In response to the unbright person that accused me of exactly what the article is trying to address, you don't need to unsubscribe, because I have done it for you. Your infantile and idiotic comment has been eradicated and you have been blocked from the privilege of reading my columns. And anyone else that chooses to let me know if I can assist you in expediting. I criticized Israel and I will continue to do so.
There are five cosmic accidents in this life. These are things that none of us have control or dominion over and they are: the day you are born, the day you die (even suicide is fate), your gender, your "race" (a European invention and construct) and your goddamned relatives. Only an abject fool would hold these things against another. If I have a problem with an entity or an individual, or group of individuals it is because of your conduct. I have nothing against anybody until they give me a reason to. The article attacks Israel. Period. Paragraph.
Some of my best friends are Jews.
Courage is not something that I lack. It is estimated that for EACH of the initial 17 million Alkebulans that reached North America as slaves, five died; eighty five MILLION PEOPLE! Is that not a "holocaust?" Austria, Belgium and France murdered millions in Alkebulan as they pilfered resources and still, to this very day, do. I'll be damned if anyone is going to "group silence me" predicated upon the illogical.
There isn't a Black Person in the United States that is an "Anti-Semite." My people have been kidnapped, humiliated, robbed, raped, lynched, boiled, burned, sodomized, electrocuted, gassed, experimented on and continue to be brutalized. That's just bullshit and I will continue to criticize Israel, the United States, The United Kingdom, France and any other rogue, racist, white supremacist state until they are no longer rogue racist, white supremacist states and damn who doesn't like it.
As far as I'm concerned, you and everyone else can criticize Israel anytime you like. Personally, I am furious with Israel right now, just furious. Netanyahu and his far-right radical's alliance with far-right American evangelicals is unconscionable. That the Republican Party dares to speak for Israel - and Jews all over the world - is... I don't even know the word.
Since I don't know anyone who follows events in Israel as closely as I do, I rarely talk about it. All I can say, is take note of who you are speaking to.
Since I happen to be talking to you, I am compelled to issue warning. Remember what I said. The same forces driving insanity in Israel, are working in African countries. If people want to know what I am talking about, all they need do is look around America, cause the same people are doing it here as well.
I will say this as well. Near as I can tell, the African American community has arrived at this moment with the greatest asset possible. And that asset is diversity. Diversity is power - real power. Conversely, homogeneity is rigid, inflexible, unbendable, and fragile - too fragile to survive.
We humans have to live where we are – right? Since I must live where my body is, I must adapt to my place on this planet – or die. Aligning myself with a handful of radicals on the other side of the Atlantic, instead of my next-door neighbors, is insane. But that’s what Israel has done. Correcting course will take time. In the meantime, and it will be a very “mean” time, all I can do is hope we don’t hit an iceberg and go down like the Titanic.
I’m off to house building with a truck load of wood. I need to cut 168 pieces of trim, fit them in place, then paint them. My daughter got us through all the inspections and is starting to hang drywall. We’ll be dry camping for a week in that forest, call me Thumbelina.
Have a good week.
PS. "Thanks for the giggles. Some of my best friends are Jews is priceless.
I just KNEW you would like that one!, In all candor, I was thinking of you when I wrote it as you know we brown freckled ones hear that proclamation of absolution constantly.
Your comments are always so refreshingly intellectually honest. That's why I write tough stuff and ask tough questions. LookingNWords is not for the partisan, brainwashed, MSNBC/CNN/Fox News television watching sycophant. And you can bet your menorah I'll be tearing the U.S. and "AFRICOM" a new one real, real soon. Stay tuned.
I'm back home, dead tired, and whining about my sore, aching muscles. Temperatures in the high 80s, with humidity hovering around 80% sucked the life right out of me.
My daughter brought a new book with her. Well, I stole it and started reading Isabel Wilkerson's, The Warmth of Other Suns. My word, the woman can write. Wilkerson's words flowing onto the page like a river of honey carried this reader deeper and deeper inside the story she tells. I wonder do silent tears drip on our souls, like sweat on our bodies?
I started cutting wood at dawn and worked until I ran out of shade around two o’clock. And all the while I kept thinking about people picking cotton. They say experience is the best teacher, and I do believe that’s true.
One year, back in California, our state Senator, Dean Florez was trying to pass legislation requiring growers to provide shade for farmworkers in the fields. Florez couldn’t muster up the votes and scheduled the next legislative committee meeting in the fields of Kern County. Word spread fast, and a large crowd of activists showed up along with the media.
When the bus of Senators arrived, there were no chairs to sit in and no umbrellas, tents, or pop-ups to stand under. It was in the high 90s that day, and the water barrels and porta potties were the “legally” required quarter mile away. Half a mile further, the activists and media stood waiting for the Senators to walk across the blazing hot fields to do their job and decide if farmworkers needed shade – or not. That may sound like a long walk, but it was less than half a field long and most every farmworker picks several rows a day.
By the time our great state’s Senators reached us, they were drenched in sweat. Talk about “optics” those Senators sweat had soaked their armpits, backs and stomachs, then their pants, until they looked like they’d peed or shat themselves. We were genuinely worried the chubby ones would have heart attacks. When the huffing, puffing, sweating Senators reached the meeting table, they immediately surrendered. And that’s how California growers were finally legally required to provide shade for farmworkers within a quarter mile. We are talking about a 10 x 10 foot square of GD, effing shade and growers had to be forced to provide it. For the record, I did not share my umbrella or my canteen with even one of those “great” men (but let it be known, the farmworkers did – gulp, gulp, gulp).
