tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14487404696622128482024-03-12T23:27:17.597-05:00Society, Science & Soul WisdomWe cannot solve that which we are unwilling to see.Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.comBlogger600125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-9600028468357577922023-07-23T11:16:00.005-05:002023-07-23T11:37:51.700-05:00Why Did Florida Governor de Santis Choose This Week to Dignify SlaveryIt goes without saying that Florida Governor Ron de Santis never studied African history. Nor is he known for devotion to self-reflection. But the subconscious mind can at times be an eery path to truth. Could that be the real reason he has chosen the week when the American public has been mesmerized with horror by "The Sound of Freedom"? to glorify the most monstrous episodes of human trafficking in recorded history -- the transatlantic slave trade.<div><br /></div><div>De Santis should not bear the full weight of blame for sanitizing that period in American history. After all, even most textbooks refer to that institution as "chattel slavery". However, female slaves in the ante-bellum south were both agricultural laborers and sex slaves as would be defined by today's Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action and in contemporary times tabulated by UNESCO. That is, they were locked into sexual servitude for which non-consensual sexual activity or forced prostitution was imposed without legal remedy. </div><div><br /></div><div>In addition, coerced reproduction was used as a means of increasing slave assets, while slave owners who found themselves in financial straits sold their mulatto daughters to brothels because they commanded higher prices as “fancy girls”. </div><div><br /></div><div>Is this what Governor de Santis describes as the "personal benefits" of slavery?</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/4334hpr_5f67bd142f9f5f6-scaled.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Sexual exploitation of the enslaved" border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="800" height="160" src="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/4334hpr_5f67bd142f9f5f6-scaled.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /></div>Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-32707272890548085862021-06-08T08:51:00.002-05:002021-06-08T08:54:46.328-05:00Using Ancestry (Rather than Race) in Genomic Research<div data-draftjs-conductor-fragment="{"blocks":[{"key":"90ldp","text":"Delineating human populations is one of the trickiest and most sensitive subjects in genetics. The reason is the fact that even scientific thinkers can be influenced by their cultural baggage. For centuries, Americans with the help of race scientists differentiated human populations into Negroids and Caucasoids. However, a closer look at this classification scheme will show that its origin and initial utility was to differentiate those groups who could be enslaved in perpetuity and those who could not. ","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"bota4","text":" ","type":"atomic","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[{"offset":0,"length":1,"key":0}],"data":{}},{"key":"5c3qp","text":"","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"afg2s","text":"However, at the same time, America's founders were challenged by European monarchists, who derided the profound irony of the so-called American revolutionaries' \"all men are created equal\" doctrine, when the U.S. was itself based on slave labor. ","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"5inr1","text":"","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"abj92","text":"So what does that have to do with scientific classifications? Pressures within American society made it necessary to lump the Irish, English, Germans, French, and other European immigrants into a single race, when previously each nationality would have been classified as a race unto itself. But the psychological nature of these pressures created a marketplace among academics to rationalize slavery by providing theories showing that Africans were inferior to Europeans. Thus, slave traders were doing the former a presumed service by removing them from heathen-dom and placing them within a civilized setting. ","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"e4kia","text":"","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"bijip","text":"By the mid=18th century, academics were manipulating skull sizes to show that the ex-slaves had smaller brains and were thus cognitively inferior to Caucasians. When that effort was eventually shown as a sham, the 20th century impulse to establish a racial hierarchy replaced craniology (the study of skulls) and craniometry (the measurement of skulls) with more refined methods of categorizing its citizens -- intelligence testing. It should come as no surprise that the cultural groups from which the testers emanated, always scored high on such tests, and marginalized minorities scored low. ","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"gibo","text":"","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"bmv3a","text":"By the 21st century, scientists realized that the highly abused racial categories might serve a function in differentiating disease susceptibilities in diverse ethnic groups. But we now understand that race (Negroids, Caucasoids, Mongoloids), is not scientific at the genomic level, even though biomarkers can be searched for in any person's genome to identify his or her so-called race.. Human beings can however be seen as \"ecological niche populations\". That is, their ancestors will over time have developed genetic variants or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) that allowed them to survive in challenging environments. But these SNPs do not correspond to racial classifications. The SNPs that allow human populations to live in malarial areas bring together West Africans, with Southern Europeans and coastal East Indians. SNPs that make it possible for West Africans to survive the tropical heat of the sodium-deficient interior will not be carried by coastal Africans, who have the limitless availability of ocean salt for their sodium nutritional needs. Thus, ancestral populations that have adapted to the same ecological \"niche\" will have more in common with one another than other ways of delineating populations. This is because their genetic variants will align with the unique ecological conditions required to survive in whatever environments they inhabit. ","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"83toi","text":"","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"6t868","text":"This approach can also be classified as \"ancestral genomics\" because the SNPs that make unique environments livable for certain groups, may be maladaptive in other environments to which they have been translocated. A ripe field of research is the ancestral genomics of African-Americans of slave descent. They are admixed with Europeans but also appear to have differences in sodium-metabolism from coastal West Africans. Is the fact that the ancestors of these Black Americans remained healthy on 200 mg/sodium/day and their U.S. descendants consume 3400 mg/sodium/day, the reason why 75% of adult African-Americans suffer from salt-sensitive hypertension? These are the types of questions that explorations into ancestral genomics will over time answer. ","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"236v","text":"","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"1n7cc","text":"","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}}],"entityMap":{"0":{"type":"wix-draft-plugin-divider","mutability":"IMMUTABLE","data":{"type":"single","config":{"size":"large","alignment":"center","textWrap":"nowrap"}}}},"VERSION":"8.37.0"}" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="jwLWP _2hXa7 Zn7O0 public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="ftf0q-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="ftf0q-0-0"><span data-offset-key="ftf0q-0-0"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S4PAhBHOYX0/YL91oirACeI/AAAAAAAAD1A/MqIT1kkk3GIFwkk5stoe3fqbZkGJoyg4QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Logo%2BSUJATA%2BCOPYRIGHT.