The Sounds of Blackness

The Sounds of Blackness

By Latorial Faison
Okinawa Stripes
February 28, 2014

In my heart there lies no defeat,
But in my bosom a triumphant and rhythmic beat.

And while my spirit dances with gladness,
I am quick to recall the sounds of blackness.

I hear the moaning and the wailing,
Of native Africans held captive, on ships sailing.

As though it were my youth of yesterday,
Whispering truths to ears in dark dismay.

The long, persistent Motherland call,
Of anxious hope and justice for all.

As though it beckoned from higher heights,
I hear the songs of steal away nights.

That disdainful whip, the startling crack,
The sound of fifty lashes to my brother man’s back.

We listened to hate’s hypocrisy, it’s rhetoric on religion,
And prayed for deliverance, complete with wisdom.

I hear Harriet’s footsteps and her hushing sacred sounds,
As she walked without fear, in search of freedom’s grounds.

To lead as many captives safely to northern light,
Her savvy spirit vowed to never give up the fight.

The sighs of relief at a kingdom finally come,
Freedom at last for us, the worst of sins to some.

But to the surprise and shock of a divided nation,
Came the lyrics of a long overdue slave Emancipation.

The endless cheering must have been loud,
While those who stood free, made their ancestors proud.

And the old African’s dream really did come true,
In a nation where his people were brought to be subdued.

Dr. King shouted “Free at last, free at last . . . “,
And his dream of a promised land, did come to pass.

The sit-ins, the marches, and the demand for equal rights,
Were necessary for those freed in darkness, and deprived
of light.

So, in my daily living, I do not dare ignore the sounds,
But am honored that my ancestors were strong and freedom
bound.

When fellowmen can’t remember the truth about this sadness,
Pause to share with them, one of the many Sounds of Blackness.



Latorial Faison, a Military Spouse living in South Korea.

http://okinawa.stripes.com/news/poems-about-black-history

Women Raise Men's

Women Raise Men's

By Angela Kinamore
Black Poetry.tumblr.com
February 28, 2014

Though I been treated as second class since put upon this earth,
and told I can’t do without men, they forget one thing, women
raise men's!

I know men's thoughts before, they think them, I know men's
better than they know themselves, and I know how to get along
without men's, if I have to.

I’ve carried men's in my womb.

I’ve made life pleasant for men's, giving my love and wisdom,
teaching men's how to survive, soaring men's sights, to higher
heights.

I do all right raising men's in a fatherless world, teaching men's
to grow strong, to learn how to carry on…

Women keep the race going, the bloodline flowing, perfecting
each diamond of a child…sho nuff’.

To be a woman is great, for I am a queen in my own way.

Men's should reflect on that, open their eyes, and see just
how great women can be, "Cause We Raise Men's!"

http://black-poetry.tumblr.com



This poem and post are dedicated to the, "Woman" who raised me.
Love you, "Mom" and may you continue to rest in eternal love and eternal peace.

America vs. The World

America vs. The World

A superpower can foment conflict anywhere it wants to at anytime
it chooses.

By Margaret Kimberley
Information Clearing House
February 27, 2014

President Obama has placed whole nations on his Kill List.

Syria and Venezuela are to join Libya and Iraq as states that have
been made to fail, while Ukraine is snatched into the NATO-EU orbit.

“The neo-conservative project for a new American century has
reached full fruition under a Democratic president, who now has
many notches on his gun.”

The word imperialism fell into disuse in recent decades.

If it seems slightly retro, that is only because there aren’t enough
Americans committed to telling the ugly truth about their government.

During the cold war era we were told that communism increased
in influence via a domino effect, knocking down nations one by
one and forcing them into Moscow’s or Beijing’s orbit.

In the 21st century there is a new domino theory which puts every
part of the world into America’s cross hairs.

Barack Obama has succeeded in expanding America’s influence in
ways that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney could only dream about.

The neo-conservative project for a new American century has
reached full fruition under a Democratic president, who now has
many notches on his gun.

