Putting my asbestos suit on. I am unambiguously trying to stir things up. Devils Advocate. Discuss. Tell me I'm wrong. But.

African Americans will be rioting on election day 2008. I'm likely to join them. When their voting rights are suppressed in the first election of one of their own are enforced, the result will be inevitable.

UPDATE Epilogue (10:40 CDT June 16, 2008): I could have worded things more delicately, but I'll stand by the main premise. Also, "concern trolls" are usually interested in raising doubts in order to support the opposite stance of the community. We all overuse the term in lieu of engaging in the substance of an argument. So, if I'm a concern troll, how is my diary going to inadvertently influence how black and white people vote? Yup. Logically, not at all. In the end, my point is more to ensure that caging doesn't happen and that enough working voter machines are in place in locales such as Cleveland and St. Louis (when they have NOT been sufficient in the past).

If you don't think it can happen, you haven't been paying attention for the last dozen years. Make me wrong (as usual) people.

The family of Robert Kennedy, reminded this spring that it’s been 40 years since they lost him, heard May 23rd that his tragic death had been diminished into a talking point in another senator’s crass campaign rhetoric.  [Sioux Falls Argus-Leader transcript]

In 1968, having won California, Senator Kennedy’s life and his nation were struck, turning joyful hope into instant emotional chaos: [RFK assassination, live audio]

The following day, June 6, I had awakened on my parents’ couch to the sound of a news report from KMOX radio on Dad’s breakfast table, "Senator Robert F. Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. today." [New York Times]  Mary Ann Templeton and I were to be married that afternoon, at 3:30.

reprinted from WOID: a journal of visual language

Things have gotten to a point between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama where I’m half expecting next to see one of her supporters holding up a corn cob in front of an all-white jury. Actually they’ve gotten worse, though I’m not yet sure for whom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

This diary is an expansion on comments I've made, and seen, time and time again.    

I've long made this assertion:  The American people will only go so far in protecting their own rights in this country, which is why the government invariably wins in the end.  They know we will only go so far, so all they have to do is be willing to go one step beyond that to shut us down.  Which is what they do, time and time again, while we cling to our grand notions of honorable debate, following the process and ineffective protesting.

This is not a diary advocating riots as a means of protest, it is merely to explore the particularly American reticence towards engaging with the government through such means, despite our vocal or hidden admiration for other societies and cultures who do choose to use riot as a legitimate means of taking back or seizing power from a government that has long overrun its checks and balances.  (See Tibet, France, Sweden, UK, Poland, Australia...with the exception of Tibet, these are NOT Third World countries!)

In deciding whether Obama's remarks about Rural American will help or hurt, the best sources are the people who actually grew up in small-town Pennsylvania. One of these people is John Baer, who says that Obama's characterization of small-town America is on-target. Baer would know -- he grew up among the people that Obama is talking about.

"Bitter" perhaps best describes my late mother, an angry Irish Catholic who absolutely clung to her religion.

Dad, also a journalist, wasn't really bitter as far as I know, but he sure liked to hunt.

While many of us are reading about the Food Riots across the World the traditional media is acting as if it doesn't really effect us here at home. They are dead wrong. The Poor in our country are being hit hard, extremely hard. I just returned from the grocery store where I paid double for a cheap loaf of bread. 6 months ago the loaf was 69 cents, and today it was $1.29. For many that will mean nothing at all, but those on a fixed income it is devastating.  When you already exist on Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches because it's about all you can afford most the time, to have even those priced out of your budget is disheartening to say the least.

The individual person is not the only ones with budgets already stretched thin, our School Systems are feeling the heat too.

In the New York school system, the nation's largest, which serves 850,000 meals a day, the milk bill is up $3 million over last year, said Eric Goldstein, chief executive for school support services.

That is just the beginning of what's to come.

A significant spike in grain and commodities prices is driving up the cost of food worldwide and marking the beginning of the collapse of the world economy.  As a result, violent riots have broken out, as described by Vivian Walt (Time, February 27, 2008)

Rocketing food prices — some of which have more than doubled in two years — have sparked riots in numerous countries recently. Millions are reeling from sticker shock and governments are scrambling to staunch a fast-moving crisis before it spins out of control. From Mexico to Pakistan, protests have turned violent. Rioters tore through three cities in the West African nation of Burkina Faso last month, burning government buildings and looting stores. Days later in Cameroon, a taxi drivers' strike over fuel prices mutated into a massive protest about food prices, leaving around 20 people dead.

Here in the U.S., the economic collapse has been "contained" to the housing market and a "few bad apples" (Bear Stearns) in the financial markets, but for how much longer?  Will we see food riots at home?

My friend is a diplomat in Haiti and has been emailing about riots for 2 days. .... Has anyone heard any news on this? I would write more, but am wondering if anyone on Kos has any news?

The world is in a deepening food crisis.

