The Evil Empire: Turning Back the Clock On Civil Rights

Greetings all!

This post comes amid some of the greatest triumphs and failures of the United States Supreme Court this week. The triumph, of course, being that the Court essentially ruled that DOMA and Proposition 8 were unconstitutional. To be specific, the Court stated that in the case of DOMA, the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages performed in the states which allow them. This also means the federal government can give federal benefits to same-sex married couples that move to states without legalized same-sex marriage. In the case of Proposition 8, the Court stated that those in support of it had no legal standing, and therefore the lower court ruling finding Proposition 8 unconstitutional stood as correct, thereby allowing same-sex marriages to resume in California. This simply means that the burden of allowing marriage equality has shifted to the states; not the final step, but one we desperately needed. The failure of the Court comes from its ruling on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which I will discuss tonight. This week’s quote comes from Lyndon Baines Johnson, the American president whom signed it into law in the first place.

The Voting Rights Act was a method of setting a stern legal framework for ensuring no disenfranchisement of minorities, no matter what state they lived in. The permanency of Section 2 ensures that literacy tests and other “qualifications” for voting can never be placed upon people, regardless of race, gender, religion, or creed. Section 5 ensures there is a process for keeping states from enacting discriminatory laws, by enforcing preclearance for changes of voter laws. But it is not these sections which have been gutted by the Supreme Court. Instead, the Court found Section 4 unconstitutional, mostly on the basis that Congress had continued its provisions based on an older data set.

The Supreme Court has changed the United States in the single greatest bastardization of our laws seen in several decades. Even though the Court did not rip apart Section 5, preclearance is now moot because no states, counties, or townships must seek it to change their voting laws. Indeed, Texas gleefully changed its voter laws nearly immediately after the ruling came into effect. The other states, counties, and townships formerly covered by preclearance will be likely to follow suit shortly, like Georgia for example.

The Court kicked new responsibility for making the law “fair” towards modern circumstances to Congress. If we want to protect minority voters, we must now depend on them to review our country and ensure the areas needed for preclearance deserve that treatment. We must ask the House of Representatives which repealed Obamacare 37 times and the Senate which voted down bipartisan gun control measures to pass a new Voting Rights Act. We are absolutely, without a reasonable doubt, screwed.

While we wait for a do-nothing Congress to solve this, in the meantime any changes to voter laws in any state must be challenged legally and solved on a case-by-case basis. This was the very thing which frustrated LBJ in the first place and convinced him of an absolute need for comprehensive laws which would ensure minority voter rights. We could make and resolve these cases again and again for a century, and we’d still have places disenfranchising minorities. We are no longer and equal democracy. We are now one of the worst in the world.

The very reasoning behind finding Section 4 unconstitutional is ridiculous. The notion that America has somehow “changed” and that we therefore don’t need the Voting Rights Act as before is insane. Even if we had become a post-racial society, we only did so because the Voting Rights Act made us do it. Whether we liked it at the time or not, the Civil Rights Acts and Voting Rights Act forced us to integrate racial minorities equally into our society in all aspects. As a result, some things have changed for the better. It is very rare for politicians to declare that people need to pay poll taxes or pass literacy tests these days.

But that does not mean we have changed entirely. Let me be clear that racism still exists quite healthily in most of the United States. From Alaska to Massachusetts, you can be certain that racists still live and breed in America and likely will for a very long time. You don’t need to look very hard to find that racists are still trying to restrict the vote among minority voters. Don’t for a second let yourself be fooled by proponents of voter ID laws. These people are not legitimately concerned about voter fraud, a problem which essentially does not exist. All they want is to keep minorities and people likely to vote for their opponents from voting. They can’t win the vote simply by being honest, so they rig the game instead, satisfying their racist dreams at the same time.

The thing that troubles me the most is the way the Supreme Court invalidated all the progress we as a nation and as individuals have made. Back in elementary and middle school, the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Jr. were drilled into our minds incessantly. We read his speeches, watched movies about him, read books about him, everything. My teachers stressed how he was the perfect example of an American who made progress happen without violence. That was the most important factor during my education. I soaked it up like a sponge, just like all students should do. MLK was an iconic leader who deserves that kind of praise. Later on, I learned of Malcolm X, a man who fought for similar goals in different ways. In his final years, he became just as important to civil rights as MLK was, condemning the mistakes of his past. With their work, they changed the United States for the better in some of the single most correct judgments we have ever made.

