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homaikaike · 4 years ago

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Opinions and Discussing the Nonexistent Diaspora

Part Two of: “Misplaced” Hawaiians and the Myth of the Non-Existent Diaspora

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Final (Whole Project)

Hawaiian Studies 343: Myths of Hawaiian History | 21 October 2020

“Wow, it’s hard to believe you’re from Texas. I thought you were a local!” I hear this quite often actually; from cashiers in stores, to school faculty, and professors. Maybe it stems from the fact that I can understand pidgin, the creole English dialect used locally in Hawaiʻi. Or maybe it is because I have brown skin, Polynesian-style tattoos, golden bangles on my wrist and Locals brand slippers on my feet. As a “returned” Hawaiian from diaspora, I have been called “local-passing”, as in I am a person who could “pass” for being someone who lives in Hawaiʻi. Which is odd, because I do live in Hawaiʻi. It has been nearly three years since I have moved back to the home sands of my ancestors, yet my Texas driver’s license and preference for a southern twang is what nullifies any connection I could have to Hawaiʻi. I grew up in the Hawaiian diaspora, and though I could even be “Hawaiian-passing” as an actual Hawaiian person, it is because I did not grow up here that I am just another outsider. The list of opinions posed upon the Hawaiian diaspora and those living in it is lengthy and a discussion waiting to happen. I will begin this discussion here.

Before going into the many complexities of the diasporic identity and the various reactions to its existence, it is first important to unpack who is Hawaiian. It is known that Hawaiians are an ethnic group. Hawaiians are defined by ancestry, which is an important root in the discussion of Hawaiian identity. Starting with this, Hawaiians are those native to the islands of Hawaiʻi (Kanaka Maoli[1]). However, I find it important to mention that—especially in regards to the topic of this paper—that Kanaka Maoli, ethnic Hawaiians, are not less Hawaiian if they live away from Hawaiʻi and those who are living in Hawaiʻi today are not all ethnically Hawaiian. In today’s context and as generally accepted, Hawaiian is a race not a nationality; A Kanaka Maoli is one of Hawaiian ancestry, with all the kuleana[2] of a Native Hawaiian.

A misunderstanding takes place once “Hawaiian” is defined; though the definition mentioned previously explains that someone who is ethnically Hawaiian will still be Hawaiian regardless of where they live, people seem to forget that Hawaiians are located all around the world. There are many occasions on which friends and family have been met with the myth that Hawaiians simply do not live outside of Hawaiʻi. This, in theory, is unreasonable, given the plethora of reasons [to be researched] why a Kanaka Maoli would leave Hawaiʻi. The American military has a large presence in Hawaiʻi and throughout the Pacific, enlisting Pacific peoples into the Army or another branch, which then takes them to places all over the globe. In fact, the military is why I, and countless other Hawaiians in Texas ended up in such a place far from “home”. An editorial found in the Hawaii Tribune Herald, explains how the financial situation in Hawaiʻi is another factor causing Hawaiians to move off-island, pulling quotes from people currently living in the Hawaiian diaspora of the continental United States.

I’d love to come back home, but the economy in Hawaii was killing us financially. Milk [in Utah] is $1.25 a gallon...I am heartbroken every day because I want to come home, but reality reminds me why I cannot (Dawn Lehuanani Hutchinson, Utah).[3]

While many Hawaiians in diaspora find “easier” or “more affordable” lives outside of Hawaiʻi, that struggle that pushes natives out is not often recognized.

Social media is one thing that connects people to each other around the world. It is how many Hawaiians in diaspora keep in touch with family and friends in Hawaiʻi, and stay up-to-date with issues and events happening back home. However, it has also become a place for people to voice their opinions on public forums without invitation. One instance that lives rent-free in my mind, happened on Facebook; in the midst of the Protect Mauna Kea movement, an aunty of mine who lived in Texas had created a post on a group page about Mauna Kea. Though it has since been deleted because of the conflict it had caused, I remember it fairly well. She had posted something along the lines of: “Texas ʻohana[4] is sending aloha[5], please let us know if there is anything we can do from here.” Several comments were made, shaming her for living in Texas; for calling herself part of an ʻohana when she had chosen to leave her homeland, and saying that if she was “really a Kanaka” she would be on Hawaiʻi standing with the lāhui[6]. These comments were harmful, unprecedented, and showed that those diaspora communities still face judgement for having moved away from Hawaiʻi.