April 4, 1968.  It is a day I will never forget.  I was playing choose up sides basketball at the YMCA in Town of Tonawanda, NY when the announcemnt came over the speaker system.  There was a rousing cheer throughout the gym.  I was saddened beyond any hope of staying there and saying anything to the others who showed their racism so openly as a group.  My rage at them had to show as I stomped out of the gym never to return.  I already was into the Anti-war and Civil Rights movement very deeply.  As a new faculty member at SUNY in Buffalo, I had suddenly found myself at the head of an umbrella coalition in Buffalo, one of two delegates from Buffalo to the New Politics convention, Faculty advisor to SDS and a faculty representative of the draft resistance movement on our campus.  That fall I would be teaching at Philander Smith College in little Rock Arkansas to try to do more to provide education that was one component of breaking through the racism that repulsed me so much.  Look below and we can remember together as we rededicate ourselves to seeing people as people like ourselves rather than looking for differences to set them apart.

Although her visit was already scheduled before the recent riots, Nancy Pelosi met today with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, and was greeted with much affection and hope by the Tibetan exiles living there.  

I salute her for standing up to China by meeting with him, and by doing so, keeping the attention on the recent violence used by the Chinese government to submit the monks and other protesters in Tibet, and in pockets of China.

The Dalai Lama recently criticized Tibetan violence on both sides and said that if it continued that he would resign as the Tibetan Exile Governments political leader. He is under some pressure from impatient younger Tibetans who want full independence now and are willing to fight for it.

An excellent article by Gabriel Lafitte at NewMatilda.com, advisor to the Tibetan Government in Exile, about the protests and riots, and what it means to the Tibetans themselves. What follows is his article in full (reprinted with permission).

The Tibetan revolt, like those of two and five decades ago, will be crushed by the overwhelming might of the Chinese military. No match could be more unequal: maroon-clad nuns and monks versus the machinery of oppression of the global rising power. In recent months, fast-response mobile tactical squads whose sole purpose is to quell the masses have been overtly rehearsing on the streets of Tibetan towns for just what they are now doing.

What is the point of revolt if it is almost certainly suicidal

 Last week the country of Burkina Faso was brought to the edge of chaos by food riots. You probably didn't notice.
  In Morocco, 34 were sentenced to prison for participating in food riots. In Yemen at least a dozen have died in violent food riots.
  A month ago, Indonesia had to call out federal troops in order to quell protests against the rising cost of basic food items. Last November food riots in Mauritania claimed the life of an 18-year old boy. The Indian state of Bengal also saw massive food riots. In Italy, residents are protesting the rising cost of pasta.

Police in full riot gear are being overwhelmed in Kenya as an angry electorate protests a rigged election. Rigging has being part and parcel of Kenyan elections since 1963 when the first government was selected but this time Kenyans really hoped for change.

There is now fear of a full scale ethnic bloodletting   as the poor from Kibera, Nairobi's largest slum have poured into the streets in anger. Updated
The police have SHOOT TO KILL orders in Odinga hotbed Kisumu where rioters are under dawn to dusk curfew as Kikuyu businesses and homes have been burned to the ground.

I guess it is a primeval struggle destined to continue until judgment day, whenever the hell that will be. The day after Christmas 2007 two rival gangs got into a dispute over turf and started to rumble. Somebody called the cops, who managed to separate the combatants, The Jets (AKA the Greek Orthodox Priests), and the Sharks (AKA the Armenian Apostolic Priests). They were battling inside the Church of the Nativity of the Prince of Peace in Bethlehem, Palestinian Territories, which was originally divided between them by an 1852 "firman" from Abdulmecit I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of the Muslim World, because...well, because the Sultan was weak and because Louis Napoleon III was a pompous political hack, who believed that he was "entitled" to rule, chosen by God to fix, first France, and then rest of the world. In his rise to power Louis shamelessly played one political faction off another, abolished democracy, seized the throne, started the Crimean War, invaded Algeria and Vietnam (both of which came back to haunt France a century later) and was finally goaded into the 1870 Franco-Prussian War which resulted in the humiliating defeat of France, the creation of Germany, his own over throw and death. This guy was the George Bush of 19th century France.

The recent riots in France have gotten the right-wing bloggers all a flutter, and why not? After all, it's a perfect opportunity to demonize the wogs as inherently violent creatures not fit to live amongst Aryan populations. "France is the country of liberté, égalité, fraternité," they'll tell you, "how could they possibly have any problems with racism?"

But as Graham Murray told us in 2005:

This is a country where a foreign name on a CV will seriously undermine your chances of getting a job; where landlords still instruct estate agents to find white tenants; where pâtissiers sell chocolate-covered cakes called tête de nègre (negro's head) and whose inhabitants apologetically describe their poor English as petit-nègre.

Contuinued below

I've searched, but didn't find much on this story at DailyKos.

In Olympia, Washington, there has been some rather serious clashes between protestors and police over the last week, leading to numerous arrests, tear gas, concussion grenades, protesters assaulting journalists, and other events.

This Week

1. Trillionaire Debt

2. Almost 100

3. PetroChina

4. Food Riots

5. Buy Nothing Day

6. No Borders Camp

7. R.A.T.M.

8. Ron Paul, who cares

9. Ward Churchill