Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

JaneyVee

JaneyVee's Journal
JaneyVee's Journal
December 17, 2014

Breaking: Alan Gross Released From Cuba In Prisoner Exchange

Alan Gross, who was arrested and has been imprisoned for espionage in Cuba for the past five years, is on his way back to the U.S., ABC News reported.

Alan Gross, who was arrested in Cuba and held prisoner on allegations of espionage, is on his way back to the U.S. after five years in lockup, ABC News reported.

He was released as a "humanitarian gesture,"the network said. Part of the deal includes Cuba agreeing to more internet freedoms, CNN reported.

CNN is also reporting that Gross is not the only person Cuba is releasing to the U.S. An American "intel asset" is part of a separate dealin exchange for the three remaining members of the Cuban Five, spies form that nation convicted in Miami in the 1980s, who are still in U.S. lockup.

President Obama is also expected to detail new ways of repairing the U.S. and Cuba's relations, ABC News reported.

Link: http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomnamako/reports-alan-gross-released-from-lockup-in-cuba?s=mobile

December 13, 2014

"Hang the lying Kenyan traitor!"

one protester could be heard saying in the video.

"Plenty of trees in the front yard," another said. "Wouldn't be the first one hung on one of them trees."

"We've got rope," said another.

"Don't snap his neck, you pull him up watch him choke to death," someone else said



link: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/tea-partiers-protest-lynch-obama

December 9, 2014

Lets call forced rectal feeding what it really is:

Rape/Sexual assault.

And that clearly makes it a war crime.

December 7, 2014

Perhaps the reason we don't have enough Liberal leaders to vote for....

Is because all the Liberals are busy looking for Liberal leaders to vote for?

There isn't some factory that mass produces Liberals. If YOU are a Liberal, PLEASE, feel free to throw your hat into the ring. Complaining on DU 24/7 about the lack of Liberal leadership won't magically make Liberal leaders appear.

Are you a Liberal? Well I've got good news for you: YOU can become a Liberal leader. No need to keep looking for one. Be a leader. DO IT!

You will have the support of the posters on this website who will then retweet your posts or facebook your posts which will echo through social media and launch you into leadership position. And with voting turnout at 35% (sadly) you will only need about 20% of your state to vote for you anyway. Easy.


December 5, 2014

How White People Got Made

It started in the late 1600s in America, but like so many scams, it spiraled out of control until it had a life of its own.

Not long after Europeans started arriving on the east coast of North America and the Caribbean Islands they found themselves rich in land but desperate for labor to work the land. The answer they struck upon was importation of bond labor, initially mostly Irish. The Irish had not been considered fully human under English law for centuries, and they ended up in plantations and working sugar under the Caribbean sun. The easy part of importing Irish (and Scottish) slave labor was that they were right next to England. The downside is there wasn’t enough of them for the amazing amounts of land laid before the eager English settlers, and thus the Atlantic slave trade with Africa was born. This is the story we hear in school, but the abridged version we get, intentionally or not, hides the scam of it. Initially the bond terms of convict, Scotch-Irish, and African labor was a set period of time, at the end of which they received bond money and their freedom in this new land. In fact, not that many bondsmen and women lived to be free, but some did, and established themselves as a mixed-race, free peasantry of the new world. If you’ve ever wondered where the free blacks of so many stories of early America came from, a large number were the families of freed African bond laborers.

As time went on, the labor needs of the land holders continued to grow, and desperate to cultivate the land, they were loathe to let go of their bond servants and the bondsmen and bondswomen’s children (whom they kept in bondage for a legally defined time as well). In the mean time, a growing American peasantry was proving as difficult to govern as the European peasantry back home, periodically rising up in riot and rebellion, light skinned and dark skinned together. The political leaders of the Virginia colony struck upon an answer to all these problems, an answer which plagues us to this day.

The Virginians legislated a new class of people into existence: the whites. They gave the whites certain rights, and took other rights from blacks. White, as a language of race, appears in Virginia around the 1680s, and seems to first appear in Virginia law in 1691. And thus whiteness, and to a degree as well blackness, was born in the mind of America.

As of the 18th century whites could not be permanently enslaved as they sometimes had been before, and black slaves could never work their way to freedom. The whites were told this was because God had made the blacks inferior to the whites, just as the whites were inferior to the superior classes that owned property. It’s worthwhile to remember that they didn’t give whites political rights, they didn’t give whites the vote — that would not happen then nor at the revolution and independence. Whites didn’t get the vote until the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Property owners, both of land and slaves, were the only ones who could vote. That included black land and slave owners until various states passed laws in the early 18th century to take their franchise away.

This plan worked gorgeously. It broke all efforts of the majority of people, African or European, to fight for civil and political rights in America against a landed class that literally ruled everything. It reduced a portion of the people to the status of the negro slave, and gave the poor but now white people a precious and entitled inch to stand above the permanently enslaved on the social ladder. The next thing the politicians did sealed the deal: they paid poor whites a bounty for runaway slaves, and often made them overseers for slaves, turning every poor white in America into a prison guard against the people who had once been their neighbors and allies.

The rest: https://medium.com/message/how-white-people-got-made-6eeb076ade42

Profile Information

Member since: Tue Jul 31, 2012, 06:04 PM
Number of posts: 19,877

About JaneyVee

Work in tv/film production - Unionista UPM for the DGA - Mother - Music Lover - Graduate of The New School economics/film - Born & raised in Williamsburg Brooklyn 1981 - living in Manhattan.
Latest Discussions»JaneyVee's Journal