History

And I Didn’t Even Receive One Card.

Posted on by Starkey

Yesterday appareantly was “Hetrosexual Pride Day”, according to Twitter, and all of the oppressed hetrosexuals were to come out and show that they were here, they were not queer, and that we were already used to it.

So, basically, nothing that wasn’t already blatantly obvious was addressed and pointed out.

People on Twitter couldn’t understand why we, “the hetrosexual community”, didn’t have a “pride day” and why we couldn’t celebrate our sexuality. Well, first:  we don’t need a pride day (and I will tell you why here in a sec) and second: you should celebrate your sexuality. If you are straight, go be straight. Find you another straight person (or persons) that shares the same sexual turn ons that you do and get crazy! No one is shaming you for being straight, and if they are then they are the ones that are in the wrong.

However, we still do not need a hetrosexual pride day. Why? Because we didn’t fucking earn it.

Sit back, you are about to get another history lesson.

Now first, some clarification. Pride, Pride Month, and Pride Day are not the same as LGBT Pride.

Gay pride or LGBT pride is the positive stance against discrimination and violence toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)people to promote their self-affirmation, dignity, equality rights, increase their visibility as a social group, build community, and celebrate sexual diversity and gender variance. Pride, as opposed to shame and social stigma, is the predominant outlook that bolsters most LGBT rights movements throughout the world.

When I talk about Pride here, I will be talking about the event, not the stance.

LGBT Pride Day first started in June of 1970  one year after the Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall riots are what most consider the start of the LGBT civil rights movement. The Riots sparked organization and inspiration throughout the LGBT community, and it brought their struggle to the national spotlight.

Pride day used to be held on the last Sunday of June to commemorate this event in LGBT history. Soon, Pride Day became Pride Month and celebrations, parades and memorials are held all over the world to celebrate it.

So, why don’t we, hetrosexuals get to have parades? Why don’t we get to have a “Pride Day”?

Because, like I said, we haven’t earned it and we never will.

We will never have the police raid a “straight bar” (Which for some reason I keep picturing as a Buffalo Wild Wings)  or because appearing straight in public is a criminal offense. We will not have to deal with police or public harassment for looking straight, sounding straight, or walking straight. We will not be beaten or killed for just being straight. We will not have to fight for “Straight Equality” for 40+ years and even when we make some major advances, we will not be at risk to lose our jobs or housing, be asked to leave a business, denied service, or be refused medical care because we are straight. LGBT people have had to battle this, and are still at risk of these things daily.

That’s why they get to have a Pride Day. They have bled, hidden in fear, been disowned by friends and family, and have been/are being denied the right to be treated as a human. So, yes, they get to have a Pride Day, they get to come together and have a parade to celebrate victories, mourn loved ones, remember tragedies and what it’s taken to get them to this spot in history.

We do not get to have a hetrosexual pride day, because we haven’t earned it and we don’t need it. If anything, we should have a day month of humility.

Hetrosexual Humility Month, now there is something that we need.

Texas Our Texas.

Posted on by Starkey

*sigh*

I knew that this would come up.

With the “Brexit”, it has stirred up the whole “Texas seceding” talk again (Just search #Texit on Twitter). People thinking that Texas would be better on it’s own and that we don’t the Federal Government up in our shit, taking our tax money and giving it to those Damn Yankee Liberal Socialists States, yet fail to remember that Texas is the quickest state to cry out for Federal Aid when any disaster hits and bitches the loudest when we don’t get it, or don’t get it quickly enough.

The problem is that we can’t leave the U.S. legally; however there’s a multitude of people here that think we can. The popular theory meme is that we can legally leave the union and split into 5 separate states. This is false.

It’s time for a history lesson.

