Negative information has been known about for some time. A study at the University of Maryland revealed its existence in the media realm a couple years ago.
Fox News. The More You Watch, the Less You Know.(tm)
"several independent studies and investigations have been done to show that this was sabatoge."
The "independent" study (singular, not plural) that claims it was sabotage, which was conducted by the Arthur D. Little firm, was paid for by Union Carbide.
That's right. We should spend a few more billion dollars on the Shuttle Program and replace the HST's gyroscopes because "a rat done bit [your] sister Nell".
I think you've got it backwards. From your point of view, your interpretation ought to be that the poem is arguing that we shouldn't spend that money.
But even then you'd be missing the point. The present-day message of Gil Scott-Heron's famous poem (which has been used a lot in response to the Bush administration's off-the-cuff call for a new moon/mars program) is not that we shouldn't spend money on the space program, but that we shouldn't do so while continuing to ignore the billions need by our nation's schools, urban areas, infrastructure, etc., etc.
The whole announcement was in fact merely a cheap election-year ploy that the Bush team came up with in an election campaign brainstorming session. It had nothing whatsoever to do with a coherent, intelligently thought out space program (which I, in fact, would support). And this in the context of an administration which continues to completely ignore our country's domestic needs while driving our deficit through the roof with repeated tax cuts for the rich. That's the point of the poem.
Even if this were a correct assessment (which it's not), do you feel it's proper to respond with what amounts to a call for mass ethnic cleansing of the Black population?
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.
Her face and arms began to swell and Whitey's on the moon.
I can't pay no doctor bills but Whitey's on the moon.
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still while Whitey's on the moon.
The man just upped my rent last night cuz Whitey's on the moon.
No hot water, no toilets, no lights but Whitey's on the moon.
I wonder why he's uppin me. Cuz Whitey's on the moon?
I was already givin' him fifty a week but now Whitey's on the moon.
Taxes takin' my whole damn check,
The junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up,
And as if all that shit wasn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.
Her face and arms began to swell but Whitey's on the moon.
Was all that money I made last year for Whitey on the moon?
How come there ain't no money here? Hmm! Whitey's on the moon.
Ya know, I just about had my fill of Whitey on the moon.
I think I'll send these doctor bills
airmail special....
to Whitey on the moon.
Virtually all of the ones we killed were from North Vietnam, which was in the process of invading South Vietnam.
Your assertion that there are two Vietnams is ridiculous. The Vietnamese people are ONE nation, ONE people. "North" and "South" Vietnam were artificially created by occupying colonial powers. It was the VIETNAMESE who were fighting the defensive struggle to force the foreign occupiers from their land. WE and the FRENCH were the aggressors invading a foreign country where we didn't belong. Claiming the Vietnamese were the aggressors turns reality absolutely on its head.
Since there are Vietnamese people still alive, then by definition genocide did not happen.
By your definition, genocide didn't happen to the Jews in WWII, didn't happen to the Armenians under Ottoman Turkey, etc., either. Your misinterpretation of a schematic definition from a dictionary conflicts with how society has actually used the term historically.
And you are obviously too young to know anything about what was going on during the Vietnam war.
Well, Anonymous Coward, I do know that we killed on the order of 2 million Vietnamese people. That's genocide by any rational measure. Tortured a fair number of them as well, according to the first-hand testimony of a large number of troops, prominently including those who testified in the Winter Soldier Investigation. All that makes anything that the Vietnamese did to our troops invading their land pale in comparison.
And as a matter of fact, I actually know a number of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Learned a fair amount from them. And they know from first-hand experience what our country did to the people of that country.
I think it's interesting that the media is following the forged photo and completely ignoring the fact that the man claiming now to be pro-military and bragging about his service record has been proven to be one of Hanoi Jane's fellow protesters.
Everybody already knows he protested the Vietnam war after he came home from it carrying a number of medals. It's not even remotely a secret. As far as I understand, he's still proud that he protested that unjust war.
Also, it's pretty funny that the Right Wing thinks trying to associate him with Jane Fonda will get anyone outraged besides the Right Wing itself, which already hates him anyway. Most Americans associate Jane Fonda far more with her exercise video. If they get outraged about anything, it'll be about her role in the fashion trend of wearing those silly belts along with the leotards.
