authoress – Page 22 – education and deconstruction.com

Moving Water

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “Moving Water, The Everglades and Big Sugar” by Amy Green, published in 2021.

This volume discussed the people and forces that changed the Everglades (a landscape of waterways running through the central part of Florida all the way down), its vegetation, species and pollution from the 1960’s to date. The main agents of change have been (in no particular order): sugar growers, politicians of all levels of government, regulators, George and Mary Barley, Paul Tudor Jones II and grassroots groups.

After 1960, the United States began large-volume sugar-growing and processing, as it was no longer getting its sugar from Cuba. Soon, annually, 223,000 acres of land were growing 572,000 tons of sugar– half the nation’s crop– which was processed in eleven mills. This activity occupies slightly more than one quarter of the Everglades, and with a few other crops, comprises the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA).

Beginning in 1988, the federal government sued the Florida state government for damages due to the said pollution (caused mostly by the sugar growers). Everglades regulators are diverse: EPA, NOAA, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Florida Department of Health, local governments situated along the affected coasts of the lake and two rivers in the EAA, and the US Army Corps of Engineers. An entity that controls water levels around the whole region– pursuant to weather, environmental changes and political idiosyncrasies– is the South Florida Water Management District.

However, in previous decades, the politicians and some of the regulators (under pressure from the politicians) were besties with the sugar growers. That situation has changed with the worsening of pollution and other unexpected factors that have prompted actual action.

There is ample evidence that a large part of the pollution is caused by the operations of the sugar industry in the Lake Okeechobee area in the central part of the state. The industry uses fertilizer containing phosphorous, which gets into the vegetation; two major consequences include the poisoning of drinking water in South Florida, and river-course-changing excessive sawgrass, cattail and algae growth- at the expense of other plants, and at the expense of animals that eat those other plants.

Pollution has caused: the deaths of sponges, shrimp, seagrass and fish; turbid waters, hypersalinity and elevated temperatures. Some fish eat the aforementioned algae, which contain toxins such as cyanobacteria and red tide. Some humans used to eat such fish, but shouldn’t anymore, or they will likely get sick, at best.

Many people thought that the polluters should pay for the damage they were doing. At the book’s writing, nevertheless,TAXPAYERS, not the major polluters, were paying for cleanup. As can be seen, there are infinite complications, given the number of parties involved in the nature of the beast.

In the first half of 2016, disruption of the ecosystem by excessive algae growth, caused beach closings and a pervasive foul odor over a large territory. As recently as 2018, the aforementioned contaminants were sickening or killing beachgoers, manatees, sea turtles and tarpon.

Read the book to learn all about it.

Misfire

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “Misfire, Inside the Downfall of the NRA” by Tim Mak, published in 2021. This volume told the all-too-frequent story of alpha-male executives with hubris syndrome, who use their employer as their personal piggy bank, and bankrupt them. That of the National Rifle Association (NRA) was just the latest in a series of such scandals in recent decades.

As it began to go belly up, the NRA had 76 people on its board of directors, a few of whom were celebrities. They received no salary, but took ridiculous advantage of their expense accounts, and at the same time, and, in an obvious conflict, some were tasked with overseeing the NRA’s finances.

A power vacuum that started in the late 1980’s allowed Wayne LaPierre to assume the most powerful executive position in the organization by 1991. His colleagues– the NRA’s officers, and executives of its outside communications agency — manipulated him in order to form a cult of personality around him. This way, they, too, could partake of all the first-class travel, shopping and host of other aspects of a luxury lifestyle through their outsized salaries and expense accounts.

After the Sandy Hook elementary-school shooting in December 2012, the NRA became even more sociopathic, throwing up distractions in its messaging. It was already aggressively– as it had been since 1977– defeating every bit of firearms-restriction-legislation it possibly could using not only its money, but also its ability to influence politicians and voters through its network of priceless, powerful contacts; even to its own financial and reputational detriment. It argued that politicians should seek to improve America’s mental health system, and that everyone in the country had a right to own a firearm for the purpose of self-defense!

