"I am a part, of all that I have met" -- a most valuable and seemingly forgotten lesson among us, Brother Malcolm. Happy Birthday!

There's so much I could say about this documentary, but I won't -- not yet. I simply ask that you watch it (if you've not already seen it) and then, let's all talk about it.

"Inseparable" -- how I always want authentic Black women to be!

For a myriad of reasons, it's been a few years since I've watched American Idol.  So you can imagine my surprise and delight in stumbling upon it last night, to not only find that my beautiful, "homegirl," Candice Glover -- had won the whole shebang!!

And unlike the Changeling and his "homeboy," Lincoln -- I'm certain it's safe for me to say that we are not just from the same place, we are of that place, sharing in a collection of innate life experiences and "systems of reality" (as James Baldwin put it) unique to our existences in that place (I'm homesick y'all, can you tell?). This young sister, like my family, is from one of the Sea Islands of South Carolina, all of which (along with those in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida), continue to struggle mightily to preserve our West African heritage through the Gullah and Geechee cultures.  I'm not at all surprised at this young woman's voice, because I know "from whence it came."

Candice, as I'm sure everyone in St. Helena and Beaufort are -- I am so damned proud of you (Whitney lives on, Sister) and your stick-to-it-tiveness!  Hope this is the start of our hearing and having some more great singers, and more great music like you shared throughout the show -- before I drop dead (and yes, I went to YouTube today and listened to all of her performances for the entire show)!

But wait y'all!  Here's the absolutely wonderful icing on the cake -- this, soulful, double-dose of sweet, young, Black womanhood:



Jennifer:  "Sang Candice!" -- I swear, homegirl took me back home to those incredibly, powerful Black choirs, in churches all across the South with those two little words!  And "sang" Candice did!


(P.S. Screw you, Simon Cowell!)

Being on the "right" side of history and humanity matters to me...

I've followed Black Agenda Report for some time now.  The first reason?  Clear and critical thinking that has always confirmed for me that -- I was not alone.  Second?  That I wasn't losing my damned mind being against the Changeling and his ilk from the get-go.

Not saying I wasn't initially hoodwinked and bamboozled by the only viable, "female" contender for a minute -- cuz I was (chalk that up to the fact that Cynthia McKinney, for whom I voted in 2008, was so Angry-Black-Woman-demonized, she didn't stand a chance and, to my having experienced more than my share of "long-legged Mac Daddies" (as my sister, Sugar used to call the Changeling back in the day -- Sugar, where in the hayell are you??) than the law allowed.

Look, I feel this mixed little boy's confusion, raised by his white mother's half of the family while not looking like them (let's not forget their connection to the Geithner family, m'kay?), with no connection to his African-ness other than his name and a Black wife, with South  Carolina, Gullah roots.  I even  get how having a white grandmama who clutched her purse and pearls when Black folk (who looked like him!) approached, would make him feel that being accepted, adored and written about by white America made him feel more important than being truly humane (like Dr. King, whom he channels whenever necessary), honest -- and Black.  I also get how he needed to feel powerful, important, relevant and most importantly, accepted in these alleged, united states -- by any means necessary (his only connection to Malcolm, please hear me).

But what I don't get is -- notwithstanding all of his "lookin' like us" shit  -- why WE don't, as young sister Lauryn sang,  "Rebel" against the Trojan Horse, megalomaniacal puppetry in which he indulges.

Not casting aside the many, critically thinking others in the following video, I have to say that Kali Akuno and Abayomi Azikiwe, both, have it exactly right in this great compilation of facts.  Family please -- do listen, and maybe learn a thing or two:

TED Talks Education

The "Voices" and I have been going back-and-forth pretty hot and heavy for the last three months (No, I'm not crazy.  I just figure, when you talk to yourself, if nobody else -- you ought to have some damned answers!).  The conversations have been enlightening and reductive; combative and conciliatory; exciting and depressing (and no, I'm not a manic-depressive either); but most of all -- emotionally and mentally draining.

