The Truth About The Tea Party: It's Fascism, Wealth, and Patriarchy all Rolled Into One Power-block

image is from here

If your political leadership is comprised of filthy rich neoconservative WHM fatcats in power, beware that CRAP's version of fascism in right around the corner. They want to pin "socialism" on President Obama so their bigotry and tyranny can look more moderate and reasonable. But it's always uglier and more corrupt than you are told it is when it comes to mass power being abused. What follows is a cross post from Harambee Radio and Television Network. Please click on the title below to link back.

 

The Truth About The Tea Party Movement

• Posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton on October 17, 2010 at 11:51am

From The Ramparts

 Junious Ricardo Stanton

    The Truth About The Tea Party Movement

        "Koch Industries has denied specifically funding Freedomworks or tea parties directly, however. The company's director of communications wrote ‘Koch companies value free speech and believe it is good to have more Americans engaged in key policy issues. That said, Koch companies, the Koch foundations, Charles Koch and David Koch have no ties to and have never given money to FreedomWorks. In addition, no funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties.’ Koch's director of communications did affirm, however, that the company funds Americans for Prosperity (AFP). TPM's Lee Fang reports that ‘AFP was founded in part by the company's Executive Vice President, David Koch. He is currently the chairman of the board of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.’ Media Matters also lists the Sarah Scaife Foundation as having given a total of $2.96 million in funding to FreedomWorks.[7] The Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation is financed by the Mellon industrial, oil, and banking fortune. The Claude R. Lambe Foundation, also controlled by the Koch family, has donated more than $3 million to Americans for Prosperity" Tea Party Funding
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tea_Party_movement_funding

        A little over a year or so ago I started getting E-mail messages from Dick Armey who was calling for rallies and demonstrations against the policies of Barack Obama. How he got my E-mail address I’ll never know. However I noticed the masthead on his literature was called Freedomworks and after receiving more announcements about upcoming marches and demonstrations I did a little Internet research on Armey and Freedomworks. For those of you not familiar with him, Dick Armey was a former US Congressman who rose to the rank of Majority Leader when the Republicans took control of the House during the 90's. He eventually left Congress and took on the role as Chairman of Freedomworks an organization dedicated according to it Website to: lower taxes, less government and more freedom. Looking at their Website www.freedomworks.org/issues you see they profess to be against government regulation and for tax and tort reform, school choice, privatization of Social Security and reform of Medicare.

         So while their Website appears benign and ideologically non- threatening, the tip off that they are not libertarians is the fact that nowhere on their Website do they take a stand against the ongoing wars that are draining this country dry; nor do they mention the bailouts of the insurance, banking and Hedge Fund industries by the same government they want to shrink. So it was not surprising to me when it came to light that Freedomwokrs is a front for the Koch Brothers, two energy industry billionaires who have their own aggressive right wing agenda. According to SourceWatch a group that, "profiles the activities of front groups, PR spinners, industry-friendly experts, industry-funded organizations, and think tanks trying to manipulate public opinion on behalf of \fs23ulcorporations or government.", the Tea Party is being funded by super wealthy right wingers to promote their own conservative agenda.

         "Reports indicate that the Tea Party Movement benefits from millions of dollars from conservative foundations that are derived from wealthy U.S. families and their business interests. Is appears that money to organize and implement the Movement flows primarily through two conservative groups: Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. In an April 9, 2009 article on ThinkProgress.org, Lee Fang reports that the principal organizers of Tea Party events are Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, two ‘lobbyist-run think tanks’ that are ‘well funded’ and that provide the logistics and organizing for the Tea Party movement from coast to coast. Media Matters reported that David Koch of Koch Industries was a co-founder of Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), the predecessor of FreedomWorks. David Koch was chairman of the board of directors of CSE.[2] CSE received substantial funding from David Koch of Koch Industries, which is the largest privately-held energy company in the country, and the conservative Koch Family Foundations, which make substantial annual donations to conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, etc. Media Matters reported that the Koch family has given more than $12 million to CSE (predecessor of FreedomWorks) between 1985 and 2002" http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.p

