Fahrenheit 9/11
No. I have not seen the movie. Why? I hate and despise lines. I knew it would be packed so I didn't even bother. I will probably see it this week. What I wanted to point out was the following found at Alternet in an article entitled: Moore Light, Moore heat.
quote:
DISNEY'S EFFORT TO CENSOR MICHAEL MOORE: At the direction of CEO Michael Eisner (who is a Bush campaign contributor), the Walt Disney Company prohibited its Miramax division from distributing "Fahrenheit 911." The company enjoys a cozy relationship with President Bush's brother, Jeb. As governor of Florida, Jeb Bush serves as a trustee for the state employees' pension fund. That fund owns approximately 7.3 million shares of Disney stock. Eisner told reporters he was refusing to distribute the film because Disney is "such a nonpartisan company, do not look for us to take sides."
...DAVID BOSSIE'S HYPOCRISY: The conservative front group "Citizens United," which is headed by Clinton attacker David Bossie, is trying to get the Federal Election Commission to intervene and censor advertising for "Fahrenheit 9/11". Just two years ago, however, it was Bossie who led the charge against FEC interventions. On 6/12/02, The Hill newspaper reported him saying his group feels "FEC rules and regulations are abhorrent...they restrict the American people's ability to have an influence in politics."
The first paragraph had a big 'duh" factor about it. but that second one was a nice surprise. As soon as the news broke last week that certain republicans wanted the ads for F-9:11 to be pulled ahead of the Presidential Elections, I smelled a rat. To have these people exposed for the two faced rats they are is nice. "it's about the rules" said David on ABCNews. yes I'm sure it is.
links:
http://www.alternet.org/movies/19062/
(17 years of informed commentary)
Monday, June 28, 2004
Back at the Ranch
D-sekou over at The Deskrat has an excellent post regarding the "culling" of the Black voter roles. Check him out.
D-sekou over at The Deskrat has an excellent post regarding the "culling" of the Black voter roles. Check him out.
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
The Color Complex
Those of us who are of African descent know that due to the desire of whites to be "pure" they disowned their own offspring. as a result "black" people (and I use the term loosely here) come in "all shades" (very contradictory but...). Some spec of humanity in those early folks caused a general attitude that showed a preference for these persons, not necessarily because they were light but but at the very least because they were in fact children of whites. There are many exceptions to this but I'm not trying to write a thesis on the matter. As a result of this and other social issues there became in many ex-slave and ex-colonial societies a color system that also generally demarcated a economic and social status where the darker one was the more likely one was poor and of a lower economic status. Indeed in the United States Marcus Garvey noted that the NAACP had a habit of putting light skinned men and women in the front offices. This also resulted in friction between members of this "race." Please do note that it was not the decision by the blacks in the US to included any person with some black in them as black but rather a socially imposed decision by whites. Thus it is in fact a continuation of that imposition, when blacks discuss unity "within the race" when it concerns the "many shades." One way to confirm this would be to read the interview of Thandee Newton, who's mother is from southern Africa ( The exact location escapes me) and she stated that she was not considered black by her mothers people. However upon moving to England she was considered African, and in the states "mistook" for an African American. Confusing indeed. Anyway, many blacks are unaware of how pervasive the color complex is. Today I read an article in Indo Link entitled Color Complex In The South Asian Diaspora where author Francis C. Assi discusses interviews he had with woman and men from South Asia:
Quote:
Nasir, a twenty-two year old from New York has this to say of his preference for fair skin: “Would I personally be attracted to lighter-skinned Desi girls? Of course. I mean, it’s natural to find those girls more beautiful, to tell you the truth.”
Sahar, a nineteen-year-old Desi from New Jersey, bemoans the plight of the single girl deemed unattractive: “If a girl has a major flaw, she’s just stuck. It’s sad but . . . in society, if a girl is extremely overweight or extremely underweight, if she’s very, very dark complected. These are all physical things, just physical abnormalities.”
Grewal has noted in her study that ‘particular physical qualities are always fetishized in constructions of beauty. However, in these communities, the stigma attached to dark color intersects with broader racial discourses in the U.S. That’s why a Desi mother of three daughters in their twenties, explicitly refers to dark coloring as a physical abnormality and deficiency.’
As another informant, Sultana, says: “Well, in [South] Asian communities, because there are so many shades, most everyone prefers light skin. And if they are dark, they have to at least be charming and pleasant looking. If they are not, then they are in big trouble. And it is much, much worse here than in India and Pakistan because over there if you are ugly . . . if you have any kind of deficiency than at least you can make it up with money. “O.K. my daughter’s not beautiful, but I can give you a house.” But here no one needs money. They all have money and so they can’t compensate deficiency with money. See, we parents are afraid [of our children marrying dark skinned mates] because, if not for this generation, then the next generation, our grandchildren. Because dark color is dominant over light color . . . and the children will carry the dark color [because it] is a dominating feature . . . and it stays over the generations.”
What I found revealing about this article was how dark skin was spoken of as a physical deformity. It is quite clearly known that the non-production of skin pigment is not only a genetic recessive, it is also a type of albinism ( as any person with vitiligo can tell you). As much as I've heard blacks talk about skin color I have never ever heard it referred to as a physical deformity. Clearly there are higher levels of self-hate out there.
Links:
http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=062204065913
Those of us who are of African descent know that due to the desire of whites to be "pure" they disowned their own offspring. as a result "black" people (and I use the term loosely here) come in "all shades" (very contradictory but...). Some spec of humanity in those early folks caused a general attitude that showed a preference for these persons, not necessarily because they were light but but at the very least because they were in fact children of whites. There are many exceptions to this but I'm not trying to write a thesis on the matter. As a result of this and other social issues there became in many ex-slave and ex-colonial societies a color system that also generally demarcated a economic and social status where the darker one was the more likely one was poor and of a lower economic status. Indeed in the United States Marcus Garvey noted that the NAACP had a habit of putting light skinned men and women in the front offices. This also resulted in friction between members of this "race." Please do note that it was not the decision by the blacks in the US to included any person with some black in them as black but rather a socially imposed decision by whites. Thus it is in fact a continuation of that imposition, when blacks discuss unity "within the race" when it concerns the "many shades." One way to confirm this would be to read the interview of Thandee Newton, who's mother is from southern Africa ( The exact location escapes me) and she stated that she was not considered black by her mothers people. However upon moving to England she was considered African, and in the states "mistook" for an African American. Confusing indeed. Anyway, many blacks are unaware of how pervasive the color complex is. Today I read an article in Indo Link entitled Color Complex In The South Asian Diaspora where author Francis C. Assi discusses interviews he had with woman and men from South Asia:
Quote:
Nasir, a twenty-two year old from New York has this to say of his preference for fair skin: “Would I personally be attracted to lighter-skinned Desi girls? Of course. I mean, it’s natural to find those girls more beautiful, to tell you the truth.”
Sahar, a nineteen-year-old Desi from New Jersey, bemoans the plight of the single girl deemed unattractive: “If a girl has a major flaw, she’s just stuck. It’s sad but . . . in society, if a girl is extremely overweight or extremely underweight, if she’s very, very dark complected. These are all physical things, just physical abnormalities.”
Grewal has noted in her study that ‘particular physical qualities are always fetishized in constructions of beauty. However, in these communities, the stigma attached to dark color intersects with broader racial discourses in the U.S. That’s why a Desi mother of three daughters in their twenties, explicitly refers to dark coloring as a physical abnormality and deficiency.’
As another informant, Sultana, says: “Well, in [South] Asian communities, because there are so many shades, most everyone prefers light skin. And if they are dark, they have to at least be charming and pleasant looking. If they are not, then they are in big trouble. And it is much, much worse here than in India and Pakistan because over there if you are ugly . . . if you have any kind of deficiency than at least you can make it up with money. “O.K. my daughter’s not beautiful, but I can give you a house.” But here no one needs money. They all have money and so they can’t compensate deficiency with money. See, we parents are afraid [of our children marrying dark skinned mates] because, if not for this generation, then the next generation, our grandchildren. Because dark color is dominant over light color . . . and the children will carry the dark color [because it] is a dominating feature . . . and it stays over the generations.”
What I found revealing about this article was how dark skin was spoken of as a physical deformity. It is quite clearly known that the non-production of skin pigment is not only a genetic recessive, it is also a type of albinism ( as any person with vitiligo can tell you). As much as I've heard blacks talk about skin color I have never ever heard it referred to as a physical deformity. Clearly there are higher levels of self-hate out there.
Links:
http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=062204065913
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Welcome D-Sekou
Our good friend D-Sekou who has graced us with commentary every now and then has joined us in blogdom. You can check him out via our links section he's the DeskRat
Our good friend D-Sekou who has graced us with commentary every now and then has joined us in blogdom. You can check him out via our links section he's the DeskRat
Friday, June 18, 2004
What is a "civilian'
Today it appears that Paul M. Johnson was beheaded by "Al-Qaida Militants.' Many people are very disgusted by this and understandably so. However once one has gotten over the queasiness of beheading we need to realize something. Mr/. Johnson worked for Lockheed-Martin. Lockheed Martin is one of the largest defense contractors in America ( if not the world). It supplies the US with the infamous Apache helicopter such as those used to kill Iraqis. Furthermore, Mr. Johnson worked directly on this killing machine and is therefore, by US definition, indirectly responsible for any and all killing done with that machine. He aides and abets the US Military. In other words He is no civilian as say you and I ( maybe) who have no contact with the military other than our taxes (and that right there is another debate). The "Al-Qaida militants" even made this very statement:
quote:
"Let him taste something from what Muslims tasted who were long reached by Apache helicopter fire and missiles," the statement said, according to the A.P.
Mr. Johnson, 49, worked in Saudi Arabia for the past decade in cooperation with Lockheed Martin on the Apache helicopter.
You really can't argue with that logic. We have seen it in Palestine and Iraq and elsewhere. Who knows if the missile that has killed many a Palestinian was not in fact worked on by Mr. Johnson.
"But" you may say, "HE wasn't in the military." That is true but one must realize that the US has involved many private "enterprises" to do work that the military would do. Simply because an organization falls outside the Armed Services does not make the people in it civilians. If you want protection as a civilian I suggest not working for a company that does work on military projects and be careful of where you relocate. After all, we are expected to not have any sympathy for those that help terrorists and in a reversal of fortune Mr. Johnson, seen as a terrorist by others has been caught up. Perhaps the people of the US will stop ego tripping and understand that this is not some game and there are better solutions to what is going on.
Links:
http://nytimes.com/2004/06/18/international/middle-east/18CND-SAUDI.html?hp
Today it appears that Paul M. Johnson was beheaded by "Al-Qaida Militants.' Many people are very disgusted by this and understandably so. However once one has gotten over the queasiness of beheading we need to realize something. Mr/. Johnson worked for Lockheed-Martin. Lockheed Martin is one of the largest defense contractors in America ( if not the world). It supplies the US with the infamous Apache helicopter such as those used to kill Iraqis. Furthermore, Mr. Johnson worked directly on this killing machine and is therefore, by US definition, indirectly responsible for any and all killing done with that machine. He aides and abets the US Military. In other words He is no civilian as say you and I ( maybe) who have no contact with the military other than our taxes (and that right there is another debate). The "Al-Qaida militants" even made this very statement:
quote:
"Let him taste something from what Muslims tasted who were long reached by Apache helicopter fire and missiles," the statement said, according to the A.P.
Mr. Johnson, 49, worked in Saudi Arabia for the past decade in cooperation with Lockheed Martin on the Apache helicopter.
You really can't argue with that logic. We have seen it in Palestine and Iraq and elsewhere. Who knows if the missile that has killed many a Palestinian was not in fact worked on by Mr. Johnson.
"But" you may say, "HE wasn't in the military." That is true but one must realize that the US has involved many private "enterprises" to do work that the military would do. Simply because an organization falls outside the Armed Services does not make the people in it civilians. If you want protection as a civilian I suggest not working for a company that does work on military projects and be careful of where you relocate. After all, we are expected to not have any sympathy for those that help terrorists and in a reversal of fortune Mr. Johnson, seen as a terrorist by others has been caught up. Perhaps the people of the US will stop ego tripping and understand that this is not some game and there are better solutions to what is going on.
Links:
http://nytimes.com/2004/06/18/international/middle-east/18CND-SAUDI.html?hp
Two Stories continued
I guess I would have to change the title to "Three Stories" if I wanted to be accurate. Today I stumbled on an article in the Philladelphia Inquirer entitiled: Minority firms lag in city deals wherein' the following statistics were offered:
quote:
Today, that program has long since been ruled unconstitutional. In a city where well more than half the population is African American, Hispanic or Asian, minorities' percentage share of the government's business is still stuck in single digits, according to a city study....
According to the U.S. Census, the Philadelphia area has fewer black-owned firms per capita than any other major metropolitan area with a substantial minority population.
Those businesses, which numbered 17,863 at last count, generate less than one-half of 1 percent of all the revenue from firms based in the city and eight neighboring counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
So of all the economic production in Philladelphia, black businesses generate less than .5% of that production. So if the total revenue from all businesses on Philly was say $10 Billion that black take on that would be $50 Million. Spread out over 17,863 black businesses AND assuming that all these businesses generate the same revenue (not) The take for each business would be: $2799.00. YOu read that right. Clearly then many of these black businesses are operating at a loss. Again this is the progress from 1912.
Links:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/breaking_news/8950642.htm?1c
I guess I would have to change the title to "Three Stories" if I wanted to be accurate. Today I stumbled on an article in the Philladelphia Inquirer entitiled: Minority firms lag in city deals wherein' the following statistics were offered:
quote:
Today, that program has long since been ruled unconstitutional. In a city where well more than half the population is African American, Hispanic or Asian, minorities' percentage share of the government's business is still stuck in single digits, according to a city study....
According to the U.S. Census, the Philadelphia area has fewer black-owned firms per capita than any other major metropolitan area with a substantial minority population.
Those businesses, which numbered 17,863 at last count, generate less than one-half of 1 percent of all the revenue from firms based in the city and eight neighboring counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
So of all the economic production in Philladelphia, black businesses generate less than .5% of that production. So if the total revenue from all businesses on Philly was say $10 Billion that black take on that would be $50 Million. Spread out over 17,863 black businesses AND assuming that all these businesses generate the same revenue (not) The take for each business would be: $2799.00. YOu read that right. Clearly then many of these black businesses are operating at a loss. Again this is the progress from 1912.
Links:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/breaking_news/8950642.htm?1c
Thursday, June 17, 2004
So it's Official
Confirming what most conscious people knew since..oh...Oct 2001, the 9-11 commission has reported that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the events of 9-11-01. Furthermore it appears that Saddam didn't give Mr. Bin Laden the time of day.
quote:
"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States," the commission's statement reads.
The statement says bin Laden did explore possible cooperation with Saddam Hussein, asking for space for training camps and help getting weapons, but Saddam never replied to bin Laden's requests.
So again we have facts that directly contradict what President G. Bush has claimed about Iraq and still there is no impeachment proceeding being planned. Iraq is now in the throes of urban gurilla civil war. The Kurds are threatening to cede from Iraq unless they retain veto power over the new iraqi "government" and Iraq "security forces" and government officials are being killed left, right and center. And what is there to show for it? Weapons of Mass Destruction? No. Terrorist hideouts? No. Proof of alliances with so called Al _Qaida? No. Just a bunch of US businesses making off with millions of Dollars. I'm going to repost a portion of one of my poems:
"As sure as the Bible is missing books
George Bush is missing sense
and violence only breeds more violence.
but
this ain't really about Hussein
Regime change
crashing planes
or buildings falling in flames.
It's all a game
and
Those that know the rules
play the average citizens for fools."
Links:
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040617-070457-7073r.htm
Confirming what most conscious people knew since..oh...Oct 2001, the 9-11 commission has reported that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the events of 9-11-01. Furthermore it appears that Saddam didn't give Mr. Bin Laden the time of day.
quote:
"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States," the commission's statement reads.
The statement says bin Laden did explore possible cooperation with Saddam Hussein, asking for space for training camps and help getting weapons, but Saddam never replied to bin Laden's requests.