All kinds of accusations are flying around regarding whether the report is "politically biased." Did anybody read down to the end of the article in the NY Times? (I already know the answer to that question, of course; I merely ask it for rhetorical purposes.)
In the second-to-last paragraph, the findings within the report are supported by Dr. Sidney Drell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. The Hoover Institution, for god's sake!
What does that tell us about the question of political bias in the report?
I know the history behind your comment. I just found it interesting that you seem to think a literacy test given today would single out black Americans.
Actually, I think it would single out Blacks and Latinos to a large extent. For example, here in NYC the public school system, which is mostly Black and Latino, is massively underfunded by a racist appropriation scheme which funnels a disproportionate share of funding to mostly white, middle-class upstate schools. As a result of that and various other factors, a significant proportion of students coming out of the public school system are functionally illiterate. Most of the white kids in the city go to private schools or get into the best public schools by classist selection mechanisms. Talk to any NYC schoolteacher (I know several) and they'll tell you all about it.
Is it more racist to note where systemic racial disparities occur in the real world and speak out against them, or is it more racist to pretend they don't exist and allow them to continue?
Are you implying that black people on the whole are illiterate? Kind of a racist comment, don't you think?
Sigh. Americans just don't know their history. I was making a connection between the historical use of literacy tests in the South during the era of Jim Crow to keep Black people off the voter rolls (because institutional white supremacy in the South did its best to keep Blacks uneducated, literacy tests were a convenient way of keeping them from voting) and the 2000 Presidential election.
Bush got selected in 2000 because of a practice in Florida which can also properly be labeled Jim Crow. The vote as cast was very close. But this didn't take into account many thousands of overwhelmingly Black voters who were improperly purged from the rolls by a private company with ties to the Republicans because they were alleged to be felons who had lost the right to vote, even though the overwhelming majority were innocent.
Forget all the to-do about hanging chads and recounts in various counties. If this crime hadn't been allowed to happen, Gore would have gotten a clear majority in the state and would have become President. Bush is a Jim Crow president. Straight up. Read the article.
We don't need literacy tests to bring back Jim Crow and clean thousands of Black people from the voter rolls. All we have to do is hire ChoicePoint and "Leave the Scrubbing to Us!(tm)"
At a moment when elements of the US government are once again spying on and terrorizing vulnerable members of US society, it's worth remembering the speech of William Mandel in front of the House Unamerican Activities Committee. His words spelled the beginning of the end for that dark moment in American history:
Honorable beaters of children, sadists, uniformed and in plain clothes, distinguished Dixiecrat wearing the clothing of a gentleman, eminent Republican who opposes an accommodation with the one country with which we must live at peace in order for us and all our children to survive.
My boy of fifteen left this room a few minutes ago in sound health and not jailed, solely because I asked him to be in here to learn something about the procedures of the United States government and one of its committees. Had he been outside where a son of a friend of mine had his head split by these goons operating under your orders, my boy today might have paid the penalty of permanent injury or a police record for desiring to come here and hear how this committee operates.
If you think that I am going to cooperate with this collection of Judases, of men who sit there in violation of the United States Constitution, if you think I will cooperate with you in any way, you are insane! This body is improperly constituted. It is a kangaroo court. It does not have my respect, it has my utmost contempt.
I would say author Terry Bisson came a lot closer to foreseeing this turn of events. An excerpt from a review:
What if the first manned spaceflight to Mars was staged by a Hollywood film company? Voyage to the Red Planet by Terry Bisson.
Look at NASA...please! If there isn't a more frightening indication of the impact of space on today's culture, I'll become a monk in space. Can you even see NASA from where you are, or is it hidden behind the lifestyles, the crime reports, the utter banality of "human interest" stories in the news? When you do hear about NASA it is either because they are requesting more money, having their budget cut by Congress, or they've delayed the shuttle launch yet again. Is today's apathy with space caused by NASA's incompentence, or vice versa? Either way, the future looks grim.
