If you agree that enough is enough in Darfur, you can take action; visit the American Jewish World Service at http://action.ajws.org (You need not be Jewish to log on.)
Those who believe that slavery is dead in the 21st Century are sadly mistaken. Four million souls from Somalia, the Sudan, Mauritania and elsewhere across the globe languish in chains--more people than in all the years of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. That much is fact.
The Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (1981) declares 'all human beings are born free' and 'slavery and forced labour are abhorred'. So why does the Islamic nation of the Sudan continue to wage war on its Muslim citizens--the Nuba first, and the people of Darfur in the present? That's a question I'd like to have answered.
Civil war, hypocrisy and greed have kept slavery alive in the Sudan. The Emancipation Posse exists to explore new solutions, and to bear witness to the best--and worst--in Man.
Peace is not enough. Especially where peace does not exist.
THE EMANCIPATION POSSE; THE FIRST THREE YEARS by 'Papa Blues' Robbins
from the back cover:
They came to end the slave trade in the Sudan. Five resurrected beings united agsinst an abhorrent custom long thought extinct. But power is no panacea, nor are the alternatives to violence easily accomplished. This is the story of their struggle...
Available through PublishAmerica.com ISBN 1-4137-3938-5 softcover 199 pages $16.95
Sample a chapter at Amazon.com
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RANT--6/19/06
President Bush has missed an extraordinary opportunity. Instead of wasting time hounding gays and violating every other Christian ethic, he could have taken aim at a far greater threat to our moral fiber. Ahm talkin', 'course, 'bout the consumer ethic of Madison Avenue.
Don't get it, do you? Typical WASP Jerry Falwell zipbrains. It doesn't bother anyone else that we're assaulted by commercials left right and center, distracting us, confusing us from caring for what truly matters. Do you know how many forms The White Album by the Beatles has taken just in my short lifetime? I'll give ya a hint--LP, 8-track, cassette, CD--and every time you are compelled to buy the up-to-date version of the same damn record at ever-escalating prices.
Doesn't everybody have stacks of VHS tapes that are basically valueless since DVDs hit the market? I happen to know people who blow every red cent on crap they don't need, like brand-new wide screen TVs, in place of covering minor inconveniences--y'know, like rent and oh yes, food.
Our market-based consumer mentality encourages covetness, greed, envy, gluttony--hmm, those weren't part of the Seven Deadlys, now was dey?
Malls are the worst of all, they cater to our basest impulses. You can't go to one of those places and NOT spend money. You can tell yourself, 'I'm only going to spend thees much, I'm still on a budget'. But as the day drags on, well, a guy gets hungry, and thirsty, and whoo-ey, you gotta have that fancy toy hanging in a display window. And before ya know it, there goes your dinner money.
Oh, and has anyone paid attention to how they market toys to children? For girls the ads are soo cute and pink and the music's la-la-la-la-la. If it's boys we're talkin' about--RAAAA!!! The War machines scream and the boys get in your face and the music goes thrum-thrum-thrump, and the general testosterone mood is Kill-Kill-KILLLL!!!
We should not be patronized like this. We should not be buying crap we don't need, in ever increasing quantities. We should not be turning our kids into greedy, gimme-gimme-gimme consumers. We should resist the moral vacuum that is consumerism.
Our politicians should not be in bed with the panderers of greed in this proud nation, either. Never mind gays, who did they ever hurt? Gays are not a threat to us (whoever 'us' is supposed to be). Now rampant consumerism, there's a fight worth engaging in; there's a foe worth vanquishing. IF our leaders have enough balls to face it.
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RANT #2--The Iranian Delusion of the Month, 9/21. 2006
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is either sadly misinformed or he's a very clever politician playing to the masses. I refer to his crass remarks re: the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, to wit, that he believes it never happened. Comes of skipping college to raid U.S. embassies, I suppose.
Well, I have a disturbing truth to impart to him and all such naysayers--sorry Charley, but IT HAPPENED. Moreover it does not need to be proven, the evidence for the Holocaust having occurred is sadly abundant.