When Texas won its independence in 1836 it was in shambles. No infrastructure, no monetary system, no schools and no industry. It was all farmland and everything had to be imported from the US. Basically, Texas was broke as fuck; however because Texas originally expanded through parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming:

Texas1836map

It blocked the U.S.’s  westward expansion, it was also an insertion point for any still ambitious European powers that wanted to come back into North America through the Gulf of Mexico. The main reason why Texas wasn’t quickly annexed in as a State is that the U.S. knew the moment that they did, it would start a war with Mexico. So, in 1844 the US Senate rejected an annexation treaty with Texas and then later in 1845 accepted it. In 1846 we had the Mexican-American War. Now, here is where that divide into 5 states thing comes in. When we were annexed in on 3/1/1845 we jacked up the Missouri Compromise because we would be adding another “slave state” (despite the fact that 90% of Texans were neither slaves nor slave owners) and our northern border crossed  the 36°30’N line of latitude which had been established as the demarcation point between free territory and slave territory by the Missouri Compromise. So, the powers that be came up with this:

New States of convenient size not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas and having sufficient population, may, hereafter by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution; and such states as may be formed out of the territory lying south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly known as the Missouri Compromise Line, shall be admitted into the Union, with or without slavery, as the people of each State, asking admission shall desire; and in such State or States as shall be formed out of said territory, north of said Missouri Compromise Line, slavery, or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited.

Basically, the states that would have been made above the line for the Missouri Compromise would have been “Free States” and the ones below it would have been “Slave States” because Texas was a lot bigger at the time; however we SOLD THAT EXTRA LAND in 1850 for $10 million dollars in the Compromise of 1850 and we used that money to pay off our debt to Mexico. Also, we kind of fucked off any real chance of dividing into any number of states when we ACTUALLY seceded from the US in 1861 and joined the Confederacy. We were then formally re-admitted to the United States after 1865 (1870 to be exact) when the 13th Amendment was passed and abolished slavery and informally made us a state again due to the Confederacy’s surrender. Article IV,Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution already says specifically that we cannot divide into multiple states:

New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

When were re-admitted back into the US by Congress, there was no, repeat NO annexation treaty which reserves the right to secede from the Union without the consent of the U.S. Congress. Even before Texas formally rejoined the nation, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that secession was not legal, and thus, even during the rebellion, Texas continued to be a state. In the 1869 case Texas v. White, the Court held that individual states could not unilaterally secede from the Union and that the acts of the insurgent Texas Legislature — even if ratified by a majority of Texans — were “absolutely null.”

That’s the history of it.

Let’s get a little more current though.

“If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.”— Antonin Scalia, late Supreme Court Justice

So, while some Texans may want to secede and others may want to see us go, we simply legally cannot. The United States isn’t the EU. The EU is a group of countries that have agreed to be together and actually have protocols for leaving, where we are a group of states that make up a country and only have protocols for adding new states. It’s a different concept.

My advice to Texans that want to secede: Become an immigrant to another country and start a new life there. It’s like secession, only on a more personal level.

My advice to people that live outside of Texas that want to see us go: Come down here and head to Austin. Then go to Trudy’s and have a couple of Mexican Martinis, go hit up 6th street and just see the town. The next morning, head over to Juan in a Million and have a Don Juan. You’ll see that Texas can be an awesome place. (Just stay the fuck out of Houston).

So, we’ll keep seeing y’all. We ain’t goin’ nowhere.

 

There’s One in Every Group.

Posted on by Starkey

Everyone wants to be different. Everyone wants to be special. For the most part, you are unique; however the laws of probabilities and averages weigh in and there is probably someone else out there that is just like you. Now, I am not saying that you have an evil twin with an eye patch; however there is probably someone that is like minded, dresses almost the same, likes the same food, and may even appear almost the same (sans the eye patch).

This is also true of ideologies and beliefs within religions, which are themselves ideologies and beliefs. Here in the U.S. we hear a lot about Christians and the “war on religion”.  Recently we had a local pastor in the small town of Samson Park, TX make a few headlines as he gave a sermon after the Orlando shootings about the “50 sodomites” and how “they’re the scum of the earth, and the earth is a little bit better place now.”. This Arizona native came to Texas just a little over a year ago and after his church was only open for that 1st year, he managed to make it on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Active Hate Group list.

