Are you ready for it?

Occupy Wall Street, protesting corruption, the buying off of our political system, and the massive redistribution of wealth from the workers who made wealth possible to the super-wealthy, the big banks, stockbrokers and CEO's.

Arab Spring, the protest expressing deep-seated resentment toward Arab dictatorships, anger at the brutality of the security apparatus, unemployment, rising prices, and corruption that followed the privatization of state assets in some countries.

Black Lives Matter, a response to the racism that is endemic in many aspects of our society, but most especially to the fact that police brutality affects black people more than any other ethnic group in America.

Tiananmen Square, the 1989 protests in China against inflation, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy, and restrictions on political participation.

What do these have in common? At their heart, they are all a coming together of mostly young people who have decided that it's time for  change toward real progress in human societal evolution.  And the struggle continues. 

The United Kingdom just voted to leave the European Union.

And here in the United States, a huge majority of Republican primary voters has chosen Donald Trump as their presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States.  And on the Democratic side, 45% of primary votes counted so far have been for Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Socialist whose stands on issues are reminiscent of the liberal policies of the Democratic Party of decades past while the present Party is run by corporatists masquerading as liberals, what have been called Neoliberals and New Democrats.

But that's not all.  Many, many voters were disenfranchised as the Democratic Party adopted and adjusted Republican/Conservative/Tea Party tactics to prevent Sanders supporters from voting.  There are official inquiries and even lawsuits about election fraud springing up, as the Media, allegedly in cahoots with the Democratic National Committee, downplayed at almost every turn the progress being made by the Sanders campaign, which began at a serious disadvantage and pulled within a few points of the Establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton, before the primaries were over, taking 22 states and, when all of the mail-in and provisional ballots are finally counted, perhaps more.  

What does it all mean?  Consider that a majority of Republicans chose an anti-candidate, one who is neither respected nor wanted by the Party elites.  And nearly half of the Democratic voters chose a candidate who has eschewed Party membership while harkening back to a truly liberal and progressive stance that the Party's top echelons have apparently forgotten.  Then consider that this accounts for roughly half of the membership of of both Parties who voted in their respective primaries.  Add to that that about 40% of registered voters in the United States are either independent or support a third party. 

This speaks to that same dissatisfaction that led to the four groups mentioned at the beginning of this  More and more people are openly coming out against business as usual and want to see real progress in human affairs. 

As Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks Network just said tonight, "Buckle up.  Here comes the revolution."

© 2016 Donald C. Rice Jr.

Hillary Clinton's Rape Case

Everyone who knows me and/or follows me, in real life or on social media, knows that I do not like or trust what I see and hear of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the "presumptive" nominee for the Democratic run for the Presidency of the United States.  However, in an effort to be as impartial as possible, allow me to present my analysis of one particular aspect of why I don't trust her.

There is a meme running around the Internet about a rape case she handled as a young attorney on Arkansas:

While the meme grossly misrepresents the facts of the case, what stands out in my awareness is that Hillary laughed about lie detector test:

"I had him take a polygraph, which he passed,
which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs."

She also laughed about saying to prosecutor,
"Well, this guy's (a well-known and highly respected forensics expert) ready to come from New York to prevent this miscarriage of justice."

Here is the report from CNN that includes those excerpts:

What happened in Hillary Clinton's 1975 rape case?

These facts, all by themselves, show clearly what she thought about the case.  She clearly thought the man was guilty.  Did she know he was guilty?  We may never know the answer to that question; it's not one she is ever likely to answer.  But it's clear that she believed he was.  He passed the polygraph, and that destroyed her faith in the test.

In Clinton's defense, she was appointed as the man's lawyer.  That made her responsible for defending him to the best of her ability.  She did that, admirably, within the system as it was at the time.  She didn't get the guy of completely, but plea bargained the case down so that, instead of being sent to prison for life, he spent a year in the county jail for "fondling".

It must also be acknowledged that the prosecution massively bungled their side of the case.  They lost the actual evidence, the piece of the underwear with the blood and semen stains, and offered Clinton the remainder of the garment as what they had for evidence. 

Apparently they also failed to bring forth the witness statement that the man got on top of the girl and a short time later pulled up his pants. 

