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Random
Thoughts on
The
Trent Lott Affair
By
Junious Ricardo Stanton
I
was attending a local council meeting last night and a neighbor
and councilwoman seated next to me stated quite proudly,
"Well we got rid of Trent Lott." I responded "We
didn't get rid of him Bush and the White House got rid of him,
his own party stabbed him in the back and kicked him to the
curb." Undaunted she responded, "Yeah, but the Civil
Rights organizations helped put the pressure on him and Bush had
to get rid of him."
At
that point I realized she was clueless about what went down, how
Bush used statements Lott made as an excuse to rid himself of a
man who really wasn't in his league as far as being a world
class thief, warmonger and drug dealer. Ponder this, George W.
Bush the man who lays wreaths at monuments to the Confederacy
publicly rebuked Trent Lott for statements he has repeatedly
made about Strom Thurman, how if he had been elected president
in 1948 the nation would be "better off."
Bush
used a photo op in Philadelphia where he was promoting his
"Faith Based Initiatives" at Bright Hope Baptist
Church an African-American congregation in the heart of the
North Philadelphia ghetto and later at a luncheon attended by
blacks and whites at Philadelphia's Marriott Hotel to set Lott
up for the kill. Once Bush made his comments the jackals
and hell hounds in the press and Republican Party were unleashed
on the unsuspecting Lott who thought Bush had his back. (Notice
except for the reactionary and impotent Black Congressional
Caucus, no key Democratic leaders demanded Lott step down.)
Once Bush gave the signal the acquiescent press notably the New
York Times Op-Ed (since when has the New York Times
cared about white people being insensitive about our issues?)
and key Republicans started calling for Lott's ouster or
suggesting he should step down.
In
subsequent public comments Bush stated he wasn't going to get
involved, knowing full well by not defending or supporting Lott
or providing White House back up, he (Bush) was sounding Lott's
death knell. Poor Lott was forced to further humiliate himself
by going on BET to plead his case, an attempt to defend the
indefensible. ( How would you like to go on national TV to
defend yourself against stupidly racist and career
threatening remarks?) It was a no win position.
Not
surprising, Lott made things worse for himself and the crescendo
calling for his resignation grew louder. Bush turned his back on
Lott and left him hanging. By Thursday Lott knew he was
done, he started publicly saying the White House did him in. The
next day Lott resigned.
Check
this out, Bush publicly demands Lott apologize and behind the
scenes his Chief Advisor Karl Rove works to oust Lott based on
statements he's made over the years but Bush said nothing when
Attorney General John Ashcroft attended a pro Confederacy rally
and called Jefferson Davis "a great patriot"? Why
didn't Bush demand Ashcroft apologize? Ask yourself why hasn't
Bush asked the Joint Chiefs or the Director of the CIA, FBI,
National Security Agency or FAA to apologize to the AmeriKKKan
public for their failures on 9-11?
Why
has Bush not pushed for a thorough investigation of 9-11 or
fired anyone in the military, intelligence community or FAA over
that fiasco? Will the Republican Party be any different
under Dr William Frist's leadership? Don't count on it.
Republicans don't give a hoot about black folks, our feelings,
our human or civil rights; that was all a ruse to get rid of
Trent Lott. Remember it was black folks Jeb Bush disenfranchised
in Florida, don't go for the okie-doke. William Frist's voting
record is almost identical to Lott's. He's conservative, meaning
he wants to turn the clock back to the 1800's socially. So
what is Bush' attraction to Frist?
Well
like Bush's Frist's family is rich, they own a lot of hospitals
and they have bilked Medicare out of almost a billion, that's
with a "B" dollars. They have agreed to repay the
government $400,000,000 (some reports say as much as 880
million). Massive fraud like this is right up Bush's
alley. Remember Dubeyah's brother Neil was a major player
in the Savings and Loan fiasco in the '80's. Neil was the front
man for the family in the Silverado Savings and Loan Co scandal
that defrauded the shareholders and cost US taxpayers almost a
billion dollars. The corporate owned media never talks about
that do they? Wonder why? Bush and Frist are kindred
spirits, while Trent Lott was just a Mississippi red neck.
The
White House is saying Frist will help push Bush's Health Care
agenda. If things follow the usual script the Bush-Frist
marriage will open the floodgates of campaign money from
pharmaceutical and health insurance companies into the Bush
coffers. Their contributions will do for health care and
prescription drugs what Enron did for energy and what defense
contractor campaign contributions have done for the War on
Terrorism and the Carlyle Group's stock portfolio.
Lott
was a liability, he was the son of a sharecropper, a wanna be,
he was out of his league. Unfortunately for him he was not an
elitist cold blooded white collar crook like Bush; so he had to
go to make way for the next round of corporate rip offs.
POSITIVELY BLACK (December
23, 2002)
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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update 8 December
2011
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