So again we have facts that directly contradict what President G. Bush has claimed about Iraq and still there is no impeachment proceeding being planned. Iraq is now in the throes of urban gurilla civil war. The Kurds are threatening to cede from Iraq unless they retain veto power over the new iraqi "government" and Iraq "security forces" and government officials are being killed left, right and center. And what is there to show for it? Weapons of Mass Destruction? No. Terrorist hideouts? No. Proof of alliances with so called Al _Qaida? No. Just a bunch of US businesses making off with millions of Dollars. I'm going to repost a portion of one of my poems:
"As sure as the Bible is missing books
George Bush is missing sense
and violence only breeds more violence.
but
this ain't really about Hussein
Regime change
crashing planes
or buildings falling in flames.
It's all a game
and
Those that know the rules
play the average citizens for fools."
Links:
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040617-070457-7073r.htm
Monday, June 14, 2004
Two Stories..One Moral
Today while perusing www.blackelectorate.com I found two articles. One entitled State marker to honor 'Black Wall Street' contained the following reference:
Quote;
Two years later W.E.B. DuBois came to town. He was Washington's ideological rival, but his reaction to Durham was similarly effusive. In the journal World's Work of January 1912, DuBois wrote:
"There is in this small city a group of five thousand or more colored people, whose social and economic development is perhaps more striking than that of any similar group in the nation. ...
"A singular group in Durham where a black man may get up in the morning from a mattress made by black men, in a house which a black man built out of lumber which black men cut and planed; he may put on a suit which he bought at a colored haberdashery and socks knit at a colored mill; he may cook victuals from a colored grocery on a stove which black men fashioned; he may earn his living working for colored men, be sick in a colored hospital, and buried from a colored church; and the Negro insurance society will pay his widow enough to keep his children in a colored school. This is surely progress."
Now check the date. According to the late WEB Dubois, head negro for the NAACP clearly stated where black, social and economic ( And therefore political) independence was a sign of progress in 1912. Later there would be a great push by the NAACP to "integrate" America. As a result of the integration push and a rejection of so called 'black power" politics, The scene described above does not exist. And let's be clear Phat Farm, and Sean John, have their clothing manufactured in Asia and shipped here, the only thing 'black: about most black clothing companies is the audience that gives it cred ( on a side note, according to Black Enterprise, Sean John, is not, by BE's standards a black owned company. Neither is HARPO).
Anyways, let's look at story number 2. The Art Newspaper has an article about the financial straights that the Wright Museum of African-American History. It appears that the museum has fallen far short of it's projected visitation goals and has no endowment How come this museum has no endowment?
Quote:
The museum, named after the founder of Detroit%92s first African-American museum, was set up in the late 1980s as the world%92s largest museum of its kind. Those who had campaigned for its establishment had argued that although Detroit%92s population is predominantly black, the city was largely spending its money on projects that, they said, catered to the tastes of white suburbanites. The scheme to establish the African-American museum sailed through government, voters rubber-stamped a bond for its construction, and the museum was built.
When the huge 120,000-square-foot $38.4-million structure opened in 1997, it had no endowment and an annual budget of $6.8 million. It was expected to draw 500,000 visitors annually, but had a poorly installed collection of mediocre quality and failed to gain the stability necessary to attract gifts. Visitors have fallen dramatically from 200,000 in the inaugural year to 38,000 last year.
There is still no endowment and the museum reported a deficit of more than $2 million in 2001. Despite trimming staff, programmes, and opening hours, the museum has more than once failed to pay its employees.
With a record number of black millionairs, and a relatively large black middle class and those "Black CEO's." Why has there not been an endowment set up? Is this Museum not important to Winfrey, Parsons, Aaron or Johnson? So while we here at GG agree with Cosby's commentary, we'll send equal scorn on these rich blacks who are not doing what they are supposed to be doing as people that high on the totem pole.
But lets be real here, why are the two stories connected? Simply put, there is no longer a real concern about black economic or social development in the independent sphere. Integration has sucked out no only the talent of black communities, but it has also instilled a "could care less" attitude in the population where such things as AA museums are not only unimportant, but when done, done poorly. So we move from the excellence of Black Wall Street of 1912 to a half-assed black museum of 2004. Where's the progress in that?
links:
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11688
http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-490583.html
Today while perusing www.blackelectorate.com I found two articles. One entitled State marker to honor 'Black Wall Street' contained the following reference:
Quote;
Two years later W.E.B. DuBois came to town. He was Washington's ideological rival, but his reaction to Durham was similarly effusive. In the journal World's Work of January 1912, DuBois wrote:
"There is in this small city a group of five thousand or more colored people, whose social and economic development is perhaps more striking than that of any similar group in the nation. ...
"A singular group in Durham where a black man may get up in the morning from a mattress made by black men, in a house which a black man built out of lumber which black men cut and planed; he may put on a suit which he bought at a colored haberdashery and socks knit at a colored mill; he may cook victuals from a colored grocery on a stove which black men fashioned; he may earn his living working for colored men, be sick in a colored hospital, and buried from a colored church; and the Negro insurance society will pay his widow enough to keep his children in a colored school. This is surely progress."
Now check the date. According to the late WEB Dubois, head negro for the NAACP clearly stated where black, social and economic ( And therefore political) independence was a sign of progress in 1912. Later there would be a great push by the NAACP to "integrate" America. As a result of the integration push and a rejection of so called 'black power" politics, The scene described above does not exist. And let's be clear Phat Farm, and Sean John, have their clothing manufactured in Asia and shipped here, the only thing 'black: about most black clothing companies is the audience that gives it cred ( on a side note, according to Black Enterprise, Sean John, is not, by BE's standards a black owned company. Neither is HARPO).
Anyways, let's look at story number 2. The Art Newspaper has an article about the financial straights that the Wright Museum of African-American History. It appears that the museum has fallen far short of it's projected visitation goals and has no endowment How come this museum has no endowment?
Quote:
The museum, named after the founder of Detroit%92s first African-American museum, was set up in the late 1980s as the world%92s largest museum of its kind. Those who had campaigned for its establishment had argued that although Detroit%92s population is predominantly black, the city was largely spending its money on projects that, they said, catered to the tastes of white suburbanites. The scheme to establish the African-American museum sailed through government, voters rubber-stamped a bond for its construction, and the museum was built.
When the huge 120,000-square-foot $38.4-million structure opened in 1997, it had no endowment and an annual budget of $6.8 million. It was expected to draw 500,000 visitors annually, but had a poorly installed collection of mediocre quality and failed to gain the stability necessary to attract gifts. Visitors have fallen dramatically from 200,000 in the inaugural year to 38,000 last year.
There is still no endowment and the museum reported a deficit of more than $2 million in 2001. Despite trimming staff, programmes, and opening hours, the museum has more than once failed to pay its employees.
With a record number of black millionairs, and a relatively large black middle class and those "Black CEO's." Why has there not been an endowment set up? Is this Museum not important to Winfrey, Parsons, Aaron or Johnson? So while we here at GG agree with Cosby's commentary, we'll send equal scorn on these rich blacks who are not doing what they are supposed to be doing as people that high on the totem pole.
But lets be real here, why are the two stories connected? Simply put, there is no longer a real concern about black economic or social development in the independent sphere. Integration has sucked out no only the talent of black communities, but it has also instilled a "could care less" attitude in the population where such things as AA museums are not only unimportant, but when done, done poorly. So we move from the excellence of Black Wall Street of 1912 to a half-assed black museum of 2004. Where's the progress in that?
links:
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11688
http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-490583.html
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
The Police State is Now in View
Mark today on your calendar. Today the Transit Police in Boston Mass. started to "randomly" search commuters. This is in response to the train bombings in Spain. There is a saying that those who would discard liberty for security deserve neither. I agree. Apparently Americans are so bull headed, so arrogant. So..racist that they are willing to live in a police state in order to feel "safe." And be clear this is now a police state (until the Supreme Court steps in and does with it is mandated to do: uphold the constitution). And do not think for a minute that this will stop with "random" commuter searches. Soon you may be pulled off a bus or train for no apparent reason. You may soon find that you may be accosted in your house and have your house searched for no apparent reason. And what if you refuse? Well given what happens at Airports around the nation, You can expect Abu Gharib type treatment. I'm Black. Black people have been here and done this. Some apologists will say that they have nothing to hide and if you don't then you should not be worried or concerned. That's not the point. The reason the 4th and 5th Amendments exist is to maintain the citizens presumed innocence. Innocence that is legally presumed until conviction of some crime by a Judge and/or Jury. Unfortunately, America, ( besides it clear breech of constitutionality in regards to black people), has been moving very quickly in the direction of guilty upon suspicion. Thus anyone can be treated as a criminal simply for being percieved as suspicious. The other reason for the 4th Amendment is that one is protected by the forces of the State to not only sieze your property but to also prevent the state from attempting to use your property to frame you. Thus the law specifies that a warrant must be for specific items. Clearly a search on an innocent person for possible contraband in order to determine "guilt." is in violation of ones constitutional rights. For example, If a search wielded a knife, would that person be suspected of being a terrorist? A murderer? Does not a citizen have a constitutional right to bear arms? What law is a person in a public place on a publicly funded transport system, breaking by having a knife? Furthermore, If such "random"searches are upheld? Soon Police would be able to grab up anyone on any suspicion.
Full text follows:
OSTON (AP) -- Transit police will begin randomly stopping riders on Boston's subways and commuter trains next month to search their bags and packages, a procedure transportation officials say was largely prompted by the March 11 train bombings in Spain.
The new policy is set to be in place for July's Democratic National Convention, MBTA Police Chief Joseph Carter told The Boston Globe for a story in Tuesday editions. It will include explosive-sniffing dogs and all 247 uniformed Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority police officers, he said.
"I have no trepidation about being first (in the nation with the policy)," Carter said. "I don't want to be the first to do an interview about having a serious incident that may have some terrorist indications to it. ... We want to do this to encourage people to feel safe on the MBTA, to utilize public transportation."
Carter said MBTA has not announced the new policy formally because officials still are working out the details on how to balance security and privacy concerns.
Last month, MBTA police announced the entire force has been receiving counterterrorism training that includes spotting suspicious behavior. MBTA police already can request to see the identification of passengers they perceive to be acting suspiciously.
Last month, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration unveiled a pilot program to screen the bags of all passengers at a single Maryland Rail Commuter station in suburban New Carrollton.
MBTA Deputy Police Chief John Martino, who is overseeing the development and implementation of the search policy, said police, sometimes accompanied by explosive-sniffing dogs, will randomly pick out riders for inspection throughout the transit system daily. He said the number of inspections would increase dramatically during the convention July 26-29.
Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said that while she understands the need for security, the MBTA plan is deeply flawed and may violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on unreasonable search and seizure.
"The Fourth Amendment doesn't stop at your wrist when you carry a briefcase; it includes your bag," Rose said. "It either has to be truly random, or it has to have a root in a reasonable basis of suspicion."
The March terror bombings in Madrid, Spain, killed 191 people and were blamed on Islamic militants with possible links to al-Qaeda.
Links:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/06/08/boston.transit.search.ap/index.html
Mark today on your calendar. Today the Transit Police in Boston Mass. started to "randomly" search commuters. This is in response to the train bombings in Spain. There is a saying that those who would discard liberty for security deserve neither. I agree. Apparently Americans are so bull headed, so arrogant. So..racist that they are willing to live in a police state in order to feel "safe." And be clear this is now a police state (until the Supreme Court steps in and does with it is mandated to do: uphold the constitution). And do not think for a minute that this will stop with "random" commuter searches. Soon you may be pulled off a bus or train for no apparent reason. You may soon find that you may be accosted in your house and have your house searched for no apparent reason. And what if you refuse? Well given what happens at Airports around the nation, You can expect Abu Gharib type treatment. I'm Black. Black people have been here and done this. Some apologists will say that they have nothing to hide and if you don't then you should not be worried or concerned. That's not the point. The reason the 4th and 5th Amendments exist is to maintain the citizens presumed innocence. Innocence that is legally presumed until conviction of some crime by a Judge and/or Jury. Unfortunately, America, ( besides it clear breech of constitutionality in regards to black people), has been moving very quickly in the direction of guilty upon suspicion. Thus anyone can be treated as a criminal simply for being percieved as suspicious. The other reason for the 4th Amendment is that one is protected by the forces of the State to not only sieze your property but to also prevent the state from attempting to use your property to frame you. Thus the law specifies that a warrant must be for specific items. Clearly a search on an innocent person for possible contraband in order to determine "guilt." is in violation of ones constitutional rights. For example, If a search wielded a knife, would that person be suspected of being a terrorist? A murderer? Does not a citizen have a constitutional right to bear arms? What law is a person in a public place on a publicly funded transport system, breaking by having a knife? Furthermore, If such "random"searches are upheld? Soon Police would be able to grab up anyone on any suspicion.
Full text follows:
OSTON (AP) -- Transit police will begin randomly stopping riders on Boston's subways and commuter trains next month to search their bags and packages, a procedure transportation officials say was largely prompted by the March 11 train bombings in Spain.
The new policy is set to be in place for July's Democratic National Convention, MBTA Police Chief Joseph Carter told The Boston Globe for a story in Tuesday editions. It will include explosive-sniffing dogs and all 247 uniformed Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority police officers, he said.
"I have no trepidation about being first (in the nation with the policy)," Carter said. "I don't want to be the first to do an interview about having a serious incident that may have some terrorist indications to it. ... We want to do this to encourage people to feel safe on the MBTA, to utilize public transportation."
Carter said MBTA has not announced the new policy formally because officials still are working out the details on how to balance security and privacy concerns.
Last month, MBTA police announced the entire force has been receiving counterterrorism training that includes spotting suspicious behavior. MBTA police already can request to see the identification of passengers they perceive to be acting suspiciously.
Last month, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration unveiled a pilot program to screen the bags of all passengers at a single Maryland Rail Commuter station in suburban New Carrollton.
MBTA Deputy Police Chief John Martino, who is overseeing the development and implementation of the search policy, said police, sometimes accompanied by explosive-sniffing dogs, will randomly pick out riders for inspection throughout the transit system daily. He said the number of inspections would increase dramatically during the convention July 26-29.
Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said that while she understands the need for security, the MBTA plan is deeply flawed and may violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on unreasonable search and seizure.
"The Fourth Amendment doesn't stop at your wrist when you carry a briefcase; it includes your bag," Rose said. "It either has to be truly random, or it has to have a root in a reasonable basis of suspicion."
The March terror bombings in Madrid, Spain, killed 191 people and were blamed on Islamic militants with possible links to al-Qaeda.
Links:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/06/08/boston.transit.search.ap/index.html
Friday, June 04, 2004
Andre Crouch: 2004 Negro
The term Negro never really sat well with me. Linguistically it was either a color descriptor derived from the Portuguese or it was a coined term to refer to the people who live among the Niger River devolving into "Nigger." Either way it was in my mind a label put upon Black people by whites for their own use. Of course at the end of the 60's most of us relegated that title to the dustbin of history and only used the term in historical context or as a reference to those whom we felt were less than men or women when dealing with black issues. We call them "Knee-grows." Today most Blacks in the United States are referred to as "African-American." This goes along with every other group that now has some hyphenated name. An unfortunate side effect of this name is that many Blacks have gotten into the habit of calling any and every black person they see "African-American." Furthermore; very few people seem to realize that technically, African-American would include any and all people in the Americas, including those in the Caribbean, and Latin-America. Me I do like Malcolm X and refer to myself as an African in America. I often get silly questions like what tribe I come from. I just say the one that survived the great Maafa. Unlike many of my peers, I also hold a very Traditional" African worldview in that I practice an African Religion (Ifa) and a few other things in addition the the things that are a result of the unique experience of being in America. I would never call myself a Ghanaian or a Nigerian or a Kenyan simply because I did not grow up in any of those places. I am a "generic" African. Damn proud of it too.
Today I ran across what has to be one of the silliest articles I have ever come across. This one is up there with the Jamaican writer who insists that Black people cannot govern themselves. Andre Crouch was republished in the NY Daily News in an article called 'Why I use the word 'Negro'"
Let me deconstruct Mr. Crouches arguement:
Some people are particularly disturbed by my use of the word Negro as opposed to the latest fashionable label. I am not bothered by such people, but I am disturbed by the reliance on cosmetic identity that has become so important to black people over the last 35 or 40 years.