This local asshat aside, I want to talk about another group that has drawn my attention today. A group that I usually try to stick up for because they are demonized in the western media and they tend to keep to themselves when it comes to indoctrination and evangelism. I am speaking about Muslims.

Now before you start going into the “Another Stupid  American”, “He’s a Texan Republican” (Which I am not, FYI), or the “Dude, you are going to get bombed” spiel, let me be clear. When I say that I am an atheist, I mean just that. Theist meaning  the belief in the existence of a god or gods with the prefix “a” meaning not or without ( Examples: asymmetrical,. asymptomatic, apolitical). So, I am not “anti-Christian”, I think all of them are non-sense.  You may hear me talk about Christianity a lot but that’s because I live in a north Texas town that is approximately 9 square miles in size, has a population of roughly over 10K, and has 20 churches  in it (of which the majority of are either Baptist or Evangelical). So, that particular belief system is on my radar, a lot.

What has made me take a look at the Muslim community? A guy named Ahmed Muhammad Ahmed el-Tayeb. He is the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, which is a very high position in Sunni Islam. He is also a well educated man and holds a Phd in Islamic philosophy from the Paris-Sorbonne University, and has been president of Al-Azhar University since 2003. OK, so he is well educated in his religion and it’s philosophies, but I am sure he took a few other courses.

He took to the airwaves, on his nightly TV show, and started telling the viewing audience:

…that atheists developed their opinions in the 18th century with some degree of politeness and respect toward those who believe in God but contemporary atheists, particularly after the events of September 11, have declared war against all religions, especially Islam.

Wait…What?

First, yes atheism historically did  formally start during the early 18th century and we were polite about it because of all of the persecution of heretics going on at the time. The rise of toleration and enlightenment only started because people were sick of the Spanish inquisition, the witch trials, the civil wars of England, Scotland and the Netherlands that had previously occurred. People were sick of all of the bullshit that had been done and that was being done by the church. It wasn’t until the mid to late 1700’s that tolerance of  other religions and beliefs was finally accepted in Europe, and atheism would be even tolerated to any degree. So yeah, we were kind of polite because we were afraid of that whole death or imprisonment thing. Oh, and post 9/11 it wasn’t just atheists that didn’t like Muslims. It was pretty much every bigoted asshole on the planet. Some atheist, some theist, and all misguided; however I thank you for proving my point.

No matter what the religious view, there’s always “one of those guys”.  Even the religion of Islam is declaring that there is a war on religion; however the muslims are stepping up the game:

Trending on Arabic #Twitter is this hashtag #نطالب_بقتل_الملحدين which translates to “We demand the killing of the Atheists”. scary times.

I tried translating this, and I got “We demand the transfer of atheists”; however when you isolate بقتل and translate that, it means killing. Now, some people are stating that this is just in regards to Atheists in Saudi Arabia and/or the Middle East, but it really isn’t clarifying that. The hashtag doesn’t say “We demand the killing of the Atheists here in the Middle East. Everywhere else is cool”. Also, it’s not just the middle east and it’s not just the religion of Islam. In 2015 2 men were murdered for speaking out against religion and superstition and the violence associated with it in India. Govind Pansare and his wife were attacked and he later died from his injuries, M. M. Kalburgi was shot dead at his home, a third man, K. S. Bhagawan was only sent a threatening letter, the leader of the militant Hindu organization that allegedly killed the other two men was caught and arrested.

Back to our friend The Sheik:

 He added that one of the major causes of the spread of irreligiosity and atheism in the Islamic world is that some Muslim youth do not have the support for firm thinking and belief and cannot assess what they hear, especially since those who spread atheism spread their ideas with simple and comprehensible explanations for the youth.

I searched Google to get a definition of “firm thinking” and I had to laugh at this:

Did you mean:
free thinking definition
formal thinking definition

I did find a site called firmthinking.com which is a “strategy and marketing consulting firm” but I don’t think that is what the sheik is talking about; however I do think that he means strategic thinking.

Strategic thinking is defined as a mental or thinking process applied by an individual in the context of achieving success in a game or other endeavor.