What could be more jarring though, is the judgment faced upon returning to Hawaiʻi. In my own experience, the Texas-made Hawaiian pride I had grown up with was suddenly lost upon moving back to Hawaiʻi for college. It was as if my Hawaiian identity was lost, because all I became to local Hawaiians in Hawaiʻi was Texan. I had grown up in Texas, not Hawaiʻi and therefore to them I was not Hawaiian. I was not alone in this either, and many teachers who realized this have spoken to me about never losing pride for who I am. Kanaka scholar ʻIlima Long, is a “returned” diasporic Hawaiian, meaning that she has returned to live in Hawaiʻi from her previous life in diaspora. Having worked with plenty of students during her time, she is one of the kumu that not only understands the experiences of diasporic Hawaiian youth, but also what that experience can contribute to academically:

I trip out when I think about how many [diasporic] Hawaiians I know who've [returned] home that I'm close to in Hawai'i, and what they bring to the lāhui from that positionality. But these are folks who have largely worked through the jolting identity issues that face kanaka who come home.[7]

Though the many opinions and happenings expressed in this paper have been of a negative nature, there has been a changing of the tides. Also on social media, there has been a recognition of these struggles, where people have been speaking out against hate and judgement. Because of this, I feel that the greater idea—the pride of being part of culture actively being oppressed—has instead connected those in diaspora communities to those in the local Hawaiian communities, with many locals now recognizing the difficulties and inner identity struggles that people face with being a Hawaiian raised away from Hawaiʻi.

It must be hard to grow up as Native diaspora. I can relate on a small level, living away from [Hawaiʻi] for the past 7 years...Ultimately your choice, but claiming your right as an Indigenous person is liberating and freeing. I know I feel closer to my ancestors when I own my identity as a Native Hawaiian. Hope no one ever makes you feel that you are less Native because you are diaspora or because of your blood quantum. If that ever happened, remember that is not our ways.[8]

While there are countless more opinions to be unpacked and addressed with an academic eye, being a Hawaiian that returned to Hawaiʻi from diaspora has been both a blessing and a curse; a push-and-pull experience where the complexities of identity have been questioned on multiple occasions. Learning what pushes Hawaiians away from Hawaiʻi and addressing that directly, could be the first step in debunking the myth that Hawaiians do not exist outside of Hawaiʻi, and ending the shame within our own communities.

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Notes

*all pictures used above are mine, courtesy of me*

[1]Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary: Hawaiian-English-Hawaiian, Rev. and enl. Ed. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986), 127: Human, person; 240, native, indigenous, respectively. Together referring to an indigenous Hawaiian. See also: Jonathan Osorio, “What Kine Hawaiian Are You?”, (The Contemporary Pacific, 2001), pg. 361.

[2]Pukui and Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary: Hawaiian-English-Hawaiian, 179: right, concern, responsibility.

[3]Keli'i Akina, "Why People Are Leaving 'Paradise'," editorial, Hawaii Tribune Herald, June 28, 2019, accessed October 21, 2020, https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2019/06/02/opinion/why-people-are-leaving-paradise/)

[4]Pukui and Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary: Hawaiian-English-Hawaiian, 276: family, relative, kin group.

[5]Ibid., 21: Love, compassion, sympathy.

[6]Ibid., 190: Nation, race, a people.

[7]ʻIlima Long, Twitter post. March 6, 2019, 7:03 a.m., https://twitter.com/ItsIlima/status/1103340225609129984.

[8]Palakiko Chandler, Twitter post. December 5, 2019, 1:00 p.m., https://twitter.com/palakiks/status/1202724336144007168.

sources

Akina, Keli'i. "Why People Are Leaving 'Paradise'." Editorial. Hawaii Tribune Herald, June 28, 2019. Accessed October 21, 2020. https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2019/06/02/opinion/why-people-are-leaving-paradise/.

Chandler, Palakiko. “Twitter / @palakiks: It must be hard to grow up Native…” December 5, 2019, 1:00 p.m., https://twitter.com/palakiks/status/1202724336144007168.

Long, Ilima. “Twitter / @ItsIlima: I trip out when I think about…” March 6, 2019, 7:03 a.m.‏ https://twitter.com/ItsIlima/status/1103340225609129984.

Osorio, John Kamakawiwoole. “‘What Kine Hawaiian Are You?" A Mo'olelo about Nationhood, Race, History, and the Contemporary Sovereignty Movement in Hawai'i.” The Contemporary Pacific 13, no. 2 (2001): 359–79.

Pukui, Mary Kawena., and Samuel H. Elbert. Hawaiian Dictionary: Hawaiian-English, English-Hawaiian. Honolulu, HI: Univ. of Hawaiʻi Press, 1986.

