The
DISH
Unbossed
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Vol.
13 No. 41…Dedicated
to the Dialogue on Race…October 11, 2010
Bit
of History
Dilma
Vana Rousseff
Dilma
Rousseff was born on December 14, 1947 to Bulgarian immigrant Pedro Rousseff
and 
Dilma Jane Silva, a schoolteacher in
Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Her father was born in
After
moving to
The school was a hotbed of revolutionary fervor where students rallied against
the military coup (1964) and the dictatorship that followed. According to
Dilma, "I became aware of the political situation in my country. I
realized that my world was not a place for debutantes."
Joining
the Worker's Politics (POLOP 1967), a faction of the Brazilian Socialist Party
founded in 1961, Dilma had to choose between election/constituent politics and
the armed struggle. She chose the latter after reading Revolution inside the
Revolution by Règis Debray, a Frenchman, who joined Fidel Castro's revolution.
During that period, Dilma met Clàudio Galeno Linhares, who participated in the
sailors uprising against the military coup; they married one year later (1968).
Dilma
joined the militant Colina, National Liberation Command, and was editor of The
Piquet, their newspaper. They advocated Marxist politics among labor unions,
stressing guerrilla tactics --the need for weapons and confrontations with
police. With only a dozen militants, little money and few weapons (1969), their
Colina began robbing banks, stealing cars, transporting weapons and setting off
bombs. Following a gun battle in which two policemen were killed and another
wounded, Dilma and Galeno lived a "Bonnie and
According
to the authorities, Dilma was "one of the brains" of the
revolutionary schemes. Her police profile identified her as the "Joan of
Arc of subversion," and "one of the headmasters" of the
clandestine organization in
Dilma
was unexpectedly arrested during a raid on a bar in 1970, when a search
revealed she was armed. Dilma was taken to the OBAN headquarters, held for 22
days and tortured -- beaten and given electric shocks. Twenty pounds thinner
and battling thyroid problems when she left jail two years later, Dilma
Rousseff recuperated in Minas Gerais while living with her family. She moved to
Rousseff
gave birth to her only child, daughter Paula Rousseff Araújo, in March of 1976.
Responding to the changing circumstances of her life, Dilma returned to school.
She attended the
She
returned to politics in 1977 and was listed among 97 so-called
"subversives" in public administration, which prompted her firing
from the FEE. However, her life continued to change when the mandatory
two-party system ended in 1980. Dilma and Araújo helped found the Democratic
Labour Party (PDT) and helped elect Alceu Collares Mayor of
Rousseff
became a member of the group developing energy policy for Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva during his run for president in 2002. Overshadowed by the two front
runners for the job of Minister of Energy, if Lula won the election, Dilma was
patient and reserved when she first joined the team, but soon stood out with
her objectivity and knowledge in the area. It came as a great surprise when Lula
chose Dilma as Minister declaring: "Already near 2002, it appeared that a
comrade with a little computer in her hand, when we started debating, I
realized she had a differential characteristic from the others who were there,
because she came in with the practicality of the assignment of running the
Secretary of Energy of Rio Grande do Sul. Then I was like: I think I found my
Minister here."
José
Dirceu, Chief of the Presidential Staff resigned as a result of his involvement
in the so-called "Mensalão" scandal and Lula selected Dilma his new
Chief of Staff. She took office on June 21, 2005, becoming the first female to
assume the position. After more than two years of speculation, Rousseff
launched her official presidential campaign as a candidate for the Workers'
Party on June 13, 2010. With the backing of President Lula and a strong
campaign, she won the first round with 47% of the votes and is in a runoff Oct.
31. She will face former
Lula's
Allies Sweep Senate Race, Governorships
The
coalition that backs Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is set to have
a two-thirds majority in the Senate and 
won 12 governorships in the first round
of voting, results showed Monday (10-4-10)
Sunday's
general election was however not a complete success for the ruling- party camp.
Its presidential candidate, Dilma Rousseff, won the first round of voting, but
still must face off against social democrat Jose Serra in a runoff October 31.
Lula's Workers' Party (PT) and its allies are to have 55 Senate seats beginning
in January - up from their current 39, while the opposition goes from 33 down
to 22 seats and independents shrink from 10 to four, according to a vote count
from Sunday's legislative election. Lula's allies swept the board Sunday: Of 54
Senate seats being chosen, they won 40.
The
relevance of the balance of power in the Senate will depend on the outcome of
the presidential runoff between Rousseff and Serra.
If
Rousseff wins the presidency, she will have a very friendly Senate to work
with, in line with the wishes of the outgoing Lula. However, if Serra were to
win, he would have to govern in an unfavourable legislative setting.
