racism

The Known Knowns of a Known War Criminal

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It’s always magical to be able to throw an asshole’s words back in his face… especially when he is an outspoken representative of so many other assholes.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2003. Photo by Roger L. Wollenberg/UPI

While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime,” he said. “And I don’t think there’s anyone in any of those pictures … (who wouldn’t) accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom.

Rumsfeld: Looting is transition to freedom, UPI, April 11, 2003

#GEORGEFLOYD
#BLACKLIVESMATTER
#RESIST

Killing in the Name

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Waiting for the trump statement to be released declaring the Minneapolis cops who murdered George Floyd to be good people…

Mr. Floyd died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by an officer’s knee, in an episode that was recorded on video by a bystander, inciting condemnation and protests.

What We Know About the Death of George Floyd, New York Times, May 27, 2020

President Donald Trump seemed to encourage police to be more violent in handling potential offenders during a speech to law enforcement officers today.

“Please don’t be too nice,” he said to the audience in Long Island, New York.

Trump to police: ‘Please don’t be too nice’ to suspects, ABC News, July 28, 2017
Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses…

#GEORGEFLOYD
#KILLINGINTHENAMEOF
#WAKEUP
#BLACKLIVESMATTER

The Dichotomies of Hate

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Racists, driven by their feeble-minded ignorance and incapacitating insecurities, will always leech off any opportunity or misfortune to project their self-loathing and self-delusions upon others of whom they both envy and fear…

A man followed the Chinese American doctor from the Boston hospital, spewing a profanity-laced racist tirade as she walked to the subway. “Why are you Chinese people killing everyone?” Li recalled the man shouting. “What is wrong with you? Why the f— are you killing us?”

Asian American doctors and nurses are fighting racism and the coronavirus, Washington Post, May 19, 2020

#hatethehate

The Inequality of Hate

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It’s a disgusting national shame how many of our innocent, unprovoking citizens are murdered by other small-minded, blood-lusting citizens motivated wholly by hate and personal delusions of a superior bloodline while being criminally supported by institutional delusions of the same.

“…if we as a community had not been willfully blind to our institutionalized racism, Ahmaud might still be alive.“

Ahmaud Arbery Holds Us Accountable, The Bitter Southerner, May 2020

#irunwithahmaud
#prayforamerica

Empty Words of the Privileged

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It’s hard to believe so many people have to live so miserably in the richest, most powerful country in the world.


This has become cliché and empty to say, especially from those of us speaking from our privilege, but since there are so many pockets of wretched poverty all around the country such as described in the following article, it’s hard not to say it.

Courtesy New York Times

“Hundreds of miles of roads are unpaved, so it can take up to three hours to get a sick person to help. It’s difficult to self-isolate because families live in one-room homes called hogans. Up to 40 percent of Navajo households don’t have running water, making it hard to wash hands. Cellphone service and Wi-Fi are limited, so it’s difficult to keep in touch and to get information about the epidemic.”

A Life on and Off the Navajo Nation, New York Times, May 13, 2020

#alonetogetherwithourprivilege

Starbucks and Mocha

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The New York Times’ recent piece Melville’s Whale Was a Warning We Failed to Heed is actually a quite serious look at human nature, racism, the environment… but here is a fun selection from it that belies its erudition:

Melville had read Jeremiah Reynolds’s violent account of a sperm whale “white as wool,” named — for his haunt near Mocha Island, off the coast of Chile — Mocha Dick. It’s unknown what led Melville to tweak Mocha to “Moby.” Good thing he did, and that Starbuck was the name he gave his first mate rather than his captain. Otherwise the novel would follow Starbuck’s obsession with a Mocha.

Courtesy the New York Times

#whosaidseriousnesscantbefun
#nowbacktobeingserious

Just Imagine

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Imagine what the response would have been if these heavily armed “protesters“ were of any other race than white…

– A lot of dead and incarcerated non-white “protesters,” that’s what the response would have been for those of you with failed imaginations.

Now, try to imagine that none of these “protesters” are trump cultists emboldened by their dear leader’s violence-inspiring rhetoric…

– Unimaginable, isn’t it.

Courtesy of Washington Post

Outside the House chamber, the protesters crammed into the hallway and stairwell, periodically chanting, “Lock her up!” and “Let us in!” Their chanting could be heard faintly from the House floor — and ultimately, the Republicans gave the protesters what they wanted: a refusal to extend Whitmer’s emergency declaration. In Michigan, legislative approval is required to extend emergency declarations beyond 28 days; Whitmer’s expired Thursday night, with no such approval to renew.

After a day of armed protesters and a GOP lawsuit threat, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer extends state of emergency, Washington Post, May 1, 2020

#americaisoccupiedterritory

Regarding That Which Despicable Beings Create

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Always a conundrum — what to do with something good created by someone bad.

I mean, take HP Lovecraft for instance. Are horrors authors and readers still praising him so for his early contributions to the genre? Fortunately for me, having read his work long before learning he was such a virulent racist, I find his writing flat and uninteresting and way, way overrated so shunning him to the dustbin of the disgraced is no problemo.

But there are a lot of other types of situations and scenarios out there that can put one in such an unpleasant conundrum…

Read more

The Bird As Language

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The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas…

From Toni Morrison’s Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1993

#maysherestinpeace
#maysherestinpower

FEATURED IMAGE COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA