Many people annually get as stuffed as their turkeys in celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving is a quintessentially American holiday, so much so that it is not just a holiday, but really is (as the etymology implies) one of our Holy Days, almost universally celebrated by Americans. In its sacredness, families get together to (unintentionally?) celebrate one genocide (against Native Americans) by committing another (against turkeys). Can we celebrate in good faith and conscience?On Thanksgiving Day, we give thanks. We give thanks for being the invader, the exploiter, the dominator, the greedy, the gluttonous, the colonizer, the thief, indeed the genocidaire, rather than on the other side of imperialism’s zero-sum murderous game. As Mark Twain points out in his War Prayer, wishing and being thankful for one’s own success and victory is, at the very same time, wishing and being thankful for another’s defeat and destruction. Do we want to make these kinds of wishes and give these kinds of thanks?The Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran declared that “it is the honor of the murdered that they are not the murderers”. Perhaps, but it is a very difficult honor to uphold. Native Americans, at least those who have survived the over 500 year genocidal project, are the poorest ethnic group in the richest country of the world. Each year, a group of Native Americans gather at Plymouth Rock on Thanksgiving Day to mourn and fast in honor of their people and in memory of what is lost. What do we want to be honored for? What honors are Americans thankful for?It was once earnestly asked by Native Americans, “Why do you take by force what you can have by love?” Christopher Columbus reports in his personal diary that when he arrived in the Americas he was amazed. The Arawaks, with curiosity and joy, came to greet the people coming off the ships from Europe. The Arawaks (whom Columbus mistakenly thought were Indians) were a peaceful people, by all accounts, willing to share anything they had, offering both emotional kindness and their physical objects. Columbus describes how remarkable these people were. So innocent of weapons and violence, Arawak people would initially reach out their hands to feel the strange, shiny objects called swords. The Arawaks would only “work” for a few hours a day, “spending” the rest of their time relaxing, socializing, and creating their culture in the ways that people most enjoy. Columbus also tells of how the Arawaks had no “shame”, being able to walk around naked or make love whenever they pleased. With the tiny amount of gold on their island, they fashioned jewelry to adorn themselves. As with many other pre-contact indigenous groups, the Arawaks essentially lived in Utopia. Can Americans be thankful for living in a utopian society? Are we thankful for having destroyed one? Should we be grateful for having so many deadly weapons? For being so greedy for gold, both actual and metaphorical?As Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange is fond of pointing out, Columbus could have done one of a few different things after encountering the Arawaks of whom he was so impressed: (1) Columbus could have quit his travels and lived the rest of his days amongst this remarkable people. In fact, millions of people today spend thousands of dollars and their precious couple of weeks of vacation trying to experience modern conditions resembling these ancient ones. (2) Columbus could also have continued on his journeys, exploring other islands, encountering new peoples, and searching for India and elsewhere with which to trade. While doing so, he could have expanded and developed his writings, perhaps doing valuable ethnographic and comparative sociological research. (3) Another possibility is that Columbus could have rushed back to Europe, declaring the wonders of Arawak society and urging that the best minds of Europe go to visit and study the Arawaks. As a result of doing so, Europeans could have incorporated aspects of Arawak society into their own, if not emulating it altogether. Are we proud of and thankful for our hubris and ethnocentrism?Of course, Columbus did none of these. Apparently, there was a fourth possibility. With grave implications, Columbus wrote in his diary that with fifty men he could enslave the entire population and capture all their gold. This was no empty boast. The “savage” Arawaks were enslaved, many were tortured, their labor exploited, and their wealth stolen and shipped off to Europe. During this process of imperialist superexploitation, men had their hands chopped off, women had their breasts sliced and their pregnant bellies cut open, babies were thrown into the air, sometimes crashing to the ground and other times being impaled on those strange, shiny swords, presumably all in the name of Christianity, Civilization, and, eventually, Capitalism. The Arawaks were literally exploited to death and they are now extinct, all of them having been killed off through virulent brutality, overwork, and disease. Are Americans thankful they weren’t Arawaks? Are we thankful for not being the dehumanized “Other”?The Pilgrims later came to America to escape religious persecution from the British, apparently in order to commit ethnic and religious persecution against the Native Americans and, later on, others. And this they did, and we in fact continue to do, effectively and mercilessly. At the time of the first Thanksgiving in the 1620s, it was also the dawn of another type of genocide. 