Rousseff's leftist PT increased its own share from 11 to 15 senators. It is set
to be the second-largest in the upper house of the Brazilian Congress, behind
its main ally, the centrist Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB),
with 20 seats.
The
opposition led by the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), whose
presidential candidate Serra managed to hold Rousseff to a runoff, and by the
conservative party Democratas (DEM) that suffered a historic defeat in the
Senate race.
The
PSDB, which currently has 14 senators, will from January have only 10, while
the DEM went from 18 seats to seven.
No
details were immediately available as to the make-up of the lower house of the
Brazilian Congress, for which pre- electoral opinion polls had also given Lula
and his allies a comfortable lead.
The
ruling coalition that backs Lula and Rousseff also carried 12 of the 18 state
governorship races that were decided in Sunday's voting. The PT got back the leadership of the state of
The centrist PMDB, the PT's main ally, kept
However, the social democratic opposition will keep command of
The state of Amazonas elected a governor of the tiny Party of National
Mobilization (PMN). Governors in the remaining eight states and in the federal
district of
Who Will Reach Out to Afro-Brazilians?
By John
Burl Smith
There
seems to be a gentlemen's agreement, even though two candidates were women, not
to encourage slave descendants to participate in the electoral process of any
party. Surprisingly, Marina Silva, who came in third, is Afro-Brazilian but she
focused on environmental issues to attract Green Party support and abortion to
court protestant voters but made no overt statement regarding the socioeconomic
and political needs and demands of slave descendants.
She,
like the other two candidates, seemed to take refuge behind
With
Lula holding the door open for further comments and proposals, no candidate
walked through. Actually, they seemed to slam the door on his fingers, shutting
off any indication there will be further progress during their administration.
Had Silva made a strong case to Afro-Brazilians she could have moved past right
winger José Serra into the runoff. Moreover, now that Serra can close on
Rousseff in a two candidate race, a strong pitch to Afro-Brazilians by Dilma
would put her out of reach before he can close the gap. But like most
Anthropologist
and historian Lilia Schwarcz gave her impressions on contemporary
In
June Brazil passed the Racial Equality Law to help tackle the gap between
whites and blacks by rewarding businesses with a workforce that is more than
20% black. Under the law, all elementary and middle schools will have to teach
black Brazilian and African history. Aspects of the bill designed to address
systemic discrimination, most notably university quotas, were stripped from the
bill by senators opposing affirmative actions to eliminate disparities.
Reception to the law has been mixed. While applauding the focus on education,
Afro-Brazilian activists criticized the bill for not addressing the most
pressing social issues facing blacks, such as land rights and police brutality.
This resistance to change further underscores the need for human rights
monitoring by the UN Human Rights Council of racism in
Passage
of these meager steps required a ten-year fight, which points up the lack of
political will to push for equality reflected by all candidates for president.
It is true that
In
a statement in support of the law, Senator Paulo Paim of President Lula's own
Workers' Party said, "Last year, research institutes connected with the
federal government indicated that blacks are the poorest, the least educated,
are those who when employed receive the lowest wages and who are the overwhelming
majority of workers pushed into informal employment and unemployment...the
proportion of blacks below the poverty line is 50%, while among whites it is
25%..." The senator went on to point out that these differences show up in
social indices such as life expectancy, life time earnings and other quality of
life issues.
Lula,
rather than the candidate from the Workers' Party, attacked the right wing
opposition for having gone to court to block sections of the law that would
have established affirmative action quotas in jobs, education and television
programming. Opposition to the law was based on the same disclaimer of racism
in
Only
after numerous slave rebellions, slavery was finally abolished in Brazil in
1888, but economic, political, social and military elites that benefitted from
the slave system continued to maintain power, as in the US, and used their
power to enforce racist policies -- both legal and de-facto racial oppression.
The total population of
The legislation Lula signed also authorized the creation of a
Slave descendants face the same problem the world over, which is why during the
United States Universal Periodic Review now before the UN Human Rights Council,
US slave descendants have filed a petition (which can be read at
www.thedish.org), opposing the US' review of its human rights record. That
review does not mention racism as a systemic problem in the
What Religion?
By Raja Chemayel
Salomon´s
Only this temple, shall please God?
What is that religion which needs a piece
of Land?
And not any piece of land,
But someone´s else own land...
What kind of God is that
Who needs a specific-Temple
To be build in a specific-place, for
him?
(Is the St. Peter Cathedral in the
not good enough for him, as example?)
What kind of religion is that
Which you get only if your mother
has it?
(What happens when the mother is an
atheist-jeJew?)
What kind of God is it
Who discriminates between the
humans?
(Why should a Canaanite loose his home
to a Chaldean?)
What kind of holy-scriptures
You would want to rely on
When there is no original-text
available?
