wiped out – not just killed off by disease or violence – but erased from history. Of those that remained, their cultures have been mixed up and caricatured. They have been removed from their ancestral homelands, and had tribal governments gutted and replaced over and over because they were not “friendly” enough to the assimilationist interests of colonizers.

The scars on native America are so deep, so ugly, that they cause some observers to turn away the critical eye and instead fantasize about pan-Indian ideals, or co-opt what is found comfortable or novel. The very notion of what it means to be native has caused once united peoples to turn on themselves, challenging who is, and who isn’t part of the tribe.

With both camps having some truth, and as each clamors for the spotlight today, I instead  choose to acknowledge the courage and sacrifice that native peoples have made in making America what it is. It is easy to forget that all the “Indian names” of places scattered around the country came from somewhere, that the different tribes were actually different cultures, and that many of them are still living, still native, today. Every year, then, I shall acknowledge the people that have shaped native America. I will praise those who, in the tumultuous post-contact years, have been examples of courage, ingenuity and compassion to preserve precious native ways, and make contributions to fledgling America, and beyond. I will address different tribes, time periods and the men and women that are the heroes of “Indian country,” to put in print stories that will hopefully create a new camp that serves the memory of those that came before, and does not try to seek revenge in their name.

I will start this new tradition in print with a native hero of print itself: Sequoyah of the Cherokee. Although it is not known exactly when he was born, author Tom Underwood wrote that “he was old enough to fight in the Creek war of 1812 in a company of Cherokee volunteers.” Four years later, he was a signatory on a treaty (of the many) that ceded large swaths of Cherokee land. What is known, is that he was fascinated by the European’s “talking leaves” (books).

Sequoyah understood the power of the written word. He saw the potential for communication, government and sharing ideas. Through hard work, ridicule and some setbacks -including his wife burning every one of his notes in frustration- he crafted an 86-character syllabary, representing all of the sounds of the Cherokee language. In just a few years the Cherokee had gone from a completely illiterate people to one that could read and write in their own language, thanks to one man. That single act of creation may have been what saved Cherokee culture from complete annihilation.

In 1824 the council recognized Sequoyah’s achievement and voted him a medal of honor, the one he is often seen wearing in portraiture. By 1825, a Cherokee was translating the Bible into the new writing, and by 1828, a Cherokee printing press was made. In 1828, The Phoenix, the first bilingual newspaper of the United States was printed in English and Cherokee. Although under more recent scrutiny, the content of the paper’s “native culture” was brought into question, the interest that remained in preserving Cherokee language and culture has never faded.

In 2009, under the leadership of Principal Chief Chadwick “Corntassel” Smith, every employee of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma has to learn how to speak, read and write the language. Every government program and document has Cherokee translations in Sequoyah’s characters. Even The Phoenix, which is still in print today, has stories in English and Cherokee. There are many other bands of Cherokee around the United States -some recognized by the Federal government, some not- that are all united by the common script.

Thanks to one man, a warrior and a scholar, the Cherokee forever have their own “talking leaves,” and this time in their own native tongue. Happy Columbus Day. Never forget where you come from.

Makings of a Police State in America

There are two ugly words that nobody in the media or government wants to say, but Colbert I. King, columnist for the Washington Post has  alluded to in this column: police state.

n. A nation whose rulers maintain order and obedience by the threat of police or military force; one with a brutal, arbitrary government. (police state. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/police state (accessed: August 08, 2009).)

I will be the first to admit that our police are not outwardly “brutal”, but there is a thin, hazy blue line between excessive force and self defense. Those of us without a badge are not allowed to defend ourselves against anyone who has one. In fact, any attempt to protect yourself from an officer that is using force against you, even for the most specious of reasons is considered “assault” on said officer.

Undoubtedly, law enforcement officers need to protect themselves, thus most have issue kevlar vests, semi-automatic sidearms, pepper spray, tasers, batons, and hand to hand combat training. Most civillians do not.