Basically, I read this as: “Our kids need us to think for them, because if they think for themselves, then they won’t buy into our religious beliefs because the atheists are talking clearly and rationally.”.  But he goes on to say:

“Experts in psychology and large financial institutions support these ideas and the danger of these institutions is that their ideas can be considered as the weapons of the West,” he stressed.
OK, there it is. It boils down to atheism (in the form of psychology and money?) being linked to “The West”. I am sure when he says “The West” he doesn’t mean Canada or Brazil. Because all atheist are American. He goes on to blame international humanitarian groups for abusing religious freedom and blaming most of Europe for recognizing LGBT rights that “are hated and uncomfortable in the Islamic world.”  He then pushes for the idea to have religious classes taught in all of their schools and universities (and I don’t think he means as an elective) to “to ensure the culture of society against deviant thoughts”.
And we all know my thoughts on deviants.
Here’s my point, I don’t care what book you are claiming is “infallible truth” or what imaginary friend you talk to at night or 5 times a day while bowing and stretching. Every religion has a bunch of nutjobs in them. The guy 12 miles away in a small ass Baptist Church or the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar several thousand miles away are both the same guy.  They are both misguided by the ideology and dogma that comes from a book that was written thousands of years ago and has caused pain and bloodshed for thousands of years since.
And they are both afraid.
They are afraid of their culture, their religion, the meme that has lasted thousands of years dying. So, they are both acting out. One is throwing a tantrum and saying stupid hateful shit and trying to get his 15 minutes and attract the dregs to fill the pews. The other is hoping that his position and power will lead people to further his ideology of his religion and he is also saying stupid things and acting out. That’s what all of these things are: tantrums.
The world is changing and some people don’t want to change with it. So, they will become assholes, bigots and just full of hate and try to ruin it for everyone else. In the unfortunate case of these two, one has a Youtube channel, and the other has a national TV show. Then someone has a twitter hashtag that is trending, but not in a great way.
Regardless of what you believe, or don’t believe, can we just try not to kill each other?
Please?

Hello. Do You Have a Moment to Read About Religious Liberty (and how it’s a horrible concept)?

Posted on by Starkey

I am going to start this off by saying that I love my state. Texas has some of the greatest culture anywhere in the US. You can find people of every color , religion and orientation here, and it makes this state beautiful (Plus the food is fucking amazing). Is it perfect, hell no. Texas’ spiral down into  political stupidity started in 1861. It’s had it’s shinning moments when things looked like they were gettin’ better, but then good ol’ stupidity got a hold of us and dragged us down again. As I have learned while being a Liberal/Democrat (Sometimes Green) Atheist living in Texas, you hope for the best and prepare for the worst when it comes to Texas politics.

Which brings me to this post.

While going through my Twitter feed (which is where I usually get my news from, I follow a lot of local, national and global news sources)  I read this little gem from my home state:

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article60846377.html

twitterTexas

Here, let me just give you the first little bite:

Texas’ attorney general, who faces an ethics investigation for advising government officials they could deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples, backed Republican lawmakers Wednesday who want new religious objection measures and new scrutiny on city equal rights ordinances.

Although a top aide to Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton told a Senate panel the state would likely be sued if new laws explicitly let public officials deny same-sex marriage licenses, the state’s top prosecutor encouraged Republican leaders to “protect” people from what he called religious punishment.

“Religious liberty is the first freedom established in the Bill of Rights, and the moral bedrock upon which our nation has been built,” Paxton said in a statement released after the meeting.

Now, I have inherited a trait from my grandmother in which I will yell profanities at inanimate objects like the target of my discontent (or the object itself) can actually hear me. So, after a long tirade of profane objections to another one of my state’s epic blunders. I decided to post about it vs. yell at my Nexus 6.

The one thing every conservative loves to quote and go to when equality, or anything LGBT related, comes up is the first amendment. Like Mr. Paxton says here: “Religious liberty is the first freedom established in the Bill of Rights…”, he is correct that it is the first in the list of freedoms listed in the bill of rights. What no conservative likes to go into is the establishment clause of the first amendment, instead what they run for is the free exercise clause of the first amendment. Even this is misused by conservatives, because it doesn’t give people the right to discriminate.

