Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts

Monday, November 28, 2011

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Sunday, May 15, 2011

freedom riders


Freedom riders were civil rights activists that rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia (of 1960). The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.

Boynton v. Virginia had outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel, but the ICC had failed to enforce its own ruling, and thus Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South.

The Freedom Riders set out to challenge this status quo by riding various forms of public transportation in the South to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement and called national attention to the violent disregard for the law that was used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses.

Most of the subsequent rides were sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), while others belonged to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "Snick"). The Freedom Rides followed on the heels of dramatic sit-ins against segregated lunch counters conducted by students and youth throughout the South and boycotts beginning in 1960.

The United States Supreme Court's decision in Boynton v. Virginia granted interstate travelers the legal right to disregard local segregation ordinances regarding interstate transportation facilities. But the Freedom Riders' rights were not enforced, and their actions were considered criminal acts throughout most of the South. For example, upon the Riders' arrival in Mississippi, their journey ended with imprisonment for exercising their legal rights in interstate travel. Similar arrests took place in other Southern cities.
(read more) (american experience)

Monday, April 4, 2011

burn the house down

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African American civil rights movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.

King is often presented as a heroic leader in the history of modern American liberalism. A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he expanded American values to include the vision of a color blind society, and established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. (read more)

Monday, January 17, 2011

Martin Luther King, Jr.


Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African American civil rights movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. King is often presented as a heroic leader in the history of modern American liberalism.

A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he expanded American values to include the vision of a color blind society, and established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. (read more)

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The De-Humanization Of Mankind


sexism...the oldest form of de-humanization.

racism...came next adding to de-humanization.

war...made the civilian populations combatants.

i'm a number...not a person, indexed, filed, controlled.

bill moyers.....culture of corruption...follow the money.

economic slavery...people are consumers, commodities.

germ warfare...antithesis of humanity...they will kill us all.

citizens united vs F.E.C....corporations get more influence.

indoctrinated...programmed, surveilled, brainwashed, used.

pharma guinea pigs...they don't need rats...they have us now.

engineered terrorism...culture of fear...they instill fear and hate.

they want to give a zygote...full human rights...a cell is not human.

human testing...Operation Whitecoat...Tuskegee...mental patients.

Friday, December 3, 2010

"charlie"


Charles Bernard "Charlie" Rangel (born June 11, 1930) is the U.S. Representative for New York's 15th congressional district, serving since 1971. He is a member of the Democratic Party. As the most senior member, he is the Dean of New York's congressional delegation. In January 2007, Rangel became Chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, the first African-American to do so. He is also a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Rangel enlisted in the United States Army, and served from 1948 to 1952. During the Korean War, he was a member of the all-black 503rd Field Artillery Battalion in the 2nd Infantry Division.

In late November 1950, this unit was caught up in heavy fighting in North Korea as part of the U.N. forces retreat from the Yalu River. In the Battle of Kunu-ri, Rangel was part of a vehicle column that was trapped and attacked by the Chinese Army. In the subzero cold, Rangel was injured by shrapnel from a Chinese shell. Some U.S. soldiers were being taken prisoner, but others looked to Rangel, who though only a private first class had a reputation for leadership in the unit. Rangel led some 40 men from his unit, during three days of freezing weather, out of the Chinese encirclement. Nearly half of the battalion was killed in the overall battle.

Rangel was awarded a Purple Heart for his wounds and the Bronze Star with Valor for his actions in the face of death. His Army unit was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, and three battle stars. In 2000, Rangel reflected with CBS News that

"Since Kunu Ri – and I mean it with all my heart, I have never, never had a bad day."

Rangel later viewed his time in the Army, away from the poverty of his youth, as a major turning point in his life: "When I was exposed to a different life, even if that life was just the Army, I knew damn well I couldn't get back to the same life I had left." After an honorable discharge from the Army with the rank of staff sergeant, he returned home to headlines in The New York Amsterdam News.

Rangel finished high school, completing two years of studies in one year and graduating in 1953. Rangel then received a Bachelor of Science degree from the New York University School of Commerce in 1957, where he made the dean's list. Then, on full scholarship, he obtained his law degree from the St. John's University School of Law in 1960.

Rangel is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African-Americans. He is also a member of the fraternity's World Policy Council, a think tank whose purpose is to expand Alpha Phi Alpha's involvement in politics and social and current policy to encompass international concerns. (read more)

"Charlie"

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Rosa


Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress later called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement".

