You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August 2010.
Diversity Debate Convulses Elite High School
Heretic! Blasphemer! Polish Star Faces Trial on Claim Drunks Wrote Bible
Christian Pastor Promotes “International Burn a Koran Day”
U.S. Schools: Grooming Students for a Surveillance State
Totally different than the Muslim outcry over “Mohammed cartoons”: Catholics Try to Ban ‘Pregnant Nun’ Ice Cream Ad
Still loving that old Gore Vidal quote:
There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party…and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt—until recently… and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.
Holla that.
I don’t agree with everything Mother Teresa ever said, but her response to a young person’s request to come work with her in Calcutta was pretty good:
Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering and the lonely right there where you are — in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. … You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society — completely forgotten, completely left alone.
As you may recall, Glenn Beck has started his own non-credited university.
One man has been brave enough to fork over $9.95 AND attend the lectures. Read his response to each class here.
A quote:
Over one of the most harrowing half hours of my entire life, I also learned that the principles of American government were based on the “best forms of government listed in the Bible”…
And in Lecture 4:
[David Barton ("a pseudo-historian with limited academic credentials")] whines that we’ve been told that Franklin and Jefferson were agnostics and deists. But he insists that these actions prove they were true Christians who believed in a theocracy, dammit! Don’t believe those dirty librels and their deconstructionist ways.
I guess Barton’s using the Transitive Property of Christian Fundamentalism. Let me explain. If A = C and C = D, then A = B, which proves everyone is a secret Christian and that the Founding Fathers wanted us to separate church and state so that Christians were free to worship wherever they wanted and however they wanted so long as they were the right type of Christians.
Perhaps you are familiar with the visceral fear and hatred that the mere mention of Ebonics evokes among certain, more light-colored segments of the population.
Perhaps a little linguistics-speak will dampen their fear and fancy academic-y jargon will dull their hatred. Well, probably not, because learnin is communist, but I can dream.
This fascinating interactive map at Forbes lets you choose any county in America and see how many people are moving in, and whence, and how many are moving out, and whither.
h/t Chris P.
This is super neato! View the “Journey of Mankind [sic]” at this awesome link, i.e. the time-lapsed spread of humans across the earth from our common origins in East Africa.
h/t Ayana J.
“Not unsurprisingly, social policy regularly turns out to be a welfare project for the rich and powerful.”
-Noam Chomsky, Year 501, The Conquest Continues, 1993
“[T]he more civilisation advances, the more it is compelled to cover the ills it necessarily creates with the cloak of love, embellish them, or to deny their existence; in short, to introduce conventional hypocrisy…that culminates in the declaration: The exploiting class exploits the oppressed class solely and exclusively in the interest of the exploited class itself; and if the latter fails to appreciate this, and even becomes rebellious, it thereby shows the basest ingratitude to its benefactors, the exploiters.”
Friedrich Engels, The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State, 1884
Some of the denizens of Kellogg, Idaho and the surrounding Silver Valley area would really prefer the government not clean up the toxic mining waste in their community. So what if poisonous chemicals are found at record-setting levels in the bodies of their children. Because you know what, if the toxic waste clean-up efforts continue, it would be bad for business.
That’s right. The willingness of the government to clean up the toxic waste sends a bad message to mining companies, a message that some locals are trying to silence: Companies should have a plan for safe hazardous waste disposal. THE HORROR!!!
Or to put in the words of a concerned resident:
“They’ve got their environmental science degree from some place like Berkeley and they drive their Prius to the back hills of Idaho and here are a bunch of miners and they want to do what they think is best for us,” said attorney James McMillan.
We like our poisonous mining sludge just the way it is, thank you. That arsenic doesn’t just get into children’s blood by itself, for gosh sake!
Recently, on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation in New York:
According to court documents, [Pedro] Jones, who was not related to the boy, punched him over and over with closed fists and grabbed him by the neck.
Documents say he confessed to the crime, telling troopers, “I was trying to make him act like a boy instead of a little girl. I never struck that kid that hard before.
The baby, Roy Jones, died.
Jones said, I suppose without irony, though irony-factor was not reported upon: “I’m sorry. That’s my baby. I loved him to death.”
How can a baby “act” like a boy or a girl? Why would anyone think that physical violence could force a baby to act more “male”? What kind of “male” would anti-girliness corrective violence produce? Why does a baby deserve death for not demonstrating adult cultural gender norms?
Just some questions I have in my outrage.
Via TransGriot.
A few days back I wrote a lengthy piece titled Financial Security & Social Justice. I have continued to keep my thoughts on this topic, and came across this article: Are You Overpaying for your 401(k)?