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S4PAhBHOYX0/YL91oirACeI/AAAAAAAAD1A/MqIT1kkk3GIFwkk5stoe3fqbZkGJoyg4QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Logo%2BSUJATA%2BCOPYRIGHT.jpg" /></a></div><br />Delineating human populations is one of the trickiest and most sensitive subjects in genetics. The reason is the fact that even scientific thinkers can be influenced by their cultural baggage. For centuries, Americans with the help of race scientists differentiated human populations into Negroids and Caucasoids. However, a closer look at this classification scheme will show that its origin and initial utility was to differentiate those groups who could be enslaved in perpetuity and those who could not. </span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="ftf0q-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="ftf0q-0-0">However, at the same time, America's founders were challenged by European monarchists, who derided the profound irony of the so-called American revolutionaries' "all men are created equal" doctrine, when the U.S. was itself based on slave labor. </div></div><div class="jwLWP _2hXa7 Zn7O0 public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="ahdi1-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="ahdi1-0-0"><span data-offset-key="ahdi1-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="jwLWP _2hXa7 Zn7O0 public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="fjkdt-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fjkdt-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fjkdt-0-0">So what does that have to do with scientific classifications? Pressures within American society made it necessary to lump the Irish, English, Germans, French, and other European immigrants into a single race, when previously each nationality would have been classified as a race unto itself. But the psychological nature of these pressures created a marketplace among academics to rationalize slavery by providing theories showing that Africans were inferior to Europeans. Thus, slave traders were doing the former a presumed service by removing them from heathen-dom and placing them within a civilized setting. </span></div></div><div class="jwLWP _2hXa7 Zn7O0 public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="399uh-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="399uh-0-0"><span data-offset-key="399uh-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="jwLWP _2hXa7 Zn7O0 public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="ahh4t-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="ahh4t-0-0"><span data-offset-key="ahh4t-0-0">By the mid=18th century, academics were manipulating skull sizes to show that the ex-slaves had smaller brains and were thus cognitively inferior to Caucasians. When that effort was eventually shown as a sham, the 20th century impulse to establish a racial hierarchy replaced craniology (the study of skulls) and craniometry (the measurement of skulls) with more refined methods of categorizing its citizens -- intelligence testing. It should come as no surprise that the cultural groups from which the testers emanated, always scored high on such tests, and marginalized minorities scored low. </span></div></div><div class="jwLWP _2hXa7 Zn7O0 public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="7uoqr-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="7uoqr-0-0"><span data-offset-key="7uoqr-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="jwLWP _2hXa7 Zn7O0 public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="btasl-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="btasl-0-0"><span data-offset-key="btasl-0-0">By the 21st century, scientists realized that the highly abused racial categories might serve a function in differentiating disease susceptibilities in diverse ethnic groups. But we now understand that race (Negroids, Caucasoids, Mongoloids), is not scientific at the genomic level, even though biomarkers can be searched for in any person's genome to identify his or her so-called race.. Human beings can however be seen as "ecological niche populations". That is, their ancestors will over time have developed genetic variants or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) that allowed them to survive in challenging environments. But these SNPs do not correspond to racial classifications. The SNPs that allow human populations to live in malarial areas bring together West Africans, with Southern Europeans and coastal East Indians. SNPs that make it possible for West Africans to survive the tropical heat of the sodium-deficient interior will not be carried by coastal Africans, who have the limitless availability of ocean salt for their sodium nutritional needs. Thus, ancestral populations that have adapted to the same ecological "niche" will have more in common with one another than other ways of delineating populations. This is because their genetic variants will align with the unique ecological conditions required to survive in whatever environments they inhabit. </span></div></div><div class="jwLWP _2hXa7 Zn7O0 public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="92l86-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="92l86-0-0"><span data-offset-key="92l86-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="jwLWP _2hXa7 Zn7O0 public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="71epq-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="71epq-0-0"><span data-offset-key="71epq-0-0">This approach can also be classified as<a href="https://www.ancestralgenomics.org/" target="_blank"> "ancestral genomics" </a>because the SNPs that make unique environments livable for certain groups, may be maladaptive in other environments to which they have been translocated. A ripe field of research is the ancestral genomics of African-Americans of slave descent. They are admixed with Europeans but also appear to have differences in sodium-metabolism from coastal West Africans. Is the fact that the ancestors of these Black Americans remained healthy on 200 mg/sodium/day and their U.S. descendants consume 3400 mg/sodium/day, the reason why 75% of adult African-Americans suffer from salt-sensitive hypertension? These are the types of questions that explorations into ancestral genomics will over time answer. </span></div></div><div class="jwLWP _2hXa7 Zn7O0 public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="15e1e-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="15e1e-0-0"><span data-offset-key="15e1e-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="jwLWP _2hXa7 Zn7O0 public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="3rmb1-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="3rmb1-0-0"><span data-offset-key="3rmb1-0-0"></span></div></div></div><!--Generated by www.webweaver.nu-->
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</script>Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-16581389396919902302021-06-04T18:30:00.001-05:002021-06-04T18:30:11.518-05:00The REAL Reason U.S. Does Not Shoot Down UFOS-- FEARFor years, unidentified aircraft have been intruding on U.S. airspace, even swarming our multi-billion dollar warships. The U.S. does not shoot them down because they know these flying objects are neither China', Russia's, nor ours. So what does that leave? The alternative is so unnerving that not even the Pentagon has the cojones to say it out loud. Their actions have shown that they at least do believe these craft to represent technologically-advanced civilizations from another realm, for which they are <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K4_QhaoWns4/YLq3WxwbOBI/AAAAAAAAD0U/Udre1Z9WBl0i8EvrZE5vvhO-6-h8O4fOACLcBGAsYHQ/s816/UFO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="816" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K4_QhaoWns4/YLq3WxwbOBI/AAAAAAAAD0U/Udre1Z9WBl0i8EvrZE5vvhO-6-h8O4fOACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/UFO.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>powerless to do anything about. <script language="JavaScript">
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</script>Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-56605181977166421802021-06-02T09:31:00.001-05:002021-06-02T09:34:47.738-05:00Bravo! Naomi Osaka is My Kind of Sports Hero <i>Greatness speaks for itself. </i>Or maybe it takes a tennis star from Japan to teach us Americans the true meaning of courage. The fact that Naomi Osaka was penalized for bowing out of a press conference only highlights the fact that in our society, a great performer cannot speak through her performance. She must at the same time demean her talent with vapid chatter. Is it to fill the empty spaces in our own souls? <div><br /><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yplbPhe5z8I/YLeU_KvrM6I/AAAAAAAADz8/3OC-LlM-SrobBIB5KDZZ32ZX2CJdMKv1gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1872/Naomi%2BOsaka.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1053" data-original-width="1872" height="210" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yplbPhe5z8I/YLeU_KvrM6I/AAAAAAAADz8/3OC-LlM-SrobBIB5KDZZ32ZX2CJdMKv1gCLcBGAsYHQ/w373-h210/Naomi%2BOsaka.jpg" width="373" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Naomi Osaka shows us true stardom</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><i>Still waters run deep. </i>And maybe Naomi Osaka is here to teach us the true meaning of star power. <br /> </div></div>Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-32871706869574130092021-04-01T22:18:00.003-05:002021-04-01T22:27:49.966-05:00Why Precision Medicine's Diversity Problem is Steadily Getting Worse I discussed in a recent interview with <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/genetics-race-dna-databases-reference-genome-too-white" target="_blank">ScienceNews reporter, Tina Saey, </a> the crisis of race and diversity in genomics and precision medicine, which is getting worse rather than better.<script language="JavaScript">
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</script><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxkom4FUId8V9plZJ9mRFTIUvCd9xct69kByqcBP3QkS-GoyvjULGDREB2CqaTQNksIAJaJVEUqZpi3jjEHRg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br /><div><br /></div>Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-89098952196928841082019-12-23T21:39:00.002-06:002019-12-23T21:58:33.510-06:00White Nationalists Hiding under the Banner of Evangelical Christianity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">White Nationalists Emboldened by Trump</td></tr>