Back then, I thought I knew a thing or two about farm work, but I was wrong. California heat is dry as dry can be. Working outdoors in humid Kentucky summers, has finally, finally, finally taught me the true measure of the people who planted and picked the cotton that built the American economy. If I were dictator, every American student would take field trips, to the fields to pick crops.
PS. I thought that story might satisfy your inner vigilante, the same way remembering satisfies mine.
PPS. Please tell this digital dummy how the heck I can find your podcast.
Can we bury hell? Please. Put hell in a cement coffin and send it to Mars with Elon Musk. I don’t care how we bury hell, but it’s got to go, and it cannot ever be allowed back.
I’m serious.
Hell is the same darn thing as racism and antisemitism (and all the other isms). Hell is an effing idea, a concept, a manufactured, fabricated, made-up nothing. Hell is a weaponized idea that has been terrorizing, murdering, butchering, slaughtering, destroying, enslaving, and torturing innocent people ever since someone thought it up.
Christians sell the hell out of hell. Take hell away from them and we might get some peace on earth. Christ doesn’t sell as well as hell, but that’s their marketing problem – not mine. Think about it people, what the hell is hell?
Tell evangelicals you don’t believe in hell, and they walk away. No more talk, no more preaching, no more threatening, no more nothing. Without hell, they got nothing to sell.
And what you might ask, does that have to do with antisemitism and Israel? Well, Christians have been trading in hell for 2023 years. If you can get people to “believe” in hell, you can get them to “believe” anything. I think racism and antisemitism began in hell. I also think hell keeps it alive.
You are one of the smartest people I have ever encountered. Your wisdom, your intellectual honesty, your refusal to be intimidated inspires THE HELL out of me.
I am at my best as a human when my readers teach me and you have taught me much.
Coming from you, that's a mighty fine compliment. Thank you.
Jews do not believe in hell or heaven. That's the reason, the Jewish people are working to answer the same question you asked, with a vigor I haven't seen in decades. Every day I'm getting two or three newsletters on the subject.
The old saying about two Jews with three opinions is not joke, its a fact. So do not ask a Jew that question. If you do, you are gonna get a hundred different questions and zero answers.
Personally, I think that's the reason Jews survived 2023 years of Christian persecution. The value Jews place on diversity of mind and experience enabled and empowered people to adapt to whatever they faced, without surrendering their minds. Its also the reason, Christians could not divide us. And since they could not divide us, they could not conquer us. They could kill and torture us, and they surely did, but they could not divide us. That said, white American evangelicals are doing their very best, and spending a fucking fortune trying to divide Israelis even as we speak. American evangelicals are doing the same shit in African countries, even as we speak.
Taking hell away from Christians is a military strategy, not an idea.
Brother Rohn, you are our nuclear weapon, with atomic cluster bombs attached. Keep blowing up the lies and mythology propagated by Israel; Herzl's dream that today, looks, nor acts, nothing, nor anything like the nation that he envisioned. It's time we build our own true Akebulan nation-state. Why would anyone want to cling to the dead corpse of America, or Israel?
As I have been a long-term critic since at least the six-days war, I know what you say is true. Israel is an international pariah and has been almost as long as it has been a nation. Of course it was granted nationhood as a result of international guilt over Hitler's supposed 'holocaust"
I don't say supposed because I deny Hitler put many Jewish people to death, but because they have played it up as if Hitler's attempt to exterminate them was somehow unique. In fact consequently to Hitler's holocaust they had been perpetuating (with the aid of the British after their post WWI mandate over the region) a holocaust of their own against the native population (both of Muslim and Christian) to exterminate or have them removed from the region). And of course that did not cease
upon nationhood.
But there is an irony to the very name "israel". The Jewish people were mortal enemies of Israel since the tenth century B.C. If we take the literal invasion of the twelve tribes, then eventually 2 tribes decided to want a king and the others did not. From one of those arose the first king, Saul. Now in the Bible all of the men in Benjamin were massacred (a Jewish holocaust against a neighboring tribe) and Saul was a Benjamite, only in the sense that the Jews determine their affiliation through their matrilineal relationship, although they govern as a patriarchy, and this still sit well and Jewish David killed him an conquered all the tribes. I don't really know how the Israelis (the other tribes) viewed David because there is only one account I know of. Certainly his son was heinous. He enslaved the Israelis and took on all the trappings of a pontiff. And so upon his death, during the upheaval of the secession, remember David had already killed his heir, Absalom, and Solomon finished off the rest of his elder brothers. And upon the death of Solomon, an exiled son of Solomon's returned (Rehoboam) to Israel and eliminated his rivals. This set the stage for a rare successful slave revolt. ( In the Bible Moses, but set back in time).
So while certainly not the first nation to attempt a "holocaust", they have long embedded into their history a right of superiority to others and to exterminate others.
