Oppression
MLK Freedom Groove
From the vaults! Rich Rich Juzwiak's awesome remixing of MLK's "Let Freedom Ring" speech titled, MLK in the house. Stick around long enough and you'll also find in the playlist MLK's actual speech, courtesy of the MLK Library.
Civil Rights | Freedom | Holiday | Mashup | Music | Oppression | Race | Racism | Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. | Jr. Day | Martin Luther King
Blanquito vs. Latino or the unbearable lightness of being Alberto Gonzales
Memorandum is off the hook this morning with news that Alberto Gonzales has resigned as US Attorney General.
There are cheers and jeers all around the blogosphere for what many consider the worst Attorney General to the worst Presidency in the history of the United States. The press release from Ralph Neas over at People For the American Way better encapsulates what a lot of people in the blogosphere are saying :
The Ennabler GeneralIt’s high time this attorney general resigned. Alberto Gonzales was the 'Enabler General' for the imperial Bush presidency. He undermined the Constitution, made a mockery of the rule of law, and turned the Justice Department into an arm of the Bush Administration’s political operation.
Gonzales protected the interests of George W. Bush over the interests of the American people at every turn. He oversaw a Justice Department that was twisted to serve political interests, from the president’s domestic spying program to bogus allegations of voting fraud that kept minorities and poor people from the ballot box. He showed open contempt for oversight by Congress, and gave testimony under oath that was at best incompetent and at worst, deliberately untrue.
...
Now, it’s time to heal the Justice Department, and find a new attorney general who will restore integrity to the office.
To me though, what's really is important is how Gonzales' fall is not just a foible of his character. To me what is important here is how the Bush administration has used the idea of "diversity" to empower into corruption racial, ethnic and gender minorities.
Blanquito | Corruption | Diversity | Ethics | Ethnicity | Marginalization | Oppression | Race | Alberto Gonzales | Department of Justice | Impeachment | Republicans
The lambs of war
"There has never been a just one, never an honorable one - on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful - as usual - will shout for the war. The pulpit will - warily and cautiously - object - at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and here is no necessity for it."
Then the handful will shout louder.
A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you willsee this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers - as earlier - but do not dare to say so.
And now the whole nation - pulpit and all - will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
Alienation | Oppression | Politics | War | Mark Twain
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The large defect
"Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race - the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions."
Democracy | government | Oligarchy | Oppression | Politics | Religion | War | Mark Twain | Satan
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Jesus Did Not Say: "Shut Your Pie Hole"
(Update by Liza Sabater, Publisher : Hello Salon Readers! Feminist bloggers are not taking the attacks against Amanda, Melissa and other feminist bloggers lightly. We are working now harder than ever to create a Feminist Bloggers PAC.)
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I have sat with this for days now, trying to bring to fruition in language the tremendous anger, sadness, and yes—fear—that flooded me last week as I watched Amanda and Melissa become the targets of Christofascists' attacks. (For tremendous work on the topic, please see Liza's posts, including a full roundup of links to the feminist blogosphere's reaction.) I choose my words carefully, and when the urge comes upon me to let loose a string of expletives—necessary language for me sometimes, the ur language that boils forth from an angry soul—I try to tamp it down. I want to be heard.
One thing I do know. Jesus did not say: "Shut Your Pie Hole."
But Paul did: In I Corinthians<.i>, 14:34-35, he writes, Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says.
Blogosphere | Censorship | Feminism | Oppression | Power | Sexism | Amanda Marcotte | Catholic League | Democrats | John Edwards | Liza Sabater | Melissa McEwan | William Donohue
Franz Fanon explains Dave Chappelle's departure from Comedy Central, posthumously
These new-found tensions which are present at all stages in the real nature of colonialism have their repercussions on the cultural plane. In literature, for example, there is relative over-production. From being a reply on a minor scale to the dominating power, the literature produced by natives becomes differentiated and makes itself into a will to particularism. The intelligentsia, which during the period of repression was essentially a consuming public, now themselves become producers. This literature at first chooses to confine itself to the tragic and poetic style; but later on novels, short stories and essays are attempted. It is as if a kind of internal organisation or law of expression existed which wills that poetic expression become less frequent in proportion as the objectives and the methods of the struggle for liberation become more precise. Themes are completely altered; in fact, we find less and less of bitter, hopeless recrimination and less also of that violent, resounding, florid writing which on the whole serves to reassure the occupying power. The colonialists have in former times encouraged these modes of expression and made their existence possible. Stinging denunciations, the exposing of distressing conditions and passions which find their outlet in expression are in fact assimilated by the occupying power in a cathartic process. To aid such processes is in a certain sense to avoid their dramatisation and to clear the atmosphere. But such a situation can only be transitory. In fact, the progress of national consciousness among the people modifies and gives precision to the literary utterances of the native intellectual. The continued cohesion of the people constitutes for the intellectual an invitation to go farther than his cry of protest. The lament first makes the indictment; then it makes an appeal. In the period that follows, the words of command are heard. The crystallisation of the national consciousness will both disrupt literary styles and themes, and also create a completely new public. While at the beginning the native intellectual used to produce his work to be read exclusively by the oppressor, whether with the intention of charming him or of denouncing him through ethnical or subjectivist means, now the native writer progressively takes on the habit of addressing his own people.
