a repost: If you believe in transgenderism (spontaneous genetic transmutation), you don’t believe in REAL SCIENCE at all

by in Randomness..., Reposts | 5 Comments

Article posted on Natural News (click link for original)

Image: If you believe in transgenderism (spontaneous genetic transmutation), you don’t believe in REAL SCIENCE at all

By Mike Adams

It’s beyond hilarious: Those marching for “science” in Washington are so steeped in the fake science of man-made climate change that they’ve now fallen for the wildly fake “science” of transgenderism.

You can’t believe in biological transgenderism and science at the same time. The two ideas are mutually exclusive. (But that doesn’t stop Bill Nye from holding both contradictory thoughts in his head at the same time, curiously.)

If you believe in real science, you have to believe in the genetic reality that gender expression in humans is binary. The human species, in other words, is a “sexually dimorphic” species. Note that the term doesn’t say “polymorphic species.” That’s because “dimorphic” means TWO expressions of sex, not the ludicrous 30+ now believed by the anti-science lunatic Left, which now subscribes to magical thinking about gender and sex expression (among other topics, see below).

Breitbart.com said it best in this article about 5 scientific facts the “science march” refuses to acknowledge:

There Are Only Two Genders

This fact is particularly popular amongst people who question the “science march’s” commitment to, well, science.

The idea that there are only two genders, male or female, and that you have to be born either one or the other is a basic truth acknowledged by most people. Biologically, it is irrefutable: humans are a sexually dimorphic species. The only exceptions are the tiny minority of intersex people, who in very rare cases are born with chromosomal types that do not align with regular male-female patterns.

That’s the only exception. If you are not intersex, you are a man or a woman. You certainly aren’t one of Facebook’s 58 gender options, which extend to “lesboflexible,” “agender” and “pansexual.”

Will the Science March organizers acknowledge this inconvenient truth? They certainly haven’t done so yet. And given that feminists bullied them out of using the word “female,” it may be a long time coming.

Science march organizers refuse to even use the term “female” because they’ve all been intimidated by the lunatic Left into magical thinking (which is the opposite of science)

Think about it: The organizers of the science march can no longer even refer to the female members of a dimorphic species as “female.” This term is apparently too offensive and rigid for the lunatic anti-science Left which now believes that all science is, literally, whatever they want it to be at the moment. Darwin would be aghast.

No wonder the climate change hoax is so convincing to the voodoo science kooks on the Left: Social conformity, not scientific evidence, has now become the driving force of the Left’s supposed “science.” (Related: Follow more news on rational science at Rational.news.)

When the Left uses the hashtag #ScienceIsReal, they also mean that biological men can magically transform into women merely by uttering the words, “I am now a woman.” In other words, #ScienceIsReal is rooted in the sheer lunacy of what I have long dubbed the magical belief in “spontaneous genetic transmutation.” This is the belief — now widely held among scientifically illiterate Leftists — that biological men who declare themselves to be women will need tampons, experience menstruation and might even become pregnant. Wow. What’s next? Are they going to argue the Earth is flat, too? Is the geometry of the planet now going to be whatever you “feel” it should be at the moment?

The whacky belief in spontaneous genetic transmutation is just the tip of the (melting) iceberg on the anti-science Left which also believes in spontaneous racial transmutation (one woman is 100% Caucasian, but now she “self-identifies” as being African-American) and other ridiculous anti-science nonsense rooted in magical thinking.

Where is Richard Dawkins when you really need him to explain the basics of genetics to the loony Left, by the way? Is the politically-motivated “science” of the Left now so disconnected from reality that the popular science mob is going to willfully throw out the entire knowledge base of genetics? What will they replace it with? Double helix MAGIC and something like “quantum DNA” that coexists in infinite parallel universes, each of which belongs to one gender located somewhere between zero and one? I can’t wait to find out how they attempt to reconcile the lunatic Left’s beliefs in transgenderism with genetic reality. I wouldn’t be surprised if schools begin to ban genetics sections of science textbooks in order to comply with the “religious science fundamentalism” the Left is now peddling under the vacuous banner of “science.”

Scientifically illiterate Leftists also think CARBON is bad… even when they are made of carbon and nearly everything they eat is made of carbon

Here’s where it gets truly hilarious. While scientifically illiterate Leftists have declared war on carbon (yes, the element carbon) in the form of “carbon taxes” and the “war on carbon,” they apparently have no idea whatsoever that they are all made of carbon.

Nearly everything vegans eat at every meal is made of carbon. Yes, that celery is made of carbon. Practically every molecule in the fruits, nuts, vegetables and seeds you consume is also made of carbon … except for inorganic compounds like sodium chloride, of course, which is an ionic crystal requiring no carbon. (If you don’t understand the difference between organic and inorganic chemistry, don’t worry… the Left doesn’t either!)

Yes, Leftists are too scientifically illiterate to know that vitamin C is made of carbon. There are actually six carbons in every molecule of vitamin C, come to think of it. Here’s the molecular structure of vitamin C. If you can’t count the carbon elements in this diagram, you are too scientifically illiterate to comment on anything related to science: (typical lunatic Leftist comment on this diagram, “Where is the carbon? It’s not labeled ANYWHERE!”)

Apparently, the “science” lessons in universities today have totally neglected to teach students that humans are carbon-based life forms. Instead, they have all these ignorant, conformist, crybully snowflake students thinking that carbon is evil and must somehow be eradicated from a planet where every living organism we know of is made of carbon. (Or maybe if you’re an idiotic Left-wing science activist, you might believe in the existence of Salt monsters, but no rational person believes there are living Salt monsters roaming the planet.)

