BOBBEE BEE: KINGDOM BUILDERS featuring Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr.

“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

KINGDOM BUILDERS is the second song off the "NEW" album The Evolution of an MC by the self-proclaimed Black Poetry Writer, who continues to display his creative and lyrical prowess, while offering another dose of Ghetto Poems "In the Age of Donald Troop"-

BOBBEE BEE:THE ALT-RIGHT AND THE RISE OF DONALD TRUMP

by George Michael Professor of Criminal Justice - Westfield State University

In recent months, far-right activists – which some have labeled the “alt-right” – have gone from being an obscure, largely online subculture to a player at the very center of American politics.

Long relegated to the cultural and political fringe, alt-right activists were among the most enthusiastic supporters of Donald Trump.

Earlier this year, Breitbart.com executive Steve Bannon had declared the website “the platform for the alt-right.” By August, Bannon was appointed the CEO of the Trump campaign. In the wake of Trump’s victory, he’ll be joining Trump in the White House as a senior advisor.

I’ve spent years extensively researching the American far right, and the movement seems more energized than ever.

To its critics, the alt-right is just a code term for white nationalism, a much-maligned ideology associated with neo-Nazis and Klansmen. The movement, however, is more nuanced, encompassing a much broader spectrum of right-wing activists and intellectuals.

How did the movement gain traction in recent years? And now that Trump has won, could the alt-right change the American political landscape?

Mainstreaming a movement

The alt-right includes white nationalists, but it also includes those who believe in libertarianism, men’s rights, cultural conservatism and populism.

Nonetheless, its origins can be traced to various American white nationalist movements that have endured for decades. These groups have historically been highly marginalized, with virtually no influence on the mainstream culture and certainly not over public policy. Some of the most radical elements have long advocated a revolutionary program.

Groups such as the Aryan Nations, White Aryan Resistance, the National Alliance and the World Church of the Creator have preached racial revolution against ZOG, or the “Zionist Occupation Government.”

Many were inspired by the late William L. Pierce’s “Turner Diaries,” a novel about a race war that consumes America. (Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, had pages from the book in his possession when he was captured.)

But these exhortations didn’t resonate with most people. What’s more, after 9/11, many of the revolutionary right’s leading representatives were prosecuted under new anti-terrorism statutes and sent to prison. By the mid-2000s, the far right appeared to have reached its nadir.

Into this void stepped Richard Spencer and a new group of far-right intellectuals.

In 2008, conservative political philosopher Paul Gottfried was the first to use the term “alternative right,” describing it as a dissident far-right ideology that rejected mainstream conservatism. (Gottfried had previously coined the term “paleoconservative” in an effort to distance himself and like-minded intellectuals from neoconservatives, who had become the dominant force in the Republican Party.)

William Regnery II – a wealthy and reclusive publisher – founded the National Policy Institute as a white nationalist think tank. A young and rising star of the far right, Spencer assumed leadership in 2011. A year earlier, he launched the website “Alternative Right” and became recognized as one of the most important, expressive leaders of the alt-right movement.

Around this time, Spencer popularized the term “cuckservative,” which has gained currency in the alt-right vernacular. In essence, a cuckservative is a conservative sellout who is first and foremost concerned about abstract principles such as the U.S. Constitution, free market economics and individual liberty.

The alt-right, on the other hand, is more concerned about concepts such as nation, race, civilization and culture. Spencer has worked hard to rebrand white nationalism as a legitimate political movement. Explicitly rejecting the notion of racial supremacy, Spencer calls for the creation of separate, racially exclusive homelands for white people.

Different factions

The primary issue for American white nationalists is immigration. They claim that high fertility rates for third-world immigrants and low fertility rates for white women will – if left unchecked – threaten the very existence of whites as a distinct race.

But even on the issue of demographic displacement, there’s disagreement in the white nationalist movement. The more genteel representatives of the white nationalism argue that these trends developed over time because whites have lost the temerity necessary to defend their racial group interests.

By contrast, the more conspiratorial segment of the movement implicates a deliberate Jewish-led plot to reduce whites to minority status. By doing so, Jews would render their historically most formidable “enemy” weak and minuscule – just another minority among many.