Some people just don't think of themselves as straight products of the social engineering project of Slavery and Jim Crow. Some of us wish to self identify rather than retain the label handed down to us by others. Furthermore for many of us The rejection of Negro is more than cosmetic rather it is a statement of who we are. Some call ourselves "African-American' because we recognize the duality of our identity. One would have had to have embraced ones past and integrate that into oneself in order to understand that.
The argument was that "Negro" separated black people from their African identity. It did not acknowledge the greatness of Africa, wonderful Africa, that lost paradise where everything was perfect. It did not recognize that black people had not always been slaves - that they were, in fact, a separate nation descended from kings and queens.
Hmm. No one, of course, ever considered that if most of the millions of black Americans really were descended from kings and queens, one would have needed a lot more land than Africa provided to support all that royalty. Millions of kingdoms definitely present a challenge.
It was, at best, cult thinking. But it was also a way of getting people to think of themselves as perpetual victims who were oppressed at every turn. That seems to me the greatest impact of believing that the history connected to the name Negro was all second-class travail and injustice.
Some 40 years ago, Malcolm X said: "You're not an American, you're a victim of Americanism."
That's too crude and simpleminded. But the crude and simpleminded are not unusual when the subject is the Negro. While such statements might sound good on a podium, they miss a great and substantial truth.
Now in one sense I agree with this argument. No way could we ALL have been descended from Kings and Queens. But this is too simpleminded for even Mr. Crouch to grasp. The argument is meant to inform the unknowing that believed that all we were capable was begging for scraps from white people that there were in fact large kingdoms and Queendoms in Africa. And therefore the Black man and woman was just as capable of greatness as any other group of people. I suppose such an idea was way too simple for Mr. Crouch to grasp.
The other problem with Mr. Crouch's statement is that he seems to think that Malcolm X was in the business of victim-hood. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Perhaps Mr. Crouch should spend more time studying before attempting to critique Malcolm X.
Being called something other than Negro will not better the state of the people who now walk around challenging others to call them African-Americans. They think that to be proud and effective, people with dark skins of a certain pedigree need to know they are connected to the grandeur of Africa, the fountain of civilization. Hogwash.
Clearly, knowing that they are Africans has done nothing special for Africans themselves, as we can see in the massacres in Rwanda during the 1990s, the many brutal African dictatorships and the abundance on the continent of backward ideas about women, slavery and a number of other things.
People can call themselves whatever they want. But the challenges facing this nation and its darker ethnic group will not be solved by anything other than deep thinking and hard work. Pride comes from accomplishment. Cosmetic nonsense will not get it.
Well thank you Mr, Crouch for stating the obvious. Clearly White Power did not prevent Hitler from visiting War upon the world. It is strange that Mr Crouch wants to whip the Black man and woman for having pride in their ancestry and history but appears to have no problems with the constant pride movements directed at white youths. These take place in various "History" classes about Greco-Roman Civilization. The renaissance, and various stages of American history. So it is only bad for Black people to revel in the history. Everybody else gets a free pass. I'm sorry that Mr. Crouch is sop ashamed of the Dictators and Coup leaders and massacres that have happened in Africa. I'm sad that such things shame him. Perhaps we'll soon be seeing an article entitled : " Why I am no longer a Negro."
Links:
http://www.maafa.org
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/199208p-172003c.html
The term Negro never really sat well with me. Linguistically it was either a color descriptor derived from the Portuguese or it was a coined term to refer to the people who live among the Niger River devolving into "Nigger." Either way it was in my mind a label put upon Black people by whites for their own use. Of course at the end of the 60's most of us relegated that title to the dustbin of history and only used the term in historical context or as a reference to those whom we felt were less than men or women when dealing with black issues. We call them "Knee-grows." Today most Blacks in the United States are referred to as "African-American." This goes along with every other group that now has some hyphenated name. An unfortunate side effect of this name is that many Blacks have gotten into the habit of calling any and every black person they see "African-American." Furthermore; very few people seem to realize that technically, African-American would include any and all people in the Americas, including those in the Caribbean, and Latin-America. Me I do like Malcolm X and refer to myself as an African in America. I often get silly questions like what tribe I come from. I just say the one that survived the great Maafa. Unlike many of my peers, I also hold a very Traditional" African worldview in that I practice an African Religion (Ifa) and a few other things in addition the the things that are a result of the unique experience of being in America. I would never call myself a Ghanaian or a Nigerian or a Kenyan simply because I did not grow up in any of those places. I am a "generic" African. Damn proud of it too.
Today I ran across what has to be one of the silliest articles I have ever come across. This one is up there with the Jamaican writer who insists that Black people cannot govern themselves. Andre Crouch was republished in the NY Daily News in an article called 'Why I use the word 'Negro'"
Let me deconstruct Mr. Crouches arguement:
Some people are particularly disturbed by my use of the word Negro as opposed to the latest fashionable label. I am not bothered by such people, but I am disturbed by the reliance on cosmetic identity that has become so important to black people over the last 35 or 40 years.
Some people just don't think of themselves as straight products of the social engineering project of Slavery and Jim Crow. Some of us wish to self identify rather than retain the label handed down to us by others. Furthermore for many of us The rejection of Negro is more than cosmetic rather it is a statement of who we are. Some call ourselves "African-American' because we recognize the duality of our identity. One would have had to have embraced ones past and integrate that into oneself in order to understand that.
The argument was that "Negro" separated black people from their African identity. It did not acknowledge the greatness of Africa, wonderful Africa, that lost paradise where everything was perfect. It did not recognize that black people had not always been slaves - that they were, in fact, a separate nation descended from kings and queens.
Hmm. No one, of course, ever considered that if most of the millions of black Americans really were descended from kings and queens, one would have needed a lot more land than Africa provided to support all that royalty. Millions of kingdoms definitely present a challenge.
It was, at best, cult thinking. But it was also a way of getting people to think of themselves as perpetual victims who were oppressed at every turn. That seems to me the greatest impact of believing that the history connected to the name Negro was all second-class travail and injustice.
Some 40 years ago, Malcolm X said: "You're not an American, you're a victim of Americanism."
That's too crude and simpleminded. But the crude and simpleminded are not unusual when the subject is the Negro. While such statements might sound good on a podium, they miss a great and substantial truth.
Now in one sense I agree with this argument. No way could we ALL have been descended from Kings and Queens. But this is too simpleminded for even Mr. Crouch to grasp. The argument is meant to inform the unknowing that believed that all we were capable was begging for scraps from white people that there were in fact large kingdoms and Queendoms in Africa. And therefore the Black man and woman was just as capable of greatness as any other group of people. I suppose such an idea was way too simple for Mr. Crouch to grasp.
The other problem with Mr. Crouch's statement is that he seems to think that Malcolm X was in the business of victim-hood. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Perhaps Mr. Crouch should spend more time studying before attempting to critique Malcolm X.
Being called something other than Negro will not better the state of the people who now walk around challenging others to call them African-Americans. They think that to be proud and effective, people with dark skins of a certain pedigree need to know they are connected to the grandeur of Africa, the fountain of civilization. Hogwash.
Clearly, knowing that they are Africans has done nothing special for Africans themselves, as we can see in the massacres in Rwanda during the 1990s, the many brutal African dictatorships and the abundance on the continent of backward ideas about women, slavery and a number of other things.
People can call themselves whatever they want. But the challenges facing this nation and its darker ethnic group will not be solved by anything other than deep thinking and hard work. Pride comes from accomplishment. Cosmetic nonsense will not get it.
Well thank you Mr, Crouch for stating the obvious. Clearly White Power did not prevent Hitler from visiting War upon the world. It is strange that Mr Crouch wants to whip the Black man and woman for having pride in their ancestry and history but appears to have no problems with the constant pride movements directed at white youths. These take place in various "History" classes about Greco-Roman Civilization. The renaissance, and various stages of American history. So it is only bad for Black people to revel in the history. Everybody else gets a free pass. I'm sorry that Mr. Crouch is sop ashamed of the Dictators and Coup leaders and massacres that have happened in Africa. I'm sad that such things shame him. Perhaps we'll soon be seeing an article entitled : " Why I am no longer a Negro."
Links:
http://www.maafa.org
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/199208p-172003c.html
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Haitian Floods Inevitable
I was discussing the flood situation in Haiti with friends and commented that the flooding in Haiti was inevitable. Recent news I had read in the New York Times indicated that the situation in Haiti was so bad that people were stripping the forest of trees in order to make charcoal to cook food and other needs. The trees provided a natural way to prevent flooding as their roots kept soil erosion at a minumum. Without the trees the soil would simply turn to mush become saturated and allow flooding to occur far more rapidly than normal. Today I read in The Militant the very same discussion:
Quote:
One of the main reasons for the catastrophic flooding and mudslides was the severe deforestation of the hills and valleys in the border region. Haiti’s forests have disappeared because, without access to electricity or other sources of fuel, thousands of Haitian workers and farmers depend for survival on charcoal made from cutting down trees for heat, light, and cooking fuel.
It is of great sadness that we obvserve that the well off in Haiti appeared to be more concerned with Aristide than the looming environmental catastrophy that was awaiting them. They collaborated with outside forced to get arms and uniforms, yet there is no evidence that any of these coup members even thought about the wellbeing of the Haitian masses. But then again that's the requirement to get on the US' good side.
Links:
http://www.themilitant.com/2004/6823/682301.html
I was discussing the flood situation in Haiti with friends and commented that the flooding in Haiti was inevitable. Recent news I had read in the New York Times indicated that the situation in Haiti was so bad that people were stripping the forest of trees in order to make charcoal to cook food and other needs. The trees provided a natural way to prevent flooding as their roots kept soil erosion at a minumum. Without the trees the soil would simply turn to mush become saturated and allow flooding to occur far more rapidly than normal. Today I read in The Militant the very same discussion:
Quote:
One of the main reasons for the catastrophic flooding and mudslides was the severe deforestation of the hills and valleys in the border region. Haiti’s forests have disappeared because, without access to electricity or other sources of fuel, thousands of Haitian workers and farmers depend for survival on charcoal made from cutting down trees for heat, light, and cooking fuel.
It is of great sadness that we obvserve that the well off in Haiti appeared to be more concerned with Aristide than the looming environmental catastrophy that was awaiting them. They collaborated with outside forced to get arms and uniforms, yet there is no evidence that any of these coup members even thought about the wellbeing of the Haitian masses. But then again that's the requirement to get on the US' good side.
Links:
http://www.themilitant.com/2004/6823/682301.html
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Thank God For The White Man!!
Odd title for a Garveyite. But no, It's not me saying this. I stumbled across the following:
quote:
Tokelau became a British colony in 1889 and was passed to New Zealand in 1925. Since the mid-1970s moves had been made to give the country independence, but many Tokelauans fear change could leave them unable to support themselves.
Tokelau's head of government, Patuki Isa'ako, told a meeting of the UN Committee of 24 on decolonisation last week that the UN and New Zealand, not the islanders, were behind the moves.
"Life as a New Zealand colony has brought many benefits to the country. There is no poverty, no unemployment, and full literacy. Although electricity does not run 24 hours a day, all houses now have internal flush toilets."
The New Zealand-appointed administrator, Neil Walter, said:
"Clearly independence is not on Tokelau's screen. A decision to become self-governing in association with New Zealand would do little more than recognise and confirm the status quo."
So apparently the Tokelau simply cannot imagine life without the White Man. So they have shrines to the British too? There is full employment not because of the White Man, but because they all (mostly) engage in subsistence farming. Any culture operating at the Agricultural level with areable land should have 100% employment. Note to Tokulau: Your ancestors had 100% employment too. And what of those toilets? Well you mean these folks have not, after 1000 years learned how to make glass or at least smealt iron? Just what have they been doing all these years. Oh yes that's right, Worshipping The all mighty White Man.
Sad.
Links:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/30/1085855439939.html
Odd title for a Garveyite. But no, It's not me saying this. I stumbled across the following:
quote:
Tokelau became a British colony in 1889 and was passed to New Zealand in 1925. Since the mid-1970s moves had been made to give the country independence, but many Tokelauans fear change could leave them unable to support themselves.
Tokelau's head of government, Patuki Isa'ako, told a meeting of the UN Committee of 24 on decolonisation last week that the UN and New Zealand, not the islanders, were behind the moves.
"Life as a New Zealand colony has brought many benefits to the country. There is no poverty, no unemployment, and full literacy. Although electricity does not run 24 hours a day, all houses now have internal flush toilets."
The New Zealand-appointed administrator, Neil Walter, said:
"Clearly independence is not on Tokelau's screen. A decision to become self-governing in association with New Zealand would do little more than recognise and confirm the status quo."
So apparently the Tokelau simply cannot imagine life without the White Man. So they have shrines to the British too? There is full employment not because of the White Man, but because they all (mostly) engage in subsistence farming. Any culture operating at the Agricultural level with areable land should have 100% employment. Note to Tokulau: Your ancestors had 100% employment too. And what of those toilets? Well you mean these folks have not, after 1000 years learned how to make glass or at least smealt iron? Just what have they been doing all these years. Oh yes that's right, Worshipping The all mighty White Man.
Sad.
Links:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/30/1085855439939.html
Thursday, May 27, 2004
More on Black Education
Oddly enough I'm still having discussions on Bill Cosby's comments. One such conversation with a Professor revealed that black parents allow thier children to watch more tv than any other group in America. This isn't just poor blacks, but blacks across the socio-economic spectrum. She went on to discuss the recent evidence that children who are exposed to television during the first 2 years of thier lives are at high risk for developing ADD-HD. Now we do know that ADD is overdiagnosed in black children (and children in general) but what she pointed out was that the studies showed how the brains of these young children who are weaned on TV are actually wired differently ( much like a crack baby). Furthremore, we are witnessing the first full generation of children raised on 24 hour Cable television.
After having this discussion I took a gander at The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (no 24, Spring 2004) where I stumbled across an article attempting to discuss the general low-scores of blacks on the SAT. Among the 14 points discussed ETS, two immediatlty jumped out at me:
12) Reading to Young Children: Almost two thirds of all white children ages three to five are read to every day. Only 48 percent of black children in this age group are read to daily.
13) Television Watching: In black households, 42 percent of fourth-graders watch six or more hours of televisions each day. Only 13 percent of white fourth-graders watch six or more hours of television each day.
Point 13 is perhaps the most condemning point. six hours of television a day represents 30 hours of television a week. or the equivalent of just under the hours of full-time employment. rto put this in perspective if we look at another article in the same Journal, which discusses gradutaion rates of black High Schoolers, we would note that the national average for black graduation is 50.2 percent and in New York 35.1 percent graduate and in New Jersey the rates is 62.3%. therefore we have corresponding drop-out rates of 49.8%, 64.9% and 47.7% respectively. With the exception of the New York rates, one can theoretically make a direct correlation between television watching and drop-out rates. Remember tv watching and the development of 24 hour entertainment directed at children and teenagers (Cartoon Network and the various iterations of MTV) are relatively recent phenomena so tv watching is currently going up, not down.
To be fair the ETS report did discuss other factors such as nutrition, parental involvement, class sizes and the like, but I'm quick to dismiss this because some years ago while reading Tony Brown's Black Lies, White Lies I found a reference to an article in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (Spring 1994) no 92. The article entitled "Black Africans Now the Most Highly Educated Group in British Society" Stated that
26 percent of adult black Africans, compared to only 13.4 percent of white adults, in the United Kingdom hold academic qualifications higher than "A" or college level. Thus Blacks in the United Kingdom with African origins are outperforming British Whites by two to one. Asians who are dominating the American education scene and swamping Blacks in achievement and the Caribbean Blacks who best Whites in the United States take a back seat to the Africans in the United Kingdom. where race conflicts are even more contentious and where the academic and scholarly cultures are "centerpieces of Western Eurocentrism.
