"The true man of God sees no man as good or evil,
no man as friend or enemy." Siri Guru Granth Sahib
“When the adversity will hit, the communication will break.
Never break the communication, neither with an enemy nor
with a friend. Keep communicating. That’s what God does.
Just understand. Communication is vibration. Keep vibrating,
but positively. Never listen to negativity.” Yogi Bhajan
THE REMEDY IS COMMUNITY
Communication and Cooperation Works
A robust transparency is necessary at this time in our history.
We pledge to advocate and participate in thoughtful
disagreement.
Therefore our intention is to actively promote diversity and cultural competency, explore issues of color and gender, and inspire people
who have a history of being marginalized, using social media and other
means as platforms to inform various communities of the life experiences
and concerns of marginalized people with regard to the necessity for social
action, dialogue, inclusion, compassion, tolerance, and cultural literacy to
expand and improve human relations going forward, in order to better facilitate
the current worldwide shift in global consciousness from tribalism, instability,
and extremism, to harmony, cooperation and enduring peace. In addition, we
welcome and support other organizations that promote the transformation of
consciousness as taught by spiritual teachers like Guru Nanak Dev and others.
Our vision is to ultimately afford every person in our community
the opportunities to explore the sensitivities of the human spirit to
wit each person is inspired to (a) teach and interact with people while
maintaining an appreciation for their longing for inclusion, the innate longing
to belong within our human nature; (b) respond with compassionate consideration
and sensitivity to those gender equality, racial, cultural, religious, ethnic, economic,
social, psychological, and philosophical differences that exist within most communities.
"Organizations tend to be tribalistic, even incestuous, i.e., when the 'gene pool'
of its members is of just one race. The organization is at risk of being perverted
in its policies and procedures. The obvious remedy is inclusion of 'outsiders'."
Television now in color!
Open dialogue, especially with those with whom we differ,
is an expression of caring, inclusion, tolerance, love, and truth.
See Rules of Conduct. Join the conversation here or call 855-410-2700.
"Diversity is the quality or state of having people who are of different
races or who have different cultures within a group or organization.
Question is are we mature enough to sit down and discuss issues of tribalism, including race, religion, and gender? When there's no
dialogue only one side of any issue is resolved." Hari Singh Bird
"I am White, and as such, my role in ending racial oppression
must be in engaging other White people to join accountable
work for racial justice. Plain and simple." Jamie Utt
"... blocks are keeping you from achieving your potential as
men. If we are not willing to talk about something, how can
we get rid of it?" Siri Singh Sahib of Sikh Dharma 1984
"Are there even occasional conversations between White eyes and Colored eyes regarding the issues of diversity and racism
and their impact and complexities within the American community today?
Issues to do with diversity are not going away just because we deny their
existence, or because they cause us discomfort to discuss." Hari Singh Bird
"As humanity moves into the Age of Space, how will we resonate with Grays and
Greens
when we can't relate to Blacks, Browns and Whites?" ACT For Diversity
"All sanctions, externally applied, are morality." Morality is not an absolute state. It is affected and changed by different cultures, religious beliefs, societies, etc. In some past cultures it was most
immoral to consider having only one husband, for example." Aftab Singh Khalsa
Purpose
The DiversityDialogues.org mission is to afford members of the community the opportunity (see example) to explore the sensitivities of the human spirit to where each person is inspired to (a) teach and interact with people while maintaining a keen appreciation for their longing for inclusion, the innate longing to belong within our human nature; (b) respond with compassionate consideration and sensitivity to those racial, cultural, religious, ethnic, economic, political, social, ethical, psychological, and philosophical differences that exist within every community. Join the conversation here. See Forum Rules of Conduct. See Why Goldman Sachs Encourages Dialogue About Race. See Why Don't Sikh Women Tie Turban? See For The People Of Color.
These people are each different, but they do not represent diversity!
These people are each different, but do they truly represent diversity?
These people are each different, but do they truly represent diversity?
DIVERSITY: The state of having people who are of different races or who are of different cultures in a group or organization: the opposite of uniformity. See Examples.
TRANSPARENCY:The quality of being able to be seen through; or easy to notice or understand; not secretive.
"Tis the Age of Transparency. Be transparent or become irrelevant." Transparency, i.e., intellectual honesty, along with open dialogue exercised without exposing confidential contacts, is essential in order to build trust, and to clarify and resolve conflicted issues. (Truth is transparent. Transparency is truth made manifest.)
Many individuals as well as organizations attempt to act in secrecy. At the same time these entities tend to covertly gather intelligence and work to keep their affairs unknown in an attempt to remain unaccountable.
The U.S. government, National Security Agency (NSA), banks, investment firms, philanthropic organizations, religious institutions, corporate sporting association leagues, like the National Football League (NFL), etc. come to mind. When left unchecked, these organizations tend to become even more opaque, exclusive, even tribal-like.
Posted by Jesus Garcia on Saturday, January 2, 2016
"There needs to be a conversational relationship
between white eyes and colored eyes in America."
Join the conversation!
Bring your passion. Leave your agenda.
Diversity Dialogues MySense
Hari Singh Bird
Sat Nam. Here, a mixed group of Caucasians, Africans, and Asians representing the diversity of faiths pose for a photo in front of a Mosque.
This photo was taken at the Vancouver Avenue, First Baptist Church of Portland, Oregon, at
the time of the Arun Gandhi peace event, which included Native American Cherokee, Hindu,
Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Buddhist, Catholic, and Protestant faiths, and Asians, Browns, Blacks, and
Whites. This is the only Portland church at which Dr. Martin Luther King gave a sermon. (1962)
These photos depict examples of pluralism in which people of different ages, social classes,
religions, races, etc., living together in a community, continue to have their different traditions
or interests in the belief that people of different ethnicity,religions, races, etc., should live
together in society as taught and championed by Guru Nanak, the opposite of tribalism.
Those who are unable to relate to the diversity depicted in this photo are likely
the proponents of tribalism, the social tendency to live in loyalty to a tribe,
social group or gang (hierarchical tribe) especially when combined with a
strong negative attitude toward marginalized people outside the group.
We must all take care that we do not eventually go down the path
of the Taliban and Isis. It all starts with tribalism. According to
the Siri Singh Sahib, religious fanatics are the most fanatic. See Yogi Bhajan On The Subject of Banishment.
We gladly accept all, and we shall exclude none, for after all,
we are the same - we are all One.Guru
Gobind Singh
The temple and the mosque are the same, there is no difference between Hindu worship and Muslim prayer; all human beings are really the same; their differences are illusory.
The Gods, Demons, Yakshas, Gandharvas, Turks and Hindus; come from different countries and seem different because of their garb.
However, their eyes are the same, their ears the same, their bodies are the same and their habits are the same; after all, they are all an admixture of the elements; earth, air, fire and water.
The Allah of Muslims and The Abhekh of Hindus are the same, the Puranas of the Hindus and the holy Quran of the Muslims are the same; all have the same beautiful form and have been created by the One Lord.Guru Gobind Singh from Dehra Masit Soee
We need to pay attention.
We need to get engaged.
We need to practice what we teach.
