September 4th, 2008
At the Republican National Convention, there are the usual paraphenilia symbolizing the range of ignorance in which participants engage. Basically, to quote a Bush-ism, either you are for us or against us.
Now, granted, education never equates to intelligence or critical thought, but I would halluncinate that if you are going to attack an issue or person or group, you would want to do your research first.
Never is this more evident than the button that read “Jihad This”, essentially giving a repugnant response to a particular Jihad by a faction of Muslims who in engage in the practice of violent jihads. What they missed was, that is only one aspect of Jihad-ism. If they understood the definition of what a Jihad was, they would have never printed that button. Then again, never underestimate the persistance of ignorance. There are those who still believe that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks.
So there we have it, another RNC with blind patriotic fervor, proclaimations of violence masked in strength, and the fear mongering that galvanized a confused nation. Immigrants, gays and lesbians and those foreign and domestic who do not fit this agenda are in their crosshairs.
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August 22nd, 2008
Yes, I have reached four decades of existence on this planet! I thank my better half, my family, friends, colleagues and everyone else who have touched me and I have touched.
1968 was the year I was born, a turbulent period of time. The assasinations of Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy, The Tet Offensive, and many other events occured in that year. Perhaps that was the genesis for who I am today as an artist and activist. What I do know is this: it is 2008, and we still have a LONG way to go.
On this day in 1989, Huey P. Newton was killed in a drug deal gone bad. Here was one the most sholared, progressive and forward thinking human beings in this society. Yet, he fell so far and so hard. Huey is another example of how we need to love, nurture and protect each other, so that none of us will fall through the cracks.
So, if you want to do anything for me on or around my birthday, my request is that you reach out to someone else, someone who is in need, someone who has been struggling, someone you know who is putting on a good face but deep down is really going through something. Give them some love and nurturing and understanding. That would be the best gift you can give to me. It is all about us, and as one goes, we all go.
Many blessings to you and yours, and I hope that you will reach many more milestones in your lives as I have.
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August 22nd, 2008
Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones has died after suffering a brain hemorrhage. She was fifty-eight years old. In 1998 she became the first African American woman to represent Ohio in Congress. She was a leader in the fight against predatory lending practices and advocated for broadening healthcare coverage for low- and middle-income people. In January 2005, she led the fight in the House against certification of President Bush’s re-election, citing voting irregularities in Ohio.
Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones: “I’m duty-bound to follow the law and apply to the law to the facts as I find them, and it is on behalf of those millions of Americans who believe in and value our democratic process and the right to vote, that I put forth this objection today. If they are willing to stand at polls for countless hours in the rain, as many did in Ohio, then I should surely stand up for them here in the halls of Congress. This objection does not have at its root the hope or even the hint of overturning the victory of the President, but it is a necessary, timely and appropriate opportunity to review and remedy the most precious process in our democracy. I raise this objection neither to put the nation in the turmoil of a proposed overturned election, nor to provide cannon fodder or partisan demagoguery for my fellow members of Congress. I raise this objection because I am convinced that we, as a body, must conduct a formal and legitimate debate about election irregularities. I raise this objection to debate the process and protect the integrity of the true will of the people.”
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August 22nd, 2008
Former Chinese leader Hua Guofeng has died at the age of eighty-seven. He took charge of China in 1976 following the death of Mao Zedong. Hua immediately arranged for the arrest of Mao’s most loyal supporters, the Gang of Four, bringing an end to the Cultural Revolution. Hua ruled China for only two years.
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August 22nd, 2008
In Indonesia, prosecutors formally charged a former top intelligence official with the murder of a prominent human rights activist who died of arsenic poisoning during a flight to the Netherlands in 2004. Prosecutors said Muchdi Purwoprandjono, the former deputy chief of Indonesia’s National Intelligence Agency, had assigned an agent to poison Munir Thalib, an outspoken critic of the country’s military. The prosecutor said Munir was killed because he unveiled the kidnapping of thirteen rights activists by an army special force team in 1997 and 1998 when Suharto was in power.
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August 22nd, 2008
In Peru, indigenous rights groups called off more than a week of protests at two key Peruvian energy sites after congressional leaders moved to throw out a controversial land law. The law would have made it easier for mining and energy companies to buy communally owned land. Indigenous groups were concerned this would have led to a foreign land grab, especially in the Amazon rain forest.
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August 22nd, 2008
A federal appeals court in California has ruled airline passengers can challenge their inclusion on the government’s secret no-fly list. The decision was made in the case of a former Stanford University student who was detained and handcuffed in 2005 as she attempted to fly home to Malaysia.
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August 22nd, 2008
A top United Nations agriculture official has warned that the race by food-importing countries to secure farmland overseas to improve their food security risks creating a “neo-colonial” system. The Financial Times reports the warning by Jacques Diouf comes as countries from Saudi Arabia to China plan to lease vast tracts of land in Africa and Asia to grow crops and ship them back to their markets. Diouf said, “The risk is of creating a neo-colonial pact.”
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August 22nd, 2008
In China, two elderly women could face a year of reeducation in a labor camp, because they applied for permits to demonstrate during the Olympics. The Washington Post reports the two women went to Chinese police five times this month to seek approval to protest against officials who evicted them from their homes in 2001. During their fourth attempt to get a protest permit, the women were told they might be ordered to serve a year of time in a reeducation camp for disturbing the public order. Since the start of the Olympics, the Chinese government has yet to permit a single demonstration in any of the three official protest zones in Beijing.
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August 22nd, 2008
House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers has sent letters of inquiry to Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff Lewis Scooter Libby and other former officials. Conyers is investigating a report in Ron Suskind’s new book that the White House ordered the CIA in 2003 to forge a letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein in an attempt to portray a false link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. In his letter to Libby, Conyers wrote to Libby, “I have become very concerned with the possibility that this Administration may have violated federal law by using the resources of our intelligence agencies to influence domestic policy processes or opinion.”
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