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America's Secret Caribbean Colony |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=42736"><span class="small">Belen Fernandez, Al Jazeera</span></a>
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Wednesday, 30 August 2017 08:20 |
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Fernandez writes: "This year, the inhabitants of debt-ridden Puerto Rico marked a dubious anniversary: one entire century of United States citizenship."
A woman with a national flag talks to police as Puerto Ricans march in support of becoming an independent nation. (photo: Alvin Baez/Reuters)
America's Secret Caribbean Colony
By Belen Fernandez, Al Jazeera
30 August 17
Colonialism is alive and well as Puerto Ricans 'celebrate' 100 years of US citizenship.
 his year, the inhabitants of debt-ridden Puerto Rico marked a dubious anniversary: one entire century of United States citizenship.
The island was charitably commandeered by the US in 1898 following the Spanish-American War, but the conferral of citizenship didn't take place until 1917 when, The Economist has noted, the move "conveniently allowed 20,000 [Puerto Ricans] to be drafted into service in the first world war the following year".
In addition to the luxury of being eligible to fight and die in every US war since, Puerto Ricans have enjoyed numerous other perks as Americans do.
In the 1940s and 50s, for example, there was a pretty cool law prescribing 10 years of jail time for anyone who said, sang, or whistled anything that could be construed as being against the US government.
Add to that a lengthy campaign of forced sterilisation of Puerto Rican women, the conversion of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques into a US military base and navy bombing range, and the suffocation of the local economy for the benefit of US corporate financial interests, and you wonder how Puerto Rico could possibly be better off independent.
The C-word
Significantly, despite hefty contributions to the US Treasury, Puerto Ricans are not permitted to vote in US presidential elections and have no effective representation in the US Congress.
So much for that old line about "no taxation without representation" - which was, of course, America's justification for overthrowing its own colonial masters some 100-plus years before the acquisition of Puerto Rico.
Lest any misled person mistakenly diagnose the Puerto Rican arrangement as one of straight-up colonialism, the US judiciously pressured the United Nations in 1953 to remove the island from its list of global "non-self-governing territories".
Now, we are told Puerto Rico is a "commonwealth" - which certainly sounds a lot more civilised than the other C-word.
And thus Puerto Rico remains the colonial elephant in the room. (Make that one of a herd of elephants, if we want to include Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands.)
Its colonial status is rendered ever more glaringly apparent by a handy little deal called the Jones Act, which, as an article on the PBS website explains, "requires everybody in Puerto Rico to buy goods from an American-made ship with an American crew, limits business owners and jacks up prices".
But hey, it's free trade!
Give and take … and take and take
Beyond the shameless exploitation of Puerto Rico as a captive market, the US has contributed in numerous other ways to the island's current crippling debt crisis.
A 2015 Washington Post article datelined Barceloneta, Puerto Rico, describes one contribution:
In the end, colonialism is alive and well in this day and age - presided over by none other than the self-appointed global pioneer of freedom and democracy.
"A generous series of tax breaks enacted by Congress shielded the profits of US corporations operating here and helped transform Puerto Rico from a largely agrarian society to a manufacturing powerhouse".
The article continues: "But what Washington gave, it also took away".
Luckily for Wall Street, the taking away opened up all sorts of opportunities for predatory investors who scrambled to buy up discounted debt and augment their tropical beachfront property collections.
As is par for the course in neoliberal systems that prioritise making the rich richer over helping the poor to survive, the response to the debt crisis can be summed up in a single word: austerity.
A May 2017 New York Times article, for example, reports on the curious matter of "the Washington-based consultant who was recently named secretary of education in Puerto Rico … a few months after Puerto Rico's affairs were taken over by a governing board in New York".
Again, so much for "self-governing".
The article notes that "the oversight board has warned that the government must save up to $40 million a month, suggesting that about 300 schools close". This is on top of the multitude of schools that have already been closed - many of them, predictably, in poverty-stricken areas.