Not only do we have the eyewitness testimony of its survivors, we have that of the Nazi perpetrators, plus that of the Allied soldiers who liberated the death camps in Europe who can bear witness to the Jews' emaciated bodies, the tattoos burned into them by maniacs like the late unlamented Dr. Mengele. Documentary evidence detailing the implementation of the so-called 'Final Solution' is also on record, besides the physical evidence of the camps themselves.
But why does anyone need to go on? The Iranian people are poorly served by the dissemnination of such half-baked denials. My advice to President Ahmadinejad is to better vett his script writers in the future, or at least hire those who are better informed.
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RANT# 3--9/21/06
I've finally figured out what's wrong with the Republican party. At first I thought they could be compared to fascists. I mean they are exhibiting many of the characteristics of the Il Duce kind--1) they favor reduced taxes on big business, 2)they espouse a hypocritical emphasis on 'moral values', 3)they sing the praises of military action over diplomacy, 4)they share a consevative viewpoint towards women (to wit, they should bear children, stay at home and shut up) and 5) they show absolute devotion to an Imperious Leader. On reflection, however, I've discovered that it's much worse than that.
They're BORG!!!
The Borg, you will recall, are the Hive-minded all-powerful aliens from the Star Trek universe. Rent the video 'First Contact' sometime, that will give you all the information you'll ever need.
Really. Republicans are disciplined mentally and ideologically, they're guilty of a group-think mentality. They adhere to a political platform even in the face of reason &/or failure of the instituted program, plus they communicate in easily-digested catchphrases to swoon a gullible constituency; they exhibit blind obedience to their leader, and anyone who deviates from the assigned script is pressured to conform or they are destroyed--metaphorically speaking. And any line that deviates from their script is, of course, 'Irrelevant'.
Fortunately we have a power that Jean-Luc Picard didn't to deal with these nasties--it's a little used principle in this country called 'throw the bums out'. We have only to use our ballots, and (this is usually the tricky part) use our intelligence to vote the right people in.
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The Rant to End All Rants: IRAQ, QUITE POSSIBLY THE STUPIDEST WAR THE UNITED STATES HAS EVER EMBARKED ON (Dec. 12, 2006)
Wars are stupid by their very nature, but it is hard to find a worse example than the ill-conceived (and ill-managed) one in Iraq. I have nonetheless compiled a list of viable candidates. As we go through these I'd like one and all to bear in mind this homily from Benjamin Franklin, given to a British ambassador at the end of our own Revolution --"There never was a good war or a bad peace."
1-THE WAR OF 1812. As far as stupid wars go, this one is a classic. It's the war that almost lost the Revolution. We'd gone to war AFTER a settlement had been reached on the issue that started the conflict (ie, the impressment of American sailors into service on British men-o-war). You can thank another hotheaded Congress for that, thinking wiht their gonads instead of the grey matter. The War of 1812 accomplished nothing except to get a lot of good men killed, and Washington DC was burnt to the ground on top of that. Neither side gained a victory, and it was another chance for us to launch an abortive raid to conquer Canada. And to get our butts whooped, AGAIN. (I mean really, if Benedict Arnold couldn't do it...) Gave us a nice anthem, though.
2-THE MEXICAN WAR. Ahh, another present from the GRAAAND ol' state o' Tehas. That wasn't a war, it was a massive land grab. The John Birch Society recently held a symposium at our library on the so-called 'Immigration Invasion'. Here's my response to you, Johnny--PHHHT! Get over it, Charlie, THEY were here first. WE invaded Mexico, on the slimmest of pretexts (gee, that sounds familiar!) and we took more land than we were entitled to. If anything, the Mexicans are entitled to come back here, it was their home. The mere success of our invading army doesn't detract from the immorality of that war, as Ulyssus Grant himself noted in his memoirs
3-THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. I'm not sure this one qualifies. It's still an open question whether the spark for that war, the explosion of the battleship Maine, was caused by a flaw in the engine or a Spanish mine. If anything that war was an unqualified success--which saddled us with an empire in the form of Guam, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines and our lovely lil' prison camp/err, base at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba. Bringing our victorious boys home and confining them on Montauk Point with yellow fever--THAT was stupid.
