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  Sunday, January 31, 2010Reservations About Reservationsa.part.heid noun A system or practice that separates people according to race, caste, etc.It's pretty extraordinary how humans have been treated like animals - worse, in fact: like commodities.Of course, border controls have only been around for barely more than a century, largely concocted to prevent Jewish people from entering countries like mine - Britain - when it was considered merely an inconvenience. Millions of dead Jews later, the feigned concern for them was used as an excuse to stop Hitler's Nazi quest for white-power world domination when, in fact, it was just that this was a capitalist with potentially more might than our capitalists. Lord Kitchener, after all, had already popularised use of the "concentration camp" model long before those pesky Nazis used it. Before that, though, the first examples of a concentration camp were in the United States, where predominantly European invaders slaughtered, tortured, raped, pillaged and plundered Native land, and incarcerated their people in confinement. Not satisfied with that, these "Americans" then found that there weren't enough "Injuns" left over to exploit - so had to try to satiate their greed for slavery by going and kidnapping Africans to bring them back over with them for more capitalist exploitation. Yep, you can't have a rich, fat, elite without an exploited poor huddled masses. Why do you think immigration was considered such a good thing at the time, the French beacon to the world's unwanted positioned at the coast? The fat cats were licking their chops at the sight of all these desperate people as tools for profit. The United States of America became an apparatus of avarice, taking in, chewing up, and spitting out minorities in its American Dream machine. My dad always said, "They can't all be Indians; you have to have Chiefs." The dream was an illusion; in actuality a nightmare. It's been said that in modern America, the concentration camp still exists, but in another form: the ghetto. In these areas, the people with even less chance of realising any kind of "dream" at all have hardly any opportunities, kept at the bottom of the barrel, while U.S. TV shows show the rest of us images of only financially comfortable, perfectly coiffed and manicured African-Americans like Bill Cosby and Damon Wayans in their big suburban homes, while even the aptly-named White House has a token black man placed in it to serve the interests of the privileged class he's surrounded by and harp on with the American DreamTM rhetoric to keep everyone calm. In-keeping with the agenda, the further abuse and use of Judaism for capitalist methods led to the creation of an Israeli state that would forcibly and often illegally encroach on Palestinian land to steal resources, leading to reactionary violence that Western media would label "terrorism" since it wasn't given approval from a rich white man's rubber stamp or seal while wearing a sharp suit, instead using the tales to demonise Islam and Muslims and commence a colonial War on TerrorTM that continues to this day under the present administrations. And last but not least: Down Under, in the nation of Australia often considered comprised of convicts from Europe, the Aboriginal people who were there first suffer their own punishment for no sin besides being in the way of greed. The businessmen bartering for an Olympics show on their turf when taking the International Olympic Committee on a tour of Australia hid the sorry sights of these people from the bigwigs. And don't even get me started on Woomera refugee camp, seen in the closing moments of my film Escape from Doncatraz. But stop the press - there's more! In the same way yet going one step further, the Canadian elite has not only yet again waved its banner and buoyed its image as "accepting" and "tolerant" and, well, "not American" to woo the IOC their way while hiding the horrors of the living conditions of First Nations people there - but even allowed their Olympic projects to help them sweep them under the rug. Oh, what you can get away with in your own backyard when you're juxtaposed against your rowdier, drunken, more violent next-door neighbour. How much longer will the world fall for this pathetic PR attempt from a country with such appalling treatment of First Nations people and a substandard welfare state? Sorry, Canada, you are American: North American, and all that land was native land. But that's for another time and place. Few have reservations about reservations. Few recognise the apartheid that exists all around the world to this day thanks to a voracious elite distracting, dividing and conquering the mass majority in the world who are not white, yet poor. Slavery never ended - we just gave it another name: capitalism. - Jay Baker; South Yorkshire, England Jay Baker's brand-new book is Pissing in the Mainstream. You can read a compilation of his best blogs from the past several years, and a few exclusives, in the book Soon To Be Banned: Musings of a Media Activist, available here. Labels: apartheid, Australia, Canada, Escape from Doncatraz, Israel, Palestine, racism
posted by Jay Baker at
9:53 AM
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Sunday, December 6, 2009Asian is the New Black"White folks ain't trying to keep you down. White folks just don't like to be pushed into a corner. They'll come around. You just got to make it look like it was their idea, like they're the ones that thought of it. They need to feel like they're the great emancipators. Like it was theirs to give in the first place. Let them have it. I mean, if that's all it takes, let them have it." - Laurence Fishburne as Edward Robinson, to a Mexican in the movie Bobby. Is there a racial hierarchy? The African-Americans have seemingly always suffered racism, a part of U.S. society unchanged by the token election of a right-wing capitalist President who just happens to be black. Then - as if nothing had been learned from Ireland or Palestine - Barack Obama's predecessors began the building of a wall to prevent more Mexicans crossing the border. "Now," I heard one African-American tell a Mexican, "you are the niggers." It was a concept represented by that character, Edward Robinson, in Emilio Estevez's film about Robert Kennedy's last hours. There always has to be an "enemy within" for our true enemies to thrive on. It's nothing new. Immigration controls are barely more than a hundred years old, conceived initially with the motivation of restricting movement of the Jews; creating the ability to open and close borders at will, as though part of some kind of Social Darwinist selection. But due to the shortage in workforce in 1950s Britain, the "colonials" were suddenly welcomed into the country over from the Caribbean to fill the void. Later, they were met with disdain, but it soon passed as society progressed and people became enlightened. Soon enough, the soccer hooligans were fighting, but the whites and blacks were joining together in chasing Indians and Pakistanis through the streets; it was their turn, and the blacks were just glad to be able to save their asses and be on the winning team. The Southern Asians in Britain were left to endure the National Front marching through their slums...until the Anti-Nazi League came along, and - taking direct action to another level - ran into those streets and gave the fascist racists a good beating, kicking their cause to the curb. More recently, we've seen South Asia bombed repeatedly and starved through sanctions, killing millions of children and many more adults. The CIA created the Ba'ath Party led by Saddam Hussein, as well as Osama bin Laden's Taliban, all as part of its effort to control the region, resulting in reactionary terrorist attacks from extremists - among them, ironically, Osama bin Laden himself. But the bombings in London, England, on July 7th, 2005, were by lads from West Yorkshire, where racism had risen and the British National Party had gained ground. Asians in Britain are trying to counter Islamophobia rife in the mainstream media through groups like MPACUK, and the rich and powerful are galvanising the issue of immigration that only boosts the single-issue politics of the BNP when there is in fact no issue there at all. As a result, while I was making Escape from Doncatraz on this subject, I even heard British-born Asians talk about the supposed threat of refugees and those who seek asylum. Yep: they're the ones now sitting at the bottom of the barrel in a capitalist system that crushes us from the very top, and depends on divisive distraction to get away with it over and over again. You see, when you've scratched and clawed your way from the bottom of the barrel you, too, fear ever going back there. You'll stand on whoever you can through fear of losing the few things you've gained. Those at the top are so far away, so impossible to reach or even see, it's your only hope of leverage, the only way you feel you can survive. That's capitalism. And until it's gone, the elite will always keep distracting us to "kick the dog" while they continue to enjoy their power, their riches, and that very system that keep them on top at our expense. - Jay Baker; South Yorkshire. Jay Baker's brand-new book is Pissing in the Mainstream. You can read a compilation of his best blogs from the past several years, and a few exclusives, in the book Soon To Be Banned: Musings of a Media Activist, available here. Labels: Barack Obama, Escape from Doncatraz, Immigration, racism, refugees
posted by Jay Baker at
1:41 PM
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