Emblematic of the latter view is Kevin MacDonald, a former psychology professor at the California State University at Long Beach. In a trilogy of books released in the mid- to late 1990s, he advanced an evolutionary theory to explain both Jewish and antisemitic collective behavior.

According to MacDonald, anti-semitism emerged not so much out of perceived fantasies of Jewish malfeasance but because of genuine conflicts of interests between Jews and Gentiles. He’s argued that Jewish intellectuals, activists and leaders have sought to fragment Gentile societies along the lines of race, ethnicity and gender. Over the past decade and a half, his research has been circulated and celebrated in white nationalist online forums.

A growing media and internet presence

Cyberspace became one area where white nationalists could exercise some limited influence on the broader culture. The subversive, underground edges of the internet – which include forums like 4chan and 8chan – have allowed young white nationalists to anonymously share and post comments and images. Even on mainstream news sites such as USA Today, The Washington Post and The New York Times, white nationalists can troll the comments sections.

More important, new media outlets emerged online that began to challenge their mainstream competitors: Drudge Report, Infowars and, most notably, Breitbart News.

Founded by Andrew Breitbart in 2007, Breitbart News has sought to be a conservative outlet that influences both politics and culture. For Breitbart, conservatives didn’t adequately prioritize winning the culture wars – conceding on issues like immigration, multiculturalism and political correctness – which ultimately enabled the political left to dominate the public discourse on these topics.

As he noted in 2011, “politics really is downstream from culture.”

The candidacy of Donald Trump enabled a disparate collection of groups – which included white nationalists – to coalesce around one candidate. But given the movement’s ideological diversity, it would be a serious mischaracterization to label the alt-right as exclusively white nationalist.

Yes, Breitbart News has become popular with white nationalists. But the site has also unapologetically backed Israel. Since its inception, Jews – including Andrew Breitbart, Larry Solov, Alexander Marlow, Joel Pollak, Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos – have held leading positions in the organization.

In fact, in recent months, Yiannopoulos, a self-described “half Jew” and practicing Catholic – who’s also a flamboyant homosexual with a penchant for black boyfriends – has emerged as the movement’s leading spokesman on college campuses (though he denies the alt-right characterization).

Furthermore, the issues that animate the movement – consternation over immigration, national economic decline and political correctness – existed long before Trump announced his candidacy.

 

As political scientist Francis Fukuyama opined, the real question is not why this brand of populism eme
rged in 2016, but why it took so long to manifest.

Mobilized for the future?

The success of the Trump campaign demonstrated the potential influence of the alt-right in the coming years. At first blush, Trump’s victory in the Electoral College seems substantial.

But his margin of victory in several key states was quite slim. For that reason, support from every quarter he received – including the alt-right – was vitally important.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that they were among his most avid foot soldiers in getting out the vote in both the primaries and general election. Moreover, the Trump campaign provided the opportunity for members of this movement to meet face to face.

Shortly after the election, Richard Spencer said that Trump’s victory was “the first step, the first stage towards identity politics for white people.” To some observers, Bannon’s appointment as Trump’s chief strategist confirms fears that the far-right fringe has penetrated the White House.

But if Trump fails to deliver on his most emphatic campaign promises – such as building the wall – the alt-right might become disillusioned with him, just like the progressives who chastised Barack Obama for continuing to prosecute wars in the Middle East.

Unlike old-school white nationalist movements, the alt-right has endeavored to create a self-sustaining counterculture, which includes a distinct vernacular, memes, symbols and a number of blogs and alternative media outlets.

Now that it has been mobilized and demonstrated its relevance (just look at the number of articles written about the movement, which further publicizes it), the alt-right is likely to grow, gaining a firmer foothold in American politics.

BOBBEE BEE: What Constitutes a "Legitimate President" in the United States?

by Danny Haiphong

“The struggle to legitimize the US Presidency is ultimately a desperate attempt by the finance capitalist-aligned ruling class to stabilize the system with endless war.”

A recent piece authored by Robert Kuttner, the founder of the liberal magazine The American Prospect, laid out the criteria for a "legitimate" Presidency. The purpose for such criteria is given away by the piece's title, aptly named "Impeaching Trump." There currently exists a layer of the liberal section of the ruling class that is committed to ousting the President-elect from office.