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks, age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Her action was not the first of its kind. Irene Morgan in 1946, and Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, had won rulings before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Interstate Commerce Commission, respectively, in the area of interstate bus travel. Nine months before Parks refused to give up her seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to move from her seat on the same bus system. In New York City, in 1854, Lizzie Jennings engaged in similar activity, leading to the desegregation of the horsecars and horse-drawn omnibuses of that city. But unlike these previous individual actions of civil disobedience, Parks' action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers. After retirement from this position, she wrote an autobiography and lived a largely private life in Detroit. In her final years she suffered from dementia and became embroiled in a lawsuit filed on her behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast.

Parks eventually received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Her death in 2005 was a major story in the United States' leading newspapers. She was granted the posthumous honor of lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda. (read more)

Friday, August 13, 2010

What's In A Word?

Is it possible for a "Word" to be inherently bad?

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so".(Hamlet, Act II, Scene II)



SCHLESSINGER: Jade, welcome to the program.

CALLER: Hi, Dr. Laura.

SCHLESSINGER: Hi.

CALLER: I'm having an issue with my husband where I'm starting to grow very resentful of him. I'm black, and he's white. We've been around some of his friends and family members who start making racist comments as if I'm not there or if I'm not black. And my husband ignores those comments, and it hurts my feelings. And he acts like --

SCHLESSINGER: Well, can you give me an example of a racist comment? 'Cause sometimes people are hypersensitive. So tell me what's -- give me two good examples of racist comments.

CALLER: OK. Last night -- good example -- we had a neighbor come over, and this neighbor -- when every time he comes over, it's always a black comment. It's, "Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?" And, "Do black people really like doing that?" And for a long time, I would ignore it. But last night, I got to the point where it --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist.

CALLER: Well, the stereotype --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist. No, I think that --

CALLER: [unintelligible]

SCHLESSINGER: No, no, no. I think that's -- well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says -- we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here -- the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, "White men can't jump; I want you on my team." That was racist? That was funny.

CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around --

SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.

CALLER: That isn't --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing. Don't hang up, I want to talk to you some more. Don't go away.

I'm Dr. Laura Schlessinger. I'll be right back.

After taking a commercial break, Schlessinger resumed her discussion with the caller:



SCHLESSINGER: I'm Dr. Laura Schlessinger, talking to Jade. What did you think about during the break, by the way?

CALLER: I was a little caught back by the N-word that you spewed out, I have to be honest with you. But my point is, race relations --

SCHLESSINGER: Oh, then I guess you don't watch HBO or listen to any black comedians.

CALLER: But that doesn't make it right. I mean, race is a [unintelligible] --

SCHLESSINGER: My dear, my dear --

CALLER: -- since Obama's been in office --

SCHLESSINGER: -- the point I'm trying to make --

CALLER: -- racism has come to another level that's unacceptable.

SCHLESSINGER: Yeah. We've got a black man as president, and we have more complaining about racism than ever. I mean, I think that's hilarious.

CALLER: But I think, honestly, because there's more white people afraid of a black man taking over the nation.

SCHLESSINGER: They're afraid.

CALLER: If you want to be honest about it [unintelligible]

SCHLESSINGER: Dear, they voted him in. Only 12 percent of the population's black. Whites voted him in.

CALLER: It was the younger generation that did it. It wasn't the older white people who did it.

SCHLESSINGER: Oh, OK.

CALLER: It was the younger generation --

SCHLESSINGER: All right. All right.

CALLER: -- that did it.

SCHLESSINGER: Chip on your shoulder. I can't do much about that.

CALLER: It's not like that.

SCHLESSINGER: Yeah. I think you have too much sensitivity --

CALLER: So it's OK to say "nigger"?

SCHLESSINGER: -- and not enough sense of humor.

CALLER: It's OK to say that word?

SCHLESSINGER: It depends how it's said.

CALLER: Is it OK to say that word? Is it ever OK to say that word?

SCHLESSINGER: It's -- it depends how it's said. Black guys talking to each other seem to think it's OK.

CALLER: But you're not black. They're not black. My husband is white.

SCHLESSINGER: Oh, I see. So, a word is restricted to race. Got it. Can't do much about that.

CALLER: I can't believe someone like you is on the radio spewing out the "nigger" word, and I hope everybody heard it.

