August 31, 2005
FrontlineNews - NBUF Youth BTM
My man Marcus Brown spits fire in his own right. Outside his own spoken word exposition, he puts in Work with creative and conscious folks nationwide. In Kansas City, he's known for exemplifying and making a way for young people to express themselves. It's in that context under the umbrella of the Dubois Learning Center that I've had the pleasure of making his acquaintence. Marcus put together a tight 12 minute podcast that beautifully demonstrates the power we can tap when we help our children BE THE MEDIA (BTM). This is the type of audio that will become a staple of the Frontline Media Network, a podcast Internet Radio show that will soon begin regular production at the Dubois Learning Center. I think this is one you'll really enjoy! Here's the audio file.
NOLA TAZ
It is at times like this, when the focus is on disaster, that people show their true nature. At least that's what MLK said about the test of a man. Coming to grips with my partisan side, I recognize how best to antagonize the liberal nemesis: test his theories during times of duress.
I happened across a friend's blog and he mentioned, on his way to Burning Man, that doyenne of the diverse Hakim Bey. Bey's theory turns up at the oddest moments and from my perspective evoke little more than a romance for chaos. And so I quote from Bey wondering if Progressives here might be swayed by the highfalutin' theory as we observe what goes down in the town that drowned. To wit:
Uprising, or the Latin form insurrection, are words used by historians to label failed revolutions--movements which do not match the expected curve, the consensus-approved trajectory: revolution, reaction, betrayal, the founding of a stronger and even more oppressive State--the turning of the wheel, the return of history again and again to its highest form: jackboot on the face of humanity forever.
By failing to follow this curve, the up-rising suggests the possibility of a movement outside and beyond the Hegelian spiral of that "progress" which is secretly nothing more than a vicious circle. Surgo--rise up, surge. Insurgo--rise up, raise oneself up. A bootstrap operation. A goodbye to that wretched parody of the karmic round, historical revolutionary futility. The slogan "Revolution!" has mutated from tocsin to toxin, a malign pseudo-Gnostic fate-trap, a nightmare where no matter how we struggle we never escape that evil Aeon, that incubus the State, one State after another, every "heaven" ruled by yet one more evil angel.If History IS "Time," as it claims to be, then the uprising is a moment that springs up and out of Time, violates the "law" of History. If the State IS History, as it claims to be, then the insurrection is the forbidden moment, an unforgivable denial of the dialectic--shimmying up the pole and out of the smokehole, a shaman's maneuver carried out at an "impossible angle" to the universe. History says the Revolution attains "permanence," or at least duration, while the uprising is "temporary." In this sense an uprising is like a "peak experience" as opposed to the standard of "ordinary" consciousness and experience. Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen every day--otherwise they would not be "nonordinary." But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. The shaman returns--you can't stay up on the roof forever-- but things have changed, shifts and integrations have occurred--a difference is made.
Is there or is there not insurrection in New Orleans? Are people taking this opportunity to liberate themselves as the jackboot of the state is otherwise occupied? Will the prisoners released from jail to higher ground find an opportune moment to become what they have been denied from becoming? Is New Orleans a Temporary Autonomous Zone?
Or, are we just witnessing what happens to poor people who have but simple ambitions? Is everybody simply reduced to a lower form of survival and those not fit to achieve during normal days only depressed a bit further?
I think it is what it is. A city reduced to rubble and refugee status. There is no transcendence here, only human instinct and the spinning and framing of government assistance and media commentary. There is nothing special except that we Americans don't often look so closely at our neighbors. Everybody who wants to help, would help anyway. Everybody who wants to rob would be robbing sooner or later. Today, we're just getting a peak at ourselves naked. 24/7
It's not biblical. It's just a flood.
$0.20 Price Rise Over Night?!?!?!?!?
In the Baltimore-Washington region, some local news stations are reporting overnight gasoline price increases of $0.20.
Gouging.
Plain and simple.
Unless they are saying that the refinery to gas station reserve is no more than 3 or 4 days.
Of course, that reserve seems to become months worth when the price per barrel price drops.
"This Hurts More More Than...."
I never believed the saying, "This hurts me more than it hurts you".
Until now.
Sometimes you have to let your children fail in order to teach a life lesson.
Stand back, say, "You do what you want to do, but it is wrong for the following reasons...". Then, let them go along their way. Just pray that they find their way back onto the right path.
The "kid" messed up the first year of college. No more funding from me until it's determined that the "kid" has proper priorities. Meanwhile, swim on your own. If you sink, you sink.
With love...
August 30, 2005
Chavez challenges the oil kings
More plot thickening from the Sunday Binnis Post online...,
On July 14 in the western city of Maracaibo, Venezuelan government tax auditors and a prosecutor went to the offices of Chevron, the second-largest US oil company.They seized boxes of records to build a case that San Ramon, California-based Chevron and 21 other energy companies owe Venezuela €2.4 billion in back taxes.
Chavez, who refers to US president George Bush as ‘Mr Danger', said on June 5 that the US was trying to install a global dictatorship. US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice described Chavez as a “negative force'‘ in the region.
just goes to show, you gotta let a ho be a ho...,
On July 14 in the western city of Maracaibo, Venezuelan government tax auditors and a prosecutor went to the offices of Chevron, the second-largest US oil company.
They seized boxes of records to build a case that San Ramon, California-based Chevron and 21 other energy companies owe Venezuela €2.4 billion in back taxes.
The raid is part of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's push to squeeze more money out of foreign companies that want to pump oil from the world's fifth-largest petroleum exporter.
Since last October, he has raised heavy-oil royalty fees to as much as 30 per cent from 1 per cent, begun paying for some services in nonconvertible bolivares instead of US dollars, and ordered oil well contracts converted into government-controlled joint ventures.
Chavez wants to use the revenue to pay for homes, clinics and schools for the 58 per cent of Venezuelan families who live on less than $200 a month.
Since taking office in February 1999, Chavez has embarked on a socialist revolution, seizing ranches to hand over to the poor and starting a TV news network with promotional ads featuring a swastika painted on a US flag.
Chavez says he's using oil money to bankroll a quest to become Latin America's leader against US-style capitalism.
In a May 4 speech, he said: “Being rich is bad'‘ and “Jesus Christ was a socialist'‘.
Chavez, a close friend of Cuban president Fidel Castro, sends crude oil to Cuba in exchange for doctors to staff 3,000 neighbourhood clinics.
In June, he pledged subsidised oil for poor Caribbean nations, such as Grenada.
But Chevron and its competitors haven't been scared off, because Venezuela has the largest reserves in the western hemisphere. The oil companies want to invest $30 billion in Venezuela, which is the fourth-largest supplier of crude to the US, according to the Venezuelan Hydrocarbons Association.
Chavez says all companies are welcome in his country.
“Foreign companies have been here for the last century exploiting oil and gas, and they'll have all the space they've been able to have so far,” he says.
“It's just that they will have to pay the royalties, they will have to pay the income tax. If they don't, we will go after them.”
Venezuela's tax agency stated on August 11 that it was seeking to attach more than 280 billion bolivares (€106million) in assets from Royal Dutch Shell in a dispute over what the country says is unpaid back taxes.
The prize in Venezuela is the tropical flatlands north of the Orinoco river, beneath which, according to Chavez, lie 230 billion barrels of heavy crude, one of the largest oil deposits in the world.
Chavez, who has used his clout as leader of the third-largest member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) to curb Venezuela's output by 20 per cent since taking office, now says he wants to boost production.
Most of the decline came from the state-owned producer, Petroleos de Venezuela, where Chavez fired half the workforce to break a 2002-2003 strike aimed at ousting him. Daily output at PDVSA has tumbled to about 2million barrels from 2.92 million barrels in 1998.
Foreign oil companies took up the slack, doubling their production to about 1.12 million barrels a day last year.
Now, Chavez says he wants to attract €8 billion more from foreign oil companies to help boost Venezuela's total oil production to 5 million barrels a day by 2009.
“This government is your ally,” Chavez told foreign oil executives in March. “We are not chasing anyone away from Venezuela.”
At the same time, Chavez claimed that the Bush administration was trying to force him to commit suicide and he threatened that exports to the US would be cut off if he were to meet an untimely death.
Chavez, who refers to US president George Bush as ‘Mr Danger', said on June 5 that the US was trying to install a global dictatorship. US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice described Chavez as a “negative force'‘ in the region.
Last Monday, television evangelist Pat Robertson told viewers of his 700 Club TV programme that the US should assassinate Chavez to stop him from becoming a “launching pad for communists'‘.
Venezuelan vice president Jose Vicente Rangel responded by saying Robertson's remarks were “criminal'‘. US state department spokesman Sean McCormack said at a press briefing that Robertson's views did not “represent the policy of the United States'‘.