Of course the issue to me is "Do the Jews have a right to exist" as a modern nation cannot be separated from the concept of do any native cultures have a pre-existing right to be a nation once it is no longer an existing nation. Well some ethnicities did form their own nation after the breakup of the soviet empire, but I believe Israel was the precedent, at least in modern times. But of all places, America should not be in favor of that as America has an awful lot of ethnicities they had attempted to exterminate who I'm sure they would not consider making into competing nations (although the treaties granted them nationhood, and now they are granted limited sub-nation rights, but that's mostly a pretense).
And one more thing, I don't deny the Jewish holocaust in the 40's. But the numbers don't add up. In 1933 Germany there were 550,000 Jews (from the Holocaust Encyclopedia) and 9.5 million in all of Europe. There were a lot (about a third) in Poland and many of those were killed by Hitler. About 3.5 million managed to get out of Europe during Hitler's reign.That meant there were only six million Jews in Europe to be killed and all were not killed because there were"holocaust survivors". There is some confusion if holocaust survivors are among the 3.5 million who fled after Hitler assumed power to be sure. But not counting those Germans who died in battle, five million non-Jewish Germans were sent to their death during Hitler's reign. Just a few numbers, but there are in some dispute, but there is no doubt that many German resisters to Hitler were also put to death during his reign and that was nearly ten times the amount of Jewish people in Germany that died.
I, Sir, tend to drill down to the lowest common denominator. In the case of Israel it is the same as everywhere else Europeans have murdered melanic people and taken their land (i.e. North America; specifically the United States and Canada, Oceana, Australia and a plethora of island nations). In all of these instances terrorism and racist, genocidal violence was/is the primary implement of "conquest." Israel's modus operandi is no different and for anyone to project that I have something against Jews or am an "Anti-Semite" they must have brown eyes because they are full of shit. I am, quite simply, tired of white boys taking things that don't belong to them and brutalizing the world's majority. Period. Paragraph.
Further, in the late 80's before my first marriage, I went to the "Diamond District" in New York City. One of the Jewelers I visited was unaware of my presence and was examining a diamond that another customer (white boy) brought in. As he looked at it through his monocle he said "you paid too much for this stone, it has niggers in it...see here? Those are inclusions, very bad." That Jeweler was Jewish. Lastly, not only did Jews collaborate with Nazi Germany, there have been Jews in the Ku Klux Klan. There has never been a black Nazi or black member of the Ku Klux Klan. Ergo, anyone thinking they are going to intimidate me about telling the truth regarding Israel, The United States, Jews, Gentiles, rednecks, inbreds or anybody else INCLUDING Black People in the United States is an abject fool.
Well yes there were Jewish collaborations with Nazis and in the Klan. I admit Jews were often persecuted against, even before Nazism, But "the Jews" in a collective sense founded their nation (and their Religion) by a claim of Jewish superiority to their neighbors 3000 years ago, and then on its refounding 2500 years ago and then for the third time when they began trying to remove native inhabitants on attempting to resettle the area 150 years even before they used the holocaust to grant them that nationhood.
But that does not mean I believe Jews should be persecuted or their synagogues bombed, I believe no one should be persecuted against.
I have a question for you, however,for you. It is not a suggestion I necessarily favor, and I'll tell you why, but first the question. Many from the past, including Lincoln, before the war, suggested blacks should be moved to a separate place, Panama was one suggested, and of course Liberia was the result of one such attempt. Liberia actually survived much longer than the US before civil war. So my question is what do you think about the US partitioning the nation (not that they would do so very willingly) and giving black Americans their own government. Do you think blacks in Americans would want that? And I have seen some suggestions by black writers suggesting it.
My objection, or fear, is that even if they were able to achieve it, would the partitioned really be able to trust the white side to not try to interfere in their affairs or simply abrogate the treaty or attempt to reduce its size. In reality, though, the time to have done so would have been immediately after the civil war when most of black Americans were living primarily, or even if they had fulfilled Sherman's promise of "50 acres and a mule".
But I have seen the idea floated around for a long time by some black theorists and even though I doubt its possibility I am curious what you think of the idea. Because I hope daily that all this will end it is too deeply culturally ingrained in "white" consciousness as you write about.
It is both my nature and academic training to answer interrogatories directly and with brutal precision. However, my answer to this particular query has to be, necessarily, nuanced but I will be as direct as I might.
I do not believe that Black People in the United States, and elsewhere, will ever be in harmony with the pale, stringy haired man. But, that's just my opinion. The European seems to have a penchant for violence and, thusly, supremacy that appears to be inherent and genetic. Augment that penchant with how the Black Person in the United States arrived (name taken, religion taken, tongue taken, culture eradicated, and deemed "property") and I don't see, in a scholarly way, how that can be overcome. "We shall overcome"...is equine feces.
I might be wrong, but I doubt it.
I would suggest that you peruse the following that will, hopefully, further elucidate my long, long thoughts on the matter.
American "His-Story" is replete with white fantastic fictions (lies). And though the fictions are innumerable, they are augmented and often enhanced by omissions which are introduced at the very earliest stages of a child's education. The most prominent vehicle for the white fantastic fictions and omissions are American textbooks. One of the great omissions is the industry of slave breeding; particularly as it pertained to banking. You see, the "matter" of the United States is, indeed, Africa.
