Check out this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7AkEoo3iVY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Peace.
Michael Santomauro @ 917-974-6367
What sort of Truth is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?
Let's End Thought Crimes in the Twenty-first Century. -- to separate historical fact from propaganda…peace is patriotic!
Check out this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXLTb5hqrg4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Peace.
Michael Santomauro @ 917-974-6367
What sort of Truth is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?
Let's End Thought Crimes in the Twenty-first Century. -- to separate historical fact from propaganda…peace is patriotic!
Who sets the standard for beauty? Why is it that black women feel inferior to white women, and darker-skinned black women feel inferior to lighter-skinned black women? Aisha Curry brings to the surface an issue in desperate need of attention in her book, "Pretty for a Black Girl! Compliment or Insult?" (published by AuthorHouse), and explains the ugly truth behind being "pretty."
"One day about five years ago, I was absolutely tired of being told that I was pretty for a black girl," says Curry. "I started asking my friends if they had heard this statement before, and as time went on I realized how prevalent this issue is."
Curry uses real-life examples in "Pretty for a Black Girl! Compliment or Insult?" from her experience as a young, African American woman. In a powerful, personal, refreshingly honest narrative voice, Curry levels with readers about complexion issues, stereotypes and self-confidence. "The wisdom [in 'Pretty for a Black Girl!'] has the potential to free African American women - indeed, all women - to be much more than just 'pretty,'" says Curry. Curry writes:
I had a 24-year-old, African American woman tell me, "I don't see what's so wrong with someone telling you you're pretty for a black girl … [Y]ou should be happy you're attractive and not one of those unfortunate, ugly black girls who are constantly staring me down because they're jealous." You see, this is what I'm talking about … Why do you have to accept the fact that someone can say you're pretty for a black and not just pretty? This is the acceptance of being accepted. Black women justify their beauty to feel more accepted by other races.
"Pretty for a Black Girl! Compliment or Insult?" inspires women of all ethnicities to love themselves for who they are, not who they aren't.
In Europe, MEN were enticed to join the Spanish and other European explorers by promises that the indian girls and women were "easy" and did not practice "marriage" or "monogamy". America was founded on sexual tourism, or sexual slavery. In otherwords, they did the same thing that migrating humans have been doing for thousands of years. Some say that the fun was not kept in America. "If you want the prototypical conquistador your man isn't Columbus; it is Hernando de Soto. Soto, as he was known in his time, became the first European to penetrate far into the interior of North America. From l539 to 1543, his army of 600 men traveled 4,000 miles, twice the distance later covered by Lewis and Clark. ... Soto was a toughened veteran of the Spanish conquest in Peru. He'd come to the Americas at the age of 14, the son of an impoverished squire, and returned to Spain a rich man and with a reputation for killing Indians for sport. He could have retired in splendor, but he wanted more -- more gold, more glory. ... He passed through 10 future states of the United States. He went up into the Carolinas, across the Appalachians, and down through parts of Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, coming on the Mississippi River near Memphis. Then he pushed on into Arkansas, before turning back to the Mississippi when he couldn't find rich civilizations to plunder. ... They were a starving band that had been decimated by sickness and Indian attacks. Soto had buried almost half of his men, and the walking wounded were carrying the mortally wounded in makeshift slings. ... The fighting in the Southeast had been incredibly ferocious. Everywhere De Soto went he demanded food, clothing, and women for his sex-starved men. When threats and diplomacy didn't work, he went on hair-raising killing sprees. But the Indians fought back with suicidal determination...." http://www.learner.org/biographyofamerica/prog01/transcript/page03.html "The Spanish Crown's soldiers beginning with Christopher Columbus started the trans-Atlantic teenage female sex trade. That is, they would capture infant Indian girls in the "Americas" and take them to Europe where they would be sold as prostitutes." http://www.umich.edu/~ltpao/conqui.html "But the Spaniards' most powerful weapons were invisible killers they brought with them in the blood and breath -- infectious diseases. Because they'd been isolated from the rest of the world, the Indians had no immunity to European diseases such as smallpox, diphtheria, influenza, and cholera. Common childhood diseases like measles and mumps hit them with ferocious force. Smallpox alone could wipe out an entire tribe in one harrowing visitation -- partly because it struck almost everyone at the same time, leaving no one to tend to the victims. In l520 there were approximately 25 million people in Mexico. Eighty years later there were about l.3 million, largely because of European diseases. It is no wonder the invasion of North America has been called "the greatest demographic disaster in the history of the world." The Spanish had yet another advantage over the Indians: a set of beliefs ideally suited for conquest. In l492, Spain had just completed a seven century-long war to drive the Moors out of Iberia. This Catholic crusade nourished a warrior culture among the lesser nobility of Castile, and they carried it to the Americas, convinced they had a divine mandate to reduce the New World infidels into submission.
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Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
http://www.DebatingTheHolocaust.com
Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton
http://motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/predator-state#disqus_thread The Predator State
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Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
http://www.DebatingTheHolocaust.com
Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton
We need a new economic system because the old has failed. American Capitalism has failed so many people in so many ways. We need to transform our economy to one that works for the most people possible. We need a new form of capitalism.
What is the state of American capitalism today? As Professor James Galbraith has stated American capitalism is not what we are told by politicians, media or textbooks: benign competition leads to a greater good for most people. We are far from that. The defining feature of American capitalism today is predation – where a class of people – the oligarchs – feed off the demise of people not within this class. This oligarchy, or as Professor Galbraith calls them the predatory class, has control over the government and the capital in our economic system.