Clicking through the channels (TV is such shit these days), I stumbled upon this show on PBS, thinking it'd just be some "white noise" to ease my mind.  But I was pleasantly surprised that it was exactly the opposite!  Do click the link below to watch, listen and enjoy...

TEDTalks Education

In order of appearance:

• Ms. Rita Pierson -- a combination of ALL my Black, public high school teachers; my kind of self-esteem builder!
• Ramsey Musallum -- yep, he's a chemistry teacher; I'd have liked being in his class
• Shahruz Ghaemi -- "out of the mouths of babes" is all I can say about this kid!
  
• Dr. Angela Lee Duckworth -- perky with a point, no?
• Melissa Perez -- keep blowin' that whole pregnant teen, single mother bullshit out of the water, Chica!
• Bill Gates -- never had many warm fuzzies about him, but hey...
• John Legend -- that voice, those words!
• Geoffrey Canada -- forget Arne Duncan's ass!  I thought the Changeling should have appointed him Secretary of Education (but I know, that would've been too much like right)!
• Malcolm London -- a powerful, honest reality from this young brother; he should be the Changeling's "homeboy" (but of course, we know Lincoln is)
• Pearl Arredondo -- ¡Prédica!; Así me gusta la verdad de esta hermana Latina!
• Sir Ken Robinson -- y'all betta recognize, the British are coming (back!)

I needed to see this right now Family.  How 'bout you?

From one Black revolutionary to another...

As we spoke about Assata Shakur in the comments on the previous post, Sister Carolyn reminded me of my most favorite, literary Hero's letter to another of my Sheroes -- Angela Davis.  I just had to post it (all boldface mine -- because there are so many messages to be heard):

~#~

An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis

James Baldwin
November 19, 1970

Dear Sister:

One might have hoped that, by this hour, the very sight of chains on black flesh, or the very sight of chains, would be so intolerable a sight for the American people, and so unbearable a memory, that they would themselves spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles. But, no, they appear to glory in their chains; now, more than ever, they appear to measure their safety in chains and corpses. And so, Newsweek, civilized defender of the indefensible, attempts to drown you in a sea of crocodile tears (“it remained to be seen what sort of personal liberation she had achieved”) and puts you on its cover, chained.

You look exceedingly alone—as alone, say, as the Jewish housewife in the boxcar headed for Dachau, or as any one of our ancestors, chained together in the name of Jesus, headed for a Christian land.

Well. Since we live in an age in which silence is not only criminal but suicidal, I have been making as much noise as I can, here in Europe, on radio and television—in fact, have just returned from a land, Germany, which was made notorious by a silent majority not so very long ago. I was asked to speak on the case of Miss Angela Davis, and did so. Very probably an exercise in futility, but one must let no opportunity slide.

I am something like twenty years older than you, of that generation, therefore, of which George Jackson ventures that “there are no healthy brothers—none at all.”  I am in no way equipped to dispute this speculation (not, anyway, without descending into what, at the moment, would be irrelevant subtleties) for I know too well what he means.  My own state of health is certainly precarious enough. In considering you, and Huey, and George and (especially) Jonathan Jackson, I began to apprehend what you may have had in mind when you spoke of the uses to which we could put the experience of the slave.  What has happened, it seems to me, and to put it far too simply, is that a whole new generation of people have assessed and absorbed their history, and, in that tremendous action, have freed themselves of it and will never be victims again.  This may seem an odd, indefensibly impertinent and insensitive thing to say to a sister in prison, battling for her life—for all our lives.  Yet, I dare to say, for I think that you will perhaps not misunderstand me, and I do not say it, after all, from the position of a spectator.

I am trying to suggest that you—for example—do not appear to be your father’s daughter in the same way that I am my father’s son.  At bottom, my father’s expectations and mine were the same, the expectations of his generation and mine were the same; and neither the immense difference in our ages nor the move from the South to the North could alter these expectations or make our lives more viable.  For, in fact, to use the brutal parlance of that hour, the interior language of that despair, he was just a nigger—a nigger laborer preacher, and so was I.  I jumped the track but that’s of no more importance here, in itself, than the fact that some poor Spaniards become rich bull fighters, or that some poor black boys become rich—boxers, for example.  That’s rarely, if ever, afforded the people more than a great emotional catharsis, though I don’t mean to be condescending about that, either.  But when Cassius Clay became Muhammed Ali and refused to put on that uniform (and sacrificed all that money!) a very different impact was made on the people and a very different kind of instruction had begun.