What are Africans in the UK (and here but I currently only have ancedotal evidence to African Achievement in the US) doing that blacks in the US aren't. What are Caribbean blacks doing that black americans aren't? In my estimate it comes down to culture. Many Black Africans come from places where television is an out of reach expense and when it isn't the local programming is nothing like what is broadcast in the US ( This is changing). Similarly, in the caribbean 6 hour tv days is not happening. The time when you see African and caribbean students having issues (aside from normal differences between people) is when they have been absorbed into or influenced by black American culture. It is small wonder then why many new Black immigrants from Africa, etc. do thier best to keep away from Black Americans. This does not mean that they are right to do so, but you can see from a perspective why it would make sense.
Ultimately we need to do as the Group MAZE suggested:
Change our ways.
Links:
http://www.jbhe.com/
Oddly enough I'm still having discussions on Bill Cosby's comments. One such conversation with a Professor revealed that black parents allow thier children to watch more tv than any other group in America. This isn't just poor blacks, but blacks across the socio-economic spectrum. She went on to discuss the recent evidence that children who are exposed to television during the first 2 years of thier lives are at high risk for developing ADD-HD. Now we do know that ADD is overdiagnosed in black children (and children in general) but what she pointed out was that the studies showed how the brains of these young children who are weaned on TV are actually wired differently ( much like a crack baby). Furthremore, we are witnessing the first full generation of children raised on 24 hour Cable television.
After having this discussion I took a gander at The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (no 24, Spring 2004) where I stumbled across an article attempting to discuss the general low-scores of blacks on the SAT. Among the 14 points discussed ETS, two immediatlty jumped out at me:
12) Reading to Young Children: Almost two thirds of all white children ages three to five are read to every day. Only 48 percent of black children in this age group are read to daily.
13) Television Watching: In black households, 42 percent of fourth-graders watch six or more hours of televisions each day. Only 13 percent of white fourth-graders watch six or more hours of television each day.
Point 13 is perhaps the most condemning point. six hours of television a day represents 30 hours of television a week. or the equivalent of just under the hours of full-time employment. rto put this in perspective if we look at another article in the same Journal, which discusses gradutaion rates of black High Schoolers, we would note that the national average for black graduation is 50.2 percent and in New York 35.1 percent graduate and in New Jersey the rates is 62.3%. therefore we have corresponding drop-out rates of 49.8%, 64.9% and 47.7% respectively. With the exception of the New York rates, one can theoretically make a direct correlation between television watching and drop-out rates. Remember tv watching and the development of 24 hour entertainment directed at children and teenagers (Cartoon Network and the various iterations of MTV) are relatively recent phenomena so tv watching is currently going up, not down.
To be fair the ETS report did discuss other factors such as nutrition, parental involvement, class sizes and the like, but I'm quick to dismiss this because some years ago while reading Tony Brown's Black Lies, White Lies I found a reference to an article in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (Spring 1994) no 92. The article entitled "Black Africans Now the Most Highly Educated Group in British Society" Stated that
26 percent of adult black Africans, compared to only 13.4 percent of white adults, in the United Kingdom hold academic qualifications higher than "A" or college level. Thus Blacks in the United Kingdom with African origins are outperforming British Whites by two to one. Asians who are dominating the American education scene and swamping Blacks in achievement and the Caribbean Blacks who best Whites in the United States take a back seat to the Africans in the United Kingdom. where race conflicts are even more contentious and where the academic and scholarly cultures are "centerpieces of Western Eurocentrism.
What are Africans in the UK (and here but I currently only have ancedotal evidence to African Achievement in the US) doing that blacks in the US aren't. What are Caribbean blacks doing that black americans aren't? In my estimate it comes down to culture. Many Black Africans come from places where television is an out of reach expense and when it isn't the local programming is nothing like what is broadcast in the US ( This is changing). Similarly, in the caribbean 6 hour tv days is not happening. The time when you see African and caribbean students having issues (aside from normal differences between people) is when they have been absorbed into or influenced by black American culture. It is small wonder then why many new Black immigrants from Africa, etc. do thier best to keep away from Black Americans. This does not mean that they are right to do so, but you can see from a perspective why it would make sense.
Ultimately we need to do as the Group MAZE suggested:
Change our ways.
Links:
http://www.jbhe.com/
Monday, May 24, 2004
Don't hate on Cosby
Recently, Bill Cosby set off a commotion by making a commentary on a known issue within the black community, which resulted in all kinds of talk regearding whether Cosby was right or wrong. Below a summary of Cosby's statements:
quote:
Cosby said, according to Leiby: "Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids – $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'
He added: "They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"
The Post said Cosby also targeted imprisoned blacks.
"These are not political criminals," he said. "These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"
Many conscious blacks claimed that Cosby should have pointed fingers at middle class blacks for abandoning "poor blacks." Perhaps he should have but that doesn't change what he did observe. Here at Garvey's Ghost we have president for the posiition that it is indeed the responsibility of the oppressed to shake off the yoke of oppression given that oppressors never act in the interest of the oppressed. Marcus Garvey left us a good document on reading and it's importance:
You must never stop learning. The world's greatest men and women were people who educated themselves outside of the university with all the knowledge that the university gives, as [and?] you have the opportunity of doing the same thing the university student does---read and study. One must never stop reading. Read everything that you can that is of standard knowledge. Don't waste time reading trashy literature. That is to say, don't pay any attention to the ten cents novels, wild west stories and cheap sentimental books, but where there is a good plot and a good story in the form of a novel, read it. It is necessary to read it for the purpose of getting information on human nature. The idea is that personal experience is not enough for a human to get all the useful knowledge of life, because the individual life is too short, so we must feed on the experience of others. The literature we read should include the biography and autobiography of men and women who have accomplished greatness in their particular line. Whenever you can buy these books and own them and whilst you are reading them make pencil or pen notes of the striking sentences and paragraphs that you should like to remember, so that when you have to refer to the book for any thought that you would like to refresh your mind on, you will not have to read over the whole book.
You should also read the best poetry for inspiration. The standard poets have always been the most inspirational creators. From a good line of poetry, you may get the inspiration for the career of a life time. Many a great man and woman was first inspired by some attractive line or verse of poetry. There are good poets and bad poets just like there are good novels and bad novels. Always select the best poets for your inspirational urge.
Read history incessantly until you master it. This means your own national history, the history of the world---social history, industrial history, and the history of the different sciences; but primarily the history of man. If you do not know what went on before you came here and what is happening at the time you live, but away from you, you will not know the world and will be ignorant of the world and mankind. You can only make the best out of life by knowing and understanding it. To know, you must fall back on the intelligence of others who came before you and have left their records behi[n]d.
To be able to read intelligently, you must first be able to master the language of your country. To do this, you must be well acquainted with its grammar and the science of it. Every six months you should read over again the science of the language that you speak, so as not to forget its rules. People judge you by your writing and your speech. If you write badly and incorrectly they become prejudiced toward your intelligence, and if you speak badly and incorrectly those who hear you become disgusted and will not pay much attention to you but in their hearts laugh after you. A leader who is to teach men and present any fact of truth to man must first be learned in his subject.
Never write or speak on a subject you know nothing about, for there is always somebody who knows that particular subject to laugh at you or to ask you embarras[s]ing questions that may make others laugh at you. You can know about any subject under the sun by reading about it. If you cannot bu[y] the books outright and own them, go to your public libraries and read them there or borrow them, or join some circulating library in your district or town, so as to get the use of these books. You should do that as you may refer to them for information.
You should read at least four hours a day. The best time to read is in the evening after you have retired from your work and after you have rested and before sleeping hours but do so before morning, so that during your sleeping hours what you have read may become subconscious, that is to say, planted in your memory. Never go to bed without doing some reading[.]
Never keep the constant company of anybody who doesn't know as much as you or [isn't] as educated as you, and from whom you cannot learn something or reciprocate your learning, especially if that person is illiterate or ignorant because constant association with such a person will unconsciously cause you to drift into the peculiar culture or ignorance of that person. Always try to associate with people from whom you can learn something. Contact with cultured persons and with books is the best companionship you can have and keep.
By reading good books you keep the company of the authors of the book or the subjects of the book when otherwise you could not meet them in the social contact of life. NEVER GO DOWN IN INTELLIGENCE to those who are below you, but if possible help to lift them up to you and always try to ascend to those who are above you and be their equal with the hope of being their master.
Continue always in the application of the thing you desire educationally, culturally, or otherwise, and never give up until you reach the objective---and you can reach the objective if other[s] have done so before you, proving by their doing it that it is possible.
In your desire to accomplish greatness, you must first decide in your own mind in what direction you desire to seek that greatness, and when you have so decided in your own mind[,] work unceas[i]ngly toward it. The particular thing that you may want should be before you all the time, and whatsoever it takes to get it or make it possible should be undertaken. Use your faculties and persuasion to achieve all you set your mind on.
Try never to repeat yourself in any one discourse in saying the same thing over and over except [when] you are making new points, because repetition is tiresome and it annoys those who hear the repetition. Therefore, try to possess as much universal knowledge as possible through reading so as to be able to be free of repetition in trying to drive home a point.
No one is ever too old to learn. Therefore, you should take advantage of every educational facility. If you should hear of a great man or woman who is to lecture or speak in your town on any given subject and the person is an authority on the subject, always make time to go and hear him. This is what is meant by learning from others. You should learn the two sides to every story, so as to be able to properly debate a question and hold your grounds with the side that you support. If you only know one side of a story, you cannot argue intelligently nor effectively. As for instance, to combat communism, you must know about it, otherwise people will take advantage of you and win a victory over your ignorance. Anything that you are going to challenge, you must first know about it, so as to be able to defeat it. The moment you are ignorant about anything the person who has the intelligence of that thing will defeat you. Therefore, get knowledge, get it quickly, get it studiously, but get it anyway.
Knowledge is power. When you know a thing and can hold your ground on that thing and win over your opponents on that thing, those who hear you learn to have confidence in you and will trust your ability.
Never, therefore, attempt anything without being able to protect yourself on it, for every time you are defeated it takes away from your prestige and you are not as respected as before.
All the knowledge you want is in the world, and all that you have to do is to go seeking it and never stop until you have found it. You can find knowledge or the information about it in the public libraries, if it is not on your own bookshelf. Try to have a book and own it on every bit of knowledge you want. You may generally get these books at second hand book stores for sometimes one-fifth of the original value.
Always have a well equipped shelf of books. Nearly all information about mankind is to be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. This is an expensive set of books, but try to get them. Buy a complete edition for yourself, and keep it at your home, and whenever you are in doubt about anything, go to it and you will find it there.
The value of knowledge is to use it. It is not humanly possible that a person can retain all knowledge of the world, but if a person knows how to search for all the knowledge of the world, he will find it when he wants it. A doctor or a lawyer although he passed his examination in college does not know all the laws and does not know all the techniques of medicine but he has the fundamental knowledge. When he wants a particular kind of knowledge, he goes to the medical books or law books and refers to the particular law or how to use the recipe of medicine. You must, therefore, know where to find your facts and use them as you want them. No one will know where you got them, but you will have the facts and by using the facts correctly they will think you a wonderful person, a great gen[iu]s, and a trusted leader.
In reading it is not necessary or compulsory that you agree with everything you read. You must always use or apply your own reasoning to what you have read based upon what you already know as touching the facts on what you have read. Pass judgement on what you read based upon these facts. When I say facts I mean things that cannot be disputed. You may read thoughts that are old, and opinions that are old and have changed since they were written. You must always search to find out the latest facts on that p[a]rticular subject and only when these facts are consistently maintained in what you read should you agree with them, otherwise you are entitled to your own opinion.
Always have up-to-date knowledge. You can gather this from the latest books and the latest periodicals, journals and newspapers. Read your daily newspaper everyday. Read a standard monthly journal every month, a standard weekly magazine every week, a standard quarterly magazine every quarter and by this you will find the new knowledge of the whole year in addition to the books you read, whose facts have not altered in that year. Don't keep old ideas, bury them as new ones come.
How to Read
Use every spare minute you have in reading. If you are going on a journey that would take you an hour carry something with you to read for that hour until you have reached the place. If you are sitting down waiting for somebody, have something in your pocket to read until the person comes. Don't waste time.
Any time you think you have to waste put it in reading something. Carry with you a small pocket dictionary and study words whilst waiting or travelling, or a small pocket volume on some particular subject. Read through at least one book every week separate and distinct from your newspapers and journals. It will mean that at the end of one year you will have read fifty-two different subjects. After five years you will have read over two hundred and fifty books. You may be considered then a well read man or a well read woman and there will be a great difference between you and the person who has not read one book. You will be considered intelligent and the other person be considered ignorant. You and that person therefore will be living in two different worlds; one the world of ignorance and the other the world of intelligence. Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.
Your language being English you should study the English language thoroughly. To know the English language thoroughly you ought to be acquainted with Latin, because most of the English words are of Latin origin. It is also advisable that you know the French language because most of the books that you read in English carry Latin and French phrases and words. There is no use reading a page or paragraph of a book or even a sentence without understanding it.
If it has foreign words in it, before you pass over [them] you should go to the dictionary, if you don't know the meaning and find out the meanin[g]. Never pass over a word without knowing its meaning. The dictionary and the books on word building which can be secured from book sellers will help you greatly.
I know a boy who was ambitious to learn. He hadn't the opportunity of an early school education because he had to work ten hours a day, but he determined that he would learn and so he took with him to his work place every day a simplified grammar and he would read and me[m]orize passages and the rules of grammar whilst at work.
After one year he was almost an expert in the grammar of his language. He knew the differen[t] parts of speech, he could paraphrase, analyse and construct sentences. He also took with him a pocket dictionary and he would write out twenty-five new words with their meanings every day and study these words and their mords [forms?] and their meaning. After one year he had a speaking vocabulary of more than three thousand words. He continued this for several years and when he became a man he had a vocabulary at his command of over fifteen thousand words. He became an author because he could write in his language by having command of words. What he wrote was his experiences and he recorded his experiences in the best words of his language. He was not able to write properly at the same age and so he took with him to work what is called in school a copying book and he practised the copying of letters until he was able to write a very good hand. He naturally became acquainted with literature and so he continued reading extensively. When he died he was one of the greatest scholars the world ever knew. Apply the story to yourself.
There is nothing in the world that you want that you cannot have so long as it is possible in nature and men have achieved it before. The greatest men and women in the world burn the midnight lamp. That is to say, when their neighbours and household are gone to bed, they are reading, studying and thinking. When they rise in the morning they are always ahead of their neighbours and their household in the thing that they were studying[,] reading and thinking of. A daily repetition of that will carry them daily ahead and above their neighbours and household. Practise this rule. It is wise to study a couple of subjects at a time. As for instance---a little geography, a little psychology, a little ethics, a little theology, a little philosophy, a little mathematics, a little science on which a sound academic education is built. Doing this week after week, month after month, year after year will make you so learned in the liberal arts as to make you ready and fit for your place in the affairs of the world. If you know what others do not know, they will want to hear you. You will then become invaluable in your community and to your country, because men and women will want to hear you and see you everywhere.
As stated before, books are one's best companions. Try to get the[m] and keep them. A method of doing so is every time you have ten cents or twenty five cents or a dollar to spend foolishly[,] either on your friends or yourself [,] think how much more useful that ten or twenty five cents or dollar would be invested in a book and so invest it. It may be just the thing you have been looking for to give you a thought by which you may win the heart of the world. The ten cent, twenty five cent or a dollar, therefore, may turn out to be an investment of worth to the extent of a million dollars. Never lend anybody the book that you want. You will never get it back. Never allow anybody to go to your bookshelf in your absence because the very book that you may want most may be taken from the shelf and you may never be able to get one of the kind again.
If you have a library of your own, lock it when you are not at home. Spend most of your spare time in your library. If you have a radio keep it in your own library and use it exhaustively to listen to lectures, recitals, speeches and good music. You can learn a lot from the radio. You can be inspired a lot by good music [lines repeated]. Good music carries the sentiment of harmony and you may think many a good thought out of listening to good music.
Read a chapter from the Bible everyday, Old and New Testaments. The greatest wisdom of the age is to be found in the Scriptures. You can always quote from the Scriptures. It is the quickest way of winning approval.