What do we have left to protect ourselves with? The Law? If an officer is accused of excessive or criminal conduct, he (or she) is put on paid, administrative leave – not counted against their vacation – until the matter is “internally investigated”. If it were you or I, or a Harvard professor, we are put in jail, until the investigation is complete.  If we are lucky, and it’s minor enough, we can “post and forfeit” and be on our way, like this lawyer allegedly arrested for saying “I hate police”. “Those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear” does not, and has not been true for some time.

The simple charge of ‘disorderly conduct’, whatever that may mean to that officer at that moment, is being used as a tool to threaten and intimidate, not just maintain “order”. It’s just a little reminder that people need to be kept in line, “or else”, while the arbitrary arrests are used to justify ever-inflating police budgets. Is crime going down as much as budgets go up?

The issue is broader than street-level. Privatized prisons make incarceration a for-profit venture. The more laws that are made to criminalize larger sections of the population – the most vulnerable being already-disadvantaged poor and minority demographics – the more people go in to these prisons. The more people in the prison, the more money the prison’s parent/holding company makes. Laws that give end-user drug crimes tougher sentences than high-level distribution and trafficking crimes are perfect examples. Why are crack and meth (and once-vilified pot) users given disproportionally harsher sentences than those that sell or traffic it? Because they can, and the hapless users likely cannot afford an expensive lawyer to fight on their behalf. They are to do time “as an example” to others. One “example” after another, and another, and another… until it seems the prisons are full, and more need to be built.

Federally, the public can only but watch as they are told their phones may be tapped, they may be indefinitely held (and possibly tortured) as “enemy combatants”, or simply “threats”. We have yanked people off the streets in foreign countries, tortured them, and held them for years without trial – and even when we have told them and each other that they are innocent of wrong, they are still “too dangerous” to let go. Watch as the rhetoric of “homegrown terrorism” starts up and see who is yanked off the streets, what socio-economic demographic they come from, and how transparent their proceedings are.

The government is beholden to “defense contractors” that have their hands in all the military branches, the alphabet soup of secretive security and intelligence agencies, and even state and local police departments. Who do you think provides the military-style equipment and uniforms that have replaced Barney Fife’s patrol car and six-shooter? They make a lot of money perpetuating conflict and fear, and selling new systems and new security and enforcement practices to “protect” us.

Are some changes to security and police practices necessary? Of course. Threats from abroad and at home are changing, and the genuine need for protection and self-defense of the nation and its people needs to change with it.

What’s missing is the critical, open, transparent discussion of what those changes mean, whom they will affect and how they will be implemented. Hiding behind the veil of “security” makes more and more law enforcement actions “secret” and ultimately arbitrary, especially when the police and military have the same gear, guns and training provided by the same contractors.

Sounds like the makings of a police state to me.

Alabaman National Guard may be called to police civilians in budget crisis?

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/08/troops-may-be-deployed-to-alabama-county/

This RawStory article looks at an Associated Press story by Jay Reeves about how the Alabama National Guard may be called in to “assist” police in the cash-strapped Jefferson County.

This quote from Reeves’ story mentions the Alabama National Guard’s involvement:

A spokesman for Hale, Randy Christian, said the sheriff told Riley after the ruling that state assistance may be needed to perform basic law enforcement tasks once the department’s current funding is exhausted in early September.

“We will certainly be looking at calling in the National Guard,” said Christian.

The RawStory article does not go into the details of the “assistance” all, only mentioning that it is a possibility. If Governor Riley, who is the Commander in Chief of the Alabama Guard orders (or allows) them to deploy to Jefferson County, then some precedent-setting questions will be raised:

• Even assuming everyone means well and tries not to purposefully run roughshod over the mostly-unarmed civilian populous, will the Alabama National Guard be trained well enough to protect the population’s legal rights while performing police duties?
• If they mess up, what kind of recourse will civilians get?
• If fiscal crisis = security crisis, what is the threshold for calling in the Guard when other states have a lot of red ink? What kind of precedent will this set?