I’m willing to bet you that 99% of the morons marching for “science” can’t even count the number of double bonds in the molecule shown above. And they wonder if vitamin C has something to do with Santa Claus because there are so many “HO HO HO” references in the structural map.

A band of morons marching for “science” only serves to entertain real scientists

Look, let me lay it out straight for you: A mob of anti-science morons marching in the name of “science” does not make them scientists. It just makes them hilariously stupid and a source of incredible entertainment to those of us who are actual practicing scientists. Bill Nye is not a real scientist, by the way… he’s a TV actor playing a scientist.

If you’re wondering whether I’m a real scientist, my next science paper is being published in the next 2-3 weeks in a mainstream peer-reviewed science journal. If you want to check out my own science credentials, here’s a link to one of my patented scientific discoveries which eliminates dangerous radionuclides from the human digestive tract. Here’s a link to my ISO-accredited analytical laboratory, and here’s a link to one of the analytical methods I developed for the quantitation of cannabinoids using Time-Of-Flight mass spectrometry. Also, check out my new Health Ranger Science podcast site, which features podcasts and articles specific to the topic of REAL science.

And yes, I’m also made of carbon, which must be why the idiotic Left can’t stand my rationality and reason. My realization in all this is that you can’t fix stupid, but you can make sure they don’t win elections by voting against their stupidity at every opportunity.

a repost: University segregates whites into separate room for “white privilege” indoctrination

by in Randomness..., Reposts | 3 Comments

Article posted on Natural News.com  (click link for original)

 

Image: University segregates whites into separate room for “white privilege” indoctrination

By J.D. Heyes

The atmosphere on many college campuses across the country today has become very tense. Much of what is happening has gone beyond the realm of “political correctness,” and instead has begun to lean towards truly insane.

Whether it’s the creation of “safe spaces,” where little snowflakes who can’t handle opposing political, social and religious viewpoints can go to ‘escape,’ or the creation of “gender-neutral” nonsensical language, or the violent attacks against free speech, the Marxist Leftists who run these asylums appear to be doing all they can to destroy the next generation.

As reported by Heat Street, now the issue of race and “white privilege” is being radicalized on some campuses, including Kennesaw State University in Georgia, which recently separated white students into one classroom while those who “identified” as a person of color into another.

The outrageous separation of students by their ethnicity came during an event last week regarding ‘privilege’ and interracial relations. (RELATED: The Anti-Free Speech Left Claims Another Victim – Or Not – As Ann Coulter Vows To Speak At Berkeley Despite Event Cancellation)

“The goal of the workshop, which was led by an outside expert, was to foster learning and create an environment of understanding and support for one another,” claimed Kennesaw State University spokeswoman Tammy DeMel. “Attendees were asked to work together and then were invited to join the group with which they identify.”

Incredibly, she then said that the event, held April 13, “is being mischaracterized” as forced segregation.

You gotta love the Marxist Left. They expect everyone to live in the same surreal world of denial they exist in.

The workshop’s title was equally surreal: “Being, Becoming and Fostering Allies: Building Relationships Across Privilege,” which was ‘taught’ by a pair of psychology professors and a graduate student from another bastion of Left-wing insanity, the University of Massachusetts, along with a KSU prof.

At the workshop, the students ostensibly were taught how to become an ally of the less privileged, in addition to “the essential roles of self-reflection, cultural humility, and re-engagement after failures.”

This garbage is just the latest attempt by the Left to denigrate white people at the expense of minorities. Over the last academic year, Heat Street noted, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Michigan and Concordia University all underwent accusations of segregation after each held an event that divided participants by race or otherwise focused on one particular racial group – whites, mostly, and always in a nefarious manner.

That the goofball spokeswoman for Kennesaw wants you to believe something other than what was taking place is par for the course for the American academic Left. That this and previous “race-related” workshops having to do with “privilege” are not about singling out whites only for derision is laughable.

Consider the segregation exercise at Kennesaw; whites only (or those who “identified” as white) were all put into one room, while everyone else who identified as a different ethnicity was put into the other. The not-so-subtle message, once again, was: Whites only vs. all other minorities. (RELATED: Higher Education? Stanford Will Now Accept Students If They Scribble “Black Lives Matter” On Their College Application)

And just which ethnicity has been most associated with “privilege” recently – in academia, in the entertainment industry, in political circles and in cultural discussions?

Whites. If this kind of overt discriminatory activity was being directed at any other ethnic group, the Marxist Left would explode.

A cornerstone principle of Marxist “revolution” is to single out the enemy and attack them relentlessly, demonizing them with all sorts of absurd allegations. The American Left, with assistance from white apologists mostly in the Democratic Party, have decided the way forward for their “cause” is to blame all of society’s ills on the majority ethnic group.

Food for Thought: The Reluctant Entrepreneur

by in Food for Thought, Randomness... | 4 Comments

From the Melanated Man:

I’ve had this piece on my mind on and off for probably about a year now and I finally feel compelled enough to write about it. This may be a brief post, but rest assured this won’t be last time I talk about this subject matter either.