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I'm beginning to suspect that the mainstream media is too market-driven to "call a spade a spade". The Caucasian folks who label themselves Evangelical Christians are nothing other than white nationalists, parading as religionists. As to why the mainstream media caters to the fanciful label they give themselves is probably to hold onto such viewers. But why should the rest of us flatter folks who exhibit the amorality of slave traders, by calling them something they're not -- i.e. Christians.<br />
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As I've peeped behind the curtain of white nationalist subterfuge, I've come to another rather startling realization. This voting bloc rails against abortion or LGBT rights only because it gives them a moral-appearing stance that they can use to batter liberals. But if we look back at recent history, we see that these white Evangelicals only latched on to the Catholic crusade against abortion in the last several decades as they sought ways to define themselves without acknowledging their white nationalist fear of a multiethnic America. President Barack Obama's two electoral victories sent these folks into an abyss of shock that only someone as corrupt and amoral and unfearful of parading his birtherist racism as Trump could help them climb out of. </div>
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Amanda Marcotte at Salon hit the bullseye with her article entitled: <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/12/23/in-trumps-america-christian-is-no-longer-a-religious-faith-its-white-identity-politics/"> "In Trump's America 'Christian' is no longer a religious faith — it's white identity politics"</a> The sooner America realizes that we're not dealing with a religious constituency, but rather with a profoundly secularist grab for fascist-like power, the sooner we'll be able to defeat these new confederates. </div>
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-68970626897389644282019-11-30T20:06:00.001-06:002019-12-15T10:28:03.490-06:00UNT TRANSDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON ANCESTRAL GENOMICS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0NV8I1-_eGI/XfZGly9pFaI/AAAAAAAACfw/2cCvJACqWcgr4QyVhnoo9ZV1LjElArXrACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Conference%2BEMAIL%2Bart%2Bcropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="169" data-original-width="366" height="291" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0NV8I1-_eGI/XfZGly9pFaI/AAAAAAAACfw/2cCvJACqWcgr4QyVhnoo9ZV1LjElArXrACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Conference%2BEMAIL%2Bart%2Bcropped.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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We are pleased to announce the opening of <a href="https://www.ancestralgenomics.org/">Registration for the April 17-18, 2020 UNT Transdisciplinary Conference on Ancestral Genomics. </a>This Inaugural two-day Conference will launch an annual 5 year series, bringing together leaders in the fields of ancestral genomics, evolutionary history, nutrition and other relevant fields as they relate to underrepresented populations. The April 2020 meeting will focus on testing new theoretical models developed to lend insights into "paradoxes" in the medical literature relating to six disease susceptibilities in African-Americans of slave descent. Future meetings will use these innovative methodologies to tackle the role of ancestral genomics and disease susceptibilities in global populations as well as underrepresented demographic groups in the U.S., which include Latinos/Hispanics and Native Americans. The upcoming forum will also bring together specialists from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, National Library of Medicine, the Cooperative Human Tissue Network, the Food and Nutrition Board, Precision Medicine and the National Center for Biotechnology Information to educate our research community on industry standards for ancestral genomic approaches. Workshops will be set up to establish collaborations for future research directed at our goal of diminishing the one-size-fits-all approach to human genomics. These sessions will also address a range of issues. including the authentication of ancestral cell lines, improved methods in bioinformatics data-gathering, ancestral adaptations to diverse nutritional environments, and effective methods for recruiting underrepresented populations to participate in medical studies.<br />
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What is Ancestral Genomics?</h2>
<b>The Challenge</b><br />
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A crisis exists in the Genomics and Precision Medicine field generated by new but counterintuitive discoveries regarding the nature of human genetic diversity. While race may be useful in a socio-cultural context, it has no basis in science. Human populations are adapted to the unique ecologies of the genetic niches they inhabit. African-Americans of slave descent carry a different genomic profile than Nigerian-Americans and may as a consequence have different disease susceptibilities. While West and East Africans may be shoved into the same "Black" racial classification, the former will have gene variants or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) that provide some level of natural immunity to malaria along with a susceptibility to sickle cell anemia but the latter will not. Ancestral Genomics is recognizing the medical value of identifying "genetic niche populations", rather than clustering humans into amorphous and sometimes misleading racial categories. However, Ancestral Genomics is also a concept that recognizes the deficiencies in taking a so-called colorblind approach to medicine. While well-intentioned, it usually leads to a one-size-fits-all paradigm, in which populations of European ancestry are universalized and their specific genomic traits misapplied to all other populations. This happens frequently because at the present time approximately 81% of the European genome has been studied, but only 3% of the African genome. Thus identifying disease-triggering variants in underrepresented populations is more difficult since the same disease symptoms may be expressed with different gene variants in different genetic populations. Ancestral genomics is bypassing race to study humans at the level of their ancestral populations.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: small;">The Questions We Should be Asking Ourselves</span></b><br />
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New questions arise when we examine underrepresented populations in their ancestral context. This inaugural Conference will focus on African-Americans of slave ancestry and develop models, which can become the focus of subsequent conferences in this series. Some of the most pressing issues related to African-American health disparities that this meeting will explore relate to:<br />
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<li>How should racial classifications be used in genomic medicine? African-Americans of slave origins possess an admixture profile that is on average 75% interior-Niger-Kordofanian West African DNA, 24% Northern European DNA and 1% Native American DNA. They do not carry the same genomic profile as Nigerian-Americans, who are of predominantly coastal-Niger-Kordanian ancestry. And yet, they are both categorized as belonging to the same race. Given the growing accuracy of DNA testing, can or should ancestry be used in place of racial categories?</li>
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<li>What are the most cost effective and medically beneficial fix to diversifying the reference genome an approach that regularly adds patches of non-European populations to it? Or, if the goal is reducing the number of genetic variants in non-Europeans that are tagged “rare” or VUS (Variants of Unknown Significance) should more emphasis be placed on identifying discrete ancestral genomes, which recognize the genomic adaptations of diverse ancestral populations to their unique environmental niches?</li>
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<li>How should genomic medicine grapple with the fact that different sets of genetic variants or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) trigger what appear to be the same traits or diseases in different genetic populations? (Europeans share one trigger for lactase non-persistence, Tanzanians have a different one, and their Kenyan neighbors have another one altogether).</li>
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<li>What role should the African genome play in medical research since it carries the full range of human genetic variation and thus contains within it the possibility of disease breakthroughs that might benefit the entire human species? (Were HeLa cells unique in their immortality or a harbinger of other discoveries yet to be made in the unexplored African ancestral genome?) </li>
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<li>Does the One-Size-Fits-All or colorblind approach to medical research silently racialize Europeans by universalizing their genomes and applying it to all human populations? </li>
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<li>Are African-Americans more susceptible to TRPV6-expressing cancers ((Metastatic Prostate Cancer, Triple Negative Breast Cancer, Colorectal Cancer, Ovarian Cancer) than other U.S. demographics? If so is the ancestral TRPV6a calcium ion channel variant the culprit?</li>