SCHLESSINGER: I didn't spew out the "nigger" word.

CALLER: You said, "Nigger, nigger, nigger."

SCHLESSINGER: Right, I said that's what you hear.

CALLER: Everybody heard it.

SCHLESSINGER: Yes, they did.

CALLER: I hope everybody heard it.

SCHLESSINGER: They did, and I'll say it again --

CALLER: So what makes it OK for you to say the word?

SCHLESSINGER: -- nigger, nigger, nigger is what you hear on HB --

CALLER: So what makes it --

SCHLESSINGER: Why don't you let me finish a sentence?

CALLER: OK.

SCHLESSINGER: Don't take things out of context. Don't double N -- NAACP me. Tape the --

CALLER: I know what the NAACP --

SCHLESSINGER: Leave them in context.

CALLER: I know what the N-word means and I know it came from a white person. And I know the white person made it bad.

SCHLESSINGER: All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Can't have this argument. You know what? If you're that hypersensitive about color and don't have a sense of humor, don't marry out of your race. If you're going to marry out of your race, people are going to say, "OK, what do blacks think? What do whites think? What do Jews think? What do Catholics think?" Of course there isn't a one-think per se. But in general there's "think."

And what I just heard from Jade is a lot of what I hear from black-think -- and it's really distressting [sic] and disturbing. And to put it in its context, she said the N-word, and I said, on HBO, listening to black comics, you hear "nigger, nigger, nigger." I didn't call anybody a nigger. Nice try, Jade. Actually, sucky try.

Need a sense of humor, sense of humor -- and answer the question. When somebody says, "What do blacks think?" say, "This is what I think. This is what I read that if you take a poll the majority of blacks think this." Answer the question and discuss the issue. It's like we can't discuss anything without saying there's -isms?

We have to be able to discuss these things. We're people -- goodness gracious me. Ah -- hypersensitivity, OK, which is being bred by black activists. I really thought that once we had a black president, the attempt to demonize whites hating blacks would stop, but it seems to have grown, and I don't get it. Yes, I do. It's all about power. I do get it. It's all about power and that's sad because what should be in power is not power or righteousness to do good -- that should be the greatest power.

(Richard Pryor & George Carlin)

(Bill Cosby - Prejudice)

Monday, January 18, 2010

Martin Luther King, Jr


"Injustice anywhere

is a threat to justice everywhere"

Martin Luther King Jr.

Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Theocratic Myopia


"This was a portrait of the Republican Party fully in the grip of its right wing: almost exclusively white, overwhelmingly evangelical, fixated on abortion, homosexuality, and abstinence education; resentful and angry; and unable to discuss how and why it had become this way. Noticeably absent from the convention were moderate Republicans. Senator Lincoln Chafee, legatee of the moderate Republican tradition in Rhode Island, was defeated in the 2006 midterms, and he was endorsing Obama. The last Republican House member from New England, Representative Chris Shays of Connecticut, would lose his seat in two months. None of the great Republican families of the past, from the Rockefellers to the Eisenhowers, were there either. Both of Ronald Reagan's natural children, Ron and Patti, endorsed Obama. President Dwight Eisenhower's granddaughter, Susan, addressed the Democratic National Convention in Denver just moments before Barack Obama appeared to accept his party's nomination. How did a party once known for its "big tent" philosophy become a one-ring circus? How did a Republican Party that had dominated American politics for over twenty-five years become so marginalized?" (read more)

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Culture of Fear


The Right's Fringe Festival
The racist, antigay, pro-gun, antichoice, Christian nationalist march on Washington
By Sebastian Jones

September 16, 2009

This Saturday, some 70,000 people marched through downtown Washington, DC. Organizers of the "Taxpayer March on DC" crowed on their website that "thousands of local organizers and grassroots Americans" took to the streets because they've had "enough of the out of control spending, the bailouts, the growth of big government and soaring deficits." Pretty straightforward, bread-and-butter economic conservatism, right?


So imagine my surprise when, having just arrived at the march, I saw a thin, tall, bearded fellow with a boonie cap jogging up Pennsylvania Avenue shouting "White Power!" A few people looked around awkwardly, not sure how to react, but mostly the crowd just moved along. Why wouldn't they, after all, when just a few paces down the road an elderly man was showing off his "McCarthy Was Right!" sign, or when numerous placards compared the president to various genocidal tyrants, or when the most common mass-produced poster (courtesy of an antiabortion group) demanded that we "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy"?