Sat Nam. Please pay attention my fellow, progressive-thinking Americans.
NPR is less than 10% public (Commons) and 90% corporation-funded. Meet the Press is totally financed by Military contractors (Boeing/Lockheed-Martin) and owned by NBC, which is corporation-owned by General Electric (another military contractor). Companies, which are carried by Whole Foods and your local cooperative are now owned by larger fish. Coke owns Honest Tea, Garden Burger is owned by Kellogg, Boca Burger by Kraft (Philip-Morris), Nestle owns Power Bar, Kettle Chips is owned by Frit-Lay (Lays Potato), Golden Temple Granola/Peace Cereals (Post). Life has changed not for the better in the past 50 years.
When this money controls politics and influences elections, we are no longer a Democratic Republic but something else. "We the People" need to be engaged, we need to pay attention, we need to be actively involved.
So for those who are upset by NBC Anchor man, Brian Williams, embellishing a 'war' story, remember he was embedded with the soldiers. The Pentagon controlled what reporting was done.
Strategies for Authentic Race,
Class, and Gender Discussions
February 5, 2015 --At EduCon 2.7 this year in Philadelphia, a group of us held our second annual "Privileged Voices in Education" conversation. Last year's conversation, moderated by prolific edtech ombudswoman Audrey Watters and me, sparked a series of discussions about the various ways in which race, gender, and class play into who gets to call themselves an expert, who gets to go to conferences, and whose experiences are often dismissed as a result.
This year, I moderated a similar conversation with edtech expert and parent Rafranz Davis, and the crowd felt readier to have these delicate topics come to the fore. Last year and this year, many attendees raved about the conversation we had. They came out feeling either relieved or energized, and, in some instances, both. Each time, we the presenters came minimally prepared, but with our hearts open, hoping to glean as much as we could from others and bring some of our private conversations to light.
An Environment for Asking and Listening
"Discourse about racism is not meant to stir up
feelings of guilt, it is meant to drive people to
action against injustice." -- MySikhSense.com
When we speak of empathy, what tools do we have that make our interactions more powerful, especially when issues of race, class, and gender come up?
Early and often, the keys to successful conversations start and end with empathy, but feeling something can't be enough. Here are some of the ways in which I prepare for these discussions.
1. Agreements as Environment
Fortunately for us, EduCon's values and mission help bring together folks who adhere to the ideas of inquiry and progressive education. We get to lightly remind the folks in the room that this is the lens from which we spark the conversation. Even in the most challenging moments, we can debate without losing that sense of humanity. Of course, not everyone works the way Science Leadership Academy does, which means that protocols are not only suggested, but necessary. Coming up with some group norms certainly works, but having an entire system of group norms and approaches works best, the way a code of conduct at edtech conferences helps women feel safer in these spaces. Setting up norms protects the voiceless more so than the most empowered.
2. Questioning Skills Aren't Just for Students
The best and worst thing about the internet is the speed at which we receive information. Sometimes, this means that we can connect with awesome folks across the country who can change the ways in which we operate. Other times, this means that we connect with folks in more adversarial ways, understanding that the person on the other side of the conversation doesn't truly want to form a relationship (this is usually when we float around the word "troll").
Yet with most interactions, my most powerful online and offline tool is to slow things down and truly understand the other person's point of view. Usually, this looks like a series of questions that either inform my thinking or push harder on the other folks as well. In asking these questions, I can listen for intent as well as message. If the conversation builds into something more productive, that's a win for both of us.
If the conversation dovetails into something more derogatory, that's a lesson in and of itself. The questions usually start off impersonally, pointing less at the person who's asking them and more at the facts and opinions informing the other person in the conversation. Eventually, personal experiences come to the fore, but it's best to wait a few moments to get into the personal elements of the conversation.
3. Active Listening (Silence Can Empower)
In both of the aforementioned big discussions that we had at EduCon, the moderators did their best to keep conversation going without much input from us except at the beginning and end. We sometimes lightly threw questions at everyone to help them think, but otherwise, we found it most powerful to quiet ourselves. After both conversations, folks questioned why we stood so silent, suggesting that we should have spoken more.
Whenever this comes up, I also think back to my classroom and wonder, "Well, how does that help you if I'm doing all the talking?"
With people in different stages of learning all in one room, active listening is a powerful tool for navigating these spaces, even more so in a roomful of adults. As facilitators, we stood up there picking different voices to contribute to the conversation. It shouldn't always be same people speaking up in these conversations, regardless of their vantage point. Finding others to speak up empowers everyone to keep contributing. By the same token, some folks might over-share, and helping to steer them toward collective conversation creates a much-needed balance for all participants in the room, whether on or offline.
Active listening means picking up on central ideas and themes in the conversation, rephrasing for deeper meaning, and asking others what they thought about said ideas. When people don't do any one of these things, struggle ensues, and we miss out on creating an engaging environment for delicate, challenging conversations. At the same time, active listening and staying silent in these moments challenges others to collectively come up with answers. As moderators, by not interjecting our opinions, we put the onus on the other participants to deal with the problems under discussion.
The Wrap-Up
At the end of the conversations, whether on or offline, it's critical to leave people with tangible, actionable steps. Sometimes, the “tangible thing” means providing resources (see Rethinking Conversations on Race Among Educators). It can also mean finding something that a school can do to create a better discipline policy for their students. The best moderator is one who can also pull together the resources and next steps that will keep the conversation growing.
These conversations shouldn't end when the facilitator says, "Thank you all." Instead, these conversations should be where the learning begins. --
Please help me raise awareness and propose the Edmund Pettus bridge, which spans the Alabama River, be renamed to honor Viola Gregg Liuzzo. Anyone you know who cares about justice and equality and would like our Nation to heal from its racist and violent past, please spread the word. Read on.
"Viola Liuzzo (1925-1965) was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan on the last night of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March. She is the only White woman honored at the Montgomery Civil Rights Memorial. Remembered primarily for the atmosphere of scandal surrounding her death, she is considered the most controversial of the civil-rights martyrs.
By 1965 Liuzzo was a 39-year-old, middle-class Detroit housewife and mother of five. After her youngest child started school, she enrolled as a part-time student at Wayne State University and was inspired by returning students' reports about the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project to register Black voters. In March 1965, she participated in sympathy marches to demonstrate solidarity with Blacks in Selma, Alabama, who were planning a pilgrimage to the state capitol to support passage of a federal voting-rights bill.
On March 7, 1965, Liuzzo watched news broadcasts of state troopers armed with billy clubs and tear gas attack 600 demonstrators crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their way to Montgomery. Civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. called off the attempt and issued a national appeal for Americans to come to Selma, join the marchers, and help them try again. Liuzzo and 25,000 other Americans answered his call.
For five days, Liuzzo worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) transportation service ferrying marchers between Selma and Montgomery. On March 25, she and Leroy Moton, a 19-year-old local Black activist, headed to Montgomery to pick up the last group of demonstrators waiting to return to Selma. While stopped at a traffic light in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, at 7:37 p.m., they were spotted by four Klansmen who, according to the later testimony of one of them, had spent the day seeking an opportunity to kill King.