The Free Exercise Clause protects citizens’ right to practice their religion as they please, so long as the practice does not run afoul of a “public morals” or a “compelling” governmental interest.

“Run afoul of public morals”, I would think seclusion, discrimination and bigotry is most afoul of our public morals these days; however people want to claim this “religious liberty” as a free pass to not do things that they do not want to do because of their religion. Sorry, but it doesn’t work like that. You are granted the “right to practice [your] religion as [you] please, so long as the practice does not run afoul of a “public morals” or a “compelling” governmental interest.” This means you can be a Baptist, Muslim, Buddhist, Catholic, Hindi, or Satanist ; however you have to do things like file a tax return even if your invisible imaginary friend says not to, and you cannot be a pedophile or rob a bank every 2nd Thursday, even if your dear and fluffy lord demands that you do so. That’s what runs afoul of a “public morals” or a “compelling” governmental interest means. Not selling a cake or a pizza to a LGBT person isn’t religious liberty, it’s weaponizing your faith, it’s discrimination, and it’s not covered under the 1st Amendment.

Plus, Religious Liberty as it is wielded by these “conservative bible-thumpers” (as I like to call them)  doesn’t even measure to the legal standing that the government can allow due to the establishment clause. So, conservative religious liberty is a constitutional contradiction.

Under the “Lemon” test, government can assist religion only if (1) the primary purpose of the assistance is secular, (2) the assistance must neither promote nor inhibit religion, and (3) there is no excessive entanglement between church and state.

(http://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/first-amendment-and-religion)

Religious Liberty, as stated by conservatives, fails on all 3 benchmarks. It’s not secular, it does promote one religion over another, and it does cause a pretty huge entanglement of church and state. So, the idea of “Religious Liberty” (as defined by conservatives) is nothing more that a lump of bullshit.

However, here is one thing that isn’t a myth. It’s the reason that they run to the Free Exercise Clause and all but completely ignore the Establishment Clause. There is one thing that the Establishment Clause guarantees everyone.

The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” This clause not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion, but also prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another. It also prohibits the government from unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion.

“…It prohibits the government from preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion.”

That’s right, the first amendment also grants you freedom FROM religion.  The Founding Fathers were of extremely different religious backgrounds and philosophical positions on religion. Thomas Jefferson actually re-wrote the bible , rarely attended church,  and took an almost Deist view to Christianity. Hell, he was the driving force for having a dividing wall to separate church and state. Benjamin Franklin was a Freemason, a Deist, a follower of Voltaire & Enlightenment and allegedly a member of the Hell Fire Club. He made his own virtues, his own beliefs and, like Jefferson, they were very unorthodox. The Father of the American Revolution Thomas Paine was highly critical of religion, especially Christianity, and took a very unorthodox view of religion. James Madison, The Father of the Constitution, was damn near an atheist because he hated religion.

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

[Letter to William Bradford Jr. April 1 1774]”

So, just these 4 examples show you that this nation was not founded on Christian values, but secular values, and that the conservative view of Religious Liberties is just a delusion. These men had left England because of the “Religious Liberties” that the Church of England and the Monarchy were taking. That is why this country is founded as a secular nation, dividing church and state, not promoting one over the other.

*Sigh*  (Takes a deep calming breath)

It just pisses me off to no end when I hear someone (usually a republican, and usually a conservative) say that the United States is a “Christian Nation”. Not because I am an atheist, but because it is a false statement that people of ignorance are believing. It is almost like they believe Jesus himself fought off the British in 1776 along with Moses and Noah as his wing men in their heavenly F-16s while Skynard played in the background.  The only two times religion is mentioned in the Constitution, is during the 1st Amendment when it is being discussed and that is it. There are no mentions of g-d, Jesus or anything remotely Christian anywhere in the entire document. As a matter of fact, in 1793 colonial preacher John M. Mason actually spoke out against the way the Constitution of the United States was written as too secular and didn’t give any mention to g-d.