         In case you haven’t figured it out by now, the Tea Party movement isn’t a spontaneous grass roots movement after all. Disaffected whites are being manipulated by some very cunning Republican right wingers who are exploiting the fears, frustrations and angst of white folks who see their net worth and standard of living deteriorating at a rapid pace. These white folks are looking for someone to blame because they mindlessly drank the Kool-Aid about their house always appreciating in value, believing they could keep using it like an ATM machine ad infinitum. Now they are facing default, unemployment and homelessness; they are angry and frightened. While their frustrations are real and justified, the so called spontaneity of the Tea Party movement is not. Yes people are upset but like me many of them received E-mails and letters from Dick Armey and Freedomworks urging them to attend town meetings, rallies and demonstrations against Obama’s Healthcare Bill and other domestic policy issues. Armey and the Republican Party recruited Glen Beck and Sarah Palin to be their celebrity spokespersons and Fox News a bastion of fascist propaganda anyway, readily jumped on board to support the movement. Don’t be mad at the Tea Baggers, they are being duped and used by the right wingers for their agenda.

         The left-right divide is used by the ruling elites to cunningly keep the masses duped, distracted, disorganized and discombobulated. This way the people won’t come together to figure out how the banksters, military industrial complex war mongers, the multi-national corporations their political puppets and stooges are ripping us off. Both sides of the political aisle are bought and paid for. It’s not just the Tea Party, it’s the left too. Don’t you ever wonder who funds the NAACP or how Al Shaprton flies all over the country to attend "grass roots" rallies? If you want to see who is funding most of the organizations on both the left and right go to www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=338 which is a right wing Website by the way; and peruse their Funding The Left and Right page. Click on the various spreadsheets they provide and look at the names of the foundations putting out money to fund supposedly grass roots movements.

          I have nothing against philanthropy but when money is used as a means for clandestine political manipulation that’s a different story. The ruling elites have mastered funding both sides in a dispute, that way no matter who wins, they come out on top and the "winners" owe them. They do it in political campaigns and war. Don’t fall for the okey-doke and flim-flam. The Tea Party is being used by right wingers to further their own agenda, just like some so called progressive organizations are funded by the left to promote their agenda.

By Stone or By Rope: Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani Will Die Because of Patriarchal Mandates for Misogynistic Atrocity

Most patriarchies have their own cultural methods of terrorising and murdering women for crimes women did not commit. And within many patriarchies, the crime is simply "being a woman". When will men stop their brutal, gynocidal carnage against womanity? What follows is from The Guardian.co.uk. Please click on the title below to link back. What will men do to stop other men from murdering women? When will men see opposing these atrocities, and stopping men from committing them, as a top priority human rights issue?

Iran stoning case woman to be 'hanged'

Human rights group claims Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is to be executed for murder instead of adultery

• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 November 2010 18.32 GMT
• Article history

 

An image of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani held during a rally in support of her in front of the Iranian embassy in Rome in September. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images

An Iranian woman whose sentence of execution by stoning for adultery provoked a worldwide outcry will instead be hanged for murder on Wednesday, a human rights group has said.

"The authorities in Tehran have given the go-ahead to Tabriz prison for the execution … Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani," the International Committee Against Stoning (Icas), a German-based campaign group, said on its website.

"It has been reported that she is to be executed this Wednesday, 3 November."

Officials in Iran were unavailable to confirm or deny the report.

Ashtiani's stoning was suspended after prominent political and religious figures called the sentence "medieval", "barbaric" and "brutal". Brazil, a close ally of Iran's, offered to grant asylum to the 43-year-old mother of two.

A government spokesman said in September that Ashtiani's adultery conviction was under review but the charge of being complicit in the murder of her husband was still pending.

Under the law in force in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, murder is punishable by hanging, and adultery by stoning.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fended off questions about the case from reporters when he attended the UN general assembly in September, condemning what he called the fabrications of hostile western media and denouncing the US as hypocritical for its capital punishment record.

The case has worsened relations between Iran and the west, which are locked in a dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme and were further complicated last month when two Germans were arrested in Iran while conducting an interview with Ashtiani's son.

The pair entered Iran with tourist visas and were not authorised to act as journalists, judicial officials said. The German government is trying to secure their release.