A more straightforward means of generating needed revenue might of course be to scrap the Jones Act, or to tone down obscene tax breaks for obscenely wealthy people on an island where nearly half of the population happens to live below the poverty line.
What about that list?
While the whole colony question was supposed to have been definitively put to rest in 1953, a pesky UN Special Committee on Decolonisation had the audacity in June 2016 to approve a text calling on the US government to expedite Puerto Rico's "self-determination process".
A committee hearing featured numerous speakers from Puerto Rico and elsewhere who denounced everything from America's forcible imposition of the death penalty on the island to the catastrophic health crisis on Vieques - linked by many observers to toxic US military activity - to efforts to disappear Puerto Rican national identity and culture.
Granted, this was before the release of Despacito, the most streamed song to date, which has made all sorts of strides in terms of cultural preservation. (Just kidding.)
In the end, colonialism is alive and well in this day and age - presided over by none other than the self-appointed global pioneer of freedom and democracy.
And while there may be few reasons for optimism given the current international state of affairs, we might at least hope the backyard "commonwealth" isn't condemned to 100 more years of servitude.
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NFL Plantation Owners Ban Uppity Quarterback |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Tuesday, 29 August 2017 14:09 |
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Boardman writes: "To watch America's structural racism at work, one need look no further than the National Football League (NFL) and its treatment of nonviolent unorthodoxy as expressed by Colin Kaepernick going to one knee during the national anthem in support of the unacceptable thought that black lives should matter as much as anyone else's. Of course, that's still a relatively new idea in the United States, dating from 1863 in law and still not fully accepted in much of the country."
Colin Kaepernick. (photo: Jake Roth/Reuters)
NFL Plantation Owners Ban Uppity Quarterback
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
29 August 17
American Shame: Colin Kaepernick is jobless for thought crime
o watch America’s structural racism at work, one need look no further than the National Football League (NFL) and its treatment of nonviolent unorthodoxy as expressed by Colin Kaepernick going to one knee during the national anthem in support of the unacceptable thought that black lives should matter as much as anyone else’s. Of course, that’s still a relatively new idea in the United States, dating from 1863 in law and still not fully accepted in much of the country.
Colin Rand Kaepernick, who turns 30 in November, is a proven professional football quarterback who chose to become a free agent after the 2016 season. He led San Francisco to the Super Bowl in 2012. He is good enough to play for most any of the NFL’s 32 teams, but none have signed him. A year ago, when unarmed black men shot by cops were getting heavy news coverage and while presidential candidates Clinton and Trump disparaged Black Lives Matter, Kaepernick undertook a solo protest, sitting during the national anthem before the first NFL pre-season game. In subsequent games, Kaepernick went down on one knee in silent, respectful protest during the Star Spangled Banner. Asked by an NFL Network reporter why he was doing that, Kaepernick said:
I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder….
This is not something that I am going to run by anybody. I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed.... If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.
At the time, official football – the league, his team, his coach – all spoke carefully about respecting Kaepernick’s “right as a citizen,” without engaging the issue he was raising. Kaepernick is bi-racial. He was adopted by white parents and raised in Wisconsin with white siblings.
Zeitgeist signals: Kaepernick blacklisted, Arpaio pardoned
In November 2016, a Miami Herald reporter asked Kaepernick about a shirt he had worn showing Fidel Castro and Malcolm X with the caption: “Like Minds Think Alike.” In discussing the shirt, Kaepernick reportedly said: “One thing that Fidel Castro did do is they have the highest literacy rate because they invest more in their education system than they do in their prison system, which we do not do here, even though we’re fully capable of doing that.”That sort of truth, spoken out loud, does not endear one to the overlords of the NFL or other American authorities, especially the ones who created and profit from the unaddressed, unending scandal of prisons for profit.