“…very Constitution which the singular goodness of God enabled us to establish, does not so much as recognize his being! … From the Constitution of the United States, it is impossible to ascertain what God we worship; or whether we own a God at all … Should the citizens of America be as irreligious as her Constitution, we should have reason to tremble …”

http://archives.dickinson.edu/digitized-resources/complete-works-john-m-mason-dd

(this is just a good read on this subject: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-crawford/america-is-not-a-christian-nation_b_7750002.html )

 

Finally, there is this: The Barbary Treaties 1786-1816 Treaty of Peace and Friendship (Aka: The Treaty of Tripoli).

This was a peace treaty signed between the newly formed United States Government and the Muslim privateers and pirates of Barbary Coast (Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco and Tunis) around North Africa.  I am going to place Article 11 here for you to read:

ARTICLE 11.

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

(http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp)

Here it is, stated in black and white and in plain English. We are not a Christian Nation in any sense. We are not a theocracy. No Jesus in his heavenly F-16. We do not (or should not) make legislation based on Christian (or any religious) values, but on humanitarian values and common sense. So, while you have the right to openly practice your religion, you do not get to oppress and discriminate another person with it because of so called “Religious Liberties”. Your “Liberties” as you are claiming  are a myth lie that has been handed down to you by people that want you to rally to their cause, their platform, and help line their pockets. You are being used and you are using your faith (that you claim is based on love) as a weapon to hurt other people by discriminating, shaming and by helping make laws that are harmful to others. You do not have this right, this so-called “Religious Liberty”, you never did.

So, knock it the fuck off.

A Short History Lesson Because People Are Dumb

Posted on by Starkey

While going through my Twitter feed I see this:

beyonce riots

Anti-Beyonce’ protests? Why the fuck are we protesting Beyonce’? She is great! Her voice is enchanting and let me be honest, she is fucking hot. Hot and talented, you can’t be anti-hot and talented! That’s just called jealousy.  Then anti-anti Beyonce’ protesters? Those aren’t protesters, those are called Beyonce’ fans.

So, I click on the article  and see what this is all about. Oh, it’s about her halftime show and how people conservatives don’t know history (or don’t want to acknowledge it). I see. So, people conservatives have this misconception that all the Black Panthers did was be scary to white people and kill cops. No, that’s the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense founded in 1989 in Dallas Texas and as any surviving member of the actual Black Panther Party will tell you:

“There is no new Black Panther Party”

The NBPP is a stark departure from the original, mainly because they ARE anti-white and also antisemitic. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the NBPP as a “black racist” hate group.

The original ( and only) Black Panther Party was founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. During that time in California, police brutality (against anyone really) was out of control. You had Bloody Thursday at The People’s Park  in Berkeley where live ammo was used on unarmed protesters, you had the Watts riots, and the killing of Matthew Johnson, an unarmed young black man in San Francisco. I am sure if you researched it, you could find hundreds of more cases (I remember stories of “Hogs Law” around that time period that mother witnessed when she was on the force as a dispatcher here in Texas. So, police misconduct was kind of an unchecked thing back then). So, as a counter-measure, Newton studied California gun law until he knew it better than many police officers. He decided to organize patrols to follow the police around to monitor for incidents of brutality, but with a crucial difference: his patrols would carry loaded guns. This act was done in order to record incidents of police brutality by distantly following police cars around neighborhoods.When confronted by a police officer, Party members cited laws proving they have done nothing wrong and threatened to take to court any officer that violated their constitutional rights.

Not that they would go and “hunt down the pigs”, or “shoot the cops on sight”.  They were using the existing open carry laws for long rifles for the state (at the time) and exercising there 2nd amendment rights under the US Constitution. Sound familiar conservatives, does this help so far, Rep. Peter King, (R-Long Island)? It should because it’s the same BS that y’all are saying now. The same BS that y’all are doing now, with the exception of everyone being afraid of some unseen boogeymen that I am willing to bet are not white.