The Military Economy of the United States

“Bread and circuses”
Answering the question posed by this RawStory article, “Is America building a military economy?” is simple. We already HAVE sold our economy out to the military.

RawStory writer Daniel Tencer comments on Floyd Norris’s article for the New York Times that “durable-goods shipments — a basic measure of industrial production — “fell by more than 20 percent during this recession, and would have declined further were it not for increased production of weapons.”" Then linked a military/nonmilitary chart that shows durable goods shipments and the distinction is graphically clear.

Think about the recent defense spending bill congress was fighting about:

Was anyone arguing that the reduced numbers of F22 fighters were possibly obsolete or ineffective/inappropriate for the “new war”? Not really. Only that their production was vital to hurting state economies. Other already-obsolete projects are still in the budget. Why? Not because they will do anything to protect us, but because the companies producing them stand to make a ton of money and maybe produce a few hundred jobs here and there while the R&D and manufacturing process is slowly dragged out.

The only way to ensure perpetual growth of defense budgets is to perpetuate war.

Look at the rest of our economy:
-Auto, Technology, Appliance manufacturing is now almost entirely outsourced to China (to whom we owe a ton of money) and other countries with cheap -sometimes child- labor and lax pollution standards.

-Fuel and energy production is beholden to foreign governments that otherwise hate our guts and have zero incentive to help us switch to clean, renewable, domestically produced energy; because they have no other export of their own, it’s important to them to keep us “hooked on oil”.

-Healthcare is run by Big Pharma and Big Insurance who’s only interest is -not cures or preventive medicine to keep us healthy- but to keep us barely alive but very well medicated, and paying ever more for a patchwork system of care that treat us like rude mechanicals, fixing not the damaged whole body, but the single broken part and ignoring the rest of our interconnected, interdependent biological systems.

-Farmers in America are subsidized because they cannot afford to compete against foreign imports from countries with (again) lax pollution standards and poor labor practices, unless they grow themselves to be ‘factory farms’ that produce questionable quality “food products” that are vulnerable to massive disease outbreaks (salmonella, e.coli among them) and bring harm to human and environment.

Not all corporations are bad, but those that adhere to the promise of taking care of their workers, their environment and their country have to work extra hard to compete with those that are only concerned with taking care of their bottom line.

Once the resources of the American People are used up -and those resources are finite- they will grow tired of “bread and circuses” and inevitably the sights of the only growing economic engine, the military industrial complex, will turn inward and we will have to deal with the monster we created.

“We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately.” – Ben Franklin

Governor Granholm Speaks at Alpena Community College on the Stimulus Plan

Governor Jennifer Granholm made a rare appearance at Alpena Community College’s Granum Theatre on April 24th to promote her plan for implementing President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act package. The stimulus will bring $18 billion to the beleaguered northeast Michigan area, and have effects for years to come. About $7 billion of those funds will be for preexisting federal programs, and the rest in tax cuts. “Since the recession began, volunteerism is up 20%”, she said. “But we’re all in this together!”

Described as “use it or lose it” funding, it is the “largest investment in roads in at least 50 years”. It is also the “largest amount of tax cuts for low and middle income households in the history of the United States”. As it was “one-time” funding, she did not want education to try and design new programming, but rather invest in projects like new buildings and equipment.

Granholm said her main focus for Michigan’s chunk of the stimulus has three objectives: Diversify sectors of the economy in to green energy generation, educate citizens by doubling the number of college graduates, and protect citizens who want to own a home or have difficulty paying for the one they have. As she walked back and forth on the stage, she pointed out some of the effects of the stimulus, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit

Governor Granholm at Alpena Community College

being “raised to $5,657 for families of three or more”, unemployment eligibility being “extended for up to 79 weeks”, and the projected “creation of 109,000 jobs over two years”.

She was clear to point out that stimulus money would go to “real people” and brought up several of them to tell the crowds about how they are being helped. Tanya King and Dwayne Casebier talked about how the Bridge Card helps take some of the stress of finding enough to eat, and Jason Dutiel and Jessica Johnson

Jessica Johnson and Jayson Dutiel

talked about how the No Worker Left Behind program is helping them pay for school and get retraining.  Catherine McClure

Catherine McClare

told of how a crew came and “weatherized” her house as part of a $6.6 million program north east Michigan.