The American triumph—in which the American tragedy has always been implicit—was to make black people despise themselves.  When I was little I despised myself, I did not know any better. And this meant, albeit unconsciously, or against my will, or in great pain, that I also despised my father.  And my mother.  And my brothers.  And my sisters. Black people were killing each other every Saturday night out on Lenox Avenue, when I was growing up; and no one explained to them, or to me, that it was intended that they should; that they were penned where they were, like animals, in order that they should consider themselves no better than animals. Everything supported this sense of reality, nothing denied it: and so one was ready, when it came time to go to work, to be treated as a slave.  So one was ready, when human terrors came, to bow before a white God and beg Jesus for salvation—this same white God who was unable to raise a finger to do so little as to help you pay your rent, unable to be awakened in time to help you save your child!

There is always, of course, more to any picture than can speedily be perceived and in all of this—groaning and moaning, watching, calculating, clowning, surviving, and outwitting, some tremendous strength was nevertheless being forged, which is part of our legacy today.  But that particular aspect of our journey now begins to be behind us.  The secret is out: we are men!

But the blunt, open articulation of this secret has frightened the nation to death.  I wish I could say, “to life,” but that is much to demand of a disparate collection of displaced people still cowering in their wagon trains and singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” The nation, if America is a nation, is not in the least prepared for this day.  It is a day which the Americans never expected or desired to see, however piously they may declare their belief in “progress and democracy.”  These words, now, on American lips, have become a kind of universal obscenity: for this most unhappy people, strong believers in arithmetic, never expected to be confronted with the algebra of their history.

One way of gauging a nation’s health, or of discerning what it really considers to be its interests—or to what extent it can be considered as a nation as distinguished from a coalition of special interests—is to examine those people it elects to represent or protect it.  One glance at the American leaders (or figure-heads) conveys that America is on the edge of absolute chaos, and also suggests the future to which American interests, if not the bulk of the American people, appear willing to consign the blacks.  (Indeed, one look at our past conveys that.) It is clear that for the bulk of our (nominal) countrymen, we are all expendable. And Messrs. Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, and Hoover, to say nothing, of course, of the Kings’ Row basket case, the winning Ronnie Reagan, will not hesitate for an instant to carry out what they insist is the will of the people.

But what, in America, is the will of the people? And who, for the above-named, are the people? The people, whoever they may be, know as much about the forces which have placed the above-named gentlemen in power as they do about the forces responsible for the slaughter in Vietnam.  The will of the people, in America, has always been at the mercy of an ignorance not merely phenomenal, but sacred, and sacredly cultivated: the better to be used by a carnivorous economy which democratically slaughters and victimizes whites and blacks alike.  But most white Americans do not dare admit this (though they suspect it) and this fact contains mortal danger for the blacks and tragedy for the nation.

Or, to put it another way, as long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness—for so long as they are unable to walk out of this most monstrous of traps—they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered in their name, and will be manipulated into and surrender themselves to what they will think of—and justify—as a racial war.  They will never, so long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between themselves and their own experience and the experience of others, feel themselves sufficiently human, sufficiently worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves, their leaders, their country, their children, or their fate.  They will perish (as we once put it in our black church) in their sins—that is, in their delusions.  And this is happening, needless to say, already, all around us.

Only a handful of the millions of people in this vast place are aware that the fate intended for you, Sister Angela, and for George Jackson, and for the numberless prisoners in our concentration camps—for that is what they are—is a fate which is about to engulf them, too. White lives, for the forces which rule in this country, are no more sacred than black ones, as many and many a student is discovering, as the white American corpses in Vietnam prove.  If the American people are unable to contend with their elected leaders for the redemption of their own honor and the lives of their own children, we, the blacks, the most rejected of the Western children, can expect very little help at their hands: which, after all, is nothing new.  What the Americans do not realize is that a war between brothers, in the same cities, on the same soil, is not a racial war but a civil war.  But the American delusion is not only that their brothers all are white but that the whites are all their brothers.