American slavery was, among other things, a slave breeding industry. The growth to 4 million people (properties) was, in and of itself, an economic expansion. When an enslaved child was born that child was worth $75 or $100 at birth. That did not mean that the child would be "sold" for that amount of money immediately, it was an appraisal for the purpose of determining the slave owners wealth. Thus, the slaver could borrow more money from the bank in terms of a "mortgage". The baby was, in effect, collateral. The birth of every enslaved child created "credit" which, according to modern monetary theory, means created money.
Virginia: The Great Slave Breeding State
Virginia is often referred to as The Mother of Slavery, which both created, and perpetuated, a legal system by which the child born to an enslaved woman from Africa would automatically "inherit the condition of its mother"... no matter who the father was. This is important to understand, especially in terms of the wholesale rape of black African women by white slavers; Thomas Jefferson comes to mind. Though, in fairness to Mr. Jefferson and his ilk, the woman was not a human person but "property" so, obviously, she had zero legal rights (or rights of any type) and could not "just say no". The point being, since she was not human she could, therefore, not be "raped" for one can not, legally, rape a dog, a car or a refrigerator. This law also ensured no "freedom" for children born to a white father. Ergo, a white man could drop his pants, demand favors of a sexual nature, seek pleasure, brutalize a woman and get paid for doing it. Dwell on that for a wee bit and let your mind go free. As the great musician Dr. George Clinton said: "free your mind, and your ass will follow". The reason that Thomas Jefferson was instrumental in outlawing the importation of slaves from Africa (signed into law March 2, 1807) had absolutely nothing to do with any noble regard for the personage of slaves; it had everything to do with money. He was raising the stock prices for slave breeders and domestic slavers. Period. It was an economic move.
Essentially two states, Virginia and South Carolina, were the catalysts for the expansion of slavery and, thusly, the United States territories. Virginia being the center of the slave breeding industry, and South Carolina being the center of slave exporting. In fact, South Carolina is often referred to as "a colony of a colony in search of a stable crop". That stable crop became slaves and their exportation (and exploitation). Since Barbados (the original "sugar island") was the wealthiest of the British Colonies and sugar was it's essential crop, it had an insatiable appetite for slaves. Sugar killed its workers within ten years and was known as a "killing field". Rice and indigo also became cultivated; these crops were also very hard on the slaves. Ergo, there was a constant need for replacements. The slave breeding permeated the southern states and they had all of the labor they needed, but the "human crop" was needed and used to fulfill the requirements for labor in the "new territories". And, just as Mr. Jefferson foresaw, the incentive to develop more territory increased "stock" prices.
Slaves: Human Savings Accounts
When I was a child, every summer I left Los Angeles to spend the summer with my grandparents in Kansas. There I learned about hunting, fishing, baseball, lightning bugs and a plethora of other things; but mostly, I learned about farming. And one of the primary things one learns about farming is that you are always looking to create more. More eggs from the laying chickens in the brooders, more crops, more pigs, more cattle, etc. If an animal does not, or cannot, breed it will be slaughtered or sold. If a crop does not produce greater and greater yields, it will be replaced; it is the nature of the beast, so to speak. The black labor force was part of "farm stock". If you were a laboring black woman, your number one obligation to your slaver was to reproduce as early in your life as it was possible and as often as possible. If you did not reproduce you would be sold; something that instilled sheer terror in the slaves. This terror was not a result of being enamored with one slaver over the other, but a fear of yet another unknown, brutal environment where the slave would have neither acquaintances nor environmental familiarity. The breeding of these slaves included rape by white slavers, forced mating, and "arranged marriages" (which was weird, I mean how do you "marry" property?). Good ole "founding father" Thomas Jefferson said it best in the only book he ever wrote entitled "Notes On the State of Virginia" (he was 77 years old at the time he gave the following advice): " I consider a woman that brings a child every two years more productive than the best man on the farm what she produces is an addition to the capital." That would include the children he had with a 14 year old girl named Sally Hemings; Jefferson "owned" the children and could, thusly, sell them.
It is what it is, because it was what it was.
Slavocracy
Slave breeding played the quintessential role in the United States becoming a major world power. The slave breeding industry drove expansion of the United States, it is that simple. The slave breeding industry was, in effect, a Ponzi scheme; something Karl Marx used to confirm his observation in 1862 that "capitalism required an ever expanding market". Slaves were not just labor, they were merchandise, they were credit, they were "capital (ism)" they were money. They retained their value by reproduction; the stable wealth of the United States was derived from black slaves.
In the final analysis, what I find most ironic is that the descendants of that valued "property" lives are so devalued today. Though paradoxical, the black "American" has less value to the white man today, than he/she did then (prison industrial complex, sports/minstrel notwithstanding).
Black People in America will never know what happened to them until they educate themselves, and what happened to them is likely the greatest atrocity in human history. There is a reason that these individuals were, and continue to be in various ways, denied education. For if they ever really come to grips with, and fully understand, what has been done to them the jig is up, literally. That is why it is imperative to be certain that the last thing they do is get a library card and use it, or attend a decent school. I can not be fooled by such tomfoolery, because I learned the game from Tom. I was educated by Tom. I know Tom's code and I am not his uncle.
In response to the unbright person that accused me of exactly what the article is trying to address, you don't need to unsubscribe, because I have done it for you. Your infantile and idiotic comment has been eradicated and you have been blocked from the privilege of reading my columns. And anyone else that chooses to let me know if I can assist you in expediting. I criticized Israel and I will continue to do so.