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<li>Is the TRPV6a variant more calcium absorbent than the derived (European) TRPV6b variant? If so, might overexposure to free calcium ions trigger a higher susceptibility to TRPV6-expressing cancers in populations who carry the ancestral TRPV6a variant?</li>
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<li>Do all humans have the same dietary calcium needs? The Niger-Kordofanian West Africans consume 200-300 mg/calcium/day but have minimal rates of osteoporosis. Americans of Northern European origin consume 1000-1200 mg/calcium/day, but are at high risk of fragile bone diseases. Could high calcium consumption trigger potential malignancies or preeclampsia in childbirth for African-Americans and other populations who have strong bones despite a lower than USDA-required calcium intake? Should U.S. calcium intake be stratified by ancestry rather than based on a one-size-fits-all model? </li>
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<li>In order to avoid misdiagnosing African-Americans with kidney disease, U.S. laboratories have added a correction factor to this genetic population’s eGFR score. Should other biological values be stratified by ancestry in order to provide a more accurate picture of health in a particular population?</li>
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<li>Do all humans have the same dietary sodium needs? The Niger-Kordofanian ancestors of African-Americans inhabit the sodium-deficient interior of West Africa. They are genetically adapted to consuming 200-300 mg/day/sodium, levels that would be too low even to meet the survival needs of coastal West Africans. Does transition from a low-sodium ancestral diet to the current 3400 mg/sodium/day intake trigger salt-sensitive hypertension and kidney failure in African-Americans? Should U.S. sodium intake be stratified by ancestry rather than based on a one-size-fits-all model.</li>
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<li>What advances are being made in ethnopharmacology that may be of special benefit to African-Americans?</li>
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-84378397232292151162018-09-03T10:39:00.001-05:002018-09-03T10:40:14.770-05:00The Genetics of Calcium-Triggering Cancers in African-Americans <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">African-American Males Retain more Calcium which Can Trigger Prostate Cancer</td></tr>
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Cancers identified by the uncontrolled proliferation of the TRPV6 mRNA biomarker, kill African-Americans (AAs) at nearly twice the rate of Whites. Malignancies assigned to this class include: Metastatic prostate cancer, triple negative breast cancer, colorectal and multiple myeloma. This ecological model identifies the cause as an ethnic-specific haplotype of the TRPV6 calcium ion channel, which is also proto-oncogenic. This ancestral TRPV6a variant has been shown in several studies to be more calcium absorbent than the non-African/European TRPV6b allele. AAs inherited strong bones from their low-calcium consuming (200-400 mg/day) Niger-Kordofanian West African ancestors. However, AAs are maladapted to the high calcium (1,000+ mg/day) food environment of the U.S. As a consequence, the ancestral TRPV6a allele can become invasively oncogenic when over-exposed to excess free calcium ions, leading to the aforementioned class of cancers.<br />
<a href="http://nobleresearch.org/Doi/10.14312/2052-4994.2018-6">(read more)</a><br />
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RELATED POSTS:<br />
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<li><a href="http://african-americanhealth.blogspot.com/2018/07/precision-medicine-must-embrace-african.html">Precision Medicine Must Embrace African Genomics or Lose Its Cutting Edge</a></li>
<li><a href="http://african-americanhealth.blogspot.com/2018/07/should-african-american-women-with.html">Should African-American Women with Ovarian Cancer Avoid Calcium?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://african-americanhealth.blogspot.com/2018/07/does-calcium-cause-cancer-in-blacks.html">Are USDA Dietary Requirements Killing Blacks?</a></li>
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-70570947991219105022018-06-11T21:46:00.000-05:002018-06-11T21:48:12.381-05:00Does Milk and Dairy Cause Cancer in Blacks?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Dairy Industry Markets Milk to Blacks</td></tr>
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Federal nutritional standards do not take into account the differing dietary calcium needs of the diverse ethnic groups that comprise this nation. Rather, the USDA has calculated the biological needs of European-Americans and now operates on the presumption that this one population group should speak for the entire human species. <br />
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This mindset has created a serious problem for African-Americans. While Whites have the highest rates of osteoporosis and fragile bone diseases, Blacks have the lowest. This is so even though African-Americans consume 30% less calcium on account of lactase non-persistence (lactose intolerance). Bone health is the most accurate means of gauging a particular ethnic population's calcium needs. Blacks have strong skeletal structures because their bodies possess certain genetic variants that metabolize calcium more efficiently than other groups. The TRPV6 calcium ion channel in humans absorbs dietary calcium through the intestinal walls. However, the African TRPV6a variant of this gene is 25-50% more calcium absorbent than the non-African TRPV6b variant. Thus populations carrying the TRPV6a variant require less calcium in their diets, because a larger percentage will be absorbed for the body's biological needs.</div>
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This genomic advantage for people of West African descent, whose ancestors lived on 200-400 mg. calcium/day is now having a devastating effect on African-Americans. <i><b> The reason is that they consume 2 to 4 times more calcium than their ancestors and the over-consumption of calcium triggers an aggressive class of cancers, which includes metastatic prostate cancer, triple negative breast cancer, ovarian and colorectal cancer. </b></i> The mortality rate for Blacks is more than twice that of Whites for these particular malignancies. My research calculates that African-Americans should be consuming closer to 600 mg/calcium in order to reduce their cancer risk.</div>
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The situation for Black females is even more critical. White women suffer high rates of osteoporosis and as a consequence all American females are given the same public health message. It is that they should supplement their calcium intake in order to reduce the risk of fragile bones as they age. But alas, African-American women are dying of "TRPV6-expressing" cancers, triggered by a hypersensitivity to excess calcium.</div>
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Some of these facts are explained in a video clip released by the University of North Texas. If you would like to know more about this subject, I would be glad to send you a copy of my latest article (send your request to connie@unt.edu). </div>
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-41808832623924909382018-03-23T10:55:00.002-05:002018-03-23T11:04:28.150-05:00White Nihilism -- Killing Innocents to Assert One's Manhood -- IS DOMESTIC TERRORISM<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If I hear one more so-called pundit claim that white American males who slaughter innocent people are not terrorists because they have no motive, I'm going to vomit. How dare these talking heads present such bigoted stupidity in public forums. Yes, Donald Trump and his political cronies may own the FOX news network and intimidate the mainstream media. <i> But they don't own reality.</i><br />
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Folks should not accept such garbage. The unrepentant efforts at mass slaughter on the part of individuals like the Austin Bomber is domestic terrorism in the fullest definition of the word. The English language is fluid. Terms mean whatever we, the people, say they mean. A court of law is different because it is its own closed universe. Reporters can certainly announce that courts may have one definition, just as a little over a century ago, a black person was less than 2/3's of a human. But it is the journalist's job to clarify the fact that a legal definition is not the reality of the matter.</div>
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For the sake of peace, I'll steer away from calling the Austin bomber a Christian terrorist despite his upbringing and fundamentalist causes. But let's take a moment to look at the alternative. Maybe he's a non-religious, domestic terrorist in the mold of the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, who slaughtered 59 people. The media and law enforcement refused to call him a terrorist as well. Such folks if not religious, are ideologues none the less. They are as willing to die for their ideals as any fanatical Muslim. They are Nihilists. They believe in nothingness, or to be more precise, nihilism according to Wikipedia is "the philosophical viewpoint that suggests the denial or lack of belief towards the reputedly meaningful aspects of life." For America to have created a cadre of white males willing to kill masses of innocent people and die for nothingness other than the assertion of their manhood as they engage in the act of killing is truly, truly horrifying. </div>
