By: Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
It has been said that the march of history, particularly in the realm of human rights, is always forward. Embedded within this concept is the idea that despite tragedies and war, the human condition always progresses. Unquestionably, whoever created the expression did so long before our just completed decade.

The decade began with arguably the first fraudulent presidential election in the history of the United States. Rather than a clear and decisive victory for Bush-Cheney, it was a Reagan-Bush hand-picked Supreme Court that intervened to give us two candidates who had received less votes than their opponents in a hotly disputed election.

Upon being sworn into office, these two grabbed the reigns of power and began to govern as though the U.S. electorate had granted them a unanimous mandate. From there it went straight downhill.

Bush-Cheney pompously began to govern where Reagan-Bush had left off; all power to the corporate sector and all power to the military-industrial complex. Not that Clinton had been a moral beacon or a champion of the poor, but Bush-Cheney ensured that every aspect of government came to be placed at the service of the corporate sector.

Then came 9-11. And what could have been a moment that could have united all of humanity, the Bush-Cheney administration turned it into an opportunity to divide the world up into good vs. evil and to consolidate the power of the United States on a global scale. 9-11 virtually became a war marketing opportunity. It also ushered in the birth of “The Homeland.”

9-11 became a clarion call for a fanatical crusade against Arabs/Muslims and a call for a permanent worldwide war: God Bless America. With it also came a moral demand for the speeding up of Big Brother Society with nonsensical mantras such as: “The U.S. Constitution is not a suicide pact” and “the Geneva Conventions are now ‘quaint’ and obsolete.”

God had bequeathed to the United States its own special set of laws that Americans could obey or disobey at the discretion of their God-inspired leader. That’s why the Bush-Cheney administration worked feverishly to ensure that Americans [soldiers and/or mercenaries] were not subject to the International Criminal Court of Justice.

It became a license to kill without accountability and a rationale for dehumanization: Where had we heard that before? New arguments were contrived that not all human beings were entitled to life or to the full protection of the law, especially if we were at war. Thus, the notion of permanent worldwide war was conceived. And thus, the Bush-Cheney administration abrogated unto themselves the rogue notion that in carrying out this war, the U.S. now had permission to ignore, interpret as it saw fit, or create new laws, permanently.

In war, no trials are necessary. The only rationale necessary is that a legitimate target has been targeted. Whether it is actually hit is irrelevant and dead civilians are but collateral damage. In this scenario, drone technology became the weapon of choice with no fingerprints and no accountability.

Enter hate. The climate was created that those that were to be receiving our bombs were different than us. Brown people became the enemy… with turbans. Brown people became the enemy in Afghanistan and then at home. And it didn’t matter what kind of brown people. They became both the enemy and the convenient scapegoat. Enter the era of Lou Dobbs and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Enter the era of closed borders and closed minds.

As long as the enemy is “not us” – the loss of rights became acceptable. And to facilitate this era, it became necessary to stoke fear, periodically. Enter color codes. Or was it simply a return to America’s old-fashioned color codes? Enter a cheerleading media and the end of its governmental watchdog function. All Americans were subjected to loss of privacy and freedoms, but by then, it was already too late.

Then came the Iraq War.

No weapons of mass destruction were ever found, but the [true] reasons for war – and the laws governing war – became irrelevant. The stage had already been set; Iraq was simply the latest enemy and their leader the embodiment of evil. And the mainstream media again stepped forward or jumped: “How can we help?”

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives; many more hundreds of thousands have been maimed while millions have been displaced and through all this, Americans yawn. Less than 5,000 Americans dead and only 30,000 Americans wounded has not been quite enough to bother the American conscience.

Even when the Democrats took back control of Congress in 2006, impeachment for prosecuting a clearly illegal war became “off the table” and ending the war was also declared out of the question.

When Barack Obama became President Barack Obama, everything was to change. But “Supporting the troops” became the circular and continuing argument for continuing the Iraq war. And the change we could believe in and Yes We Can began to rhyme with Afghani-stan… the sequel. And Paki-stan.

That was the lost decade when permanent war became Nobel. That is how America lost its mythical conscience. And the decade ended with explosives in the underwear of a Nigerian man; a jarring reminder that our permanent war is here to stay. And now, Yemen also rhymes with Yes We Can? Now too, we also know that Big Brother is also never going to go away. It really wasn’t government; it was the people who gave this decade away.

Cheney Encourages America’s Enemies

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By 2042, whites will no longer be the American majority. As immigrant populations–largely people of color–increase in cities and suburbs, more and more whites are moving to small towns and exurban areas that are predominately, even extremely, white. Rich Benjamin calls these enclaves “Whitopias” (pronounced: “White-o-pias“).