What kind of monotheists are they
When they do not share their
God?
(When there is only one God ,
You should share it with others)
Why would any people be
"chosen"
While the rest of the other peoples would
be all "forgotten."
If any land were to be
"promised"
Why not the Sunny-Hawaii
Or the beautiful-Switzerland?
(Why the Land-of Canaan and not
If God wanted to free the Slaves from
the Pharaoh´s
Why did God free only
A selective-part of those salves?
(And, why only jewish-slaves could
leave
If God were a racist
Why did Jesus and Mohammad
Preach all of us universally?
What kind of religion teaches
segregation and discrimination
and inequality among the people?
(Does racism become a religion?)
The Bigot-Whisperers (Excerpts)
By Phil Rockstroh
I was born, at slightly past the
midpoint of the Twentieth Century, in the Deep South city of
My
father, employed at the time as a freelance photojournalist, would arrive home
from work, his clothes redolent of tear gas, his adrenal system locked in
overdrive, his mind reeling, trying to make sense of the brutality he
witnessed, perpetrated by both city officials and ordinary citizens,
transpiring on the streets of the city.
The
print and media images transmitted from
These
social and economic inequities, perpetuated by exploitative labor practices,
roiled
In
a similar manner, manufactured controversies such as the gay marriage and gays
in the military dust-ups of the present time have little to do with gays or
marriage or the military. These issues are served as red meat to arouse the
passions -- and loosen the purse strings -- of the fear-driven, status
quo-enabling, confused souls residing at the center of the black spleen of the
Republican ideological base.
Although,
as a rule, the right's lies and displacements are most effective when liberals
offer working people only bromides, platitudes, and lectures on propriety and
good taste. Obama and the Democrats, time and time again, present demagogues
with an opening the size of the cracks in Glenn Beck's gray matter. Hence, the
bigot-whisperers of the right are provided with a void that they can seed with
false narratives; wherein, they are given free rein to cloud the air and clog
the airwaves with palaver about fifth columnist threats from terrorist-toady
mosque builders and gays in uniform undermining moral in the ranks by belting
out show tunes in foxholes and impromptu shower stall instruction on the art of
hand to hand sodomy.
Cultures
are organic in nature. Combine the elements of the scorched earth policies of
neoliberal capitalism, its austerity cuts and downsizing, plus the hybrid seeds
of the consumer age -- and what alien foliage will rise from the degraded soil
-- fields of right-wing AstroTurf. Add: industrial strength fertilizer. And see
how our garden grows, with: Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin -- the mutant seed
sprouted Chia Pets of corporate oligarchy.
Yet
the idea of Beck and Palin leading a populist, pitchforks and torches style
uprising in the
The
recent demonstrations, in
By
the informal design of our present oligarchs and the self-referential nature of
the corporate owned media, US citizens have the right to say almost anything
that is on their minds, as long as it has little to no effect on the status
quo. If there was ever a mass movement that effectively challenged the nation's
massive class inequity and threatened to rein in the excesses of the
Moreover,
the mid-life snit-fest engendered by the fading political power of the
country's white, middle class majority, as was the case with the racial
resentment of the white underclass of my native
Part
of the irrational fear arising from economically forsaken members of the white
laboring class toward President Obama is informed by race. Another aspect of it
is more inchoate, as evanescent as the nature of the man himself.
My
childhood, in
The paranoid, domestic douchescape works in the service of the
This
phenomenon is what is at the root of the rage rising from the faux populist
right: the ground level realities of life in the corporate state are vastly
incommensurate with the capitalist hagiography they hold in their heads.
Moreover, when one's mental imprinting and social conditioning is challenged,
one can find oneself in a bewildering place. Though the state is emotional in
nature, it feels akin to being physically lost . . . same disorientation, same
sense of panic. Many people were never given and/or didn't develop a compass of
logic by which to navigate the novel landscape that one is cast into when one's
sacred beliefs are challenged. This is why change is a long time coming, and
when it arrives it will not be greeted fondly.
About Me:
A poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in
On Corrections and Updates!
By Dot
Last
week's issues (The DISH Vol. 13 No. 40)
elicited a number of noteworthy responses from our readers. Most respondents wanted
to rant and demand their email addresses be removed from this listing. Others
wanted to say "thank you" for another great issue. One email in
particular pointed out an error in the opinion piece by John Burl Smith (The
Future According to James Wolfensohn).
"Dear
Dot: Just in the interests of accuracy, the talk by James Wolfensohn was
significantly mis-cited. It is represented as being given in 2004, and
Wolfensohn is credited with prescience. But the actual site shows that the talk
was delivered in January of this year. He is referenced as giving a talk at
Stanford in 2004, but it is not included among the speeches on his website at
the Bank, so it is not clear that he said the same things in 2004, or that the
earlier talk was accessed. As any journalist knows, it is important to get the
facts right. Just wanted to bring this to your attention."