He and the rest of the NATO leaders began the trail of destruction
with Libya, tearing that country asunder under the guise of saving
it.

Using lies and their servants in the corporate media, they
constructed a tale of a tyrant and a people yearning for protection.

That evil success emboldened them and their gulf monarchy allies
further and they decided that Syria would be the next domino.

That plan didn’t work quite as well as Obama and the rest of
murder incorporated team thought it would.

When the British parliament said no to new military adventures
Obama was left sputtering on national television.

He was forced to back down from an adamant position he
had taken just days earlier.

The semi-comedic setback was only temporary because the
monster must be fed at all cost.

The system can no longer sustain itself and brute force is
the only out.

There is nothing old fashioned about imperialism.

This malevolent force is still alive and well.

George W. Bush made efforts to overthrow the democratically
elected Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela when he plotted
with the opposition against the late Hugo Chavez.

Obama is clearly more committed to violence than his predecessor
and has helped to stir up right wing Venezuelans who want to rid
themselves of Nicolas Maduro.

Maduro has been weakened by the ginned up protests and is now
forced into talks with an opposition that won’t be satisfied until
he is dead and gone too.

The Venezuelan people have voted for their revolution numerous
times.

The U.S., a country that never ceases to call itself a democracy,
has thwarted their clearly expressed will time and time again.

But that is the essence of empire after all.

While armed force against Syria was temporarily blocked, the West,
the Persian gulf monarchies, Israel, and jihadists have not given up
their effort to topple the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria.

The savage war has made thousands of Syrians homeless and
starving refugees, all because the empire needs its next domino.

Not only does United States meddles in its own backyard, it also
relentlessly interferes on the other side of the world in far away
Ukraine.

Popular discontent against that country’s president became a
successful effort to bring that country into the western sphere
of economic influence but with the awful strings of austerity
attached.

Ukraine has the choice of going bankrupt or being bailed out
and dying a slow death a la Greece.

While the machinations were afoot, president Obama warned
Vladimir Putin away with threats of sanctions.

The scenes of sometimes violent street protests in Ukraine made
a fortuitous tableau for the United States which claimed the
infamous “responsibility to protect” which never protects anyone
who actually needs help and which has brought so much suffering
to people around the world.

Every invasion, occupation and disruption in recent years can be
laid at the feet of the United States and its allies.

Iraq has been destroyed quite literally, Iran has been destroyed
economically.

Libya was taken out and Syria is on the brink.

The United States quite openly makes it clear that it wants to
have its way in the world.

If Russia attempts to use its influence then it is vilified and
caricatured as a cruel dictatorship controlled by a tyrant.

No matter how many elections Chavez and now Maduro won,
they are called dictators by American talking heads.

A superpower can foment conflict anywhere it wants to at
anytime it chooses.

Venezuelans must knuckle under or face the prospect of
more turmoil and violence.

Ukraine must sign onto economic policies which have
already proven disastrous.

The United States leaves its fingerprints in these and many
other places and that is the essence of imperialism.

It is all about control with the rawest brute force available.

The United States hasn’t officially made Venezuela or any
other a colony but it doesn’t have to do that.

It just has to show that it is boss and the dominos will fall
wherever it chooses.



Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in
BAR, and she maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at
http://freedomrider.blogspot.com

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37779.htm

The War Against Truth

The War Against Truth

If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow.
- Emile Zola

By Butler Shaffer
Lew Rockwell.com
February 24, 2014

February 22nd was the 71st anniversary of the murder of Sophie
and Hans Scholl and their friend Christopher Probst.

They were young people, in their early twenties, who lived in Munich, Germany. They, along with other members of a peaceful, anti-war group known as White Rose, published leaflets informing fellow Germans of the wrongs being engaged in by the Nazi regime.

The three were caught with such leaflets, quickly tried for the crime of “high-treason” and immediately executed by guillotine.

At her trial, Sophie testified: “Somebody, after all, had to make
a start.”

Her final words were: “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause.”