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This is what Americans should be talking about. But how can we, if the society refuses to name these people?</div>
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-26795866710661687552018-03-22T09:13:00.000-05:002018-03-22T10:25:20.964-05:00Mr. Austin Police Chief -- Your Compassion for this White Terrorist is Shamefully Misplaced<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Perhaps under the pressure of the climactic end of this investigation, Austin Deputy Police Chief Brian Manley misspoke when he characterized the confession of the Austin bomber, Mark Conditt, by saying:</div>
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<i> “He does not at all mention anything about terrorism nor does he mention anything about hate. But instead it is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his personal life that led him to this point.”</i></blockquote>
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<a href="https://scontent-dfw5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/29512420_10155245615581056_7047082567186513920_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=9b8c44c9668bf9bfa8ebe4a2def920c2&oe=5B2DDE47" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Image may contain: 1 person, smiling" border="0" height="320" src="https://scontent-dfw5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/29512420_10155245615581056_7047082567186513920_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=9b8c44c9668bf9bfa8ebe4a2def920c2&oe=5B2DDE47" width="254" /></a>Most school shooters and mass murderers in the U.S. don't go around slaughtering people out of hate, but rather out of a yearning for glory. What I find most shocking at this point, is not the pattern of white male shooters seeking to gloat over how much carnage they can create in the slaughter of innocent people. It is the refusal of law enforcement, the White House, the society at large to initiate even the merest whisper of a conversation about what soulless rot lies at the core of these individuals and their families and communities that generate such thought and behavioral templates. </div>
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In the midst of this silence, let me offer a hint. This culture of white nationalism has thus far sustained Donald Trump, the GOP and the NRA. How could they not hate immigrants, who's only wish is to have the opportunity to make a life for themselves in the U.S. Do the aimless Mark Conditt's of the world want to compare their own failures to people who have been given none of the privileges Conditt was born with but failed to use. He could not heal his low self-esteem with explosives just as so many white males in the Trump orbit cannot heal their masculine insecurities by stockpiling weapons. </div>
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These unhealed wounds are rotting these males from the inside out. It is this stench of decaying soul-flesh that the students at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have risen up to shove their generation as far away from as they can get. I hope they succeed. America's future depends on it.<br />
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-8116924807631472812018-02-23T08:41:00.004-06:002018-02-23T21:22:48.058-06:00One Way to Stop School Shootings. . . Beseech Africa's Trickster God for WisdomAs a historian, I function in the secular realm. But I use the metaphors of spiritual traditions when the message conveyed carries unusual emotional clarity. When Christian missionaries first confronted the Trickster God of West Africa, they right away assigned him the role of Satan. Here was an entity that caused misery and trouble. He wasn't even the lovable, fairytale imp one finds in certain other traditional religions and folklore, who merely plays pranks on people. This divinity is all-powerful and when he sees the need has no compunction against fomenting chaos and violence on unimaginable scales.<br />
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So what does the Trickster have to do with this period of mourning that has left our nation feeling raw and rudderless but for the leadership and courage shown by a bunch of grieving teenagers? The Trickster finds ways of handing out AR-15s to youngsters and adults alike. In each case, the lost, narcissistic soul is yearning for something a semi-automatic rifle promises to bring. And then the slaughter begins.<br />
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If the society doesn't learn the lesson it is meant to learn at Columbine High, the Trickster moves on to ... and ... You can see why the missionaries thought this divinity demonic. The point here though is that either America learns its lessons or faces the slaughter of an entire generation of children and the post traumatic stress syndrome of the survivors.</div>
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So, what is the lesson the Trickster is intent on having us learn at the cost of such blood sacrifice? It's not necessarily spiritual nor even, for that matter, moral. It's merely a history lesson. </div>
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To begin with, America was itself founded on unspeakable violence. What did ridding a continent of its indigenous populations look like, especially to the victims? Our nation grew prosperous on the backs of slave labor. The obsession with armed militias fanned by paranoia grew out of the culture of slave patrols, when every able bodied white man in the South took up arms to protect their "way of life". America may need to bare its soul to its own clueless citizens, if it is to get beyond its present impasse. And then the nation must decide on ways to make the 2nd Amendment work for a modern civilized nation, rather than a Indian-ravaging slave state.<br />
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Practically speaking, America will first and foremost have to figure out a way to get military-grade weapons out of the hands of civilians. Too many folks are now as doped up on NRA and GOP empowerment fantasies as opioid addicts. Or, the Trickster will just keep doing his thing, pleading in his own way that society not continue to sacrifice its children in vain. </div>
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-50631670680334604762018-01-24T16:24:00.002-06:002018-05-02T09:58:25.389-05:00"Antebellum Evangelicalism" Has Theological Roots in Slavery<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The thoughtfulness of Southernleveller’s <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/23/1735520/-Politicized-White-Fundamentalists-of-the-U-S-Religious-Right-vs-True-Evangelical-Faith" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(153, 107, 61) !important; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Politicized White Fundamentalists of the U.S. Religious Right vs. "True Evangelical Faith"</a> <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/23/1735520/-Politicized-White-Fundamentalists-of-the-U-S-Religious-Right-vs-True-Evangelical-Faith" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(153, 107, 61) !important; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"> </a>inspired me to write this short diary to clarify the Evangelicalism of the likes of Franklin Graham and Tony Perkins. His diary described:</div>
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. . . giving “mulligans” to Drumpf’s adulteries and other immorality and defending him as “godly." These folk, who also supported pedophile Roy Moore, are not “evangelical,” which means “good news centered” (referring to the good news about Jesus of Nazareth).….. </div>
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I even decided to give this particular religious brand a name: “Antebellum Evangelicalism”. It was in fact the Southern Evangelical movement that broke away from the Northern movement in the early 1800’s over the issue of abolitionism. Remember, mainstream Evangelicals originating in Europe were profoundly against slavery. One of their most well-known spiritual leaders was John Newton, the slave trader who had made that extraordinary conversion experience and later penned the beautiful and sublime “Amazing Grace”. This is who the Evangelicals were. The Black Evangelical movement in the U.S. represents the legacy of this spiritual tradition.</div>
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But Southern white Evangelicals broke away and created their own theology. It was one of riffling through the Bible looking for literal citations of slavery from societies of 2,000 years ago. It did so in order to claim that Christianity justified slavery. These churches repudiated “love thy neighbor” Christianity for any verbiage they ripped out of context in order to justify the existence of bondage in ancient society. This presumably meant that God justified the institution.</div>
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Recent DNA evidence also reveals that what we politely call “chattel” bondage was actually sexual slavery in the antebellum South. Sexual assault and forced impregnation of female slaves was endemic to the institution. Slave owners, some of whom were clergy, sold their mulatto daughters to brothels when finances were tight. This thriving trade was known as the “fancy girl market”. </div>