Unless new reserves are tapped in countries like Venezuela in the next 15 years, global oil output won't keep pace with demand, according to a report by New York securities firm Sanford C Bernstein.
The report forecasts that demand for oil will grow by 1.8 per cent a year until 2020 to 102.7 million barrels a day.
Global oil production capacity will be 102.1 million barrels a day, the report says.
Concern about future supply has helped to push crude oil prices up more than fivefold to a record $67.10 a barrel on August 12 from $12.28 on February 2, 1999, when Chavez was sworn in as president.
Venezuela is one of the few major oil producers that allow foreign investment. Saudi Arabia allows only its state oil company to pump crude.
And Venezuela has been more open than other countries in Latin America such as Mexico, which bars foreign companies from exploiting the second-biggest oil reserves in Latin America.
Oil companies such as Shell have acquiesced to Chavez's demands. On July 14, the government ordered Shell, whose 90 years of working in Venezuela includes having its wells nationalised in 1975, to pay $131 million of back taxes.
Shell says it has paid all of its taxes.
Norway's state-run Statoil, Paris-based Total and Chevron have been hardest hit by Chavez's new rules, because they manage wells for PDVSA and are shareholders in the four heavy-crude production ventures in the Orinoco belt.
Statoil, Total and Conoco-Phillips may have to pay €260 million in back taxes for their heavy-oil ventures in the Orinoco belt, according to oil minister Ramirez.
Chavez is also considering a reduction in Venezuela's dependence on oil sales to the US, which accounts for about 60 per cent of the nation's crude exports. He signed agreements to boost oil sales to Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Paraguay and Uruguay.
He also proposed building a pipeline to Pacific Oceanports in Colombia to ship more crude to China.
The US imports 15 per cent of its crude oil from Venezuela, which is just a four to five-day tanker trip from Texas refineries.
Oil is a pervasive part of life in Venezuela, where petrol stations don't even post the price, because it is fixed at 18 cents per gallon. Revenue from crude exports funds half the government's budget, and oil prices have driven Venezuela's economy since the 1920s.
Last year, as crude prices soared again, Venezuela's economy grew a record 17 per cent.
In 1998 Chavez won a landslide election victory by pledging a revolution that would use oil revenue to spread equality. Since taking office, he has taken advantage of surging oil prices by boosting spending on programmes for the poor to a projected €10.6 billion this year - almost half the national budget. This has helped him to survive an attempted coup and recall referendum.
PDVSA dispenses €3.2 billion a year for everything from cooperatives that make the red T-shirts Chavez supporters wear to monthly stipends for 700,000 people enrolled on adult education courses.
On some days, PDVSA's 13-floor concrete headquarters in Caracas draws scores of people seeking funds for social programmes, known as missions.
“For a long time, our oil went to the rich, but as you can see, here that's changed,” says Wuikelman Angel, 35, who manages workshops, a youth centre and a clinic that PDVSA built last year on a three-hectare shuttered gasoline depot in Caracas's Catia slum.
On one morning in late June, about 50 people wait at the €5.7 million complex, flanked by a verdant hill covered with tin-roofed shacks and piles of garbage, for free treatment at a two-storey clinic with a new X-ray machine and a pediatric ward.
In a warehouse across a rose-lined square, a dozen people make final adjustments to machinery at a shoemaking cooperative, one of thousands of government-financed companies that are part of Chavez's plan to give jobs to the poor.
It's all financed by PDVSA, starting with the cooperative's first order for 250 pairs of black leather shoes, which were donated to victims of a mudslide.
Across the road is a government supermarket that sells food at a 33 per cent discount - one of 12,000 built with PDVSA funds since Chavez took power.
In addition to the PDVSA money, Chavez is using €4.8 billion of the country's €23.5 billion of central bank reserves for government spending.
Chavez is stepping up social spending to build support for a re-election bid in December 2006. His approval rating was 61 per cent in the second quarter - that's down eight percentage points from the start of the year.
Despite demands for more taxes, Chevron and Repsol plan to expand in the Orinoco area, which would involve drilling as many as 2,000 wells that use steam to force tar-like crude oil out of the ground.
The Orinoco Belt, with as many as 300 billion barrels of oil, may be a critical area for Chevron to add reserves.
Chevron and Repsol hope to negotiate an agreement that will allow them to use their expertise to run the wells, pipelines and refineries planned for the Orinoco.
If Venezuela is seeking to expand production, there is no doubt that the Orinoco is the area to develop.
28 August 2005 By Michael Smith and Peter Wilson
Parker Exceeds Coonshow Ideals
Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer Star Parker meets and exceeds her typical standard of high coonshowmanship - managing in one loopy screed to take a whack at Jesse, {who's prolly just there trying to arrange for a Citgo discount gas franchise for himself or a member of his extended entourage in a hood near you} deny MLK's suppressed vision for social justice and structural change, and most astonishingly, defend Pat Robertson's call for the assassination of the democratically elected leader of Venezuela who just happens to be black!!!
Jackson addressed the Venezuelan parliament, met personally with President Chavez and used the occasion to condemn Pat Robertson's unfortunate remarks calling for Chavez's assassination. However, Robertson's remarks, for which he had already apologized, were provoked by genuine and well-founded concern about the ongoing erosion of human liberty in Venezuela and Chavez's activities in spreading his influence throughout Latin America.Jackson, however, was more interested in attacking Robertson than in whether Robertson's concerns are legitimate.
oh Lawd...,
Jackson falls short of King's ideals
By Star Parker
Jesse Jackson chose to celebrate the 42d anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech by going to Venezuela and paying homage to its left-wing strongman president Hugo Chavez. Choosing this venue for recalling King's ideals tells us a lot about how Jackson understands those ideals and what he is about.
Jackson's politics have largely defined black politics since King's death. It has been my view that these politics have played a central role in creating the serious social problems in our community today. Checking out whom Jackson chooses to embrace provides insight into those politics and, hopefully, into our problems.
Jackson addressed the Venezuelan parliament, met personally with President Chavez and used the occasion to condemn Pat Robertson's unfortunate remarks calling for Chavez's assassination. However, Robertson's remarks, for which he had already apologized, were provoked by genuine and well-founded concern about the ongoing erosion of human liberty in Venezuela and Chavez's activities in spreading his influence throughout Latin America.
Jackson, however, was more interested in attacking Robertson than in whether Robertson's concerns are legitimate.
In response to concerns from the Bush administration that Chavez is a force for instability in Latin America, headlines in Venezuela and the United States reported Jackson as saying that Venezuela was "no threat."
However, here is what Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, who also teaches Latin American politics at Georgetown University, had to say in a Washington Post op-ed piece on Sunday:
"The Venezuelan leader is waging battles on several fronts. A great deal is at stake, including the prospects for liberal democracy in Latin America. Chavez is constructing a model of domestic governance that is inimical to democratic values and individual rights. He appears to be embarked on a mission that is not only virulently anti-U.S. but that seeks to push the region back toward authoritarian politics."
When Pat Robertson broadcast his suggestion that we "take out" Chavez, Chavez himself was in Cuba visiting his good friend Fidel Castro. Also among his friends is African dictator Robert Mugabe, whom Chavez honored in Venezuela last year.
However, Jesse Jackson had nothing but words of praise for Chavez.
"Your focus on foreign debt, debt relief, and free and fair trade to overcome years of structural disorder, unnecessary military spending, land reform... these are some of the great themes of our time."
Regarding the "unnecessary military spending," Peter Brookes, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation reports on Chavez's buying spree of MiG 29 fighters, helicopter gunships and AK-47 assault rifles from Russia and additional arms purchases from Spain and Brazil. Chavez has indicated intent to increase Venezuela's army reserve as "an honorable answer to President Bush's intention of being master of the world."
Meanwhile, Chavez has been busy using oil as a diplomatic tool, making sweetheart deals throughout Latin America, according to the Inter-American Dialogue's Shifter, to advance his anti-U.S. agenda.
King fought oppression with nonviolence and carried a message of freedom driven by Christian ideals. His message was transformed, under leaders such as Jesse Jackson, to the politics of power and political patronage, of entitlement and welfare. Since King's death, single-parent black households and out-of- wedlock black births have tripled. Life in our inner cities has become defined by drugs, aids, promiscuity, disdain for education, and unemployment.
I believe if King were with us today, he would be in our cities working to restore faith, family, and personal responsibility. He wouldn't be in Venezuela giving credibility to a garden variety Latin American despot.
Star Parker is president of Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education and author of "Uncle Sam's Plantation." The Web site address for her organization is www.urbancure.org.
