All posts tagged fear
I'm not always wearing my full habit...
It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.
It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution.
It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.
It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.
It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes.
It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.
It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.
If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women’s rights - and women’s rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely - and the right to be heard.
Hillary Clinton (from ‘Women’s Rights Are Human Rights’ Speech Beijing, China: 5 September 1995)” (via funny-bunnies)
*stands up and applauds*
(via taintedsaints)
What the Data Actually Say About Illegal Immigration
We are not being flooded with illegal Mexican migrants. The total number of migrants from Mexico has varied very little since the 1950s. The massive influx many have written about never happened.
Net illegal migration has stopped almost completely.
Illegal migration has not stopped because of stricter border enforcement, which Massey characterizes as a waste of money at best and counterproductive at worst.
There are indeed more undocumented Mexicans living in the United States than there were 20 years ago, but that is because fewer migrants are returning home — not because more are sneaking into the country.
And the reason that fewer Mexican citizens are returning home is because we have stepped up border enforcement so dramatically.
Mull over that last point for a minute. If Congress had done nothing to secure the border over the last two decades — if it had just left the border alone — there might be as many as 2 million fewer Mexicans living in the United States today, Massey believes.
Sigh. I’ve noticed that it’s almost always counterproductive to make a spectacle of enforcing something. And we sure do love our security theater here in the US, don’t we?
(Source: azspot)
Pure awesomesauce: Africans shocked by uncivilized antics of European savages
WARNING: The following quote from the abovelinked article contains SATIRE, along with discomfiting truths for western white folks.
DAKAR. Africans say they have little hope that Europe will ever become civilized, after a week in which Spain’s King Carlos went on an elephant-killing spree and the Swedish Culture Minister was entertained by a racially offensive cake. “You can take the European out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the European,” sighed one resident of Kinshasa.
August Mwanasa, of Libreville in Gabon, said the latest atrocities didn’t surprise him as Europeans were still “savages”.
“I don’t want to sound racist, and some of my best friend are white, but let’s be honest: violence is hard-wired into their DNA,” said Mwanasa. “I mean, Europeans killed over 20 million other Europeans in the 1930s and 1940s. That’s barbarism on a scale unprecedented in history.” …
I absolutely love the bit about siesta in Spain. Ha!
Increasingly in Europe, Suicides ‘by Economic Crisis’ - NYTimes.com
The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.”
Many, like Mr. Tamiozzo and Mr. Schiavon, have died in obscurity. Others, like the desperate 77-year-old retiree who shot himself outside the Greek Parliament on April 4, have turned their personal despair into dramatic public expressions of anger at the leaders who have failed to soften the blows of the crisis.
A complete picture of the phenomenon across Europe is elusive, as some countries lag in reporting statistics and coroners are loath to classify deaths as suicides, to protect surviving family members. But it is clear that countries on the front line of the economic crisis are suffering the worst, and that suicides among men have increased the most.
May God have mercy on us all.
(Source: sarahlee310, via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
Teacher Fired over Trayvon Martin Fundraiser
What do you do with a teacher who provides students with authentic learning opportunities? A teacher who invests her own resources to support students? A teacher who was voted Teacher of the Year two of the last three years?
If you’re Superintendent Jacqueline Cassell at the Pontiac Academy for Excellence Middle School in Pontiac, Mich., you fire her.
Last month Brooke Harris’ eighth-grade class asked her about the “kid who was killed over some skittles;” she seized the opportunity to bring her students’ lived experiences into the classroom—a strategy we and other experts advocate.
Brooke saw a teachable moment. She and her students began the formal process of organizing a school event. Students wrote persuasive letters to the principal and superintendent. Brooke and a co-worker filed the necessary paperwork. The principal immediately signed off on the fundraiser.
Superintendent Cassell was less enthusiastic. She refused to approve the proposal, despite having supported many other “dress down” fundraisers. Brooke’s students took the disappointment in stride, but asked to present their idea to Cassell in person.
