Columnist – John Sammon
I can’t figure it out, and I’ve thought about it, but why is “God bless America” a popular saying? It seems somehow, elitist, exclusionary. I mean, if we go by inference, what’s between the lines, or what remains unsaid, if God blesses America, what about the rest of the world?

Why would God bless America if he did bless it (assuming God is a he)?

I never hear anyone say, God bless France. Or, God bless the United Arab Emirates. I’ve never heard a foreigner say, God bless my particular country.

Many people over the centuries have invoked God’s name including soldiers when they conquered other countries by saying “God is with us.”

But God bless America?

This seems to be a peculiarly American wish. First of all, if God only blesses America, and doesn’t bother to bless Uruguay, then God only represents America. God is supposed to be the God of all people, believers and non.

This saying seems at odds with what every major religion on the face of the earth claims, the universality of God, in other words, my God is the God—-of all people. I never hear the Pope say the Catholic God is only God over America. If God only blesses America, he must be mostly America’s God, and not the God of Mongolia.

When you say God bless America, America only makes up about five percent of the world’s population. What about the rest? They don’t matter?

What if I made it even more exclusionary and said God bless Reno? Everybody else is left out. Now, I’m sure God could find something nice about Reno to want to bless it. It has gambling, and it has hills that turn golden in the sunset. But if you said Gold bless Reno, and reasonable people heard you say that, I’m certain most would say that sounds a little bit foolish.

They’d think you were a moron. God bless Reno?

Why should God bless America?

Why should God bless an artificial border created by men, as women had very little to do with both the Louisiana and Gadsden purchases of 1807 and 1853, that occupies a 3,000-mile swath of the North American Continent, and was created largely by purchase, or outright conquest, from its original native inhabitants, and Spaniards who had come before? A confederation of states ruled from the District of Columbia, a tiny piece of land stolen from Native American Indians, so named for the Italian explorer Columbus who mistakenly thought he was in India and thus called them Indians?

Why would God bless this area of land and the people in it? If we go back a short hundred years, it must be obvious he (God – assuming God is a man) didn’t bless everybody. How could he? Native Americans were conquered, annihilated or placed on reservations where they were sometimes starved by the government. Women were as cattle to their husbands and didn’t have the right to work or vote. Blacks were slaves. Mexicans were considered greasers by the ruling elite.

The drawn up Constitution which said “We the people,” left everybody out except white, rich land-owning founders.

Would God in his infinite wisdom bless such a land?

Right wing haters and nuts will accuse me of being against God and America, and I’m really not. It just seems that way. It’s my manner. I question things.

Maybe God blessing America is a more modern thing. He (God) has only done it since the 1930s. He ignored us before, but he blesses us now.

Originally, God Bless America was a song coined by composer Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidore Beilin), a Jewish immigrant from Russia, as he languished at an army post in the U.S. during World War 1. Its opening stanza was copied from an old Yiddish tune called When Mose Leads his Nose, and later became a popular song in the 1930s sung by Kate Smith. The saying seemed to take on special importance during the Red Scare days of the 1950s when Americans thought they were going to be wiped out by Godless heathen Russia in a nuclear war. So paranoia, some founded in reality, some not, may be behind this statement’s popularity.

But we haven’t answered the question. Why would God bless America? Why would he want to? Is it because we are better than other people? Is it because we have a higher standard of living than many other impoverished countries?

Does God consider America his best creation, his finest achievement, the cream of the crop?

For God to bestow his special favor on Americans, there has to be a reason. I realize that God bless America is essentially a request. We’re saying, God, please bless America. But why would God? And why don’t we want him to bless the people of other countries?

We seem to have many of the same problems other countries do, a higher crime rate, poverty, pollution, drugs.

Isn’t this a bit like a few of us forming an exclusive club? And to make ourselves feel better, saying to others “keep out?” This is only for us. It seems to imply ownership of God. Is it because we think better of ourselves than we do of others, many of whom are less fortunate?

Shouldn’t it be instead, God bless all good people, wherever they can be found?

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   Columnist – John Sammon
Three of the major, tubby, fat-faced-jowly, chubby white boys who serve as right-wing racist talk show hosts on Fox News, and the Fox News blonde she-male, if asked to rank their least favorite people, with the most despised starting at the top, would rank them as follows.

The names used here are the same slang names the tubby, fat-faced-jowly, chubby white boys who serve as right-wing racist talk show hosts on Fox News, and the Fox News blonde she-male, would themselves use once the mike is turned off.

Fox stands for Fear Others Xenophobically.

Here’s the list. No surprise to some of the rankings.