There are five cosmic accidents in this life. These are things that none of us have control or dominion over and they are: the day you are born, the day you die (even suicide is fate), your gender, your "race" (a European invention and construct) and your goddamned relatives. Only an abject fool would hold these things against another. If I have a problem with an entity or an individual, or group of individuals it is because of your conduct. I have nothing against anybody until they give me a reason to. The article attacks Israel. Period. Paragraph.
Some of my best friends are Jews.
Courage is not something that I lack. It is estimated that for EACH of the initial 17 million Alkebulans that reached North America as slaves, five died; eighty five MILLION PEOPLE! Is that not a "holocaust?" Austria, Belgium and France murdered millions in Alkebulan as they pilfered resources and still, to this very day, do. I'll be damned if anyone is going to "group silence me" predicated upon the illogical.
There isn't a Black Person in the United States that is an "Anti-Semite." My people have been kidnapped, humiliated, robbed, raped, lynched, boiled, burned, sodomized, electrocuted, gassed, experimented on and continue to be brutalized. That's just bullshit and I will continue to criticize Israel, the United States, The United Kingdom, France and any other rogue, racist, white supremacist state until they are no longer rogue racist, white supremacist states and damn who doesn't like it.
Verstehen sie?
https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=128580&page=1
As far as I'm concerned, you and everyone else can criticize Israel anytime you like. Personally, I am furious with Israel right now, just furious. Netanyahu and his far-right radical's alliance with far-right American evangelicals is unconscionable. That the Republican Party dares to speak for Israel - and Jews all over the world - is... I don't even know the word.
Since I don't know anyone who follows events in Israel as closely as I do, I rarely talk about it. All I can say, is take note of who you are speaking to.
Since I happen to be talking to you, I am compelled to issue warning. Remember what I said. The same forces driving insanity in Israel, are working in African countries. If people want to know what I am talking about, all they need do is look around America, cause the same people are doing it here as well.
I will say this as well. Near as I can tell, the African American community has arrived at this moment with the greatest asset possible. And that asset is diversity. Diversity is power - real power. Conversely, homogeneity is rigid, inflexible, unbendable, and fragile - too fragile to survive.
We humans have to live where we are – right? Since I must live where my body is, I must adapt to my place on this planet – or die. Aligning myself with a handful of radicals on the other side of the Atlantic, instead of my next-door neighbors, is insane. But that’s what Israel has done. Correcting course will take time. In the meantime, and it will be a very “mean” time, all I can do is hope we don’t hit an iceberg and go down like the Titanic.
I’m off to house building with a truck load of wood. I need to cut 168 pieces of trim, fit them in place, then paint them. My daughter got us through all the inspections and is starting to hang drywall. We’ll be dry camping for a week in that forest, call me Thumbelina.
Have a good week.
PS. "Thanks for the giggles. Some of my best friends are Jews is priceless.
I just KNEW you would like that one!, In all candor, I was thinking of you when I wrote it as you know we brown freckled ones hear that proclamation of absolution constantly.
Your comments are always so refreshingly intellectually honest. That's why I write tough stuff and ask tough questions. LookingNWords is not for the partisan, brainwashed, MSNBC/CNN/Fox News television watching sycophant. And you can bet your menorah I'll be tearing the U.S. and "AFRICOM" a new one real, real soon. Stay tuned.
In the meantime: "chop wood, carry water."
I'm back home, dead tired, and whining about my sore, aching muscles. Temperatures in the high 80s, with humidity hovering around 80% sucked the life right out of me.
My daughter brought a new book with her. Well, I stole it and started reading Isabel Wilkerson's, The Warmth of Other Suns. My word, the woman can write. Wilkerson's words flowing onto the page like a river of honey carried this reader deeper and deeper inside the story she tells. I wonder do silent tears drip on our souls, like sweat on our bodies?
I started cutting wood at dawn and worked until I ran out of shade around two o’clock. And all the while I kept thinking about people picking cotton. They say experience is the best teacher, and I do believe that’s true.
One year, back in California, our state Senator, Dean Florez was trying to pass legislation requiring growers to provide shade for farmworkers in the fields. Florez couldn’t muster up the votes and scheduled the next legislative committee meeting in the fields of Kern County. Word spread fast, and a large crowd of activists showed up along with the media.
When the bus of Senators arrived, there were no chairs to sit in and no umbrellas, tents, or pop-ups to stand under. It was in the high 90s that day, and the water barrels and porta potties were the “legally” required quarter mile away. Half a mile further, the activists and media stood waiting for the Senators to walk across the blazing hot fields to do their job and decide if farmworkers needed shade – or not. That may sound like a long walk, but it was less than half a field long and most every farmworker picks several rows a day.
By the time our great state’s Senators reached us, they were drenched in sweat. Talk about “optics” those Senators sweat had soaked their armpits, backs and stomachs, then their pants, until they looked like they’d peed or shat themselves. We were genuinely worried the chubby ones would have heart attacks. When the huffing, puffing, sweating Senators reached the meeting table, they immediately surrendered. And that’s how California growers were finally legally required to provide shade for farmworkers within a quarter mile. We are talking about a 10 x 10 foot square of GD, effing shade and growers had to be forced to provide it. For the record, I did not share my umbrella or my canteen with even one of those “great” men (but let it be known, the farmworkers did – gulp, gulp, gulp).
