and I liked google buzz

obitoftheday:

Obit of the Day: “It Was the Right Thing to Do”

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which designated portions of the United States as “military areas.” As such, the Department of War and the U.S. Armed Forces were allowed to remove any citizens from the area they deemed to be a threat to national security, especially those individuals of “Foreign Enemy Ancestry.”  The U.S. government meant the Japanese*.

Over 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese (and Korean^) heritage were sent to internment camps across the western United States. Some would remain in the camps for the duration of the war. (Ironically, the 442nd Infantry Regiment, composed entirely of Japanese-Americans, became the most highly decorated regiment in the history of the U.S. Army with 21 Medals of Honor and 8 Presidential Unit Citations.) 

Reaction to the removal of the Japanese residents up and down the West Coast of the U.S. varied. It was a battle of xenophobia versus civil liberties. But, in general, few non-Asians did anything about it.

Bob Fletcher did. Working for the state of California as an agricultural inspector, Mr. Fletcher quit his job and began looking after the farms of three families who were interned: the Nittas, Okomotos, and Tsukamotos.

Besides caring for over 90 acres of farmland, Mr. Fletcher paid the families’ mortgages and taxes. He kept half the profits but held the rest aside. When the families were released at the end of World War II, he returned to them their farms and the other half of the profits.

Marielle Tsukamoto, who was five when she was interned, said of Mr. Fletcher, “He was honest and hardworking and had integrity. Whenever you asked him about it, he just said, ‘It was the right thing to do.’”

Bob Fletcher, who was married to his wife Theresa for 68 years and drank a quart of milk a day, died on May 23, 2013 at the age of 101.

Sources: Sacramento Bee, PBS.org, and Wikipedia

(Images of Bob Fletcher, undated, and Marielle Tsukamoto with her grandmother, circa World War II are courtesy of blogwalker.edublogs.edu)

Also check out the OOTD for Gordon Hiyabayashi who fought internment all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

* The U.S. government did round up Italians and Germans as well. There were two major differences in the internment of those groups versus the Japanese: 1) Sheer numbers. The Italian community saw less than 300 members arrested after Executive Order 9066 was issued. The Germans would have 11,000 “enemy aliens” detained. The Japanese saw 120,000 community members relocated. 2) Citizenship. Japanese citizens, whether here for 50 years or 7 years, were grouped along with Japanese non-citizens. The U.S. however only focused on non-citizens among Italians and Germans. 

^ Koreans were group with Japanese because Korea (Manchuria) was under Japanese control since 1910.

(via cultureofresistance)

damned-marsh-yankee:

Bradley Manning, who spilled the beans on the US blowing away of unarmed Iraqi journalists and overlooking war crimes by the US military and allied Iraqi troops, released thousands of low-level cable messages. He has been charged by the US government with thereby being a traitor, giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It is not clear which enemy benefited from the catty remarks in some embassy cables, or how exactly their revelation harmed national security. What did happen was that millions of people in the US and around the world discovered some of the more egregious sins of commission and omission of the US government, especially with regard to Iraq. The treason charge against Manning is outrageous, and has been pursued because otherwise what he did is not obviously very serious and even a military judge might not return a severe sentence. While the scatter shot character of his revelations may be troubling, some of what he revealed was government crimes, for which Americans should thank him.

It turns out that Manning, in making government correspondence available for us to read, was just turning the tables on the US government, which The Guardian and the Washington Post today reveal has a back door called PRISM into all our internet communications (emails, over-the-internet phone calls, browser search history, etc.) with 9 major companies, including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! (but not, interestingly, Twitter). The program is detailed in a Powerpoint slide presentation for initiating new NSA employees into its workings.

(Source: azspot, via cultureofresistance)

deafmuslimpunx:

Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians (in Spanish with English sutbtitles)

a documentary from Mexico about the Huicholes, an Indigenous nation that still continues its traditions and way of life despite Spanish colonization of Mexico. Located in Wirikuta, central Mexico, the Huichol people are fighting back to save their sacred land from mining companies.

(Source: badass-bharat-deafmuslimpunkstar, via spanishyeah)

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

By Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras 

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.

Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations – the NSA.

In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: “I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions,” but “I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.”