1619 marks the first year that human beings were brutally “imported” from Africa to become slaves in America, if they happened to survive the cruel capture and horrific Atlantic crossing. So while Africans were being heartlessly torn away from their homes and families, viciously enslaved and dehumanized, tortured and killed, Native Americans were being attacked and annihilated. By the time that President Lincoln re-invented and instituted the Thanksgiving Day tradition in the early 1860s, the US was fighting its civil war. The US Civil War may have been fought over slavery (and labor more generally), though it was certainly not fought for the slaves (or for laborers). Sadly, there is much, much more to the tragic history of genocide and US complicity. Is it for this legacy that Americans give thanks? Are Americans thankful for the results of racism, sexism, and classism?In Europe, during the 1930s and 1940s, various demographic groups were being systematically targeted by the Nazis: Jews especially, but also leftists and unionists, people with physical and mental disabilities, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gays and lesbians, the Roma (so-called Gypsies) and the small number of Blacks, as well as other misfortunate minorities. Although we now know that the US had accurate aerial photographs of the rail lines leading to and from the death camps since 1941, among other pertinent information obtained even earlier, the US did not enter the war against fascist Germany until almost 1942, only after the US was physically attacked by Japan. Even then, however, the US neither bombed the rail lines or the death camps themselves, nor allowed in large numbers of refugees from fascism. Indeed, just like Haitians in the 1990s and Afghans in 2001, Jews in the 1940s were sometimes turned back to their respective Hell. Millions and millions of people died unnecessarily. Adding insult to injury, the US government even paid war reparations to US corporations, including General Motors, which were supplying the Nazi military with much-needed machinery and vehicles, for the damage done to their German factories due to the Allied bombing campaign. (The US government went further by guaranteeing safe passage for many Nazi officers and even employing a number of them, some of whom helped advance biological and chemical weaponry as well as death penalty technology in the US. Other Nazi officers were supported, especially in Europe and Latin America, as an oppositional force against real or suspected communism.) Likewise, the US was seemingly uninterested in Japan’s genocide against the Chinese in Nanking, and then did (and does) little to stop China’s genocide of the Tibetans since the 1950s. The US has also never been interested in the genocide against the Kurds or Armenians. The US was interested, however, in setting up detention camps in 1942 for Japanese-Americans and, to a much lesser extent, Germans and Italians. Are Americans thankful for our hypocrisy and selective democracy?In 1965, the US supported and facilitated genocide in Indonesia. Under the US-supported military dictatorship, half a million to a million communist-sympathizing peasants were killed in Indonesia. Their lives are considered so worthless that a more accurate number of those killed is nearly impossible. (A more recent example of this mentality is from the Gulf War, during which US bulldozing tanks buried an unknown number of slaughtered Iraqis in the desert. When asked how many were killed and buried in these mass unmarked graves, General Colin Powell coldly replied that he wasn’t interested and didn’t care. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright followed up that mentality by stating on TV that the hundreds of thousands of additional kids who have died since the war, due to sanctions, are a worthwhile price to pay. For whom?) The US supplied some 90% of the weapons and training to the Indonesian military, in addition to favorable trade and investment, but also provided logistics and specific names of Indonesian activists to be targeted for death. The Indonesian military gladly obliged, taking the US hit list and then accomplishing their task as best as possible. Since 1975, similarly, the US has sponsored and abetted genocide in Indonesian-occupied East Timor, culminating in the latest round of “newsworthy” massacres at the end of 1999. Nearly the same time that the modern Indonesian/East Timorese tragedy began, the US condoned genocide in Cambodia, after committing acts of genocide throughout South East Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, the US supported vicious and murderous wars in Central America, central Asia, and southern Africa, in which hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, were killed, with many more disabled, displaced, and disappeared. The US also sat idly by during the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, while almost totally ignoring slavery and genocide in Sudan throughout that entire decade. Furthermore, the US persists in continuously building, vigorously marketing, and violently employing chemical, biological, nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Are Americans proud of US foreign policy? Of supporting murderous dictators and regimes? Of maintaining deadly double standards?At the same time that the US has, by far, the most expensive and powerful military on Earth, it also has a high poverty rate, the largest prison population, a relatively high infant mortality rate, tremendous over-consumption and waste, a stingy and demeaning welfare program, an active capital punishment program, and almost as many privately-owned guns as people. Are Americans proud of US domestic policy? Of supporting murderous policies and programs? Of maintaining deadly discriminatory standards?There are many reasons to celebrate and Americans have a lot to be thankful for. Genocide should not be one of those things. What are we doing on Thanksgiving Day? We would be appropriately appalled if Germany or Austria were celebrating a Holocaust Memorial Day, where Germans and Austrians got together with their families for dinner on their official day off, joyously remembering the things that are important to them, just as American families get together for Thanksgiving Day and think of things to be thankful for. (Similar scenarios, just as ugly, could be constructed for white supremacists, rapists, and murderers.) Some activities and events are inappropriate just because of the context in which they occur and the history of suffering they represent. Thanksgiving Day is clearly part of that history. Are Americans thankful for forgetting their own history, for having collective cultural and political amnesia?We do not have to feel guilty, but we do need to feel something. At the very least, we need to reflect on how and what we feel. We should also review our history and what it means to us and others, while we must rethink our adopted traditions, including our Thanksgiving High Holy Day. My personal (and therefore political!) resolution for the new year is to stop celebrating genocide. American Thanksgiving may be sacred to some, but it’s utterly profane to me.Dan Brook teaches sociology at the University of California at Berkeley and can be contacted via [email protected]. The views expressed inside this editorial aren’t necessarily the views of AllHipHop.com or its employees.