Superdome of Shame
Jack Duggan brings it hard and correct at LewRockwell.com on the apartheid degeneracy perpetrated under cover of Katrina. Predictably, there hasn't been a peep raised about this in the MSM or by the traditional coonshowmen/wimmin.
Let's face it. If you're poor in America, you're a "suspect," maybe. If you're poor and black in America, you're a "criminal," definitely. Even if your life is in peril, no excuses. Your rights don't count as long as any badge or weekend warrior in BDU's says they don't.This is the real story of the Louisiana Superdome. Hurricane Katrina can certainly destroy the environs of the Louisiana and her neighboring states, but that can all be rebuilt. What will never be rebuilt is the dignity of the poorest citizens of that region, since the government acted with a greater destructive force than a hurricane. The lamp of freedom has been blown out by force-five bureaucrats, their sycophants and their head-embedded media enablers who will insure that it will never get re-ignited. For our own good, of course.
Heads should roll in Louisiana, for all those whose civil rights were violated on Sunday, August 28, 2005, outside the Louisiana Superdome of Shame.
Watching news coverage of the refugees trying to enter the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans for safety from the approaching force-five Hurricane Katrina, I was incredulous how the people attempting to enter the stadium were being treated by the National Guard troops and local police. The people were made to stand for hours outside in the awful Louisiana climate while they were admitted one or two adults at a time so they could be searched "for firearms and alcohol."
The frail elderly, many grasping walkers and others in wheelchairs seemed to be near collapse. They, along with hundreds of small children needing water and rest-room relief, were forced to wait as long as four hours to get to safety. It was often repeated during the video reports that the last time the Superdome was used as a hurricane shelter, a few of the temporary occupants removed some furniture. But this time, they had a large security force on hand, so that was NOT going to happen again, no-siree-bob.
During coverage by Geraldo Rivera Sunday night, FOX NEWS' video cameras zoomed inside the foyer deck of the Superdome and viewers could see a national guard person going through a powder compact from of a woman's purse that was way too small to hold a liquor bottle or a gun. It was obvious that they were looking for drugs in warrantless searches. They instructed all the refugees far back in the seemingly endless lines to have their prescription-pill bottles out when approaching the security checkpoint and also a photo ID to prove that they belonged with the prescription.
There were THOUSANDS of poor, mostly black citizens of the lower Louisiana area, many of them little children and sickly elderly, being forced to stand for hours while the government violated their civil rights with forced searches that were patently unconstitutional, unjust and unreasonable under the dire circumstances. "Don't want to be searched? That's okay...now turn around, go outside and die!" Big choice.
Can you imagine New Orleans' wealthy elite meekly submitting to such microscopic searches of their persons and property for drugs? Heads would roll. But poor people who had no money to escape the deadly storm's onslaught had no choice. They had nowhere else to go to save their children's and parents' lives. They were humiliated just for trying to survive. Their grandfathers and grandmothers suffered as slaves on Southern plantations decades ago, while today, they suffer as slaves to the state, the state that cancels their human rights and dignity in the name of "protecting" them.
Did you see that, America? Nothing has changed in the South. Poor people of are still being herded and treated as criminals because of the color of their skin. The Sheriff and Louisiana National Guard knows the profile of likely drug users: black people and anyone associating with them; they were searched just as if they were entering a state penitentiary visiting a death-row prisoner. Maybe the refugees would have fared better if they had had season tickets in their hands.
Think about it. They can allow in 30,000 screaming fans with fifty-dollar bills and costly NFL tickets in their hands in a few minutes, but poor black people fleeing for their lives, four hours. Four HOURS!
None of the news people I saw on the major cable and broadcast networks noticed this outrage. Apparently, they are still "embedded" with the government and couldn't possibly risk dislodging their heads long enough to report the truth right before their eyes.
We let morons take away our rights to person and property at the airports, all for the false "protection" they promised us and can't possibly deliver, so now we see them doing it to helpless citizens even when the citizens' lives are in danger. "First, we gotta check you for weapons and drugs...pull your dress up, lift up your arms...." – let those old people collapse and those kids soil themselves – "This is FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY."
God forbid that anyone have a hip flask to calm their nerves during a traumatic life-and-death experience. Someone else might actually toke up or take a non-prescription pill! And a few might take their right to keep and bear arms seriously, when everyone knows that only government employees deserve self-protection, not their citizen "bosses." The constitution doesn't apply when the government thinks it can make you safer by judging you, disarming you, and denuding you of your rights.
Who gave the order to make all these exhausted, miserable poor people wait for hours while they were searched so illicitly? Under what actual law did they search these refugees for anything whatsoever on their person? Do they search football game fans this thoroughly and for this long? Suuuuuure they do....
Could all this form a mass tort against the State of Louisiana? Maybe. Some of the Superdome refugees must be hopping mad.
Let's face it. If you're poor in America, you're a "suspect," maybe. If you're poor and black in America, you're a "criminal," definitely. Even if your life is in peril, no excuses. Your rights don't count as long as any badge or weekend warrior in BDU's says they don't.
This is the real story of the Louisiana Superdome. Hurricane Katrina can certainly destroy the environs of the Louisiana and her neighboring states, but that can all be rebuilt. What will never be rebuilt is the dignity of the poorest citizens of that region, since the government acted with a greater destructive force than a hurricane. The lamp of freedom has been blown out by force-five bureaucrats, their sycophants and their head-embedded media enablers who will insure that it will never get re-ignited. For our own good, of course.
Heads should roll in Louisiana, for all those whose civil rights were violated on Sunday, August 28, 2005, outside the Louisiana Superdome of Shame.
August 30, 2005
Jack Duggan [send him mail] lives in Fort Apache (Hamilton, New Jersey, site of the anthrax mailings) with his family.
Bled, Misled, and Spiritually Dead
AJC reports black conservative coonshow du jour;
"We're not just a church, we're an international corporation," Long said. "We're not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can't talk and all we're doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.""You've got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering."
"Any problem people may have with his charity, Long said, was rooted in some people's expectations that pastors should be poor.
"I would love to sit with you and walk with you through the Bible to show that Jesus wasn't poor," he said.
His congregation is inspired by seeing its pastor do well, Long said.
"I'm not going to apologize for anything. ... "
In 1995, Bishop Eddie Long established a nonprofit, tax-exempt charity to help the needy and spread the gospel.
But it was Long, leader of the largest church congregation in Georgia, who became the charity's biggest beneficiary.
The charity, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc., provided him with at least $3.07 million in salary, benefits and the use of property between 1997 and 2000 — nearly as much as it gave to all other recipients combined during those years, tax records show.
It is one of at least 20 nonprofit and for-profit corporations that Long founded after becoming pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in 1987. Long's businesses include a music publishing company and a transportation service.
The charity's compensation to Long over that four-year period included:
•A $1.4 million six-bedroom, nine-bath home on 20 acres in Lithonia.
•Use of a $350,000 luxury Bentley automobile.
•More than $1 million in salary, including $494,000 in 2000.
Long said the charity, which reported that it stopped doing business after 2000, did not solicit donations from New Birth members. It reported that its income included royalties, speaking fees and several large donations.
The charity made $3.1 million in donations to others between 1997 and 2000, the records show, but they did not contain any itemized breakdown of the donations, as required by the Internal Revenue Service.
Nonprofit groups are exempt from paying state and federal income taxes if they meet certain criteria. In return, the federal tax code says their executives' benefits may not be excessive.
Long and his wife, Vanessa, were two of the charity's four board members. The charity gave a third board member, Terrance Thornton, a $160,000 loan in 1999 to buy a home site across the street from Long's house, tax records show.
Long's tax attorney, J. David Epstein, said an independent compensation committee, along with a second committee within New Birth and a national accounting firm, oversaw those decisions. He declined to identify the firm or members of the committees.
Long, 52, defended his compensation during an interview about his charity. He's transformed New Birth, based in Lithonia, from a 300-member church to a 25,000-member megachurch with a global presence, according to the church's Web site.
"We're not just a church, we're an international corporation," Long said. "We're not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can't talk and all we're doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.
"You've got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering."
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of a Senate committee investigating lavish salaries of nonprofit executives, said leaders of tax-exempt organizations must be responsible for the public trust they've been given.
"I'm worried that a few people are confusing the ringing of a church bell with the ringing of a cash register," Grassley said in a statement in response to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's inquiries about the charity. "When I hear about leaders of charities being provided a $300,000 Bentley to drive around in, my fear is that it's the taxpayers who subsidize this charity who are really being taken for a ride."
As the popularity of televangelism, traveling religious shows and megachurches has skyrocketed, so has the money their leaders can earn. IRS enforcement of compensation rules has been light, and the agency rarely audits nonprofit groups.