Dear people,

All night we strolled along the streets of Gezi, and never for a moment did my amazement subside. I am so happy to be here. This thing is much bigger than I imagined. It’s pure love.

Here you have gays and lesbians next to anticapitalist muslems. You have trotzkyists and kemalists and anarchists all eating at the same table. You have nationalists, ecologists, students, workers, feminists, etc. They dance together in circles, having the time of their lives. And of course you have the football supporters, let’s not forget them. The three big teams from Istanbul are all here, Besiktas, Galatasaray and Fenerbahce. They were sworn enemies not so long ago, and now they sing and chant as brothers, united against prime minister Erdogan and the police.

(Source: amodernmanifesto)

amodernmanifesto:

What we see

Clouds gathering North and South.
Public spaces, street corners, poor neighborhoods shouting out loud for true democracy. From Tahrir to Sintagma, crowds are urging us all to see: see the inequalities of a system in total crisis, of the dirty games of technocrats and parliamentaries, of insecure of dictators and false democrats.
They would have us without any alternative – all we can do is play by the rules. Work more. Make do with less. And be content with what is left. The consequence of this 30 years-old lie is yet more inequality and more servitude.

It is to this lie that the present revolts. This is where we begin our struggle.

The capitalist system can no longer hide the consequences of the crisis it is crippling into. Fast-paced ecological destruction and global economic crisis mean the same thing for all the poor and the oppressed throughout the world: disaster. Year after year, unemployment rates increase against all statistical manipulation; some are marginalized by being declared “unemployable”, while the great majority of those who are able to find a job are condemned to precarious work. Young people and women are the first ones to live in poverty more than any other, no matter how hard they work. Basic social rights such as education, heath care and accomodation are being attacked one by one – we can benefit from them just as long as we are able to buy. The consequences of the global economic inequality are forcing millions to migration either directly – through hunger and deterritorialization – or indirectly through conflicts and wars. Those who line up at the blind gates of the civilized world, victims of constant discrimination and racism, can ok,nly exist as cheap labor force easily spendable, and be drawn into even more miserable conditions life than the poor people of their new homeland.

socialistworker:

Amy Muldoon explains how the workers’ council system arose out of the revolution and provided an example of unprecedented democracy.

May 31, 2013

“What do we need some Constituent Assembly for when we have our soviets, where our deputies meet, and which can decide everything and know how to go about everything?”

THE RUSSIAN soldier who uttered these words spoke for millions of impoverished workers, peasants and soldiers who took onto their own shoulders the project of ending the tyranny of the Tsar and constructing a society free of unaccountable, exploiting rulers.

Socialists embrace the Russian Revolution not just because a hated autocrat was deposed, but because the whole Tsarist system was overthrown by the most far-reaching, democratic movement of the oppressed that history has ever seen. The soviets (Russian for “councils”) were the mechanism of the transformation and stand as a model of the creativity and efficiency of workers’ self-rule.

The soviets first appeared in the 1905 Revolution in Russia, which was inspired by the fight for a shorter workday, but quickly led to a direct political assault on the despotism of the Tsar.

Initially created out of strike committees, the soviets rapidly evolved into organizing centers throughout Russia’s major cities for the working class to debate and implement tactics in the struggle. The soviet was both a weapon of workers’ power against the old system and the beginning of an accountable, democratic replacement.

The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky—who was elected to head the soviet in the capital of Petrograd in 1905, and again in 1917, described their birth:

A proletariat, impelled by the course of events to improvise such unheard-of revolutionary activities, must at whatever cost produce from its depths an organization corresponding to the dimensions of the struggle and the colossal tasks. This organization was the soviets—brought into being by the first revolution, and made the instrument of the general strike and the struggle for power.

Based on elected deputies, or delegates, from each workplace (in the case of peasants, by location, and in the case of soldiers, by units), the soviets were incredibly sensitive to the changing moods and demands of the population. With no perks or terms of office or bloated campaign funds, soviet representatives truly voiced the wishes of their constituents—or were soon replaced if they didn’t.

Though the 1905 Revolution was defeated and the struggle suppressed by the Tsar, the experience and memory of the soviets left a deep impression on the working class and Lenin’s Bolshevik Party.

When the First World War drove Russian society to the brink of destruction—and sparked a revolutionary upheaval—the soviets re-emerged around the country to facilitate workers’ struggle.