  1.   Niggers, coons, jungle bunnies (African Americans). All three Fox newscasters, and the Fox News blond she-male, secretly wish black people were back in fields picking cotton like in the good old days. Also, as a general rule, the greater the number of racist epithets (slurs) assigned to a people, the more they are hated, and the more they can be justifiably proud for being hated by the goons at Fox.

  2.   The Fox racists also despise those whom they think of as:

  3.   Spicks (Mexicans, also known as beaners, wet-backs or greasers).

  4.   Gooks.

  5.   Chinks.

  6.   Zips (Koreans).

  7.   Hajis (Iraqis).

  8.   Muzzies (Muslims).

  9.   A-Rabs (also known as rag-heads, sand niggers, or camel jockeys).

10.   Editors’ Note: Remember, none of the chubby Fox News broadcasters thought enough of their country to serve in the military, not one. They let other young men their age serve while they learned their vile craft safe from harm at the college campus radio station.

11.   Wops (Italians, also known as I-ties, garlic eaters or Dagos).

12.   Kikes, Hebes (Jews). Jews advanced down a notch from #9 to #12, in other words being slightly less hated in the opinion of Fox News, because they kicked ass on the A-Rabs.

13.   Frog Connucks (French Canadians).

14.   Frogs (French).

15.   Bohunks (Eastern Europeans).

16.   Polacks (Polish. Another racist epithet is to go up to a Polack and ask, “How’s the bowling team?“).

17.   Limeys (British). The presence of the Brits so high up the list is due to the Fox News blonde she-male and her opinion that Prince Charles and the Beatles were five English faggots.

18.   Japs or Nips (Japanese).

19.   Faggots (all persuasions, also called queers or limp-wrists).

20.   Socialists (liberals).

21.   Papists or mackerel snappers (Catholics).

22.   Micks (Irish. Hannity and O’Reilly disagreed with this one).

23.   Towel-heads, wogs or Sabu, for Sabu the Elephant Boy (East Indians).

24.   Injuns or Redskins (Native Americans).

25.   Congo Lisa (the name they secretly assigned Condoleezza Rice even though she is a conservative).

26.   Uncle Tom (Michael Steele).

27.   Tree huggers (conservationists).

28.   Krauts (Germans. Beck and Coulter disagreed with this ranking).

29.   Editor’s Note: All three major, tubby, fat-faced-jowly, chubby white boys who serve as right-wing racist talk show hosts on Fox News, and the Fox News blonde she-male, strongly and angrily disagreed that they are cracker honkies (white men).

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By: Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

   [ Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez ]
The New York Times described alleged killer Philip Markoff as having led a “seemingly normal” life before he was arrested for killing a woman he’d met through Craigslist and for robbing at least two others.

The New York Daily News described Markoff as “clean cut” and “a high-achieving dentist’s son.” The Boston Globe also described the shaggy-haired Markoff as “clean cut” — as did countless other media outlets. Politico.com called Markoff “all-American,” while the Associated Press and dozens of others called him “handsome“; PR Insider said, simply, that “by all appearances, he had it all.”

Over and over again, coast to coast, American media outlets told us how good-looking, smart and “normal” Markoff was, or should have been.

As I read and watched the media coverage of the 22-year-old alleged killer, I was stunned — though not surprised — by the fawning tone taken by the nation’s reporters.

After all, given the available information, Markoff could have been painted as weird, anti-social, woman-hater, irresponsible, deeply in debt, broke and in the midst of eviction from his apartment. He could have been presented as a stone-faced, emotionless creep who scared classmates by forcing kisses on them and had a long history of strange behavior.

Hell, one look at the guy at a bar, and most women I know would have shuddered and walked the other way.

But Markoff wasn’t served up to the public this way by the media.

   [ The Killer -- Philip Markoff: Handsome and clean cut, or creepy
   freakin' loner? If you're a news editor, the former; if you're me
   and everyone I know, the latter.) ]
Rather, Markoff was served by the media on a silver platter, described as a great-looking, charming, rich guy (none of which were true), whose alleged crimes were ostensibly all the more shocking for one simple and disturbing reason: Markoff had stepped outside of our racist culture’s perceived norm for his type.

I’ll say it again, in plain language: In the mythology of white male editors, guys like Markoff don’t kill. They golf. With newspaper editors. Most of whom look like Markoff.

The hidden code in the news coverage of Markoff, as it was for “preppy killer” Robert Chambers and countless other white male killers, has been clear: tall, young white guys, especially middle-class or wealthy ones in college, just don’t do stuff like this. Except that they do.

History inconveniently proves the U.S. media perception of privileged white men as nonviolent rulers of the earth to be counter to fact.

The United States has produced more serial killers than any other nation on earth, and 85 percent of them have been white men, according to a study by Apsche. The average age that serial killers take their first victim is 28; 62 percent target strangers exclusively and 71 percent operate in a specific geographic area.