When they saw the White Liuzzo driving a car with Michigan plates after dark with a Black man in her passenger seat, they decided to attack them instead. The Klansmen hoped that this would send a clear message about White supremacy to Northern Whites, Southern Blacks, and like-minded liberals. Engaging Liuzzo in a high-speed chase on Highway 80, they pulled alongside her car about 20 miles outside of Selma and fired. Liuzzo was killed instantly and Moton, covered in her blood, escaped by pretending to be dead.
The Edmund Pettus Bridge is a bridge that carries U.S. Route 80 across the Alabama River in Selma, Alabama. Built in 1940, it is named for Edmund Winston Pettus,* a former Confederate brigadier general and U.S. Senator from Alabama and Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. The bridge is a steel-through-arch bridge with a central span of 250 feet (76 m). The Pettus Bridge is widely known as the site of the conflict of Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965, when armed officers attacked peaceful civil rights demonstrators attempting to march to the state capital of Montgomery. The death of Ms. Liuzzo took place after the second march on the Edmund Pettus bridge just outside Selma. (See Selma, the movie.)
Protestors cross the Edmund Pettus bridge just outside Selma March, 1965
*Edmund Winston Pettus was born in Limestone County, Alabama, to John Pettus and Alice Taylor Winston in 1821. He graduated from a public high school and attended Clinton College. He then went on to Tuscumbia, Alabama, to study law and was admitted into the state's bar association in 1842. In 1844 he was elected to serve in the seventh Judicial Circuit of Alabama as a solicitor. From 1847-1849 he served as a lieutenant with the Alabama Volunteers during the Mexican–American War. From 1854 he served as a judge in the seventh Judicial Circuit of Alabama, until resigning in 1858. After resigning as judge he went back to Selma, Alabama where he went back to practicing law. Following the outbreak of the American Civil War he served with the 20th Regiment Alabama Infantry, eventually attaining the rank of brigadier general in 1863 and being assigned a command in the Army of Tennessee. Following the war he resumed his law practice in Selma. At that time he also led the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. He was residing in Selma when he was elected as a United States Senator from Alabama in 1897 and 1903. He died in 1907." -- Source.
Again, I am proposing that the Bridge be renamed due to the nature of the crime, from its original name in honor of a known 'White racist' named Edmund Pettus to that honoring a 'White' woman whose life was snuffed out by members of that very organization (the KKK), of which he at one time was Grand Wizzard in the State of Alabama.
In 2013, the bridge was named a "National Landmark". There are those who say the name cannot be changed but I propose that interested parties make contact with the White House and U.S. Congressman John Lewis, who was present on the Freedom Rides of 1961 and again at the Selma March during the brutal beatings by the Selma police and the Alabama state police on 'Bloody Sunday" in 1965, on behalf of the name change.
Another example of a National Landmark, which was declared sacred at one time to many Americans is in Hardin, Montana. Its a battlefield site where two cultures clashed in 1876. This National monument was declared by the Truman Administration as the "Custer Battlefield Park".
So my proposal has to go to many channels. It needs to go to high places, but using the internet and social Media will expedite the speed of awareness across the nation.
I have written to Thom Hartmann and Mark Thompson, and attempted to post on Oprah Winfrey's FB page. I have posted on John Legend and "Common", noted Rapper and collaborator of "Glory", the award winning song written by him and Legend. I have also tried to reach U.S. Congressman John Lewis.
If anyone has any ideas to facilitate this, I welcome them. Please help by posting it to your FB, Twitter account, personal BLOG, or by letting others know of the idea.
The inspiration for this came when I heard a 63 year daughter of Ms. Liuzzo speak on Monday, January 19, 2015 (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day). She spoke very strongly and I was moved. She told how the FBI maligned her mother and how she had to resort to the "Freedom of Information Act" to retrieve archives and statements made by FBI agents as well as J. Edgar Hoover.
Thank you for considering to help make this a reality!
Sat Nam. As a human being and a Sikh of the Guru I feel empathy for all victims of hate crimes. Sikhs have also suffered many incidents of torture, mutilation, hangings and death at the hands of hateful people of the Mughal, British, Indian and now American cultures.
This has taken place for 350 years since the time of our Guru's. In the U.S., slavery and Apartheid have existed since the 1600's. There are parallels. But here's where the petal meets the road. The 10th Guru established the Khalsa to stand out and stand up. I've seen very little of that since 1984. Many Indian immigrants have migrated to the West (Britain-Canada-U.S.) and many men have shaven, cut their Kesh, wear baseball hats and used Anglo-nicknames instead of the name blessed by the Guru.
I understood this 30 years ago, I feel its an excuse today. We speak of U.S. born adopted, so-called White Sikhs who donned the turban, grew their beards, even took Amrit who have left Dharmic life and whose children have taken similar actions. Well, Siri Singh Sahibji once said, speaking to the 'White Sikhs':
"You can always cut your hair, take off your turban and quit. No Black can do that. He stands out and cannot take the 'color' of his or her skin off." This is White Privilege!
So what I've seen and experienced here in the U.S. over the past 50 years, Blacks are the only group who were organized, non-violent and dedicated to Civil and Human Rights. Whites even followed and joined later, but it was the oppressed descendants of Slavery who lead the way. Watch the film - The Great Debaters, based on true story of young Blacks growing up in Texas in the 1930s who would end up debating the Harvard Debate Team in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The "Massacre of Amritsar" is referenced not by the 'White privileged' Harvard students but by descendants of slavery!
I come from both worlds. The world of the 1950s-60s as an American, I am of White privilege but I keep my Kesh, my Daastar, my Beard and my commitment, knowing that as a Sikh, I am obligated to fight for the oppressed and to walk the path of Equality and Justice.
So as we hope Justice will come to the victims of the post-1984 attacks on Sikhs in India, we see injustice happening today in New York, Missouri, Ohio, Michigan to African American males killed by police, too. Innocent, unarmed Black boys are murdered by the very people sworn to serve and protect.
I'll bet if we taught yoga in prisons to young Black men, and they learned of Sikh history, this would inspire them, too! But, except for M.S.S. Krishna Kaur, we no longer do this. As far as I know, we offer no organized prison class programs.
I agree with Hari Singh, African American men and women would naturally be attracted to the Healthy, Happy, Holy lifestyle as many White hippies were 50 years ago. The difference is if there was real diversity and equality within 3HO and Sikh Dharma, they would find a home and take leadership roles in their respective communities. And most of them wouldn't hide as their White counterparts have in the past. Why?Because they can't. -- See What Diversity Is. See What Diversity Is Not.
Diversity Dialogues
MySense
Ravitej Singh Khalsa
Sat Nam. In regard to the Fareed Zakaria posting, look how many deaths have occured between the Shiites and Sunnis. Far more than any terrorist campaigns. And the Middle East has been doing the same things for 4,000 years. Nothing new. The only thing that is new is global and instant news coverage.* And the whole world loving to watch yet another soap opera. And “spin” is nothing new. Been changing history and stories for 15,000 years. What is the reality?