A year after he first spoke out by kneeling in silence, Colin Kaepernick is unemployed. Unarmed black men are killed by cops at a faster rate now than in 2016, but it’s not news so much any more. Kaepernick had his free speech, now he’s paying the price. The country has moved on to a more ardent defense of free speech by Nazis, white supremacists, the KKK, anti-Semites, and other bigots.
The Trump administration is contributing to social calm and order by setting out to give local police more military weapons, from armored troop carriers to grenade launchers.
The ugliest sign of the country’s darkening racial zeitgeist is President Trump’s pre-emptive, unprincipled, unconditional pardon of one of America’s most notorious police bigots, former sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, a man who spoke proudly of his brutal and deadly prison system as a “concentration camp.” Arpaio was awaiting sentencing when the President interdicted the judicial process with a hasty pardon, granted without any of the usual review and consideration. The brief White House announcement concluded with these lies:
Throughout his time as Sheriff, Arpaio continued his life’s work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now eighty-five years old, and after more than fifty years of admirable service to our Nation, he is worthy candidate for a Presidential pardon.
Arpaio’s record is reasonably clear that he did little protecting of the public or the Constitution. His office operated with racist standards that encouraged police brutality and led to prisoner deaths from violence and neglect. Arpaio’s service as sheriff was not admirable but self-serving, obsessed with targeting Latinos regardless of guilt, while ignoring real criminal offenses, including domestic abuse and child abuse.
Kaepernick and the Star Spangled Banner of American irony
Some say Kaepernick is the victim of a blacklist. Others deny what seems obviously true. One of the deniers makes much of a few other players making similar gestures without consequences. But he leaves out critical facts: that these are players currently under contract and that they have a union to defend them. He makes a point of saying that “NFL rosters are 70 per cent Black,” without wondering why NFL rosters are close to 100 per cent without any expressed social conscience. He does not mention that NFL owners would be 100 per cent white but for some limited partners like Reggie Fowler of the Minnesota Vikings.
American racism is structural, institutional, shameless, and intractable. Electing Barack Obama in 2008 didn’t make the country a post-racial society any more than electing Donald Trump in 2016 makes the country a post-sane society. The abiding ambiguity of American madness can be seen in our “national anthem,” which has been our national anthem less than 100 years (adopted 1931).
The Star Spangled Banner celebrates the defense of Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor in 1814 in Maryland, a slave state. The attacking British force included numbers of escaped slaves fighting for the British on the promise of earning their freedom. Francis Scott Key, who wrote the Star Spangled Banner, was a lifelong slave owner. A lawyer who served as US Attorney, Key used his office to prosecute abolitionists. In an 1837 prosecution of abolitionist Dr. Reuben Crandall for instigating a slave rebellion, Key said in his summation to the jury:
Are you willing, gentlemen, to abandon your country, to permit it to be taken from you, and occupied by the abolitionist, according to whose taste it is to associate and amalgamate with the negro? Or, gentlemen, on the other hand, are there laws in this community to defend you from the immediate abolitionist, who would open upon you the floodgates of such extensive wickedness and mischief?
Rendered in modern language, these are the same sentiments the racists of Charlottesville expressed in their exercise of free speech. In 1837, the jury acquitted Dr. Crandall. On the Charlottesville hordes, the jury is still out.
Maybe, should our public consciousness come to grips with the reality that our national anthem is a slave owner’s paean to the defense of a slave state, we might think more seriously about kneeling ourselves. That might be a better way to express our hope to become, truly, the land of the free and the home of the brave.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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The Year I Spent in Joe Arpaio's Tent Jail Was Hell. He Should Never Walk Free. |
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Tuesday, 29 August 2017 13:53 |
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Chairez writes: "I was born in Mexico, grew up in Tijuana, and moved to Arizona when I was 14. I went to high school in a small town called Holbrook, then went to Phoenix to go to Arizona State University. By that time, roughly 2012, Joe Arpaio's vicious anti-Latino tactics had already raised racial tensions in Maricopa County, where he was sheriff."