The danger in such a move does not necessarily reside from the elimination of Trump and his particular form of rule. What is dangerous about the effort to impeach Trump is the conflation of the genuine interests of oppressed and working class people with Kuttner's particular definition of Presidential legitimacy.

What defines a "legitimate President" of the United States according to Kuttner? The criteria of Presidential legitimacy are simple. The President must be anyone else but Donald J. Trump. Trump's unsettled business ventures mix "official duties with personal enrichment," which is deemed “illegal” under the US Constitution. And a legitimate President certainly cannot have peaceful relations with Russia. Trump's so-called ties to Russia are grounds for treason and enough to warrant impeachment.

Yet Kuttner’s argument for what constitutes a legitimate President rests on the assumption that the system of governance is legitimate in its own right.

Yet the system of capitalism and imperialism in control of the US state apparatus has never been mired in a deeper crisis of legitimacy than the one currently in motion. Since Trump's election, establishment Democrats and Republicans have waged a multifaceted campaign of war against Russia in attempt to resolve the crisis.

This campaign includes Kuttner's narrative that Russia meddled in US elections in favor of Trump as well as the vast NATO-sponsored military buildup in the Baltic States bordering Russia. The struggle to legitimize the US Presidency is ultimately a desperate attempt by the finance capitalist-aligned ruling class to stabilize the system with endless war.

“The President must be anyone else but Donald J. Trump.”

So the question must be posed again: What really constitutes a legitimate President of the United States?

A "legitimate President" in the eyes of the ruling establishment is defined by a number of factors.

"Legitimate" Presidents help consolidate and manage the crisis of imperialism in a manner that is palatable to the policy objectives of the ruling class. Such rule must also be effective in curbing the ideological and political development of the inevitable insurgency that arises from capitalist and racist oppression. Donald Trump's deviation from the ruling class on Syria and Russia as well as his public white supremacist worldview makes him an unsavory choice to govern a superpower that is circling the drain.

Perhaps the best example of a "legitimate" US President under imperialism is leaving office on January 20th. Barack Obama has consistently met all the criteria for what makes a President legitimate in the hearts and minds of the ruling class. Obama managed the crisis under terms that handsomely rewarded his capitalist masters.

The "first Black President" worked diligently for Wall Street, transferring the most wealth to the top 1 percent from the rest of the population in US history. Obama achieved a new record for the most transfers of military weaponry to racist police forces that occupy Black American cities. He deployed US Special Forces to 70 percent of the world's nations, with a staggering 1600 percent increase in Special Operations Forces in Africa from 2006 until the present. These forces helped Obama drop over 26,000 bombs in 2016.

“Under Obama, imperialism's most egregious crimes found room to flourish.”

Obama was a gift to the imperialist system, which before his first term began was stuck in both political and economic turmoil.  Under Obama, imperialism's most egregious crimes found room to flourish. Not one banker was punished for the economic collapse of 2007-08. In fact, trillions of dollars were sent to Wall Street's coffers while working class and oppressed people were left with an economy dominated by low-wage and contract jobs. The real unemployment rate sits at 23 percent as millions of people have gone uncounted by official unemployment statisticians. But imperialism had plenty of opportunity over this time to spend trillions militarizing the Russian border, funding and arming jihadists, and renovating the US nuclear arsenal. 



Under Obama, the ruling class won and the people lost big. Yet despite this development, popular protest was relatively small in size and duration. The Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements brought police terror, white supremacy, and inequality back into the political discourse, but were unable to develop a solid organizational and ideological basis from which to win material victories.

The anti-war movement was completely suppressed, and the LGBTQ and women's movements were consumed under the Democratic Party umbrella. All of this can be traced back to the "legitimate" Presidency of Barack Obama. His rule ensured that radical and revolutionary political alternatives would have no breathing room under the weight of political symbolism and neo-liberal dogma.


“It appears that no amount of information will stop the Democrats’ push for Trump to abandon his rhetorical gestures of peace with Russia and continue the dangerous war against Russia that began under Obama.”