Back then, I thought I knew a thing or two about farm work, but I was wrong. California heat is dry as dry can be. Working outdoors in humid Kentucky summers, has finally, finally, finally taught me the true measure of the people who planted and picked the cotton that built the American economy. If I were dictator, every American student would take field trips, to the fields to pick crops.
PS. I thought that story might satisfy your inner vigilante, the same way remembering satisfies mine.
PPS. Please tell this digital dummy how the heck I can find your podcast.
Amen. Bless you. And I am an atheist. Thanks for setting the record straight.
Can we bury hell? Please. Put hell in a cement coffin and send it to Mars with Elon Musk. I don’t care how we bury hell, but it’s got to go, and it cannot ever be allowed back.
I’m serious.
Hell is the same darn thing as racism and antisemitism (and all the other isms). Hell is an effing idea, a concept, a manufactured, fabricated, made-up nothing. Hell is a weaponized idea that has been terrorizing, murdering, butchering, slaughtering, destroying, enslaving, and torturing innocent people ever since someone thought it up.
Christians sell the hell out of hell. Take hell away from them and we might get some peace on earth. Christ doesn’t sell as well as hell, but that’s their marketing problem – not mine. Think about it people, what the hell is hell?
Tell evangelicals you don’t believe in hell, and they walk away. No more talk, no more preaching, no more threatening, no more nothing. Without hell, they got nothing to sell.
And what you might ask, does that have to do with antisemitism and Israel? Well, Christians have been trading in hell for 2023 years. If you can get people to “believe” in hell, you can get them to “believe” anything. I think racism and antisemitism began in hell. I also think hell keeps it alive.
Can we bury hell? Please?
You are one of the smartest people I have ever encountered. Your wisdom, your intellectual honesty, your refusal to be intimidated inspires THE HELL out of me.
I am at my best as a human when my readers teach me and you have taught me much.
Thank you.
Coming from you, that's a mighty fine compliment. Thank you.
Jews do not believe in hell or heaven. That's the reason, the Jewish people are working to answer the same question you asked, with a vigor I haven't seen in decades. Every day I'm getting two or three newsletters on the subject.
The old saying about two Jews with three opinions is not joke, its a fact. So do not ask a Jew that question. If you do, you are gonna get a hundred different questions and zero answers.
Personally, I think that's the reason Jews survived 2023 years of Christian persecution. The value Jews place on diversity of mind and experience enabled and empowered people to adapt to whatever they faced, without surrendering their minds. Its also the reason, Christians could not divide us. And since they could not divide us, they could not conquer us. They could kill and torture us, and they surely did, but they could not divide us. That said, white American evangelicals are doing their very best, and spending a fucking fortune trying to divide Israelis even as we speak. American evangelicals are doing the same shit in African countries, even as we speak.
Taking hell away from Christians is a military strategy, not an idea.
You ought relinquish the habit of leaving me speechless.
Brother Rohn, you are our nuclear weapon, with atomic cluster bombs attached. Keep blowing up the lies and mythology propagated by Israel; Herzl's dream that today, looks, nor acts, nothing, nor anything like the nation that he envisioned. It's time we build our own true Akebulan nation-state. Why would anyone want to cling to the dead corpse of America, or Israel?
As I have been a long-term critic since at least the six-days war, I know what you say is true. Israel is an international pariah and has been almost as long as it has been a nation. Of course it was granted nationhood as a result of international guilt over Hitler's supposed 'holocaust"
I don't say supposed because I deny Hitler put many Jewish people to death, but because they have played it up as if Hitler's attempt to exterminate them was somehow unique. In fact consequently to Hitler's holocaust they had been perpetuating (with the aid of the British after their post WWI mandate over the region) a holocaust of their own against the native population (both of Muslim and Christian) to exterminate or have them removed from the region). And of course that did not cease
upon nationhood.
But there is an irony to the very name "israel". The Jewish people were mortal enemies of Israel since the tenth century B.C. If we take the literal invasion of the twelve tribes, then eventually 2 tribes decided to want a king and the others did not. From one of those arose the first king, Saul. Now in the Bible all of the men in Benjamin were massacred (a Jewish holocaust against a neighboring tribe) and Saul was a Benjamite, only in the sense that the Jews determine their affiliation through their matrilineal relationship, although they govern as a patriarchy, and this still sit well and Jewish David killed him an conquered all the tribes. I don't really know how the Israelis (the other tribes) viewed David because there is only one account I know of. Certainly his son was heinous. He enslaved the Israelis and took on all the trappings of a pontiff. And so upon his death, during the upheaval of the secession, remember David had already killed his heir, Absalom, and Solomon finished off the rest of his elder brothers. And upon the death of Solomon, an exiled son of Solomon's returned (Rehoboam) to Israel and eliminated his rivals. This set the stage for a rare successful slave revolt. ( In the Bible Moses, but set back in time).
So while certainly not the first nation to attempt a "holocaust", they have long embedded into their history a right of superiority to others and to exterminate others.