Countless, cowardly politicians have caved under pressure to the NRA’s demands; they voted against even weak proposed laws that would restrict gun acquisitions and gun usage, that would hardly have made a dent in sales of firearms, because they wanted to get reelected. As is well known, the NRA was a monster-sized lobbyist and political donor. It had a mean-spirited cancel-culture: publicly shaming its ex-employees on social media if they criticized it, even years after their employ.

Beginning in April 2019, a decades-long power struggle resulted in an orgy of litigation between and among the NRA, its communications agency, and its law firm, whose main go-to executive had become besties with LaPierre. That executive, too, was availing himself of the benefits derived from financial crimes of excess typical of these kinds of organizations.

Read the book to learn all about it. Wayne LaPierre has been just one (of those countless who are actually caught!) of a few poster boys whose financial crimes borne of excessive greed have been exposed, but sooo few organization leaders such as he, are punished for their misdeeds. Here are a few others, who were actually punished (and the year in which they went to jail):

2005, Dennis Kozlowski

2005, Bernie Ebbers

2006, Jack Abramoff

2007, Richard Scrushy

2012, Bernie Madoff

And here is the song they sing when caught:

I TOOK IT EASY

sung to the tune of “Take It Easy” with apologies to the Eagles.

Well, I got out on BAIL.
You can’t put me in JAIL.
I got SEVen sins on my mind.
Whistleblowers betrayed me.
Prosecutors flayed me.
My lawyers are close friends of mine.

I took it easy.
I took it easy.

Don’t believe the evil liars who say I’m guil-ty.

I live it up while I still can.
I hid my assets. Then it hit the fan.
I found a place to make my millions.
I took it easy.

Well I’m STILL your leading male.
I’m just too great to fail.
My claques, flacks and sycophants all aGREE.
I DID nothing wrong.
I’ll delay this CASE so long you’ll give up on punishing me.

Come on, payyy me,
my bonus and sa-alary.
I have no doubt that friends in high places are gonna SAVE me.

TaxPAYERS lose. I win.
You’ll never catch ME again.
So eat your heart out. Look at ME grin.
I took it easy.

Well, I got out on BAIL.
You can’t put me in JAIL.
I got NO remorse on my mind.
No matter how much you hover,
you’ll NEVER recover, all the money you say is not mine.

I took it easy.
I took it easy.
Don’t believe the evil liars who say I’m guil-ty.
Come on, payyy me,
my bonus and sa-alary.
I have no doubt that friends in high places are gonna SAVE me.

Oh, I got it easy.
YOU’RE the one who’s slea-eazy…

Suez

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “Suez, 10 years after Suez, questions are still being asked…” by Hugh Thomas, originally published in 1966. This volume was penned by and through the eyes of a British journalist.

In 1875, on behalf of the British government, Benjamin Disraeli purchased a controlling interest (45%) of shares in the Suez Canal Company. By 1956, a little less than 25% of the imports, and about 33% of the ships passing through the canal, were British.

There was arrogance all around, among the top leaders of countries involved in the Suez Canal Crisis: Egypt’s Nasser, Great Britain’s Eden, France’s Mollet and Israel’s Ben Gurion.

Other leaders, such as America’s president Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles refrained from a hawkish stance for their own country, letting the British and French make fools of themselves in sending troops. The author described the whole episode thusly: “… the spectacle of over one hundred thousand men setting off for a war which lasted barely a day and then returning has few parallels in the long gallery of military imbecility.”

Eden was ready to fight the Egyptians when Nasser declared he was nationalizing the canal’s holding company, which was based in Paris. The declaration meant that Nasser would charge dues on ships passing through.

The international contract governing the canal stipulated that Egypt would own the canal itself in 1968. The Treaty of Constantinople, signed in 1888 deemed the canal an international waterway. Nasser could be removed as a custodian of sorts only “for cause” but arguably one cause could be the fact that, beginning in 1951, he banned Israeli ships from the canal.