Obama popularized oppression and exploitation among a large section of the electorate for the majority of his Administration. Workers and oppressed people struggled in disorganized silence.  And even when popular protest ensued, few activists held Obama accountable for things like mass incarceration or the continued protection of the banks. The Obama period has been the highest expression of the Democratic Party's transformation into the War Party and the most legitimate party of imperialism. Trump's ascendancy has brought this reality out of the darkness and into the light.

Recent weeks have intensified the Democratic Party's rabid drive to become the most preferred imperialist political party in the United States. Hollywood millionaires such as Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks have lauded Obama's rule while taking ineffectual swipes at Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has moved forward in peddling the lie that Russia, Trump, and WikiLeaks worked together to meddle in the 2016 elections in favor of Trump. Numerous reports of Russian hacking have been discredited and the only intelligence report that exists on the subject contains zero detail on the specifics of Russia's so called hack job. But it appears that no amount of information will stop their push for Trump to abandon his rhetorical gestures of peace with Russia and continue the dangerous war against Russia that began under Obama.

“Donald Trump's deviation from the ruling class on Syria and Russia as well as his public white supremacist worldview makes him an unsavory choice to govern a superpower that is circling the drain.”

A recent piece on Obama by fellow admirer and corporate liberal Ta-Nahesi Coates exemplifies the danger of the current moment. While "progressives" obsess about Trump, pundits such as Coates have gone into overdrive to legitimize the Presidency of Barack Obama. The piece aggrandizes Obama and wishes him a warm farewell. Coates is unable to provide one example of how the Obama Presidency benefited the oppressed in a material way. The Democratic Party has been embarrassed by the rise of Trump yet the policies of Obama's two terms helped Trump take the White House.

To hide their complicity, Democrats have sought to soil the insurgency of the coming period by defining themselves as the legitimate political leader of the oppressed.

However, empty promises no longer get the job done so the Democrats have turned to all out war instead.

The definition of a "legitimate" President is dependent on the lens of the inquirer. If one looks through the lens of the ruling class, a legitimate President manages the crisis of the imperialist system of exploitation under relative terms of social peace. The expectation is that working class and oppressed people will continue to validate this definition in the name of American Exceptionalism. However, there has never been a US President that has genuinely governed in the interests of humanity. The imperialist state is an organ of class rule.

It is organized to protect the interests of the capitalist class and suppress the interests of the working class and oppressed. The coming period holds much potential for the further development of radical insurgency. The effort by the Obama camp of the ruling class to legitimize the Presidential seat is nothing but an attempt to stifle the insurgency.

Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area. He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com

BOBBEE BEE: CONGRATULATIONS TO THE "SMOOOTHIE" QUEEN!!!!

When Tonya Brigham opened her Smoothie King franchise in the Bowie Town Center two years ago, the corporate parent told her it would be a slog just to sell $360,000 worth of the juice drinks the first year.

She finished $19 shy of $700,000.

“We did well,” said the ­46-year-old mother of two, who opened the store as a way to control her schedule after working 80-hour weeks as a meeting planner.

Brigham’s store is the No. 1 Smoothie King in greater Washington and the Northeast. Its sales are among the top 15 of the 743 Smoothie Kings in the United States, which makes her a member of the company’s elite “King’s Club.”

You might call her the queen of Smoothie King.

“During the summer months, we have done up to 300 guests per day,” she said. She has already served more than 100,000 guests in 2016.

Brigham’s company isn’t big, but it delivers a healthy paycheck (she won’t say how much, but it’s six figures), requires no travel and affords her the flexibility to spend time with her husband and children. It’s the classic case of a career parent who wanted to rekindle the connection with family while preserving a paycheck.

Brigham said she owes it all to soccer moms.

“This is soccer mom heaven,” Brigham said of her Bowie store. “The number one guest of Smoothie King is a soccer mom, the mother who has 100 balls up in the air at the same time. She is tired, stretched, but cares what she puts in her kids’ bodies and cares about what she puts in her body.”

Part of the reason for the success is location and promotion. Across the parking lot is an L.A. Fitness gym.

“These folks are my 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. crowd,” Brigham said. “We really see them in the evening after their workout when they are not interested in going home to cook but grabbing a meal-replacement smoothie for dinner.”