#HWST 343 #myth papahana

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xicanation · 8 years ago

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Efrén Paredes, Jr. was a 15-year-old honor student in St. Joseph, Michigan who was who was wrongly convicted by in a majority White jury in Berrien County, Michigan, a community with a history of white supremacy. There was no evidence whatsoever linking young Efrén, who had no previous criminal record, to a murder and armed robbery. He was given two life sentences without parole and another life sentence with possible parole.

Efrén has now served almost 28 years an is now 43. He is also a longtime activist and advocate who has opened unimaginable doors and touched communities far outside his cell.

Efrén needs our support: Ways to help

1. Sign the petition: www.tinyurl.com/Efren1016 2. Donate: paypal.me/ZavalaParedes

The controversial case has gained international attention, been condemned by veteran investigators, city councils, been addressed at the United Nations, and by numerous reknown activists and academics, including:

His story is also part of a few documentaries:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/185104498

and the Natural Life film.

According to 4efren.com:

Several notable scholars and activists across the country support Efren’s release including Dr. Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, Director, Institute for MultiRacial Justice, author, and activist; Dr. Carlos Munoz, Jr., Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, author and activist; Dr. Rodolfo Acuna, historian, educator and Chicano studies scholar; Dr. Jorge Chinea, Director of Chicano-Boricua Studies Department, Wayne State University, author and activist; Dr. Martha Grace Duncan, Professor of Law, Emory University, and author; Favianna Rodriguez, political printmaker, digital artist, activist; Juana Alicia, muralist, printmaker, educator, and activist; Elena Herrada, Director, Centro Obrero, Detroit Public Schools Board Member, and writer; Elisha Miranda aka E-Fierce, filmmaker, writer, and activist; Dr. Walter Garcia-Kawamoto, Journal of Adolescent Research, Manuscript Consulting Editor; and others.

Efren also enjoys the support of world renowned wrongful convictions expert Paul Ciolino, a veteran private investigator. Ciolino is the author of numerous articles in professional publications and the book, “In the Company of Giants: The Ultimate Investigation Guide for Legal Professionals, Activists, Journalists and the Wrongfully Convicted.” In addition, he co-wrote the best-selling and critically acclaimed textbooks “Advanced Forensic Criminal Defense Investigations” and “Advanced Forensic Civil Investigations.”

Ciolino is the former chief investigative advisor to Northwestern University Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, the Medill School of Journalism, and DePaul University Center for Justice in Capital Cases. In 2003, when former Illinois Governor George Ryan granted clemency and pardons to 167 death row inmates, he cited Ciolino’s investigative work, which helped free five innocent men, as one of the reasons for the en masse commutations.

According to Ciolino, “There is not one shred of credible evidence to suggest that Efren was involved in the murder. No weapon, no eyewitnesses, no physical evidence, no motive, no prior conduct to suggest that a 15-year-old student athlete, and honor role student with zero criminal background, would have planned, participated in or committed this murder. The community and jury were sold a bill of goods based on the words of drug dealers and thieves.”

Juvenile Life Without Parole

There was no physical evidence linking Efren to the crime, no eyewitnesses to the crime, and Efren was home with his parents and two brothers when the crime was committed.

Efren had no juvenile or adult criminal record previous to his arrest on March 15, 1989. In a rush to judgment, and efforts to allay community concerns of criminals committing further acts of violence, he was tried and convicted only three months after his arrest by a jury comprised of 11 White jurors and one Black juror.

Efren received illegal two life without parole (LWOP) sentences for one homicide and a parolable life sentence for the armed robbery. The prosecutor charged Efren under two alternate theories of murder — premeditated murder and felony murder — and his trial judge, Zoe Burkholz, sentenced him for both counts of murder.

The Berrien County Court is located St. Joseph, MI, the same city where the crime occurred. St. Joseph had a racial composition of being 95% White at the time. The judge, prosecutor, all the investigating police, and the victim in the case were all White. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Berrien County ranks among the top 25 most segregated metropolitan areas in the country.

All but one of the youths in Berrien County who have received life without parole (LWOP) sentences have been children of color. Efren is the only Latino youth in the county’s history to receive the sentence.

Efrén Paredes, Jr.

Efren has since been actively involved in community issues and amplified his message of non-violence and criminal justice reform. According to his site, “He has appeared on various radio stations and podcasts across the nation to discuss criminal justice issues. Some of the stations include National Public Radio (NPR), Michigan Radio, Central Michigan University Public Radio, the Jack Ebling Show, La Raza Chronicles, KPFA Radio, Detriot Superstation 910 AM, Thousand Kites, Juvenile Justice Matters, Youth Radio, and others.