So be it. We cannot awaken this sleeper, and God knows we have tried.  We must do what we can do, and fortify and save each other—we are not drowning in an apathetic self-contempt, we do feel ourselves sufficiently worthwhile to contend even with inexorable forces in order to change our fate and the fate of our children and the condition of the world!  We know that a man is not a thing and is not to be placed at the mercy of things.  We know that air and water belong to all mankind and not merely to industrialists.  We know that a baby does not come into the world merely to be the instrument of someone else’s profit.  We know that democracy does not mean the coercion of all into a deadly—and, finally, wicked—mediocrity but the liberty for all to aspire to the best that is in him, or that has ever been.

We know that we, the blacks, and not only we, the blacks, have been, and are, the victims of a system whose only fuel is greed, whose only god is profit. We know that the fruits of this system have been ignorance, despair, and death, and we know that the system is doomed because the world can no longer afford it—if, indeed, it ever could have. And we know that, for the perpetuation of this system, we have all been mercilessly brutalized, and have been told nothing but lies, lies about ourselves and our kinsmen and our past, and about love, life, and death, so that both soul and body have been bound in hell.

The enormous revolution in black consciousness which has occurred in your generation, my dear sister, means the beginning or the end of America.  Some of us, white and black, know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecedented nation.  If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name.

If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is—and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber.  For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.

Therefore: peace.
Brother James

(I just love how we saw, and looked after, one another back then!)

The Changeling and Brother Ass-Coverer -- perfectly "selected" tools of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy

Family, please stop being misled by the deus ex machina that is the Changeling.  He and his cohorts would have you believe that theirs are the mighty shoulders upon which we stand -- they are not, but hers are:

Assata Shakur in Her Own Words: Rare Recording of Activist Named to FBI Most Wanted Terrorists List




Angela Davis and Assata Shakur’s Lawyer Denounce FBI’s Adding of Exiled Activist to Terrorists List



Designated a domestic terrorist?  40 years later?  What the hell is this, some kind of dog whistle to distract from the very white faces of the FBI/CIA-followed (if not handled), Tsarnaev brothers?

Family, our culture doesn't stand a chance in these alleged United States if we don't stop living this life with our eyes wide shut.  We must all begin to think critically, act purposefully -- and become our OWN "agents of change!"

Related:
- An Open Letter to President Obama on the Matter of Assata Shakur
- Assata Shakur Is Not a Terrorist
- Gregory Kane: The rest of the Chesimard story
- Why the Hunt for Assata Shakur Matters

A brief series interlude: Death in 3s, an uncomfortably close call and some belated "Ruminations"

In the last three months, death has knocked on my family's door three times.  I'm just now getting back home -- from yet another a funeral.

My aunt, the second of my grandmother's children (my mother was the first), died of a heart attack at 81 years old in mid-February.  I'd flown to Florida to take care of some tenant/maintenance issues at the house there, when I got the call.  I handled the headaches and changed my airline ticket and rental car drop-off location, and then drove the nine or so hours home so I could be there.

I flew back from there, and by the time I got back to Texas, I got a call shortly thereafter that her daughter's husband had died in March due to complications from sickle cell anemia (I'd planned to go to his funeral, but couldn't work it out financially). Then, the man who helped raise me and my brother after my parents divorced, passed away last week after some long-suffering and debilitating effects of Alzheimer's at 88 years old. His daughters and I were like sisters -- there was no way I wouldn't  show up for his "home-going."