And that’s when things got weird.
Dear Superintendent Jacqueline Cassell:
Undercover Nun is praying for your immortal soul.
Love,
me
As for white America, perhaps it can stop crying out against “black supremacy,” “black nationalism,” “racism in reverse,” and begin facing reality. The reality is that this nation, from top to bottom, is racist; that racism is not primarily a problem of “human relation” but of an exploitation maintained - either actively or through silence - by the society as a whole. Camus and Sartre have asked, can a man condemn himself? Can whites, particularly liberal whites, condemn themselves? Can they stop blaming us, and blame their own system? Are they capable of the shame which might become a revolutionary emotion?
Kwame Ture (via howtobenoladarling)
May God have mercy on us all.
(Source: howtobeterrell, via mehreenkasana)
I have felt like Trayvon Martin. Many many times while walking at night, being pulled over by police, being told that I’m not supposed to ‘be.’ My ‘being’ in a space has caused questions, concerns, suspicions. In the back of my mind I always wondered if there would be a reckoning. If my ‘being’ would become so intolerable to someone that they would try to end my existence rather than engage in a conversation. The only difference between me and Trayvon is that I am still here and he is not. Still, the question lurks around the subconscious when I walk home every night from the subway and a police car slows down alongside me. The squad car slows down. Eyeballs examine my ‘being,’ noticing any signs of anger, insanity, guilt. I continue walking, pretending to be oblivious. In most cases this is the best sign of innocence: by pretending to not notice.
Unlike myself, Trayvon physically noticed the accusation. He noticed the suspicion and dared to walk toward it. Stare at it, as he spoke with his girlfriend over the phone. Curious, as to who could be staring at him so intently he took a step in Zimmerman’s direction. Staring directly at George Zimmerman before quickly walking away.
I could name other incidents of walking while Black: the police slow-downs, pull-overs, suspicious looks. It’s all the same because my reaction has to be measured and numb. I pretend not to notice and keep eyes fixed straight ahead. Hands out of pockets and swinging along my side. Maybe I’ll start singing. A guilty man wouldn’t sing, would he?
More and more the last few years when I find myself WWB, a sad smile comes across my face. After all these years, you’re still looking for that sign of suspicion. It’s not here. I’m innocent. There is nothing wrong with me. I’m just a Black man out for a walk.
Aurin Squire’s post on Trayvon Martin and “walking while Black”…just wow. Read the rest of it at the R today. (via racialicious)
Indeed: read the whole piece. It isn’t very long.
And may God have mercy on us all.
(via silas216)
It may have escaped Keller’s recollection but, at the time the “racist nightmares” of Birmingham and Selma actually were occurring, there was a strong school of respectable opinion — and not just in the South and not just from Bill Buckley — that treated Dr. King the very same way that Keller treats Al Sharpton here: as a “rabble rouser,” and as a threat to the public order. That has been the deflection of choice for the defenders of white political power for centuries. It was the primary argument against the abolitionists, and not just in the South, either.
Charles P. Pierce (via azspot)
I wish it wasn’t so hard for us to recognize the intrinsic worth of every human being. Jesus said it: Love God; love everybody else. And pray for your enemies. It’s hard to dehumanize people you’re praying for.
(via mohandasgandhi)
Gritty Mermaid Reboot: Another Rant
You’re absolutely right. Even the bible can become an idol, when its importance is lifted above pesky things like loving one’s neighbor and pulling the log out of your eye before pointing out the sawdust in another’s.
Why aren’t we talking about Christ’s radical love? About God living in relationship with us, so that we can live in relationship with each other? About what it might mean to include God in one’s marriage? Do we have to be so hung up on the buttsex? REALLY?
This is just my thought. Because too much of the obsession about homosexuality and Christianity occurs in the Evangelical “Bible-only” world we become over obsessed with arguing about those dreadful clobber verses. But I think that’s giving too much ground. Demonstrating to…
UK Politician tweets about Christianity
May God have mercy on us all.
(via silas216)
