REAL TALK: Belafonte on Obama

attention spineless liberals!!!
for those of you that believe i'm too hard on president obama i found a video clip to corroborate my sentiments featuring a much more mature, thoughtful, & (perceived as) safer older black guy...Mr. Harry Belafonte

our lives are too precious & times are too volatile to surrender to the perceived safety of the center...fight back

Real Talk with Dr. Gabor Maté

randomly catching an interview with Dr. Maté back in the spring of 2010 totally changed my life. if it wasn't for the good doctor's insightful words i never would have began the introspective psilocybin based summer benders that helped me deal with all of the personal emotional turmoil that the past 2 years have introduced to my generally healthy psyche. beginning to independently dissect my own history has been unbelievably liberating & helpful. the general population being either thoughtful or mindless sheep are lost in the age of consumer capitalism. people need to engage some serious introspection to better understand the true mechanics of how we make decisions, the basis for the ways we interact with the outside world, why we mistreat ourselves & others.
perhaps working as a preschool teacher has colored my opinions on the way that we raise our children in the modern world...but it actually kinda seems to have just reinforced many of my previously held beliefs...(in fact one of the craziest things is the link between why i am crazy & work as a caregiver!)

The New Jim Crow

both of the 2 parts of legal scholar, author, & seemingly all around lovely & thoughtful person Michelle Alexander's democracy now interview discussing how her book delves into the new age of legal institutional discrimination...aka america's new caste system [notice its caste not class...there is no escaping your caste]

New World Water

big maude barlow keeps it hella real & really scary with some ridiculously ominous statistics about the current & future state of the global food & water systems.

when the chickens really come home to roost we're all gonna wish that our problems were as easily solved as the ones characters face in Dystopic, post-apocalyptic movies like mad max.

Maude Barlow heads the Council of Canadians which is Canada’s largest public advocacy organization. She’s also founder of the Blue Planet Project. This is a part of what she had to say @ Toronto's Messy Hall in opposition to the g20 summit

Live from the Frontlines of the End of the World

this may be the most honest & insightful piece about bp gulf coast disaster that anyone has produced so far.

the 1st interview is with a member of the u.s. coast guard & its difficult to tell if he's just being candid because he's caught off guard by the questions or if he's simply naive. either way his honest explanations are welcome & definitely more than a bit upsetting.
the real meat of this piece is mr. dean blanchard, a resident of louisana's gulf coast & the owner of the largest shrimp business in the area. dean is incredibly knowledgeable & agonizingly honest. this man is hitting us with the realest of talk & he desperately deserves to be heard.
it always seems that every mainstream news outlet reports this story as some sort of semi-tragic novelty about bp's ineptitude at capping the oil well instead of seriously discussing the vast destruction & dealing with the fact that this is one of the greatest environmental catastrophes in human history. comparable environmental destruction has occurred in the past, but those disasters only laid the groundwork of oceanic sickness that bp is turning into a plague.

clean energy now or there will literally be no tomorrow

M E X I C O

if i ever have a bit of "free time" i'll be sure to share some of my thoughts on mexico...until then drink in the unbridaled thoughtfulness & old school journalist masculinity that is charles bowden as he breaks down the bloodshed, drug cartels, & international governmental ineptitude going down in Murder City aka Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

Inequities Like A Motherfucker

THE FACTS:

*$* For every dollar of wealth owned by the typical white family, the typical family of color owns only 16 cents. And for single women of color, the wealth gap is far wider.

*$* Nearly half of all single black and Hispanic women have zero or negative wealth, meaning their debts exceed all their assets. The median wealth for single black women is only $100; for single Hispanic women, $120. This compares to just over $41,000 for single white women. About a third of single Hispanic women and one-fourth of single black women have no checking or savings account.