Of course the issue to me is "Do the Jews have a right to exist" as a modern nation cannot be separated from the concept of do any native cultures have a pre-existing right to be a nation once it is no longer an existing nation. Well some ethnicities did form their own nation after the breakup of the soviet empire, but I believe Israel was the precedent, at least in modern times. But of all places, America should not be in favor of that as America has an awful lot of ethnicities they had attempted to exterminate who I'm sure they would not consider making into competing nations (although the treaties granted them nationhood, and now they are granted limited sub-nation rights, but that's mostly a pretense).
And one more thing, I don't deny the Jewish holocaust in the 40's. But the numbers don't add up. In 1933 Germany there were 550,000 Jews (from the Holocaust Encyclopedia) and 9.5 million in all of Europe. There were a lot (about a third) in Poland and many of those were killed by Hitler. About 3.5 million managed to get out of Europe during Hitler's reign.That meant there were only six million Jews in Europe to be killed and all were not killed because there were"holocaust survivors". There is some confusion if holocaust survivors are among the 3.5 million who fled after Hitler assumed power to be sure. But not counting those Germans who died in battle, five million non-Jewish Germans were sent to their death during Hitler's reign. Just a few numbers, but there are in some dispute, but there is no doubt that many German resisters to Hitler were also put to death during his reign and that was nearly ten times the amount of Jewish people in Germany that died.
I, Sir, tend to drill down to the lowest common denominator. In the case of Israel it is the same as everywhere else Europeans have murdered melanic people and taken their land (i.e. North America; specifically the United States and Canada, Oceana, Australia and a plethora of island nations). In all of these instances terrorism and racist, genocidal violence was/is the primary implement of "conquest." Israel's modus operandi is no different and for anyone to project that I have something against Jews or am an "Anti-Semite" they must have brown eyes because they are full of shit. I am, quite simply, tired of white boys taking things that don't belong to them and brutalizing the world's majority. Period. Paragraph.
Further, in the late 80's before my first marriage, I went to the "Diamond District" in New York City. One of the Jewelers I visited was unaware of my presence and was examining a diamond that another customer (white boy) brought in. As he looked at it through his monocle he said "you paid too much for this stone, it has niggers in it...see here? Those are inclusions, very bad." That Jeweler was Jewish. Lastly, not only did Jews collaborate with Nazi Germany, there have been Jews in the Ku Klux Klan. There has never been a black Nazi or black member of the Ku Klux Klan. Ergo, anyone thinking they are going to intimidate me about telling the truth regarding Israel, The United States, Jews, Gentiles, rednecks, inbreds or anybody else INCLUDING Black People in the United States is an abject fool.
The truth playeth not favorites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Burros
Well yes there were Jewish collaborations with Nazis and in the Klan. I admit Jews were often persecuted against, even before Nazism, But "the Jews" in a collective sense founded their nation (and their Religion) by a claim of Jewish superiority to their neighbors 3000 years ago, and then on its refounding 2500 years ago and then for the third time when they began trying to remove native inhabitants on attempting to resettle the area 150 years even before they used the holocaust to grant them that nationhood.
But that does not mean I believe Jews should be persecuted or their synagogues bombed, I believe no one should be persecuted against.
I have a question for you, however,for you. It is not a suggestion I necessarily favor, and I'll tell you why, but first the question. Many from the past, including Lincoln, before the war, suggested blacks should be moved to a separate place, Panama was one suggested, and of course Liberia was the result of one such attempt. Liberia actually survived much longer than the US before civil war. So my question is what do you think about the US partitioning the nation (not that they would do so very willingly) and giving black Americans their own government. Do you think blacks in Americans would want that? And I have seen some suggestions by black writers suggesting it.
My objection, or fear, is that even if they were able to achieve it, would the partitioned really be able to trust the white side to not try to interfere in their affairs or simply abrogate the treaty or attempt to reduce its size. In reality, though, the time to have done so would have been immediately after the civil war when most of black Americans were living primarily, or even if they had fulfilled Sherman's promise of "50 acres and a mule".
But I have seen the idea floated around for a long time by some black theorists and even though I doubt its possibility I am curious what you think of the idea. Because I hope daily that all this will end it is too deeply culturally ingrained in "white" consciousness as you write about.
It is both my nature and academic training to answer interrogatories directly and with brutal precision. However, my answer to this particular query has to be, necessarily, nuanced but I will be as direct as I might.
I do not believe that Black People in the United States, and elsewhere, will ever be in harmony with the pale, stringy haired man. But, that's just my opinion. The European seems to have a penchant for violence and, thusly, supremacy that appears to be inherent and genetic. Augment that penchant with how the Black Person in the United States arrived (name taken, religion taken, tongue taken, culture eradicated, and deemed "property") and I don't see, in a scholarly way, how that can be overcome. "We shall overcome"...is equine feces.
I might be wrong, but I doubt it.
I would suggest that you peruse the following that will, hopefully, further elucidate my long, long thoughts on the matter.
https://rohnkenyatta.substack.com/p/black-to-africa-bargain-basement
Blackism: Human Savings Accounts
By Rohn Kenyatta
American "His-Story" is replete with white fantastic fictions (lies). And though the fictions are innumerable, they are augmented and often enhanced by omissions which are introduced at the very earliest stages of a child's education. The most prominent vehicle for the white fantastic fictions and omissions are American textbooks. One of the great omissions is the industry of slave breeding; particularly as it pertained to banking. You see, the "matter" of the United States is, indeed, Africa.