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The moral authority (or lack thereof) in such a system was one of <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">patriarchal amoralism</strong>. The patriarch defined reality. Right and wrong, truth, reality, versus fake was a function of the patriarch’s declaration. If he said that a mulatto child with the same color eyes and dimples was not his, then his wife demanded apologies from anyone who would have besmirched his honor. The patriarch decided which sex acts the community would condemn as scandalous, according to his political or personal agenda. Truth was defined according to the dictates of the patriarch.</div>
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In searching for answers to the behavior and thinking of Trump’s supporters, a person can quote the Bible if they wish. But patriarchal amoralism, not the Bible, not Christian teachings, is the foundation of this Evangelical sect. After slavery, it justified the lynching of blacks, segregation, and the vile hatred that we see being fanned today in such churches. Being patriarchal and authoritarian, it has never in America’s history supported nor nurtured the values of democracy. Thus Its “religious” leaders convey the theological values needed to prepare its communities for fascist rule. This thread has always existed within American society. It is not new. It is not superficial. It will not disappear. America made a moral compromise at the beginning of its existence. Every century or so, the reality of it gets thrown like acid into our faces. </div>
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-56623429687376382212017-11-24T09:30:00.001-06:002017-11-24T09:30:29.104-06:00Al Franken & Conyers Should Go When 53% of White Women Stop Supporting Donald Trump<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Let me explain what “white skin privilege” means from my vantage as a black feminist. It refers to having the space to cultivate “delicate sensibilities” in a world that demands focus. I’m not referring here to upholding or failing to uphold ones values of fairness towards all human beings. What I am talking about is a repeat of what gave us Donald Trump in the first place. Apart from anti-feminist white women, there were Progressives who felt that the female Democratic candidate wasn’t pure enough.<br />
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White women can weave in and out of reality in ways that people of color cannot. Neither Al Franken nor Conyers are pedophiles. When Trump resigns, they can resign. In the meantime, prioritize your battles. Otherwise you’ll get confused, worn out, and when you’re needed most, you’ll be vacationing in the Caribbean.<br />
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-86611253313395403022017-09-25T08:55:00.003-05:002017-09-25T08:55:53.812-05:00How Trump Relinquished His Moral Authority to an ESPN Commentator <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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An informal show of hands in my History of Black Women class settled the question. President Donald Trump had just lost his moral authority to speak on issues of racism and white supremacy and transferred them to a young black ESPN commentator named Jemele Hill. The fact that the President might be wholly unaware of the transfer was immaterial. The question I had posed to the class was this: “Whose victimization by white supremacy and racism would make him or her a better judge of its corrosive aura: President Donald Trump or ESPN commentator Jemele Hill?”<br />
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While the question might have seemed lopsided to some, that’s how moral authority works. It is not codified in writing, like the U.S. Constitution or our legal codes. It is based, instead on what are perceived to be lasting truths, exercised by those who’ve earned the privilege to be respected in that domain. What had Jemele Hill done to earn that authority apart from publish a series of tweets in which she had called the President a “white supremacist” and what had he in turn done to lose it, other than attack ESPN and demand that she apologize?<br />
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Ms. Hill had performed a breathtakingly simple act of courage. She had announced a truth that President Trump had for eight years denied, double daring the media and politicians to contradict. The evidence grew longer, nastier and ever more preponderant with references being made to Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers and a Latino judge as unfit to adjudicate Trump’s legal case and the list continued to grow. Trump was a leading figure in the birther movement, declaring America’s black president a Kenyan imposter. He had demanded to see Obama’s college transcripts, suggesting the president wasn’t smart enough to get into Harvard law school. The New York businessman also asserted that the President’s acclaimed memoir, Dreams from My Father had been ghost written. When not fixated on Obama, Trump bought an $86,000 ad calling for the execution of black youths for the Central Park rape, a crime they were later found innocent of having committed.<br />
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In venues across the nation where black women congregate, conversations turned bitter. President Trump’s attack had gone too far, re-opening old, ancestral wounds. His tweet had mimicked the voice of a patriarchal master dismissing a black woman ’s experience of racism as a lie, for which she deserved to be smacked down. After all, the patriarch owned not just her world, but the English language as well. Words could only mean what he said that they meant. Human behaviors could only be given the interpretations that he imposed on them.<br />
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But Jemele Hill had not backed down. She had liberated the English language from the lexical dictatorship that had held it hostage. If President Donald Trump fit even the most narrow textbook definition of a white supremacist, then he was a “white supremacist”.<br />
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America’s over-arching problem is not racism, but cowardice. A nation that allows its Commander-in-Chief to threaten the livelihood of a young woman for saying in a tweet a moral truth written in the hearts of her community, is a nation that will have unconditionally surrendered its leadership of the free world. <br />
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-6818233723724090872017-09-23T13:27:00.001-05:002017-09-23T13:29:37.083-05:00How Saddam's Parrot Led Me to Safety From Trump Jr.'s Business Ethics & a Cosmic Cataclysm<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jim Currie's latest novel Saddam's Parrot</td></tr>
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What if you woke up one Saturday morning and learned that the Texas University where you taught (and where some of your students still bedded down in homeless shelters on account of Hurricane Harvey) had just paid Donald Trump jr. $100,000 to give a thirty minute speech on Ethics. Struggling to understand the mindset of the higher rung of the state’s educated elite, you would then have to face the lower rung’s reaction to the news that the Earth was on a collision course with a mysterious Planet named Nbiru. When it comes to the magical realism of actual life, there’s no place like the Bible Belt to contemplate apocalyptic gore.<br />
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Instead, I padded into the kitchen, grabbed myself a lemon gingerberry Kombucha, and curled back up in bed with author Jim Currie’s latest novel <i>Saddam’s Parrot</i>. Years back, this same author had transported me once before out of harm’s way. That time, I sat on the floor of a hut in Futa Toro, Mauritania, reading The Mindful Traveler and contemplating whether a trek into the Sahara would take me where my soul needed to roam. Jim Currie came through this time as he had those many years before with flying colors (as for that last trip, I ended up in a lively disco, dancing the nights away in neighboring Dakar — the soul’s ways are indeed mysterious). <br />
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<i> Saddam’s Parro</i>t, is beautifully written, funny and even poignant in places. The book is, admittedly, steeped in politics -- the talkative African grey parrot once belonged to Saddam Hussein, ended up in the George W. Bush White House, and harbors secret information worth killing for — but this book’s politics is a more transcendent experience without being super-earthly in anyway. As a dutiful Kossack, I’m as steeped in the stuff as anyone. Yet there is something so expansive about Currie’s world of people, a parrot, and sublimely intelligent and self-aware elephants. Oops, I forgot to mention the centrality of elephants in this story. <br />
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And see, that’s my point. Practical circumstances immerse me in a day-to-day world peopled by Trump, his ugly-hearted minions and the disintegration of the fragile democracy I call home . But this book helps me escape my self-confinement, because as important as our nation’s current crisis is, why should Trump define my entire existence, when the world is so vast and full of wonders bestowed on us by nature, even though they too are at risk of annihilation. <br />