One other piece of documentation associated with the canal included the United Nations Charter’s Article 51. It was kind of a worthless passage, as its provisions were unenforceable unless nations agreed on how to interpret it and chose to abide by it. That passage said military action was justified if any entity took over the canal.

Eden came of age in the generation who fought in WWI and was of the mind that appeasement didn’t work on Hitler. Wiser world leaders whose experiences and intelligence differed, knew that Nasser was no Hitler. Eden’s cabinet ministers were men of different ages, some of whom disagreed with him.

Britain’s options included resolving the complicated dispute with the assistance of the United Nations (UN), or the International Court. Britain’s troops stationed geographically nearby (in Malta, Port Said, Libya, Jordan and Cyprus) were unprepared to fight a war in or near Egypt, and it would take a few months to move supplies, equipment, etc. to where they needed to be. The Soviets were supplying weapons to the Egyptians, and those weapons would be superior in the event of an air war.

The European government officials who were dovish, argued that it was wrong to use force just to safeguard oil supplies, and that the conflict should be settled through the UN. The situation became more complex (as though the propaganda war, Hungarian suffering and upcoming elections in Jordan and the United States, Britain’s lingering pro-Arab stance and France’s sending arms to Israel weren’t enough) when, in the second week of October 1956, there occurred a border skirmish between Israel and Jordan. About a week later, Israel attacked Egypt.

Yet another set of conditions on paper by which specific nations agreed to abide, came into play: the 1940 Tripartite Pact stated that when lands around Israel (pursuant to the geography of 1950) were crossed by people with war in mind, both Britain and France together were obligated to take some kind of action.

Read the book to learn more details of the diplomatic and political events leading up to and during the conflict (or war, as interpreted by some), its exciting conclusion, and the death tolls of the parties involved.

Here We Are

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “Here We Are, American Dreams, American Nightmares” by Aarti Shahani, published in 2019.

In the mid-1990’s, according to New York State, the Manhattan electronics store co-owned by Shahani’s father, was a front for Colombia’s Cali drug cartel. The indictment had thirteen counts.

After 9/11, the U.S. federal government agency Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established for the purpose of finding and deporting immigrants, both illegal and those in special circumstances, with no statute of limitations.

Shahani’s uncle Ratan (in the latter category– he had a green card) “… missed his [ICE deportation] flight and spent more nights in detention, on the taxpayer dime…” The financial institution with which he had an account– Broadway National Bank– had laundered $123 million through various accounts. It “…paid a fine of $4 million, and no bank executive served a single day in jail.”

One question Americans might want to ask, however, is how much IS the “taxpayer dime” when it comes to funding illegal immigrants? Is the actual dollar value a nickel a month per American?? Or a thousand dollars a day per American??

Of course, it is impossible to fully account for the qualitative impacts, good and bad, that illegals have on society as a whole. More specifically, they might make undocumented (excuse the pun) positive economic, cultural, social or athletic contributions, but partake of limited resources such as healthcare and education that diminish quality thereof for citizens. (For more info, see this blog’s posts: The Opposite of Woe, Call Me American, full circle (sic), Patriot Number One, The Snakehead, Where the Wind Leads, The Fox Hunt, and Scorpions For Breakfast.)

Anyway, this suspenseful story recounted a series of traumatic events of an immigrant family from India, interspersed with vignettes of the family’s hardships (due to the author’s father’s naivete; plus swindlers, errors and bad luck) that led the author to become an activist. She ended up delivering lectures to audiences consisting of “lawyers, journalists, social workers, congressional staffers, city council members and families in crisis.”

Read the book to learn all about it.

Oil and War

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a sponsored post.

Below is the song Putin is singing now.

OIL AND WAR

sung to the tune of “Elenore” with apologies to The Turtles.

You give me so much power
but my leadership’s starting to sour.
I really love this.
Oil and war suit me.

Economic ruin aWAITS me.
Besides that, THE world hates me.
I never tire of oil and war, really.