When, in 2003, a nation-wide poll asked Germans to select the most important people in the history of Germany, Sophie and Hans Scholl finished in fourth place.

They came out ahead of such men as Bach, Goethe, Gutenberg, Bismarck, Brandt, and Einstein!

Every political system is firmly grounded in lies, deceit, fraud, distortions, corruption, and other falsehoods and acts of dishonesty.

Accordingly, it is the nature of such agencies to propagandize lies as truth, and to control the revelation of demonstrable truths by classifying otherwise embarrassing documents as “secret;” as well as using censorship and the threat of trials for treason.

Like insects that prefer to live in the protective darkness beneath rocks, sunlight is most disruptive.

The American nation state is firmly entrenched in this interconnected war against truth and insistence upon propagandized perversions of reality.

Through mechanisms beyond the imagination of George Orwell, the NSA is now able to gather the most micro-detailed information about each of us.

In order to maintain and extend its control over us, the state
presumes itself entitled to know everything it wants to know
about each person.

At the same time, we are allowed to know only that
which serves the state’s interests to have us know, employing its
media sycophants to impart the party line.

The statists are well aware of just how liberating the free flow of ideas and information is to people.

Gutenberg’s invention of movable type made possible decentralized expansion of the search for understanding.

The Italian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Reformation, the Age of Reason, the Scientific Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution trace their ancestries to the enhanced capacities for creative people to synthesize knowledge with one another.

Modern technologies, of which the Internet is the best known expression, are now extending such means to exponential dimensions.

While the wielders of state power insist on babbling their divisive, redistributionist bromides about egalitarianism, there is one form of “equality” that terrifies them: a world in which knowledge, and the intellectual skills of analysis, are shared equally by all.

The specter of intelligent, informed minds, centrifuged across all mankind, would deprive the statists of their most valued quality: the arrogance interwoven into the fabric of their roles of philosopher-kings, armed with the coercive power of the state to enforce their self-serving visions upon the submissive collective of humanity.

One finds this fear of informed, self-directed, rational men and women expressed by such corporate-state enthusiasts as Hillary Clinton and Diane Feinstein.

Clinton has long championed the idea of a “gatekeeper” for the Internet, to confine access to this medium only to writers approved by the ruling establishment!

Feinstein has offered the proposition that the First Amendment
protects only “legitimate journalists” (i.e., those persons who
work on behalf of an existing member of the media).

Knowing that established broadcasters and newspapers are already
a part of the corporate-state order, she is eager to confine “truth”
telling to those under institutional control.

Those outside the stockade are to be subject to censorship; only licensed writers will be permitted.

Expressing the arrogance of her elitist class, Feinstein asks does “this privilege [First Amendment protection is but a ‘privilege’ in her mind] apply to anyone?

To a 17-year-old who drops out of high school, buys a website for $5, and starts a blog?”

Her desire to restrict thought was reflected in a statement she
made in China a number of years ago, in which she commented
that she was more comfortable with Chinese reporters because
“They just write down what we say.”

Such compliant, dependent scribblers are less inclined to ask the kinds of questions that might be upsetting to corporate-state interests.

More aggressive writers might want to inquire into how Feinstein and her husband have been able to use the powers of the nation state to help amass their tens of millions of dollars of wealth!

Feinstein’s query raises another concern for the statists.

School drop-outs are troublesome for the elitists, who insist upon compulsory school attendance as the primary tool with which to condition young minds in the conflict-driven, institutionally-directed, vertically-structured model of social organization.

How can institutions become ends in themselves, their purposes
to preempt our own, unless children grow up believing in both
the necessity and propriety of living their lives in obedience to
the philosopher-kings?

To condition people in such a mindset is the raison d’etre of the government school system.

Members of the power-elite are among the most vocal advocates for government schools, yet most enroll their children in private schools wherein they can better develop their minds for the day they assume their positions near the apex of the pyramid.

Your children are expected to become drones, or drone operators, and for the teaching of such mechanistic skills the government schools are adequate.