American slavery was, among other things, a slave breeding industry. The growth to 4 million people (properties) was, in and of itself, an economic expansion. When an enslaved child was born that child was worth $75 or $100 at birth. That did not mean that the child would be "sold" for that amount of money immediately, it was an appraisal for the purpose of determining the slave owners wealth. Thus, the slaver could borrow more money from the bank in terms of a "mortgage". The baby was, in effect, collateral. The birth of every enslaved child created "credit" which, according to modern monetary theory, means created money.
Virginia: The Great Slave Breeding State
Virginia is often referred to as The Mother of Slavery, which both created, and perpetuated, a legal system by which the child born to an enslaved woman from Africa would automatically "inherit the condition of its mother"... no matter who the father was. This is important to understand, especially in terms of the wholesale rape of black African women by white slavers; Thomas Jefferson comes to mind. Though, in fairness to Mr. Jefferson and his ilk, the woman was not a human person but "property" so, obviously, she had zero legal rights (or rights of any type) and could not "just say no". The point being, since she was not human she could, therefore, not be "raped" for one can not, legally, rape a dog, a car or a refrigerator. This law also ensured no "freedom" for children born to a white father. Ergo, a white man could drop his pants, demand favors of a sexual nature, seek pleasure, brutalize a woman and get paid for doing it. Dwell on that for a wee bit and let your mind go free. As the great musician Dr. George Clinton said: "free your mind, and your ass will follow". The reason that Thomas Jefferson was instrumental in outlawing the importation of slaves from Africa (signed into law March 2, 1807) had absolutely nothing to do with any noble regard for the personage of slaves; it had everything to do with money. He was raising the stock prices for slave breeders and domestic slavers. Period. It was an economic move.
Essentially two states, Virginia and South Carolina, were the catalysts for the expansion of slavery and, thusly, the United States territories. Virginia being the center of the slave breeding industry, and South Carolina being the center of slave exporting. In fact, South Carolina is often referred to as "a colony of a colony in search of a stable crop". That stable crop became slaves and their exportation (and exploitation). Since Barbados (the original "sugar island") was the wealthiest of the British Colonies and sugar was it's essential crop, it had an insatiable appetite for slaves. Sugar killed its workers within ten years and was known as a "killing field". Rice and indigo also became cultivated; these crops were also very hard on the slaves. Ergo, there was a constant need for replacements. The slave breeding permeated the southern states and they had all of the labor they needed, but the "human crop" was needed and used to fulfill the requirements for labor in the "new territories". And, just as Mr. Jefferson foresaw, the incentive to develop more territory increased "stock" prices.
Slaves: Human Savings Accounts
When I was a child, every summer I left Los Angeles to spend the summer with my grandparents in Kansas. There I learned about hunting, fishing, baseball, lightning bugs and a plethora of other things; but mostly, I learned about farming. And one of the primary things one learns about farming is that you are always looking to create more. More eggs from the laying chickens in the brooders, more crops, more pigs, more cattle, etc. If an animal does not, or cannot, breed it will be slaughtered or sold. If a crop does not produce greater and greater yields, it will be replaced; it is the nature of the beast, so to speak. The black labor force was part of "farm stock". If you were a laboring black woman, your number one obligation to your slaver was to reproduce as early in your life as it was possible and as often as possible. If you did not reproduce you would be sold; something that instilled sheer terror in the slaves. This terror was not a result of being enamored with one slaver over the other, but a fear of yet another unknown, brutal environment where the slave would have neither acquaintances nor environmental familiarity. The breeding of these slaves included rape by white slavers, forced mating, and "arranged marriages" (which was weird, I mean how do you "marry" property?). Good ole "founding father" Thomas Jefferson said it best in the only book he ever wrote entitled "Notes On the State of Virginia" (he was 77 years old at the time he gave the following advice): " I consider a woman that brings a child every two years more productive than the best man on the farm what she produces is an addition to the capital." That would include the children he had with a 14 year old girl named Sally Hemings; Jefferson "owned" the children and could, thusly, sell them.
It is what it is, because it was what it was.
Slavocracy
Slave breeding played the quintessential role in the United States becoming a major world power. The slave breeding industry drove expansion of the United States, it is that simple. The slave breeding industry was, in effect, a Ponzi scheme; something Karl Marx used to confirm his observation in 1862 that "capitalism required an ever expanding market". Slaves were not just labor, they were merchandise, they were credit, they were "capital (ism)" they were money. They retained their value by reproduction; the stable wealth of the United States was derived from black slaves.
In the final analysis, what I find most ironic is that the descendants of that valued "property" lives are so devalued today. Though paradoxical, the black "American" has less value to the white man today, than he/she did then (prison industrial complex, sports/minstrel notwithstanding).
Black People in America will never know what happened to them until they educate themselves, and what happened to them is likely the greatest atrocity in human history. There is a reason that these individuals were, and continue to be in various ways, denied education. For if they ever really come to grips with, and fully understand, what has been done to them the jig is up, literally. That is why it is imperative to be certain that the last thing they do is get a library card and use it, or attend a decent school. I can not be fooled by such tomfoolery, because I learned the game from Tom. I was educated by Tom. I know Tom's code and I am not his uncle.