Interesting quote:
Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research Center has a study out this month about the cost of 401(k) plans, and they have found another flaw in the nation’s defacto retirement savings system: It is overpriced. So not only do 401(k) plans not meet the needs of the average American, they aren’t cost effective either.
I pulled my tiny 401(k) savings right before The Great Recession. It was because I quit the job that provided me with the account. If I hadn’t, I would have ended up with less money after investing than I had put in. As it was, after two years, the account had stayed about even. I would have had the same amount of money whether it had been in savings, the 401(k), or in my mattress. This personal experience gave me the inkling that 401(k)s might not be the infallible vehicle for retirement security that they had been pitched to me as.
Stephen Gandel, the author of the article above, also wrote:
The ugly truth, though, is that the 401(k) is a lousy idea, a financial flop, a rotten repository for our retirement reserves. In the past two years, that has become all too clear. From the end of 2007 to the end of March 2009, the average 401(k) balance fell 31%, according to Fidelity.
Also, individual participants in 401(k)s have little choice regarding what they are investing in. They typically get the option to work with one company, and chose between a limited number of products. If the employee objects to the corporations that their money ends up supporting, tough luck. No retirement for you!
Now I have an IRA through a credit union. The account makes me somewhere between $5.00 and $15.00 a year. I’m rolling in it.
Your thoughts on 401(k)s?
August 29th is the anniversary of the levees breaking.
NOLA Femmes are counting down to the anniversary with a photos series intended to “depict the state of New Orleans neighborhoods in the 5th year post-Katrina.”
All the photos are taken by New Orleans women, and they are excellent. Please check out the project here.
Photo by maringouin.
Photo by maringouin.
What’s not to like about this opinion piece in the Selma Times-Journal, written by Democratic Alabama State Senator Hank Sanders? My personal favorite part is using the wife-girlfriend dichotomy to symbolize the “home-grown industry” versus the “new industry”. Rhetorical genius.
I would suggest that this article is offensive towards women, but by its very nature, Sanders indicates that the Selma Times-Journal has no female readers, and therefore there are no women to offend.
Oh, and what is it that riled Sanders sufficiently to write such a rousing polemic against Alabama governor Bob Riley? Riley’s treatment of Bush Hog, “the world’s most successful” manufacturer of rotary cutters for clearing land. So you can imagine that emotions are running high and the only way Sanders could express the true tenor of his feelings is incredibly derogatory language against women.
h/t Drew
You will find the following video disturbing, if you are disturbed by the sight of policemen beating women and dragging their babies.
This video shows a police attack against immigrant women and children in France who were protesting for access to shelter. They had been camping out in a public space. (The video won’t imbed for some reason. Curse you WordPress!)
Notice how the newscaster frames the story, giving caveat after caveat to caution the viewer not to get too riled up. It was totally justified to beat unarmed women and children who are protesting for housing! The public order was at stake, and come on, these people are simply immigrants of color ruining the French way of life.
Two takes on this video:
Renee at Womanist Musings: It takes Courage to be a Brown/Black Mother in this World
BFP at Flip Flopping Joy: Mama
If you want to throw up in your mouth, read the disgusting comments following the NYTimes coverage. Basically, these homeless women, and not the police, are the ones who used brutality and harmed the children. So the NYT commenters would have it.
It turned out how you would expect.
Part of the crowd at the July 31st Tea Party diversity rally, Uni-Tea.
You won’t regret reading this awesome piece by Greg Bloom.
Included is this brilliant idea:
A proposal for dismantling racism: Let’s eat together
We affirmed the radical notion of sitting down and eating together as a starting point for building relationships, gaining historical perspective, sharing culture, learning from each other, offering practical tips for healthy cooking/eating, supplying food for those is need, discussing future action, recognizing who is missing from the table, and action to bring them into the circle next time. Many of the key ingredients to dismantling racism.
Building on the example of the People’s Kitchen Collective in Oakland we see endless potential in this model. Here are some ideas:
* Work to raise $$ so the meal can be free to all or on a sliding scale
* This example was a meal for 200 people
* Invite 20 people to come help prepare the meal
* Invite 4 people to teach one dish each
* Set up 4 stations and have each cook discuss the role this dish plays in their culture, where the ingredients come from (work to include the growers whenever possible), and how food can be used for organizing in their community
* Have the 20 cooks report back what they learned to the larger group
* Collectively say grace/thanks for the food!
* Offer discussion questions for each table
* Send each guest home with the recipes and whatever ingredients you can provide (especially cultural spices or things harder to find)
* Discuss who is missing from the table and what collectively can be done to include them next time
* Set a date for next meal!
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