*$* Today there are more African Americans under correctional control, whether in prison or jail, on probation or on parole, than there were enslaved in 1850. And more African American men are disenfranchised now because of felon disenfranchisement laws than in 1870

THE EDITORIAL: unrealisticly flowery speeches about sticking together & bootstrap economics fall on deaf ears in the face of the myriad of legal discriminatory practices employed by nearly all u.s. institutions. in an age where employees are subjected to credit checks for lower-middle class jobs the people must advocate for themselves.
in the episode of democracy now below amy goodman & juan gonzalez dive deep into the ever widening wealth gap in the u.s. & discuss the symptoms & solutions with Mariko Lin Chang, chief author of the study “Lifting as We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth and America’s Future”, C. Nicole Mason, Executive Director of the Women of Color Policy Network at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service @ NYU, & Michelle Alexander, author of the new book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
dig what these sisters have to say about what is essentially 21st jim crowism & check out the full study to digest all of the other facts & figures @ Insight Center for Community Economic Development

i even took the time to embed the videos into smaller chunks for all you cyber wisdom seekers on the go






& here's a lil somethin' about what happened to ACORN one of the unfortunately few organizations that work to end poverty in a real way


remember if money is the root, then poverty is the handmaid of oppression. the modern caste/class systems must end if anyone wants even an illusion of security & freedom.

fight back

Malcolm X: “By Any Means Necessary”

unfortunately timeless words from the man himself

A Blast From The Past: Brother West Says...

definitely not kanye for those that were hoping for some neo hip hop assholery. this is a clip of Dr. Cornell West from way back in september of 2009 discussing the release of his long-awaited memoir, “Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud”.
there was definitely something specific about this interview that made me bookmark it & save it for all these months. what it is i cannot remember, but i'm sure it gave me a quantum of solace during a very difficult personal adjustment period. if nothing else its worth watching for Dr. West's delightfully thoughtful pontifications on life

its been a long time......

i shoulda left you with some deeper thoughts to sift through.

its no secret that 2009 the worst year of my life. for a myriad of reasons 09 was so inexplicably awful that it stifled me creatively & almost made me completely disappear from the scene.
many months & one album later i've returned to the horus set with new personal revelations that were very randomly spurred by Dr. Gabor Maté in his democracy now interview from this morning...the monday after valentine's day 2010...perhaps the good doctor's perspective will further enlighten some of you as well

So Much For Promises & Bailouts

well...i definitely failed on the updating the horus set blog more often. i suppose that i could say i was taking black history month off to reflect, but i've really just been busy teaching babies how to talk, count, recognize words + colors, walk on stairs, eat with utensis, & fight the system by sharing!)

everyone everywhere is still talking about the economy which has been a frequent subject of the the light & the dark blog here, but i was really impressed by Thomas Geoghegan's take on what's been going on for decades & ultimately culminated in the current catastrophe. below is the tuesday march 24th episode of democracy now which features an interview with Mr. Geoghegan about 16 minutes into the show.
feel free to skip ahead, but there's some really interesting news in the headlines (especially for those of you that eat red meat).
there's also a really insightful interview with Riki Ott, a community activist, marine toxicologist, former commercial salmon fisherma’am and author of two books on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. she helps shed light on the seldom discussed topic of how corporations got the same rights as individual people despite it being in complete contradiction to the bill of rights & u.s. constitution.
the Riki Ott interview starts about 40 minutes into the broadcast & is very deserving of your time.

dear mr. president...

we will protest you & your neo-liberal agenda whenever it goes against the greater good.

many obama supporters seem to believe that our soon to be president is only adding so many clinton era neo-liberals to his staff because it will give him more credibility when he implements the radical policy changes that everyone swears he will bring. history shows us that revisionist history & unrealized wide-eyed optimism never work out for the people of the united states. obama promises to listen to dissenting views to develop more inclusive policies, but surrounding himself with the warmongering cronies that set up all of the circumstances that are playing themselves out as global calamities today is not a progressive step toward a peaceful & prosperous future.

check out democracy now from tuesday november 25th to get some more insightful commentary on how obama may already be fucking up...........

more tips & questions for the new u.s. president

as usual i have an opinion about our new president's dealings, but in lieu of ranting myself i will again differ to some folks that have much more experience in researching & speaking truth to power...here's some transcript from democracy now's tuesday november 25th episode featuring some very interesting commentary...

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Hudson, at least when he is talking about infrastructure, is he talking about mass transportation?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Largely that.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, as opposed to highways and roads, and actually mass transit?