Oil and-war, GEE I think you’re swell.
I don’t care that war is hell.
It’s my pride and joy, etc.

Oil and-war, I will TAKE this time
to say-you CAN-not speak your mind.
In my empire, I’m banning Meta.

Trump really thinks I’m groovy.
This is my James Bond movie.
Don’t you agree,
Oil and war suit me?

If you don’t like when we go low,
maybe you shouldn’t watch the show.
It takes one to know one.
Oil and war suit me.

Oil and-war, GEE I think you’re swell.
I don’t care that war is hell.
It’s my pride and joy, etc.

Oil and-war, I will TAKE this time
to say-you CAN-not speak your mind.
In my empire, I’m banning Meta.

Oil and-war, GEE I think you’re swell, ah hah.
Oil and-war, GEE I think you’re swell, ah hah, aah.

A Woman Among Warlords

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

“We are right now under the ‘protection’ of armed forces from 43 countries, yet we are still living with war, brutality, poverty and crime.”

The above happens to describe Afghanistan.

The Book of the Week is “A Woman Among Warlords, The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice” by Malalai Joya with Derrick O’Keefe, published in 2009.

The second oldest of ten children, born in April 1978 in western Afghanistan, the author– a political activist– deserves major bragging rights. For, she risked her life in remaining in her beloved homeland where she spoke the truth about the war, the corruption, the leaders and all the other ugly aspects of her country’s impossible situation to raise awareness of what the world could do to make things better in the future.

Joya (a pseudonym, as she was in a witness protection program of sorts at the book’s writing) spent her childhood in various refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan. Her family lived in Iran because her father received medical treatment there after having his leg blown off by a land mine. He was a member of the mujahideen and political dissident. Her family moved to Pakistan because her father wanted to provide her with a decent education.

A few years after the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops, Afghanistan was a chaotic, poverty-stricken, war-torn wreck, and stayed that way for the next four decades– due to very common, oft-repeated historical forces; human nature, especially. Armed Muslim fanatics roamed the streets to violently enforce the dress and behavior codes for females, five-times-a-day prayers, and to suppress free speech and ban any and all pleasurable activities in the name of their religion the way they themselves perceived it should be. Nevertheless, in the 1990’s, ordinary Afghans watched the bootlegged American movie Titanic in secret.

Shortly after 9/11, the Taliban disappeared because they knew the jig was up. They reinvented themselves as students at Ivy League universities, parliament members in Afghanistan, and propagandists. Incidentally, ex-Nazis after WWII reinvented themselves in a similar manner; those with transferable skills became Soviet officers. This kind of scenario has been repeated throughout history amid regime changes, among men with superior survival skills.

Anyway, in 2002, the United States destroyed communications infrastructure via modern weaponry in Afghanistan. After about three years, though, the U.S. and NATO failed to deliver on promises and installed a corrupt puppet regime that actually hurt ordinary Afghans. Unsurprisingly, “International Security Assistance Force” became a misnomer– just another foreign occupier. The usual CIA bribes, human rights abuses (especially against females!), growing of opium that would be processed into black-market heroin to be distributed worldwide, and other nefarious activities continued to proliferate behind the scenes.

Beginning when she was in high school, Joya taught literacy to adult women who, if they were allowed by their husbands to attend classes, were expected by their husbands to do all the housework and childcare. There was fear not only of physical abuse from husbands, but also public-square lashings, beheadings or hangings if the Taliban discovered the hidden classes held in basements.

In 2004, Joya attended a conference and delivered political speeches that provoked angry reactions from Afghanistan’s evil leaders– mostly alpha males with hubris syndrome in the dictatorship that the country had become, backed by the U.S. and NATO. Her fellow political workers called her a Communist, infidel, and worse, incessantly smearing her.

The United Nations provided some security for Joya, but she became especially vulnerable to assassination attempts when she began traveling between Kabul and her hometown of Farah City, to run for a seat in the Parliament of Afghanistan.