Do you watch television? The shows of Shonda Rymes? Where there is no color line. And heroes and villains alike come in all colors and shades. The Evening News with color, shapes, age and orientation represented. Public television news' Grand Dame is a stout woman of color. That is what the new Gens are watching. And not seeing colors or shades. Or if they do, thinking how nice of a color that actor or actress is. It’s just the Piscean that really cares. And it’s time for that to simply die off. Armageddon time.
The old dies and the new lives differently. Guru Gobind Singh said 960 million there will be. New yoga students and teachers from the Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan tradition fast filling up that number. That’s all I care about. The future. The past is already dead. We just have to let the old skin shuck off. And it is in the numbers. More brown people everywhere in the media. Lots of them. Just have to watch a little TV to understand it’s all changing.
3HO/Sikh Dharma has to learn to keep up or be left out. That’s just the way it is for everyone -- equal opportunity. Do or die. Simple. When Siri Chand Singh was interviewed the YOUNG Punjabi Sikhs thought he was so cool. When the Black women in Texas became a Sikh so many Punjabi’s texted on her Facebook. They loved her. What does that say? It’s all happening anyway. And nothing will stop it. No matter the posturing and campaigning, the Piscean age is going to die. Easily or miserably. Gracefully or regretfully. With honor or fear. At each other, with each other, or for each other. Your choice. --
*Editor's Note: It has been said that you will see everything twice if you live long enough.
"Sunshine is the best remedy for dirty laundry." Inder Jeet Singh
"Looking at the one and only Black Family native to SDI/3HO/KRI
after 50 years from my perspective as a person of color I have to
ask, why are there so few Black Families? How many White Families
vs. Black Families are there after 50 years? Oh sure, there are a few
African-Americans, but they are disproportionately represented.
Think about the optics from the perspective of most people of color.
Do people of color see this disparity as a positive or as a negative?
And how many Black Kundalini Yoga teachers-trainers are there?
Isn't it time for there to be some serious mixed-race adult dialogue?
The key indicator that organizations have come of age is when
they advocate open dialogue on issues with marginalized people.
BTW: When asked if one Black Family after 50 years is an issue
of concern, some Sikh Dharma ministers agreed. But when asked
why the issue is never discussed, they were unable to answer.
Discourse is not meant to stir up feelings of guilt. Discourse is
meant to drive people to action against injustice. Question is
are we mature enough to sit down and discuss issues
of tribalism, including race, religion, and gender?" Note: Nobody has yet responded to questions.
Diversity Dialogues
MySense
Ravitej Singh Khalsa
Re: Keeping In Mind The Numbers
Sat Nam. Medical errors? My son has a prescription, and I called about its renewal to the medical center. They prepared same and had it ready...for the entirely incorrect medication, which would have been consequential. (See Previous Post.)
Always read prescriptions carefully.* And understand what the medication is supposed to be. The medical provider we go to has cut staff considerably. And those remaining are vastly overworked.
This is an issue with everything. Understaffing to feed the upper levels more profits and bonuses. The concept of 1% getting everything filters down little.
If one goes back to recent or ancient Feudal systems the same is found. And the 1% has always had access to the best current medicine. And the serfs little or no access.
Those wanting the Piscean Age to continue are working so hard to make it so. Bringing back a Feudal system is one of the ways.
The current GOP simply wants the feudal system and will do anything to achieve it. With no conscience or consciousness. --
‘France Tries To Mask Its Islamophobia Behind Secular Values'
Pakistan-born British commentator Tariq Ali seldom minces words.
As a political activist, journalist, writer and film-maker, he has courted
controversy and ruffled many feathers. But over the years he has also built up
a huge base of followers and admirers much beyond London, where he stays
The firebrand leader of the 1960s campus movement, now all of 71, shows
no signs of mellowing with age. In this interview with Pranay Sharma, he
charateristically refuses to pull any punches, while talking of the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, the Islamophobia in the West and the ‘double
standards’ Europe adopts while talking about ‘freedom of expression’.
January 26, 2015 --The killing at Charlie Hebdo last week has led to worldwide condemnation while emphasising on the threat posed by radical Islam on France and other Western democracies. How justified is that fear?
It has been going on since 9/11. The West refuses to address the causes. Any attempt to explain why is usually denounced and so it becomes civilisational, or good versus evil, or free speech versus barbarism. The fact is that the West has reoccupied the Arab world with disasters in Syria, Iraq and Libya where things are much worse than under the previous authoritarian regimes. This is the prime cause of the radicalisation of young Muslims. The Left is in a bad way or seen as part of the problem, so they go to the mosque, search for hardline solutions and are eager to be used by jehadis.
What is the context in which the Paris killing should be seen?
As I described above but vis-a-vis France, these guys were a pure product of French society. Unemployed, long-haired, into drugs, alienated till they saw footage of U.S. torture and killings in Iraq.
So you think Western interventionist policies in the Arab and Muslim world are responsible for radicalisation of sections of Muslims in Europe and the United States?
In my opinion, one hundred per cent.
How serious is Islamophobia in France and other European countries?
France is the worst in Europe and tries to mask it by proclaiming its secular values (sound familiar?), but these values don’t apply to Islam. In fact, French secularism means anything but Islam. And when satirical magazines taunt them, they react. It’s as simple as that.
Do you see this as a clash of liberal, Western values against conservative, fundamentalist ideas?
No. I think democracy is on the decline in the West. Ruling parties are the same: neoliberalism at home and wars abroad. There is a volatility that I have not seen in Europe since the ’60s and ’70s. This time it’s born out of despair, not hope, except in Greece and Spain, where new alternatives are emerging. Asyriza (the radical left party) victory in Athens on January 25 would be a small step forward.
How should the idea of secularism in France be seen? Is mocking religious beliefs of others a key element of it?
It is, but it’s concentrated on Islam, a tiny bit on Catholicism, while Judaism is usually left well alone. Why not show Moses regularly gang raping Palestinian men and women? Just as an idea.
As a political activist, author and journalist, how do you see the idea of ‘freedom of expression’ in Europe and other Western societies? Don’t they have ‘red lines’, which should not be crossed?
Of course they do. The press in most of Europe today has very clear lines. The diversity has gone and the bulk of the media are an essential pillar of what I have called the ‘extreme centre’ -- the ruling bloc in Europe. The uniform way in which the Euro-American liberal media attacked the Bolivarian governments was one indication. The defence of neoliberalism and wars is another. The virtual exclusion of dissenting voices is common to most of the media. Even Germany has seen a decline and The Guardian in Britain has witnessed a coup on its op-ed pages. The (Julian) Assange and (Edward) Snowden stories were handed to them on a gold plate, but there is now a backlash, and self-congratulations on Snowden will not suffice.
Some key players at Charlie Hebdo were part of the ‘Street Fighting Years’ of 1968. What do you have to say about the way they evolved?
