Just a thought from a story from a kitchen in the bowels of the Airport Sheraton.
Low level hotel managers are a nasty lot. Mean or lazy are the two catagories I've observed. The workers pretty much know how to run things, and the most successful managers were the ones who kissed upper-management ass and seemed elegant to the clients.
The really vicious managers ( interestingly, usually the least elegant) I've observed pick on people for no reason. Make all the typical sexist, racist, homophobic remarks. Oddly, sexist remarks are the only ones spoken in the presence of the subject-group of the remark. Hmmm..., I never thought of that before, but it's mostly true. I wonder if Judy covers that?
Anyway, I used to notice how many young black men reacted to these individuals(if they qualify for that moniker). Instead of navigating around this scum-bags as most of the rest of us did, including a couple of older, relatively highly paid,long-time black employees(especially this great guy named Howard), these kids would make life extremely difficult for themselves, till they quit or got fired. They seemed to think that they were being targeted because they were black and couldn't handle it. I always thought of it as a misapplication of black nationalist sentiment. Kinda. Malcolm X, the movie came out while I was working there, BTW.
Of course it's not just a black thing. The mother of my best friend's ward, her niece, is completely disfunctional. She has many problems, emotional and physical. These are compounded by a hyper-defensiveness that has led to problems on several occassions. It's an understandable reaction to her intensely vulnerable position, but it's extremely counter-productive. She's presently in a cast to the hip because of a confrontation with a fellow inmate at the group home she lives in. By no means a first.
Say, that brings me round to the peno-centric thing. So, being poor(in Consumer Land), black and male brings on a defensiveness that is ultimately self-destructive. Somehow, anti-racism attempts, especially the BN kind, I think, makes life even more difficult for these guys.(hard to believe that's possible)
The other reason I'm afraid of the black nationalist thing is cause I've seen it used so many times, to advance a selfish agenda. It's more visible when blacks do it. It's more dangerous when whites do.
....................Weimar Russia
I very much hope that the administration didn't want to destabilize Russia.
> Back in 1993, at least, the line among the people whom I hung out with was
> that the United Stase had an enormous security--never mind the
> humanitarian--interest in making Russia's transition as successful as
> possible: no one wanted to see a Weimar Russia.
Tom's post reminded me that I dropped this thread, as I am wont to do. Voluntary ADD.
Brad,
It seems to me that if the adm. spends money supporting people who are implementing policies that are destructive to Russia, despite what their own well-meaning economists have to say, then it's safe to assume they desire the destruction of Russia. Clinton is not stupid, and he's got a real big research department, no? I think my Too Stupid To Be True Theorum applies here.
Any way, why would USA Inc. desire a strong, functioning Russia? It would likely be seen as bad for business. Short term greed gratification, long term military justification. What more could they want?
Not a True Believer, though sometimes I wish I was-pms
South China Morning Post
Saturday January 16 1999
Man dies as police quell mass protest against graft
ELAINE PAK LI and Agencies More than 4,000 mainland villagers clashed with 1,000 police during an anti-corruption protest that left at least one person dead, reports said yesterday.
The incident happened near Changsha city in Hunan province, officials in Hunan and Hong Kong-based rights groups said.
Police fired tear-gas and called in soldiers to disperse crowds protesting over taxes and corruption.
About 100 people were detained, according to an SAR-based human rights group.
Several thousand villagers from Qingshui village had gathered in front of the Daolin township government office around noon on January 8 and demanded that taxes be reduced and corruption halted, a township official said by telephone.
"Around 5pm, the villagers tried to get into the township offices, so the police blocked them and fired tear-gas."
Some people were trampled by the crowd and there were not enough local police officers to handle the situation so the PLA had been called in, she added.
The Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said 1,000 police and 500 soldiers were called in.
Police beat protesters with batons. One farmer died after being hit by a tear-gas canister, the centre said.
"It burned his skin and the man bled to death," it said.
Hundreds were arrested but 80 had been released after further protests to the Changsha Government by the villagers. The family of the dead villager had received 60,000 yuan (HK$56,100), the centre said. About 30 farmers were still believed to be in custody.
On January 9, farmers met in the village and 500 soldiers were ordered to break up the gathering, the centre said. An official from Ningxiang county, which administers Daolin, denied any deaths but confirmed that 4,000 to 5,000 villagers took to the streets.
She said villagers around Daolin had been campaigning for lower local taxes in order to "save the countryside".
In the past week more than 200 farmers from Daolin county had written to the provincial Government, urging it to identify the officer responsible for the death.
There had also been three demonstrations outside the government building in Changsha over the violent police action, human rights groups said.
Heavy tax and illegal levies charged by corrupt officials have triggered rural unrest but it is rare for thousands of villagers to take to the streets.
Sources close to security officials estimated there were more than 10,000 unruly incidents by farmers in 1997.
The incidents, mostly at village level, ranged from demonstrations and petitions to efforts to surround or damage government offices. There were at least 300 attempts to break into banks and post offices.
The Communist Party leadership put rural unrest at the top of its agenda when President Jiang Zemin warned last October that farmers' taxes must be reduced to ensure stability.
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