Before I continue, my intentions are not to  slight those of you who are entrepreneurs and own your own businesses full-time or on the side. More props to you and your success, and keep doing what you’re doing. Your determination to do for self and to provide a need or service to the community is truly an inspiration. My only goal here is to dispense some food for thought. Now that that’s out of the way…

When I was child, I dreamed of one day of not only becoming an engineer, but a entrepreneur of some sort as well. I wanted to embark on ventures that could uplift myself but my fellow man as well.

Today? Not so much.

Not with what I know about  the Matrix.

What killed those dreams, you say? Well you know about the engineer bit, if you’ve been keeping up. But that tells only one part of that story. I will be posting Part 2 very soon.

Being an entrepreneur? Maybe starting and running my own business one day? It doesn’t tickle my fancy like it once did in my adolescent state of mind. That doesn’t mean I want to work for someone else either, especially if that someone is a European/Caucasoid-owned corporation (you can include the state and federal governments in that equation as well considering they’re in cahoots with the private sector…and…they’re technically corporations themselves, too) that is only concerned about the bottom line.

And when it comes to self-determination and self-reliance for the Melanin-Dominant (Black) community on the global scale, entrepreneurship is strongly encouraged.

“We have over a $1 trillion in buying power! We should be investing that into ourselves!”

“We need our own businesses and resources!”

I understand completely  and I agree with that position. If we want to end our oppression, we need to to break ties with our oppressor altogether, on EVERY LEVEL! End of story!

Yet… I ask myself this question:  Is it really our goal to  simply emulate our oppressor’s behavior?

Does it make sense to practice capitalism, a system that was created out of theft and deceit, amongst our own collective? 

Does it make sense to adopt the same Eurocentric mindset that is ANTI-LIFE (LIGHT), destructive to our physical bodies and mental well-being as well as to the health of the planet? Just to create this illusion of progress and productivity  amongst our collective? Just to attain monetary and material wealth?!

Example: A Melanin-Dominant (Black) millionaire owns various chains of fast food restaurants giving off  the illusion of Black self-reliance and determination.

Couple of problems with this picture:

  1. Eating fast food is equivalent to eating rat poison, with no nutritional value to the body whatsoever.
  2. More than likely these fast food restaurants are located in low-income areas (mainly Black and/or Brown) that can afford the low-quality and more importantly, low-cost bullshit.
  3. The workers (who again are more than likely Black and/or Brown) are grossly underpaid.

(Note: The above example is based off this article.)

There are plenty more examples very similar to that. What’s the point of being an entrepreneur when the product/service you’re providing does more harm than good to your consumers, no matter the ethnicity? Nor does it challenge the status quo?

In the end, nothing has changed. Exploitation and oppression still reigns.

Entrepreneurship should only be another stepping stone toward deeper spiritual enlightenment and maturation into our true selves as man/woman on an individual level. It is only one avenue to help rebuild the confidence to become self-reliant and self-sufficient (i.e. The Black Wall Street). It should NOT be the end goal.  Money is only a illusion in the first place.

If we wish to be a united collective, to bring about real peace in this world, we must RE-MEMBER the African-centered philosophy of community: we are all connected to the All, and the gifts and resources bestowed upon us and this rock we inhabit shall be shared harmoniously and unconditionally (i.e barter system.)

Just like it was in the beginning. That is our TRUE LIBERATION, TRUE FREEDOM!

The doctrine of entrepreneurship a.k.a. ownership is not a NATURAL PHENOMENON. It is just another means of survival, a byproduct of this cruel paradigm, for those of us who can’t stomach the menial routine of the 9 to 5 grind.  Either way, we are still supporting a construct that is against the nature of Earth’s ORIGINAL MAN and the Earth itself.

So the next time you see an article or post that mentions “the need to support Black businesses” or highlighting “the lack of support for black businesses”, look deeper into the situation and ask yourself this question:

Will my support for Black businesses honestly bring about the physical and spiritual independence that is desired amongst myself and the Black collective I identify with?

I’m not saying “don’t support Black businesses.” I’m suggesting we  take a different view of the situation at hand, that’s all.

 

Just some food for thought, fam!

 

Peace and Love to my melanated family,

The Melanin Man

a repost: #BlackLivesMatter Introduces a New Visa Debit Card, and Revives the Toxic Old Myths of Black Capitalism

by in Politics from a Black-Concious Perspective, Reposts | 1 Comment

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

There’s a box of odious and discredited myths which hold that African Americans have less wealth and higher rates of poverty, joblessness and other negative social indicators because we ain’t thrifty, because we don’t save and invest like some other folks, because we don’t spend our cash with black businesses, and we just do not properly manage our collective wealth. Quite simply, these propositions are fake economics, zombie fake economics, killed and disproven many times but still walking among us. Now these disreputable myths have been embraced by portions of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

During this year’s Black History Month, the #BlackLivesMatter folks rolled out, in partnership with OneUnited Bank, their officially branded #BlackLivesMatter debit card, which features the striking portrait of “Amir,” an African boy flanked by the iconic images of 1968 Olympians Tommie John and John Carlos, fists in the air. The accompanying mini-blizzard of press releases, stories and statements, some accompanied by the hashtag #BlackMoneyMatters, double down again and again on the pernicious nonsense that black banks and the marshaling of black spending power are solutions to the economic distress of black families and communities.

Morgan State University’s Dr. Jared Ball, a former collaborator of ours at Black Agenda Report and a prolific scholar whose current work can be found at imixwhatilike.org, has done more to document and explain the bogus economics of “black spending power” and similar contraptions than anybody alive. Ball wrote a long and thoughtful Facebook post this morning on the news that #BlackLivesMatter is leveraging its brand for this Visa card and claiming the whole thing is about black economic empowerment.