They evolved sharply to the right, like French society as a whole. A friend of mine recently wrote: “...did I ever tell you that Cabu gave me my first job when I was still at the lycee? For five months I was at Le Canard Enchaine; that was in the late ‘80s... Then he relaunched Charlie Hebdo and I joined him for a while, but I never felt at ease with this team and I broke off with them during the war in Yugoslavia (obviously Charlie was in favour of the NATO intervention) and I moved to London... Then by the late ‘90s Charlie became definitely a right-wing fanzine, always trying to please the establishment and in favour of ALL the colonial wars.... Cabu was an anarcho libertaire and Wolinski was not a bad bloke (a real artist)...the last time I saw him was many years ago at a stand at la fete de l’Humanite...always in solidarity with Cuba...” That was a long time ago. The only decent daily paper of record in France is the online Mediapart, which exposes graft and corruption in high places and is feared by the establishment.
While hundreds of thousands came out to join the rally against the Paris killing, there was hardly any protest visible on the death of 2,000 people at the hands of Boko Haram in Nigeria. What are the reasons for that?
Blacks killing Blacks never bothers Europe. It’s a long tradition. The Belgian rulers killed between 10-12 million Congolese in the early 19th century. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a pamphlet denouncing the atrocities (Conrad wrote a novel) and there was a solidarity movement of sorts, but limited. Nowadays, the killings and drone attacks in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, AfPak are so common that the haramis of Boko Haram are used to show(ing) barbarism but not too much else... Nigeria’s leader, Goodluck Jonathan, has a lot to answer for as well.
But the attitude that we talk about in France and other European countries is not against Muslims alone, it is against immigrants in general. Will this play an important role in the coming elections in the UK?
True, but Islamophobia is rife all over the continent and has to be distinguished from hostility to immigrants or the Roma who have been in Europe for over a thousand years! In Britain, the campaign mounted by the racist UK Independent Party is concentrated against European migration (Poles, Romanians, Albanians etc) and is part of their anti EU stance. The extreme-centre parties are pandering to UKIP in the most shameless fashion. --
People around the world were outraged at the barbarous ISIS immolation of a Jordanian pilot in Syria last week by Islamic extremists. But Christian extremists in America have a history of similar barbarism, which President Obama reminded attendees at a prayer breakfast, February 5, 2015. Read on.
Diversity Dialogues
MySense
Bill Moyers
"Jesse Washington was just one Black man to
die horribly at the hands of White death squads."
February 6, 2015 -- They burned him alive in an iron cage, and as he screamed and writhed in the agony of hell they made a sport of his death.
After listening to one newscast after another rightly condemn the barbaric killing of that Jordanian air force pilot at the bloody hands of ISIS, I couldn’t sleep. My mind kept roaming the past trying to retrieve a vaguely remembered photograph that I had seen long ago in the archives of a college library in Texas.
Suddenly, around two in the morning, the image materialized in my head. I made my way down the hall to my computer and typed in: “Waco, Texas. Lynching.”
Sure enough, there it was: the charred corpse of a young Black man, tied to a blistered tree in the heart of the Texas Bible Belt. Next to the burned body, young White men can be seen smiling and grinning, seemingly jubilant at their front-row seats in a carnival of death. One of them sent a picture postcard home: “This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe.”
The victim’s name was Jesse Washington. The year was 1916. America would soon go to war in Europe “to make the world safe for democracy.” My father was twelve, my mother eight. I was born 18 years later, at a time, I would come to learn, when local White folks still talked about Washington’s execution as if it were only yesterday. This was not medieval Europe. Not the Inquisition. Not a heretic burned at the stake by some ecclesiastical authority in the Old World. This was Texas, and the White people in that photograph were farmers, laborers, shopkeepers, some of them respectable congregants from local churches in and around the growing town of Waco.
Here is the photograph (with spectators in the tree, left).
Take a good look at Jesse Washington’s stiffened body tied to the tree. He had been sentenced to death for the murder of a White woman. No witnesses saw the crime; he allegedly confessed but the truth of the allegations would never be tested. The grand jury took just four minutes to return a guilty verdict, but there was no appeal, no review, no prison time. Instead, a courtroom mob dragged him outside, pinned him to the ground, and cut off his testicles. A bonfire was quickly built and lit. For two hours, Jesse Washington — alive — was raised and lowered over the flames. Again and again and again. City officials and police stood by, approvingly. According to some estimates, the crowd grew to as many as 15,000. There were taunts, cheers and laughter. Reporters described hearing “shouts of delight.”
When the flames died away, Washington’s body was torn apart and the pieces were sold as souvenirs. The party was over.
Many years later, as a young man, I visited Waco’s Baylor University, often referred to as the Texas Baptist Vatican. I had been offered a teaching position there. I sat for a while in the school’s Armstrong Browning Library, one of the most beautiful in America, containing not only the works of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the acclaimed Victorian poets, but also stained glass windows, marble columns, and elegant ceilings that bring to mind the gorgeous interior of Michelangelo’s Laurentian library in Florence.
Sitting there, I found it hard to reconcile the beauty and quiet of that sanctuary with the photograph that I had been shown earlier by a man named Harry Provence, publisher of the local newspaper. Seeing it, I realized that as young Jesse Washington was being tortured, students his own age, some of them studying for the ministry, were just finishing their spring semester. In 1905, when another Black man had been lynched in Waco, Baylor’s president became a leader of the anti-lynching movement. But ugly memories still divided the town.
Jesse Washington was just one Black man to die horribly at the hands of White death squads. Between 1882 and 1968 — 1968! — there were 4,743 recorded lynchings in the U.S. About a quarter of them were White people, many of whom had been killed for sympathizing with Black folks. My father, who was born in 1904 near Paris, Texas, kept in a drawer that newspaper photograph from back when he was a boy of thousands of people gathered as if at a picnic to feast on the torture and hanging of a Black man in the center of town. On a journey tracing our roots many years later, my father choked and grew silent as we stood near the spot where it had happened.
Yes, it was hard to get back to sleep the night we heard the news of the Jordanian pilot’s horrendous end. ISIS be damned! I thought. But with the next breath I could only think that our own barbarians did not have to wait at any gate. They were insiders. Home grown. Godly. Our neighbors, friends, and kin. People like us. -- Source.
The Birth of a Nation Centennial
February 7, 1915-2015
Sat Nam. I just breezed through this horrific stereotype film on post Civil War South. All the "Negroes" in the film are "Black shoe polished" White actors, including the women. The heroes are the White robed and masked Klu Klax Klan who save the day. What is the difference between ISIS and KKK? Both wear masks. They, of course, do not represent the majority of Christians or Muslims. They are corrupted fanatics, mostly males, who are reacting to what they perceive to be persecution. They react by recruiting others who have this insecure mentality, and then they TERRORIZE others to legitimize their cause.
Does anyone in America THINK 'Christianity' when they see or remember the horrors of KKK terror? Why not see ISIS as Islam's "KKK"? Both are 'cults', death cults, who call themselves something we all know they are NOT? Do you think it's because only Brown and Black people are seen as terrorists by Whites.
You have to feel inferior and insignificant if your view is that Christianity is the only true religion, and Jesus is the only true Messiah or Savior of mankind, i.e., 'all others' (infidels) are evil, and all that's evil stems from that.
Thanks Mr. President for starting the dialogue, again. It's time America faced itself and heals from its wrongful acts of terror on both Native-Americans and African-Americans.