In 2002 and 2003, TV evangelist and author Joyce Meyer had compensation packages of up to $900,000 approved by her ministry's board, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Bishop T.D. Jakes, who staged MegaFest in Atlanta this summer, has a $1.7 million mansion in Dallas, according to Time magazine.
With few exceptions, the public rarely gets a glimpse at religious leaders' compensation because churches are not required to file tax returns. Information on Long's salary and benefits was derived from the charity's tax returns, which are public records.
Churches must report to the IRS how much they pay employees, but those records are not public.
Long's charity and his church were separate organizations. The charity was incorporated under federal law as a nonprofit religious corporation — not a church — subject to rules to ensure accountability and prevent enrichment of executives at the public expense.
Churches and nonprofits are required to follow the same IRS rules regarding compensation. The IRS tax guide for churches and religious organizations says that neither group may "provide a substantial benefit to private interests," and their net earnings "may not [benefit] any individual." They are allowed to pay their executives "reasonable compensation."
"In general, an individual(s) salary and benefits should not be excessive and must be approved by the majority of board of directors who are unpaid and not related to the individual(s)," said IRS spokesman Mark Green in a statement.
Long's benefits went beyond reasonable compensation, said Jeff Krehely, deputy director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a Washington-based group that promotes accountability in the philanthropic community.
"After reviewing the compensation packages of foundation executives — including those who have been written up in the press as being excessive — I've never seen anything quite like what Long [was] getting, when you include his salary, the house and the car," Krehely said.
Marcus Owens, a Washington attorney and former director of the IRS' Exempt Organizations Division, was retained by Long to look over Bishop Eddie Long Ministries as a result of inquiries about the charity.
Owens released a statement saying, "The Ministry has a comprehensive system of internal controls and policies in place that ensure that all funds are accounted for and spent for appropriate purposes under the tax code." He declined to elaborate or answer questions about the operation of the charity from 1997 to 2000.
'Touch a lot of people'
Long, accompanied by two attorneys and two publicists, talked about his charity in a conference room at New Birth's sprawling campus in south DeKalb County. He declined to answer most questions about his charity's financial transactions, leaving those responses to his attorney. He and Epstein later declined to answer follow-up questions, including whether Long had reported the house on his personal income tax return.
The church, dubbed "Club New Birth" because of the abundance of young black single professionals who attend its services, includes a school that goes through ninth grade, a fitness center and a 10,000-seat sanctuary, opened in 2001.
The church also ministers to drug addicts and prisoners, helped start a credit union near South DeKalb Mall, and has been involved in religious revivals as far away as New Zealand and Kenya.
"We touch a lot of people," Long said. "This is a world-impacting ministry, and I personally get a little offended when my integrity is questioned."
Long has drawn criticism before. In December, he and Bernice King, younger daughter of the late Martin Luther King Jr., led a march from the King Center promoting several causes. Critics said the civil rights leader would never have agreed to the march's call for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
A black conservative, Long calls himself one of God's "scarred leaders," someone God uses despite moral lapses that included being fired from a job for lying on an expense report.
Long established the charity as a nonprofit religious corporation in 1995. Incorporation papers filed in New York said its purpose was spreading the gospel and that no part "of its assets, income or profit" would be distributed to any directors of the charity except for "reasonable payment."
Epstein said it was created for Long to coordinate his charitable activities, including mission trips overseas and donations to churches and orphans.
But later, the charity's compensation committee decided to use some of the charity's assets to pay Long for his work at New Birth to make up for many years when he had been underpaid, Epstein said. Long had told his charity's compensation committee previously that he didn't want to be paid the maximum amount available to him, Epstein said.
"It was appropriate to do something to make a dent in the compensation that the bishop hadn't received," Epstein said.
"Bishop Long has never received the legal amount of compensation he is due by law," said Epstein. A Philadelphia lawyer specializing in church tax law, Epstein is the producer of a video for pastors called "How To Maximize Your Clergy Salary and Benefits Package."
At one time Long also received a salary from New Birth. A church spokesman said Long no longer takes a salary, but instead accepts "love offerings" made by church members. Long would not discuss his current compensation.
Land donation
The charity took out a $1,160,000 mortgage to purchase the home in March 1998, according to DeKalb County property records. The mortgage was paid off by 2003, records show.
In October 2002, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries notified the IRS that the charity was dissolving and pledged to transfer all of its assets to New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.
The house was never transferred.
Instead, a year later, Long signed papers relinquishing the charity's interest in the home, making himself the sole owner. The same day, Christmas Eve 2003, Long took out a $300,000 loan using the house as collateral.
State law in New York requires that a nonprofit religious corporation must get court approval and notify the New York attorney general's office of its intent to transfer real estate to one of its officers. The attorney general's office said it could not find any record of the transaction or of Long's charity getting court approval.
Epstein said Long earned much of the charity's revenue through royalties, honorariums and gifts from other pastors and churches. He and Long emphasized that none of the charity's money came through soliciting New Birth members.
"I have great integrity with my congregation," Long said. "I would never take their money and use them to build my own personal happiness."
Tax and property records show, however, that New Birth accounted for more than half the charity's income in 1997. Fulton County property records show the church gave Long's charity 13.7 acres of land that year. The charity later reported selling the property for $1.4 million.
Also, a single donor accounted for 90 percent of the charity's income in 1999 and 2000, tax records show. One donor gave $1.9 million in 1999 and one donor gave $1.6 million the following year. As allowed by law, the records do not identify the donors.
Long would not say whether New Birth was the donor nor talk about the church's decision to donate land to his charity.
'Last say-so'
Long said a church board oversaw his charity's decisions to compensate him.
"It's not like I wake up and say, 'I think I want a Bentley,' " he said.
In the past, however, Long has claimed he was the final decision-maker at New Birth. In a 1999 interview, he told the Journal-Constitution how he became the unquestioned leader at his church. After presiding over New Birth's explosive growth, he said he told his congregation that a biblical leader shouldn't have to answer to a board. Long said the board relinquished its authority over him with his congregation's approval.
In his book "Taking Over," Long described the event in more detail. He wrote that after seven years at New Birth, he was frustrated by its deacon board because it was "gripping the purse strings" of the church and "telling the man of God when to jump and how high." He said he received a revelation from God, who encouraged him to get rid of the "ungodly governmental structure" at New Birth.
"That was the day I became pastor," Long wrote. "Up until that time, I was the hired preacher . ... "
Some pastors take advantage of a lack of denominational accountability to enrich themselves, said J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma, a national magazine that covers charismatic churches. Grady said, however, that he didn't know enough about Long's ministry to comment on it specifically.
"There are many independent churches out there today that are accountable to no one," he said. "Their board structures are controlled by a few insiders and no one can bring correction. That is not healthy. But it will not change as long as the congregations don't demand change."
Several New Birth members said they approved of Long's compensation, home and leadership style. They said church boards often limit the vision of pastors.
"I know he's going to do the right thing," said Melvin Johnson, a member of the church's elder council. "He's going to sow the seed where it's supposed to be sowed."
Johnson said there was no New Birth board or committee that can overrule Long's decisions. "He would have the last say-so in terms of what ultimate decisions are made," said Johnson, a member for 17 years.
Everett Blakes, another member, said Long recently pledged to pay off the debts of 10 families and to buy a car for every unmarried mother at the church.
Blakes said it was New Birth's duty to support Long financially.
"We have to come bearing gifts," Blakes said. "When you come before the priest and he gives a word to you, then it's your duty to meet the needs of the priest."
'Jesus wasn't poor'
Several nonprofit experts and watchdog group leaders questioned how the $1.4 million home and the Bentley contributed to the charity's stated purpose.
They cited IRS rules warning that a nonprofit religious group could lose its tax-exempt status if it provides excess economic benefits to an insider.
"An organization can be a tax-exempt entity or a for-profit entity, but not both," said Rod Pitzer, a tax expert with Wall Watchers, a North Carolina-based watchdog group that monitors the finances of large Christian organizations.
Nonprofit experts and others who viewed the charity's records at the Journal-Constitution's request said that it did not appear to have an independent board.
"With a wife approving her husband's salary, it appears that this board's stamp is really just a rubber stamp," said Grassley, the Iowa senator.
Board members other than Long did not comment for this article. Long's wife, Vanessa, declined to comment and Thornton did not return telephone calls. A fourth board member who served for several years could not be located.
Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, said Long shouldn't build his prosperity on the back of a nonprofit religious corporation.
"It's wrong to use tax-subsidized dollars to support luxury goods for nonprofit executives," said Borochoff. "If he wants these things, then he should get people to give him money outside of a nonprofit organization."
Long said he represented a "paradigm shift" in the black church. He said he won't be like other pastors who died broke while giving everything to congregations that "wanted them to live in poverty and preach to them about prosperity."