4--VIETNAM. I'm of the mind now that our involvement in the Vietnam war couldn't have been avoided. That doesn't mean it was RIGHT--just that we were committed to the fight agaisnt communism. As far as the execution...well, that was a major botch job, start to finish. We basically waded in without a plan to win that battle--we simply moved in when the French moved out. It helped even less that Ho Chi Mihn was prepared to hand a gun to every single man, woman and child (literally!)in order to beat us. See, that was the difference between our two armies--he was willing to sacrifice every living soul to get rid of us; we put a much higher value on the lives of our soldiers. Our invading Cambodia only compounded the problem and gave the Khmer Rouge the opening they needed to massacre their own people. Vietnam, ultimately cost us 52,661 American lives, not to mention our humiliation before the whole world and the five years of self-induced shame and doubt that followed.
I think we've missed the most important lesson of that war. During the Korean conflict Douglas MacArthur succeeded in repulsing the North Koreans back behind the 38th parallel, which was the mandate given by the U.N. Then he thought he'd be cute and go on to the North Korean capital. Good job--that only got the Chinese involved, a much more numerous and formidable army than the North Koreans had already proven themselves to be. So instead of a victory we ended up with a stalemate which continues today. Funny, I could have sworn MacArthur also told us not to get involved in a land war in Asia in the first place...
5--IRAQ.. I'm trying to understand where people get the idea we had 'unfinished business' in Iraq. HELLO! We had a mandate to kick Saddam's ass out of Kuwait--period. Listen closely--WE-DID-THAT. And mighty successfully, too, I might add. You neocon clowns seem to have forgotten the most important lesson of the first Gulf War--Saddam was a pissant. Yes, he was a bastard and a mass murderer who killed thousands of Kurds. He was still a second rate-dictator without any respect in the Arab world. Why do you idiots perceive him as a supervillian, why is that? Is it because we and our allies gave him most of the weapons he used in his war against Iran--which he later used on Kuwait? Hmm? A lil' collective guilt for arming the fruitcake in the first place? At least the Vietnamese were glad to see the back of us, they were more than willing to turn their arms on themselves. Win or lose, we've so pissed off the Militant Muslims they'll be launching 9/11s at us for the next couple of generations. Thank you ever so much, Mr Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld. You know, I was kind of hoping to leave my son a much better legacy than that.
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BURNING POP CULTURE QUESTIONS, Pt. 1 (Jan.30, 2007)
1) Are you as sick of rappers sticking their butt-ugly pugs and oversized hams in the camera as I am? They've been doing that for 20 years, is this an originality crisis or what? Can't they get a new schtick?
2) While we're on the subject, why would these skinny half-nekked girls hang out with a conceited bloated rapper who can't get his botox off the couch?
3) In their new video "Ser o Paracer", why is RBD dressed like cave people?
4) Do they still say "Frak!" on 'Battlestar Galactica", and does it mean what I think it does?
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RANT--Jan. 30, 2007
More people have a problem with this vision thing than yuo might think. It's not exclusively a Democratic party problem. I think if we don't want ot be overrun by anymore hairlip Republicans we bettter figure out what America stands for. As for myself, I have a few pointers:
--America is where the impossible can happen. This goes way beyond landing on the Moon. it goes back to Lewis and Clark crossing the continent and truly mapping where no man had dare go before. It's where Henry Knox and his intrepid band of colonial soldiers dragger 52 cannon from Fort Ticonderoga and mounted them on Dorchester Heights over Boston. It's an army of railroad workers punching through mountains to complete the Transcontinental Railroad. It's that and so much more,.
--America is where one man can stand and lead others where we need to go. Sometimes their example crosses ideological or racial lines, but they always made this a better land to live in. So let's hesr it for Frederick Douglass, Thomas Edison, JFK, John Quincy Adams, Henry Knox, Robert Goddard, and so many others.
--America is a land where men are free to worship the Almighty as they see fit, free of government interference; it's also the land where immigrants have come for generations to escape religious persecution, and that's the way it always should be.