The Birth of a Nation is a silent film, banned by the NAACP and used as recruitment by KKK. Propaganda is propaganda, whether it's D.W. Griffith's KKK's, the Nazi's Goebbels, or ISIS, in 2015.
Maybe that's the problem, it was a "silent film" and we have kept silent until now. --
The Birth of A Nation
More about The Birth of a Nation
The Birth of a Nation was on the AFI, American Film Institute, list of Greatest American Films of All Times until 2007. Source.
The conventional wisdom about The Birth of a Nation is that it represents an impressive and innovative display of cinematic skill that was unfortunately wasted on a story that promotes a bizarre and disturbing point of view. While that is certainly true in a general way, it might also be something of an oversimplification.
It really is almost like two different movies. The first part, which takes place in the era before and during the Civil War, contains little objectionable material, and it deserves praise both technically and for the acting. The second part, set in the reconstruction era, contains almost all of the disturbing material, and it also is really not all that great in terms of cinematic quality.
Then also, the degree to which The Birth of a Nation may have influenced the development of cinema has very likely been overstated . The controversy that it generated may very well have helped it to remain better known than other films of the era that were equally innovative and/or lavish, or nearly so.
If the movie had ended shortly after the memorable and well-crafted Ford's Theater scene, the anti-war sentiment and similar themes would remain the main focus, since the effects of war on families and individuals is depicted convincingly and thoughtfully. In that case, its occasional lapses would possibly at the worst be called "dated", given the quality of the rest of this part of the movie.
The second half, though, is completely unfortunate in almost every respect. Not only does it promote a distorted viewpoint, but the story becomes labored, and the characters lose their depth and become more one-dimensional. The purely technical side, such as the photography and the use of cross-cutting, might still be good, but much of the rest of it loses its effectiveness.
Perhaps more importantly, it really seems rather difficult to justify the credit that this one film gets in the development of cinema. There had already been numerous feature-length movies, and most of the techniques that Griffith used were also in use by others. He may well have been ahead of the pack in terms of appreciating their possibilities, but that does not mean that cinema would not have developed as it did without this particular movie.
Just as one example, the Italian epic "Cabiria", from the previous year, has the same kind of lavish scale, is quite resourceful in its techniques, and is quite entertaining, without causing so much controversy.
Other early feature-length films also include some creative efforts to adapt film-making techniques to longer running times and more complex stories. Finally, many short features from the pre-Griffith era experimented with the same kinds of techniques that he later would use systematically. There's no denying Griffith's considerable technical skill, but others of the era also deserve some credit, even if they and their works were less controversial, and are now largely forgotten as a result. -- Source.
Sat Nam. Reading Bill Moyer's story above reminds me, what goes around comes around.
Lest we forget, the Islamic extremism we see reported in today's news we've seen before, just like we've seen Christian extremism before. It doesn't matter how long ago or how recently. Racism, murder and violence are not the true core concepts of any world religion. Christianity has been hijacked previously just as Islam has, and it can easily happen, again. The fact is all religious movements have their extremist elements. Check out the history. Google it. Also, check out The Signs of Kali Yuga.
There's an old saying that, you're bound to see everything at least twice if not more, if you live long enough. The Earth, the Cosmos, transits through repetitive cycles of Yugas / Epochs / Eras / Ages that happen over eons of time. What goes around comes around. Check out the following report in the news, today. --
Jim Crow lynchings more widespread
than first thought, report concludes.
February 10, 2015, Lauren Gambino, reporter at the Guardian U.S. in New York. --- In 1931, the Alabama governor called the National Guard to the Scottsboro jail to protect a group of young Black men who he believed might be lynched after being accused of raping two White girls.
In 1919, a Black soldier returned home to Blakely, Georgia, having survived the horrors of the First World War only to face the terrors of a White mob that awaited him in the Jim Crow-era South. When the soldier, William Little, refused to remove his army uniform, the savage mob exacted their punishment.
Little was just one of 3,959 African Americans who were brutally and often publicly killed across the Southern states between the end of the Reconstruction era and the Second World War, which is at least 700 more lynchings in these states than previously recorded, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). The authors’ inventory of the nearly 4,000 victims of what the report calls “terror lynchings” reveals a history of racial violence more extensive and more brutal than initially reported.
Many of the victims were, like Little, killed for minor transgressions against segregationist mores – or simply for demanding basic human rights or refusing to submit to unfair treatment. And though the names and faces of many who were lynched have slipped from the pages of history, their deaths, the report argues, have left an indelible mark on race relations in America.
“The trauma and anguish that lynchings and racial violence created in this country continues to haunt us and to contaminate race relations and our criminal justice system in too many places across the country,” it concluded.
The report, titled Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, is the result of nearly five years of investigation by EJI, a nonprofit organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, into lynchings that occurred in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950. It explores how the legacy of racial inequality in America was shaped and complicated by these violent decades, which saw thousands of African American men, women and children killed by “terror lynchings”, horrific acts of violence inflicted on racial minorities.
The sites of nearly all of these killings, however, remain unmarked in what the report calls an “astonishing absence of any effort to acknowledge, discuss or address” the violence that occurred. The authors make the case that the country cannot fully heal from this painful chapter of its history until it acknowledges the devastation that this era created and the residual effects of these acts.
Bryan Stevenson, the director of EJI, said the organization plans to erect monuments, memorials and markers in the communities where the lynchings took place, as a way of piercing the silence and starting a conversation.
Acknowledging the hardships he faces in getting the funding and approval to build the markers, not to mention the controversy that will almost certainly ensue, Stevenson said the process will force communities to reckon with the vicious history of racial violence.
“We want to change the visual landscape of this country so that when people move through these communities and live in these communities, that they’re mindful of this history,” Stevenson said. “We really want to see truth and reconciliation emerge, so that we can turn the page on race relations.”
He added: “We don’t think you should be able to come to these places without facing their histories.”
The report argues that atrocities carried out against African Americans during this period were akin to terrorism, and that lynchings were a tool to “enforce racial subordination and segregation." It is the follow-up to the organization’s 2013 report Slavery in America.
“It’s important to begin talking about it,” Stevenson said. “These lynchings were torturous and violent and extreme. They were sometimes attended by the entire White community. It was sometimes not enough to lynch the person who was the target, but it was necessary to terrorize the entire Black community: burn down churches and attack Black homes. I think that that kind of history really can’t be ignored.”
Stevenson said this era had a profound impact on contemporary issues facing African Americans.
“The failings of this era very much reflect what young people are now saying about police shootings,” Stevenson said. “It is about embracing this idea that ‘Black lives matter’,” he added. “I also think that the lynching era created a narrative of racial difference, a presumption of guilt, a presumption of dangerousness that got assigned to African Americans in particular – and that’s the same presumption of guilt that burdens young kids living in urban areas who are sometimes menaced, threatened, or shot and killed by law enforcement officers.” --
Law Enforcement Officers formerly known as Peace Officers
"I am White, and as such, my role in ending racial oppression
must be in engaging other White people to join accountable
work for racial justice. Plain and simple." Jamie Utt
Diversity Dialogues
MySense
Bryan Stevenson
The number of African-Americans who were
lynched between 1877 and 1950 is 3,959.