In
response to this thoughtful missive, we issued a statement to the reader
acknowledging the error, which was the result of a lack of due diligence. Also,
we are creating a corrections and updates column as a venue to publish errors
and oversights and provide updates on ongoing issues.
We
would be remiss in not addressing the tenor of the negative responses. Some of
the adjectives used were downright insulting and do not bear repeating. Besides
demanding that they be removed from our listing, these angry readers called me
anti-Semitic, a charge I categorically deny.
There
is nothing anti-Semitic in stating facts. Ironically, none of those issuing
this ugly charge offered any evidence to back up the claim; they just made it
and closed the door to any future dialogue.
By no means shy about my views when it comes to religion, I, as a rule, eschew
the organized variety. Product of a Southern Baptist upbringing, granddaughter
of a Missionary Baptist preacher, whose daughter, my mother, stopped attending
Sunday service because "the church was full of sinners," her words
not mine, I took my mother's advice and guidance on the topic of religion to
heart. As a spiritual being, I do not require organized religion to praise my
God. No preacher is better than me at transmitting a prayer and seeking
forgiveness for a transgression. No church building is necessary, because my
God is in me; I take Him wherever I go, as He is my witness.
I
am neither for nor against any religion. I view organized religion like any
other business. In the case of Jews, the rich and powerful ones control
Bishop
Eddie Long's Billboard
By
Boyce Watkins, PhD
Bishop Eddie Long apparently has a
great deal of support from members of the
On
one hand, we could easily argue that those who've built this ill-timed
billboard are most certainly talking about Jesus with their words. The problem,
however, is that they don't have a picture of Jesus next to the words. Instead,
there is a picture of Bishop Eddie Long. If Long's supporters were trying to
communicate the words of Jesus, they should probably have considered including
a picture of the person to whom they were referring.
In
business school, we teach a concept called "co-branding." Now, I'm no
marketing expert, but simply put, co-branding is effectively the act of
strengthening one's brand name by connecting it with another. For example,
there is a reason that Nike pays LeBron James millions of dollars every year.
By associating their brand with his name and face, they are elevating the value
of their own product.
The same is true when connecting a disgraced public figure like Bishop Eddie
Long with the name of Jesus. Jesus is probably the most valuable brand in the
history of the world - as perfect, pristine and respected as you can get. So,
by using Jesus' words and putting them next to the face of Bishop Eddie Long,
his supporters expect that they are scoring a public relations touchdown.
What's
most sad about this billboard is that there are many people who will be fooled
by it. The deep commitment that many Americans have to God and Jesus can
sometimes be utilized by those with malevolent objectives. I can't say for sure
if Eddie Long is the person behind the billboard or whether he's guilty of the
terrible actions for which he's being accused. What I can say, though, is that
in the event that a person in the pulpit may be doing harm to our children, we
cannot allow our commitment to a higher power to make us both blind and
ignorant.
Mailbox:
E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email
www.nation.com ...Lou Dobbs, American
Hypocrite....In Lou Dobbs's heyday at CNN, when he commanded more than 800,000
viewers and a reported $6 million a year for "his fearless reporting and
commentary," in the words of former CNN president Jonathan Klein, the host
became notorious for his angry rants against "illegal aliens." But
Dobbs reserved a special venom for the employers who hire them, railing against
"the employer who is so shamelessly exploiting the illegal alien and so
shamelessly flouting US law" and even proposing, on one April 2006 show,
that "illegal employers who hire illegal aliens" should face felony
charges. ...His scheduled October 9 address at the Virginia Tea Party
Convention will mark his second major Tea Party address of the year, reviving
questions about whether the former CNN host is gearing up for an electoral
campaign. He recently told Fox's Sean Hannity that he has not ruled out a
possible Senate or even presidential run in 2012. But with his relentless
diatribes against "illegals" and their employers, Dobbs is casting
stones from a house--make that an estate--of glass. Based on a yearlong
investigation, including interviews with five immigrants who worked without
papers on his properties, The Nation and the Investigative Fund at The Nation
Institute have found that Dobbs has relied for years on undocumented labor for
the upkeep of his multimillion-dollar estates and the horses he keeps for his
22-year-old daughter, Hillary, a champion show jumper. ...
Email
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com
...Angle In Flap As Pastor Calls Reid's Mormon Religion A Murderous Cult...By
Eric Kleefeld...Holy Jeremiah 
Wright, Batman! In the Nevada Senate
race, Republican nominee Sharron Angle is now having to put some distance
between herself and her own former pastor, John Reed of