This was only a sampling of the hateful language on display at the rally, which was only tangentially about taxation. More accurately, the event was a FreedomWorks-organized, corporate-funded, Fox News-fueled celebration of every conservative political and cultural cause of the past fifty years. Milling around the crowd, it was impossible to miss the references to issues as disparate as blocking investigations of CIA torture, promoting assault weapons and God "judging" America for homosexuality. Confederate flags were flown, Obama was told to "go back to Kenya," and so forth and so on. The crowd itself was almost exclusively white--and its members had come to get their country back.

(read more)

Monday, September 7, 2009

Subterfuge of Dinosaurs

"Left-wing, chicken-wing, it's all the same to me".....Woody Guthrie.

Why would anyone have contempt for an educated person? I'll tell you why, it's because new information and discoveries have always challenged the beliefs of the past. The evolution of perspective inevitably changes the way we see reality and the world we live in. There are many who take up the mantle of conservatism to protect and insulate themselves and their beliefs from the perceived attack on their reality of the truth. The more extreme fundamentalist conservatives create and promote their own limited views by enshrining them in "legitimate" vehicles such as museums and encyclopedias. So today, for the purpose of shining the light of truth into the darkness of ignorance, I offer but two examples of how this practice can be harmful and dangerous and, dare I say it, specious, subterfuge, deception, dishonesty, etc.

______________________________________________

The website "Conservapedia" is a "copy-cat" online encyclopedia that mimics Wikipedia in order to gain "legitimacy" on the internet.

"The Conservapedia project has come under significant criticism for factual inaccuracies and factual relativism. Conservapedia has been compared to CreationWiki, a wiki written from the perspective of creationism, and Theopedia, a wiki covering the Bible. Some writers have compared it with new conservative websites competing with mainstream ones, such as MyChurch, a Christian version of social networking site MySpace, and GodTube, a Christian version of video site YouTube. The Guardian of the United Kingdom has referred to the Conservapedia's politics as "right-wing".

Thomas Eugene Flanagan, a conservative professor of political science at the University of Calgary, has argued that Conservapedia is more about religion, specifically Christianity, than conservatism and that it "is far more guilty of the crime they're attributing to Wikipedia" than Wikipedia itself. Matt Millham of the military-oriented newspaper Stars and Stripes called Conservapedia "a Web site that caters mostly to evangelical Christians". Its scope as an encyclopedia, according to its founders, "offers a historical record from a Christian and conservative perspective." APC magazine perceives this to be representative of Conservapedia's own problem with bias.

The project has also been criticized for promoting a dichotomy between conservatism and liberalism and for promoting relativism with the implicit idea that there "often are two equally valid interpretations of the facts". Matthew Sheffield, columnist for The Washington Times and contributor to the conservative Media Research Center blog NewsBusters, argued that conservatives concerned about bias should contribute more often to Wikipedia rather than use Conservapedia as an alternative since he felt that alternative websites like Conservapedia are often "incomplete". Author Damien Thompson says Conservapedia "is to dress up nonsense as science".

Allegations of homophobia have also been raised against Conservapedia. Bryan Ochalla, writing for the LGBT ("lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender") magazine The Advocate, referred to the project as "Wikipedia for the bigoted." (read more)

______________________________________________

The "Creation Museum" is a laughable use of the word museum and another example of mimicry to gain a sense of legitimacy. Mimicry can be another form of deception.

"The Creation Museum is a "museum" that presents an account of the origins of the universe, life, mankind, and man's early history according to a literal reading of the Book of Genesis. Its exhibits reject universal common descent, along with most other central tenets of evolution, and assert that the Earth and all of its life forms were created 6000 years ago over a six-day period. In particular, exhibits promote the claim that humans and dinosaurs once coexisted, and dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark. The museum exhibits are at odds with the vast majority of scientists who accept that the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, and that the dinosaurs became extinct 65.5 million years before human beings arose. The museum has generated criticism by the scientific community, several groups of educators, Christian groups opposed to young Earth creationism, and in the general press.

Professor Lord Robert Winston visited the museum and remarked, "I admit I was dismayed by what I saw at the Ken Ham museum. It was alarming to see so much time, money and effort being spent on making a mockery of hard won scientific knowledge. And the fact that it was being done with such obvious sincerity, somehow made it all the worse."