Joe Arpaio was the sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona. (photo: Darren Hauck/AP)
The Year I Spent in Joe Arpaio's Tent Jail Was Hell. He Should Never Walk Free.
By Francisco Chairez, The Washington Post
29 August 17
 was born in Mexico, grew up in Tijuana, and moved to Arizona when I was 14. I went to high school in a small town called Holbrook, then went to Phoenix to go to Arizona State University. By that time, roughly 2012, Joe Arpaio’s vicious anti-Latino tactics had already raised racial tensions in Maricopa County, where he was sheriff.
At the time, Arpaio was infamous among my community for his “sweeps.” He would send police into restaurants, hotels or anywhere else he suspected undocumented people might be working and would arrest those who couldn’t produce IDs. People lived in fear of these sweeps; some families I knew even moved to New Mexico, hoping to escape Arpaio.
I heard all about Arpaio’s crusades firsthand. By 2014, I was working as a court interpreter for Maricopa County. Every day, I would interpret for Spanish-speaking people who had been arrested by Arpaio in the desert, trying to come to the United States to work. Arpaio’s men would arrest them and put them in detention facilities for months, holding them until they took a plea agreement — so he could get a conviction for them on the record. That way, if they ever tried to return to the United States, they would be placed in federal prison.
That same year, I got into a bad relationship and I drove while drunk, causing an accident in which another person was injured, which in Arizona is classed as aggravated assault. I was arrested, and it took the county an entire year to prosecute me. I thought it was the worst year of my life, until I was convicted and sent to one of Arpaio’s jails.
The minute I turned myself in to go to jail, they took me to the Fourth Avenue jail, the county’s hub for all arrests. There, they put me through something called “the Matrix”: being moved from one cell to another for about 12 continuous hours. It was extremely cold, and all I was allowed to wear underneath the striped uniform I was given was underwear and flip-flops. Guards threw me a bag with old bread, an orange and milk; nothing else was offered, and sleeping was nearly impossible. I laid for hours on cold concrete, only to be hustled abruptly to another cell, and then another. Finally, they put me in chains and moved me to another jail by bus.
I arrived at one of Arpaio’s several “tent cities,” outdoor jails where inmates shelter in army tents, mostly exposed to the Arizona elements. I was there on a work furlough program, meaning that I was allowed to leave to work during the day. Every day after work, I would return to the jail and spend the night in the tents. Each Sunday was spent entirely in the jail.
The rules of the tent city were strict, arbitrary and brutally enforced. There are no newspapers allowed; Arpaio hated newspapers. The only food allowed for those of us in the work furlough program was the food in the vending machines, which was grossly overpriced.
During the sweltering summer, the temperature could reach 115 or 120 degrees. I was in the tents when we hit 120. It was impossible to stay cool in the oppressive heat. Everyone would strip down to their underwear. There was no cold water, only water from vending machines; and eventually, the machines would run out. People would faint; some had heatstroke. That summer, ambulances came about three times. One man died in his bed.
But the winter was even worse. During the winter, there were no heaters. Most jackets and heavily insulated pants weren’t allowed; they don’t want you to be comfortable.
When the temperatures dropped, we were forced to come up with makeshift ways to keep ourselves warm. The showers were kept scalding hot during both summer and winter. We hated to shower, but we would fill our empty water bottles up with the nearly boiling water and put the bottles between our blankets when it was freezing outside. We also would save the plastic bags we found when we cleaned up the jail yard and wrap our feet with them, tucking hot water bottles inside to keep our feet warm while we slept.
Still, it was freezing, achingly cold. I was in so much pain that winter that now, when I’m cold, it reminds me of being there.
Arpaio saved worse abuse for others. Those who were in full detention had to wear pink socks, underwear and flip-flops. They ate peanut butter and bread, and the only other meal they received was baloney and bread. They also had the option of “slob,” which was an unknown, disgusting substance that looked like some kind of thick stew and tasted like cardboard. (The poor people in the work furlough program who couldn’t pay for vending-machine food had no choice but to eat it.)