But, let’s continue…

In August 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instructed its program “COINTELPRO” to “neutralize” what the FBI called “black nationalist hate groups” and other dissident groups…The goals of the program were to prevent the unification of militant black nationalist groups and to weaken the power of their leaders, as well as to discredit the groups to reduce their support and growth. The initial targets included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Nation of Islam. Leaders who were targeted included the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Maxwell Stanford and Elijah Muhammad.

COINTELPRO also aimed to dismantle the Black Panther Party by targeting the social/community programs they endorsed, one of the most influential being the Free Breakfast for Children Program. The success of the Free Breakfast for Children Program served to “shed light on the government’s failure to address child poverty and hunger—pointing to the limits of the nation’s War on Poverty”. The ability of the Party to organize and provide for children more effectively than the U.S. government led the FBI to criticize the program as a means of exposing children to Panther Propaganda. In response to this, as an effort of disassembling the program, “Police and Federal Agents regularly harassed and intimidated program participants, supporters, and Party workers and sought to scare away donors and organizations that housed the programs like churches and community centers”

That’s right the Black Panther’s main program was community outreach. Especially it’s Free Breakfast for Children program. The Panthers would cook and serve food to the poor inner city youth of the area.  The Panthers set up kitchens in cities across the nation, feeding over 10,000 children every day before they went to school. Because the BPP could feed kids and fight poverty better than the US Government, that program became a target of the FBI. Later this Free Breakfast Program would become the Black Panther’s “Serve the People” program which still included the Free Children’s Breakfast, but also Free Health Programs like medical care & ambulance services, there were educational services that also provided meals, bus services, and transportation to medical appointments. Students were instructed based on their ability, not there grade. So, if a student was able to perform 4th grade math, but only read at a 1st grade level he was taught at those individual levels. There were also criminal justice programs that included busing to prisons so that families could visit loved ones and they also did attorney referrals. The Black Panthers also stood up for class equality, women’s right,& reproductive rights.

Were they perfect? No, there were run-ins with police. Huey P. Newton was arrested for shooting a police officer while resting arrest. Bobby Hutton was killed by police and Eldridge Cleaver were wounded during a shootout with police. There were also claims of BPP members engaged in criminal activities; however does that make the entire party bad? Does it make them the fear mongering cop killers that some people would suggest? I say no. I think they should be remembered as a group of people that saw that things needed to change and they took the initiative and changed them. They fixed what was broken and I am glad that Beyonce’ included them in her performance. The BPP should be remembered for what they really did. They fed people, they educated people, they lent a helping hand to their community and they stood for equality. All that gun in their hand did was tell people: “Hey, I can do what you can do. I am the same as you. So don’t fuck with me.”

So, go on Beyonce’, do what you do.

 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Black_Panther_Party

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Park_(Berkeley)#May_15.2C_1969:_.22Bloody_Thursday.22

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/BPP-Serving-The-People1998.htm

American History

Posted on by Starkey

There is one thing that I dreaded when I took on my Top 100 Documentaries Challenge and that thing occurred a few days ago. The dreaded documentary series. I knew it was going to happen, and it did.

#31 The Civil War

I try not to look at the previews of the films. I kinda want to be surprised. So, I didn’t know if this was going to actually be about the Civil War or about who knows what. Turns out it was a 9 episode series at approximately 99 minutes each and actually about the Civil War. Thankfully it was a well funded PBS documentary with some great narration and production (Two Words: Morgan Freeman), so it was extremely interesting to watch. I binged the hell out of it; mainly because I find that part of American history so fascinating.

I will try not to spoil it, I mean it’s a historical documentary and you kind of know who won; however there are some things that I don’t think that everyone knows about the Civil War. I was actually shocked at what Texas did to join the confederacy (Which proves Texas politics has been fucking retarded since 1861). The whole series was just filled with details about the war that made it so interesting and infuriating at the same time. The main thing that I noticed, is that some of these things are still happening today. The players have different names, but the ideas that are being tossed around echo the the same things that happened back in 1861.