We may as well stop teaching our children the good example MLK set back then. With Section 4 taken down, none of his work matters now. None of Malcolm X’s work matters either. We are once again the nation of bigots and fools that existed prior to the Civil Rights Movement.

This past week, president Obama visited the prison cell which held South African civil rights icon Nelson Mandela in jail for 27 years. Mandela is one of the single most accomplished living civil rights and South African leaders to ever exist. While South Africa still has work to do, his vision is within sight and within grasp there. Unfortunately, it seems his health has been failing him as of late. For all we know he may survive this to live another day. However, I’d hate to see him die knowing the United States adopted the example of the system he worked his entire life to defeat.

That’s all for this week, and as always I can be reached through the comments here, my email at zerospintop@live.com, or any of my various accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Steam, Google+, Reddit, Tumblr, DeviantArt, and now Youtube. Good night, and this is KnoFear, signing off. 

Brazil, and Knowing the Enemy

Greetings all!

This post is directed at something that has irked me and some communists like myself in the past few days. I speak of the Brazilian popular protests going on right now, which have only just begun recently but already are consuming large portions of the population. This week’s quote comes from Jon Stewart, a political comedian I absolutely love.

The first thing I will tell you is that you should not pay attention to what the rest of the world (at least, non-Brazilians) is telling you about the protests, and from what I hear my friends around the world telling me about their media reports, do not listen to them either.

The protests which are currently going on are severely dynamic, but they have taken a definite turn towards conservatism.

The context of the protest is as follows:

The initial wave of protests were organized by the MPL (Movimento Passe-Livre) which is an autonomist anarchist movement, based primarily in public universities. Their main goal is and always was free, public funded transportation. The protests were organized in response to (left-wing, social democrat/liberal PT Worker's Party) Mayor Fernando Haddad's and (right-wing, conservative, social democrat in-name-only PSDB) Governor Geraldo Alckimin's hikes in bus and metro fares.

The media, at first, launched a total offensive against the protests, accusing it of vandalism, and of being made-up by extreme leftists. They justified the actions of the armed Military Police of Brazil (which is a Gendarme), which was, at the time, shooting rubber bullets at people's faces (which is lethal), beating up primarily women, using lots of tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the movement, as well as several intimidation tactics, such as baseless arrests (including the famous arrests for vinegar possession).

The media realized that despite all of their efforts, the movement had a popular agenda and had been garnering support across progressive sections of the population. One very popular ultra-conservative anchor attempted to ask the extremely loaded question to his viewers: “Do you support vandalism in ongoing protests?” Only to have his primarily reactionary audience humiliate him live by voting yes. The media, realizing they could no longer discredit the movement, and noticing that their most reactionary viewers were ready to take the street, switched strategies.

Soon afterwards, the raging anti-communist pundit withdrew his previous opinion and started favoring the protests, but also started claiming that the protests were about "much more", and started to tell his viewers that the protests were about the long running list of anti-leftist complaints that were traditionally presented by the media against the left leaning worker's party and used electorally by the right-wing PSDB. The rest of the media did exactly the same thing. They even set up the narrative on the international level, using Youtube as the means through which we became aware of the protests. This would later serve to legitimize the conservative coup in the eyes of the international audience.

Now here is the tricky part. You will notice that there is nothing intrinsically progressive about the video. It is unfortunately common that so-called "socialists" in developing nations, just as much as conservatives, are loathe to corruption, wasteful spending and the degradation of public services. However, this has to be looked at in the context that the Brazilian media has built over the years that the semi-leftist PT government has been in the presidency of the country.

Maybe one example some will be familiar with is the Venezuelan media and its participation in the attempted 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez, who was a friend to pink-tide Brazilian president Lula Da Silva who was current president Dilma Rousseff's predecessor. What was the Venezuelan media's strategy? To constantly pound on the viewer's minds the idea that all leftism is corrupt, to fabricate accusations daily and to create the general feeling of constant crisis. The same has been absolutely true of Brazilian media since 2000.