Any problem people may have with his charity, Long said, was rooted in some people's expectations that pastors should be poor.
"I would love to sit with you and walk with you through the Bible to show that Jesus wasn't poor," he said.
His congregation is inspired by seeing its pastor do well, Long said.
"I'm not going to apologize for anything. ... "
August 29, 2005
Why We Fail
In a nutshell;
While stating that she “didn't have a personal relationship” with Johnson, Oprah told Martin of several stories the highlight her regard for the visionary publisher.
Complete gossipy coverage of the snub but the bolded words above tell the entire story as far as I'm concerned about a catastrophic failure of leadership and commonality of interests.., how could the two most powerful black folks in MSM - both operating out of Chicago -NOT have a close professional relationship at the very least?
thinking about the pink slip issued to Julian Bond by Ted Hayes on an episode of America's Black Forum in May..,
August 28, 2005
KatrinaVision
Neocon wagerers please step to the betting window.
Katrina is a category 5 storm. It's gonna shutdown 1 Million barrels of daily oil production and 10 million cubic feet of natural gas production {which as we all know by now, peaked a long time ago in these here united states...,} and which will have an even greater impact than the approximately 2.5% disruption of our daily oil jones.
If G-Dub opens the strategic petroleum reserve today {800 Million barrels of black gold} it'll put the speculative wolves into check at market opening tomorrow morning, and, indicate that the administration is focused on the well-being of the American people. If, on the other hand, he salutes us with his middle finger, as I fully expect him to do, I will interpret this as a clear and present signal that we are strategically committed to putting in work in and around the Tehran metropolitan area within the next x months weather and other logistical factors permitting.
So neocons, is your boy about the well-being of the American people, the well-being of energy speculators, or, is he fittin to put in work in Iran which necessitates he hold that oil dear for the use of Rumsfeld and company?
Grieving Mothers
I haven't written anything about Cindy Sheehan, because, frankly, I don't see the point in it.
The woman was anti-war before her son was killed. After her son was killed, she was still anti-war, and is doing what she thinks needs to be done so that no other mothers face what she is facing.
Other mothers take a view opposite of Cindy Sheehan. That's their view.
To date, I think many on the anti-Sheehan side have been pathetic and over the top in their opposition to her. Frankly, it's made me sick to my stomach. However, on the Fox News Sunday, I saw some sanity.
Chris Wallace had two mothers who each had a son killed in the war. One wanted the troops to come home IFF the reason for being there could not be explained well enough, while the other supported the mission as is.
Wallace and the segment producer did an outstanding job presenting rational women who presented rational views. And at the end, Wallace did something that too many pundits and news articles are not doing: he asked about their commonality.
Pat Robertson's Fatwah and the Emergence of Medieval America
One of the best said Malthusian libertarian summaries of the current state of affairs that I've come upon to date. It begs the question of whether we can stop distracting ourselves long enough to concentrate and generate a feedback loop of sufficient intensity to alter our trajectory into the economic phase transition. Note this is only about altering our trajectory because there's no question that we're coming to ground shortly. All that remains in question is whether we execute a landing or whether we crash.
It is a bitter truth to swallow that the American peace movement, by itself, did not end the Vietnam War. It ended, primarily, because the Vietnamese people fought tenaciously, purchased freedom with their own lives and bloodied America's nose. It ended because America's soldiers, mostly Black, began to mutiny, and because college-aged boys, mostly White, declined to fight or die for a war that meant nothing to them. It ended because of the massive stresses in the American economy, the inflation, the devaluation of the dollar, the crisis caused byskyrocketing oil prices due to the 1973 oil embargo. It ended because the feedback loop of the Vietnam War threatened to rip apart the carefully engineered society of America.
Pat Robertson was right when he suggested that the United States would assassinate Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
Robertson, of course, is a hypocrite and one of this country's most effective ad men for atheism. In the main, Pat Robertson is a medieval, witch-burning, fool. However, he moves among people who are either within or near to the circles of power. They are not nice people, but they are not fools. Robertson has either heard directly from this country's rulers' own lips, or heard from reliable sources close to them, that the US does, indeed, have President Chavez in its cross-hairs.
Robertson sees himself as a prophet with a direct line to God. All medieval witch-burners do. He is a fool because he could not resist opening his mouth and blabbing to the whole world that he had foreknowledge about America's black bag operations to assassinate yet another democratically elected foreign leader. By speaking so brazenly -- and prematurely -- Robertson caused two immediate effects: First, he provoked sanctimonious denials from other political witch-burners like Minnesota's Republican Senator Norm Coleman and Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld. Second, Mr. Robertson's intemperate prattling has, in essence, spilled the beans about the all-too-real US plan to kill President Chavez. Thus has Pat Robertson unwittingly spared Hugo Chavez from the death that was, indeed, prepared for him -- at least for the time being -- and earned Mr. Robertson a public scolding from those liars whose dark secret he has disclosed.
There are numerous wonders associated with what Mr. Robertson said. Why, for example, are so many Americans shocked by the notion that, covertly or overtly, their leaders would assassinate another country's head of government?
It is one thing to have forgotten our history from the last century, when the US helped to violently overthrow the popularly elected governments of Chile (Allende) and Iran (Mossadegh) and nearly every country in Central America from Panama (Omar Torrijos) to Guatemala (Jacob Arbenz). Can the majority of Americans have already forgotten that even in this century we have forcibly removed Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the duly elected president of Haiti, and unhesitatingly supported undemocratic governments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Philippines and Kazakhstan? Political assassination, of course, is not an exclusive tool of American foreign policy. This country's readiness to covertly kill political leaders who offend us puts the US in league with Ariel Sharon, Stalin, Rome's Caligula, feudal Europe and the medieval despots of the declining Byzantine Empire.
It is no surprise that Mr. Robertson and his fellow medievalists have most in common with the theocrats of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The word “assassin”, after all, is derived from the medieval French word, “hassassis” (hashish takers) given to Muslim fanatics who committed to “assassinate” Christian crusaders who had occupied the Middle East. Thus has Mr. Robertson eschewed the peace-extremist teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and endorsed the tactics of medieval, anti-occupation, Crusader-killing, dope-smoking, Islamic insurgents.
The Administration's more-or-less official response to Mr. Robertson's statements was that such an assassination would be “illegal” under US law. But why would the public accept that explanation when it is obvious that the 'rule of law' in America applies only to the lesser classes, and not to them at the highest level of policy making? Political and social leaders have been assassinated within and without the United States for decades, usually without the sanction of law; and if the US government had not its own finger on the trigger, then it found the usual collaborators who, for the purchase of power or money, would pull the trigger as America's proxy.
Meanwhile, America's perpetually vacationing medieval king says nothing while he shakes spears at the world and mutters disingenuously, like Henry II, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome chaviste?”
The election of Mr. Bush and the influence of Pat Robertson and his dominionist ilk are markers of a degenerate medievalization of America. So, too, are the efforts in some quarters to push Science back into the Middle Ages and to undermine evolution with oxymoronic notions of “intelligent design”. Notwithstanding advances in technology, America is regressing backwards from its Enlightenment origins into medievalism. The people who scream their patriotism the loudest seem to be the most determined to destroy the Founders' dreams by creating a medieval theocracy like only Torquemada could love.
History often shows that blind religious fervor, superstition, sectarian violence, witch hunts and intolerance increase in society commensurate with increasing economic stress. Thus, “technology”, in and of itself, does not protect a society when economic surpluses start to disappear and the competition for depleting resources becomes sharp. Technology will not brake the superstitious, frightened flight into medieval religious irrationality when the people find their jobs disappearing, their purchasing power devalued, their houses becoming too expensive to heat, their cars too expensive to fuel, everything costing more for less value -- in short, as the brief historical blip of American middle class prosperity between the age of coal and the age of the Internet evaporates. It is in times like these, historically, that the people turn to charismatic religious leaders.
Why do we seem so unable to arrest America's backsliding from modernity? Other than the occasional demonstration, protest march or election between greater or lesser evils, concerned American citizens cannot seem to gain any traction. Except for the spontaneous actions of people like Cindy Sheehan, organized resistance to the witch-burning medievalists has, at least in these United States, resulted in more disappointment than quantifiable success. Why is this?
Partly, it is because beginning around the time of the First World War, America has been a laboratory for very successful social engineering on a grand scale. By a deliberate, decades long, coordinated training of the American people -- through print, film, radio and television and their infusion into the institutions of education -- the most powerful business/political interests have thoroughly inculcated the citizenry with a medieval serf's docility and acceptance of authority. Our colleges and universities have been re-made into incubators for obedient corporate employees and consumers. Whereas once we were a wilder, more independent pack of dogs, now we tend to bark when told to bark, shut up when told to shut up, and lick the hand that merely refrains from striking us. We have been trained to be collared, to walk on a leash, and to think of it as though we were walking the master and not the other way around. We eat the kibbles that trickle down to us and we have been trained not to bite.
