Racism

Torture in the US Prison System: The Endless Punishment of Leonard Peltier

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More than 20,000 inmates are caged in isolation in the United States at any one time. Originally designed as a temporary disciplinary action, solitary confinement has drifted into use as a long-term punishment. This act of inhumanity is a clear contradiction of the Eighth Amendment. During the Pelican Bay hunger strike that rippled into prisons across the country, a 66-year-old man with extreme medical needs, Leonard Peltier, was forced into "the hole" at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.

Nightmarish as it is, what follows is fact.

The Protect Glen Cove Commitee is encouraging people to show up at Sogarea Te Thursday and Friday to support the Native American occupation to protect the ancient burial site from desecration by the City of Valley and the Greater Vallejo Recreation District (GVRD).

Wounded Knee DeOcampo and the rest of the committee are also asking all of their supporters to please take a moment to send emails and letters to the Native American Heritage Commission, to make it clear to them that there is widespread support for our efforts to protect their ancestors at Glen Cove by preventing the current development plan from proceeding. Below are all of the details:

GVRD is not only still refusing to meet with the Protect Glen Cove Committee, they are also declining to sign the agreement produced from an initial meeting on April 18th, in which some basic understandings between GVRD and the Committee were established regarding the vigil at Sogorea Te, according to the Protect Glen Cove Committee.

*** DAY 14 UPDATE - Supporters requested Thursday-Friday

A contractor came by today who told us that his job is to paint a poison chemical treatment on the stumps of waterfront trees at Glen Cove, once the Atlas Tree Service cuts them down.

Does hidden white privilege exist? Allan Johnson provides an alternative way of thinking about issues of privilege by examining what keeps us from seeing our own privilege and how that privilege harms others.

After 30 years of college teaching, Allan G. Johnson now devotes himself entirely to writing and public speaking. He has worked with more than 200 schools and organizations in 36 states.
Source: Leading From Where You Are: Unraveling Privilege, Power and Difference with Allan Johnson

Music includes Earth Anthem, All the Pretty Little Horses, Cisco Houston, Mariachi Tamazula-Alma Llanera, the day they caught Saddam Hussein, We'll Meet Again

The video's from a year ago but the subject matter is the same

Palestine's Olive Harvest Horror

By RANNIE AMIRI

“Lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it … ”

Quran 24:35

“And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives.”

Judges 15:5

Olives and olives oil. Nothing symbolizes Palestinian land, identity and culture as they do. They are the hallmarks of national pride and the veritable heart of Palestine’s agricultural economy.

Although the subjugation and daily humiliation of occupation takes various forms in East Jerusalem and the West Bank—demeaning checkpoint searches; arrest and interrogation of minors; preventing ambulances from expeditiously transporting the sick to hospitals; the eviction of families and demolition of homes—few situations evoke more outrage and deep sadness as do the torching of olive orchards by vigilante settlers.

Bill Noxid in Enough of the Myth of American Morality -- Awakening the Global Slave:

"“They hate our Freedom” was all it took to convince the people of this county that brown people 5,000 miles away in caves with box cutters defeated the NSA, CIA, and United States Military, and ten years of evidence has yet to dissuade them from their delusional belief. The ignorance and hate emanating from the @Park51 Community Center ‘controversy’ demonstrates conclusively that just as it was ten years ago, still no evidence is required to demonize an entire race or religion of brown people because American White people ‘feel’ violated based on their self-delusion and lack of historical knowledge. The whole world is expected to capitulate to American unreasonable and outrageous demands because the people are too ignorant and fearful to know the truth of anything."

"The real conversation gets lost in the lowest common denominators of hate and ignorance, and that is the corporate slavers’ intention..."

"The real conversation gets lost in the lowest common denominators of hate and ignorance, and that is the corporate slavers’ intention." If you read on in Noxid's article, you will discover his desired "conversation" involves the real truth behind 9/11. Right now I would settle for a conversation that simply grazes the reality of the massive wrongs perpetrated in our name by our leadership.

I yearn for a national conversation that is willing to begin to explore and process the scope of immoral, illegal and exponentially expanding violence committed by the United States in the name of democracy and security, which has more to do with imperialist aggrandizement and craven cronyism. A conversation with a citizen majority not in a moral coma. Citizens with potential for rationality and empathy, not in what Richard Kim in the Nation estimates is an unreachable eighteen percent that sports tinfoil caps in full-blown racist paranoia.

Link to pic

Interesting that whoever drove this, is also parked in a handicapped spot without a handicapped license plate. ... To be fair, maybe they have one of those things you stick on your review mirror, but it's kind of hard to see through the confederate flags in the back window

WaPo via boingboing

[T]he DMV agreed that the plate contains a coded message: The number 88 stands for the eighth letter of the alphabet, H, doubled to signify "Heil Hitler," said CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper. "CV" stands for "Confederate veteran" -- the plate was a special model embossed with a Confederate flag, which Virginia makes available for a $10 fee to card-carrying members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. And 14 is code for imprisoned white supremacist David Lane's 14-word motto: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

[story begins 32 seconds into the video]

Seth Myers: This week, Arizona signed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country which will allow police to demand identification papers from anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. I know there’s some people in Arizona worried that Obama is acting like Hitler, but could we all agree that there’s nothing more Nazi than saying "Show me your papers?"

California Court Okays Discrimination Against Section 8 Tenants

Remember Donald Sterling, the NBA team owner and Los Angeles mega-landlord who has been sued multiple times for outrageous housing discrimination, most recently by the U.S. Department of Justice? Sterling is back in the news this week, again for discrimination in his role as landlord. This time, however, Sterling convinced a California Court of Appeal that it was just fine for him to discriminate against a Section 8 tenant. At this point, anyone who still believes in the myth that judges are “liberal activists” needs to have his or her head examined.

The Karuk Tribal Council on January 28 voted unanimously to sign the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement.

Karuk Tribe

P R E S S R E L E A S E

For Immediate Release: January 28, 2010

For more information: Craig Tucker, Klamath Coordinator, Karuk Tribe, cell 916-207-8294

Youtube Bans “Feeling The Hate In Jerusalem”
Posted by Max in June 18th 2009

Feeling The Hate In Jerusalem -- The Censored Video from Max Blumenthal on Vimeo.

Youtube has removed my video, “Feeling The Hate In Jerusalem,” on the baseless grounds that it contains “inappropriate content.” They have offered me no further explanation and have stonewalled my inquiries and attempts to rectify the situation. Thus they have censored a video that contains far less inflammatory content than thousands of video they are already hosting. Why? I won’t ascribe motives to Youtube I am unable to confirm, but it is clear there is an active campaign by right-wing Jewish elements to suppress the video by filing a flood of complaints with Youtube. At the same time these elements have attempted to paint me as a self-hating Jew determined to foment anti-Semitism. I answered this last charge to Ha’aretz (read the barely coherent article here) last week: “I have received death threats from people, mainly ones calling me a self-hating Jew. I am self-hating, but my self-hatred has nothing to do with me being Jewish.”