It’s hard to recall memories of that year. When I heard Friday that President Trump had decided to pardon Arpaio, I was disgusted, dispirited and disappointed in the American political system.
I am not ashamed of what I did: I committed a crime and I paid my dues. How ironic it is, that the immigrant who committed a minor criminal act has to live with a conviction on his record for the rest of his life, while a criminal like Arpaio gets to walk away unscathed for his crimes, which are greater in scale and severity.
The people of Maricopa County have done so much — spent time, money and energy — trying to let the world know what Arpaio had done. And in a single moment, Trump has destroyed all of that hard work, all of those voices. The president should be bringing us together, especially in the wake of something like Charlottesville, but I think that Trump wants us to be divided, specifically by race. Arpaio’s pardon is proof of that.
There’s evil in the world that’s unrepentant, and I’ve experienced it firsthand. Arpaio being pardoned is a nightmare come true.
Although politicians like Trump and Arpaio are trying to divide us, this is the time for our community to come together and keep fighting for those whose voices go unheard and kept in the dark. Hope for a better future is what helped me survive the agonizing time I spent in those horrendous facilities, and hope will lead us into a better future for America.
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Is This the End of Rex Tillerson? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=45964"><span class="small">Alex Shephard, New Republic</span></a>
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Tuesday, 29 August 2017 13:47 |
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Shephard writes: "Is this the end of Rex Tillerson? One way of looking at the departures of Steve Bannon and Seb Gorka, The Mooch's brief and wondrous reign as communications director, and the ascension of John Kelly was that they cumulatively represented the triumph of the more conventional voices in Trump's inner circle - that the globalists had ultimately prevailed, even if they had paid a dear price in the process."
Rex Tillerson in 2015. (photo: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images)
Is This the End of Rex Tillerson?
By Alex Shephard, New Republic
29 August 17
 ne way of looking at the departures of Steve Bannon and Seb Gorka, The Mooch’s brief and wondrous reign as communications director, and the ascension of John Kelly was that they cumulatively represented the triumph of the more conventional voices in Trump’s inner circle—that the globalists had ultimately prevailed, even if they had paid a dear price in the process. “Trump has lost both the agitators for radical action to match radical words (Bannon, Mooch), and his enablers (Priebus),” Mike Allen wrote shortly after Bannon’s departure. “He will still talk to them, but power always shrinks on the outside. He’s left surrounded by the architects of The Conventional.”
But in the wake of Charlottesville and Friday’s incredibly shady pardon of the unusually racist (even by American standards) Joe Arpaio, the more accurate narrative may be that Trump is increasingly isolated. Over the last few days, arch-conventionalists Gary Cohn and Rex Tillerson have distanced themselves from Trump—and may be heading out the door themselves. On Friday, Cohn told the Financial Times that the administration “must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups,” meaning neo-Nazis. And on Sunday, Tillerson distanced the entire country from the president, telling Fox News’s Chris Wallace that Trump “speaks for himself” when he discusses hate groups, implying that his failure to condemn white supremacists was not an American value.
Unsurprisingly, given Trump’s obsession with loyalty, there are rumors that both may be on their way out. On Sunday, Axios’s Jonathan Swan reported that Trump is becoming fed up with Tillerson, having said, “Rex just doesn’t get it, he’s totally establishment in his thinking.” Tillerson has never seemed to be particularly happy or comfortable as secretary of state. But his departure, coming as it does after the departures of Bannon and Priebus and Mooch and Flynn and Gorka and Spicer, would be yet another sign of Trump’s isolation and the failure of anyone, regardless of their globalist or alt-right credentials, to reach him.
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s the NFL season begins, the controversy around former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick continues to grow. Ever since he took a knee (instead of a seat) during the national anthem last year, 