“Articles about Efren have been featured on ColorLines, RaceWire, The Progressive, The Michigan Citizen, South Bend Tribune, TelesurTV, Latina Lista, The Nation, Seattle Times, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, Lansing State Journal, MLive, Associated Press, 99% Invisible, The Theory of Everything, AlterNet, and other web sites. In 2015 Latina Magazine named Efren as one of four Latino prisoners in the U.S. deserving of clemency.

“Efren has taken his message of non-violence and criminal justice reform to other countries as well. He spoke to a large audience of youth at a basketball tournament in Toronto, Ontario (Canada) and has appeared twice on TelesurTV, a station based in Quito, Ecuador.

“During his incarceration Efren has raised money for underfunded classrooms, youth summer camps, and breast cancer awareness. He also applied for and received grants from a corporation to build a weight training area and fund the purchase of library books, encyclopedias, and a learning resource center at a prison he was formally housed at.

“Efren has been invited to speak at various religious services and cultural organization events throughout his incarceration. He has been a keynote speaker at Cinco de Mayo, Latino History Month, Kwanzaa, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and Black History Month events, just to name a few.

“He has also developed proposals and received approval by prison administrators to host numerous members of the public who have visited prisons to speak on an array of subjects. Some of those people have included professors, state representatives, poets, authors, psychologists, lawyers, and social justice advocates.

“During the course of his incarceration Efren has received commendations from prison Wardens for the positive work he has done assisting the prisoner population through his work serving over 14 six-month terms as a member of the Warden’s Forum at various prisons. He also has the support of a retired Michigan Braille Transcribing Fund Executive Director as well as current and retired Michigan Department of Corrections staff.

“Efren is currently the subject of an immersive audio project being created by a New York-based podcast producer and Columbia University graduate student. An Emory University law professor is also devoting an entire chapter to him in an upcoming book she is authoring about prisoners sentenced to life without parole sentences when they were juveniles.

“In September 2015 Efren was among 20 prisoners selected to help develop a prison outreach component of the My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) program based at Michigan State University (MSU). MBK is a program that trains people to become mentors to at-risk African-American boys, Grade 6-8, in the Detroit Public Schools. Upon successful completion of the program training Efren will receive an MBK Mentor Internship certification from the MSU Residential College in the Arts and Humanities.”

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Xica Nation first heard about this story from Maria Luisa Zavala, Efren’s wife, who had these words to share:

How did you two connect? Why did this matter speak to your heart?

MZP: “In 2000 -2001 I was working at a nonprofit that started in SouthWest Detroit that later moved to Lansing Michigan. It was called the Xicano Development Center (X..D.C.). One of our board members had a relative that was incarcerated.

“In Michigan when prisoners want to start any type of cultural group on the inside they have to find an organization on the outside that will sponsor them.

“We had no idea what was required of a sponsoring organization. So, another board member and I went to find out. It was very simple, we just had to send a representative once a month to sit in on their meetings and make sure they were making positive plans and putting on cultural programs that benefited the rest of the inmates. So we signed on to sponsor L.A.S.S.O. (Latin America Spanish Speaking Organization). As the word got around in the facilities that the XDC had provided sponsorship to L.A.S.S.O. and then we got request from other facilities and from H.A.S.T.A. (Hispanic American Striving Towards Achievement). We also made contact with I.N.U. (Indians Nations United).

“In 2003 I started to attend the LASSO meeting in the Robert Cotton Correctional Facility in Jackson Michigan. This is where I met Efren Paredes Jr. He was the chair of the group. Efren, the LASSO Board members and I worked hard to prepare Xicano, Mexican, Latin American educational events and programing. I worked closely with Xicano/Latino professors at Michigan State University, community activities, and community leaders to go into the facility to speak and teach.

“I would say that maybe a year into the work that we were doing I became curious as to why someone like Efren (he was/is very well spoken, educated, eager to learn, caring, mentor, and well written (blog) would be serving three life sentences. So, I became interested and he gave me information about his case so that I could learn on my own why he was in there. He did not explain it to me, he wanted me to come up with my own conclusion after reading his court documents and learn details of his case.

“As for what motivated me to get involved in this matter I would say that after going through numerous court documents, and speaking to his family I am convinced he is innocent. The injustice that was committed upon a teen boy and his family was a terrible tragedy. I offered to help in any I could.

In college I learn to be a community organizer by being a member of MEXA, I was involved in a 6 day hunger strike, fought for xicano studies, increase hiring of xicano professors, increase recruitment of xicano latino students, and working on retention of those students. After college I we started a Brown Beret Chapter in Southwest Detroit in the late 1990’s. After learning of this injustice committed upon this family perhaps I could be of some assistance.