In fact, Rede Globo, which has the near-monopoly of TV audiences, which is owned by the billionaire heirs of Roberto Marinho, who had a personal fortune of 60 billion dollars, had previously attempted in 2007 to spark an artificial "popular" march against the PT government led by several celebrities on its payroll.

I should also strongly remind everyone that the 1964 Brazilian military coup was preceded by a million-strong reactionary march on the state of Guanabara asking for conservatism against the reformist social-democrat João Goulart. So to those who are simply enamored by any public protest thinking it's impossible that the right can muster popular support, please keep in mind the realities of the situation.

Now, you're probably asking, "How can you suggest that the current protests are conservative? You're out of your mind!" Well, to be fair, you are reading this and you are probably not in Brazil, watching how giddy the media is with the whole thing. You are probably not aware that the agenda against "corruption" was suggested by the military chief of police when negotiating with MPL. You are also probably not aware that the large majority of the opposition to the Worker's Party does not come from the radical left, as I wish it did and as MPL does, but it comes from the PSDB and half of their electors are nostalgic of the Brazilian fascist dictatorship. So they are going out there and asking for a new one.

For those blissfully unaware, the period between 1964 and 1986 was far from heavenly for Brazil under dictatorship.

As I write this, thousands of right wing militants are burning red flags on Paulista Avenue and demanding the impeachment of president Rousseff. These militants are those who think that democracy only exists when married to neoliberalism, so in her place they want to install PSDB or the Brazilian equivalent of Pedro Carmona (the man who took power for two days during the 2002 Venezuelan coup).

Many of us are only now waking up to this fact, as there have been some interesting attempts to make people aware of the oncoming conservative coup by some artists, which are conscious of the media and right-wing hijacking of the initial protests.

Now, the leftist parties have attempted to reclaim their movement and to fight against the reactionary agenda which always masquerades as "apolitical" demands for the moralization of politics. The right wing and the media have as such appropriated the anarchist "anti-party" discourse to denounce the left-wing in the protests, and some radical right wingers are demanding the extinction of parties, much like the 1964 military dictatorship proceeded to do. MPL and the anarchists are failing to react to this and are fueling the right wing rhetoric.

There are also sections of the left which are too isolated in their group of friends to realize that the majority of people participating in the marches are not their friends. The majority of people joined in after the calls of reactionary media pundits. In many cities the protests were not started by the left, and instead the protests are solely about the right-wing protesting against left politics. Do not be fooled, as true Occupiers would not gather up and protest near former president Lula's house.

Meanwhile, the Federation of Industries of São Paulo State (a business owner's union, pretty much the opposite of progressivism) is supporting the protests. The Brazilian Pedro Carmona sharpens his fangs.

So I find it extremely upsetting that many people, especially those who claim to be progressive-inclined, are basically providing international support for a movement which works directly against what Brazil needs to be fighting for.

So when the judiciary, which the media has built up as the great moralizing institution, its hero being the Supreme Court Justice Joaquim Barbosa, does some kind of maneuver to oust the left-leaning Rousseff in favor of elections that bring back the neoliberal PSDB to power, the international community will be ready to validate the coup. I should remind you all that this is the textbook tactic of 21st century dictatorships, as taught to us by Honduras.

Brazil is in danger of going in the wrong direction, and I am continually annoyed by eager-beavers who find out about what is going on through some Youtube video sponsored by some think tank like the Millennium Institute or by the Brazilian equivalent of Miami Cubans and think that this is an overall positive development simply due to a bandwagon effect.

That is all for this week, and I hope I've shined some light on this issue. As always, your feedback through comments and my email at zerospintop@live.com are always welcome. I can also be reached through Facebook, DeviantArt, Twitter, Steam, Google+, Tumblr, and my new Youtube account. Good night, and this is KnoFear, signing off. 

Orwell Was Right: The NSA Spying Program

Greetings all!

This is the second part of my promised political work this week, this time focusing more on American politics rather than an international issue. Tonight, I zero in on a massive scandal for the current government in the United States, specifically the NSA spying program.

For those unaware, the National Security Administration has been secretly listening in on millions of Americans’ phone calls, and has been accessing the online activities and records of Americans as well. This apparently goes fairly far back, as revealed by leaker and former CIA employee Edward Snowden. The intelligence community, from the FBI to the Department of Homeland Security, has been pushing for these measures ever since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The extensive spying program has been committed through the use of PRISM, and has been flawlessly passed by the legislative and executive branches.