In August, Iranian television aired an interview with a woman it said was Ashtiani admitting a relationship with a man who had gone on to murder her husband. Icas called the TV show "toxic propaganda".

The US has imposed sanctions on eight senior Iranian officials, including the commander of the Revolutionary Guards and several cabinet ministers, for human rights abuses.

That is in addition to the sanctions over Iran's nuclear activities, which it fears are aimed at making an atomic bomb, something Tehran denies.

According to Amnesty International, Iran is second only to China in the number of executions it carries out, having put to death at least 346 people in 2008.

The Indigenous People of Colombia are Facing Genocide: Who Will Work With Them to Protect Their Land, Stop Forced Relocation, and End the Mass Murder?

image of map is from here

The image above as well as what follows in text is a cross-post from Indian Country Today. Please click on the title below to link back.

Colombian indigenous still in danger of extinction

By Rick Kearns, Today correspondent

Story Published: Nov 1, 2010
Story Updated: Oct 29, 2010

Advocates warn that many indigenous peoples in Colombia still face the danger of extinction due to an increase in homicides, threats and instances of forced displacement.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees issued a report Aug. 9, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, focusing on these imminent and present dangers. The threats could result in the physical or cultural disappearance of many peoples, and the warnings about this emergency are not new.

In 2004, the United Nations Special Rapporteur Rodolfo Stavenhagen issued an alert warning that 12 indigenous groups were facing imminent extinction, and five years later in 2009, the Colombian Constitutional Court petitioned the government to “design and put into practice” special protections for 34 groups. In 2010, the Colombian authorities enacted a plan and invited U.N. officials to visit the country for further consultation.

The UNHCR report did note that in some regions of the country violence against Native peoples is decreasing, but in several other areas the problems are getting worse. Statistics from 2009 show that there was a 63 percent increase in the number of reported homicides of indigenous persons from 2008, with a notation of the effect the violence was having on children and adolescents. For instance, in the three massacres of Awa people in 2009, more than 11 percent of the 33 killed were minors under the age of 18.

The agency listed the Awa, along with the Wounaan, Embera, Eperara-Siapidara, Jiw, Nukak and Sicuani indigenous communities as requiring special protection. They also expressed concern over more problems affecting indigenous young people, such as the forced recruitment of young indigenous Colombians by illegal armed groups as well as sexual violence committed by these same armed groups in the Guaviare and Chaco departments. Suspected suicides by young indigenous women could be related to this sexual violence, the report stated.

The refugee agency stated that despite new efforts by the Colombian government, including the “special protections” for 34 indigenous communities, concerns are growing due to – among other factors – recent reports of the forced displacement of the Sicuani and Wounaan peoples. Both of these communities are among the 34 groups who have been granted protections. Figures for 2004 – 2009 show a total of 55,513 indigenous people were among the more than three million internally displaced Colombians. The report asserted that 70 percent of those displacements were due to violence, and that this same violence has increased in indigenous communities in nine regions.

Among the displaced are the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes such as the Nukak, Sicuani, Jiw and Jitnu who are being forced to settle or are forcibly confined by illegal armed groups, which prevents the tribes from both accessing traditional sources of food and rituals such as hunting and other social customs.

The UNHCR report also found that displaced indigenous people were moving into urban centers and that these changes were also hindering the preservation of cultural identity and traditional social structures.

One of the indigenous people interviewed by the refugee agency was Simon, a 40-year-old member of the Inga community. He told the UNHCR about some of the consequences of his peoples displacement from the mountains in Southern Colombia to the eastern city of Villavicencio.

“The children that were born in Villavicencio don’t speak Inga; if they can they are embarrassed to. And that is not the young peoples fault. If we were able to have meetings, if they were able to continually participate in the meetings of us, the Inga, it would be much easier to feel part of a community and be proud of it.”

The issue of prior consultation was also featured in the agency report. The UNHCR asserted that “prior consultation on decisions that affect economic and social development is the instrument that allows indigenous people to exercise their rights to participate in national and regional governance.”

While the government of new President Juan Manuel Santos was commended for taking some steps toward protection of the indigenous peoples of Colombia, the agency warns that more enforcement and greater protections of all rights are needed to prevent the further disappearance of indigenous Colombians.