“I don’t want to sound cheesy but the words that resonated with me are “an injustice to one is an in injustice to all”. I also learned of the injustice committed to many youth getting waived into adult court to be treated, sentenced, and incarcerated as if they are grown. They can’t defend themselves, they can’t plead out because they do not know how to navigate the criminal system. Even adults that can understand the system get railroaded every day. So, this was an opportunity to help an individual get his case some attention locally, nationally, and internationally. Perhaps get him some justice.

“I helped him and the family launch a Free Efren campaign that went strong for many years, and we were even able to get a public hearing that would inform the Michigan Governor weather she should commute him or not. The hearing was attended by over 300 supporters. Unfortunately, the hearing was in front of the Parole Board, which informed him that they could not recommend to the Governor weather he should be commuted because up until this day, they are not charged with hearing cases of innocence.

“We have joined the national movement of changing laws of Juvenile Lifers With Out Parole (JLWOP), and prison reform. As a grassroots group we helped at times with informing ACLU and legislators of Efren’s case. Now as you have read laws have changed in favor or his release, but we still have a long way to go before his release.”

Efrén needs our support: ways to help

1. Sign the petition for resentencing: www.tinyurl.com/Efren1016 2. Donate directly to Efrén at: paypal.me/ZavalaParedes

Links to more information

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Free.Efren/

Online petition: www.tinyurl.com/Efren1016

Donate: paypal.me/ZavalaParedes

Efrén’s accomplishments: www.TinyURL.com/EfrenCV2016

Blog: www.4Efren.blogspot.com

Web Site: www.4Efren.com

Free Efrén: 15-year old honor student, wrongly charged 3 life sentences, spends 27th year changing the world from inside a cell Efrén Paredes, Jr. was a 15-year-old honor student in St. Joseph, Michigan who was who was wrongly convicted by in a majority White jury in Berrien County, Michigan, a community with a history of white supremacy.