While many groups including libertarians and tech giants like Reddit alike oppose this spying program, it has received clear support from Congress and the presidency (at most times), forcing both presidents Bush and Obama along with many members of Congress to defend their legitimacy. The most common argument made can be summed up in the words of Senator Lindsey Graham, who has claimed that as long as we have nothing to hide, we should have nothing to reasonably fear.

This argument, while sound on the surface (for a moron), is so flawed in its tenets that it makes me fear Graham even more than the NSA. For a point of reference, I’ll be referring to the novel 1984 by George Orwell, a prominent British author and socialist. In said book, the government maintains a constantly-monitoring state apparatus in order to assure absolute peace (read: complacence) among the populace it rules over. All aspects of society are penetrated by the authority of Big Brother, the man in charge sometimes seen as more of a force than a person. That force being, of course, fear. Fear of the common citizen which can instill thoughts of change in his brothers and sisters, fear which keeps freedom and knowledge out of the hands of everyone. Fear, being the only reason I started writing in this capacity in the first place.

How Graham and other members of Congress see no connection between the NSA and 1984 is baffling. These people claim to be the bastions of the American constitution, and yet it seems most of them are unfamiliar with the 4^th Amendment, which guarantees safety from unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. This also applies to the states, as required by the due process clause of the 14^th Amendment. They seem to forget the unalienable right to privacy of American citizens, guaranteed by several court cases throughout our history. From Katz v. United States to Kyllo v. United States, our judiciary and legal system has guaranteed a reasonable right to privacy on the part of all Americans.

But let’s take the time to address these silly arguments. Let’s say that you have absolutely nothing to hide on your computer or phone records. You commit no illegal activities online; you pirate no music or other legal property, you never access illegal pornography, etc. You are an exemplary American, one who follows all laws to the dot. You should still be angry at having your privacy violated. Not because you are afraid of what might be found, but because you are afraid it is happening in the first place. Your basic constitutional and intrinsic rights are being infringed unlawfully, and no person should have to undergo such treatment without good reason.

But what of terrorists and other criminals, the police-state-backers cry? How else are we to catch these threats to our civil society? While how we approach the War on Terror is an honest debate we can have, monitoring the internet and phone records is a failed method of doing so. If we need NSA spying to stop events like 9/11, why didn't we stop it? If we need NSA spying to stop horrors like the Boston Marathon Bombing, why didn't we stop it? If NSA spying is so necessary, why is it so crappy at doing what it has been sent out to do in the first place? The simple answer to this question is because it cannot prevent these attacks on America. We often claim that terrorists hate us because of our freedoms; we cannot defend ourselves from them by taking away the freedoms we claim to love.

So, what do we do now? How can we restore our freedoms, bring back the great democracy we once were in the past? Clearly, one of the things we can do immediately is dissolve the NSA and destroy PRISM. Not only do the actions of the NSA call into question how our government treats and views its own citizens, it calls into question how willing we are to protect the democracy our founders fought and died to bring forth. The very thought that we are all being watched should make us sick and angry beyond belief. We must also pardon Snowden, the hero who brought these revelations to light. Ultimately, though, this is not enough. It should be clear to us by now that the War on Terror has done little to root out terrorism in the world. Instead, the War on Terror has created the world’s creepiest security apparatus, a branching effort to extend control over America and, eventually, the world. This seething mass of profit, fear, and weaponry sprouts forth from our government through our own ignorance and laziness. There is something we can do: destroy the DHS. While it is awkward to be in agreement with conservatives for me, I agree that we must attack our problems at their root. We do not need a whole portion of the executive branch to protect ourselves, especially when the DHS is making us feel less secure all on its own.

That’s all for tonight, and I hope everyone will forcefully remind our representatives of the freedoms we deserve as I have. Your feedback in comments is encouraged, and I can be reached through my email at zerospintop@live.com, or my Facebook, Twitter, Google+, DeviantArt, Tumblr, Steam, and Reddit accounts. Good night, and this is KnoFear, signing off. 

Kemalism In Crisis: The Turkish Protest Movement

Greetings all!