Therefore Cosby didn't say anything that hasn't been known by Black Nationalist since 1920, long before Brown v. Board of Education. if 50 years after Brown V. Board Blacks have not figured out the importance of reading and the mastery of the primary language in the country in which one lives then exactly who's fault is that? Don't get mad at Cosby
Links:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38565
Recently, Bill Cosby set off a commotion by making a commentary on a known issue within the black community, which resulted in all kinds of talk regearding whether Cosby was right or wrong. Below a summary of Cosby's statements:
quote:
Cosby said, according to Leiby: "Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids – $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'
He added: "They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"
The Post said Cosby also targeted imprisoned blacks.
"These are not political criminals," he said. "These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"
Many conscious blacks claimed that Cosby should have pointed fingers at middle class blacks for abandoning "poor blacks." Perhaps he should have but that doesn't change what he did observe. Here at Garvey's Ghost we have president for the posiition that it is indeed the responsibility of the oppressed to shake off the yoke of oppression given that oppressors never act in the interest of the oppressed. Marcus Garvey left us a good document on reading and it's importance:
You must never stop learning. The world's greatest men and women were people who educated themselves outside of the university with all the knowledge that the university gives, as [and?] you have the opportunity of doing the same thing the university student does---read and study. One must never stop reading. Read everything that you can that is of standard knowledge. Don't waste time reading trashy literature. That is to say, don't pay any attention to the ten cents novels, wild west stories and cheap sentimental books, but where there is a good plot and a good story in the form of a novel, read it. It is necessary to read it for the purpose of getting information on human nature. The idea is that personal experience is not enough for a human to get all the useful knowledge of life, because the individual life is too short, so we must feed on the experience of others. The literature we read should include the biography and autobiography of men and women who have accomplished greatness in their particular line. Whenever you can buy these books and own them and whilst you are reading them make pencil or pen notes of the striking sentences and paragraphs that you should like to remember, so that when you have to refer to the book for any thought that you would like to refresh your mind on, you will not have to read over the whole book.
You should also read the best poetry for inspiration. The standard poets have always been the most inspirational creators. From a good line of poetry, you may get the inspiration for the career of a life time. Many a great man and woman was first inspired by some attractive line or verse of poetry. There are good poets and bad poets just like there are good novels and bad novels. Always select the best poets for your inspirational urge.
Read history incessantly until you master it. This means your own national history, the history of the world---social history, industrial history, and the history of the different sciences; but primarily the history of man. If you do not know what went on before you came here and what is happening at the time you live, but away from you, you will not know the world and will be ignorant of the world and mankind. You can only make the best out of life by knowing and understanding it. To know, you must fall back on the intelligence of others who came before you and have left their records behi[n]d.
To be able to read intelligently, you must first be able to master the language of your country. To do this, you must be well acquainted with its grammar and the science of it. Every six months you should read over again the science of the language that you speak, so as not to forget its rules. People judge you by your writing and your speech. If you write badly and incorrectly they become prejudiced toward your intelligence, and if you speak badly and incorrectly those who hear you become disgusted and will not pay much attention to you but in their hearts laugh after you. A leader who is to teach men and present any fact of truth to man must first be learned in his subject.
Never write or speak on a subject you know nothing about, for there is always somebody who knows that particular subject to laugh at you or to ask you embarras[s]ing questions that may make others laugh at you. You can know about any subject under the sun by reading about it. If you cannot bu[y] the books outright and own them, go to your public libraries and read them there or borrow them, or join some circulating library in your district or town, so as to get the use of these books. You should do that as you may refer to them for information.
You should read at least four hours a day. The best time to read is in the evening after you have retired from your work and after you have rested and before sleeping hours but do so before morning, so that during your sleeping hours what you have read may become subconscious, that is to say, planted in your memory. Never go to bed without doing some reading[.]
Never keep the constant company of anybody who doesn't know as much as you or [isn't] as educated as you, and from whom you cannot learn something or reciprocate your learning, especially if that person is illiterate or ignorant because constant association with such a person will unconsciously cause you to drift into the peculiar culture or ignorance of that person. Always try to associate with people from whom you can learn something. Contact with cultured persons and with books is the best companionship you can have and keep.
By reading good books you keep the company of the authors of the book or the subjects of the book when otherwise you could not meet them in the social contact of life. NEVER GO DOWN IN INTELLIGENCE to those who are below you, but if possible help to lift them up to you and always try to ascend to those who are above you and be their equal with the hope of being their master.
Continue always in the application of the thing you desire educationally, culturally, or otherwise, and never give up until you reach the objective---and you can reach the objective if other[s] have done so before you, proving by their doing it that it is possible.
In your desire to accomplish greatness, you must first decide in your own mind in what direction you desire to seek that greatness, and when you have so decided in your own mind[,] work unceas[i]ngly toward it. The particular thing that you may want should be before you all the time, and whatsoever it takes to get it or make it possible should be undertaken. Use your faculties and persuasion to achieve all you set your mind on.
Try never to repeat yourself in any one discourse in saying the same thing over and over except [when] you are making new points, because repetition is tiresome and it annoys those who hear the repetition. Therefore, try to possess as much universal knowledge as possible through reading so as to be able to be free of repetition in trying to drive home a point.
No one is ever too old to learn. Therefore, you should take advantage of every educational facility. If you should hear of a great man or woman who is to lecture or speak in your town on any given subject and the person is an authority on the subject, always make time to go and hear him. This is what is meant by learning from others. You should learn the two sides to every story, so as to be able to properly debate a question and hold your grounds with the side that you support. If you only know one side of a story, you cannot argue intelligently nor effectively. As for instance, to combat communism, you must know about it, otherwise people will take advantage of you and win a victory over your ignorance. Anything that you are going to challenge, you must first know about it, so as to be able to defeat it. The moment you are ignorant about anything the person who has the intelligence of that thing will defeat you. Therefore, get knowledge, get it quickly, get it studiously, but get it anyway.
Knowledge is power. When you know a thing and can hold your ground on that thing and win over your opponents on that thing, those who hear you learn to have confidence in you and will trust your ability.
Never, therefore, attempt anything without being able to protect yourself on it, for every time you are defeated it takes away from your prestige and you are not as respected as before.
All the knowledge you want is in the world, and all that you have to do is to go seeking it and never stop until you have found it. You can find knowledge or the information about it in the public libraries, if it is not on your own bookshelf. Try to have a book and own it on every bit of knowledge you want. You may generally get these books at second hand book stores for sometimes one-fifth of the original value.
Always have a well equipped shelf of books. Nearly all information about mankind is to be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. This is an expensive set of books, but try to get them. Buy a complete edition for yourself, and keep it at your home, and whenever you are in doubt about anything, go to it and you will find it there.
The value of knowledge is to use it. It is not humanly possible that a person can retain all knowledge of the world, but if a person knows how to search for all the knowledge of the world, he will find it when he wants it. A doctor or a lawyer although he passed his examination in college does not know all the laws and does not know all the techniques of medicine but he has the fundamental knowledge. When he wants a particular kind of knowledge, he goes to the medical books or law books and refers to the particular law or how to use the recipe of medicine. You must, therefore, know where to find your facts and use them as you want them. No one will know where you got them, but you will have the facts and by using the facts correctly they will think you a wonderful person, a great gen[iu]s, and a trusted leader.
In reading it is not necessary or compulsory that you agree with everything you read. You must always use or apply your own reasoning to what you have read based upon what you already know as touching the facts on what you have read. Pass judgement on what you read based upon these facts. When I say facts I mean things that cannot be disputed. You may read thoughts that are old, and opinions that are old and have changed since they were written. You must always search to find out the latest facts on that p[a]rticular subject and only when these facts are consistently maintained in what you read should you agree with them, otherwise you are entitled to your own opinion.
Always have up-to-date knowledge. You can gather this from the latest books and the latest periodicals, journals and newspapers. Read your daily newspaper everyday. Read a standard monthly journal every month, a standard weekly magazine every week, a standard quarterly magazine every quarter and by this you will find the new knowledge of the whole year in addition to the books you read, whose facts have not altered in that year. Don't keep old ideas, bury them as new ones come.
How to Read
Use every spare minute you have in reading. If you are going on a journey that would take you an hour carry something with you to read for that hour until you have reached the place. If you are sitting down waiting for somebody, have something in your pocket to read until the person comes. Don't waste time.
Any time you think you have to waste put it in reading something. Carry with you a small pocket dictionary and study words whilst waiting or travelling, or a small pocket volume on some particular subject. Read through at least one book every week separate and distinct from your newspapers and journals. It will mean that at the end of one year you will have read fifty-two different subjects. After five years you will have read over two hundred and fifty books. You may be considered then a well read man or a well read woman and there will be a great difference between you and the person who has not read one book. You will be considered intelligent and the other person be considered ignorant. You and that person therefore will be living in two different worlds; one the world of ignorance and the other the world of intelligence. Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.
Your language being English you should study the English language thoroughly. To know the English language thoroughly you ought to be acquainted with Latin, because most of the English words are of Latin origin. It is also advisable that you know the French language because most of the books that you read in English carry Latin and French phrases and words. There is no use reading a page or paragraph of a book or even a sentence without understanding it.
If it has foreign words in it, before you pass over [them] you should go to the dictionary, if you don't know the meaning and find out the meanin[g]. Never pass over a word without knowing its meaning. The dictionary and the books on word building which can be secured from book sellers will help you greatly.
I know a boy who was ambitious to learn. He hadn't the opportunity of an early school education because he had to work ten hours a day, but he determined that he would learn and so he took with him to his work place every day a simplified grammar and he would read and me[m]orize passages and the rules of grammar whilst at work.
After one year he was almost an expert in the grammar of his language. He knew the differen[t] parts of speech, he could paraphrase, analyse and construct sentences. He also took with him a pocket dictionary and he would write out twenty-five new words with their meanings every day and study these words and their mords [forms?] and their meaning. After one year he had a speaking vocabulary of more than three thousand words. He continued this for several years and when he became a man he had a vocabulary at his command of over fifteen thousand words. He became an author because he could write in his language by having command of words. What he wrote was his experiences and he recorded his experiences in the best words of his language. He was not able to write properly at the same age and so he took with him to work what is called in school a copying book and he practised the copying of letters until he was able to write a very good hand. He naturally became acquainted with literature and so he continued reading extensively. When he died he was one of the greatest scholars the world ever knew. Apply the story to yourself.
There is nothing in the world that you want that you cannot have so long as it is possible in nature and men have achieved it before. The greatest men and women in the world burn the midnight lamp. That is to say, when their neighbours and household are gone to bed, they are reading, studying and thinking. When they rise in the morning they are always ahead of their neighbours and their household in the thing that they were studying[,] reading and thinking of. A daily repetition of that will carry them daily ahead and above their neighbours and household. Practise this rule. It is wise to study a couple of subjects at a time. As for instance---a little geography, a little psychology, a little ethics, a little theology, a little philosophy, a little mathematics, a little science on which a sound academic education is built. Doing this week after week, month after month, year after year will make you so learned in the liberal arts as to make you ready and fit for your place in the affairs of the world. If you know what others do not know, they will want to hear you. You will then become invaluable in your community and to your country, because men and women will want to hear you and see you everywhere.
As stated before, books are one's best companions. Try to get the[m] and keep them. A method of doing so is every time you have ten cents or twenty five cents or a dollar to spend foolishly[,] either on your friends or yourself [,] think how much more useful that ten or twenty five cents or dollar would be invested in a book and so invest it. It may be just the thing you have been looking for to give you a thought by which you may win the heart of the world. The ten cent, twenty five cent or a dollar, therefore, may turn out to be an investment of worth to the extent of a million dollars. Never lend anybody the book that you want. You will never get it back. Never allow anybody to go to your bookshelf in your absence because the very book that you may want most may be taken from the shelf and you may never be able to get one of the kind again.
If you have a library of your own, lock it when you are not at home. Spend most of your spare time in your library. If you have a radio keep it in your own library and use it exhaustively to listen to lectures, recitals, speeches and good music. You can learn a lot from the radio. You can be inspired a lot by good music [lines repeated]. Good music carries the sentiment of harmony and you may think many a good thought out of listening to good music.
Read a chapter from the Bible everyday, Old and New Testaments. The greatest wisdom of the age is to be found in the Scriptures. You can always quote from the Scriptures. It is the quickest way of winning approval.
Therefore Cosby didn't say anything that hasn't been known by Black Nationalist since 1920, long before Brown v. Board of Education. if 50 years after Brown V. Board Blacks have not figured out the importance of reading and the mastery of the primary language in the country in which one lives then exactly who's fault is that? Don't get mad at Cosby
Links:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38565
Monday, May 17, 2004
Brown V. Board anniversary
Today marks the 50'th anniversary of the first Brown decision in the US. The deeply flawed decision that legally brought down the principle of "Separate but Equal" is it applied to education and public accommodation. 50 years out many studies are showing that school and housing segregation are just as bad, if not worse than at the time of the Board decision. Of course I disagree with such reports as there is no legal segregation whatsoever. What I found interesting was a video presentation over at the New York Times website where Skip Gates and Cornell West debated the issues around so called segregated education. One thing that did bother me was that Cornel West attributed the idea that white Americans would be generous up until circumstances dictated they look after themselves to Derrick Bell. This idea was vocalised by Marcus Garvey and Martin Delany long before Derrick Bell. This underlines a problem with much of Black Academia. They, in their drive to shore themselves up and to "produce" and form their various cliques, will attribute ideas that are not even original to them to themselves, which makes them look like genius' when in fact they are merely repeating the ideas and conclusion reached by others before them. Nothing is more illustrative of this as the conflict between Dubois and Garvey. Dubois is highly regarded among Black Academics and relatively social elite whereas Garvey and his type are at best glossed over and simplified and usually outright ignored while the ideas are appropriated by more "friendly" and less "militant" persons or organization. But that's off topic.
I hope that this year, Black academics and others will finally get the point that socializing may be good for networking but does nothing in terms of learning. Education comes down to highly motivated teachers, students and parents. There are mastermind black students coming out of Countries that spend fall less on education than the US does and nary a white face around.
Also, I ran across an article by Thomas sowell entitled : Half a Century after Brown Where surprisingly I find myself in near total agreement with Mr Sowell's points:
Quote:
The landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education was immediately about schools, even though it quickly became a precedent for outlawing racial segregation in other government-controlled institutions and programs.
What was the basis for that landmark decision and what have been the actual effects of Brown v. Board of Education on the education of black students?
The key sentence in the Brown decision was: "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It was not just that the previous "separate but equal" doctrine was not being followed in practice. Rather, the Supreme Court argued that there was no way to make separate schools equal. All-black schools were inherently inferior.
It so happened that, within walking distance of the Supreme Court where this sweeping pronouncement was made, there was an all-black high school that had produced quality education for more than 80 years. Back in 1899 this school outscored two out of three white high schools in Washington on standardized tests.
Today, in the 21st century, it would be considered Utopian even to hope for such a result. Moreover, this was not an isolated fluke. This same school had an average IQ of 111 in 1939 %97 fifteen years before the Supreme Court declared such things impossible.
Most schools for blacks were in fact inferior, mainly because most were in the South, where the educational standards for blacks and whites alike tended to be lower. Racial discrimination, as distinguished from segregation alone, tended to make black schools the worst of all.
This was not due to their being all black, however. Back in the early 1940s, the black schools in Harlem had test scores very similar to those in white working class neighborhoods on New York's lower east side. Sometimes the Harlem schools' scores were a little higher than those of schools on the lower east side, and sometimes they were a little lower, but these scores were always comparable.
In short, it was not segregation, as such, that made schools inferior. If this seems like hair-splitting, consider the consequences of the Supreme Court's reasoning.
Once you say that racial separation makes the education itself inferior, you are launched on a course that leads straight to court-ordered busing of school children hither and yon to mix and match them racially, in hopes of educational improvement.
The polarization and bitterness of this crusade has lasted for decades %97 and has left black children still far behind educationally. Many are now much further below national norms than black students were in Harlem more than half a century ago....
More broadly, both the explicit language and the implicit assumptions of the Supreme Court in Brown depicted the answer to problems of blacks in general as being essentially the changing of white people. This was yet another line of reasoning that led straight into a blind alley.