In part, enlightened Americans have become politically impotent because we have been purchased with the excesses afforded by abundant, cheap energy. Like peasants in Pieter Bruegel's Land of Cockaign, we luxuriated in a relative life of ease and forgot that we were once a revolutionary people who had to wrest our Enlightenment from an empire by blood, force and strength of will. Now, when the hard labor of political effort beckons to us, we can, instead, do the institutionally approved, time-consuming things like go shopping, go to the movies, watch a baseball game, play the slot machines, drink a beer, play a video game, anything that entertains and distracts us from the task of democracy. There is Michael Jackson to titillate, Pat to pontificate, American Idols and more American idles.
In part, even the Enlightened portions of the citizenry have been enervated by the soma of this Brave New World. Some think that occasional charitable deeds, or a few dollars contributed to this NGO or another, or a weekend demonstration (time permitting), or effusions of love and understanding will change the world. While they cannot hurt, by themselves, none of these actions will accomplish anything. In fact, the control tendrils of surveillance, monitoring, and foundation grants, we should have no doubt, have already so vascularized, so infiltrated into even the highest levels of the most noble appearing organizations such that only the spontaneous, non-hierarchical actions of the Cindy Sheehans of this world can hope to effect real change. It is as though the Powers tolerate, even indirectly fund, the ineffectual organized protest that they do permit to take place because these are a social pressure release mechanism that dissipates resistive energy, a controlled burn intended to prevent a larger conflagration.
It is a bitter truth to swallow that the American peace movement, by itself, did not end the Vietnam War. It ended, primarily, because the Vietnamese people fought tenaciously, purchased freedom with their own lives and bloodied America's nose. It ended because America's soldiers, mostly Black, began to mutiny, and because college-aged boys, mostly White, declined to fight or die for a war that meant nothing to them. It ended because of the massive stresses in the American economy, the inflation, the devaluation of the dollar, the crisis caused byskyrocketing oil prices due to the 1973 oil embargo. It ended because the feedback loop of the Vietnam War threatened to rip apart the carefully engineered society of America.
As painful as the end of the age of cheap, abundant energy will be, it may allow Americans to bust out of their gilded cages. It is, after all, in the less affluent countries of today's world -- where there is less time for social foppery and fewer resources for idle consumerism -- where we find the lessons Americans must learn if it is to avoid descending into a new medievalism.
In Mexico this year, more than a million citizens turned out, effectively shutting down the capital city. They prevented the ruling mainstream parties from contriving, through judicial machination, to extinguish the presidential ambitions of its popular, left-leaning politician, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. In Ecuador, the people rose, first to oust their unrepresentative president and, second, to shut down the oil industry until it renegotiates its national contracts. In Bolivia, in June 2005, a coalition of indigenous and working class people threw out a leadership that had sold off the nation's mineral and energy patrimony to western corporate interests. In the years while Americans disputed the limped electoral contests of Bush versus Gore or Bush versus Kerry, the citizens of Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay also practiced enlightenment and swept their political houses clean.
In Europe this spring, the EU proposed a constitution that was, in essence, a carte blanche for multinational corporate rule. Overriding the cajolery of their leadership, the citizens of France and Holland overwhelmingly voted NO, thereby extinguishing (for the moment) big business's attempt to undo Europe's social safety nets and remake the continent in America's neo-liberal/neo-conservative image.
We can relearn lessons in enlightenment by looking abroad. The lessons will not mean anything, however, until the economic stress in this country equals that of the nations we would learn from; until the seductions of a surplus society yield to the reality of scarcity. That time could be coming sooner than you think: as soon as your next trip to the gas pump, as soon as your next winter heating bill, as soon as your next electrical power outage.
It is then that America's descent into medievalism could begin to be seriously checked. May the Enlightenment prevail.
Zbignew Zingh can be reached at Zbig@ersarts.com. This Article is CopyLeft, and free to distribute, reprint, repost, sing at a recital, spray paint, scribble in a toilet stall, etc. to your heart’s content, with proper author citation. Find out more about Copyleft and read other great articles at www.ersarts.com.
Article source at dissidentvoice.org
August 27, 2005
Greenspan Gives a Very Clear Warning
Now, let's turn our attention to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to the annual Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank meeting. (My invitation got lost in the mail again this year.) For the last four years, Greenspan has given his clearest, easiest to understand speech for that year at Jackson Hole. This year was no exception. His speech was on the evolution of central bank policy decision making.
The man has spoken. The end is near for this absurd housing market bubble. Many of us, by the way we act, appear to have lost our minds in the dopamine fog of blissful diregard for the hard lessons of the dotcom bubble. You've been warned, now ack like you know!!!! hmm.., I wonder what TD Jakes has told his flock to do?
August 26, 2005
T. D. Jakes
Does T. D. Jakes deserve to be put into the same category as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or Lewis Farrakhan?
Is T.D. Jakes leading Christians astray?
August Wilson Has Liver Cancer
Diagnosed with liver cancer, August Wilson continues to write
By MICHAEL KUCHWARA
AP DRAMA WRITER
NEW YORK -- Even after a diagnosis in June of inoperable liver cancer, August Wilson has continued to work on "Radio Golf," the final play in his epic 10-work cycle about the black experience in 20th-century America.
"He completed another draft of the play in early July," his assistant, Dena Levitin, said Friday in an interview from Seattle where the 60-year-old Wilson lives with his wife, costume designer Constanza Romero, and their daughter, Azula.
News of Wilson's illness was first disclosed Friday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "It's not like poker, you can't throw your hand in," the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright told the paper. "I've lived a blessed life. I'm ready." He said he has a life expectancy of three to five months.
August 25, 2005
You asked for it, you got it. Let's get this party started Chavez offers Americans cheap fuel
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, popular with the poor at home, has offered to help needy Americans with cheap supplies of petrol.
Full Monty; is either one of the cruelest disinformation bomblets of all time, or, the genuine article showing us how this brother Works. Is it any wonder he's got old devils talking out the side of their necks on teevee? Next thing you know, they'll be calling him the anti-Christ.
"We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States," the populist leader said at the end of a visit to Communist-run Cuba on Tuesday.
Chavez did not say how Venezuela would go about providing petrol to poor communities.
Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA owns Citgo, which has 14,000 petrol stations in the United States.
The offer may sound attractive to Americans feeling pinched by soaring prices at the pump but not to the US government, which sees Chavez as a left-wing troublemaker in Latin America.
Petrol is cheaper than mineral water in oil-producing Venezuela, where consumers can fill their tanks for less than $2.
Average petrol prices have risen to $2.61 a gallon in the US, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
Free health care
Chavez and Castro (R) offered to train US doctors free of charge
Chavez said Venezuela could supply petrol to Americans at half the price they now pay if intermediaries who "speculated ... and exploited consumers" were cut out.
Venezuela supplies Cuba with generously financed oil, and plans to help Caribbean nations foot their oil bills.
Chavez, in Cuba to attend the graduation of Cuban-trained doctors from 28 countries, was seen off at the airport by Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Washington has accused the two leaders of being a destabilising influence in South America.
Chavez and Castro offered to give poor Americans free health care and train doctors free of charge.
Hugo Chavez
Though it's written all over his face, seeing it in writing was very gratifying indeed;
Chávez comes from the provinces of Venezuela, from the vast southern cattle lands of the Llanos that stretch down to the Apure and Orinoco river system. Of black and Indian ancestry, his parents were local schoolteachers, and he has inherited their didactic skills. His talents first came to the fore when he joined the army and became a popular lecturer at the war college in Caracas. He is a brilliant communicator, speaking for hours on television in a folksy manner that captivates his admirers and irritates his opponents.Richard Gott writing in the Guardian is the author of Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution. I want to take this opportunity to remind each and every one of you what Dr. Sonja Ebron wrote in the Black Commentator concerning the actual threat posed by Sadaam Hussein - why the U.S. felt compelled to take him out - and why black folks ought to oppose that war.
Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, is a genial fellow with a good sense of humour and a steely political purpose. As a former military officer, he is accustomed to the language of battle and he thrives under attack. He will laugh off this week's suggestion by Pat Robertson, the US televangelist, that he should be assassinated, but he will also seize on it to ratchet up the verbal conflict with the United States that has lasted throughout his presidency.
Chávez, now 51, is the same age as Tony Blair, and after nearly seven years as president he has been in power for almost as long. But there the similarities end. Chávez is a man of the left and, like most Latin Americans with a sense of history, he is distrustful of the United States. Free elections in Latin America have often thrown up radical governments that Washington would like to see overthrown, and the Chávez government is no exception to this rule.