Joya named just a few of the ginormous number of parties whose advice and actions worsened Afghanistan’s plight in recent decades (despite all of the parties’ bragging about how they helped bring democracy to Afghanistan; in no particular order): Reagan, George W. and Laura Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Brzezinski, Obama, the CIA and NATO.

The U.S. learned nothing from the French in Vietnam, and nothing from the Soviets’ nine-year quagmire in Afghanistan, that turned into forty years of devastation. (The U.S. did, however, groom Boris Yeltsin in its own image to lead Russia in the 1990’s. Unfortunately, his reign didn’t last long due to ill health. Maybe next time it’ll choose someone with better staying-power.)

Read the book to learn of: numerous other abominations Joya harped on and lamented over as a political activist (hint: Afghan children faced “…smuggling, abduction, child labor [due to severe poverty] and lack of education”) and her recommendations for how the country could turn itself around, and her reasons for hope for her country’s future.

The King of Fifth Avenue

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “The King of Fifth Avenue, The Fortunes of August Belmont” by David Black, published in 1981.

Belmont was born in December 1813 in Alzey, the Jewish agricultural ghetto in Germany. Belmont got a member of the Rothschild family to convince his father to let him study the English language. Thanks to his grandmother’s contact with the Rothschilds’ family business (the most famous financial-services business in Europe), Belmont got a job. By 1830, he was making good money in high finance.

The summer of 1837 saw financial ruin in New York City, but Belmont was a take-charge kind of guy. Upon discovering that the American agents of the Rothschilds had gone out of business, he declared himself the new agent, hanging up a shingle bearing his name in a storefront on Wall Street. He used the Rothschild name to grow his company making investments and lending money. In 1844, he became an American citizen.

Descendants of the Knickerbockers (old, wealthy Dutch and English aristocrats in New York City) and other American-born people were anti-immigrant. They were also anti-Semitic, smearing the (Jewish) Rothschilds’ agent Belmont, especially when he jumped into politics, supporting the Democrat James Buchanan for president in 1852. But after Franklin Pierce won the nomination, Belmont backed Pierce instead.

Both the Democrats and the Whigs expressed anti-corporate feelings. But the former opposed Wall Street while the latter opposed foreign capitalists. The Whigs were mostly Wall-Streeters.

When Pierce won the election, James Buchanan turned out to have less political power than Belmont would have liked. Belmont desired to have the U.S. buy the territory of Cuba from Spain, and if Buchanan had been named secretary of state, he could have appointed Belmont a U.S. diplomat who could go to Naples to negotiate a deal. In August 1853, Belmont himself was appointed secretary of state but other events led him to go on a business tour of Europe with his family instead. He became head of the Democrat party in June 1861.

The summer of 1863 saw draft riots in New York City. The rebellion was led by conscripted men who couldn’t afford to pay $300 for someone else to soldier for them in the American civil war. Blacks suffered the most deaths during the violence, scapegoated as the cause of the war.

In the late 1860’s, Belmont became interested in horse-racing, buying land on which to build a racetrack. He became president of Leonard Jerome’s racetrack in the Fordham section of the Bronx.

Read the book to learn of a boatload more history and Belmont’s family history in 1800’s America, in politics and war, especially.

The 188th Crybaby Brigade

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “The 188th Crybaby Brigade, A Skinny Jewish Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah” by Joel Chasnoff, published in 2010.

The author related his experiences as an American who joined Israel’s military (Israel Defense Forces; IDF) of the late 1990’s, and had various rude awakenings. He observed a major lack of skills-training and deterioration of leadership. Plus, he wrote, “What disturbs me about our endless fun isn’t just that it’s so often misogynistic, racist, and in the case of Ziv the redhead, outright insensitive, but how easily I go along with it.”

At 24, he was the oldest member of the testosterone-fueled group of mostly immature 18-year old boys who had too much time on their hands. The book’s major themes reflected those in Catch-22 (the same kinds of craziness) and “Portnoy’s Complaint” (only insofar as their gender led them to behave the way they did).