Today, there are all-black schools that succeed, all-black schools that fail, and racially mixed schools that do either. Neither race nor racial segregation can explain such things. But both can serve as distractions from the task of creating higher standards and harder work.
The judicial mythology of racial mixing has led to an absurd situation where a white student can get into a selective public high school in San Francisco with lower qualifications than a Chinese American student. This farcical consequence of judicial mythology about a need for racial mixing does nothing to improve education for blacks or anyone else.
Unfortunately Mr. Sowell goes off into left field and discusses the supposed foolishness of the Miranda Warning given to people who are arrested.
Quote:
Under the much disdained "traditional" approach of criminal law, murders had been declining dramatically over the years. The murder rate in 1960 was just under half of what it had been in 1934.
All of that changed quickly and dramatically for the worse after the Warren Court began imposing its own notions about crime in the 1960s. The most famous of these changes was the "Miranda warning" that police have to give suspects, stating that they have a right to remain silent and to have an attorney supplied free.
For more than a century and a half, not one of the great Supreme Court Justices %97 not Holmes, not Brandeis, nor anybody else %97 had ever discovered any such requirement in the Constitution of the United States. Nor had Congress passed any law requiring any such thing.
Not only is his point way off the topic, but he fails to realize that Miranda was not created to protect the criminal but to inform the innocent. The Miranda Warning reminds the citizen of their constitutional right not to say anything that may incriminate themselves. It is entirely possible for an innocent person to incriminate themselves, The provision for a lawyer underscores the fact that the suspect, under the US constitution has a right to due process and equal accesmeansch menas that he should have at least a lawyer to defend him or her should they not afford one just as The State hires an attorny ( the DA) to prosecute it's behaf.
Thomas. Sowel started out with an unusually poignant idea but got himself lost.
Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/videopages/2004/05/16/books/20040516_BROWN00_VIDEO.html
http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/pe_columnists/article/0,2071,NPDN_14960_2886784,00.html
Today marks the 50'th anniversary of the first Brown decision in the US. The deeply flawed decision that legally brought down the principle of "Separate but Equal" is it applied to education and public accommodation. 50 years out many studies are showing that school and housing segregation are just as bad, if not worse than at the time of the Board decision. Of course I disagree with such reports as there is no legal segregation whatsoever. What I found interesting was a video presentation over at the New York Times website where Skip Gates and Cornell West debated the issues around so called segregated education. One thing that did bother me was that Cornel West attributed the idea that white Americans would be generous up until circumstances dictated they look after themselves to Derrick Bell. This idea was vocalised by Marcus Garvey and Martin Delany long before Derrick Bell. This underlines a problem with much of Black Academia. They, in their drive to shore themselves up and to "produce" and form their various cliques, will attribute ideas that are not even original to them to themselves, which makes them look like genius' when in fact they are merely repeating the ideas and conclusion reached by others before them. Nothing is more illustrative of this as the conflict between Dubois and Garvey. Dubois is highly regarded among Black Academics and relatively social elite whereas Garvey and his type are at best glossed over and simplified and usually outright ignored while the ideas are appropriated by more "friendly" and less "militant" persons or organization. But that's off topic.
I hope that this year, Black academics and others will finally get the point that socializing may be good for networking but does nothing in terms of learning. Education comes down to highly motivated teachers, students and parents. There are mastermind black students coming out of Countries that spend fall less on education than the US does and nary a white face around.
Also, I ran across an article by Thomas sowell entitled : Half a Century after Brown Where surprisingly I find myself in near total agreement with Mr Sowell's points:
Quote:
The landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education was immediately about schools, even though it quickly became a precedent for outlawing racial segregation in other government-controlled institutions and programs.
What was the basis for that landmark decision and what have been the actual effects of Brown v. Board of Education on the education of black students?
The key sentence in the Brown decision was: "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It was not just that the previous "separate but equal" doctrine was not being followed in practice. Rather, the Supreme Court argued that there was no way to make separate schools equal. All-black schools were inherently inferior.
It so happened that, within walking distance of the Supreme Court where this sweeping pronouncement was made, there was an all-black high school that had produced quality education for more than 80 years. Back in 1899 this school outscored two out of three white high schools in Washington on standardized tests.
Today, in the 21st century, it would be considered Utopian even to hope for such a result. Moreover, this was not an isolated fluke. This same school had an average IQ of 111 in 1939 %97 fifteen years before the Supreme Court declared such things impossible.
Most schools for blacks were in fact inferior, mainly because most were in the South, where the educational standards for blacks and whites alike tended to be lower. Racial discrimination, as distinguished from segregation alone, tended to make black schools the worst of all.
This was not due to their being all black, however. Back in the early 1940s, the black schools in Harlem had test scores very similar to those in white working class neighborhoods on New York's lower east side. Sometimes the Harlem schools' scores were a little higher than those of schools on the lower east side, and sometimes they were a little lower, but these scores were always comparable.
In short, it was not segregation, as such, that made schools inferior. If this seems like hair-splitting, consider the consequences of the Supreme Court's reasoning.
Once you say that racial separation makes the education itself inferior, you are launched on a course that leads straight to court-ordered busing of school children hither and yon to mix and match them racially, in hopes of educational improvement.
The polarization and bitterness of this crusade has lasted for decades %97 and has left black children still far behind educationally. Many are now much further below national norms than black students were in Harlem more than half a century ago....
More broadly, both the explicit language and the implicit assumptions of the Supreme Court in Brown depicted the answer to problems of blacks in general as being essentially the changing of white people. This was yet another line of reasoning that led straight into a blind alley.
Today, there are all-black schools that succeed, all-black schools that fail, and racially mixed schools that do either. Neither race nor racial segregation can explain such things. But both can serve as distractions from the task of creating higher standards and harder work.
The judicial mythology of racial mixing has led to an absurd situation where a white student can get into a selective public high school in San Francisco with lower qualifications than a Chinese American student. This farcical consequence of judicial mythology about a need for racial mixing does nothing to improve education for blacks or anyone else.
Unfortunately Mr. Sowell goes off into left field and discusses the supposed foolishness of the Miranda Warning given to people who are arrested.
Quote:
Under the much disdained "traditional" approach of criminal law, murders had been declining dramatically over the years. The murder rate in 1960 was just under half of what it had been in 1934.
All of that changed quickly and dramatically for the worse after the Warren Court began imposing its own notions about crime in the 1960s. The most famous of these changes was the "Miranda warning" that police have to give suspects, stating that they have a right to remain silent and to have an attorney supplied free.
For more than a century and a half, not one of the great Supreme Court Justices %97 not Holmes, not Brandeis, nor anybody else %97 had ever discovered any such requirement in the Constitution of the United States. Nor had Congress passed any law requiring any such thing.
Not only is his point way off the topic, but he fails to realize that Miranda was not created to protect the criminal but to inform the innocent. The Miranda Warning reminds the citizen of their constitutional right not to say anything that may incriminate themselves. It is entirely possible for an innocent person to incriminate themselves, The provision for a lawyer underscores the fact that the suspect, under the US constitution has a right to due process and equal accesmeansch menas that he should have at least a lawyer to defend him or her should they not afford one just as The State hires an attorny ( the DA) to prosecute it's behaf.
Thomas. Sowel started out with an unusually poignant idea but got himself lost.
Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/videopages/2004/05/16/books/20040516_BROWN00_VIDEO.html
http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/pe_columnists/article/0,2071,NPDN_14960_2886784,00.html
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Be careful what you find on the net
There is a reason why i sometimes don't post on an issue right away. First is because I don't allways have time. Second, I may have already commented on something similar so I don't see the point. I'm not THAT vain. Thirdly, there is a lot of mis-information out there and sometimes I'm waiting to see if I can get verification on a particular piece of information before posting on it. So it comes as little surprise to me to find out that the photo's of a purported gang rape of an Iraqi woman were in fact fake. over at the Bush Wars blog there is a post with a good breakdown of why those images are fake:
quote:
a) First, and most resoundingly, the soldiers are wearing dark green jungle camouflage gear, which--understandably, if you think about it--was not issued in Iraq.
b) The faces are camo-painted, too. Have you seen any other Abu Ghraib torture image in which a soldier tries to conceal his/her face? Isn't the lesson of the prison photos we've seen so far that anything went--that there was no sense of shame or circumspection about anything they were doing?
c) A forensic point: Look at the body posture of the woman in the first photo. She's standing under her own power. I have read a few accounts of rape over the years, in police files and in books, and I've heard of very few in which the woman did not strain physically--reflexively--to recoil from her attacker. This woman stands almost languidly. It's porn, and coarse, standard-issue porn at that.
d) A compositional point: Look at the third shot, of the "rapist"'s penis entering the "victim"'s mouth. In the rough and tumble of a real, forced sexual encounter that involved 2-3 guys crowded around a victim, this would be a very difficult photo to take. Not impossible, but extremely unlikely. On the other hand, this very shot is an obligatory part of any porn production, still or video.
I agree wholeheartedly with the analysis here. As much as I am against the war, I will not stoop to the use of fake porn to suport my case. Indeed there may have in fact been rapes of some sort done in Iraq, I don't know of a war that did not have some type of rape involved but These picturesaren't them.
What is worse is that we have the beheading of a "civiilian" by a group claiming to be a part of Al-Qaida. This group indicated that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners as seen on the media and the web was at least partially responsible for their decision to brutally behead this man. And let's be clear, regeardless of the bloodyness and inhumanity of this act, it is a direct result of the Illegal war in Iraq. Unfortunately Al-Qaida did not do their cause any good by broadcasting the beheading as most Americans, who still think themselves immune from the repercussions of the government, will believe that the right response is to get back at the "barbarians." Very poor PR on AQ's part.
Links:
http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/sperry/2004/05/10#a729
There is a reason why i sometimes don't post on an issue right away. First is because I don't allways have time. Second, I may have already commented on something similar so I don't see the point. I'm not THAT vain. Thirdly, there is a lot of mis-information out there and sometimes I'm waiting to see if I can get verification on a particular piece of information before posting on it. So it comes as little surprise to me to find out that the photo's of a purported gang rape of an Iraqi woman were in fact fake. over at the Bush Wars blog there is a post with a good breakdown of why those images are fake:
quote:
a) First, and most resoundingly, the soldiers are wearing dark green jungle camouflage gear, which--understandably, if you think about it--was not issued in Iraq.
b) The faces are camo-painted, too. Have you seen any other Abu Ghraib torture image in which a soldier tries to conceal his/her face? Isn't the lesson of the prison photos we've seen so far that anything went--that there was no sense of shame or circumspection about anything they were doing?
c) A forensic point: Look at the body posture of the woman in the first photo. She's standing under her own power. I have read a few accounts of rape over the years, in police files and in books, and I've heard of very few in which the woman did not strain physically--reflexively--to recoil from her attacker. This woman stands almost languidly. It's porn, and coarse, standard-issue porn at that.
d) A compositional point: Look at the third shot, of the "rapist"'s penis entering the "victim"'s mouth. In the rough and tumble of a real, forced sexual encounter that involved 2-3 guys crowded around a victim, this would be a very difficult photo to take. Not impossible, but extremely unlikely. On the other hand, this very shot is an obligatory part of any porn production, still or video.
I agree wholeheartedly with the analysis here. As much as I am against the war, I will not stoop to the use of fake porn to suport my case. Indeed there may have in fact been rapes of some sort done in Iraq, I don't know of a war that did not have some type of rape involved but These picturesaren't them.
What is worse is that we have the beheading of a "civiilian" by a group claiming to be a part of Al-Qaida. This group indicated that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners as seen on the media and the web was at least partially responsible for their decision to brutally behead this man. And let's be clear, regeardless of the bloodyness and inhumanity of this act, it is a direct result of the Illegal war in Iraq. Unfortunately Al-Qaida did not do their cause any good by broadcasting the beheading as most Americans, who still think themselves immune from the repercussions of the government, will believe that the right response is to get back at the "barbarians." Very poor PR on AQ's part.
Links:
http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/sperry/2004/05/10#a729
Monday, May 10, 2004
Sequential Equation
I have a lot on my plate right now so I haven't been able to post on a lot of the stuff I've seen in the news but I like to cite things that underscore previous points and posts. When this blog first started I put up a post about the sequential equation. One part that some people didn't quite get, including myself at first was the following portion.
"Military aims presupose political objectives"
Today th New York Times ran an article
that gave an excellent example of the above statement:
quote
Instead, some of Mr. Bush's senior aides conceded in conversations over the weekend, the far larger question hanging over Mr. Bush's encounter with his embattled secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the nation's military leaders is whether the revelations of prisoner abuse have so undermined American political objectives for remaking Iraq that the military challenges have suddenly become a secondary problem.
Hence when the Black Panther Party, among others proclaimed that politics comes from the barrel of a gun, they were not proclaiming empty rhetoric.
Links:
See Ujimaa
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/politics/10ASSE.html?hp
I have a lot on my plate right now so I haven't been able to post on a lot of the stuff I've seen in the news but I like to cite things that underscore previous points and posts. When this blog first started I put up a post about the sequential equation. One part that some people didn't quite get, including myself at first was the following portion.
"Military aims presupose political objectives"
Today th New York Times ran an article
that gave an excellent example of the above statement:
quote
Instead, some of Mr. Bush's senior aides conceded in conversations over the weekend, the far larger question hanging over Mr. Bush's encounter with his embattled secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the nation's military leaders is whether the revelations of prisoner abuse have so undermined American political objectives for remaking Iraq that the military challenges have suddenly become a secondary problem.
Hence when the Black Panther Party, among others proclaimed that politics comes from the barrel of a gun, they were not proclaiming empty rhetoric.
Links:
See Ujimaa
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/politics/10ASSE.html?hp
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Integration revisited
A while back I disagreed with Tim Wise's assessment that blacks do not want to live in so called "segregated" neighborhoods. Unlike most people I know who know Tim Wise' work, I don't give him a free ride just because he happens to get a lot of things right. The Black Commentator published a piece by Mr. Wise Entitled "Ghetto's Are Not a Game" in which he stated:
While only 10 percent of blacks say they prefer to live in all or nearly-all black neighborhoods, roughly three-fourths of African Americans actually live in such places, not because of choice so much as unequal access to housing markets.
According to several studies, blacks generally prefer well-mixed, integrated neighborhoods. It is whites, who by preferring no more than 10-15 percent people of color in their communities, effectively block such an arrangement from coming about. After all, if “too many” blacks or Latinos move in, whites begin to sell en masse, which means a net outflow of capital and thus falling property values, which results in more low-income persons gaining access to the area, and the eventual “tipping” of the neighborhood from mostly white to mostly of color, and poor. It is, in many ways, an ever-expanding, but nonetheless vicious circle of de facto race and class segregation.
I argued that the statistic regearding only 10% of blacks wishing to live in all black neighborhoods was way off mark. The reason I made this claim was because I know that many blacks lie to pollsters in order to not appear "racist" or to uphold "the dream." In a letter to the editor I pointed out that what most blacks would prefer is a majority black neighborhood with clean, well paved streets, more than decent grocery stores and other such quality of life items. Today I ran across an article in the Christian Science Monitor entitled: "After years in the suburbs, many blacks return to city life", that states that many blacks who live in suburbs are considering moving back into inner cities and largely black neighborhoods.
quote:
The trend - confirmed by real-estate agents, architects, community activists, and families clamoring to move in - is also clear in the numbers. Stephen Klineberg, a sociology professor at Rice University who does an annual survey of attitudes in Houston, found that last year 17 percent of African-American suburbanites polled said they were "very interested" in moving back into the city, compared with only 3.7 percent of whites suburbanites...
...But that's where it gets complex, says sociologist Monique Taylor, whose recent book, "Harlem between Heaven and Hell," looks at the trend of middle-class blacks returning to that neighborhood in the 1990s.
She found that longtime residents soon realized yuppies are yuppies, whatever their race. The conflicts grew, she says, as recent arrivals insisted on changes in the way public and communal space was used - angering longtime residents by, among other things, passing laws that prohibit loitering and public urination.