I flew home Thursday morning.  Here are the stubs from my boarding passes for that leg of the trip:

   

Since my connecting flight was leaving from Terminal C, I went upstairs and rode the Link Train from Terminal A, through Terminal B, to Terminal C.  As I had an almost 2-hour layover, I decided to go to a cafe to get something to eat.  As I stood at the register, waiting to pay, the manager with a walkie-talkie came over to the young sister ringing me up and whispered something her ear.  She looked at me, eyes as big as saucers and said, "There's been a shooting in Terminal B!"  I said, "What?!  How?!  The only folks with guns in the terminals are the TSA people right?"  She said she didn't know who'd done the shooting, but she was going to find out.  She finished ringing me up and went in a back room with her manager.

I sat at a table close to the register, hoping to get some more details when she came back out, but she never did.  I just sat there nervously eating, eyes flitting around the cafe.  When I finished, I went to my gate and said to myself, "Let me hurry up and get the hay-ell on that damned plane!"

I got on, but we just sat on the tarmac, delayed because there were passengers who'd arrived at Terminal B but were stuck there.  They waited for a little while (the flight was fully booked) and then decided to go ahead and leave -- there were quite a few empty seats.

When I finally got home, I told my son what had just happened and we flicked through the local news channels to see if there was anything on about it.  There was nothing.  Later, I went online and found this, this and this.  And wonder of wonders -- the ass-hats from the NRA were all swooping in for a convention the following day! -- Houston airport shooting hot topic at NRA convention.  I swear, you just can't make this stuff up!

~#~

Ballot Initiative Could Alter District-Congress Relationship:

“When I hear a senator saying he’s of two minds, that’s progress as far as we’re concerned,” Norton said.

This, from DC's  Representative-in-name only, makes sense?  Please.  She (along with the rest of the Black, misleadership class) has been begging for DC statehood/autonomy forever -- to no avail (and the Changeling putting those, "Taxation without Representation" plates on his official vehicle, mattered not one iota either).  Am I the only fool that understands that the powers-that-be have no intention of ever letting that Home Rule thing happen (at least not until they've effectively "bleached" the District of its chocolate residents, that is)??  {smdh}

~#~#~

No, we all can't go to Cuba anytime we want, but what's the big deal about JoeC and Bey going?

(Photo courtesy of Naturally Moi)

I mean, it's not like the Changeling sent them on some kind of educational, or covert 007 mission or anything, right?  And certainly, there's no danger of them putting their heads (OR pennies) together with an Assata Shakur while they were there, kicking around ideas, plans or actions for Black Revolution 2.0, is there?  I sure don't think so (there's sure nothing revolutionary going on with Sasha Fierce over there ---> (quite the contrary actually).

If I thought this young sister was at all culturally savvy (or cared to be), I'd say she did an excellent, undercover job of exposing Mr. & Mrs. "O" for the, "We'll step on, and over, alla y'all -- because we're better than you" selves that they are (but then again, Mrs. "O" did say she felt Bey was a great role model for her daughters.  Wait!  Isn't "Sasha" their younger daughter's name?).  But, unfortunately, I don't think that about the sister.  I'll leave it at that.

What Black folk should have their panties in a knot over, is this piece of work by Ole JoeC:

Culture icon and hip hop superstar Jay-Z has invested in Israeli wireless technology company, Duracell Powermat, and has signed on as the new face of the company. Duracell Powermat, a joint venture between Procter & Gamble and Israel’s Powermat, was announced in September of 2011. Duracell, a brand of batteries manufactured by P&G, has also invested in Powermat.

If I thought he was at all culturally savvy (or cared to be), I'd say he did an excellent job of setting himself up to take Israel's cash (down the road), so he could use it to help the many Africans-who-look-like-him, living in apartheid conditions -- in Israel.  But again, like his wife, I do not think that.  What I do think is, he's just another shabos goy -- just like Russell Simmons (Sorry, you gotta read all the way to the end for the reference).

UPDATE:
A few things on this particular "rumination" -- First, Brother Amenta and I shared this convo on another post recently:

Amenta -- "When Jay Z, easily got the ok to go to Cuba I wondered who in his camp is an agent."
Me -- You're the second person I've read that said that! As I said here, I doubt THEY had a damned 007 clue, but y'all could be right, they could have been the Changeling's "useful idiots!"