"We continue to be haunted in this country by the legacy of racial inequality," Stevenson tells As It Happens host Carol Off. "It's done something to the way we think about race and fairness and justice. I think we have to delve more deeply into these parts of our history that are quite painful and difficult."
"Lynchings of African-Americans weren't just directed at the particular victim of that lynching. This was a way of expressing to the entire African community that if you resist White supremacy, if you rebel against the existing racial hierarchy, you will be killed.
"Many of the people who were lynched were not lynched based on an accusation of rape or murder. They were lynched for violating racial hierarchy for insisting on wages, for protesting conditions and treatment... The whole African-American community was terrorized, millions of Black people in this country, experienced these lynchings in a very personal, intimate way because it was a racial terror incident."
Stevenson plans to erect memorials to lynching victims across America.
"We've got a lot of years behind us where we have practised silence about these things and when you try to break the silence, people become uncomfortable," he says. "We put up markers about the slave trade in Montgomery last year and there was some resistance. The Alabama Historical Association would not support the markers because they thought markers about slavery would be 'too controversial.'"
"We have markers and monuments all over the south that talk about the confederacy. We memorialize the leaders of the confederacy, those who fought to preserve slavery. So I do think it's challenging, but it's also necessary." -- See The Equal Justice Initiative.
"We need to get out of our heads and into our hearts to practice and
teach more tolerance, inclusion, compassion and understanding,
all of which is the focus of Guru Nanak Dev's teachings."
"The human mind was created to discriminate, e.g., make choices between
up and down, in and out, black and white, etc. We must remain aware of our
tendency to use our discretionary abilities in order to marginalize and repress
people with whom we differ. We need to constantly see to it that we advocate for pluralism, against tribalism, n the interest of justice as taught by Guru Nanak Dev. Our choices are to live for each other, or to live at each other." -- Hari Singh Bird Khalsa
Bryan Stevenson - We Need To Talk
Check out time markers at 5:40, 6:00, 7:45, 17:45, 20:00, and 21:15.
Bryan Stevenson - Just Mercy
Pain and terror: America remembers its past
Diversity Dialogues
MySense
Hari Singh Bird
Read alert...Who would have thought?
Recent statements by the FBI head are being called,
"historic literacy", by many human rights observers.
His report does much to further diversity in America.
Sat Nam. If you think you're up to speed or that there's no real diversity issues we need to deal with, read the following statements by America's current and most senior law enforcement officer. We need to get out of our heads and into our hearts to practice and teach more tolerance, inclusion, compassion and understanding, all of which is the focus of Guru Nanak Dev's teachings. Read on.
FBI Director speaks frankly about police view of Blacks By Michael S. Schmidt
James B. Comey
"Cops make 'sinister associations' when dealing with Black men," warns FBI director.
FEB. 12, 2015 -- WASHINGTON -- The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, on Thursday delivered an unusually frank speech about the relationship between the police and Black people, saying that officers who work in neighborhoods where Blacks commit crimes at higher rates develop a cynicism that shades their attitudes about race.
He said that officers — whether they are White or any other race — who are confronted with White men (White eyes) on one side of the street and Black men (Colored eyes) on the other do not view them the same way. The officers develop a mental shortcut (racism) that “becomes almost irresistible and may be even rational by some lights” because of the number of Black suspects they have arrested.
“We need to come to grips with the fact that this behavior complicates the relationship between police and the communities they serve,” Mr. Comey said in the speech, at Georgetown University.
While officers should be closely scrutinized, he said, they are “not the root cause of problems in our hardest-hit neighborhoods,” where Blacks grow up “in environments lacking role models, adequate education and decent employment.”
“They lack all sorts of opportunities that most of us take for granted (White privilege),” Mr. Comey said.
Mr. Comey’s speech was unprecedented for an F.B.I. director. Previous directors have limited their public comments about race to civil rights investigations, like those of murders committed by the Klu Klax Klan and how the bureau wiretapped the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The surveillance of Dr. King is considered one of the F.B.I.’s greatest overreaches of power. Mr. Comey, who has led the F.B.I. for about 18 months, has said that as part of his job, he wants to foster a national debate about law enforcement issues that state and local authorities across the country are facing.
He said that he decided to give the speech because he felt that in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old Black man, by a White police officer in Ferguson, MO, the country had not “had a healthy dialogue,” and that he did not “want to see those important issues drift away.”
One remedy, Mr. Comey said, would be for the police to have more interactions (dialogue) with those they are charged to protect. “It’s hard to hate up close,” he said. (See Sensivity Summit.)
"How can any organization monitor member attitudes toward diversity issues
including race, if it does not know the demographics of its organization? A
common requirement amongst governmental agencies is to regularly inquire
of ethnic and marginalized members as to their perceptions and grievances.
Any organization that fails to maintain open communication and dialogue with
its constituency is at risk of dysfunction, loss of credibility, and irrelevancy."
Mr. Comey said there was significant research that says all people have unconscious racial biases.(See Note.) Although people cannot help their instinctive reactions, law enforcement needs “to design systems and processes to overcome that very human part of us all,” he said.
“Although the research may be unsettling, what we do next is what matters most,” Mr. Comey said.
He said that law enforcement agencies across the country needed to be compelled to report shootings that involve police officers so there can be a baseline to measure the issue.
“It’s ridiculous that I can’t tell you how many people were shot by the police last week, last month, last year,” Mr. Comey said.
In addressing race relations, Mr. Comey was trying to do something that politicians and law enforcement leaders — including his boss, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. — have failed to do without creating significant backlash.
After the fatal shooting in Ferguson, Mr. Holder was widely criticized by police organizations and Republicans for a series of comments he made that were seen as unfairly critical of the police. Before the results of an investigation into the Ferguson Police Department were complete, Mr. Holder said that the department needed wholesale changes, that he stood with the people of Ferguson and that he had been profiled by the police. --
"I am White, and as such, my role in ending racial oppression
must be in engaging other White people to join accountable work for racial justice. Plain and simple." Jamie Utt
"The human mind was created to discriminate, e.g., make choices between
up and down, in and out, black and white, etc. We must remain aware of our
tendency to use our discretionary abilities in order to marginalized and repress
people with whom we differ. We need to constantly see to it that we advocate for pluralism, against tribalism, in the interest of justice as taught by Guru Nanak Dev.
Our choices are to live for each other, or to live at each other." -- Hari Singh Bird Khalsa
Diversity Dialogues
MySense
Hari Singh Bird
Sat Nam. Here's an interesting set of numbers. Aren't spreadsheets wonderful? Anybody wish to comment? Click here.
"The human mind was created to discriminate, e.g., make choices between
up and down, in and out, black and white, etc. We must remain aware of our
tendency to use our discretionary abilities in order to marginalized and repress
people with whom we differ. We need to constantly see to it that we advocate for pluralism, against tribalism, in the interest of justice as taught by Guru Nanak Dev.