After her presentation, Governor Granholm took a few questions from the audience, and then as she left, members of the press.
Michelle Swift from NEMSCA commented on how her agency helped people like King and Casebier fill out their taxes to maximize their Earned Income Credit.

Michelle Swift from NEMSCA

When a reporter for The CrossCut asked how the region could compete against China’s industrial policy making it the world leader in production of windmills and turbine technology, Granholm pointed out that the region was ideal for centrally located for turbine production. The lakes will provide shipping avenues for freighters, and there is already a former auto parts manufacturing company in Manistique turning out windmill parts. She said, “If you can bend steel for car parts, you can bend steel for turbines.”

Photos, and event lighting and audio by Robert Gandy

Fox’s March to “Running Man”:

Fox television is one step closer to the 1987 Governator movie Running Man
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093894/
The new show “Someone’s Gotta Go” will force employees to fight to keep their own jobs in a small (less than 20 person) company that is about to be downsized.

I bet $5 someone gets shot, or at least punched – in what can only be described as – “the face”.

My earliest exposure to “reality tv” was either Wild America with Marty Stouffer, or Yan Can Cook with Martin Yan. There, real life people were out in the real world, looking at real animals in real forests, or cooking real food in real kitchens – sometimes with other real chefs.
It was heaven to my young mind. How far those media angels have fallen.

When the blood, sweat and tears of sports – our modern day Rome’s gladiatorial matches – are not enough to satisfy the appetite of a hungry but complacent public, we’ve turned to the pornographic world of ‘reality tv’. There is not a lot more that can be said of or about it, the carnal fusion of sex and violence says enough.
Show link:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i974830d95caa5dbf5298c4dfb7681c93

How North Korea Cost Me $5:

The recent launch of a Taepodong-2 missile -under the guise of testing a new satellite- by North Korea cost me five dollars.  I’m not happy about it, as I doubt Kim Jung Il will ever pay me.

After leaving the launch pad in a graceful arc over Japan, the rocket sputtered out and splashed into the Pacific. By placing a sheet over the rounded nose of the device, Kim Jung Il tried to claim it was not a warhead shaped tip, and instead an experimental civilian sattelite.  He might have had a more effective cover had he also painted “NOT A MISSILE!!1!” on the side of it in big white friendly letters.  Despite all the careful preparation, the three stage rocket got only as far as stage two. Because of separation anxiety, stage three could not quite let go, and in an embarrassing embrace, the conjoined sections fell back to Earth.

How did this cost me $5?

There was much pre-launch saber-rattling by the United States -and much of the rest of the world- about the barely-disguised missile.  Various military powers made claims about shooting it down, including the laughable “If they’re just testing a rocket, we’ll be just testing our missile defense system”.  China spent much of this time quietly on its front porch, embarrased, with it’s face in its hand. Everyone has ‘one of those’ neighbors.

Just a day or two prior to the launch, the Pentagon finally said that it was not-quite-prepared to actually shoot down the rocket, but at the same time, Japan said it was fully capable of using it’s US-sourced Patriot missile batteries to knock it out of the sky.  That’s where my $5 comes in.

I bet my Editor-in-chief, and the Managing Editor five dollars that Japan would shoot down the rocket for us, so if North Korea got really mad, the United States could say, “Look guys, it wasn’t us!” As impoverished as North Korea is, I doubt it has the capability to attack Japan should that have happened. But it didn’t.

Instead, 200 DPRK commandos threw the missile as hard as they could up over Japan, but it was not quite hard enough to reach orbit.  Because Japan took no action (or did it? Where’s my tinfoil hat?), I owe the newsroom $5.

Thanks, Kim. If your rocket had worked, Japan might have freaked out enough to shoot it down, and I could have had a free burger today.  You owe me, man!