Blaxploitation | Celebrity | Colonialism | Comedy | Culture | Entertainment | Oppression | Political Compass | Politics | Popular Culture | Race | Racism | Stand-up Comedy | TV
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Not only CAN it happen, it IS happening here: Anti-Semitic America
In America today, torture is considered acceptable. Detention without due process is considered acceptable. Republican politicians are calling America a "Christian Nation." Mainstream media talk show hosts are telling Jews to "move to Israel" if they don't consider America a Christian nation. In Indiana Republican politicians are telling Jews they don't matter because they only make up 2% of the population. In Seattle a man shoots up the Jewish Federation because he is "mad at Israel." In Delaware a town considers Jews and Muslims unimportant because they are a small minority and when Jews and Muslims complain about (un-Constitutional) Christian prayer in schools and government meetings they are forced to flee the town by threats of mob violence.
Forget Mel Gibson's drunken, anti-Semitic rants. Throughout America anti-Semitism is rampant. In fact, hate crimes against Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, Hispanics, etc. are rampant. Mix this new Culture of Intolerance, routinely fed and encouraged by the Republican Party and its media lapdogs, with the acceptance of torture and detention without due process and you get an America that is walking the path that Germany walked in the 1930's.
American Taliban | Crime | Culture | Ethnic Hatred | Extreme Right | Freedom | Human Rights | Identity | Oppression | Prejudice | Racism | Religion | Terrorism | Violence | White Supremacy
White Parents and Ending Racism
Harshness in parenting. We've seen it across cultures, certainly.
But what is it really? It's a less harsh scenario than what that parent grew up in.
They've managed to lessen the blows they pass on to their young one.
But how?
Through sheer goodness. Through sheer love for their child.
And sheer hatred for what happened to them.
They decided back then, back when it was so hard, to never inflict that same crap--the harshness they found themselves receiving--onto another human being. Ever.
And now you'll hear them lament that they are "just like their mom", "just like their dad."
They aren't.
They are less harsh, less mean--even if only by a fraction. But their parenting lets you get a glimpse of how it was for them as children.
But that stuff happened. And it goes into one's brain like a recording.
It doesn't seem to matter whether I saw someone be mistreated or I was actually mistreated myself. Being that small and mostly unable to stop the unfair and senseless harshness--in whatever form--is a hurt.
And hurts become oppressor patterns down the road. (In the case of POC internalized oppression.)
Unless!
Unless a natural healing process is allowed.
Activism | Children | Emotions | Global Warming | Health | Oppression | Parenting | Prejudice | Race | White Supremacy
The Somalian Taliban: It Begins...
Not too long ago, I discussed the fall of Mogadishu as another sign that Islamic extremists are winning and that the United States under Bush has failed to successfully combat al-Qaeda and it's related groups. One such diary got attention from BBC Radio, which had me on one of their live call-in shows.
Some responses to my fears that Bush's failures are enabling a new, extremist Caliphate in the Muslim world criticized me for being too quick to judge Islam harshly. I take such criticism to heart because my beef is with religious extremists of all kinds and those fools, like Bush, who aid and abet their oppressive, terrorist agendas. I have no beef with any religion in particular or religion in general. It is extremism and terrorism that I object to.
I am sorry to say that my characterization of the Somali Islamic fundamentalist regime as being akin to the Taliban was not unfair. It seems dead on accurate. From Salon.com:
July 05,2006 | MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Radical Islamic militia fighters in Somalia shot and killed two people who were watching a banned World Cup soccer broadcast, a radio station reported Wednesday.
History in the Making | Human Rights | Oppression | Religion | Theocracy
An American Pogrom in Delaware: America as a Christian Nation
I wonder how Joe Lieberman is feeling about his Right Wing Christian extremist buddies these days? And how will this play in Crown Heights where Hassids love the Right Wing Republicans?
Hate Crimes have been on the rise in America since 9/11, and, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, hate groups in America have increased by 33% in the past five years. A peak in attacks on Muslims after 9/11 was rapidly followed by an increase in anti-Semitism in the US and worldwide. There was a slight decline in anti-Semetic incidents in 2005, but incidents are still at disturbingly high levels.
Back in February I reported an incident that, while not a hate crime, was certainly a frightening trend. In Indiana, a prominant politician told a group of Jews that their opinion on the recitation of Christian prayers at legislative sessions didn't matter because they only made up 2% of the population. This is a further sign of the rise of Republican, Christian Taliban in the US.
But now it is pogroms. I use that word carefully. In Delaware, two families, one Jewish the other as yet anonymous, were forced to flee the town due to threatened violence by right wing Christian fanatics who were pushing Christian prayer in school.
American Taliban | Civil Liberties | Civil Rights | Extreme Right | Freedom | Human Rights | Identity | Oppression | Religion | Terrorism | Theocracy | Violence