In February 1997, a helicopter accident that killed 73 Israeli soldiers, led the IDF to change its training and treatment of its ranks. It was a time similar to that just after the Yom Kippur war, when the Israeli military realized that it was unprepared to defend the country.

However, unlike in the second half of the 1970’s– in the late 1990’s, the IDF gave certain soldiers a pass, via an honor system. Ultra-Orthodox scholars could avoid military service altogether– a very emotionally charged controversy in Israel. Moreover, due to civilian complaints from families of soldiers, the military became less of an abusive hierarchy, and more socialistic, allowing soldiers to falsely claim they were injured or ill, to shirk the rigorous aspects of military life. The soldiers who weren’t crybabies, were subjected to harsh weather and severe sleep deprivation at the hands of an “arrogant, impudent, and thoroughly incompetent” captain. The other leaders were sociopathic sadists with weaponry.

The author was assigned to the tank division. A class lecturer told soldiers-in-training that Israel’s presence in Lebanon was necessary due to terror groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and their various factions. Monetary help from Iran, Syria and the former U.S.S.R., funneled to Hezbollah, supposedly made the terror groups’ resources actually superior to the IDF’s. That’s why the death toll of soldiers in Israeli tanks in Lebanon was so high, and why soldiers were killed so much sooner than troops in other divisions, even sooner than those in the infantry.

Each Merkava tank was equipped with: “…one ton of explosives in the form of depleted uranium 120-millimeter missiles, hand grenades, two MAG machine guns, a crate of .5-caliber shells and five hundred 35-millimeter bullets.”

The younger generation did not understand the mentality of their grandparents because they hadn’t personally experienced the Holocaust. They had, however, heard about or seen needless deaths and ruined lives resulting from America’s meddling in Vietnam (plus Laos and Cambodia), and Israel’s own constant fighting against its Arab neighbors and Palestinians, and its aggression in Lebanon (1982)– and they wanted no part of that.

Every major Israeli leader whose name is known worldwide (especially by American Jews fifty and older), was an old-school war-hero who also worked in Israeli intelligence (except for Golda Meir) and saw major combat, right up through Netanyahu. Since the 1990’s, leaders of the U.S. have been draft-dodgers rather than war heroes. Apparently, times are changing in geopolitics, war-mongering and energy (oil) needs and usage.

Read the book to learn how the IDF fanned the flames of racial tensions (hint: it was not because the light-skinned Ashkenazi soldiers had their private jokes), how the author struggled with his own religious identity, and many more details on the late-1990’s culture of the IDF.

If I Plead the Fifth, Man

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

This is the song Donald Trump is singing now.

IF I PLEAD THE FIFTH, MAN

sung to the tune of “If I Were A Rich Man” from the musical Fiddler on the Roof, with apologies to the estates of Zero Mostel and Jerry Bock.

If I plead the Fifth, man,
yah dee yah dee yah dee yah
dee yah dee yah dee yah dum

All day long I’d keep things mum,
because I’m a victimized man.

I wouldn’t have to-rehearse hard,
yah dee yah dee yah dee yah
dee yah dee yah dee yah dum

if I pled a biddy biddy Fifth,
because I’m a victimized man.

I’ve built a biz with prah-per-ties by the dozen.
I’ve done great things for this town!

My fine accountant had IN-teg-ri-ty, I know.

There was one set of books just going up,
and one with numbers going down,
and one more with values, I won’t show.

I’ve filled my companies with greens and towers and clubs
and a school to play and learn,
recording just as profitably as I can,

and each great ca-ching bling bling ca-ching
would be written down just-for-me,
as if to say here is a wonderful man. Oh!

If I plead the Fifth, man,
yah dee yah dee yah dee yah
dee yah dee yah dee yah dum

All day long I’d keep things mum,
because I’m a victimized man.

I wouldn’t have to-rehearse hard,
yah dee yah dee yah dee yah
dee yah dee yah dee yah dum

if I pled a biddy biddy Fifth,
because I’m a victimized man.