Chávez is a genuinely revolutionary figure, one of those larger-than-life characters who surface regularly in the history of Latin America - and achieve power perhaps twice in a hundred years. He wants to change the history of the continent. His close friend and role model is Fidel Castro, Cuba's long-serving leader. The two men meet regularly, talk constantly on the telephone, and have formed a close political and military alliance. Venezuela has deployed more than 20,000 Cuban doctors in its shanty-towns, and Cuba is the grateful recipient of cheap Venezuelan oil, replacing the subsidised oil it once used to receive from the Soviet Union. This, in the eyes of the US government, would itself be a heinous crime that would put Chávez at the top of its list for removal. The US has been at war with Cuba for nearly half a century, mostly conducted by economic means, and it only abandoned plans for Castro's direct overthrow after subscribing to a tacit agreement not to do so with the Soviet Union after the missile crisis of 1962.
The Americans would have dealt with Chávez long ago had they not been faced by two crucial obstacles. First, they have been notably preoccupied in recent years in other parts of the world, and have hardly had the time, the personnel, or the attention span to deal with the charismatic colonel. Second, Venezuela is one of the principal suppliers of oil to the US market (literally so in that 13,000 US petrol stations are owned by Citgo, an extension of Venezuela's state oil company). Any hasty attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government would undoubtedly threaten this oil lifeline, and Chávez himself has long warned that his assassination would close down the pumps. With his popularity topping 70% in the polls, he would be a difficult figure to dislodge.
Chávez comes from the provinces of Venezuela, from the vast southern cattle lands of the Llanos that stretch down to the Apure and Orinoco river system. Of black and Indian ancestry, his parents were local schoolteachers, and he has inherited their didactic skills. His talents first came to the fore when he joined the army and became a popular lecturer at the war college in Caracas. He is a brilliant communicator, speaking for hours on television in a folksy manner that captivates his admirers and irritates his opponents.
He never stops talking and he never stops working. He has time for everyone and never forgets a face. For several years he travelled incessantly around the country, to keep an eye on what was going on. This was not mere electioneering, for he would talk for hours to those who had hardly a vote among them. He exhausts his cadres, his secretaries and his ministers. I have travelled with him and them into the deepest corners of the country, and then, after a 16-hour day, he would call the grey-faced cabinet together for an impromptu meeting to analyse what they had discovered and what measures they should take.
There was always a touch of the 19th century about this frenetic activity, as though the president were still on horseback, and Castro is known to have warned Chávez not to absorb himself unduly in the minutiae of administration. "You are the president of Venezuela," he is reported to have said, "not the mayor of Caracas." Chávez has taken the advice to heart, and has become less the populist folk hero and more the impressive statesman. Concern about possible assassination has long predated Robertson's outburst, and for the past two years Chávez has cut down his travels inside the country and been accompanied everywhere by fearsome-looking guards.
Abroad, however, he is a frequent visitor to the capitals of Latin America, and he is widely perceived as the leader of the group of left-leaning presidents recently elected in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, as well as the inspiration of the radicalised indigenous movements now clamouring at the gates of power in Bolivia and Ecuador. There is another touch of the 19th century here, for Chávez is a follower and promoter of the ideas and career of Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan leader who brought the philosophy of the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution to Latin America, and liberated much of the continent from Spanish rule. Chávez has labelled his movement the "Bolivarian Revolution", and he hopes that his political ideas will spread throughout the continent.
This in itself would be alarming enough to the United States, had it the time to pay proper attention. Equally worrying for the Americans is the time Chávez has devoted to the Middle East, successfully courting the governments that belong to Opec, the oil producers' organisation, some of whom have been labelled by the Americans as "the axis of evil". Today's high oil price has much to do with increased demand from China and India, and from the Iraq war, but the spadework that has given Opec fresh credibility was put in by Chávez. Soon he will be helping to show the new Iranian president, using the Venezuelan example, how to increase the revenues of a state-owned oil company and channel them into programmes to help the poor.
Chávez is widely popular today, but for much of his presidency he has been a contested, even a hated figure, arousing widespread discontent within Venezuela's traditional white elite. Yet although his rhetoric is revolutionary, his reforms have been moderate and social democratic. He criticises the policies of "savage neo-liberalism" that have done so much harm to the poorer peoples of Venezuela and Latin America in the past 20 years, yet the private sector is still alive and well. His land reform is aimed chiefly at unproductive land and provides for compensation. His most obvious achievement, which should not have been controversial, has been to channel increased oil revenues into a fresh range of social projects that bring health and education into neglected shanty-towns.
The hatred that he arouses in the old opposition parties, which have seen their membership and influence dwindle, lies more in ideology and racial antipathy than in material loss. Some opponents dislike his friendship with Castro, his verbal hostility to the United States, and his criticisms of the Catholic church, and some people still have a residual hostility to the fact that he staged an unsuccessful military coup in 1992 when a young colonel in the parachute regiment. Many Latin Americans still find it difficult to come to terms with the idea of a progressive military man. But mostly they are alarmed by the way in which he has enfranchised the country's vast underclass, interrupting the cosy, US-influenced lifestyle of the white middle class with visions of a frightening world that lives beyond their apartheid-gated communities.
Over the past few years this anxious opposition has made several attempts to get rid of Chávez, with the tacit encouragement of Washington. They organised a coup in April 2002 that rebounded against them two days later when the kidnapped Chávez was returned to power by an alliance of the army and the people. They tried an economic coup by closing down the oil refineries, and this too was a failure. Last year's recall-referendum, designed to lead to a defeat for Chávez, was an overwhelming victory for him. The local opposition, and by extension the United States, have shot their final bolt. There is nothing left in the locker, except of course assassination.
The fingers of mad preachers are usually far from the button, but the untimely words of Pat Robertson, easily discounted in Washington and airily dismissed by the state department as "inappropriate", might yet wake an echo among zealots in Venezuela. A similar call was made last year by a former Venezuelan president. Assassinations may be easy to plan, and not difficult to accomplish. But their legacy is incalculable. The radical leader of neighbouring Colombia, Jorge Gaitán, was assassinated more than 50 years ago, in 1948. In terms of civil war and violence, the Colombians have been paying the price ever since. No one would wish that fate on Venezuela.
Crossroads
To be conscious at this moment means to accept that everything you have ever been taught in church and school is a farce, and that maintaining the American way of life will prove anti-thetical to every moral value you pretend to hold dear.
Never during our media saturated recollection has America's history so openly centered on subjugation to greed, fear, and monstrousness. In direct and overt contradiction of all the many just-so-stories which exist to reinforce our allegedly Christian identity, we are faced with the increasingly open expression of anti-Christian soullessness.
but do we dare call it what it is?
History has shown us everything we need to know about its scope, approach, and methods;
"In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes."Mein Kampf 1925
Not only should we all recognize its approach, we should all of us have taken the lesson concerning precisely where it's headed. Come on people! It's not rocket science. Pay attention to what it says, and from time to time it'll even slip up and tell you point blank, and in no uncertain terms, exactly what it is....,
August 24, 2005
Cobb - Ya Coulda Jumped In Here
Moreover, in glancing at your 2003 post re: Ujamaa, I would reject the notion that cooperative economics is lacking as a strategy for liberation. The opposing positions are ahistorical and untenable.
In point of fact, a good friend has done just that - with a Papa John's in Harlem - this after a successful stint at the Federal Reserve Bank...so, there's more to this than is meeting the eye.
But - here we go again...I don't think cobb's well thought out arguments actually hold up because in too many cases, it's a question of apples and oranges or flawed assumptions. still, the contours of the discussion merit discussion and flushing out.
August 23, 2005
The Economic Lessons of Blackness
The absolute favorite discussion of mine, more than Conservatism, more than just about anything else that touches on black identity and who we are supposed to be is right here. It is a discussion I have tried to sustain anywhere and everywhere on the net, in person, via email, in forums, in dorm rooms. I have yet to be able to sustain this conversation and so have consigned it to the pile of black intellectual curiosities that I am heir to. It is the question of black economics.
Like with my 3x4x5 demographic, I also have a notion of the various strategies of black economic destiny.
I have wrote most recently about Ujamaa, The Problem Child and came to the conclusion, somewhat disdainfully, that the winner in the sweepstakes is 'Blackface Capitalism'. But perhaps we are just a generation too soon. I think the critical question lies with understanding whether or not we will lose our willingness to aggregate and our ability to network before we become as indistinctly mainstream as everyone else who is 'not a minority'. I should also note that America is swinging our direction, big time. It won't be long before King Day means beer. (Just today I saw a TV commercial for Red Stripe whose tagline was 'Teaching our white friends how to dance for 70 years'. I swear to god.)