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clubofinfo · 7 years ago

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Expert: Indeed, the young are tethered to a slumber land of no ideas or ideals. Shackled to the beasts of debt and endless consumer-rent-mortgage-fee-levy-tax-fine-surcharge-hidden add on Capitalism. They amble to the nearest Starbucks and find the plastic putrid world and shitty coffee essence safe, conformist, the place to snuggle in with Twitter-Snapchat-Instagram-Facebook-Spotify. Add to that the general malaise of wanting nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with hipster joker-a-second crap they have downloading and meandering through their apps, and we have a country of no serious thinking. Tapped into the spine of the controllers, the brain centers micro-processing the emotions of the dictators. Not to say the oldsters in US of A aren’t the same – ambulating in the grand isles of Costco and Walmart, and, yes, juiced up on a triple-shot foamy caramel latte. The faces of red-white-and-blue are the hollowed-out skulls of the zombie culture of wanting-getting-having-buying-discarding-paying it down through the ka-chang of the ever-present ATM. I worked hard as a social worker-case manager-breeder of anarchy with old and young, now the young, kids in care, state custody, plied by the champions of bureaucracy, who have some shekels and grants here and there to help them get way past the eight ball they are behind. Shuffled from foster home to foster home, many intersecting with the juvenile injustice system, and many bouncing from school to school, no foundations, no biological link to a put-together family, whatever that is these days in the land of ballooning debts and general anxiety disorder over the simple disparity of why the gap of accumulation of wealth is getting bigger and bigger. With fewer haves than can be imaginable, and mostly haves not wondering how each and every public service had now been captured by the MBA Gestapo and elite SS forces of financial felonies. That is the anxiety of the rebellious like me. Youth having to make a choice of learning how to weld metal for a living, at the community college, then hunkering down three to a room, or five to a living room. Rents are criminal, and available places for kids coming out of state foster custody are about as rare as a wild living trotting wolf in Wyoming. Kids go from state custody to homelessness . . . or variations on a theme . . . sometimes back to the very mothers or fathers that state bureaucracy yanked them from in the first place for heinous crimes. We play charades with these youth, with their minds, their dreams, their futures, their lives. We de-link ourselves from screaming at the top of our lungs – “The systems are broken, gone, because we let the billionaires and millionaires set policy, hold sway over states, cities, regions, denude all agency for a public commons, public good, public health, public economy and public investment track.” We have tuition debts in the hundreds of thousands per graduate student (AKA mark, sucker born every nano second, PT Barnum, yeah!) after a few years past the undergraduate degree. We have a beleaguered youth who know nothing but the logo-brand game, know nothing but what they might want on top of their triple-decker quadruple-supreme, triple-dipped seven-scoop ice cream Sunday. Conversations are about things, about stupid shows, about video games, about the nothingness, zilch of the inhumane celebrity-actor-musician-athlete culture. And, is it their fault, these Gen Z kids, when we have ball-and-chained their barely burgeoning lives and decades of future absurd toil to the whims of the murderous marketers and money mongers? I have youth who can’t hitch a ride on public transportation because it’s buggered up, runs one bus to the hour, or never makes it out to rural or suburban locales, and then they have to throw down for Lyft or Uber just to make it to their shit jobs where they are cogs . . . . I was just talking to them about how screwed up Uber is . . . “I didn’t even think about getting workers’ compensation,” John said. “Uber wasn’t paying for anything.” John knew what many drivers know: that Uber fights tooth and nail in courts and in front of labor boards from New York to California to classify its drivers as independent contractors, in part to avoid having to pay for workers’ compensation payouts to its more than 300,000 drivers, a workforce comparable to major employers like Home Depot and Target. . . . . or how rotten Google et al are The Highlands Forum doesn’t need to produce consensus recommendations. Its purpose is to provide the Pentagon a shadow social networking mechanism to cement lasting relationships with corporate power, and to identify new talent, that can be used to fine-tune information warfare strategies in absolute secrecy. Total participants in the DoD’s Highlands Forum number over a thousand, although sessions largely consist of small closed workshop style gatherings of maximum 25–30 people, bringing together experts and officials depending on the subject. Delegates have included senior personnel from SAIC and Booz Allen Hamilton, RAND Corp., Cisco, Human Genome Sciences, eBay, PayPal, IBM, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, the BBC, Disney, General Electric, Enron, among innumerable others; Democrat and Republican members of Congress and the Senate; senior executives from the US energy industry such as Daniel Yergin of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates; and key people involved in both sides of presidential campaigns. Other participants have included senior media professionals: David Ignatius, associate editor of the Washington Post and at the time the executive editor of the International Herald Tribune; Thomas Friedman, long-time New York Times columnist; Arnaud de Borchgrave, an editor at Washington Times and United Press International; Steven Levy, a former Newsweek editor, senior writer for Wired and now chief tech editor at Medium; Lawrence Wright, staff writer at the New Yorker; Noah Shachtmann, executive editor at the Daily Beast; Rebecca McKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices Online; Nik Gowing of the BBC; and John Markoff of the New York Times. … or how felonious Amazon has always been, continues to be, and will forever be a curse to all humanity if we do not just stop using it, and taking the big guy to tax court, like the courts of Inquisition taking youth to court if they fudge on their housing subsidy, or the court of Scarlet Letter for daddies in arrears for child support . . . . Yep, I try and tell the Latte Lads and Lasses that Amazon is the criminal enterprise, maximum security vanguard of all bad things . . . . As Amazon spreads around the world selling everything and squeezing other businesses that use its platform, is Jeff Bezos laughing at humanity? His ultimate objective seems to preside over a mega-trillion dollar global juggernaut that is largely automated, except for that man at the top with the booming laugh who rules over the means by which we consume everything from goods, to media, to groceries. Crushing competitors, history shows, is leads to raising prices by monopolizers. Consumers, workers and retailers alike must be on higher alert and address this growing threat. You have nothing to lose except Bezos’s tightening algorithmic chains. To start the conversation, you can wait for Franklin Foer’s new book out this September, titled World Without a Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech. Until then, a good substitute is his 2014 article in The New Republic, ‘Amazon Must be Stopped.’ I tell my youth to look into it, how the billionaires’ club is made up of perverts – hating man and woman kind, hating the poor, the downtrodden, and certainly hating foster youth or recovering adults, and the homeless, and the working poor looking for a decent clinic to set a broken bone from working like slaves for these millionaires and billionaires. Our youth are prime victims of agnotolgy – the deliberate erasing of facts, truths, beliefs, but truly, history. The Jewish Nakba scrubbing. Holocaust deniers in Zion, and the new Zion, the American continent. How Canadians know nothing of their own terrible rape and murder of first nations peoples . . . their support of African despots . . . their terrible homegrown devils of international mining and arms sales . . . . Agnotology, the Two Minutes of Hate, a la Orwell, the fabricated Emmanuel Goldstein. Youth who know nothing of North Korea, of Vietnam, of any of the truths of their own womb . . . truths scrubbed by schools, by the controllers, facilitated by the Media and Publishing, and consumed by overworked, overwrought parents. Youth that hate government but love the big boys and girls running roughshod over our-their own survival: the business class. I find it interesting that Ralph Nader goes on an attack of Just Jeff Bezos (Amazon dot conned) without footnoting his piece that ALL the Fortune 1000 captains (Goose-stepping toward the vaults of shekels) of industry-finance-military-real estate-technology-media-energy are dirtier than the Mafioso, dirtier than any El Chapo, dirtier than any den of pimps and pornographers. Is there a clean, good one on the lists below? And think of the investments, the power these people wield to determine global financial-military-cultural future: Bill Gates: $86.0 billion, United States, Microsoft Warren Buffett: $75.6 billion, United States, Berkshire Hathaway Jeff Bezos: $72.8 billion, United States, Amazon.com Amancio Ortega: $71.3 billion, Spain, Inditex, Zara Mark Zuckerberg: $56.0 billion, United States, Facebook Carlos Slim: $54.5 billion, Mexico, América Móvil, Grupo Carso Larry Ellison: $52.2 billion, United States, Oracle Corporation Charles Koch: $48.3 billion, United States, Koch Industries David Koch: $48.3 billion,United States, Koch Industries Michael Bloomberg: $47.5 billion, United States, Bloomberg L.P. Or the entire DNA strains of the World’s Richest Families, they any better than Jeff Bezos and Monopoly Amazon? That’s the rub is it not, that the poverty my youth suffer, the poverty I suffer, all these shell games played with our social right: national health care; real social security; public schools and colleges; libraries for the people; banks of the states; water, air, land, food, press/journalism part of the public commons; the right to a roof over your head and a light bulb and plate of slop and a flicker of heat in the dead of winter; the vast collective right of nature to persist, excel, and evolve. This country is set ablaze by the entire Little Eichmann and Big Himmler and Ugly Zionist and Crusader logic of pain and theft. My small charges, 16 to 21, are caught in a web of psychological-physiological-economic-educational-medical-spiritual deception, and they have nothing to turn to than the ebbing and flowing corpuscles created by the generators of multi-syllabic, three dozen hyphenated things they consume, all nano-particled and sliced and diced with the magic of the chemical still. We have kids with ticks, kids with obesity-lethargy-lingering intelligence and cognition. We have children who are the essence of the Stanley Milgram experiment on obedience, except his was an experiment on authority, lab coats and Yale basement authority, whereas today, the Milgram experiment is fluid, directly wired into Facebook-Google-Anything Digital. Today, youth and the old are kettled to consumer and be all they can be based on a giant interstellar Madison Avenue-PsyOps experiment to lobotomize-confuse-disassociate-deny humans in this country. Imagine, no rebellion, no running through the streets, no daily Molotov’s thrown into the limos and onto the doorsteps of the millionaire and billionaire murderers. Milgram examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on “obedience” – that they were just following orders from their superiors. The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question: Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974). These finance-foisting, tax-robbing, war-creating, debt-inducing, human/child/ecosystem-sacrificing pigs are given more than a trillion get out of jail cards. They are running things, playing editor like Jeff Bezos, ruining everything like Mr. PayPal – My joke about Thiel’s “Brownshirt Combinator” isn’t as funny now, is it? ‘Transition Adviser Peter Thiel Could Directly Profit From Mass Deportations’: Palantir Technologies, the data-mining company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition adviser Peter Thiel, will likely assist the Trump administration in its efforts to track and collect intelligence on immigrants, according to a review of public records by The Intercept. Since 2011, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations has paid Palantir tens of millions of dollars to help construct and operate a complex intelligence system called FALCON, which allows ICE to store, search, and analyze troves of data that include family relationships, employment information, immigration history, criminal records, and home and work addresses. […] Working closely with a president-elect who has pledged to dramatically expand ICE, Thiel’s varied connections to the immigration agency place him in a position to potentially benefit financially from a deportation campaign that carries highly personal stakes for millions of Americans. […] In addition to containing information on family relationships and immigration history, the records FALCON collects can also include photographs of subjects, employment information, educational background, and “geospatial data.” […] Last month, it was reported that