Noël Open Thread

  

Hola!

Well, first I landed on this article from Katz, at Counterpunch.  Just fascinating.  I had known that people fled to the unincorporated (under the Spanish flag) lands of what is now Florida, to escape the nation that was forming… but this has so much wonderful information.

[I]n July 1816, General Andrew Jackson, Commander of the U.S. Southern District, ordered Army, Navy and Marine units to invade Florida, then under the flag of Spain. Jackson acted, probably on orders from President James Madison, without a Congressional declaration of war. Neither Spain nor its colonial outpost posed a threat to the U.S. or its citizens. Rather, the President and the General–both prominent slaveholders–had concluded that the slave economy and its human “property” were threatened by the several thousand Native Americans and African Americans, including escaped slaves, who had united in the Seminole Nation on Florida soil.  [snip]

Then… I landed on a sort of ”book end” article, also by Katz, at Black Agenda Report…

[T]his former paratrooper seems to spring from a time when Africans and Indians armed and united to fight the first European invasion. For inspiration Chavez can reach back to the misty dawn of the foreign landings when heroic Black and African men and women rose to battle invading armies and their Christian missionaries. In 1819 Simon Bolivar, also of African and Indian lineage and the Founding Father of South America’s Revolution, became the first elected President of Venezuela. Vicente Guerrero, an illiterate Black Indian guerilla General during the Mexican Revolution, took his army into the Sierra Madre mountains where he trained them to wrest their country from Spain’s colonialism – and also taught himself to read and write. Mexico’s ruling white elite mocked his lack of education and called him a “triple-blooded outsider.” But in 1829 after Guerrero came down from his mountain refuge, he became President of Mexico, the first Black Indian head of state. Guerrero wrote Mexico’s constitution, emancipated its slaves, ended racial discrimination and abolished the death penalty.

His foes in Venezuela also consider Chavez a racial outsider, but the faces of millions of his supporters refute the charge, and his message continues to triumph at the polls. He seems to relish his role as Latin America’s chief antagonist to the Bush administration. Many believe his audacity instills courage and provides cover for Latin American leaders who have the audacity to challenge the giant to the north.  [snip]

AND:  Glen Ford has a further companion piece up at BAR, on Chavez.  With some dee-licious left kicks at Rangel and others who appeared to lose their minds when Chavez poked at Bush in his speech to the UN….

[H]ugo Chavez is waking folks up. His discounting, sharing and bartering of Venezuela’s most valuable natural resource, oil, is but one part of a larger vision of cooperation among peoples, that could serve as a model to resist, combat and replace the Global Rule-Of-Capital Order. Cuba, for example, has little oil, but doctors aplenty. Capitalism is incapable of fairly distributing medical services or of maintaining any other edifice of civilization that is not based on ever-escalating rates of profit for the rulers – a formula for vast suffering and eventual global collapse. In return for discounted oil, Venezuela imports more than 10,000 Cuban doctors to tend to the needs of the poor Venezuelan majority. That’s functional solidarity outside the dollar-dominated Order. The quality of life of both nations is enhanced through rational, voluntary exchange, rather than the coercive, race-to-the bottom international relationships of late-stage, armed-to-the-teeth global capitalism.  [snip] 

Remembering this… well, let’s just say it will be interesting to watch the Democrats.  They are on the Front Burner now.  And it is possible they underestimate the anger of the electorate.  We shall see…

[“T]his is one country, whether we’re Democrat or Republicans,” said Rangel, in a bizarre outburst after Chavez called George Bush “the Devil” the at the United Nations, in September. “And to come here, at the invitation of our people, and insult the president of the United States, you insult the flag; you insult the president; you insult the country; and you insult my constituents.”

In other variations of his weird rant, Rangel spoke of “my president” being so cruelly maligned – a kind of twist on the old “Is we sick, boss?” Black servant line. (“Is we insulted, boss?”)

Later, Rangel “clarified” his remarks, reiterating his “extreme displeasure” with Chavez’s “personal and disparaging” characterization of Bush as Beelzebub. Chavez’s demeaning public attack against [Bush] is viewed by Republicans and Democrats, and all Americans, as an attack on all of us.”  [snip]

I never bought into that “my president” business.  I’d rather be wary – of them all.

[A]lthough Rangel’s rant is three-month-old news, it remains one of the baldest, most pitiful recent examples of contradiction in the behavior of a supposedly progressive African American politician. Rangel’s irate expression of solidarity with Bush – the most virulently anti-Black president since Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal bureaucracy in 1913 – clashes violently with the president’s own total lack of solidarity with African Americans. Nevertheless, Rangel maintains that an insult to Bush is “an attack on all of us.” ( Tonto’s rejoinder, “What you mean we, White Man?” comes to mind.)“

Rep. Rangel maintains that an insult to Bush is ‘an attack on all of us.’”

Nonplussed, Chavez traveled to Harlem’s Mount Olivet Baptist Church. “They told me that I should be careful after I called [Bush] the devil — and I think he is the devil — because he might kill me,” Chavez told the overflow crowd in Rangel’s own district. Bush has been trying to dispose of Chavez at least since the U.S.-inspired April, 2002 coup attempt, yet murderous designs on the part of “his” president mean less to Rangel than perceived insults “to us all” from the crinkly-haired brown Latino bearing gifts, Hugo Chavez.

Rangel’s misplaced solidarity can be partially explained by comments from “his” House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, the purported progressive from San Francisco. Chavez, she said, “is an everyday thug” who “demeaned himself and he demeaned Venezuela.”

*****************************************************************

UPDATE, 11 pm

Saw this at Angry Arab:

The ambitions proclaimed when the neo-cons’ mission statement “The Project for the New American Century” was declared in 1997 have turned into disappointment and recriminations as the crisis in Iraq has grown. “The Project for the New American Century” has been reduced to a voice-mail box and a ghostly website. A single employee has been left to wrap things up.“ (thanks Hicham)

posted by As’ad @ 9:54 PM

wellll… it would be better if more than just the website would become “ghostly”.  I still see those “PNACers” around.  Harlan Ullman for one, the planner of “Shock and Awe” bombing of Baghdad and elsewhere, was just in the audience at a panel in DC, broadcast on C-Span

Finito Benito, as I say to thwart the censors… :), finito Benito would be too good for the PNACers.

****************************************************************

UPDATE, 11:45 am Sunday

In reference to the comments from DT in the thread… I noticed this at Angry Arab:

Look at this story in the Washington Post. You always brace yourself when the Washington Post comes out with its monthly token story on one African-American. This story is like: a black man who does not want to be black. Look at the crux of this article:

“For his entire life, Mason had been determined to not be defined by race.”

How can you not be defined by race when everybody around you defines you by race? How can you not be defined by race in a deeply racist society?

posted by As’ad @ 11:47 PM link

**************************************************************

Via Electronic Intifada:

 

****************************************************************

UPDATE, 3:10 pm Sunday

 Kevin Drum could not be more mistaken.  I landed on his post thru IOZ’s post.    Has he figured out NOTHING about the pro-war, the hard right conservatives?   Does he understand nothing of “escalation” and what that means?   I caught someone on one of the cables last night, in answer to a query about Iraq, say “it was hard to face losing after 30 years of movies with a happy ending”.  I am not kidding. 

People who believe Vietnam “could be won” BELIEVE the Rambo and Rocky movies (and for anyone who does not know, Stallone sat out Vietnam on Lac Leman, hanging with the Crown Prince of Ethiopia and screwing half of Europe, he was NOT in Vietnam).  And remember, there is a new Rocky movie out…

****************************************************************