The state’s war against truth and clear thinking continues apace.

Diane Feinstein’s efforts to confine truth telling to the establishment certified, and institutionally employed, are reinforced by unnamed persons within the Pentagon and the NSA who, perhaps idolizing Nazi chief-executioner Johann Reichart’s role in beheading Probst and the Scholls, have made such statements as “I would love to put a bullet in his [Ed Snowden’s] head.”

“Treason,” to such people, has become any words or acts that discomfort the ruling classes or the hallowed institutions behind which they hide.

This is what statism inevitably produces: the thoroughly institutionalized mind.

When the purposes of abstractions (e.g., the corporate-state)
are accorded an importance that transcends the interests of
real persons; when individuals are demeaned by such systems
as “assets” or “citizens” or “collateral damage” or
collectivized as “the masses,” it becomes easy for soulless
institutional functionaries to treat men, women, and children
in the most dehumanizing ways.

Whether it is noteworthy or only a matter of coincidence, each of the aforementioned instances of statist behavior is directed against the minds of those that the state will either control, if possible, or destroy, should less destructive measures fail.

What greater symbolism of this ongoing war against the thinking of people than these: school systems that twist young minds to revere and obey institutional authorities; while the guillotine or a “bullet in the head” may await those who fail to maintain the assigned lockstep.

With the human head as the target upon which the established
order directs its destructive energies, the nature of the threat
to all of mankind should be quite evident.



Butler Shaffer teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938, Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival, and Boundaries of Order.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/butler-shaffer/to-control-
or-destroy-the-human-mind/

"Throw The Bums Out!"

"Throw The Bums Out!"

By John Rachel
OpEdNews.com
February 22, 2014

72% of American voters are for raising taxes on the wealthy.

That equates to 108 million people.

76% of American voters want to cut back on military spending.

That's 114 million people.

72% of American voters want a federal minimum wage of $10.00
or more.

That's 108 million people.

74% of American voters are for ending oil subsidies.

That's 111 million people.

79% of American voters want no cuts in Social Security and
Medicare.

That's over 118 million people.

93% of American voters want labeling of GMOs in their food.

That's nearly 140 million people!!

But none of this gets done!

The simple and insulting truth is that a mere 500 or so men
defy the will of millions.

The very people we elect and send to Washington to create laws
that protect our interests refuse to represent us and ignore our
clearly stated will on these crucial issues and many more.

They ignore "We The People" and do the bidding of "We The Rich."

Until we confront these play-for-pay lapdogs, they will continue
to serve a tiny elite minority of rich and powerful oligarchs and
America will continue its slow but certain decline.

You and I will live like beggars and America will become a
Third World country.

We've all been appalled by recent events.

We've watched as our government was shut down.

We've been horrified by the fight over the debt limit.

We've seen the systematic destruction of our democratic
way of life.

So what can we do?

With millions of dollars of fat cat money floating around,
the voice of the regular guy has been drowned out.

There has been no way to get rid of the crooks and liars.

But I believe now there is.

How did that old expression go?

"Throw the bums out!"

We do this using a new, unique and powerful strategy for taking
on the corrupting cancer of money in politics, an end run around
the iron grip that Wall Street, big banks and corporate oligarchs
now have on our political system.

This sledgehammer approach gives the 500 corporate toadies in
Congress, who arrogantly sit inside the Washington DC bubble
and ignore the very people who voted them into office, a simple,
straightforward ultimatum:

Do your job and start representing "We The People" or collect
your pink slip.

It's a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners method for cleaning up
the corruption among our elected officials and putting people
in office who will do our bidding.

It forces the men and women we choose on election day to start
taking their orders from us, instead of from the deep-pocketed
puppet masters who have effectively stolen our government by
buying off our senators, congressmen, even our president, with
huge campaign donations.

This is an election year and people are frustrated and angry.

Congress started the new year at a historically low 13% approval
rating.

I say we channel that frustration and anger into a unified and
constructive effort to restore true representative democracy
to our country.