So what it comes down to is that Hillary's supporters are going to
 ignore her own clearly demonstrated attitude toward this case.  But her detractors err in the opposite direction, failing or refusing to acknowldge that she had a job she was required by law to do, defend the accused to the best of her ability, and she did that job quite thoroughly.  She can't be faulted for that, because if it ever came out that she didn't offer up her best defense, she could have been disbarred, meaning she would not be permitted to practice law again in Arkansas and perhaps in other places as well.

The CNN report on this issue closes by noting that, according to Clinton, the case inspired her to start the first rape hotline in Arkansas.  Was this a political calculation, as some might say?  I doubt it.  She was a new lawyer just getting started at 27 years old.  I don't believe political calculation applied at all at that time in her life.  But again, I don't think we'll ever really know for sure.

It should be noted, however, that she declined to address the question of her smearing of the rape victim when specifically asked about it.  One can only speculate about that while understanding that this was accepted practice across the country in those days.  It's much less common now due to "shield laws", but it still happens, in court and out.  It's called "blaming the victim", it's a despicable practice that needs to end, and Hillary Clinton engaged in it as a defense attorney.

Here is the clip, again from CNN.  Note how the anchors mention that aspect but don't pursue it at all, concluding that Clinton gave a well-thought-out answer:

Clinton stands by defense of child rapist in the 1970s

In conclusion, while she may have done the legally correct thing in this case, it was not the *right* thing.  Yes, she got her client a reduced charge and a greatly reduced sentence resulting from that reduced charge.  Her methods, while perfectly legal, were counter to the concept of seeking the truth in the matter.  When questioned, she deflects blame and responsibility from herself.  This is not someone I would want to trust in the highest office in the land.

© 2016 Donald C. Rice Jr.

Good cops and bad cops

Yesterday the news broke that the second police officer brought to trial in Baltimore, Edward Nero, was found not guilty in the death of Freddy Gray, a black man arrested for possession of a spring-assisted knife.  Such knives are legal by Maryland state law, but Baltimore has it's own law making them illegal.  The first officer brought to trial, Caesar Goodson Jr., had a deadlocked jury and will apparently be re-tried in September.  Four more officers may or may not be taken to trial.

One might ask, "Why did Gray die in police custody?"  It's a valid question.  But it's not the purpose of this blog post.  The arrest was legitimate; the death was not.  Nor is it the purpose of this post to blame the victims, as far too many people are all too willing to do.  Sure, some of those people had criminal records.  But some had no record, yet were still killed.  Cleveland's Tamir Rice, not even a man but a 12-year-old child, comes to mind.  

With Tamir Rice in mind, one might also ask what a cop is supposed to do when someone aims a gun at them.  It's been said that a cop sometimes only has a split second to decide if they are actually in danger.  But this is a result of training, or rather, a lack of appropriate training.  For example, in many European countries, police are trained to de-escalate and disarm, only firing their weapons when absolutely necessary.  And they're trained to be able to tell when it's necessary.  There's no reason we can't train our police officers the same way here in  the U.S.  None whatsoever.

Anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention knows that Gray is not the only black man to die at the hands of police.  Nor is he the only black person, as several women have also died in police custody or by other police action.  Sandra Bland comes to mind immediately, but she's not the only one.     

No, the purpose of this post is to examine the larger picture of the phenomena of black deaths by police involvement.  And that larger picture is the reason for movements such as Black Lives Matter and Black Matters.

There is a major discrepancy, that has been demonstrated multiple times, between the treatment of minorities, especially black people, and whites.  Deny it if you will, but consider that black folks are killed for sometimes petty crimes, or no crime at  all, while the racist murderer of black people in a South Carolina church is led away smiling by police.  You know that if it had been a white church and the gunman was black, he would most likely have been dead, quite possibly after being taken into custody.

How many times have you read or heard a news report talking about arrest records of the black people who have been killed by cops?  Like Freddy Gray, that list is extensive.  But what the media generally doesn't tell us is that Freddy Gray's arrest record is not a valid measure.  What is valid is his conviction record.  Most of those arrests did not lead to convictions.  Furthermore, not one of them, arrests or convictions, was for a capital offense anywhere in this country.  Yet Freddy Gray is dead, as are a large number of other black men and women, at the hands or in the custody of police, and without one capital offense among them.

Are we a nation of laws and justice?  Or are we a nation of bigotry and revenge for all and sundry?