A week later, I read Obama Uses JayZ to Trap Assata Shakur, posted over at Freedom Rider (follow the Dhoruba bin Wahad link there to read the entire interview). It included this sentence:   Jay-Z’s delegation included a State-Department “reliable” personage who transmitted the Obama’s administration’s position.  My snark about them not having "a damned 007 clue" was intended, and stands -- as does my "useful idiots" comment.

Second, staying on the subject of Assata Shakur, Sis. Carolyn over at Perspectives... (see sidebar) shared this link with me recently: Statement by the National Network on Cuba on the placement of Assata Shakur on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list.  A good read, and if you're into those "games people play" with other people's lives, a good move!

Third, according to the Naturally Moi link in Sasha's photo up there on the right, "...the weird outfit is supposed to be an owl."

No folks, THIS is an owl (guess I'm just not visionary enough to connect big green eyes, with big brown ones):

(Photo courtesy of Graham McGeorge, from the 2013 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

End of update

~#~#~#~

What can I say about Amira Hass other than I certainly appreciate the alliance of values she and Sister Cynthia McKinney hold.  Mincing no words here, she mirrors what having "stones" is about (pun intended):

In the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, stones have played a central role. The stone was the symbol of the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993), as children as young as 8 years old rained their projectiles down on the occupying Israeli army. Soldiers often responded with live ammunition, killing more than 1,000 Palestinians, about 200 of them children. Youths with stones confronting soldiers with Galils and M-16s: Palestinian children took center stage as David against the Israeli Goliath. The image pricked the conscience of many Israelis, and citizens and governments around the world, and ultimately helped force Israeli leaders, including the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, to the negotiating table. (The Oslo agreement they forged with Palestinian negotiators proved to be disastrous; nevertheless, there was a palpable sense during the first intifada that the stone would lead to Palestinian liberation.)

Today, the stone remains a part of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation, which is more entrenched than ever. And while growing numbers of Palestinians advocate nonviolent resistance as the most promising path to a just peace, others strongly defend the right of Palestinians to throw stones as a legitimate act of political resistance against an illegal 47-year military occupation. One of them is an Israeli journalist.

“Throwing stones is the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule,” wrote Amira Hass in an April 3 article in the newspaper Haaretz. “Throwing stones is an action as well as a metaphor of resistance.”...

...In her piece, Hass underscored the “right” and “duty” of Palestinians to resist the occupation in the face of “shooting, torture, land theft, restrictions on movement, and the unequal distribution of water sources.” The Israeli journalist, who unlike nearly every Western correspondent, lives in the occupied West Bank, offered this resistance advice:

“It would make sense for Palestinian schools to introduce basic classes in resistance: ... how to behave when army troops enter your homes; comparing different struggles against colonialism in different countries; how to use a video camera to document the violence of the regime’s representatives; methods to exhaust the military system and its representatives; a weekly day of work in the lands beyond the separation barrier; how to remember identifying details of soldiers who flung you handcuffed to the floor of the jeep, in order to submit a complaint; the rights of detainees and how to insist on them in real time; how to overcome fear of interrogators; and mass efforts to realize the right of movement.”

Not least of these strategies, Hass asserted in the article that has drawn so much heat, is hurling rocks at soldiers: “Stone-throwing is the adjective attached to the subject of ‘We’ve had enough of you, occupiers.’ ” (emphasis mine)

~#~#~#~#~

Pelosi: Members are lined up to sign Paycheck Fairness Act (tried to embed but not allowed).  That damned Nancy Pelosi is somethin' else ain't she?

I got this email from when I was a Democrat and subscribed to the DCCC emails (never cancelled it, I always like being abreast of e'erybody's lies).  And this one would have been too funny for how ignorant they believe most folk are to their tactics of blaming Rethuglicans for obstructing everything, if not for their hubris and my long memory (we don't all have it twisted).  Just like the Democrats held the majority in both the House and the Senate when Shrub & Co. lied us into the Iraq war, they also lied when they engineered the bait-and-switch in favor of Ledbetter versus the real Paycheck Fairness Act:

April 9, 2013

Friends --

As the first woman Speaker of the House, I know a thing or two about challenging the status quo. I'm really proud of that, and I'm proud of all the women who have made our country strong.