Don’t be fooled by anyone, the war started over slavery. It wasn’t about State’s rights, it was about slavery. The North (and the rest of the world for that matter) had moved away from slavery and started to industrialize. The South was also heading that way until the invention of the cotton gin. When the cotton gin was invented, and production of cotton skyrocketed and people were getting stupid rich.So, the need for slaves increased by 10 times in the South. When Lincoln was elected, a Republican (which was a new party at the time and more like the Democratic party is today, somewhat liberal & progressive), the South feared that the Federal Government was going to take away slavery. However, a major part of Lincoln’s platform was that he was not going to abolish slavery. The South just freaked out any way.

When the film covered this, I my jaw dropped because I had an “Ah-Ha” moment. Because this sounded REALLY familiar. When Obama was elected, gun and ammo sales increased all over the country  91% in his first term (and I am willing to bet the majority of that was probably in the southern states) because people were afraid that gun restriction were going to be passed or their 2nd amendment rights/guns were going to be taken away. I remember just 4 years ago, a handful of nut jobs here in Texas (I believe it was roughly 1% of the population) were pressing for Texas to secede from the US because of Obama and his anti-gun views. At the time, no gun laws had been passed at all.

Then just this year, this happened:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday revealed his plans for a “convention of the states,” the first in more than 200 years, as part of a larger effort to reshape the U.S. Constitution and expand states’ rights.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/08/politics/greg-abbott-texas-rubio-constitutional-convention/

When the Confederacy was formed, the main part of it’s Constitution was that State’s Rights overruled the Central Government and that’s pretty much what these changes would do. Plus, if you have never read about our governor here in Texas, he’s bat-shit crazy. He dispatched the Texas Guard to shadow the US Military during a training exercise called Jade Helm because it was really an invasion to disarm all Texans and establish Wal-Marts as prison camps.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/16/us/in-texas-a-military-exercise-is-met-by-some-with-suspicion.html?_r=0)

When marriage equality was passed, he fought it due to religious liberty, yet allowed some Texas Senators and Representatives to openly discriminate against Muslims, but probably the most crazy thing that he has done was he rejected a bill that would have help Texans with mental health issues by giving doctors more legal grounds to detain them for evaluation and summon law enforcement if needed. Why was it vetoed? Because he received a letter from a group that was backed by Scientology (and a few other crazies) and decided they had good ideas vs. all of the Medical Professionals that backed the bill (not to mention that is passed through the Texas House and Senate with little to no resistance), so he vetoed the bill.

(https://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/14/scientology-group-urged-veto-mental-health-bill/)

When I started hearing what went into the Confederacy being formed, I got a cold shudder. Because some of it is starting to whisper up again. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we are on the verge of another civil war (The South is NOT rising again!); however the saying: “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it” does come to mind.

OK, back on topic.

The other thing that has always intrigued me is the technology that came out of The Civil War. Rifling, cone bullets, repeating rifles, the machine gun, the Gatling gun, battle ships, land mines, and the telescopic sight. Hundreds of patents were filed during the war, mostly for war technology. The other thing that also baffles me is the way wars were still fought. Rows of men firing musket volleys, just standing there almost waiting to be shot (and they were). When people say that the civil war was the bloodiest war America has ever fought, it is true. There were more casualties in that war than all other wars combined that America has fought in. Most battles in the civil war at least doubled the loss of life that occurred in D-Day. What I don’t understand is why the use of guerrilla warfare wasn’t used as it was in the American Revolution. A lot of battles were fought conventionally in the Revolution, but what really turned the tide and kicked England’s ass (sorry England, no hard feelings) is when Washington and other generals changed their tactics to unconventional warfare. I wonder if either side in the Civil War would have done this, would the war have been shorter or would the outcome have been different? Mind you, I am really happy with the way it turned out, but the loss of life and damage to a lot of cities on both sides of the country may have been spared.  I guess that will always be an unanswered question.

I hope anyone that reads this hops on Netflix and watches this film. There’s a ton of stuff that I am not going into that I actually was amazed by (Spoilers!). This documentary series was great and I will probably watch it again, eventually. Now I can continue on my trek to get to 100 and hopefully there aren’t anymore documentary series on the list.

Knock on wood.