Monday, January 14, 2008

Hegemony: Power, Culture & Ideology: Hegemony:The processes by which a dominant culture maintains its dominant position

Hegemony: Power, Culture & Ideology: Hegemony:The processes by which a dominant culture maintains its dominant position

When your ideas and your information are inconvenient to the Agenda of a Hegemon; they will say you are crazy, you need your meds, radical and anything else to discredit the message that introduces any obtusities to their brown bagging brown nosing establishment .

"The cultural control that hegemony asserts affects commonplace patterns of thought: hegemony controls the way new ideas are rejected or become naturalized in a process that subtly alters notions of common sense in a given society."

Hegemony (pronounced [hə.ˈdʒe.mə.ni (Amer.), hɪ.ˈɡe.mə.ni (Brit.)])[1] (Greek: ἡγεμονία hēgemonía) is a concept that has been used to describe the existence of dominance of one social group over another, such that the ruling group—referred to as a hegemon—acquires some degree of consent from the subordinate, as opposed to dominance purely by force.[2] It is used broadly to mean any kind of dominance, and narrowly to refer to specifically cultural and non-military dominance, as opposed to the related notions of empire and suzerainty.

The processes by which a dominant culture maintains its dominant position: for example, the use of institutions to formalize power; the employment of a bureaucracy to make power seem abstract (and, therefore, not attached to any one individual); the inculcation of the populace in the ideals of the hegomonic group through education, advertising, publication, etc.; the mobilization of a police force as well as military personnel to subdue opposition.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

The Kenedy Pasture Company: Unapologetic wartime profiteers, they got rich moving troops and munitions during the U.S. war with Mexico and running Con

The Kenedy Pasture Company: Unapologetic wartime profiteers, they got rich moving troops and munitions during the U.S. war with Mexico and running Confederate cotton during the Civil War


Kent Biffle: Rancher Kenedy's known as more than just a pretty face

09:24 AM CST on Sunday, January 6, 2008

As historic figures go, Petra's must have been terrific. Her looks stunned frontiersmen.

And after researching her for years, biographers Jane Clements Monday and Frances Brannen Vick concluded that Petra (1825-1885) was beautiful not merely physically, but spiritually as well. Forever helping friends, kin and her Catholic church, she gave away a wagonload of money to charities way before such acts earned tax credits.

Historian John Henry Brown called her "a woman of superior accomplishments and great natural intelligence." He noted, "She was considered one of the handsomest women of her day."

Indian warriors killed her father, ex-governor of Spanish Texas, and carried off three of her sisters, one of whom was never rescued. After marrying a Mexican army colonel, Petra Vela de Vidal had six children. Widowed, she then married steamboat tycoon Mifflin Kenedy and had six more children. She helped the captain build a ranching empire whose tall bunchgrasses and mesquites adorned oil deposits unknown to them that today are worth untold millions.

A Pennsylvania Quaker who, as a boy, shipped before the mast, Captain Kenedy and another Yankee steamboat captain, Richard King, partnered as tight as bark on a Gulf Coast scrub oak. And, after profitably plying the Rio Grande with their fleet of steamboats, they amicably divvied up the proceeds in 1868.

Mifflin Kenedy had 400,000 acres (in present Kenedy County), next to the 900,000-acre King Ranch. Both captains were business majors of the buccaneer school. Unapologetic wartime profiteers, they got rich moving troops and munitions during the U.S. war with Mexico and running Confederate cotton during the Civil War.

If it weren't footnoted, Petra's Legacy: The South Texas Ranching Empire of Petra Vela and Mifflin Kenedy (Texas A&M Press) might be mistaken for soaring fiction. It is chockablock with crooked politics, cattle rustlers, land fraud, warfare, and enough illicit sex to populate South Texas courtrooms for generations. There were once about 300 claimants to the Kenedy estate.

Mifflin and Petra's aggressive son, James "Spike" Kenedy, drove herds to railheads in Kansas, where he proved a poor loser at the gambling tables.

On July 20, 1872, in Ellsworth, Kan., a gambling dispute erupted into a gunfight between Spike and Print Olive, a Texas rancher and gunman. Both shot-up combatants recovered.

In August 1878, the quarrelsome cards set Spike at odds with Mayor Jim Kelley of Dodge City, Kan. Spike tried to murder him, shooting into his house. His Honor was out, but his sleeping roommate, Dora Hand, a popular singer at the Lady Gay Theater, caught a fatal slug. Maybe being the son of the second-richest cowman in Texas had something to do with Spike's beating the rap.

In April 1884, Spike shot to death a disagreeable, vagrant vaquero at the La Parra Ranch. It was ruled accidental.

Much earlier, Petra's son (Spike's half-brother), Adrian Vidal, who had deserted both the U.S. and Confederate armies, was executed by Imperialists in Mexico, where he had been captured while fighting Emperor Maximilian's troops. The Kenedys' firstborn son, Tom, 35, was killed from ambush in 1888 while campaigning for sheriff in Cameron County.

When the Texas State Historical Association gathers March 5 in Corpus Christi, Petra's biographers will talk about her and the problems facing researchers of women in her time and place. Fran Vick is the association's new president, and former Huntsville Mayor Jane Monday is on the executive board. Historians will find the Kenedys' old La Parra Ranch a short drive down U.S. 77 from Corpus Christi.

kbiffle@sbcglobal.net

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Nueces Democrats: Robert Zamora:A Man of Strength & Stability ; Winning Back The Nueces County Democratic Party For All South Texas Democrats

Nueces Democrats: Robert Zamora:A Man of Strength & Stability ; Winning Back The Nueces County Democratic Party For All South Texas Democrats


Zamora Announces for Party Chair

Updated: Jan 1, 2008 12:31 AM

A local attorney has announced he is running for chairman of the Nueces County Democratic Party.

There has been talk that several people might run. On Monday, attorney Robert Zamora officially announced that he has filed for the position, which is now held by Alex Garcia Jr.

"I have not only experience as a lawyer operating my own business for close to 30 years," Zamora said. "What I would like to do is lend the energy and the experience that I have to the operation of the Democratic Party here in Nueces County.

The race will be decided in the state presidential primary in March.