Here’s how Dr. Ball begins his deconstruction of this hard to kill myth at imixwhatilike.org…

  1. “Buying Power” is a marketing phrase that refers only to the “power” of consumers to purchase what are strictly available goods and as their own report admits has nothing to do with income or wealth which are the genuine markers of economic condition. “Power” here has nothing to do with actual economic strength. Nearly all reports/stories related to these numbers refer back to flawed, misleading and misinterpreted research from the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the Terry College of Business housed in the Bank of America Financial Center in Athens, GA.
  2. The claim that African America has roughly $1 trillion in “buying power” is an entirely phony myth, like unicorns, democracy or freedom. As explained in detail below, the number is fraudulent, itself derived from equally fraudulent surveys, absurdly interpreted sociological data and – at best – misinterpreted data regarding spending which mostly just ignores the far more sound data regarding wealth and income.
  3. The myth of “buying power” works to deny the reality of structural, intentional and necessary economic inequality required to maintain society as it is, one that benefits an increasingly decreasing number of people. To do this the myth functions to falsely blame the poor for being poor. Poverty, the myth encourages, is the result of the poor having little to no “financial literacy,” or as resulting from their bad spending habits, when in reality poverty is an intended result of an economic and social system.

Ball’s entire treatise, titled “the Myth of Black Buying Power” is not only worth reading in its entirety, it’s a thoughtfully maintained and frequently updated resource on the topic. Among much else, Dr. Ball reveals that “black buying power” phrase originated as the sales slogan of black marketers a generation ago who wanted to convince clients they had a lock on the black market. Ball points out that in the real world black America spends 44% of its income on rent alone. When you add utilities, transportation, food, clothing, student and consumer debt there’s next to nothing left to invest.

Patronizing black banks and other businesses simply will not create the mythical black owned entities that will somehow hire millions of now jobless black workers to manufacture the cars, computers, cell phones, fuel, electricity clothing health care and other services and goods made by somebody else which African Americans now consume. Nobody has ever boycotted and shopped their way to freedom. Lazy demagogues touting this nonsense never explain just how this “buying power” might somehow be intelligently re-directed from utilities, transportation, rent, and whatnot into the coffers of some entity that will “re-invest” in black communities, because they simply cannot.

Black capitalism won’t cure black unemployment either. Karl Marx wrote 170 years ago that capitalist economies always require a large reserve of unemployed workers to depress the wages of those currently employed. That has not changed. So black unemployment is not a bug in capitalism, it is a core feature. There’s nothing in the fantastical black capitalist universe to prevent the gentrification of black and brown communities either, because under this economic system the only value a stable poor or working class neighborhood possesses is the value which might be realized by flipping it, by expelling the current residents and moving in hotels, stadiums and richer, usually whiter inhabitants. This particular feature of capitalism explains why the black political class has never been able to offer any alternative model of urban economic development to its low and moderate income constituents. Advocates of black capitalism want us to live in a fantasy world which defines collective effort as shopping black and using the #BlackLivesMatter debit card at OneUnited Bank.

What would real world collective black economic effort look like?

We’ve always wondered here at Black Agenda Report why none of the pro-capitalist advocates of black collective economic effort have noticed the black agricultural cooperatives of the Federation For Southern Cooperatives which has been around for 50 years, the more recent groundbreaking work of Cooperation Jackson in Jackson Mississippi or discuss the whys and wherefores of worker owned cooperative businesses. An even greater omission that speaks plainly to the class and gender biases of the of those touting black capitalist remedies as solutions to the dire economic situation of black America is their failure to EVER mention labor unions, just about the only real world engines for collective economic empowerment ever invented.

The NYC transit workers strike of 2005, when 30,000 mostly black and brown workers brought metro NY to a halt defending their health care, pensions and the wages of future workers is a priceless example of collective action for economic uplift in the real world. That single strike probably bolstered the fortunes of more black families than all the careers of Oprah and all the other black billionaires in the US. Organizers know well that black women are the most likely to join unions too, followed in order by black men, then Latino women and Latino men, Asian women and Asian men, then white women and finally white men. You’d think the responsible heads of #BlackLivesMatter, who claim they are second to nobody when it comes to enabling and boosting the work of women organizers and organized women, would be all over this, training women to be union organizers across the country, and agitating for the repeal and creative violation of laws which make it difficult and almost impossible to organize unions and strike in large swaths of the US. But they’re not.

Somehow it makes more sense to #BlackLivesMatter to lend their brand to a black bank for their Visa debit card rollout, and peddle the tired old fake economics about how buying and banking black will save us, instead of empowering ordinary women to save each other and all the rest of us. The hashtage #BlackMoneyMatters says it all.

The portion of  #BlackLivesMatter leadership which promotes these fake economic nostrums instead of real world collective actions like cooperatives and unions can only roll this way because they are unaccountable to anyone but themselves and their funders.  Who are these funders?  A web page that seems to have been taken down from the Borealis Philanthropy web site explained that Borealis, in cooperation with the Ford Foundation and other players, aims to raise $100 million to train the next generation of #BlackLivesMatter leaders. Unlike the one percenters writing checks, the tens of thousands of rank and file activists flying the #BlackLivesMatter banner around the country possess no structural way to bend BLM’s national leaders to their will, or even to express that will.