The views expressed inside this editorial aren’t necessarily the views of AllHipHop.com or its employees.

With each day the drama around TSA body scans takes on new twists and turns. Earlier this week I penned an article pointing out the hypocrisy displayed by many who are seemingly up in arms about their ‘junk being touched‘ during pat downs or pictures of their privates from the scans being posted on the internet. It was just two or three months ago many of these same people were insisting that Muslims be searched from head to toe. They wanted religious garb removed and searched. They wanted people profiled. They wanted no stone unturned in the pursuit of safety and our fight against terror.

I found the whole thing laughable and those who were complaining a bit self centered. We’re looking at folks, both men and women who are sagging in all the wrong places shouting on local newscasts that TSA agents better not post their private parts on the Internet. Your looking and saying..Are you kidding me?   Yeah right? Maybe if the machines actually kept and stored pictures. They don’t. But seriously folks.. please just stop. This is not about grandma and grandpa having their body parts on youtube. And trust, nobody’s trying to sexualize you on a pat down. That’s the distraction from a much  deeper story.

To see this nationwide turn around where everyone is willing to forgo safety concerns to maintain their vanity had a foul stench that was hard to pin down. Something about this ‘outraged’ reeked of an orchestrated campaign, similar to the ones we saw last summer when folks were up in arms about healthcare. Y’all remember those days when this new crop of activists would show up at townhalls and disrupt them. At first it seemed genuine and spontaneous but after seeing them for a while you came to realize there was a pattern to them.  For starters it wasnt as many as you’d thought. Folks would spread themselves out in a room to create the illusion of having large numbers. Second many of the folks were actually pretty well off and not in any sort of financial jeopardy as they suggested. I know one of the protests I went to in nearby Danville, organizer oblivious to the fact I’m a journalist, handed me their cards. Two of the loudest people there were executives at healthcare facilities. They had a financial interest in keeping the drama kicking.

Not to digress, But I bring all this up because I recall how so many of us were initially taken back and fooled. Many of us got caught up and believed that some sort of large-scale mass revolt against healthcare was occurring. It wasnt. What we witnessed was a well-funded highly organized stealth campaign. This current call to action against the TSA (transportation security agency) seems to be the same thing.

What really underscored this for me was hearing something said in passing on one of the local newscasts. It’s too bad there was no follow-up, but it was revealed that there’s a push to Fire the TSA and replace them with ‘professional’ private security firms..Say what you will, but this is another step at corporate dominance. It’s a push to privatize everything.  Just like the so-called healthcare protestors.  They wanted to get rid of the p#### option.  Here we have the government-run TSA and a push to put the operation under private, corporate control.

The one leading this charge is Republican Congressman John Mica out of Florida. For those who don’t know Mica is a ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He will head that committee when the new congress convenes in January and the Republicans  take charge.

Mica has made the usual GOP talking points. He asserts the TSA is a bloated bureaucracy and needs to be streamlined. Sounds kind of funny when you take into account that Mica was one the chief co-sponsors of the Airport Security Federalization Act of 2001 that help put the TSA on the map in the aftermath of 9-11.

Congressman John Mica

When then President George Bush was insisting that we give him blank checks to fight the war on terror, Mica was right there supporting him. If folks recall it was seen as being ‘unpatriotic’ to not support any and all moves to make our airports safe. The TSA which is under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security was pointed out to be a key frontline agency to help combat the war on terror. Mica was a supporter.

