I have three questions about politics here....

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And I'd like to see how the rest of this Community answers them.

First: Is economic inequality a civil rights issue? Not so long ago, a scandal broke where minors were being incarcerated to boost the profits of privately-owned for-profit prisons. The children imprisoned were disproportinately poor and this was true regardless of race. The civil rights leaders were nowhere to be found in that situation, despite the fact that economic inequality is pernicious and not limited to racial boundaries. This, also, despite the fact that economic inequality drives the Fundamentalist movements worldwide, as reactions against it. Why is the Jena Six incident considered civil rights but children who are poor who are imprisoned for greedy evil bastards to make profits off of that somehow not?

Second: Why is it that genocide is an evil thing to do but cultural genocides and ethnocides are acceptable government policies in the developed world? The idea that there are nation-states is a pretty fiction, but no more and no less. Spain has the Basques, the Catalans, and the Castilians and the Galicians. France has the Basques and Catalans and Gascons and Bretons and Italians and Alsatians. The US has my old saw, the Indian peoples, whom we attempted to destroy their cultures thereof. Now....given that eliminating entire peoples because we don't like their cultures is wrong (as in the Shoah and the Killing Fields), why is eliminating the cultures themselves somehow not wrong?

Third (and finally): Why have there been pages and pages on the crimes of one Adolf Hitler of Branau Am Inn and virtually nothing on the crimes of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, at least in English-language media? I can name seven Holocaust scholarship books off the top of my head. I can only name one that dealt with the Soviet slave labor camp system, virtually none that touch on Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe and on Soviet ethnic cleansing, and damned fewer yet that will touch the nature of Soviet scientific evils, including a plan to shape a "New Soviet Man." Since Hitler's Master Race was almost cartoonishly evil, how again, is the Soviet Union's history of atrocities and evils done in the name of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," somehow not? Why the volumes on the Holocaust and the slaughters in Russia, but not even a box's worth of equal social history on the Gulag and Soviet ethnic cleansing?

(no subject)

[peoriashows.livejournal.com]

I know this isn't timely news, (or perhaps it is since so many black Democrats are throwing around the race card to Republican Governors and Senators) but some recent discussions on this board has gotten me thinking about how despicable certain politicians have been in the past. Specifically, most of my life I've noticed a rather enormous paradox that comes in the way Democrats seem so proud of their stances on race equality issues and women's rights issues, yet all seem so eager to forgive Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton & others so easily for their womanizing and sexists actions of the past.

Most disturbing and tasteless, though, is the Democratic party's history of racial hatred. The KKK were founded by Democrats, it was Democrats who created the Jim Crow laws in the south, Democrats wanted to keep slavery and have consistently voted (even this century) against equal rights bills. The most recent purveyors of these egregious acts is scum-bag Senator Robert Byrd. A Democrat for life Robert Byrd was a high ranking member of the KKK for 40 years (23 of those while he was a serving U.S. Senator,) he's the only Senator to vote against the nominations of Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court (the only two African Americans ever nominated.) In 1967 when Byrd and other segregationist senators were opposed to the idea of a black integrationist being placed on the court, they called Marshall a Communist. He voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and as recent as 2001 used the N-word on national TV.

Even though he's denounced his past actions in recent years, I believe old habits die hard and you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I think this unredeemable hick is, and always will be, a racist slime and of course, it's his American right to be one. What I fail to understand is why Democrats so often forget this and all the other terrible legacies their party holds when touting their recent image of The Party of Equality.

Seriously, Is Rachel Maddow, Ariana Huffington, Barrack Obama and Al Sharpton really proud of their party's history? How could they possibly be? (I, of course, could ask the same question of Republicans being proud of their party's history considering Abe Lincoln was the first president to demand income tax (though temporarily during the war) and Teddy Roosevelt supported progressive taxation, but that argument's for another day.)



Here are a couple of my sources if you want to read further about this loser:

Capitalism Magazine
Wikipedia

To avoid any confusion, if you're not already aware, I am neither Republican nor Democrat. I am an observer of the political spectrum and an observer of stupidity and insincerity and I will call it out whenever I see it.

Taliban

[debate4fun.livejournal.com]

I realize this is a little late, but I wanted to get some discussion about what everyone thinks about "talking" with the taliban.  Would it solve the problem, or would we just be letting our guard down?