Our choices are to live for each other, or to live at each other." -- Hari Singh Bird Khalsa
Diversity Dialogues
MySense
Hari Singh Bird
A case of selective censure?
Sat Nam. The Jackie Robinson West Little League baseball team won the U.S. Little League Championship in August of 2014. Little League International stripped the team of its national title, February 11, 2015, after finding the team violated regulations by placing players on the team who did not qualify because they lived outside the team’s boundaries.
The question is not so much whether the Little League International action was justified in accordance with their rules, but whether censure was applied selectively and arbitrarily, or in accordance with fairness, uniformity and impartiality.
Of course, this action had nothing to do with the teams being Black.
First Lady and President Obama pose with the championship team.
"The bottom line is a two-headed monster: JRW cheated, and Little League
International is incredibly haphazard when it comes to overseeing
some 7,000 leagues around the world." -- Chicago Sun Times
Although people cannot help their instinctive reactions, law enforcement needs "to design systems and processes to overcome that very human part of us all." FBI Director Comey
"The human mind was created to discriminate, e.g., make choices between
up and down, in and out, black and white. Therefore, we must be aware of our
tendency to use our discretionary abilities in order to marginalize and repress
people with whom we differ. We need to constantly see to it that we advocate for pluralism and against tribalism in the interest of justice as taught by Guru Nanak Dev.
Our choices are to live for each other, or to live at each other." -- Hari Singh Bird Khalsa
Sat Nam. Holy moly...trick or true? Can this be for real? Puts me in mind of the alleged destruction of Atlantis by out of control scientists. Read on.
February 10, 2015 -- Waterford Whispers News -- Theoretical Quantum Physicist Dr. Amit Goswami admitted today that he, and his peers, have absolutely "no fucking idea" what they’re doing, and claims they were no nearer than prehistoric man to figuring out the Universe.
“We have been just winging it to tell you the truth,” explained the 78-year-old in an exclusive interview with WWN. “Seriously, I haven’t a clue what’s going on. Either does anyone else in my field. We keep proving stuff that never actually happened.”
“Our cover is blown, what can I say?", he added.
Dr. Goswami’s comments came after yet another alleged breakthrough in quantum mechanics, which claims the universe has existed forever, as opposed to being created by a ‘big bang’.
“Over the years there have been just a handful of us pretending to know something about the universe that no one else does,” he went on. “But this is all lies to feed the charade. I’ve had some great times during the years; traveling the world, and giving talks on our pretend finds.”
When asked how he got away with it for so long, he replied: “I found out a long time ago that everything can be proven with a mathematical equation. Now, I mean everything; from unicorns, fire-breathing dragons, God and even the G-spot. None of it is true. Me and the handful that know the truth have been riding the Quantum Physicist celebrity wave for quite some time now, but it must end – before someone gets hurt." (Well, dah!)
The University of Oregon professor warned that the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, could potentially wipe out the entire planet if the project is not put to a halt.
“Seriously, when myself, Higgs and Ben (Benjamin Lockspeiser CERN’s first president) first pitched the idea, we never thought it would get funding. It was gonna cost billions for Christ's sake,” he recalled. “Fuck knows what the thing does – no one does. Firing particles at each other at the speed of light can’t end well. I’m just worried now, we took the joke too far." (Ya think?)
Ending the interview, professor Goswami apologized for “spoofing” everybody over the years.
“I’m coming near the end of my days now, and I just want to get this off my chest,” he said. “I just hope the world can forgive us.” (Holy moly!) -- Source.
Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad,
and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha
Artwork by Mohammad Alsalti
"They are not religious leaders. They are terrorists. And we are not at war with Islam.
We are at war with people who have perverted Islam." President Obama
"A lot of people don't realize that just about all Negro spirituals
are written on the BLACK NOTES (keys) of the piano.
Slaves were not permitted to use the WHITE KEYS."
Probably the most famous on this slave scale was written by John Newton, who used to be the captain of a slave ship, and many believe he heard this melody that sounds very much like a West African sorrow chant. And it has a haunting, haunting plaintive quality to it that reaches past your arrogance, past your pride, and it speaks to that part of you that's in bondage. And we feel it. We feel it. It's just one of the most amazing melodies in all of human history." -- Source.
After sharing this noteworthy history of the song, Mr. Phipps delivered a stirring performance and perhaps the most powerful rendition of Amazing Grace ever recorded that brought the audience to its feet at Carnegie Hall.
Why are White people expatriates when the rest of us are immigrants?
Friday, March 13, 2015 -- "In the lexicon of human migration there are still hierarchical (code) words, created with the purpose of putting White people above everyone else. One of those remnants is the word “expat”.
What is an expat? And who is an expat? According to Wikipedia, “an expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the person’s upbringing. The word comes from the Latin terms ex (‘out of’) and patria (‘country, fatherland’)”.
Defined that way, you should expect that any person going to work outside of his or her country for a period of time would be an expat, regardless of his skin colour or country. But that is not the case in reality; expat is a term reserved exclusively for Western White people going to work abroad.
White Expatriates served by Colored Immigrants
Photograph by Matt Brandon
Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats because they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races’.
Don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal, the leading financial information magazine in the world, has a blog dedicated to the life of expats and recently they featured a story ‘Who is an expat, anyway?’.
Here are the main conclusions: “Some arrivals are described as expats; others as immigrants; and some simply as migrants. It depends on social class, country of origin and economic status. It’s strange to hear some people in Hong Kong described as expats, but not others. Anyone with roots in a Western country is considered an expat… Filipino domestic helpers are just guests, even if they’ve been here for decades. Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese are rarely regarded as expats… It’s a double standard woven into official policy.”
The reality is the same in Africa and Europe. Top African professionals going to work in Europe are not considered expats. They are immigrants. Period. “I work for multinational organizations both in the private and public sectors. And being Black or colored (colored eyes) doesn’t gain me the term “expat”. I’m a highly qualified immigrant, as they call me, to be politically correct,” says an African migrant worker.
Most White people (white eyes) deny that they enjoy the privileges of a racist system. And why not? But our responsibility is to point out and to deny them these privileges, directly related to an outdated supremacist ideology. If you see those “expats” in Africa, call them immigrants like everyone else.
If that hurts their White superiority, they can jump in the air and stay there. The political deconstruction of this outdated worldview must continue." -- Mawuna Remarque Koutonin is the editor of SiliconAfrica.com. Source.
"Discourse about racism is not meant to stir up feelings of guilt, it is
meant to drive people to action against injustice." -- MySikhSense.com
"We need to get out of our heads and into our hearts to
practice and teach more tolerance, inclusion, compassion and
understanding, all of which is the focus of Guru Nanak Dev's teachings."
"The human mind was created to discriminate, e.g., make choices between
up and down, in and out, black and white, etc. We must remain aware of our
tendency to use our discretionary abilities in order to marginalized and repress
people with whom we differ. We need to constantly see to it that we advocate for pluralism, against tribalism, in the interest of justice as taught by Guru Nanak Dev.
Our choices are to live for each other, or to live at each other." -- Hari Singh Bird Khalsa
See 
We gladly accept all, and we shall exclude none, for after all, 