But this time, the soviets were reproduced on a much wider scale—appearing among peasants, soldiers, even students and housewives—and were joined by other forms of workers’ organizations.

[READ MORE]

boston-ivy:

Hiroshima mon amour - (1959)

such an incredibly haunting theme.

awesomefrench:

Edith Piaf - Bravo pour le clown

"Shared identities like skepticism are problematic at the best of times, for numerous reasons, but I can accept them as a means of giving power and a voice to the disenfranchised. And indeed, this is how skeptics like to portray themselves: an embattled minority standing up for science, the lone redoubt of reason in an irrational world, the vanguard against the old order of ignorance and superstition. As a skeptic, I was happy to accept this narrative and believe I was shoring up the barricades.

However, it’s a narrative that corresponds poorly with reality. In the modern world, science, technology and reason are central and vital, and this is widely recognised, including at the highest level. On any major political decision, the technocrat speaks louder than the bishop, or anyone else, for that matter."

Stephen Bond, “Why I Am No Longer a Skeptic” (via wretchedoftheearth)

(via sociolab)

An argument often heard in the 1980s and ‘90s by those favoring lower taxes on the rich was the rich could avoid paying taxes because they had the resources to do so, so why not be pragmatic and set tax rates low enough the rich would actually pay them? The people making this argument overlapped substantially with those arguing poor, and particularly black and brown, drug law ‘offenders’ should face mandatory sentences of decades in prison for drug convictions to ‘send a message’ drug laws will be enforced. The obvious question back is —why would harsh prison sentences dissuade people from using drugs but not from avoiding paying taxes?

This disconnect has elements of racism and class bias, but there is also a deeper precept that economic crimes are ‘victimless.’ With respect to taxes, there are two dimensions here—the premise economic resources are in the first place legitimately distributed and that tax avoidance garners no adverse social consequences. The sources of wealth accumulation in recent decades are inherited (unearned) wealth, corporate executives using monopoly power to extract economic rents, and finance dependent on public backstops and guarantees. None of these sources is supported by the economic theories of capitalism. And the social costs of tax avoidance are evident in poor schools, a dysfunctional healthcare system, deteriorating infrastructure, widespread poverty and under-funded retirement accounts. Economic crimes do have consequences. [++]

(Source: theamericanbear)

"My generation got a cheap college education when we were young, and we’re getting good retirement benefits now that we’re old. Pretty nice. But now we’re turning around and telling today’s twentysomethings that they should pay through the nose for college, keep paying taxes for our retirements, and oh by the way, when it comes time for you to retire your benefits are going to have to be cut. So sorry. And all this despite the fact that the country is richer than it was 50 years ago, and will be richer still 50 years from now.

But at least today’s kids don’t have to worry about being drafted. That’s something, I suppose."

Kevin Drum (via samuraifuckingfrog)

(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)

azspot:

The Rising Cost of Getting Ahead

Banks get to borrow cheap because they have access to the wand of sparkle dust known as the Federal Reserve’s discount window – the financial system equivalent of a quickie loan for a preferred, regular customer with a long track record of paying the money back. Even the federal government pays more to borrow than banks, with the rate on the 30-year Treasury bond currently hovering around 3%.

But both banks and the student loan industrial complex share one thing in common: they are both perceived as, if not to big too fail, highly unlikely to fail. Yet while the government has provided emergency financing to banks in the past to keep such an event from occurring, the borrowers themselves prop up the bonanza of student debt. There is little in the way of help out there and it is all but impossible to have the money owed discharged in bankruptcy court.

The result: a generation of former students so indentured to debt, they are weakening the greater economy. The New York Federal Reserve made the case a few months ago that the ever-increasing amount of monies owed was siphoning money out of the housing and auto markets, as 20-somethings with debt are less likely to own their own home or car. And that’s not all. Student loans impact everything from family formation to spending on frivolities. One study, out of the University of Wisconsin, found women with college debt less likely to marry than their unencumbered peers. Those who owe money likely spend less on leisure activities: the NPD group, a consumer market research outfit, released research less week claiming restaurant visits by members of the Millennial generation has declined by 6%.

(Source: azspot)

sandandglass:

The Healthcare Games.

(via keeping-sane)