When it was time to cut budgets and pare down so called bloated agencies, Mica introduced bills that cut welfare and student loans etc. he was up in arms about the TSA. But nowadays he’s running around saying we need to get rid of the TSA because the lines are too long??? Weren’t people like Mca telling us from day one after 9-11 to show up for our flights 2 hours a head of time so we could be safetly checked in??

Also folks should keep in mind there’s call for travelers to opt out of getting full body scans this Wednesday. The plan as stated is to slow down the lines and make folks call for sweeping changes with the TSA.

So now we have high ranking congressman smashing on a government  agency that he help star and generously fund complaining the lines are too long and we would be better off with private security guards. Mica has already written letters to 100 airport heads urging them to get rid of the TSA.. He’s already gotten the Orlando airport which is in his district to get rid of the TSA.

Really? What private firms would that be you ask? Well according to a recent ABC news article, over the past 13 years, Mica has  received almost $81,000 in campaign donations from political action committees and executives connected to some of the private contractors already at 16 U.S. airports. Once again its all about the money, the shadiness of a corporatist congressman and the manipulation of a public thats getting wall to wall coverage on the evening news about Price William getting married and not some simple investigative reporting about why we’re having protests against a screening process we all insisted we needed

Finally lets take this to its final conclusion. Why else are people like Congressman Mica pushing to fire the TSA? Because the TSA like most first responders including police and firemen had been fighting to unionize. It was something President Obama said he would help them do back in 2008. It was something vigorously opposed by South Carolina Senator Jim Demint who  said that if the TSA were to join a union it would increase terrorism.

So what this boils down to is union busting and political kickbacks and favors.  What folks also don’t know is that any private security firm would have to follow the same exact procedures as the TSA except they would get paid less. Its not like the TSA employers are making tons of money. They’re our fellow citizens doing a job thats important . They’re our neighbors, family and friends who upon getting their pay check probably show up at your local coffee shop and grocery store and contribute to the local economy.

Michael Chertoff

Mica is one of those breeds of Congressman who is on the haterism tip on behalf of corporate security firms. Him and his croonies yearn for the days when we are the oppressive beck and call of a handful of corporate barons who want to work you for long hours and pay you substantially less. This means you as a worker will forever be economically beholden to the whims of your employer.  In other words you may wind up with a dead end job that you have to keep because you can barely get buy.

We can’t end this off without talking about former Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff, remember him?  Well during his reign under george Bush, he’s the one who pushed for these full body scanners that we are supposed to be objecting to. When he was advocating, very few pointed out that Chertoff had a business relationship with the manufacture Rapiscan Systems. Even now as folks are being critical, few people are calling Chertoff to the carpet for subjecting us to this invasive machine.

So Chertoff got paid and now Mica wants to get paid.. and they say the music industry is shady

Something to ponder

-Davey D-

Kanye West went in…watch this and comment. Anybody can get it. Even Taylor Swift.

Here is the partial rant.

And now we are mere surfaces of the energy they are projecting on us. Everybody needs a villain, don’t we? We need to blame someone at all times. For me to be considered a racist for stating a blatant truth, an obvious truth, but the nuances of my words, because I am very particular with my words, and the emotion I felt at that time wasn’t worded exactly right — but everybody came and said ‘Oh my God!” — I’m talking about five years ago, not a year ago, I’m talking about five years ago, I’m talking about Katrina — and everybody said, “Oh my God, Kanye, I love you so much, I hated you until you said that. But now I see you’re speaking for me. I always thought you were an a###### but now you said something that represents me, but the whole time, whole time I’m thinking in my mind I was thinking that’s not exactly what I wanted to say, I was emotional, that was not exactly the way I wanted to say, I was emotional, that was not exactly the way I wanted to word it, but I wrote it, I rode it, just as Taylor never came to my defense in any interview, and rode the waves and rode it and rode it, that’s the way I rode the waves of the Bush comment. I rode it. It’s not about popular opinion. It’s about when you look in your heart, and know what’s right and what’s wrong. When you look in your heart, look at what the media did, look at how they exploited him, they said that he said it was his lowest moment and as a mass, as America, we took that as a fact, and if you look at the interview he said that was one of his lowest moments and he said it about ten different things! But because the popularity of me, they exploited that, to make you watch the interview and make you feel that he was stupider than ever, to think that a rapper’s comment could be his lowest moment. That’s not what he f###### said! That’s not what he f###### said! That’s not what he said! He said it was one of his lowest moments. But it shows you — the way they try to villainize, the way they tried to do that. Everything would have been okay, if they hadn’t played the audio that day … ”

[Source]