MICHAEL HUDSON: That is certainly the key. Mass-transit and almost every country creates an increase in real estate values along the routes that could actually rental that is increased by this could actually finance the entire transport system. In London when they built the tube extension to their financial district of the loop, they created 13 billion pounds worth of increased in real estate value. The tube itself cost only $8 billion. They left this $13 billion real estate value in the hands of the private landlords. Same thing in Chicago in the US. It can be a very heavy investment in mass transportation here. This is going to create enormous real-estate values. The tax system, leaves these in private hands. I think all of the tax proposals that Mr. Obama have spoken about, have to do with income tax primarily. The rich people prefer not to earn income. They prefer to make capital gains. So the intention of the economic gain that Mr. Obama brought in is really to create a huge capital gains economy. Even more disparity of wealth while leaving in place the one thing that should address in the last year and that is the enormous debt overhead. Nothing is happening on that. He is adding to debt, not reducing it.

AMY GOODMAN: Barack Obama throughout the campaign continually said that well the people should be taxed, after the Bush tax cuts, but now owing to yesterday’s address, he seemed to back off, saying well, he would let them expire perhaps, that’s a possibility, in that I think it was 2011. Your thoughts?

MICHAEL HUDSON: The kicker is when he is talking about, Obama is talking about tax, he is talking about income tax. Most wealth, is not taxed, because most wealth, takes the form of return capital gain, most wealth does not pay, if I see a wage if not others, so what Obama is talking about, well, is taxation at the margin. He is not talking about kind of wealth, and the kind of returns that Wall Street gets, which are not subject to taxation at all, in fact, the give aways, that the treasury put in to the bank available, says that because the banks are bought, affiliates that have cash, they are not even going to be subject of the income taxation. So the whole issue of the devils of detail of the small print and Mr. Obama, thanks to his appointing Summers in this aim, is going to leave it there. The Russian cryptnocrats didn’t have to tax on income, as the phrase went, only the little people pay taxes, I am afraid that’s going to be the case under Mr. Obama also.

...i will try to leave a lil more original commentary on the subject of making our soon to be new president an honest man that serves the common good tomorrow.

How to Keep Obama Honest

as some of you may have noticed i'm not a fan of the new u.s. president or the line of thinking that goes anyone is better than bush. unfortunately president obama has already backed off of many of the progressive ideals that galvanized the country behind him & with each passing day the man with the plan surrounds himself with more & more advisers from the clinton era that do not have the best interests of the proletariat at heart.
but perhaps my outsider perspective doesn't have enough credibility for your erudite tastes...don't listen to me, watch wednesday november 19th's democracy now & allow my brother from another mother dr. cornell west from princeton break down the ways we need to organize to keep president obama honest.

The Global Economic Meltdown

yessur, its rough all over the world...even our erudite european counterparts are feeling the burn. check out this episode of democracy now from wednesday october 8th 2008 to get the low down on the global economic slow down



warning the song in the second break is absolutely awful...perhaps they should use some blackdaylight music instead!)

Economic Terrorism

the way today's economic situation is being presented to the american people is nothing short of economic terrorism. the "debate" is framed as though its $700 billion to wall street as quickly as possible with as little oversight & accountability as possible or the sky will fall & there are no alternatives. for some additional insight into the consequences of the bailout please enjoy this episode of democracy now from thursday october 2nd.

Corporate Welfare 2008:The True Cost of the "Free Market"

wanna know what's really up with the under estimated $700 billion bail out for wall street? need to hear specific details from experts & lawmakers?
watch this video...

Economic Implosion

not sure you have a full understanding of what's going on with the economy? well beyond the same old wall street fat cats that demanded deregulation in the 1990's are now begging for the government to bail them out with billions of your tax dollars, all-the-while your brothers & sisters are getting their lives repossessed & foreclosed everyday without any help!
leave it to democracy now (the only daily national news show that gets mr. daylight's seal of approval) to break it down for you with intelligent & insightful explanations from industry insiders naomi prins & michael hudson.

know your enemy?

think you know about osama bin laden, his family, their history, & their ties to the united states government? author of the bin laden's: an arabian family in the american century steve coll spent 15 years researching osama bin laden & his family chronicling nearly everything from his father's rise to prominence to well after september 10th 2001.
one of the last refuges of unfettered journalism & the only daily news show that gets the blackdaylight stamp of approval democracy now's amy goodman spends an hour with investigative journalist steve coll.