Grim tidings bring modest proposals. Bisson's proposal in Voyage to the Red Planet may be hidden by a standard SF adventure plot, but it is as cutting as Swift's ever was. When the government has to sell off various departments (like NASA) to corporations to pay back the national debt, when movie stars become a new royalty, that's where you'll find Bisson, pillorying the temples with a humor and irreverence that's a joy to read. In every chapter Bisson drops a casual remark that seems innocuous at first, but sits like a dormant virus until you immune system yells "Uncle" and then unleashes its full fury making you double- and triple-up in laughter.
The plot and writing reminded me of late 60s/early 70s Philip K. Dick, except jazzed up and in tune with the 90s. Like Dick's novels, even though Voyage to the Red Planet is set in the future, its topic is the present. Today, Bisson says, we are in danger from greedy corporations threatening to gobble up each other in a gigantic Ouroboros-orgy, we are in danger of creating a new aristocracy with its own rules and classes, we are in danger of losing our perspective on what is important and what isn't. What Bisson isn't saying, though, is that the future or the present is filled with doom. If we can doctor ourselves with a little humor and stop taking everything so damned seriously, perhaps there will be some hope for us all.
(Originally published in NOVA Express.) Posted at January 01, 1991 03:31 PM
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Let's just hope George hasn't been paying Condi in oil shares, so President Rice (or McKain, don't mind really) can do the Right Thing.
You do know that there was a Chevron oil tanker named the "Condoleezza Rice," don't you? (In 2001 they quietly renamed it the "Altair Voyager.")
Negative information has been known about for some time. A study at the University of Maryland revealed its existence in the media realm a couple years ago.
Fox News. The More You Watch, the Less You Know.(tm)
The "independent" study (singular, not plural) that claims it was sabotage, which was conducted by the Arthur D. Little firm, was paid for by Union Carbide.
Of course they do. The "independent" study was paid for by the company.
Here's what I think is the best folk song about Ashcroft:
The Ballad of John Ashcroft
Pee all that you can pee
in the Aaaaaaahrmy
I think you've got it backwards. From your point of view, your interpretation ought to be that the poem is arguing that we shouldn't spend that money.
But even then you'd be missing the point. The present-day message of Gil Scott-Heron's famous poem (which has been used a lot in response to the Bush administration's off-the-cuff call for a new moon/mars program) is not that we shouldn't spend money on the space program, but that we shouldn't do so while continuing to ignore the billions need by our nation's schools, urban areas, infrastructure, etc., etc.
The whole announcement was in fact merely a cheap election-year ploy that the Bush team came up with in an election campaign brainstorming session. It had nothing whatsoever to do with a coherent, intelligently thought out space program (which I, in fact, would support). And this in the context of an administration which continues to completely ignore our country's domestic needs while driving our deficit through the roof with repeated tax cuts for the rich. That's the point of the poem.
Even if this were a correct assessment (which it's not), do you feel it's proper to respond with what amounts to a call for mass ethnic cleansing of the Black population?
Nice vicious white supremacist response.
By GIL-SCOTT HERON
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.
Her face and arms began to swell and Whitey's on the moon.
I can't pay no doctor bills but Whitey's on the moon.
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still while Whitey's on the moon.
The man just upped my rent last night cuz Whitey's on the moon.
No hot water, no toilets, no lights but Whitey's on the moon.
I wonder why he's uppin me. Cuz Whitey's on the moon?
I was already givin' him fifty a week but now Whitey's on the moon.
Taxes takin' my whole damn check,
The junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up,
And as if all that shit wasn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.
Her face and arms began to swell but Whitey's on the moon.
Was all that money I made last year for Whitey on the moon?
How come there ain't no money here? Hmm! Whitey's on the moon.
Ya know, I just about had my fill of Whitey on the moon.
I think I'll send these doctor bills
airmail special....
to Whitey on the moon.
Copyright Gil-Scott Heron, 1972.
Your assertion that there are two Vietnams is ridiculous. The Vietnamese people are ONE nation, ONE people. "North" and "South" Vietnam were artificially created by occupying colonial powers. It was the VIETNAMESE who were fighting the defensive struggle to force the foreign occupiers from their land. WE and the FRENCH were the aggressors invading a foreign country where we didn't belong. Claiming the Vietnamese were the aggressors turns reality absolutely on its head.
Since there are Vietnamese people still alive, then by definition genocide did not happen.