"Those African-Americans, who were coming into Harlem to 'be down' with the community, had to accept the idea that their interests were at odds with how the community worked," she says. "They had to really rethink: 'This is who I am and this is why I'm here.' "
You'll note that this study found 17 percent of suburban "Spot in the Milk" Blacks strongly interested in moving back to black neighborhoods. Almost double the statistic that Tim Wise quoted in his piece. This clearly underscored the correctness of my postion that the statistics concerning the assertion that blacks do not want to be in majority black neighborhoods. Secondly, my position that the issues surrounding black removal from majority black neighborhoods are those of "quality of life" are also addressed by this article.
Again I must say that we must be very carefull about the cart-blanch we give others to make cases for us that we ought to be making for ourselves.
Links:
http://www.blackcommentator.com/61/61_ghettos2.htm
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0429/p01s02-ussc.html
A while back I disagreed with Tim Wise's assessment that blacks do not want to live in so called "segregated" neighborhoods. Unlike most people I know who know Tim Wise' work, I don't give him a free ride just because he happens to get a lot of things right. The Black Commentator published a piece by Mr. Wise Entitled "Ghetto's Are Not a Game" in which he stated:
While only 10 percent of blacks say they prefer to live in all or nearly-all black neighborhoods, roughly three-fourths of African Americans actually live in such places, not because of choice so much as unequal access to housing markets.
According to several studies, blacks generally prefer well-mixed, integrated neighborhoods. It is whites, who by preferring no more than 10-15 percent people of color in their communities, effectively block such an arrangement from coming about. After all, if “too many” blacks or Latinos move in, whites begin to sell en masse, which means a net outflow of capital and thus falling property values, which results in more low-income persons gaining access to the area, and the eventual “tipping” of the neighborhood from mostly white to mostly of color, and poor. It is, in many ways, an ever-expanding, but nonetheless vicious circle of de facto race and class segregation.
I argued that the statistic regearding only 10% of blacks wishing to live in all black neighborhoods was way off mark. The reason I made this claim was because I know that many blacks lie to pollsters in order to not appear "racist" or to uphold "the dream." In a letter to the editor I pointed out that what most blacks would prefer is a majority black neighborhood with clean, well paved streets, more than decent grocery stores and other such quality of life items. Today I ran across an article in the Christian Science Monitor entitled: "After years in the suburbs, many blacks return to city life", that states that many blacks who live in suburbs are considering moving back into inner cities and largely black neighborhoods.
quote:
The trend - confirmed by real-estate agents, architects, community activists, and families clamoring to move in - is also clear in the numbers. Stephen Klineberg, a sociology professor at Rice University who does an annual survey of attitudes in Houston, found that last year 17 percent of African-American suburbanites polled said they were "very interested" in moving back into the city, compared with only 3.7 percent of whites suburbanites...
...But that's where it gets complex, says sociologist Monique Taylor, whose recent book, "Harlem between Heaven and Hell," looks at the trend of middle-class blacks returning to that neighborhood in the 1990s.
She found that longtime residents soon realized yuppies are yuppies, whatever their race. The conflicts grew, she says, as recent arrivals insisted on changes in the way public and communal space was used - angering longtime residents by, among other things, passing laws that prohibit loitering and public urination.
"Those African-Americans, who were coming into Harlem to 'be down' with the community, had to accept the idea that their interests were at odds with how the community worked," she says. "They had to really rethink: 'This is who I am and this is why I'm here.' "
You'll note that this study found 17 percent of suburban "Spot in the Milk" Blacks strongly interested in moving back to black neighborhoods. Almost double the statistic that Tim Wise quoted in his piece. This clearly underscored the correctness of my postion that the statistics concerning the assertion that blacks do not want to be in majority black neighborhoods. Secondly, my position that the issues surrounding black removal from majority black neighborhoods are those of "quality of life" are also addressed by this article.
Again I must say that we must be very carefull about the cart-blanch we give others to make cases for us that we ought to be making for ourselves.
Links:
http://www.blackcommentator.com/61/61_ghettos2.htm
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0429/p01s02-ussc.html
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
The Mental Dangers of Racism
By Divine providence I was to see a link on my own very blog to a Healthnet which is so brief I'll just repost the entire thing here:
Racism Really Does Make You Stupid
Prejudice can diminish mental abilities, study finds
by Robert Preidt | May 08 '03
THURSDAY, May 8 (HealthDayNews) -- People who are racist may suffer a temporary lapse in mental capacity after interacting with people who are members of a racial minority.
Researchers from Princeton University and Dartmouth College found that white people with a high degree of racial basis experienced a decrease in "executive function" after spending time talking with black people. Their research appears in the May issue of Psychological Science.
Executive function is a key element of thought that involves the ability to fix attention on certain, high-level mental tasks.
The study included 59 white college students. They were given a test to assess the degree of racial bias in their thinking. The students then spent time talking with either a black or a white person and afterwards were given a test that measured their ability to concentrate on a challenging mental task.
The more racially biased the students were, the worse they did on the mental task after speaking with a black person. But racially biased students who spoke with a white person, even if they discussed racially sensitive issues, had no decline in mental function.
"When you have to control your behavior, it takes a lot of energy. And if you expend energy in a social interaction, then you don't have so much left over to do something else," researcher Nicole Shelton says in a news release
This is why I advise black people, who as a result of knowledge of the massive ugliness that have been visited upon Black people, to move to an emotionally detatched state on the issue ASAP. It took me a while to understand why Professor Fluker, of Tuskegee University was so adamant about people "Checking thier emotions at the door." When one emotively engages in the work of ending WS, one compromises ones ability to think clearly.
By Divine providence I was to see a link on my own very blog to a Healthnet which is so brief I'll just repost the entire thing here:
Racism Really Does Make You Stupid
Prejudice can diminish mental abilities, study finds
by Robert Preidt | May 08 '03
THURSDAY, May 8 (HealthDayNews) -- People who are racist may suffer a temporary lapse in mental capacity after interacting with people who are members of a racial minority.
Researchers from Princeton University and Dartmouth College found that white people with a high degree of racial basis experienced a decrease in "executive function" after spending time talking with black people. Their research appears in the May issue of Psychological Science.
Executive function is a key element of thought that involves the ability to fix attention on certain, high-level mental tasks.
The study included 59 white college students. They were given a test to assess the degree of racial bias in their thinking. The students then spent time talking with either a black or a white person and afterwards were given a test that measured their ability to concentrate on a challenging mental task.
The more racially biased the students were, the worse they did on the mental task after speaking with a black person. But racially biased students who spoke with a white person, even if they discussed racially sensitive issues, had no decline in mental function.
"When you have to control your behavior, it takes a lot of energy. And if you expend energy in a social interaction, then you don't have so much left over to do something else," researcher Nicole Shelton says in a news release
This is why I advise black people, who as a result of knowledge of the massive ugliness that have been visited upon Black people, to move to an emotionally detatched state on the issue ASAP. It took me a while to understand why Professor Fluker, of Tuskegee University was so adamant about people "Checking thier emotions at the door." When one emotively engages in the work of ending WS, one compromises ones ability to think clearly.
Libya
I told people earlier that when the Bush Administration claimed that the invasion or Iraq was what motivated Ghadafi to surrender "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that the claim was completely false.Ghadafi, by my estimates was at a point where the economic sanctions from both Europe and the United States was putting a stranglehold on Libya's economy. furthermore, with an aging military and the death of his daughter. Ghadaffi realized that military confrontation with both Europe and the United States was impossible, especially with the utter lack of support from the oft loud mouthed but rarely active Arab leaders to his east. Thus Libya had moved into modernization and economics big time while pushing for a more unified Africa (past issues with African states aside). Indeed his involvement with the OAU was probably as much of a wake up call. To watch 'leaders" to the south all under the economic stranglehold of the World Bank and the IMF must have been equally alarming. Surely then, given the prospect of being raped by those institutions or giving up some outdated Chemical agents and a couple of Libyan citizens was an easy choice. Such a move would also put Ghadafi on the side of World opinion regearding US global action. Once Libya resolved it's outstanding issues with Europe and the US these nations and organizations would either have to make good on thier promises or risk being seen as hypocrites. USA Today has a nice article that proves my position that Ghadafi was in fact attempting to change its global situation long before the Iraq war.
quote:
But the story of Gadhafi's long road to rehabilitation is more complex. Interviews with a half-dozen current and former U.S. officials, Libya experts and a Libyan-American close to Gadhafi's family show that Libya began discussing giving up weapons of mass destruction in 1992, when its arsenal was rudimentary. And it may have bought nuclear technology just to have something to give up in final negotiations.
"Gadhafi felt that the Americans wanted some more to get them interested, so he put some more on the table," says Mohammed Bukhres, a Libyan-American with close ties to Gadhafi's sons. "We tried for a long time to get relations with the United States. Don't let anyone tell you it's because of the invasion of Iraq."
Another article demostrates how now Europe is trying to not live up to their obligations to libya by introducing new conditions;
quote:
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer welcomed Libya's rapprochement Monday but noted "obstacles" remained, including his government's demand for compensation from Libya for victims of the 1986 bombing at a West Berlin disco that was a hangout for American troops.
Two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman were killed and 229 people injured in the attack allegedly ordered by Gadhafi.
EU officials said they also would raise the case of six Bulgarian medics detained in Tripoli since 1999 on charges that they deliberately infected hundreds of children with the AIDS virus."
EU and Belgian officials said human rights would be raised in the context of Libya's aspiration to join the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. The application will have to be approved by EU governments.
One should note that China has been reported to have numerous Human Rights violations and yet enjoy "normal" relations with both Europe and America. Furthermore; Libya has the right to try anyone of any nationality that is accused of a crime in it's jurisdiction. Let Europe suspend ties to the US over the persons now locked up on Guantanamo with no legal rights whatsoever. Of course such a thing will not happen because, as libya knows and is trying to remedy: Cash and/or Arms rule.
Links:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-04-27-libya_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-04-26-libya_x.htm
I told people earlier that when the Bush Administration claimed that the invasion or Iraq was what motivated Ghadafi to surrender "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that the claim was completely false.Ghadafi, by my estimates was at a point where the economic sanctions from both Europe and the United States was putting a stranglehold on Libya's economy. furthermore, with an aging military and the death of his daughter. Ghadaffi realized that military confrontation with both Europe and the United States was impossible, especially with the utter lack of support from the oft loud mouthed but rarely active Arab leaders to his east. Thus Libya had moved into modernization and economics big time while pushing for a more unified Africa (past issues with African states aside). Indeed his involvement with the OAU was probably as much of a wake up call. To watch 'leaders" to the south all under the economic stranglehold of the World Bank and the IMF must have been equally alarming. Surely then, given the prospect of being raped by those institutions or giving up some outdated Chemical agents and a couple of Libyan citizens was an easy choice. Such a move would also put Ghadafi on the side of World opinion regearding US global action. Once Libya resolved it's outstanding issues with Europe and the US these nations and organizations would either have to make good on thier promises or risk being seen as hypocrites. USA Today has a nice article that proves my position that Ghadafi was in fact attempting to change its global situation long before the Iraq war.
quote:
But the story of Gadhafi's long road to rehabilitation is more complex. Interviews with a half-dozen current and former U.S. officials, Libya experts and a Libyan-American close to Gadhafi's family show that Libya began discussing giving up weapons of mass destruction in 1992, when its arsenal was rudimentary. And it may have bought nuclear technology just to have something to give up in final negotiations.
"Gadhafi felt that the Americans wanted some more to get them interested, so he put some more on the table," says Mohammed Bukhres, a Libyan-American with close ties to Gadhafi's sons. "We tried for a long time to get relations with the United States. Don't let anyone tell you it's because of the invasion of Iraq."
Another article demostrates how now Europe is trying to not live up to their obligations to libya by introducing new conditions;
quote:
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer welcomed Libya's rapprochement Monday but noted "obstacles" remained, including his government's demand for compensation from Libya for victims of the 1986 bombing at a West Berlin disco that was a hangout for American troops.
Two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman were killed and 229 people injured in the attack allegedly ordered by Gadhafi.
EU officials said they also would raise the case of six Bulgarian medics detained in Tripoli since 1999 on charges that they deliberately infected hundreds of children with the AIDS virus."
EU and Belgian officials said human rights would be raised in the context of Libya's aspiration to join the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. The application will have to be approved by EU governments.
One should note that China has been reported to have numerous Human Rights violations and yet enjoy "normal" relations with both Europe and America. Furthermore; Libya has the right to try anyone of any nationality that is accused of a crime in it's jurisdiction. Let Europe suspend ties to the US over the persons now locked up on Guantanamo with no legal rights whatsoever. Of course such a thing will not happen because, as libya knows and is trying to remedy: Cash and/or Arms rule.
Links:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-04-27-libya_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-04-26-libya_x.htm
Monday, April 26, 2004
Is Kerry as Dumb as Bush?
I've recently surmised that the Democratic Party has been infliltrated by Republicans who are doing all they can to tank the party. Either that or the Democrats are just plain stupid. This morning on Good Morning America, Kerry attempted to answer the charge that he threw away his medals in protest against the Vietnam war. The Bush machine has been trying to paint kerry as an equivocating liberal. Given kerry's show this morning they don't need to do much in this department. Kerry is on a video verifying to an interviewer that he did in fact throw away some medals or ribbons and has gone on record a number of times saying that he threw away some veteran friends medals. This morning he went on to explain the difference between "medals" and 'ribbons" and then proceeded to complain about Bush. All n all he sounded like a teenager that had been busted with his pops stack of Porn. I cannot believe for one minute that his press people allowed Kerry to wing this or worse prepared kerry to answer the question in the way that he did. Here is what Kerry should have said:
"Good morning Charlie. Let me get right to the point of this non-issue. I served my country in Vietnam. I came back and discovered that this war was wrong and I took a stand. I respect every soldier that served his country in an honorable manner in that war and will, as president make sure that America takes care of them. However, I stand by my condemnation of the Vietnam war and make no apology for standing for my principles. You should ask Mr. Bush about his service. Thank you and good day."
With that one statement Kerry would have diffused the situation without giving the republicans a sound bite of " Yes I threw my medals away." He would have retained the support of war veterans. He would have come across as having a backbone and would have turned the tables back on Bush.
I've recently surmised that the Democratic Party has been infliltrated by Republicans who are doing all they can to tank the party. Either that or the Democrats are just plain stupid. This morning on Good Morning America, Kerry attempted to answer the charge that he threw away his medals in protest against the Vietnam war. The Bush machine has been trying to paint kerry as an equivocating liberal. Given kerry's show this morning they don't need to do much in this department. Kerry is on a video verifying to an interviewer that he did in fact throw away some medals or ribbons and has gone on record a number of times saying that he threw away some veteran friends medals. This morning he went on to explain the difference between "medals" and 'ribbons" and then proceeded to complain about Bush. All n all he sounded like a teenager that had been busted with his pops stack of Porn. I cannot believe for one minute that his press people allowed Kerry to wing this or worse prepared kerry to answer the question in the way that he did. Here is what Kerry should have said:
"Good morning Charlie. Let me get right to the point of this non-issue. I served my country in Vietnam. I came back and discovered that this war was wrong and I took a stand. I respect every soldier that served his country in an honorable manner in that war and will, as president make sure that America takes care of them. However, I stand by my condemnation of the Vietnam war and make no apology for standing for my principles. You should ask Mr. Bush about his service. Thank you and good day."
With that one statement Kerry would have diffused the situation without giving the republicans a sound bite of " Yes I threw my medals away." He would have retained the support of war veterans. He would have come across as having a backbone and would have turned the tables back on Bush.
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Brown V. Board
Brown V. Board
When i graduated from Tuskegee I was full of youthful fire and zeal to let everybody know that I knew everything. I soon learned that i did not know everything. During this time I happened to stumble across a "desegregation" issue that had engulfed the Englewood Nj School system. At that time Dwight Morrow High, was ( and is) predominantly black and so called "Latino." It was widely known that white parents, and blacks that could afford it and felt so moved, paid to have their children go to High School in the neighboring town Tenafly. The town of Englewood under a supposed mandate to desegregate Dwight Morrow called a meeting. I attended this meeting intent on letting it be known that the Brown V. Board case contained very offensive suppositions about black people and that what Dwight Morrow ought to be concerned with was the schools access to proper teaching materials, proper salaries for teachers and a demanding curriculum. I was dismayed to find that one had to sign up before hand to speak so I was relegated to my seat for the duration of the meeting. Fortunately, a group of local pastors gave voice to my idea.