His journey to unlock the mysteries of Whitopias took him from a three-day white separatist retreat with links to Aryan Nations in North Idaho to the inner sanctum of George W. Bush’s White House–and many points in between. And to learn what makes Whitopias tick, and why and how they are growing, he lived in three of them (in Georgia, Idaho, and Utah) for several months apiece.

A compelling raconteur, bon vivant, and scholar, Benjamin reveals what Whitopias are like and explores the urgent social and political implications of this startling phenomenon.

The glow of Barack Obama’s historic election cannot obscure the racial and economic segregation still vexing America.

Obama’s presidency has actually raised the stakes in a battle royale between two versions of America: one that is broadly comfortable with diversity yet residentially segregated (ObamaNation) and one that does not mind a little ethnic food or a few mariachi dancers–as long as these trends do not overwhelm a white dominant culture (Whitopia).

   By: Rich Benjamin [ Enlarge ]
The headlines snared my attention over the last several days. “White Americans’ Majority to End By Mid-century,” announces The Associated Press. “Projections Put Whites in Minority in U.S. by 2050,” declares The New York Times.

The Census Bureau has been churning some provocative press releases between its last head count (2000) and the one next year. Why, I wonder, the palpable anxiety? And why don’t these headlines announce a positive reading of this statistic? Why not: “By 2050, People of Color Will Be a Majority”?

Already, 40 percent of Americans under the age of twenty-four are not white. Between now and 2050, the Latino population is projected to triple, the Asian population to double, and the non-Hispanic white population to flatline.

Meanwhile this week, two white police officers in Shenandoah, PA were indicted in federal court for filing false reports about the beating death of Luis Ramirez, a 25-year old undocumented worker. (When the immigrant was murdered in 2008 in the Pennsylvania hamlet, one of police officers was dating the accused teenage assailant’s mother.) And the Justice Department announced this week that federal hate crimes cases are at their highest level since 2001.

“Do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, of which you’re a part, and so am I,” said Bill O’Reilly to John McCain in 2007, complaining about the number of undocumented Latino immigrants. “They hate America, and they hate it because it’s run primarily by white, Christian men. They want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have.”

Sealing the Mexican border would not significantly disrupt the Latino population increase. Nor does a sour economy. Domestic births currently outpace immigration as the key source of Latino population growth. In bellwether California, for example, births to Latina mothers outnumber births to all other races combined.

Racial demographics singe my thinking like a slow-burn fuse. When exactly did I grasp white people’s proportional population decline? When, at last, did I realize what explosive emotions Latino immigration triggers? Was it reflecting on the many Census-related headlines, or while noticing other media’s metaphors for Latino immigration (“flood,” “tidal wave,” “overrun,” “invasion”), metaphors firmly in the vernacular of catastrophe, the idiom of natural disaster?

   Black Woman Burns Herself in Protest of Racism

Was it absorbing all the reports in March of 2001 that announced black Americans’ declining population share, a news flash that hit me more like an eviction notice. Hey, effective immediately, the Hispanics have ousted the blacks as America’s largest minority! Or was it watching deposed Alarm King Lou Dobbs’s “Broken Borders” segments, or clicking through the competing doomsday scenarios on cable TV, or noticing the spate of panicky best sellers, like Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, Patrick Buchanan’s State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, and Samuel Huntington’s Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s Identity. I can’t put my finger on any moment, no. It has been a ten-year drumbeat, a rat-tat-tat, of quickening alarms alerting drastic, unprecedented cultural changes to our nation, complete with compression intervals.

By 2050, White People Will No Longer Be the Majority. The next census is being conducted against this backdrop, what I call “The White People Deadline.”

Our country’s Obama-era racial politics rarely mentions race in debate, though it lodges race just under the surface of “nonracial” issues: taxes, health care reform, immigration, public spending. There is a slim silver lining to the economic slump: It may inspire a greater commitment toward our nation’s common good and more confidence in the public sector. For too long, an anti-government, race-tinged mindset has corroded belief in “one nation for all,” while fertilizing conservative myths that “explain” the economic meltdown and rebuke President Obama’s recovery agenda: “too much government regulation,” “high taxes,” “wasteful spending,” and “undeserving welfare recipients.”

Tea party protests. Combusting town-hall forums. A nativist Birther movement. Rising hate crimes against Latino Americans and immigrants. “You lie!” Right-wing calls to boycott the 2010 Census. Pockets of white America are suffering an existential crisis.