Smoothies are not a panacea for losing weight. Many nutritionists will tell you that eating whole fresh fruit or vegetables is better for you than the blended version. But it is better than a banana split or that Philly cheesesteak covered with melted cheese.

“It doesn’t have to be fried or greasy” is Brigham’s motto.

Her drinks range from $3.50 for a kid-size smoothie to $8.99 for an adult portion made with fresh vegetables. Prices in between vary, depending on ingredients. Those may include strawberries, bananas, blueberries, Greek yogurt, apples, kiwi or kale. There is also a vegan smoothie.

With the sprawling parking lot surrounded by a Safeway, sandwich stores and services, the spillover effect goes beyond the gym crowd. Brigham also has a budding catering business and sells to nonprofits for fundraisers.

Brigham is an ambassador of smoothies, promoting her product to all corners of her community. She routinely sells at health fairs and schools. Pharmaceutical salesmen stop in to buy a dozen smoothies to distribute on their sales rounds. (Brigham is planning a second store near a hospital.) She gives out gift certificates to schools and honor roll students. The kids bring a parent or another child, which usually means more smoothie sales.

One key source of patrons is the 10,000-plus congregants of First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Landover, Md.

After the pastor mentioned her by name in a sermon one Sunday, 300 people showed up at her Smoothie King. When they replayed his sermon on the radio, even more streamed in.
“It helps to know folks who are influential,” she said.

During the summer, Brigham pays it back when she blends a cooler full of smoothies and delivers them to the church parking lot attendants on Sunday mornings.

She said the key is keeping the store spotless, treating customers with respect and making suggestions when customers need assistance with flavors.

Most of her 15 or so employees work part time and hourly. There are no benefits; anyone older than 18 earns at least $10.75 per hour, the minimum wage in Prince George’s County. Workers also keep tips.

Brigham has mentored several of her employees. The lessons cut both ways. “I have given second and third chances to some who should have been let go long before situations got bad. I had to learn to cut the apron strings and hold my team accountable for the high standard set in our store.”

Brigham, who grew up in rural North Carolina, was raised by her grandparents.

“It was small-town people, church every Sunday, work, go to school, and do what’s right. Being raised in that environment has had a big influence on my life,” she said.

She majored in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She enjoyed working with hospitalized psychiatric patients, including Alzheimer’s patients and teenagers who had been

abused.

She moved to Washington, where she worked at Children’s National Medical Center. She enjoyed it but eventually needed a break, so she became a flight attendant with US Airways, traveling between Philadelphia and European cities such as Rome, Paris and Madrid.

She later got married, tried graduate school and settled back in Washington, where she worked as a meeting planner while she and her husband built a family.

“I traveled a lot. It was very painful to hear my children say, ‘Mommy, don’t go,’ and I’m heading out for eight days. It became very difficult.”

She quit to become a stay-at-home mom for three years while she pondered her next move.
“I thought, ‘How do I stay here and take care of my children and make money?’ ”

She discovered Smoothie King, which began in New Orleans in 1973, on the Internet.

“I felt God put a spotlight on it,” she said. “The more I read about this company . . . the more enthusiastic I became.”

Brigham persuaded her husband to take the risk, and after several turndowns, they received a bank loan and had a location already picked out.

They paid $15,000 for the rights to the store. She found a builder in Atlanta who saved her thousands building it out. She spent about $250,000 and opened just before Thanksgiving in 2014.
By January, she was the sales leader in the D.C. market.

“Prince George’s is the most underserved county. Folks were tired of going to Anne Arundel, tired of going to Alexandria, tired of going to D.C. Folks were tired of traveling and saw me as an African American business owner.”

Brigham said she expects to gross almost $900,000 this year.

She runs operations at her store. Her husband handles the books. “I hired and fire. He can tell you the numbers.”

She pays 9 percent of her gross sales to the corporate office for advertising and royalties. The rest she keeps. She won the 2016 Prince George’s County Chamber of Commerce Entrepreneur of the Year award.

The best part is the time she has for her two teenage children and her husband.

“I am here for dinner. I drop the kids off at school, and I work from home. But I still work from morning to night.”

By Thomas Heath (Reporter)