It's up to us. But something has to happen immediately.

We are fast approaching a point of no return, beyond which
the specter of a rigid totalitarian state looms.

Either we replace our current legislators, or they will replace
our country with one we don't recognize.

Look around. It's already happening.

So either we rise up now in a bloodless coup at the polls or
we rise up later in the streets.

Revolution in the streets will not be bloodless and I suspect
it won't end well.

The blatant and ruthless dismemberment of Occupy Wall
Street was a warning.

Time to unite and act decisively.

Hopefully it's not too late.



John Rachel has a B. A. in Philosophy, is a songwriter and music
producer, a left-of-left liberal, and has spent his life trying to
resolve the intrinsic clash between the metaphysical purity of
Buddhism and the overwhelming appeal of narcissism.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Throw-the-bums-out--by-
John-Rachel-Congress_Corporate_Government_Military-140222-160.html

Why Do We Fear The Truth?

Why Do We Fear The Truth?

By Robert J. Burrowes
Information Clearing House
February 19, 2014

If we want to take appropriate action to fix something that is not
working properly, then it is necessary to understand, precisely, the
nature of the problem.

Obviously, if our diagnosis is inaccurate, then the solution applied
is unlikely to work.

This principle of needing to understand a problem accurately before
we can devise and implement an appropriate solution applies in all
fields of human endeavour, whether it be a mechanical, scientific,
health or environmental problem, or a conflict at any level of
human relationships.

The most important impediment to understanding and resolving
any problem or conflict is our fear of knowing the truth.

We spend a lot of our time trying to deal with problems and
conflicts by deluding ourselves about the cause and/or the
solution necessary.

For example, the truth is that most of us are addicted to using
violence in one or more of the following ways, among many others:

We want to reserve the right to use violence to control or
'discipline'our children, we want to pretend that our unhealthy
diet is not the cause of our ill-health if we like eating all of
those unhealthy foods, we want to be able to consume more
than we really need and pretend that the ongoing destruction of
the natural environment and the accelerating climate catastrophe
are unrelated to our own behaviour, and/or we want to buy those
cheap consumer goods made by exploited workers (and sometimes
even child labor) in those factories in Africa, Asia and Central/
South America where the largest corporations are less encumbered
by such considerations as a requirement to pay fair wages and
taxes, to address health and safety concerns, and to consider
other human rights and environmental issues.

And we want to blame other people for our conflicts if looking
ourselves deeply in the mirror might tell us something about
ourselves that we don't want to know.

But if we want to deal adequately with any problem or conflict,
first of all we need to be courageous enough to acknowledge
the truth, including any truth about ourselves.

Why is this so difficult?

Why have we become afraid of the truth?

Like all of our fears, the fears that tell us that we cannot
understand a problem and that we cannot fix it originate
in our childhood experience.

Evolution has given all human beings an enormous array
of potential capacities for knowing the truth in a diverse
variety of circumstances.

These include sensory perception such as sight, hearing, smell and
touch to provide accurate information about the external world;
feelings such as thirst, hunger, nausea, dizziness and physical pain
to provide accurate information about the state of our body and
what it needs; memory to store and provide access to learning
from past experience; a 'truth register' to detect lies and other
misinformation; intuition to 'listen' to and remain in touch with
'the big picture' of life as a whole; conscience to enable us to make
and act on those difficult moral choices that, for example, might
ultimately require us to act against social conventions or unjust
laws; more feelings such as fear, happiness, emotional pain, joy,
anger, satisfaction, sadness, sexual ones and a vast variety of
others to tell us what is happening for us in any given situation
and to give us the power to behave appropriately in this context
when the time is right; and intellect to acquire, interpret, analyze
and evaluate information from these and other sources, such as
written material.

Tragically, however much of modern socialisation seriously inhibits
or even destroys the development of these genetic potentialities,
by inflicting what I have called 'invisible' and 'utterly invisible'
violence on us throughout our childhood, because they would
make us powerful in ways that run counter to what society wants.