As the Census “time bomb” ticks, fear mounts over a perceived loss of whites’ raw power – demographic, social, economic, and political.

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Politico: Departing CNN host and rumored 2012 presidential candidate Lou Dobbs is attacking President Barack Obama’s reported plan to commit the United States to emission standards reduction by asking “who the hell” Obama thinks he is.

Obama will attend an international climate change conference in Copenhagen later this month and according to reports will announce a target for greenhouse gas emission in the United States.

Dobbs was talking about the upcoming conference with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) on his radio show Monday when he interrupted Inhofe to ask “Senator, this begs the question if I may put it forward right now. Who the hell does this president think he is?” [ READ MORE ]

Ref: The Daily Beast — Is Lou Dobbs Too Mean To Be President? Former colleagues at CNN tell Lloyd Grove that Lou Dobbs managed through intimidation, picked on subordinates’ weaknesses, and flew into rages. Given what Dobbs calls his “nature,” could he survive a race? Dobbs “wasn’t sexist at all. He was as mean to the women as he was to the men.” [ READ MORE ]

Anti-Immigrant Bigot, BIRTHER Lou Dobbs: “Who The Hell Does This President Think He Is?“

The US Army Chain of Command: Colbert Mocks Glenn Beck

Beck’s take on Obama’s Afghanistan strategy: “This is not ping pong, it’s a death match.“

Limbaugh attacks Obama over Afghanistan: “The President just surrendered“

Rush declares that Obama thinks that “people that want to kill us” “have a point.”

Limbaugh: “The enemy camp is the White House right now”

The New GOP War Cry: “The STIMULUS Has Failed!”

MediaMatters: Contradicting broad economic consensus, right-wing media use jobs summit to declare stimulus has failed — Right-wing media figures have used the upcoming White House jobs summit to claim that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has failed to stimulate the economy and thus that the Obama administration should not continue to pursue such policies. In fact, a broad consensus of economists have agreed that the Recovery Act has boosted gross domestic product and reduced unemployment in recent months; moreover, numerous economists have stated that the ARRA’s flaw was that it was not large enough, and that additional federal stimulus is needed to continue the economic recovery. [ READ MORE ]

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Talk about a know-nothing air-head paired with a prick and assisted by a big FAT baboon. There you have it — the Sarah Palin team for 2012!

Palin on running with Glenn Beck in 2012: “I don’t know, we’ll see“

Fox and Friends plugs Palin/Beck 2012

Robin Williams Mocks Sarah Palin

Vice-President Glenn Beck!

Beck: Americans “are not fearful people“

Beck: “The real goal of the progressive movement” is “control of your life“

Beck: “Progressives have built up this wall of separation between church and state, and it’s nonsense”

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Politico reports: ‘Mr. Independent’ mulls White House bid — Former CNN host Lou Dobbs fueled already rampant speculation about his political future Monday, sending the clearest signals yet that he’s mulling a bid for president–and leaving third-party political operatives salivating over the possibility of a celebrity recruit for the 2012 campaign.

Less than two weeks after announcing his departure from the cable network–and following a series of interviews in which Dobbs encouraged speculation about his political plans–the anchorman known to fans as “Mr. Independent” finally made his presidential ambitions explicit on former Sen. Fred Thompson’s radio show Monday.

Asked if he might make a run at the White House in 2012, Dobbs answered flatly: “Yes is the answer.”

“I’m going to be talking some more with some folks who want me to listen in the next few weeks,” Dobbs told Thompson. “Right now I’m fortunate to have a number of wonderful options.” [ READ MORE ]

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Dobb’s Road To Dismissal

Update: HuffingtonPost — In a recent interview with Spanish-language network Telemundo, Dobbs softened his anti-immigrant/anti-Latino message, as he attempted to position himself “as a champion of that fast-growing ethnic bloc.” “Whatever you have thought of me in the past, I can tell you right now that I am one of your greatest friends and I mean for us to work together,” he said in a live interview with Telemundo’s Maria Celeste. “I hope that will begin with Maria and me and Telemundo and other media organizations and others in this national debate that we should turn into a solution rather than a continuing debate and factional contest,” said Dobbs. [ READ MORE ]

Talk of a HYENA in a hen-house! You have gotta be kiddin’, Señor Dobbs!

Here is Dobbs in his TRUE Colors — A History of HATE and BIGOTRY

Notes: | President Dobbs: The First Tell-All Memoir | CNN’s Lou Dobbs – The Minister of ‘Propaganda and Enlightenment’ – An Anti-Immigrant Bigot. A Racist, Xenophobic Extortionist

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