The BLM contraption isn’t made for that. But it works just fine for reviving the old and discredited myths of black capitalism, tales which blame the black poor for poverty and tell us we can and should be saving and shopping our way to freedom.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. He lives and works near Marietta GA and can be reached via email at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

Having a Moment- Black is Not Valid (Part 1)

by in Food for Thought, Having a Moment, Randomness... | 4 Comments

black is white.png

From the Melanated Man:

This post has been a couple of weeks in the making; I’ve had to digest the totality of my recent experience so I could fully understand and overstand my feelings on the topic and properly convey them.

Here’s the backstory to that recent culminating experience,  if you have not read What Sparked My Transformation (Part 1):

Since graduating from a prestigious non-HBCU Alabama college nearly seven years ago with a civil engineering degree, I have been working as a consultant for an upstart Black-owned (I’m breaking from my norm to keep it simple to today) civil engineering consulting firm in the metro-Atlanta, Ga area. I was a full-time worker for the first two and half years after school, primarily working in the office and field, mostly from 8 a.m.-5:30 pm five days a week, weekends occasionally. I  worked and  mentored by the owner/principal engineer himself,who is also Black. After that time, work began to slow down and I was essentially pushed back to part-time status. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to continue working from home by mainly writing proposals for potential projects and assisting and conducting design duties on projects when the firm acquired them. The arrangement became even more beneficial especially when my two daughters were born and my wife was (is!) in the midst of graduating medical school and finishing the subsequent residency program. All the while by staying employed by the firm, I was meeting the employment requirements for sitting for the  P.E. (Professional Engineer) licensure exam by working under the owner of the firm, a licensed P.E. Or so I thought…

Which is where I came to my current predicament. Since I took and passed my F.E. (Fundamentals of Engineering) exam in the State of Alabama, it made sense to apply for the P.E. exam in the same state as well. Plus, the majority of the projects that worked on took place in the state as well. The state board requires a minimum of four years, or 48 months, of employment supervised under a licensed-P.E. in the state of Alabama (my mentor  is a licensed-P.E. in the state of Alabama!) After completing the application and attaining the necessary references the board asked for, I figured the application process was complete and it was only a matter of time before my application was approved and I could sit for the exam.

Not quite.

A few weeks after turning in the application, I received a letter in the mail requesting my presence and that of the owner’s, my mentor, to meet with the Alabama State Board of Engineers and Land Surveyors in Montgomery, Al concerning the validity of my work experience. So my mentor and I made the two and half hour trek to the state’s capital to discuss the circumstances surrounding my employment with the firm.

And from my most honest and humble opinion, it was a complete comedy show!

The Board, which consisted primarily of middle aged to older all white-Caucasoid (again, I’m keeping it simple today) males  and a few white-Caucasoid females, basically denounced my work experience and ridiculed the my mentor’s work practices of allowing me to work from home, claiming them to be insufficient and unsound for proper development of a future licensed P.E. They said that the customary method of working in an office/field setting within a 9 to 5 time frame should have been the standard practice for training a future professional engineer licensee. They even claimed that such practice was stated within their board code book as such.

Upon reviewing the code book after the end of the meeting, it never mentioned anything of that sort; from the way the code book was worded,  the verification of the work experience is left up to the interpretation of the Board. And the common belief was that the Board overall did not agree with the “working from home” scenario. Despite the fact that  I kept working, designing plans from home and taking site visits when available, AND still kept in constant contact with the principal engineer (MY MENTOR) on a regular basis concerning the projects I worked on, potential projects, and practical engineering guidance.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked myself. “What their deal?”

Less than 24 hours, after collecting my thoughts and my emotions, I sent a email to the Board’s Executive Director, who was in attendance, expressing my disapproval of the Board’s stance on my work experience. I explained that due to the advent of modern technology, it was possible that I could effectively hone my skills as an engineer with the current setup of working from home, just as I would have commuting daily to an office doing the same job. It was the least I could do; I wasn’t going to let them have the last word without them knowing my position on the matter.

Afterwards all I could do was await for their final decision. And so I did.

I received another letter in the mail a week notifying that I was denied the opportunity to seat for the exam, only being credited for 30 months of work experience. Basically the first two and a half years. It was as if the work I completed after those first thirty months did not exist!

Ho-hum, so I need 18 more months so I can just sit for the exam. My initial thought process:

Well, I can just leave the only place I have worked and get those 18 months I need from somewhere else. No biggie! I’m not sure when the firm will produce enough work to warrant the preferred method of work the Board was asking for. I gotta do what I have to do for myself. Right?

Then I thought about the situation more thoroughly. And it became more apparently clear.

Prior to the meeting I figured the Board would be mostly or all white because of the part country I inhabited, and I was right. I figured there would be some push back because of that simple fact, and again, I was right. Yet I fulfilled all the requirements of the application by initially verifying I had worked under a licensed P.E. for actually more than four years, as well as providing the mandatory references, by which at least  three of those references had to have P.E. licensure who knew me and my work. From my perspective, that should have been enough. But it wasn’t.

Was it racism? More than likely. But that’s an unproductive mindset in this construct (Matrix!), and in my case and those who look like me, it should be expected at this point. That’s the cold, hard reality  when trying to simply survive and make a living in this white-Caucasoid dominated, European-minded, parasitic capitalistic  system.

I looked a little deeper. The firm I worked for was Black-owned, and all of the references I provided were Black. And I came to this conclusion…

I could not be validated!