As a result, we each become a 'socially-constructed delusional
identity' student, employee,soldier, citizen, who is readily
manipulated and coerced by society instead of becoming the
powerful individual, our 'True Self' that evolution intended.

For most of us, one outcome of this violence is that we learn
to not trust ourselves and to fear the truth that is internally
communicated to us.

As a result, decisive action, outside that which is obviously
socially endorsed, becomes impossible.

In contrast, powerful individuals who know the truth are not
unthinkingly obedient.

Powerful individuals trust their 'inner voice', as Gandhi called it:

'You should follow your inner voice whatever the consequences'.

Despite the fact that our fear is often telling us that some
problems are monumental and there is no way forward
(which, for example, our fear might tell us in relation to
the vast environmental challenges we now face), in fact
there are sensible, straightforward solutions to virtually
all of our problems.

And while this will mean that we often need to change our own
behaviour, most of those changes will require little effort and
can be easily accomplished.

Of course, the genuinely powerful individual is able to take
responsibility for making changes that set an example and
inspire others to act too.

In contrast, if we wait for others to take the lead or if we lobby
elites to act on our behalf, we will usually find the experience
pretty disempowering, and this will reinforce our fear that
problems cannot be solved.

So, for example, if you want to take powerful action on the full
range of pressing environmental problems yourself, then you can
certainly do so.

One way is to participate in 'The Flame Tree Project to Save Life
on Earth' and to invite others to participate as well.

And if you are unafraid to know and act on the truth, that human
violence in its many manifestations now has extinction howling
outside our door, then you might also like to consider joining
the worldwide movement to end all violence by signing the online
pledge of 'The People's Charter to Create a Nonviolent World.'

The bottom line is this:

Can you still hear your inner voice?

And do you, like Gandhi, have the courage to follow it 'whatever
the consequences'?



Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding
and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since
1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and
has been a nonviolent activist since 1981 and he is the author of
'Why Violence?'

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37696.htm

Fly Like An Eagle

Fly Like An Eagle

By Steve Miller Band
Metro Lyrics.com
February 16, 2014

Tick, Tock, Tick,
Tick, Tock, Tick

Tick, Tock, Tick,
Tick, Tock, Tick

Time Keeps On Slippin', Slippin', Slippin',
Into The Future

Time Keeps On Slippin', Slippin', Slippin',
Into The future

I Want To Fly Like An Eagle,
To The Sea

Fly Like An Eagle,
Let My Spirit Carry Me

I Want To Fly Like An Eagle,
Till I'm Free

Oh, Lord, Through The Revolution

Feed The Babies,
Who Don't Have Enough To Eat

Shoe The Children,
With No Shoes On Their Feet

House The People,
Livin' In The Street

Oh, Oh, There's A Solution

I Want To Fly Like An Eagle,
To The Sea

Fly Like An Eagle,
Let My Spirit Carry Me

I Want To Fly Like An Eagle,
Till I'm Free

Fly Through The Revolution

Time keeps On Slippin', Slippin', Slippin',
Into The Future

Time Keeps On Slippin', Slippin', Slippin',
Into The Future

Time Keeps On Slippin', Slippin', Slippin',
Into The Future

Time Keeps On Slippin', Slippin', Slippin',
Into The Future

I Want To Fly Like An Eagle,

To The Sea

Fly Like An Eagle,
Let My Spirit Carry Me

I Want To Fly Like An Eagle,
Till I'm Free

Fly Through The Revolution

Time Keeps On Slippin', Slippin', Slippin',
Into The Future

Time Keeps On Slippin', Slippin', Slippin',
Into The Future

Tick, Tock, Tick,
Tick, Tock, Tick

Tick, Tock, Tick,
Tick, Tock, Tick



Steven H. "Steve" Miller is an American guitarist, Singer, and
Songwriter, and is the Founding Member, of the "Steve Miller
Band."

http://www.metrolyrics.com/fly-like-an-eagle-lyrics-steve-miller-band.html