EditorBlog

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

If you want to know why we are still seeing headlines like this one, "Arizona Goes Birther: Secretary Of State Says It's ‘Possible' Obama Won't Be On Ballot," it's because of the reality of headlines like this one, "Census: Minority Babies Are Now Majority in United States."

The Washington Post article on May 16th put it bluntly:

For the first time in U.S. history, most of the nation's babies are members of minority groups, according to new census figures that signal the dawn of an era in which whites no longer will be in the majority.

Population estimates show that 50.4 percent of children younger than 1 last year were Hispanic, black, Asian American or in other minority groups. That's almost a full percentage point higher than the 49.5 percent of minority babies counted when the decennial census was taken in April 2010. Census Bureau demographers said the tipping point came three months later, in July....

The census has forecast that non-Hispanic whites will be outnumbered in the United States by 2042, and social scientists consider that current status among infants a harbinger of the change.

"This is a watershed moment," said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in family issues. "It shows us how multicultural we've become."

So the pathological lie about Obama not being American because he's black; the hysteria about immigration from Mexico (after all, no Tea Party advocate seems concerned about illegal maids from Poland in the US); the suppression of voter rights (most affecting the young and the poor and the elderly; i.e, that is to say minorities particularly in the cities) and so much more of the white right wing mania is in response to the basic fact that the demographics of the US democracy are inevitably going to make whites a minority in this nation.

That is why the likes of Palin, Bachmann, Santorum, Buchanan and the whole Disneyesque fantasy promulgators on the right talk incessantly about America being divinely configured as a white Christian nation. In the past few years, it has reached a feverish pitch.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The "Stand Your Ground" law is just a license to murder for white people in Florida.

The case of George Zimmerman shooting Trayvon Martin to death in Sanford, Florida, is starting to recede to the back pages of the news. This killing occurred, of course, after Zimmerman stalked Martin, who was staying with this father and his father's girlfriend, in the same gated community that Zimmerman lived in.

Zimmerman's legal stance is that he was in compliance with the state's NRA/ALEC model "Stand Your Ground" law, which basically, in the absence of witnesses, provides a license to kill with impunity. However, the lethal irony of the law is evident in that one could make a strong argument that Martin, who was being stalked by someone who he didn't know and was armed, had a legal right to "stand his ground" due to the threatening nature of Zimmerman's actions.

But Martin is dead, so it is a moot legal point for someone who is deceased.

Yet, Marissa Alexander, a black victim of domestic violence, just received the full brunt of the racial double standard on "Stand Your Ground" NRA/ALEC laws. In Florida, where Martin was killed, Alexander was just sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing off a warning shot to fend off her abusive husband. It's important to note that Alexander received a sentence in jail, even though she was allegedly defending herself - and no one was hit or injured by the shot.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

In case you missed it, the concept of the Eurozone imposing drastic austerity measures on poorer member nations is coming to a critical juncture in Greece.

In the most recent elections, the result was a stalemate at forming a parliamentary government. So a caretaker prime minister, Council of State President and Judge Panagiotis Pikrammenos, has been appointed to head an interim government until new elections on June 17.

Many Greek and European election watchers expect the surging anti-austerity Syriza party to win on June 17 after coming in second in the May 6th balloting that ended without a government being formed.

According to the BBC, the leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, considers surrendering to the European Union social network cuts in Greece as non-negotiable as the price of a bailout. As the BBC reports, "Tsipras has accused the EU and German Chancellor Angela Merkel of 'playing poker with European people's lives' by insisting on austerity measures."

Tsipras is brash, blunt, and unyielding in his view that the wealthy Euro nations (and banks) are profiting at the expense of the poorer ones:

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The "[un]fair and [un]balanced" FOX News is now into fart stories, even ones that aren't true. We don't know where this fits in with creationism, but asserting that dinosaurs extinguished themselves with bodily gas emissions puts FOX the level of tabloids that assert "Cannibals Ate JFK's Body as Part of Zombie Conspiracy."

According to a blog devoted to the advancement of rational scientific principles, "the reports of dinosaurs dying of farts are greatly exaggerated." BuzzFlash at Truthout wants to reassure readers that this is not a satire. ...

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

In early 2004, BuzzFlash at Truthout wrote a commentary advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to define Bush early or be defeated. The title of the BuzzFlash opinion piece was, "BuzzFlash Message to John Kerry: It's the Golden Hour of Opportunity, Define Bush or Be Defined by Him. There is No Option 'B.'"

Kerrey apparently didn't read BuzzFlash, because he got "Swiftboated" early and never regained his footing.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

BuzzFlash at Truthout has periodically written on the increasingly perverse profiteering of big agriculture (Big Ag), particularly its toxic threat (most recently about Monsanto and the dying of bees). In fact, it is an ominous evolution that chemical companies have – through GMO seeds and herbicides – become the most powerful force in Big Ag.
...

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

This isn't the first time BuzzFlash at Truthout has advocated that instead of banning gay marriage, we should ban divorce - and toss married individuals who commit adultery in prison - if there are people who are so concerned about maintaining the "sanctity" of marriage.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

William Jennings Bryan (1860 -1925) was a populist contradiction, a compelling defender of working people and farmers against the robber barons of his day, while being a creationist and fiery critic of the gold standard (as revealed most succinctly in his 1896 "Cross of Gold" speech)

Bryan -- despite historically being best known for arguing against evolution in the Scopes trial -- was a prescient critic of trickle down economics in his controversial "Cross of Gold" remarks to the last Democratic convention of the 1800's:

There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests up on them.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR AT BUZZFLASH ON TRUTHOUT

Given the ongoing Truthout on the Border Series covering US policy on Mexico, BuzzFlash receives many daily reports of the grim death toll south of our border.

Over the weekend, NPR reported on the latest grisly deaths, this time in Nuevo Laredo, (just across the border from Laredo, Texas):

It has been a bloody day for the Mexican border-town of Nuevo Laredo. It started at dawn when 9 bodies were found hanging from a bridge of a major thoroughfare that connects Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey.

And as the day went by, the mutilated bodies of 14 others were found across the city.

El Universal, one of Mexico's largest dailies, reports:

"The human remains, without heads, were found in black bags inside a van parked at the headquarters of the Association of Customs Agents of Neuvo Laredo, a law enforcement official sad.

"Fourteen heads, which are assumed to correspond to the bodies, were found abandoned in coolers near the municipal headquarters, near the U.S. border."

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Some days you wake up, rub the sleep dust out of your eyes, fire up the computer, and are convinced that you are reading "The Onion" instead of a mainstream corporate news site.

That's the only response to an ABC News online headline, "Water Guns Banned, Handguns Allowed at GOP Convention," that I could at first ascertain.

So the Republicans are gunning for their presidential nominating convention in Tampa, locked and loaded. What a thrill up the leg it must be to know that the delegates can vote for Romney and have a license to murder at the same time in the Gator State. ...

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