Although I graduated from a P.W.I. (predominately white institution) university and damn good one, my experience, my tutelage could not be validated. Black, no matter the profession or craft, cannot be validated under a system that perpetuates the ideology of white supremacy. For instance, Black physicians are considered an oxymoron! I have heard it from our own mouths about the overall lack of distrust we have for physicians who look like us! Brainwashing at its finest, ladies and gentlemen.

Maybe I should have added a reference that was white or worked with a company that was white-owned. I’m pretty sure that would have done the trick. Almost certain it would have.

But why is that necessary? WHY??

I thought I did enough by attending a P.W.I. school. But it wasn’t. I have to further my indoctrination by working for an P.W.I. company as well. Or stay connected with white just to gain practically cookie crumbs in a system that already places a cap on the potential on any man that is non-white! Especially a Black man! And again, no matter the profession or craft. OR the amount of money that is being offered in said profession or craft.

For those of us who are ignorant to this or refuse to accept this reality, still attached to any organized religion and wishing to stay dependent on others, the term “doing what you gotta do” is definitely the motto to live by. And JUST NOW at this very moment, I fully grasp why the majority of our people do so. When you’ve become accustomed to that certain way of thinking and living, the way the Matrix has taught us to think and live, for so long and you benefit from it in some capacity, it’s damn near impossible to break away from it.

But what about those who see through the bullshit, like myself? The initiated,  I would say,  who wish to reach their full, limitless potential without being placed in a box? Just to appease the insecurities of another man whose potential as a whole may not be as limitless because of obvious reasons (i.e. melanin)?

When I was a child, I dreamed of being a civil engineer. Now as I man, I dream of being the BEST ME IN ALL FACETS OF MY EXISTENCE. How will I do that in this environment?

What is my next move, fam?

 

(To be continued)

 

a repost: All the things progressives love to buy are destroying the planet and increasing human suffering

by in Mother Earth, Randomness..., Reposts | 3 Comments

Article posted on Natural News (click link for original)

 

By Ethan Huff

Many Mother Earth-loving, social progressives, and diehard political socialists love to talk a big game about things like saving the planet, ending world hunger, saving the middle class, and stopping corporate fascism. But when it comes down to what this “party of the people,” Democrats included, actually does on a day-to-day basis, it becomes clear that many of these folks are tried-and-true hypocrites.

Take the anti-fossil fuel crowd, for instance. These folks would love nothing more than to convert society into a hybrid-driving, mass transit-taking “green” paradise. But little do they know that even these modes of transportation include the use of things like petroleum-based plastics and batteries that run off of rare earth minerals that greatly contribute to environmental destruction.

Despite their better gas mileage ­– or in the case of electric cars, general mileage – fuel-saving and fuel-eliminating vehicles still run on energy that has to come from somewhere. Both coal and nuclear power plants provide electricity for electric cars at a substantial rate in the U.S., and neither of these methods is considered safe or “green” by any stretch of the imagination.

“Although the battery-powered car itself doesn’t produce any emissions, the power plant that generates the electricity used to charge those batteries probably does,” writes David Biello for Scientific American.

Or how about the ever popular iPhone? Plenty of progressives carry around these devices, often with an Apple portable computer in tow as well, despite Apple’s widely-published failure to protect its overseas workers in places like China. Working conditions at these Apple factories are so bad that some workers are committing suicide as an escape.

“Even if I was hungry, I wouldn’t want to get up to eat. I just wanted to lie down and rest…” reported one Apple worker to an undercover BBC correspondent about how exhausted he is after a day on the job building iPhones. According to this same gentleman, he often has to work 16-hour shifts just to keep up with the demands of his superiors.

“I was unable to sleep at night because of the stress.”

Another big buzzworthy topic for progressives is the use of solar panels, which are supposed to be a clean source of energy to replace things like coal and nuclear power. Solar panels appear to be sustainable in that they provide unlimited energy, so long as the sun is shining, without the need for a reactor or some other external input.

But a closer look reveals that these, like the batteries in electric and hybrid cars, require rare earth minerals that can be difficult to obtain. Besides their scarcity, these rare earth minerals require extensive excavation to be dislodged from their underground locales. The same is true for other “green” technologies like LED and CFL lightbulbs, which were supposed to save the planet from global warming.

“The move toward new and better technologies – from smart phones to electric cars ­– means an ever-increasing demand for exotic metals that are scarce thanks to both geology and politics,” explains a report by Yale University.

“Thin, cheap solar panels need tellurium, which makes up a scant 0.0000001 percent of the earth’s crust, making it three times rarer than gold. High-performance batteries need lithium, which is only easily extracted from briny pools in the Andes.”

There will come a point, in other words, when even many “green” technologies exceed all the hype and reveal themselves to be unsustainable. The world is already seeing this with the growing rarity of the materials required to manufacture them.

Sources:

NaturalNews.com

ScientificAmerican.com

Yale.edu

BBC.com

Why I Won’t Date a White Man

by in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

YESSSSS!! I couldn’t have said it better than this, C.C. You’ve hit the nail and then some with this post! Thank you once more!

C.'s avatarWhispers of a Womanist

When I first started dating my boyfriend, he took me to a wharf alongside the Belt Parkway of New York City. It was the middle of the night and the city wore an unfamiliar silence as we walked alongside one another under the night sky. Our bubble of new love was abruptly popped when our eyes strayed from one another onto a dead animal frozen in it’s last position. It was not the animal or its death that ended our bliss but the symbolism it bore. Namely, what seemed a formidable place to spend time, proved a potential deathbed to those as dark as the sky above– our potential fate mirrored in the slain animal forgotten in city’s silence.