This post comes amid tense events both at home and abroad, and to make up for taking time to allow these events to develop, I plan to write two pieces for this week instead of just one. Today, I shall cover the current protests and social movement which has arisen in Turkey. In light of these protests, this week’s quote comes from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

These growing protests in Turkey are a fairly new development, only showing after intense police response to a sit-in against reconstruction in Taksim Square. Originally, the sit-in was intended to shine a light on opposition to redevelopment plans for the area which involved taking away local greenery in favor of new industrialization and buildings. Almost immediately, the Turkish authorities sanctioned the use of tear gas, water cannons, and extensive violence against the participants. This quickly mushroomed into large anti-government action by thousands of civilians, continuing even now. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has responded with a sneer, declaring protesters to be violent looters that ally themselves with terrorists.

On the first day of protests, I had thought little of the possible consequences presented for Turkey. I assumed these protests were similar to those which have plagued European nations for years, like those which have occurred in France, the U.K., Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece. To me, I thought that this would boil down to dissatisfaction with the lack of progress through capitalism, alongside social upheaval that tends to tag along. The only thing I thought strange of these protests was that Turkey had experienced economic prosperity for the most part for years. Weird, perhaps, but I welcomed such events nonetheless.

Needless to say, I received quite a surprise to learn that this movement had evolved to a considerable level, where the protests represent entirely unique concerns not characteristic of a European post-industrial nation. Instead, Turkish protesters face much more immediate and dangerous problems which threaten the very institutions of a nation fought so stridently for in the past. This uprising has two significant faces: secularism vs. Islamism and democracy vs. authoritarianism.

While not the driving facet of the current social upheaval in Turkey, religious issues in Turkey are a topic worth discussion. We must remember that the modern Turkish state was founded by a man who considered religion a barrier to social progress; indeed, Kemalism and the CHP (the opposition Kemalist political party) espouse a secular public sphere. For nearly the entirety of Turkey’s current existence, it was a secular state in which the military readily intervened to prevent religious influence on government. This happened on multiple occasions, with mostly successful though at times questionable results.

However, under Erdogan political Islamism has gained ground in Turkey. A gradual Islamization of Turkish institutions has taken place, supported by the rural Muslims that Turkey hosts in its society. And yet, public support for religious dominance is significantly divided in Turkey, with urban citizens being significantly less religious than those living in smaller areas. This is mostly due to unequal development of Turkey, in that Turkey is a nation with large income inequality that drives strong growth in cities while leaving less populated areas behind. As a result, these areas do not move forward socially either, leaving the nascent local religion (in this case Islam) as a driving force. Previously, these areas were held as the best places for progress on fronts such as education and poverty relief during secular rule. But under Erdogan, the public sphere has shifted to suiting this backwards view of society, thereby imposing new morals on those that chose to reject them and expected support from their government. By flirting with ideas such as bans on alcohol, Erdogan has created a tense atmosphere in which his morals constrict the citizenry, whereas secular morals never truly restrict the private practice of religion. And as Islamism becomes accepted as a legal framework for disputes in Turkey, the dissatisfaction with oppression of the secular citizenry will only grow.

The second face of the Turkish protests is much more prominent: that of true democracy. This is largely the underlying force for those fighting the Turkish government at the moment. For Turkish citizens, democracy is a carefully crafted and well-protected institution worth keeping around; military dictatorship is a frequent casualty should democracy come into question. Instead, it is preferable that Turkey maintains a democratic tradition and continues to elect its leaders instead of having the military orchestrate government as it sees fit. And while Erdogan has been elected to government, elections are not the only defining aspects of democracy. Indeed, Turkey is not entirely free; it has imprisoned many journalists, and Turkish media is effectively controlled by the state. Peaceful opposition is not a complete right in Turkish society now, and this is why those in Turkey feel the need to fight back. Authoritarianism is wrong for them, just as it should be.

In light of this, I hope protests continue. I hope they grow in strength, and that their righteousness is recognized. I wish to see Turkey return to its secular roots, and for Turkish society to prosper in the modern world without turning to autocracy. I wish to see Erdogan fall out of power, even if that must mean military intervention to see it happen.

That is all for tonight, and I hope I've provided a good read for all. As always, your feedback is encouraged through comments, my email at zerospintop@live.com, my Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Steam, DeviantArt, Tumblr, and Reddit accounts. Good night, and this is KnoFear, signing off.