There are other features of American capitalism:
1) Financial sector that is too big.
The following is from a really good article by Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup:
From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent. Pay rose just as dramatically. From 1948 to 1982, average compensation in the financial sector ranged between 99 percent and 108 percent of the average for all domestic private industries. From 1983, it shot upward, reaching 181 percent in 2007.
That is too much concentration of wealth in one sector because with that comes great political power as shown by the various Wall Street bailout plans. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the various bailout efforts by the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department will cost taxpayers $1.9 trillion. Of course the Fed and Treasury dispute those numbers.
2) Lack of Corporate Accountability
Corporations are suppose to operate in the best interest of its shareholders but not today. What we have today is "managers' capitalism" as John Bogle calls it. Corporations are operated for the benefit of its managers and not shareholders. These managers are not held accountable either because managers are protected by securities laws and corporate governance laws or interconnecting board of directors. We see huge executive compensation packages and bonuses being paid by corporations who were not even profitable. We have executive compensation system that favors short-term gains at the expense of long-term profitability of companies.
3) Globalization
Corporations pushing for lower costs and better profit margins by reducing labor costs. This means that corporations search the globe for foreign countries that will offer them lower labor costs at the expense of U.S. workers.
4) Destruction of the middle class
This financial crisis, which was caused by the financial oligarchy, has destroyed trillions of dollars of middle class wealth by the loss of savings (particularly retirement saving), home equity and personal income as a result of unemployment. But the demise of the middle class was happening even before this financial crisis as shown by income inequality in the U.S.
Between 1969 and 1997, the share of total household income controlled by the lowest income group has decreased from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent, while the share to the highest income group increased from 43 percent to 49 percent, according to the Census Bureau.
In 2006, the top 5 percent of households in terms of income were making some $297,405, compared with the lowest fifth of the population, who had an average household income of $11,352, according to Census data.
A top heavy distribution like this does not favor a strong middle class and it portends the destruction of the middle class in the U.S. But this high concentration of income is a problem for other reasons as Professor Richard Levins has said:
"By the 70s, we had a very different distribution of income and wealth that, in my view, favored middle class. But by 1980, that trend has gone back the other way to where we have a very large percentage of income and wealth in the hands of barely one percent of the people… When you have that kind of wealth in very few hands, these people become politically and economically very, very powerful,"
This oligarchy or predatory class has hijacked American capitalism. American capitalism has created an illusion of economic growth and corporate profits based on debt. American capitalism has replaced good wage paying jobs with unregulated loans and more consumer debt. This house of cards has fallen. It is time to replace it – future generations are counting on us to do.
We need a new form of capitalism.. . . As Professor James Galbraith has stated American capitalism is not what we are told by politicians, media or textbooks: benign competition leads to a greater good for most people.The defining feature of American capitalism today is predation – where a class of people – the oligarchs – feed off the demise of people not within this class. This oligarchy, or as Professor Galbraith calls them the predatory class, has control over the government and the capital in our economic system.
Sept. 6, 2010
Letter to the EditorInconvenient Historyhttp://www.inconvenienthistory.com/archive/2010/volume_2/number_3/christianity_judaism_and_german_national_socialism.phpPaul Grubach's Erroneous View of Christianity, Judaism and and the Old TestamentBy Michael Hoffman, Sept. 6, 2010Paul Grubach's essay "Christianity, Judaism and German National Socialism: Revisionism Confronts the Theology of Susannah Heschel," is wrong on fundamental points and generally an exercise in confusion.First and foremost among his errors is his identification of the Talmud and Judaism with the Old Testament. This is the rabbinic claim and he accepts it at face value. He imagines Judaism to be what the mendacious rabbis say it is - a monotheism, Biblically based, free of Gnosticism, Hellenistic paganism and Near Eastern religions. He ascribes all of the latter to Christianity, not Judaism!"Gnosticism, Hellenistic paganism and Near Eastern religions" is a litany which is a good working description of Judaism and a defective and ridiculous caricature of Christianity.Any paganism Mr. Grubach finds in Christianity is not found in Jesus Christ or the New Testament. These are later corruptions of the church, mostly added under rabbinic influence.Mr. Grubach claims Christianity came from Judaism but he never defines Judaism. By Judaism does he mean the Old Testament religion of ancient Israel and its prophets? Or by Judaism does he denote the Pharisees and their Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash? In some cases he seems to assert the former. More often he asserts the latter. Judaism supplants and nullifies the Old Testament and represents a radical departure from Scripture and in fact constitutes a new religion.Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. He came to fulfill the true, Old Testament law of God, as He Himself said. Judaism arose with the Pharisees, as a subversion of the Old Testament religion, substituting a theology centered on worship of the Judaic male for the worship of Yahweh God.Mr. Grubach is unaware that the Old Testament, as reflected in the writings of the prophet Isaiah, for example, is anti-Jewish. Isaiah declared that Israel had "unclean lips." The Talmud states that for this supposedly offensive statement, Isaiah the prophet was rightly killed.In truth, the Old Testament is replete with attacks on Israel and warnings of the terrible fate that awaited these wayward people if they did not reform. National Socialist and neo-pagan nationalist right wing groups have for many decades stubbornly clung to the legend that rabbinic Judaism is the Old Testament religion and that the Old Testament is a book of crowning racial-Jewish chauvinism.By way of correction, if Mr. Grubach is too busy to read this writer's book Judaism Discovered, he can freely peruse the following brief article, "The Truth About the Talmud: http://talmudical.blogspot.com/Michael HoffmanCoeur d'Alene, Idaho