Educators criticizing the museum include the National Center for Science Education. The NCSE collected over 800 signatures from scientists in the three states closest to the museum (Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio) on the following statement: "We, the undersigned scientists at universities and colleges in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, are concerned about scientifically inaccurate materials at the Answers in Genesis museum. Students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level. These students will need remedial instruction in the nature of science, as well as in the specific areas of science misrepresented by Answers in Genesis."

NCSE director Eugenie Scott characterized the Creation Museum as "the Creationist Disneyland." The Guardian called the facility "quite possibly...one of the weirdest museums in the world." Physicist Lawrence Krauss has called on media, educators, and government officials to shun the museum and says that its view is based on falsehoods. Krauss said that the facility is "as much a disservice to religion as it is to science."

The museum has also been criticized by Christians who are not young Earth creationists. Notable among them is geologist Greg Neyman of Answers in Creation, an old earth creationism ministry. Neyman released a press kit dealing with the museum's grand opening in which he said: "They will see the museum, and recognize its faulty science, and will be turned away from the church.

The Rev. Mendle Adams, pastor of St. Peter's United Church of Christ in Cincinnati, Ohio, said it calls into question the whole Christian concept and "makes us a laughing stock." Roman Catholic theologian John Haught sees little merit in the museum, saying it will cause an "impoverishment" of religion. Michael Patrick Leahy, editor of the magazine Christian Faith and Reason, says that by replacing the scientific method with biblical literalism, the museum undermines the credibility of all Christians and makes it easy to represent Christians as irrational.

Lisa Park, a professor of paleontology at University of Akron who is also an Elder in the Presbyterian Church was particularly disturbed by the museums depiction that war, famine and natural disasters are the result of a belief in evolution. She stated: "I think it's very bad science and even worse theology...and the theology is far more offensive to me. I think there's a lot of focus on fear, and I don't think that's a very Christian message...I find it a malicious manipulation of the public."

The museum has also been accused of using 19th century human evolution theories, since refuted, to promote the idea that different human races came from Noah's descendants dispersing after the Confusion of Tongues at the Tower of Babel. In August 2009, more than 300 people part of the Secular Student Alliance took a tour of the venue, along with P.Z. Myers, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Scientists in the group, such as chemist William Watkin, commented about how scientifically wrong the displays are. Myers posted an account of the tour on his blog, including condemning the venue for "promoting the Hamite theory of racial origins, that ugly idea that all races stemmed from the children of Noah, and that black people in particular were the cursed offspring of Ham."

In a March 2007 Newsweek poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, 48% of respondents agreed with the statement "God created humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." According to an ABC news poll, 60% of Americans believe that "God created the world in six days." (read more)

______________________________________________

A warning to those who would attempt to subvert the truth, it will bite you in the end. Perspective cannot be used to change or distort the truth, the truth is, with or without your perspective. There has always existed an age old battle between old and new, liberal and conservative, there is nothing inherently evil about either but both can be usurped. The neo-conservative is a wolf in sheeps clothing, an injured wolf, just like the ultra-liberal, both are extremists dealing in absolutes, both are undesirable. I understand how new and conflicting truths can threaten to destroy an entire life of belief, don't be afraid of the truth. And what of the holdouts? We will have to drag them, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness".....John Kenneth Galbraith.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Art Imitates Life


District 9 earned overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. On the film review website Rotten Tomatoes, it currently holds a "Certified Fresh" rating, with 89% of critics giving it a positive review, with the consensus being, "technically brilliant and emotionally wrenching, District 9 has action, imagination, and all the elements of a thoroughly entertaining science-fiction classic".

Some critics have been ecstatic about the film. Sara Vilkomerson of The New York Observer writes, "District 9 is the most exciting science fiction movie to come along in ages; definitely the most thrilling film of the summer; and quite possibly the best film I've seen all year." Christy Lemire from the Associated Press was impressed by the plot and thematic content, claiming that "District 9 has the aesthetic trappings of science fiction but it's really more of a character drama, an examination of how a man responds when he's forced to confront his identity during extraordinary circumstances." Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum described it as "...madly original, cheekily political, and altogether exciting..."

Friday, August 14, 2009

District 9


Race-ism is prejudice

prejudice is blind

blind-ness is ignorance

ignorance is dangerous