Trump and his advisers are drafting plans to launch a campaign of workplace raids across the country to find undocumented immigrants. With a mandate to enforce laws relating to unauthorized employment, HSI has been identified as the primary component within ICE that conducts such job-site raids. This past October, after a lengthy investigation, HSI agents raided several Mexican restaurants in Buffalo, New York, arresting more than a dozen workers, some of whom were charged with criminal counts of “illegal re-entry,” raising an outcry from immigrant advocates. In 2013, after an HSI raid on carwashes in Phoenix, more than two dozen immigrants were reportedly sent to Enforcement and Removal Operations officers for possible deportation. ICE can conduct such raids even in so-called sanctuary cities that have refused to allow local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE in finding and removing undocumented immigrants. […] Palantir, which is backed by the CIA’s venture capital arm, did not respond to a request for comment regarding its ICE contracts and concerns over potential conflicts of interest. Peter Thiel spokesperson Jeremiah Hall declined to comment on a list of emailed queries, including a question asking whether Thiel has yet signed the Trump transition ethics agreement. While Ralph Nader is huge in so many ways, and I worked for his campaigns and was lambasted by colleagues in journalism, education and the environmental movement, the real rub is how he at his wise age can even stomach ANYTHING the billionaire class says, does, and infers. His Utopian thing, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us, was and is off the mark, big-time – In the cozy den of the large but modest house in Omaha where he has lived since he started on his first billion, Warren Buffett watched the horrors of Hurricane Katrina unfold on television in early September 2005. . . . On the fourth day, he beheld in disbelief the paralysis of local, state, and federal authorities unable to commence basic operations of rescue and sustenance, not just in New Orleans, but in towns and villages all along the Gulf Coast. . . He knew exactly what he had to do. . . So begins the vivid fictional account by political activist and bestselling author Ralph Nader that answers the question, “What if?” What if a cadre of super-rich individuals tried to become a driving force in America to organize and institutionalize the interests of the citizens of this troubled nation? What if some of America’s most powerful individuals decided it was time to fix our government and return the power to the people? What if they focused their power on unionizing Wal-Mart? What if a national political party were formed with the sole purpose of advancing clean elections? What if these seventeen superrich individuals decided to galvanize a movement for alternative forms of energy that will effectively clean up the environment? What if together they took on corporate Goliaths and Congress to provide the necessities of life and advance the solutions so long left on the shelf by an avaricious oligarchy? What could happen? America is a country of the dead. As is Israel, and note that not ONE cute-real-serious-well-acted-poorly- acted movie about the perfect Milgram subjects – Israelis – has ever been made, produced, shown on the Media, one clearly hoisted by Zionists – in some of their own words, as Gilad Atzmon lends some weight to this, In his recent address to the ultra-Zionist and war-mongering Stand With Us, Alan Dershowitz said, ‘People say Jews are too powerful, too strong, too rich, we control the media, we’ve too much this, too much that and we often apologetically deny our strength and our power. Don’t do that!’ Elder Zionist Dershowitz who acquired for himself the reputation of a “remarkable liar” (Chomsky) and a “serial plagiarist” (Finkelstein) probably decided, just before he meets his creator, to give truth one last try. In our world, no one can deny that Jews are “too powerful,” “too rich” or that they “control the media.” Yet no one can ignore that Jews themselves are rarely apologetic about their extensive and overblown power. In fact, as with Dershowitz, most Jews tend to boast about the various facets of Jewish domination and, while boasting, use every trick in the book to silence anyone else who points to that power. As I have been arguing for several years, Jewish power is the ability to suppress the discussion on Jewish power. Actually, Dershowitz’ approach here is rather refreshing. He admits that Jews are overwhelmingly powerful yet insists on presenting a rationale as to why Jews should never apologize about this overbearing and abusive power. ‘WE (the Jews, presumably) have earned the right to influence public debate, WE have earned the right to be heard, WE have contributed disproportionately to success of this country.’ One may wonder who is included in that ‘WE’ that has contributed so much to the ‘success’ of America. Is he referring to his client and close friend Jeffrey Epstein who pimped under-aged girls for the elites? Does Dershowitz’ ‘WE’ include Alan Greenspan who led the country to class genocide? Or perhaps his ‘WE’ denotes all those Wall Street Jewish bankers, like the Goldmans, the Sachs and the Soroses – those who, on a daily basis, gamble on the American future and the global economy. And almost certainly, Dershowitz’ ‘WE’ includes Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson who have managed to reduce American politics into merely an internal Zionist affair. These are daunting times, the entire globe sucked of its telephone calls, its computer messages, all the uploads and downloads, every human individual defecation and urination and climax cataloged in these nuclear-powered cloud servers. Battened down, these surveillance hatches. Young people are now the cows, bred to follow the orders of Old Navy and any new shiny merchant of duncery and death; to pay for their cell phones, diligently, to pay-pay-pay for the poisons going into their brains and bellies. They are taught to not question or to not rebel, or to not just sit down and start a ruckus. Daily, the power of corrupted commercialization is like s drug resistant tuberculosis eating at our next and our next generation’s soul. Until there is no resistant antinode or antibiotic to stop the final solution drawn through the elaborate algorithms of controllers – massive forgetting, massive insanity. These demigods — the monopolies — supplying every microgram of humanity’s needs, now that we are sealed in this fate of capitalism – addicted to goods and services unnecessary, and willing to watch all good and common needs vanish with each new libertarian sucking the blood from us all like the vampires and nematodes of the capitalist elites. http://clubof.info/

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