So let's break it down:
A Small Refresher
Blackface capitalism would be Revlon through their 'Dark & Lovely' product line. White owned and controlled but strictly for the benefit of black consumers.
Ujamaa is small time, cooperative economics. It means going to the black owned barbershop instead of Supercuts.
Black capitalism is best exemplified by some of the black owned and operated car dealerships in Atlanta that I hear on the black radio station with black voices using black vernacular to attract black customers.
My position is that they are all good but black capitalism is best. I would add that there is a fourth, which is 'invisiblack' capitalism in which black controlled corporations provide goods and services to the mainstream in which the race of the management team is black but unknown and materially irrelevant. American Express, Avis, AOL Time Warner are all run by black men, few people know, it makes no impact on their marketing.
Which is running things?
Mastery Culture vs Corporate Civilization Redux
Temple jogged my memory with the following comment;
The question of obtaining an effective foothold or control of an industry - from production through distribution must be resolved in the affirmative...and it won't be settled by anything other than black folk being excellent at activity x. And, in most cases, it will certainly require excellence.
Summoning to mind Dr. Oba T'Shaka's commentary on mastery culture vs corporate civilization. On the spectrum of knowledge-power-freedom - it is necessary to realize that the way things are is not the only way for them to be - and sure as hell not the best way for them to be. For example, the industrial development of Japan, up until comparatively recently, was not in fact due to emulation of Western capitalist methods, but to a much less hierarchically organised structure based on a different kind of relationship between local industry and the capitalist sector. In the light of the economic destruction being wreaked at present by the proponents of crude corporate globalisation, this is interesting to say the least....
Here are a few excerpts to whet your appetites:
"The predominant viewpoint in Japanese studies is that the emerging industrial economy of the Edo Era was “premodern” or merely the commercial extension of feudalism. Economic historian Heita Kawakatsu disputes this notion of a premodern transition existing phantom-like between feudalism and capitalism. The late Edo era, he argues, gave rise to a productive revolution on par with the industrial revolution in Western Europe and the United States. The modernization of Japan came about as the result of an evolutionary process within Asian civilization rather than by emulation of the capitalist West."
"...The evolution of silk- reeling technology reveals one of the notable features of Japanese industrialism: the incremental improvement of production technology by “skilful” workers. The role of the “skilful” worker represents a major difference between the Asian and Western models of industrialization in their respective management philosophies and in the relationships between labor and capital...In the West, as Max Weber pointed out, the entrepreneur has been exalted as a member of a predestined elect whose faith was affirmed with hard work and accumulation of capital. The result was a bias in favor of the capital congealed in the machine, while the worker faced the steady loss of his social status from craftsman to unskilled laborer. The Western factory is the meeting point of the smart machine and dull worker. The Japanese model, on the other hand, has stressed the role of the “skilful” laborer who exercises a significant degree of authority and responsibility over his tools and, collectively, over the workspace and production process. ."
"...Studies of the traditional economic dynamics of mountain communities could lead to a better understanding of their potential for industrial self- development, as well as more sustainable trade links with the developed countries. In its early development drive, Japan’s homegrown industry proved to be the basis for economic growth rather than a disadvantage. ....The retreat of NGOs and tourism before the ongoing Nepalese hill people’s insurgency, reminiscent of the Chichibu Rebellion, shows that external dependency relations, no matter how well intended or ideally conceived, cannot substitute for indigenous industry rooted in the environment and culture of mountain communities."
Watts, Another VIew
The Watts Riots, Burned Into Memory
By Roger Wilkins
Tuesday, August 23, 2005; A15
John McWhorter is right to say that we ought to pause and remember the Watts riots of 40 years ago and ponder their implication for America's present and future ["Burned, Baby, Burned: Watts and the Tragedy of Black America," Outlook, Aug. 14]. I take strong issue, however, with the conclusions he draws from his review of the events in Watts and South Central Los Angeles in 1965.
I think the difference between McWhorter and me arises in large measure from our profoundly different perspectives on the event. He writes that he was born two months after the riots occurred and that his conclusions are based on his research on the subject. Mine are based largely on what I learned when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent me to Watts 40 years ago this month as a part of two federal teams -- one headed by former Florida governor LeRoy Collins and the next by then-deputy attorney general Ramsey Clark -- both charged with helping to end the violence and figuring out what had caused it.
McWhorter dismisses the conventional wisdom that the riots occurred because of the miserable conditions in the bleakest ghettos of what was then America's most glamorous city, and he notes that "the National Urban League had rated Los Angeles the best city in the nation for blacks to live in." That might have been true of Crenshaw or other upscale black neighborhoods, but not of South Central and Watts. In one community meeting I arranged for Collins and two others I set up for Clark, the bitterness and anguish laced through the testimony of poor neighborhood residents were heart-rending and, when they spoke of the city's neglect, just cause for indignation.
----
More at the link provided.
Black Political Ideologies
Ideologies work to do a few different things. They identify friends and enemies. They identify opinion leaders and anti-opinion leaders. They identify goals, and to a much lesser extent, strategies and tactics. They link individual experiences to group experiences. They reduce complexity and interpret truth (Harris-Lacewell, 2004).
Harris-Lacewell, taking from Dawson, identifies four major streams of black political thought: Black Nationalism, Black Integrationism, Black Feminism, Black Conservatism. A fifth exists--Black Radicalism, but she (again taking from Dawson), argues that it doesn't really appear in popular black public opinion. Myself? I don't think this strain would appear in black public opinion largely because the survey questions used to measure radicalism are weak.
These ideologies are to an extent orthogonal to conservatism and liberalism. Louis Farrakhan for example, with his strong critiques of black cultural life, and his anti-democratic tendencies, can be thought of as a black CONSERVATIVE nationalist. And within black nationalism there are even more dimensions (I published a paper recently arguing that Pan-Africanism should be thought of as a dimension of black nationalism distinct from separatist nationalism).
One thing that bears witnessing. Just as the schools our children attend are set up to deal with mid twentieth century realities, and our media is set up to cover those same realities with a slight techno spin....it is very likely that our ideologies too are fifty years old. Separatist black nationalists for example no longer have to theoretically use the law or revolutionary means to take over land, or a set of southern states (like the Republic of New Africa suggests).
Simply convince around 100,000 or so black people to move to Rhode Island.
August 21, 2005
"Conservative" vs. "Liberal": We Can't Afford It
So, Lester is attempting to give me a cyber-spanking on ideology.
That's all well and good. I put words out there so if someone goes for them, that's cool. But let me clarify me thiknking a bit if I may.
There are serious issues within the Black community that need to be addressed. I'm not saying people aren't already trying to address them, but the more the merrier.
So this is where I'm coming from.
If students need to be tutored, does it matter if the tutors are from "the left" or "the right"? No. In fact, when I tutored, there were people politically aligned "left" and "right."
How about the creation of Black businesses? That something Earl Graves, Sr.has been preaching about with Black Enterprise magazine.
Michael Steele has been an advocate of Black business as well. Why should their "left" and "right" leangings prevent them from working together to benefit Blacks who want to start a business or who are already owning a business?
So this is where I'm coming from. If there are things to do, and the "sides" agree, drop the labels, put the shoulders together, and do it. If the "sides" disagree, salute each other, and go along the respective paths.
Check out this opinion article by Robert Woodson, Sr that appeared in The Washington Post's Outlook section.
Then, a community activist named Falaka Fattah and her husband, David, discovered that the oldest of their six boys had become an active gang member. Fattah responded by inviting 13 of her son's friends and fellow gang members to come and live in their small row house, replacing the family furniture with mattresses on the floors. They established rules together that governed conduct, such as requiring that everyone go to school or to work during the day, and that everyone practice good hygiene. Because fighting threatened the whole family, they agreed to bring all disputes to an "Adella" -- a peace session where all the members would participate in finding a resolution and meting out punishment if necessary.
When word circulated that there was a sanctuary from the street, more and more young people sought refuge at the Fattahs'. The family purchased the house opposite and then another one next door with the wages the young men earned doing odd jobs, washing cars and making deliveries. They named their community the House of Umoja, which means "unity" in Swahili. The number of houses grew to five, then seven.
...
If these programs have been successful, why haven't they been embraced more widely by school systems and communities? The fundamental resistance is from people on both the left and the right who argue that these remedies come from "untutored" people -- individuals who do not hold advanced degrees. More responsive, however, are police officers, judges and parents who have seen violence firsthand and know how young people can be influenced by real neighborhood experts.
I know I'm spitting into the wind, but I guess I can be an idealist, while being pragmatic and realist.