Why I Don’t Wave the American Flag

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Tuesday November 27, 2012 · 4:57 PM PST

2012/11/27 · 16:57

Here in America we are descended in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels – men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, May 31, 1954

There are a lot of people waving the American flag these days, but I’m not one of them. I also don’t subscribe to the much-vaunted myth of “American exceptionalism.” Here’s why:
I won’t dwell on our enslavement of Africans for over two hundred years and the bloody Civil War (recently estimated to have had a death toll of about 750,000 – New York Times, 4/2/2012) it took to end America’s slavery horrors. The racist Jim Crow policies and segregation that followed the Civil War have by no means been totally extinguished.
I also won’t dwell on our genocide against the Native Americans, in which we took over a continent by force while wiping-out entire cultures. Many of the remnant populations now live in poverty and a state of social disintegration on remote reservations.
However, I will point out that during the 20th century we became the world’s dominant empire and sought to consolidate our power by staging CIA-backed coup d’états to overthrow democratically elected leaders that our national security state decided it did not like. Examples include Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and Chile’s President Salvador Allende in 1973.

peacefreak

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Thursday March 15, 2012 · 2:20 PM PDT

2012/03/15 · 14:20

This diary was originally published in the March 15, 2012 Pasadena Weekly (Pasadena, CA).

peacefreak

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Saturday February 18, 2012 · 6:49 PM PST

2012/02/18 · 18:49

This is the second of two diaries comparing the performances of not-for-profit Pasadena Water & Power and for-profit Southern California Edison during a severe windstorm late last year. Guess who won by a mile? Both diaries were originally published in the Pasadena (CA) Weekly on Dec. 29 and Feb. 9, respectively.

peacefreak

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Tuesday January 03, 2012 · 4:17 PM PST

2012/01/03 · 16:17

I am a regular contributor to the "Pasadena Weekly" in Pasadena, CA, but this is my first diary on Daily Kos. Hope you like it.

Some background information: During the night of Nov. 30 - Dec. 1, 2011, Pasadena and surrounding communities in the San Gabriel Valley experienced a severe Santa Ana wind storm, which sometimes produced hurricane-force winds. There was a lot of damage and widespread power outages. I subsequently investigated the relative performances of two utilities which provide power to the San Gabriel Valley, Pasadena Water & Power and Southern California Edison. My investigation resulted in an article in the Dec. 29 issue of the "Pasadena Weekly." Here is the link to that article:
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/...

The article also comprises this diary.

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