From this description, it appears that Markoff, rather than being the shocking exception to an imaginary rule where white guys are the good guys, was pretty much the classic manifestation of the real rule of creepy serial criminals of a certain type. Not to mention that this nation was created through the rape, murder, robbery and enslavement of dark-skinned people, by guys who looked like Markoff.

(It is estimated that 100 million Native Americans were slaughtered by European “explorers,” and 50 million Africans perished as the result of the American slave trade. None of this, however, seems to have any impact on the media’s continued belief that educated white men are nonviolent.)

So, why the disconnect from reality among the media? That’s easy.

The media has long been in the business of selling perception over truth, especially when it comes to issues of race, socioeconomic class and sex. If you wish to know the myths and prejudices of a time, read its newspapers. If you wish for the truths, read its poetry.

Sexism plays a part in the media coverage, too. That Markoff targeted women selling escort services only helped the media to see him as a good guy led astray by Jezebels.

In her book, Virgin or Vamp: How the Media Cover Sex Crimes, Columbia University journalism Professor Helen Benedict beautifully illustrates the distinctions placed upon victims and perpetrators of sex crimes, depending upon the reputation, dress, race, occupation and economic class of the female victim.

In cases such as the Markoff slaying and robberies, the underlying message in media coverage tends to be that the women were somehow asking for it. In presenting Markoff as “handsome,” this mythology is underscored; after all, a handsome guy doesn’t need an escort service. The women must have been asking for it.

Benedict places the blame for this sort of media coverage on the fact that most editors, reporters and copy editors in the national media are white men who find themselves relating, at a visceral level, to the alleged perpetrators. Thus, the media’s description of Markoff as “normal.”

Whose normal? Normal to white male editors who live in white neighborhoods and have only white friends, one assumes.

If ever there was an argument for the need for increased diversity in America’s newsrooms, it is the recent coverage of Markoff.

Sadly, we are nowhere near such a goal. In fact, fewer minorities work in the news media now than 10 years ago, according to a recent report in Columbia Journalism Review.

In an increasingly nonwhite America, you do have to wonder if blatantly biased news coverage of alleged criminals like Markoff have anything to do with one after another newspaper filing for bankruptcy or outright closing down.

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Chavez gives Obama a book at summit: PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CNN) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave U.S. President Obama a book Saturday on Latin America.

The leftist leader, who once likened President George W. Bush to the devil, shook Obama’s hand and handed him “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent,” by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano.

Asked later what he thought of the book, Obama jokingly said he thought it was one of Chavez’s books. “I was going to give him one of mine,” he quipped.

Obama and Chavez are attending the fifth Summit of the Americas, a gathering of representatives from 34 countries. [ READ MORE ]

Book Presentation

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Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent – by Eduardo Galeano

Editorial Reviews

A superbly written, excellently translated, and powerfully persuasive exposé which all students of Latin American and U.S. history must read. – Choice

Well written and passionately stated, this is an intellectually honest and valuable study. – Library Journal

A dazzling barrage of words and ideas. – History

Reader Reviews:

By Hector Miranda (Puerto Rico): This book is a masterpiece. I understand why some people (just like Juan Bimba and a couple of reviewers here) hate it: It touches the real cut, the heart of capitalism, and explore it in a way few men dare. His references are not just excellent: they are irrefutable. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. One of Galeano’s best; a must read for Latin Americans! More than a history book, it’s a compilation of essays that shows how the “strong” always abuses and stand over the “weak” mass.

Neo-Marxist Analysis = Anti-Catholic & Western, April 18, 2009: By Trudigger (Chicago, Il United States): Like so many of the neo-Marxist critiques that have flourished in academia this book comes from a view that the only level of historical analysis is dialectical materialism. Marxist analysis needs a victim/victimizer paradigm to make its case.

This analysis is unbalanced and doesn’t take into account the tens of thousands of natives who were part of the daily human sacrifices made by the Aztecs . . . yes the Aztecs!

The irony of the title (Open Veins) is that the native Latin American blood letting that was the most historically heinous was at the hands of Native Latin Americans.

If you like the kind of Neo-Marxist regime in Venezuela, then get this book because it is the vision animating Chavez . . . and leading him to persecute the Catholic Church. . . be warned – Marxism leads to democide.

You can’t argue with the facts, April 18, 2009: By M. E. Baz “mebaz” (South Pasadena, California): Galeano’s book is an excellent catalog of the atrocities committed by the U.S. government in Latin America over the last several decades. If you can understand that this is not a criticism of Americans but rather of their government and industry (which is screwing them over as well), you’ll be able to understand it. Another great book on the subject is Confessions of an Economic Hit Man , which was written by an AMERICAN.