By your definition, genocide didn't happen to the Jews in WWII, didn't happen to the Armenians under Ottoman Turkey, etc., either. Your misinterpretation of a schematic definition from a dictionary conflicts with how society has actually used the term historically.
Well, Anonymous Coward, I do know that we killed on the order of 2 million Vietnamese people. That's genocide by any rational measure. Tortured a fair number of them as well, according to the first-hand testimony of a large number of troops, prominently including those who testified in the Winter Soldier Investigation. All that makes anything that the Vietnamese did to our troops invading their land pale in comparison.
And as a matter of fact, I actually know a number of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Learned a fair amount from them. And they know from first-hand experience what our country did to the people of that country.
Everybody already knows he protested the Vietnam war after he came home from it carrying a number of medals. It's not even remotely a secret. As far as I understand, he's still proud that he protested that unjust war.
Also, it's pretty funny that the Right Wing thinks trying to associate him with Jane Fonda will get anyone outraged besides the Right Wing itself, which already hates him anyway. Most Americans associate Jane Fonda far more with her exercise video. If they get outraged about anything, it'll be about her role in the fashion trend of wearing those silly belts along with the leotards.
All kinds of accusations are flying around regarding whether the report is "politically biased." Did anybody read down to the end of the article in the NY Times? (I already know the answer to that question, of course; I merely ask it for rhetorical purposes.)
In the second-to-last paragraph, the findings within the report are supported by Dr. Sidney Drell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. The Hoover Institution, for god's sake!
What does that tell us about the question of political bias in the report?
I know I'd feel powerful defeating with my bare hands an old man on kidney dialysis.
Is it more racist to note where systemic racial disparities occur in the real world and speak out against them, or is it more racist to pretend they don't exist and allow them to continue?
Bush got selected in 2000 because of a practice in Florida which can also properly be labeled Jim Crow. The vote as cast was very close. But this didn't take into account many thousands of overwhelmingly Black voters who were improperly purged from the rolls by a private company with ties to the Republicans because they were alleged to be felons who had lost the right to vote, even though the overwhelming majority were innocent.
Forget all the to-do about hanging chads and recounts in various counties. If this crime hadn't been allowed to happen, Gore would have gotten a clear majority in the state and would have become President. Bush is a Jim Crow president. Straight up. Read the article.
We don't need literacy tests to bring back Jim Crow and clean thousands of Black people from the voter rolls. All we have to do is hire ChoicePoint and "Leave the Scrubbing to Us!(tm)"
What if the first manned spaceflight to Mars was staged by a Hollywood film company? Voyage to the Red Planet by Terry Bisson.
Look at NASA...please! If there isn't a more frightening indication of the impact of space on today's culture, I'll become a monk in space. Can you even see NASA from where you are, or is it hidden behind the lifestyles, the crime reports, the utter banality of "human interest" stories in the news? When you do hear about NASA it is either because they are requesting more money, having their budget cut by Congress, or they've delayed the shuttle launch yet again. Is today's apathy with space caused by NASA's incompentence, or vice versa? Either way, the future looks grim.
Grim tidings bring modest proposals. Bisson's proposal in Voyage to the Red Planet may be hidden by a standard SF adventure plot, but it is as cutting as Swift's ever was. When the government has to sell off various departments (like NASA) to corporations to pay back the national debt, when movie stars become a new royalty, that's where you'll find Bisson, pillorying the temples with a humor and irreverence that's a joy to read. In every chapter Bisson drops a casual remark that seems innocuous at first, but sits like a dormant virus until you immune system yells "Uncle" and then unleashes its full fury making you double- and triple-up in laughter.
The plot and writing reminded me of late 60s/early 70s Philip K. Dick, except jazzed up and in tune with the 90s. Like Dick's novels, even though Voyage to the Red Planet is set in the future, its topic is the present. Today, Bisson says, we are in danger from greedy corporations threatening to gobble up each other in a gigantic Ouroboros-orgy, we are in danger of creating a new aristocracy with its own rules and classes, we are in danger of losing our perspective on what is important and what isn't. What Bisson isn't saying, though, is that the future or the present is filled with doom. If we can doctor ourselves with a little humor and stop taking everything so damned seriously, perhaps there will be some hope for us all.
(Originally published in NOVA Express.) Posted at January 01, 1991 03:31 PM