Many times I hear or read that the cops who do these things are a small percentage of the total.  This is probably true.  And there are the occasional stories of cops doing good things, like helping poor people desperate for a meal or facing eviction.  But where are the stories about cops crossing that "thin blue line"?  Where are the stories of cops standing up against their fellow officers who are not good cops?  Where are the Frank Serpico's willing to put their lives on the line to see justice being done, when the justice is against another cop?

Frank Serpico was and is a hero.  We need more of them.  And we need to see more of them.

Namaste',
Don Rice Jr.

© 2016 Donald C. Rice Jr.

Which way to go?

History informs us that when a nation or ideal or mass movement begins a downhill slide, it reach a point where it has to bottom out before the people rise up to change it.  This basic premise has been repeated over and over.  The Roman Empire had to reach it's nadir before the Renaissance could begin, for example.  The British Empire had to reach the height of arrogance and abusiveness before the colonies would rise up against it, beginning with the American Revolution. 

Each of those falls took a couple hundred years to fully materialize. The much more recent Filipino "peaceful revolution" that derailed the corrupt regime of President Ferdinand Marcos was something of an anomaly in that it took place, not after centuries, but a couple decades. But now we're in the Information Age, fueled by the Internet and the global economy.  Awareness of events in one part of the world moves quickly to nearly every corner of the Earth.  People everywhere can now see what's happening almost as it occurs. 

And here in the USA, the Industrial Age gave way to the Information Age, not by natural progression, but by political manipulation that saw our manufacturing base moved to other countries as part of a power agenda to break trade unions and dumb down education so that the people would not be aware en masse that they were being shafted by the very people who employed them as well as the ones who were supposed to represent them in the halls of government.

With the rapid movement of knowledge of events now taking place, peaceful revolution becomes more possible in some places.  And with more and more people awakening to progressive possibilities, we might yet avoid the long rebuilding that occurs after mass violent rebellions.  Much depends on how many people wake up and participate in the peaceful revolution, and what positions they assume during the rebuilding. 

But one thing seems inevitable.  That is that before this peaceful revolution can be successful, more people must be forced to accept that change is not only necessary, but inevitable.  The means of that force could very well need to be, here in America, the election of a right-wing megalomaniac such a Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.  It's a frightening, unpalatable concept, I know; but it may and probably will have the effect of convincing people that we must come together in order to create the change necessary to the furtherance of our nation toward the uplifting of human existence instead of the seeking after power and wealth for it's own sake or for our own selfish satisfaction.

Should such a person become President, it is likely that it will be for only one term, or less, should the person be impeached.  And the people will be the force behind that change, as they see the need to progress rather than regress.  

© 2016 Donald C. Rice Jr.

Trump This!

I read a rather humorous rumor today that Donald Trump wants to have some entertainment at the Republican National Convention, where he hopes (probably accurately) to be crowned that Party's nominee for President.  One person commented the idea of a bear riding a bicycle.  Another thought it should be juggling because of Trump's alleged "small hands".  Those are small-time circus acts, and Trump is anything but small time.  At least in his own bloated-ego mind anyway.

I think he'd have a reality-show theme, since he has experience in that realm.  I visualize a couple professional mimicking his rivals for the Presidency.  You know, Rubio, Clinton, Cruz, Sanders and Kasich.

It'll be billed as "Presidential Apprentice".

He's seated at the head of a conference table.  They're all standing before And he looks at each one and yells, "You're fired!"

Yeah, that's what I think The Donnie will do if that rumor is true.

 © 2016 Donald C. Rice Jr.

The Clock

What time is it? I ask,
And look at the Clock.
But the Clock says nothing.

What time is it? I ask again,
But the Clock remains mute.

Frustrated now, I ask once more:
What time is it?  

And the clock replies,
'Tis time to stop, and think, and feel,
And be yourself, with joy!

What kind of answer is that? I cry;
A clock that can't tell time?
It must be a nightmare,
with no reason or rhyme!

For minutes and hours I rant and I rave,

Then I stop, and quietly say,
Time is Now, or it is not.

And to the Clock I say,
Thank you, my friend!

© 2015 Donald C. Rice Jr. 

Finally published my book!

My long-awaited debut novel is finally live on Amazon!  Find it here:

Child Protection: A Novel of Deception

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Namaste',
Don

© 2015 Donald C. Rice Jr.