Beautifully Written, Visceral And Timeless., July 9, 2008: By Mr. Fellini “Fellini” (El Paso, Texas United States): “Open Veins Of Latin America” has not lost its importance in almost 40 years of circulation, today more than ever, Eduardo Galeano’s poetic journey through the history and suffering of Latin America is a vital work of scholarship and observation, it is a record of how the Americas were born and grew. From the Spanish Conquest to the Cuban Revolution and beyond, Galeano touches on nearly every key moment of Latin American history and brilliantly shows the reader how the events of the past helped shape the status of the present.

Part of the genius of this book is how Galeano manages to chronicle in fine detail the history of Latin America but also clearly shows how certain economic orders were established, any reader who wonders who countries like Bolivia and Peru have such wide gaps between rich and poor, white and indigenous communities, needs to read this book. In breathless detail Galeano takes us through the Spanish conquest, using historical documents and eyewitness accounts to record the suffering and terror indigenous communities endured for the sake of imperial expansion. Galeano brilliantly connects the dots between the economic and social models established at the time and the current conditions of these countries today, consider Bolivia, where racial tensions are indeed flaring up again due to the election of an indigenous leader, Evo Morales.

The worlds Galeano paints are rich in detail and fascination, heartbreak and hope. We visit forgotten cities in Peru, once paved in silver, now condemned to misery, we explore the mines of Bolivia where Indians lose their lungs to fumes and tunnels and we step into isolated villages in Brazil, where the ghosts of dead miners are said to still hold Mass on rainy evenings. Key historical events are described with visceral energy such as the outbreak of civil war in Guatemala after a U.S.-backed coup, the eruption of “La Violencia” in Colombia where thousands perished in a bloody rampage following the assassination of a progressive candidate for President. Galeano cheerfully bashes fascists including right-wing groups trying to stop Salvador Allende’s nationalization of copper in Chile by warning parents with false propaganda that their children will be flown to the USSR or Cuba for indoctrination. Galeano also tells the cold hard truth about the military junta that ruled Brazil (with U.S. help), including their pass time of burning books.

“Open Veins Of Latin America,” like all great books, enthralls, educates and makes the reader aware. Historical figures we don’t hear much about in normal textbooks come alive in Galeano’s writing, fascinating figures like Nicaragua’s Sandino, Mexico’s Hidalgo and Zapata and Peru’s Tupac Amaru reveal a heroic tradition of resistance against imperialism and repression. Some complain about Galeano’s Leftist leanings, but much of what he records is simply based on fact, on documented history. Events like the Cuban Revolution, the Mexican Revolution and Haiti’s slave uprising are thrillingly chronicled and their outcomes explored with keen insight.

Latin America remains a place that fascinates many, it is a complex region that is politically, ethnically and religiously diverse, Galeano manages like few writers have, to capture it all in this beautiful volume. “Open Veins Of Latin America” has so much information, so many stories, characters and histories that a full review does not suffice to explore it all, for those who wish to really KNOW about Latin America, this book is a must. It is a history of economies, countries, bloodshed and tears, and most importantly, of people.

| Read All Reviews |

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Barack Obama’s general election victory was a tremendous personal vindication. About two years ago when the relatively unknown junior senator from Illinois with the funny name and the big ears announced he was running for president, his colleagues and pundits didn’t give him a chance against the vaunted Clinton machine.

But armed with a healthy ego, indefatigable hope and a sense of destiny, Obama achieved his lofty goal against all odds. Obama didn’t let his race become a liability or a chip on his shoulder, his message of hope and change transcended race and struck a chord with Americans of every ethnic and cultural background.

Obama’s triumph was a milestone for African Americans that was decades in the making. Many African Americans are old enough to remember living under Jim Crow laws, but in January they will get to witness the miracle of a black president walking through the front door of the White House.

   | More Pictures |

Shortly after CNN called the election for Obama the network put up on the screen the reaction at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. Witnessing the assembled throng of African Americans weeping, cheering and dancing inside the iconic symbol of the civil rights movement, was a powerful image of how much this historic moment means to them. I’m sure there were millions of Americans of all ethnicities weeping along with them as they followed the election results from their living rooms.

Now all people of color (Hispanics, Asian Americans, Arab Americans and Native Americans) know that they too can dream of becoming a lawyer, professor, scientist, senator, and yes even the President of the United States.

The Obama victory brought joy to millions worldwide, CNN had cameras in Europe, Japan and Africa, and it was thrilling to see how crowds in these countries were overjoyed at the results of the American presidential election.

As an ethnic minority it will take a few days and weeks for me to fully savor the reality of an African American president-elect. But when Obama is inaugurated in January, Americans of all races must celebrate the victory of an intelligent, eloquent and inspired statesman, who just happens to be black.

The World Reacts