I share this anecdote to illustrate that choosing to date or marry black is sign on to a lifetime of these moments. If I decided to do as many women my…

View original post 1,324 more words

a repost: AFRICOM’s Oily Skin: Why the U.S. Still Wants Its Military In Africa

by in Politics from a Black-Concious Perspective, Randomness..., Reposts | 3 Comments
Article posted on Atlanta Blackstar (click link for original)

 

With the recent United Nations Security Council’s adoption of resolution 2349 condemning terrorism and encouraging military cooperation in Africa’s Lake Chad Basin, an international spotlight will once again be cast upon the contested region near Nigeria’s northeast border. While much attention was justifiably given to the kidnapping of 276 school girls by the militant group Boko Haram in 2014, little attention has been paid to the increasing role of AFRICOM— a U.S.-led military entity officially labeled the United States Africa Command— and its claims in its professed mission to protect and stabilize the region.

Even less attention has been given to why AFRICOM was created in the first place. The organization touts its “core mission of assisting African states and regional organizations to strengthen their defense capabilities better enables Africans to address their security threats and reduces threats to U.S. interests.” However, given Africans did not ask for their assistance — AFRICOM was forced to set up headquarters in Germany in 2008 because they were not welcome on the continent — some question both its presence and its very existence as an organization.

“There are those of us who believe there are ulterior motives and other agendas in play,” says Mark P. Fancher, an attorney and blogger who has followed AFRICOM since its inception.

Fancher acknowledges the eight-year Boko Haram insurgency against the Nigerian government and how most of the news coming out of the region is concentrated on acts of terrorism and human rights atrocities. But, he clarifies the incomplete nature of such accounts.

“The other thing that has been going on there for about 30 years is exploration for oil,” says Fancher, explaining “they believe they’re getting closer to being able to actually extract deposits and make it a new source of oil.”

As far back as 2008, years before the international community had even heard of the imposed moniker Boko Haram, the militant group had successfully run Chinese oil interests out of the potentially lucrative region. Recent estimates from the Nigerian government and related industry experts have hovered around two billion barrels of oil with roughly 14.65 trillion standard cubic feet of natural gas in the Chad Basin.

Within the past few months, Fancher says, AFRICOM “has taken it upon itself to assemble representatives for military forces in the region, along with a few European military forces, to chart out a plan for stabilizing the region specifically with respect to Boko Haram.” Well prior to the recent UN Security Council Resolution, he notes, AFRICOM had targeted April for “plotting out a military offensive against Boko Haram.”

It’s certainly not the first time AFRICOM has plotted such an offensive on African soil. In fact, its rapid expansion on the continent can mostly be credited to the dramatic events of October 2011 as Western air strikes lit up the skies of the Libyan capital, Tripoli. The Obama-backed NATO coalition had targeted longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi — considered for years to be the most powerful man in Africa, given his former chairmanship of the African Union and the stable, oil-rich nation he led for 42 years — for regime change ostensibly to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 and “an immediate ceasefire” in Libya, including an end to “current attacks against civilians.”

However, ulterior Western motives were apparent from the beginning of the mission. One that moved from protecting “citizens” to facilitating “regime change” to break Gaddafi’s powerful influence on the continent. As founder, primary funder and a former chair of the African Union who’d committed billions to establishing the continent’s independence from foreign manipulation—he worked toward a continental gold standard and the creation of an African Union Development Bank—Gaddafi posed a serious roadblock to foreign business interests in Africa and was a vocal critic at times of western intervention in Africa. Consistently, AFRICOM’s 2008 establishment of its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, rather than in Africa itself was largely a result of the Libyan leader’s cash and investment offerings to African nations who rejected U.S. requests for continental military bases. With Gaddafi eliminated, AFRICOM now has a presence by way of projects, operations or engagements in almost every country on the continent.

Such motives are far from unprecedented. The Berlin Conference, initiated in 1884, systematized Europe’s imperial desires and ushered in an era of brutal colonial activity that squashed existing forms of African self-governance for land grabs and the extraction of the continent’s natural resources. Such repression was abetted by numerous Western oil companies in the 20th century which, despite mid-century independence movements, still maintained a considerable influence over Africa’s economic and political activities. Fast forward to 2008 and one could question how much has changed given the creation of AFRICOM amidst a steadily increasing Chinese footprint on the continent and an American desire to reestablish itself through the threat or use of military might. The 2011 NATO coalition that both stoked and capitalized upon Libyan civil unrest represents a 21st-century continuum of the imperial policies established in Berlin long ago.

The emergence of armed insurgents like Boko Haram, in Nigeria has recently over-shadowed its recognition as Africa’s most populous nation, its largest economy and biggest oil producer. Given ongoing corruption and the foreign extraction of much-needed resources and revenues, large parts of the country lack basic infrastructure while disparities in wealth and education are substantial. Such inequity and instability provide a breeding ground for reaction and ideological fervor.

And once the terror spreads, what better way to capitalize upon such instability then to wage conflicts by proxy where Western business interests can appear as if their hands are clean while extracting oil revenues to the tune of billions? Or, as Dan Glazebrook stated in his May 2012 article for Counterpunch, “The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan showed the West that wars in which their own citizens get killed are not popular. … AFRICOM is designed to ensure that in the coming colonial wars against Africa, it will be Africans who do the fighting and dying, not Westerners.”