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Currie does a good job of weaving a story that clears the mind of daily White House twitter shrapnel. Even the main characters in the book, a coincidental bunch of friends living on the fringes of San Francisco life, remind me a bit of our Dailykos community, (not that we are “fringe characters” hum...) but in the sense that we have come together as ordinary people with shared values, who are learning ways of empowering our community through collective action, encouragement and supporting one another. <br />
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Saddam’s Parrot is not a big book. But it is an inspiration for someone like me, who feels so easily beaten down by the zombies of neo-fascism as they creep across our landscape. <br />
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-89029750457199136762017-09-13T22:33:00.001-05:002017-09-13T22:35:31.174-05:00Thank You Jemele Hill, Let's All Begin Calling the Man in the White House by His Rightful, Well-Earned True Title <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>White Supremacist </i>Donald Trump</td></tr>
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I'm so glad ESPN commentator, Jemele Hill. raised the issue. "White Supremacist Donald Trump" comes across as a far more authentic honorific for the man who today occupies the White House than prefacing his name with the mere title of "President".<br />
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-62119495822047379402017-09-13T19:41:00.000-05:002017-09-13T20:46:53.769-05:00Let's Talk About Sarah Huckabee Sanders REAL Problem with ESPN Commentator Jemele Hill<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
White House press secretary<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/13/jemele-hill-and-the-trump-white-houses-double-standard-on-character-assassination/?utm_term=.d0e7f742e52f"> Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that ESPN commentator Jemele Hill should be fired for calling President Donald Trump a racist</a>. Alas, Ms. Sanders problem is that she is a throwback to a frustrated plantation mistress but without the slaves to boss around. So, that might be why she's picking on Jemele Hill. The woman's telling the truth and everyone knows it. Are we, the American public supposed to pretend otherwise. Are we supposed to forget how Mr. Trump entered presidential politics by claiming that President Barack Obama was a Kenyan imposter. Trump stuck with that lie until he gained the White House. Bytheway, no one fired Trump from his shady business dealings for calling President Obama a racist. So, why should ESPN fire Jemele Hill for saying the same of Trump?<br />
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And if you're curious about Ms. Sanders' propensity for seamless lying, it's a fascinating story that harkens back to the culture she inherited from her antebellum ancestors. White plantation mistresses in those days were socialized into a way of processing reality in which they mimicked whatever truths the patriarch told them to mutter. Donald Trump is the patriarch of Ms. Sanders plantation these days. But in olden times, it sometimes meant claiming that the young 'colored' butler bore no resemblance to her own son even though he too had green eyes and a mole over his left eyebrow, if you get my drift. . . <br />
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RELATED POST: <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/8/2/1686247/-Huckabee-Sanders-Poster-Child-for-Something-even-Uglier-than-Racism-in-Antebellum-South">Huckabee Sanders-Poster Child for Something even Uglier than Racism that Arose from Antebellum South</a><br />
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-35194433255631877272017-08-14T08:40:00.000-05:002017-08-14T08:56:04.276-05:00Now that Trump's Support Base Has Shrunk to White Evangelicals and Neo-Nazis <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, VA</td></tr>
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Now that President Donald Trump's support base has shrunk to white evangelicals and neo-Nazis, it's inevitable that some Americans will conflate the two constituencies. In this way, the president will bankrupt the moral authority of white evangelical Christians as surely as he has bankrupted his businesses. It will take some time for the full impact of this collapse to be felt within that community. But that trajectory is inevitable. <br />
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With 90% of white Christian evangelicals having embraced Trump's presidency, their moral leadership of the cultural wars will soon diminish to little more than an irritating buzz in the nation's outer ear. In this fast-paced society of ours, people can become easily confused. Why should they take the advice of flag-waving neo-Nazis as to when life begins, or who should be allowed to marry whom, or who for that matter should be allowed to use which bathrooms? Evangelicals, if they look hard enough, might find a lesson or two in the Bible about the rewards of tying one's fortunes to a thrice-married, casino-owning, pussy-grabber. </div>
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-49081564421809973272017-07-16T10:00:00.000-05:002017-07-16T10:21:38.845-05:00Trump Has Just Solved a Conundrum Historians have Struggled with for a Century<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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As a historian, it is difficult if not impossible to teach American history, without at least one student each semester asking in wide-eyed incredulity, the same damning question. "How could slavery have existed and flourished in the Antebellum South, given that it was so inimical to the democratic values upon which American society was built?"<br />
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My answers are seldom adequate because young people are trying to connect what experiences in their own lives would help them to understand Americans' acceptance of such raw brutality? How did Southerners justify the institution? How did Northerners, for that matter, justify the justifications of Southerners before the Civil War? <br />
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Well, alas with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, we're living the answer. But please don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that Trump's bungling, his treasonous ties to Russia or brutal immigration policy might in any way add up to the unspeakable evils of slavery. But what I am suggesting is this. The people who make the biggest moral claims are invariably the ones who accept the most jaw-dropping moral compromises. It was the well-mannered, gentile Southern aristocracy, who examined naked slaves on the auction block like beef heifers, sold slave children from their mothers when money was tight, or worked the field hands until they dropped dead in the cotton fields. Their Confederate Christianity accepted the status quo, as did their confederate moral sense of right and wrong. Their confederate schools taught them to disparage reason in favor of pseudo-scientific theories about racial hierarchies, where the universe placed them at the top and their slaves at the bottom. These people lived in a confederate world so jerry-built on fakery and filled with lies that they truly believed the slaves loved their station in life, and would take the Confederate's side when the Civil War erupted. <br />
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Trump's presidency is an abomination of a different sort. But like the confederacy of old, it is built on fakery and flim-flam. The man is a corrupt businessman, who has bankrupted every business he started. It appears that he became entangled in money laundering for the Russian mob when American banks would no longer lend to him. International intelligence reports claim that he has been compromised by Russian President Vladimir Putin. And yet the Republicans in Congress as well as his supporters have refused ever since Trump entered the presidential campaign to demand that he release his income tax returns. The daughter and son-in-law are selling their wares from the White House porch. This is the behavior of a crime family. The "First Lady" refuses to perform any but the most minimal duties knowing that her husband, who is on tape as a "pussy grabber" will probably be serving penitentiary time before she even has a chance to hang the gold-threaded curtains in the bathroom. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Speaker Mitch McConnell know that Trump is a pathological liar as do the other members of the GOP. They realize that he is precipitating a constitutional crisis by attempting to obstruct the FBI's investigation of Trump's collusion with the Kremlin. But they tiptoe around everything, the dishonesty, disrespecting the rule of law, compromising the government of the United States for the sake of the Russians.<br />
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My point here, is that Trump's supporters, the Republican controlled Senate and House of Representatives didn't just pop out of nowhere. They've merely been in the background, waiting for an opportunity to be heard. This is neo-confederate America. Anti-immigrant nativism, plays a role and police state racism. But the larger picture is one of authoritarianism, a yearning for fascism, a strong man dictatorship. <i>That is the true legacy, the fake worldview built upon comforting lies that allowed slavery to thrive, which America never did get around to dismantling. </i> </div>
Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-69290595146689233102017-07-13T16:30:00.002-05:002017-07-13T16:45:47.079-05:00How Did White Evangelicals Get Sucked into Trump's Amoral Tribalism?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So. . . what is <i>amoral tribalism</i>? It is a moral system that defines what is right and wrong in terms of its utility to the tribe and vice versa. The difference with the standards that many Americans would identify as being moral behavior can be seen in today's political landscape. Most white Evangelical Christians are Trump supporters, who have until now propagated a moral system based on the Biblical authority of the Ten Commandments. But how then do they accept, tolerate and make excuses for what we are now being faced with as the Trump crime family reveals itself and its cronies. What we see unfolding is lying on a pathological level, stealing, treason, money laundering, sex trafficking and the various and sundry other vices that crime families and money laundering syndicates engage in. The "fake news", "nothingburger" statements made by Republican Congressmen, the consummate amoral tribalists themselves, now sound ridiculous as ways of shielding the Trumps from their own trashy lives.<br />
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So, now back to the question of how it is possible that white Evangelicals might support the Trumps. The operative term in all of this is "tribalism". The enemy is multiculturalism. President Barack Obama was the Great Satan. Immigrants are a malignant cancer. Police shootings of unarmed blacks is what it has always been, a way to feel safe and in conttrol. This particular demographic is especially vulnerable. Believing that the planet is 5,000 years old places a ceiling on the opportunities to get a college education (even though many wouldn't want to) and it precludes the freedom of thought needed to pursue careers in science and technology. In actuality it is "white Evangelicals on Sunday" following their "white tribal leader on Monday through Saturday night". </div>
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-8231492601046116722017-06-25T14:11:00.004-05:002017-06-25T14:11:50.039-05:00Is the Women's Movement Stagnating Because We Ignored the Tougher Enemy <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kellyanne Conway </td></tr>
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<i>Fifty-four percent of the white women in America are Kellyanne Conways.</i> They voted like her, think like her, rationalize racism and sexism like her. Ms. Conway is their poster lady. She conveys their priorities, which is keeping "their" men in power. She reflects their values, which is twisting reality to suit their needs. Their family values are predicated on letting men behave like baboons so long as America's racial hierarchy remains in place. Until feminists open their eyes to the fact that white nationalism in America is not demarcated by gender, our movement will continue grasping at thin air. </div>
Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-56867632517145029292017-06-17T08:37:00.000-05:002017-06-17T08:37:09.689-05:00Near Sinking of Naval Destroyer by Container Ship Major Catastrophe for U.S. Navy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Damaged Naval Destroyer after Collision</td></tr>
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I may not be a naval buff, but even I can see last night's accidental ramming of the U.S.S. Fitzgerald by a Philippine container ship as a catastrophe and public relations nightmare for the U.S. Navy. The captain has been airlifted to a naval hospital and seven sailors are missing. The merchant ship that nearly sunk the American vessel sustained only minor damage.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AfgpBfzMcmc/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="112" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AfgpBfzMcmc/maxresdefault.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Container Ship Collided with Naval Destroyer</td></tr>
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Just from my civilian's untrained view, how is the military going to justify having the American taxpayer hand over $1.5 billion a pop for building destroyers when they can be sunk by container ships? I don't know how many warships our Navy has, but the last time I checked on Google there were about 16,900 bulk carriers plying the world's sea lanes. <div style="text-align: right;">
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-62450400059324676252017-06-10T14:46:00.003-05:002017-06-10T15:14:51.488-05:00Forget the Debate about Columbus -- FOX News Helped Me Discover America<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I don't know why it has taken me a lifetime to punch through the mirage. But I'm grateful that this moment has come. For, it has given me a deeper sense of peace than I've had since Donald Trump won the presidency.<br />
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I was at an upscale supermarket this morning, and FOX news was playing in the cafe area. I didn't bother to complain to management as I usually do. I'm the interloper, having chosen for various practical reasons to make Texas my home. In any case, I was watching the lies prance across the screen, interviews with Trump's pals about what a low life ex-FBI Director Jim Comey was, etc. And then I realized something. This is Russian television, or any banana republic's television station that so happens to be broadcast in English.Nobody goes to journalism school to broadcast propaganda. Why are we (regular Americans) even allowing banana-republic propagandists on our television-waves? That's when this awesome little insight struck. </div>
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America is both a democracy and an autocracy, with that latter sub-system nestled behind a flimsy curtain. And that is what our nation built on slavery has always been. The liberal democratic superstructure's job is to speak for the whole, and to squirrel the de-federalized autocracy in the attic like a slightly disreputable relative. That's what so-called "states rights" is actually about, the autocratic, authoritarianism, anti-democratic soul of many Americans (but fortunately JUST less than a majority). Their political core, that is, "the Dixiecrats" were over time allowed to bounce back and forth between the Democratic and Republican parties.</div>
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But what we have now by fluke of circumstances is the de-federalized autocracy having come down from the attic and temporarily taken over the democratic superstructure (DC) , which was never supposed to happen. The two were supposed to co-exist, with the DC doing all the talking on the national and international stage. </div>
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Yes, yes. yes. I finally get it at a gut level. Donald Trump and his minions have always been with us. Maybe that authoritarian strain in the American national character could have been stamped out after the Civil War or maybe it was just too large. In any case, as we watch our nation disintegrate before our very eyes, at least we can say we knew what happened and why. </div>
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1448740469662212848.post-40332479969135728732017-04-09T15:02:00.001-05:002017-04-11T08:43:27.875-05:00What Scheme is Secretary of State Tillerson Hatching with the Kremlin in Russia Tomorrow?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Trump Administration narrative is that Russia is both enraged at the U.S. and shivering in its boots, since we lobbed 59 Tomahawk missiles on an empty airfield in Syria last week. The story coming out of the White House further suggests that our Secretary of State is a man of courage, who is even willing to risk life and limb in the face of Russian hostility by traveling to Moscow to negotiate who knows what since he'll be travelling without the usual entourage of State Department staff and reporters. <br />
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But what's a person of normal intelligence and a functioning moral compass to read into the current situation? The Kremlin hacked the presidential election, and pushed for the appointment of Secretary of State Tillerson, first and foremost to get the sanctions lifted, which have had a devastating effect on the Russian economy. But as of yet, the White House has not been able to pursue that goal because of the FBI's investigation of Trump campaign collusion. However, a new opportunity has arisen. Last week's Sarin gas attack has allowed Trump to appear to distance himself from Putin, who supports Syrian President Assad. The situation has even given Tillerson an excuse to get on a plane for Moscow. If our Secretary of State returns this week with some version of a deal in which Assad is removed from Syria and Russia is rewarded for their efforts by the U.S. lifting of sanctions, then we'll at least know the truth. <i> Trump was in on the Sarin gas attack that killed the Syrian children, regardless how authentic his emotional display of shock and horror may have appeared.. </i><!-- Generated by www.webweaver.nu -->
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Connie Hilliardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14532828458076045053noreply@blogger.com0