But the truth is, we're still a long way from fairness and equality in the workplace -- women make just 77 cents for every dollar a man makes.

Republican obstructionists continue to block progress on paycheck fairness -- tell them to stop acting on the wrong side of history:

Stand with me and women across the country and help us get to 100,000 strong for paycheck fairness >>

Equal work deserves equal pay -- and passing the Paycheck Fairness Act is the next step in the fight for equal pay.

This bill won’t see the light of day unless we hold House Republicans’ feet to the fire. Tell House Republicans it’s time to finally pass the Paycheck Fairness Act:

http://dccc.org/Equal-Pay

Thanks,

Nancy Pelosi

Am I the only one that remembers this dog & pony show, staged to make all you female 'mericans, think the Changeling had immediately done a damned thing about equal pay for women shortly after he burst on the scene?



Or when Pelosi stepped up on the floor in the first week of the 111th Congress, and told the lie again (even though the words on the bottom of the screen tell exactly what Lebetter was really about?



Rosa DeLauro would have done better on her damned own, rather than allowing the Changeling and Pelosi to manipulate a bill she'd worked on so hard, for so a long.

~#~#~#~#~#~

Also, got this petiton from Avaaz and thought about my telling Amenta last year, "Lawd ha' mercy! I knew my people had it right when they were growing their own food and raising their own chickens and hogs out in the country!": 

Dear Avaazers,

It’s unbelievable, but Monsanto and Co. are at it again. These profit-hungry biotech companies have found a way to exclusively ‘own’ something that freely belongs to us all -- our food! They’re trying to patent away our everyday vegetables and fruits like cucumber, broccoli and melons, forcing growers to pay them and risk being sued if they don’t.

But we can stop them from buying up Mother Earth. Companies like Monsanto have found loopholes in European law to get away with this, so we just need to close them shut before they set a dangerous global precedent. And to do that, we need key countries like Germany, France and the Netherlands -- where opposition is already growing -- to call for a vote to stop Monsanto’s plans. The Avaaz community has shifted governments before, and we can do it again.

Many farmers and politicians are already against this -- we just need to bring in people power to pressure these countries to keep Monsanto’s hands off our food. Sign now and share with everyone to help build the biggest food defense call ever:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/monsanto_vs_mother_earth_x/?bCWVXbb&v=23931

Once a patent exists in one country, trade agreements and negotiations often push other countries to honour it as well. That's why these food patents change everything about how our food chain works: for thousands of years, farmers could choose which seeds they’d use without worrying about getting sued for violating intellectual property rights. But now, companies launch expensive legal campaigns to buy patents on conventional plants and force farmers to pay exorbitant royalty fees. Monsanto and Co. claim that patents drive innovation -- but in fact they create a corporate monopoly of our food.

But luckily, the European Patent Office is controlled by 38 member states who, with one vote, can end dangerous patents on food that is bred using conventional methods. Even the European Parliament has issued a statement objecting to these kinds of destructive patents. Now, a massive wave of public outcry could push them to ban the patenting of our everyday food for good.

The situation is dire already -- Monsanto alone owns 36% of all tomato, 32% of sweet pepper and 49% of cauliflower varieties registered in the EU. With a simple regulatory change, we could protect our food, our farmers and our planet from corporate control -- and it's up to us to make it happen:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/monsanto_vs_mother_earth_x/?bCWVXbb&v=23931

The Avaaz community has never been afraid to stand up to corporate capture of our institutions, from pushing back the Rupert Murdoch mafia, to helping ensure that telecoms keep their hands off our Internet. Now it’s time to defend our food supply from this corporate takeover.

With hope and determination,

Jeremy, Michelle, Oli, Dalia, Pascal, Ricken, Diego and the whole Avaaz team

I tell you!  Wa-a-a-y too many folk trying to control the damned world by hook or by crook -- and equally, wa-a-a-y too many of us not giving a shit about it! {smdh}

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