But in person or by proxy, “AFRICOM has no business in Africa in the first place,” Fancher says. “To the extent there are military needs, Africa has its own armies and those are the military forces most appropriate for addressing the security concerns within their own countries.”

What they don’t need, Fancher continues, is “the United States jumping into these situations.”

But, he adds, “the U.S. does it because it has its own agenda.”

a repost- Long Overdue: Rikers Island, America’s Most Notorious Prison, Is Closing at Last

by in Politics from a Black-Concious Perspective, Randomness..., Reposts | 1 Comment

Article posted on Atlanta Blackstar (click link for original)

 

By David Love

Rikers Island is closing. Although it will not happen overnight and will likely take years to accomplish, the behemoth complex of jails known for its brutality, torture and other human rights abuses will be shut down. Over the years, Rikers has earned the reputation as America’s most notorious prison.

In a March 31 press conference with New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the 10-year plan to close Rikers.

“New York City has always been better than Rikers Island. I am proud to chart a course for our city that lives up to this reality,” de Blasio said. “Our success in reducing crime and reforming our criminal justice system has paved a path off Rikers Island and toward community-based facilities capable of meeting our criminal justice goals.”

Noting that Rikers Island is part of a national problem, the mayor said that, while the mass-incarceration problem did not begin in New York, it will end there. Since the facility opened in 1932, this marks the first time the city has made closing Rikers its official policy.

Mayor de Blasio tweeted about the significance of this decision:

Although the jail has been around for 85 years, Rikers Island has an older history fittingly steeped in the enslavement of Black people. As Vice reported, the Rikers (the Anglicized version of Rycken) were a wealthy Dutch family that settled the island in the 1660s at a time when New York was still known as New Amsterdam. From 1815 to 1838, the family patriarch, Richard Riker, oversaw the city’s criminal court. Part of his responsibilities included deeming free Black children, women and men as “fugitive slaves,” allowing for their kidnapping to the South by bounty hunters without a trial. Riker received kickbacks from slave catchers, and he and two slave-catching police officers were known as the “Kidnapping Club” by abolitionists.

Sadly, this sordid history of Rikers Island has continued to plague the facility, which is the second-largest in America after Los Angeles County Jail. The conglomeration of 10 jails sitting on the 400-acre island houses mostly men (93 percent), but also women and juveniles. Throughout a given year, 77,000 people go through Rikers, with 10,000 inmates detained on a given day. In the 1980s and 1990s, the jail population was double current numbers. The prison population is 89 percent Black and Latino (56 percent African-American and 33 percent Latino) — from New York’s low-income communities — and only 7.5 percent white.

Eighty-five percent of Rikers inmates have not been convicted of a crime and are pretrial detainees, with the rest serving short sentences of a year or less, as The New York Times reports. Around 40 percent of detainees have a mental illness, according to the Urban Institute.

The decision to close Rikers comes in the midst of longstanding problems of violence, brutality and inhumane living conditions for those detained there. For example, mentally ill detainees have died in custody. Rikers continues to place inmates in solitary confinement, an internationally condemned form of physical and psychological torture, with Black and Latino inmates subjected to the punishment at a much higher rate than whites.

According to a report from the federal monitor overseeing Rikers since 2015, the abuse continues, with guards using excessive force at an “alarming rate.” For example, it is common for correction officers to place inmates in chokeholds, punch them in the head while handcuffed, slam them into walls and douse them with pepper spray. The jails also are an environmental disaster, with regular flooding, crumbling infrastructure with dilapidated facilities, a putrid landfill and pollution-belching power plant, and overheated conditions that have given Rikers the nickname “The Oven,” as Grist reported. With no central air conditioning in the summer months, some prisoners have suffered from cardiovascular conditions, heat stroke, rashes and asthma, and some have attempted suicide. One homeless veteran was baked to death in his hot cell that overheated to at least 100 degrees from faulty equipment.

Things came to a head with the story of Kalief Browder, who was arrested and sent to Rikers at age 16 for allegedly stealing a backpack. He was never charged. While there, in a story revealed by The New Yorker, Browder endured three years of torture at Rikers, including beatings by guards from his first day behind bars, and starvation. After his release, Browder committed suicide in June 2015 at age 22, using an air conditioning cord to hang himself. This was a consequence of depression from the abuse he had suffered. The Marshall Project interviewed his mother, Venida Browder, for a video series called We Are Witnesses.

New York City Public Advocate Letitia James wants to rename the island after Browder, given the planned shuttering of the infamous jail.

Although de Blasio has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to improving conditions at Rikers, the time has come to phase out America’s most notorious jail. A report unveiled by the Independent Commission on NYC Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform maps out a plan to shut down the jail. Condemning the facility as a “19th-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” the commission calls for reducing the jail population by half to 5,000 and placing the remaining inmates in new facilities around the city.

The report makes a number of other recommendations, including reforming arrests by diverting tens of thousands of low-level offenders from traditional prosecution and reducing the number of people in pretrial detention so that people do not have to wait months or years in jail for the resolution of their cases.

“Finally, we recommend an approach to punishment that prioritizes meaningful sentences and a judicious use of incarceration for all types of cases,” the report said.

Rikers Island has been used as a torture chamber for Black people for far too long. Its end will come, though not soon enough.