I saw my REAL estate ful-filling my birthright
with lots of proper bonds and loans,
supervising deals to my heart’s delight.

YOU’RE accusing me and
you’re acting like a witch hunter.
Oh, what an unfair thing you’re doing,
harassing my family day and night.

All the great people came to work with me.
They asked to help ME with building.
They knew I was the expert.
They loved the Trump name.
Oh PLEASE help us.
YOU’RE posing accusations that are wrong in my eyes.

lah eeh eeh a rah rah

And here we have a big, big difference, because I know you’re WRONG.

When you’re me, they’re jealous of all you do.

If I plead the Fifth, I’d assert my RIGHTS,
and run for president again,
and maybe be-able-to build my WALL.

But I won’t discuss my books with prah-se-cu-tors seven hours every-day.
They’re doing the most unjust thing of all. Oh!

If I plead the Fifth, man,
yah dee yah dee yah dee yah
dee yah dee yah dee yah dum

All day long I’d keep things mum,
because I’m a victimized man.

I wouldn’t have to-rehearse hard,
yah dee yah dee yah dee yah
dee yah dee yah dee yah dum

So who made this evil, evil scheme?
You decree I can’t have the American Dream.
Would you leave my family and me alone?
You’re taking an outrageous tone!

Breaking the Ice

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “Breaking the Ice, The Black Experience in Professional Hockey” by Cecil Harris, published in 2003. This wordy, redundant volume described the experiences of African Americans who have played ice hockey in North America beginning in the twentieth century. As is well known, Canada’s national sport is ice hockey.

The first African American player in the National Hockey League (NHL) was Willie O’Ree. Originally from New Brunswick, Canada, at twenty-two years old, he played one game in January 1958, was demoted to the “minors” but then returned to play in the 1960-61 season. Professional hockey saw no African American players again until the 1974-75 season, when Mike Marson made the big leagues.

In 1978, the World Hockey Association was competing with the NHL for talent. Tony McKegney, an African-American Canadian, signed a contract with the former, to play with a team in Birmingham, Alabama. When racist white fans found out, they said they would cancel their season tickets if McKegney played. The team owner felt pressured into breaching the contract with him. The player’s agent was a crook, too. That’s another story.

Some newspaper writer in Toronto reported that McKegney was okay with his canceled contract. But the lying writer had never even spoken with him. Anyway, fortunately, McKegney was later drafted by the NHL to play with the Buffalo Sabres.

One major measure of talent is total goals scored in a season. In the winter 1973 season, McKegney scored thirty-six goals and was still a young twenty-five. Yet he was traded a bunch of times, anyway– playing on six different teams (one of them twice) by the time he turned thirty-three. It is certainly debatable whether race was a factor in those circumstances. For the 1991-1992 season, he played hockey in Italy.

Grant Fuhr helped the Edmonton Oilers win the Stanley Cup four times in the second half of the 1980’s and in 1990. He wore a plastic face covering for protective equipment– not because he was afraid of harm from opposing teams and racist fans, although that’s a justified fear. He was a goalie, so no one could see his skin color.

In March 2003, a racial slur led the coach and general manager of the Sault Ste Marie Greyhounds (Ontario League) to resign in disgrace. One black player said in essence, that hatred is taught in families where insecurity abounds, and is a sign of weakness all around.

In the 2003-04 NHL season, there were roughly six hundred players, only seventeen of whom were African American. Canadian hockey players (of any ethnicity) who are professional-hopefuls, can be chosen to live with a host family near a hockey venue to do an internship of sorts, that pays their expenses.

In the early 1990’s, one of the first black NHL players who trained in this manner, at sixteen years old, was Jarome Iginla. He also got to go to New York City to play with NHL greats in a special program, and played in a major international competition in Salt Lake City in 2002.

Read the book to learn much more about racial issues in ice hockey, the crackdown on hate speech uttered by hockey insiders, the childishness of fans (such as the throwing of chicken bones and bananas at black players), and the bygone era of hockey-fighting as sideshow entertainment.