The specific issue with Brown V. was that the majority decision includes a passage that says that Black students by being in separate facilities than whites would develop feelings of inferiority and thus needed to be in contact with white students in order to be properly socialised and educated. Mind you, no one asked whether or not white students have feelings of inferiority because they did not come into contact with black students. Also if one talks to persons who have gone to segregated schools you will find that a great many of them were quite well adjusted even if they believed that the facilities were sub-optimal.
Indeed if one looks at the statistics one would find that a great majority of Black professionals were the product of "segregated" schools such as Tuskegee, Morehouse and Spellman. If this is so, then clearly "segregated" environments are positive for blacks so long as such environments provide educational and cultural support.
Today I ran across an article regarding a presentation given by Derrick Bell, where he flatly states that Brown V. damaged the educational prospects of many Black youths. I tend to agree with him. While middle class blacks have been able to take flight from "segregated" and underfunded schools, at least 30% of blacks live at or below poverty levels, these individuals have not benefitted from school desegregation.
Quote:
"From the standpoint of education, we would have been better served had the court in Brown rejected the petitioners' arguments to overrule Plessy v. Ferguson," Bell said, referring to the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that enforced a "separate but equal" standard for blacks and whites. While acknowledging the deep injustices done to black children in segregated schools, Bell argued the court should have determined to enforce the generally ignored "equal" part of the "separate but equal" doctrine.
Rather than resolving the nation's racial dilemma, the Brown decision has made it more complex, Bell argued. "Racial disparities, wide and widening in every measure of well-being, overshadow the gains in status achieved by those of us black Americans who, by varying combinations of hard work and good fortune, are viewed as having 'made it,'" he said.....
...Instead, what Brown did for many African Americans was legitimate the status quo. While they remained poor and disempowered, their status was no longer a result of denied equality. Rather, Bell said, it marked a personal failure to take advantage of one's defined equal status.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
About Those Civilians
Granma International has reported that some of the "contractors" in Iraq, a nice name for mercenary, are former Chilian ex-commandos and members of the South African secret police un der the Aparthied regime:
quote:
The article went on to say that apparently Blackwater was unable to contract a sufficient number of U.S. nationals – the majority of them former soldiers – for all its postings in Iraq and had started to use former Chilean soldiers who were active during Augusto Pinochet’s regime.
The South African press indicated that the dead guard was one Francois Strydom, a former member of the notorious Koevoet counterinsurgency group, implicated in numerous political murders in Namibia during the 1980s.
La Jornada refers to the Tiger Force unit from the 101st Airborne Division that was deployed in Viet Nam to assassinate guerrillas and civilian sympathizers.
More Phoenix operations. Same ole same ole.
Links:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2004/abril/juev8/16mercenarios.html
Granma International has reported that some of the "contractors" in Iraq, a nice name for mercenary, are former Chilian ex-commandos and members of the South African secret police un der the Aparthied regime:
quote:
The article went on to say that apparently Blackwater was unable to contract a sufficient number of U.S. nationals – the majority of them former soldiers – for all its postings in Iraq and had started to use former Chilean soldiers who were active during Augusto Pinochet’s regime.
The South African press indicated that the dead guard was one Francois Strydom, a former member of the notorious Koevoet counterinsurgency group, implicated in numerous political murders in Namibia during the 1980s.
La Jornada refers to the Tiger Force unit from the 101st Airborne Division that was deployed in Viet Nam to assassinate guerrillas and civilian sympathizers.
More Phoenix operations. Same ole same ole.
Links:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2004/abril/juev8/16mercenarios.html
The Power of Propaganda
When I was at Tuskegee, an organization to which I belonged required potential members to go through an "orientation" session. One of the purposes of this session was to make sure that all the members had the same baseline knowledge of the subject matter we dealt with and to wean out those who weren't really in agreement with our principals. One of the things we dealt with was the use of propaganda. One thing we stressed was that regeardless to who in the organization was spoken to, any person inquiring about the organization or it's stand on a particular subject would get the same answer. No permutations were allowed, no "personally.." just the standard line. Some people could not understand why we did this or why we were so peculiar about how we presented ourselves to the public. But we knew that a consistent and persistent image and message was essential to further our agenda.
Today I ran across an article at Alternet entitled: How the Democrats were Betamaxed It is an excellent essay on the power of propaganda. I don't particularly care for Democrats, but I believe that for any reader that is serious about ending Global White Supremacy, this is an important read. This piece also adds evidence to the correctness of Dr. Welsing's definition of "racism" as we covered at the beginning of this blog as well as the issues of apparently unrelated phenomenon actually being related.
quote:
Republicans also understand the value of strategic communications and the importance of "naming and framing" legislation and policies. Naming and framing can turn the "estate tax" ("estate" sounds like it only applies to rich folks) into a "death tax" – we all die and it just doesn't seem right taxing the dead. When the GOP renamed the estate tax the death tax, they were able to frame it as a mainstream concern with 75% of Americans supporting its repeal, even though the estate tax does only apply to the rich, and it's paid by less than 2% of Americans.
They name legislation "No Child Left Behind," "Healthy Forests," "Clear Skies" and "Patriot Act," essentially forcing legislators to support their bills, lest they be accused of leaving children behind, favoring polluted forests and skies, or being branded as unpatriotic. It's sheer genius. It makes Microsoft's tactics for marketplace dominance look like child's play.
Another vital aspect of marketing is placement, or controlling the distribution channels. Republicans took this a step further by largely replicating Ted Turner's strategy of vertical integration of content and distribution. Cable maverick Turner recognized that he could become a formidable media force by owing both the channels of distribution – his TBS cable network – and content. So, he bought sports teams, acquired the MGM classic movie library and invented the 24-hour news network CNN to fill his cable channels.
Using this same vertical integration model, conservative think tanks and foundations, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, have been laboring intensively on the research and development of conservative policies, as well as their packaging in media-friendly ways. These policies provide the "content" to feed to three primary distribution channels: legislative distribution channels including elected officials, candidates, senior staff, and political appointees; judicial distribution channels; and various mainstream and dedicated media distribution channels, such as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Washington Times, et al.
Links:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18395
When I was at Tuskegee, an organization to which I belonged required potential members to go through an "orientation" session. One of the purposes of this session was to make sure that all the members had the same baseline knowledge of the subject matter we dealt with and to wean out those who weren't really in agreement with our principals. One of the things we dealt with was the use of propaganda. One thing we stressed was that regeardless to who in the organization was spoken to, any person inquiring about the organization or it's stand on a particular subject would get the same answer. No permutations were allowed, no "personally.." just the standard line. Some people could not understand why we did this or why we were so peculiar about how we presented ourselves to the public. But we knew that a consistent and persistent image and message was essential to further our agenda.
Today I ran across an article at Alternet entitled: How the Democrats were Betamaxed It is an excellent essay on the power of propaganda. I don't particularly care for Democrats, but I believe that for any reader that is serious about ending Global White Supremacy, this is an important read. This piece also adds evidence to the correctness of Dr. Welsing's definition of "racism" as we covered at the beginning of this blog as well as the issues of apparently unrelated phenomenon actually being related.
quote:
Republicans also understand the value of strategic communications and the importance of "naming and framing" legislation and policies. Naming and framing can turn the "estate tax" ("estate" sounds like it only applies to rich folks) into a "death tax" – we all die and it just doesn't seem right taxing the dead. When the GOP renamed the estate tax the death tax, they were able to frame it as a mainstream concern with 75% of Americans supporting its repeal, even though the estate tax does only apply to the rich, and it's paid by less than 2% of Americans.
They name legislation "No Child Left Behind," "Healthy Forests," "Clear Skies" and "Patriot Act," essentially forcing legislators to support their bills, lest they be accused of leaving children behind, favoring polluted forests and skies, or being branded as unpatriotic. It's sheer genius. It makes Microsoft's tactics for marketplace dominance look like child's play.
Another vital aspect of marketing is placement, or controlling the distribution channels. Republicans took this a step further by largely replicating Ted Turner's strategy of vertical integration of content and distribution. Cable maverick Turner recognized that he could become a formidable media force by owing both the channels of distribution – his TBS cable network – and content. So, he bought sports teams, acquired the MGM classic movie library and invented the 24-hour news network CNN to fill his cable channels.
Using this same vertical integration model, conservative think tanks and foundations, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, have been laboring intensively on the research and development of conservative policies, as well as their packaging in media-friendly ways. These policies provide the "content" to feed to three primary distribution channels: legislative distribution channels including elected officials, candidates, senior staff, and political appointees; judicial distribution channels; and various mainstream and dedicated media distribution channels, such as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Washington Times, et al.
Links:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18395
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
A Jewish Conspiracy
There's a lot of talk about Black-Jewish relations and the supposed rise in Anti-Semitism in the AA community, specifically in the more "educated" portions of the AA community. Such So called "Anti-semitism," Itself a gross misnomer, is the result of the fact that we, educated blacks, can read and know when Jewish people, or specifically Jewish organizations, step into our business and manipulate our so called leadership. The most recent glaring example of this was the ouster of Cynthia McKinney from her Congressional seat by Denise Majette. Majette won largely due to cross over votes and heavy backing by jewish people. This was discussed in my February 7th, 2004 commentary entitled How Jews Run This where I heavily quoted a SF Bay article that demonstrated, with undeniable facts, how Jewish Organizations have influenced Black political figures.
On April 9th the Atlanta Jewish Times Posted an article on how the Jewish Community "worked tirelessly to elect Democratic US Rep. Denise Majette to office in 2002."
Quote:
It is a sentiment that has echoed widely in the days since March 29, when Majette amazed even her own staff in announcing her intention to run.
Among her many Jewish supporters, some have expressed anger, disappointment and confusion over her decision.
“I’m surprised,” said Larry Cooper, an oncologist who helped raise funds for Majette during her successful 2002 campaign to unseat 10-year Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney. “I frequently talk to her. I had no hint that this was coming down the pike.”
“I’m in shock,” added Steven Wertheim, an orthopedist who along with his wife Melinda hosted several fundraisers for Majette at their home in 2002. “I was given no advance notice.”
Wertheim, who calls Majette’s decision an “obvious misstep,” says people who this year have contributed money to what they believed would be her 2004 House re-election bid may now ask Majette for their money back.
“I think there will be a lot of people who do so,” he said.
Knowledgeable sources confirm that some Jewish supporters have already called Majette’s 4th District congressional office in Decatur demanding their money back.
Answering their concern, Majette told The Jewish Times, “It was not my intention to deceive anyone. I have honored my commitments. I have addressed Jewish concerns.
“Those who supported me will continue to have a voice in the Senate,” she continued. “I hope they will give me the opportunity to serve [there].”
Did I read that right? Apparently we have confirmation that Denise Majette was bought by the Jewish Lobby.
Some one needs to make a poster quick. Denise Majettes face with a big Negro for Sale sign on it.
Links:
http://atlanta.jewish.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=603
There's a lot of talk about Black-Jewish relations and the supposed rise in Anti-Semitism in the AA community, specifically in the more "educated" portions of the AA community. Such So called "Anti-semitism," Itself a gross misnomer, is the result of the fact that we, educated blacks, can read and know when Jewish people, or specifically Jewish organizations, step into our business and manipulate our so called leadership. The most recent glaring example of this was the ouster of Cynthia McKinney from her Congressional seat by Denise Majette. Majette won largely due to cross over votes and heavy backing by jewish people. This was discussed in my February 7th, 2004 commentary entitled How Jews Run This where I heavily quoted a SF Bay article that demonstrated, with undeniable facts, how Jewish Organizations have influenced Black political figures.
On April 9th the Atlanta Jewish Times Posted an article on how the Jewish Community "worked tirelessly to elect Democratic US Rep. Denise Majette to office in 2002."
Quote:
It is a sentiment that has echoed widely in the days since March 29, when Majette amazed even her own staff in announcing her intention to run.
Among her many Jewish supporters, some have expressed anger, disappointment and confusion over her decision.
“I’m surprised,” said Larry Cooper, an oncologist who helped raise funds for Majette during her successful 2002 campaign to unseat 10-year Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney. “I frequently talk to her. I had no hint that this was coming down the pike.”
“I’m in shock,” added Steven Wertheim, an orthopedist who along with his wife Melinda hosted several fundraisers for Majette at their home in 2002. “I was given no advance notice.”
Wertheim, who calls Majette’s decision an “obvious misstep,” says people who this year have contributed money to what they believed would be her 2004 House re-election bid may now ask Majette for their money back.
“I think there will be a lot of people who do so,” he said.
Knowledgeable sources confirm that some Jewish supporters have already called Majette’s 4th District congressional office in Decatur demanding their money back.
Answering their concern, Majette told The Jewish Times, “It was not my intention to deceive anyone. I have honored my commitments. I have addressed Jewish concerns.
“Those who supported me will continue to have a voice in the Senate,” she continued. “I hope they will give me the opportunity to serve [there].”
Did I read that right? Apparently we have confirmation that Denise Majette was bought by the Jewish Lobby.
Some one needs to make a poster quick. Denise Majettes face with a big Negro for Sale sign on it.
Links:
http://atlanta.jewish.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=603
Friday, April 02, 2004
More Axe
There's a Bob Marley collection where the song 'Small Axe" is accompanied by a track "More Axe." I just read a story that definitely qualifies as "more axe." The Indepepended UK quotes one Sibel Edmonds who worked as a translator for the FBI:
quote:
A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.
She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".
Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".
Heads must roll.
Links:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=507514
There's a Bob Marley collection where the song 'Small Axe" is accompanied by a track "More Axe." I just read a story that definitely qualifies as "more axe." The Indepepended UK quotes one Sibel Edmonds who worked as a translator for the FBI:
quote:
A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.
She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".
Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".
Heads must roll.
Links:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=507514
Thursday, April 01, 2004
The Truth Comes in Dribbles
I usually never have to wait for "official" sources to know when the US has it's foot in something. In regards to Haiti the white faces, the perfect American English and the well armed rebels had "outside influence' written all over it. Today I stumbled across this piece at Granma International which reports that the "rebels' were funded by the US and trained in the Dominican Republic.
Quote:
SANTO DOMINGO.— The Xinhua news agency has reported that the groups which rose up against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were armed and trained by the United States in the Dominican Republic, according to a preliminary report presented today.
That statement is the provisional conclusion by the Haiti Investigation Committee made up of religious and legal representatives from several different countries and created in 1991 by former U.S. Justice Secretary Ramsey Clark.
"Two hundred soldiers from the U.S. Special Forces arrived in the Dominican Republic with the authorization of President Hipólito MejÃa as part of a military operation to train Haitian rebels," revealed the report that was circulated in the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo.
This Bush Klan is really up on some illegal ish. I do hope that whenever he is put out of office that the someone manages to convict these people for thier crimes.
links:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2004/marzo/mier31/14haiti.html
I usually never have to wait for "official" sources to know when the US has it's foot in something. In regards to Haiti the white faces, the perfect American English and the well armed rebels had "outside influence' written all over it. Today I stumbled across this piece at Granma International which reports that the "rebels' were funded by the US and trained in the Dominican Republic.
Quote:
SANTO DOMINGO.— The Xinhua news agency has reported that the groups which rose up against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were armed and trained by the United States in the Dominican Republic, according to a preliminary report presented today.
That statement is the provisional conclusion by the Haiti Investigation Committee made up of religious and legal representatives from several different countries and created in 1991 by former U.S. Justice Secretary Ramsey Clark.
"Two hundred soldiers from the U.S. Special Forces arrived in the Dominican Republic with the authorization of President Hipólito MejÃa as part of a military operation to train Haitian rebels," revealed the report that was circulated in the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo.
This Bush Klan is really up on some illegal ish. I do hope that whenever he is put out of office that the someone manages to convict these people for thier crimes.
links:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2004/marzo/mier31/14haiti.html
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