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To Burning Bush on Solutions:
Great Question again Brother.
The only thing that we can do is a multifaceted approach. We should first do the best that we can in our own communities.
For when we do this, at the least gains that we see can be tangible and we can witness it more directly in our communities. You have mentioned family growth and you are right on that. We have to work on building our families via mentorships, community development programs, fighting for economic justice (when economic fairness grows & economic inequality goes down, families improve as studies document. Industrialized nations have shown this. We have to reject selfish materialism since that philosophy contributed to the economic recession of 2008), talking to the youth in a reasonable fashion without arrogance or ego, and other actions.
We should educate the young on the value of males and females in the world (and the importance of families in general). We should inspire our people to follow ethics and real values. Our culture is about ethics and true morality can spiritually plus socially prosper our people. We should work in independent organizations that want a better life for us and our people (in dealing with health, education, crime, and other important issues).
WE SHOULD EDUCATE OURSELVES ON THE EVILS OF WHITE SUPREMACY/RACISM (since we can't make solutions without knowing the origin of the problem in the first place. We have to understand that we are at war and this is an emergency straight up) AND THE GREATNESS OF OUR BLACKNESS.
Also, we have the right to boycott, protest, and make our voices heard. We have the right to speak out and use action (as in organizing independent programs to address problems).
Individually, we should respect Black Love and advocate it publicly and in private. Without Black Love, black human beings will never survive as a community. It is as simple as that. We should advocate more Black Unity among both genders. Individually, we should improve our health (via trying our best to stop smoking, eating no poisons, and finding time to exercise). We should meditate or evaluate our lives daily, so that we can be better people. We should find unique ways to not only learn about STEM subjects, but develop economic & technological powerbases more in the States (and globally in the pan-African world). We can support real black businesses with our resources. Long term, we should strive for better self determination. It is not easy, but we have to start somewhere. YES, WE OUGHT TO TREAT OUR NEIGHBORS AS OURSELVES. THAT IS THE COMMONSENSE IDEAL OF REAL SPIRITUALITY.
There are tons of other things that we can do individually and collectively.
-By Timothy (Me)
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-Savant
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While I'm not completely sure about JFK, I'm pretty sure that you're spot on regading the reasons for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ironically, it was the Black Panther Party which while not embracing King's nonviolence, were the Black group committed not just to a Black movement, but a movement of the poor and exploited---and unifying the disinherited and the dispossessed. What we learned from the FBI documents related to the COINTELPRO operations is that the FBI were more afraid of Panther IDEAS and PROGRAMS than about a few shotguns and leather jackets some of them owned. Dr. KIng talked about the need for a "radical redistribution of political and economic power"--which is what the Panthers also called for. That's reason, I believe, why King was killed. And the reason why the Panthers were suppressed. -Savant Alas, a voice of good sense. But I still think that worker and consumers cooperatives have to be an essential part of the effort to achieve economic self-determination for our people. I don't want all the wealth concentrated in a few hands of a Black Wall Street. For then the situation of the average Black person will not improve much, and we'd be aping the exploitative practices of white America and the white 1% Cooperatives, workers credit unions, cooperatively run banks,etc--all this must be part of the mix. And let silly people worry about IR marriages and who's sleeping with who.
-Savant
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I've read that the British destroyed many native industries in India in order to force its own commodities.
In Algeria, according to Nigel Gibson, there was actually a higher level of literacy than in France before French colonialists shut down schools that already existed, and replaced them with French schools to which only a tiny minority of Algerians were admitted. And by seizing Algerian lands to hand them over to settlers, the pauperized large numbers of Algerian peasant cultivators. Hence both famine and illiteracy were imposed on the people. Similarly, European settlers in South Africa seized 87% of lands from native cultivators, pauperizing them and forcing them into economic serfdom.
All this enriched the Europeans at the price of immiseration for the victims of Western racist capitalist imperialism.
-Savant
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The 99% Movement is a growing popular democratic movement for economic justice. It is a movement opposed to the concentration of wealth of the corporate plutocracy. And it challenges the worship of wealth and the demeaning of people.
Moreover, the Movement has remained for the most part markedly a NONVIOLENT MOVEMENT.
Is this a Movement such as Dr. King would support were he with us still? Is this movement akin to the Poor Peoples Movement which Dr. King and others were trying to build during the last few months of his life?
Has the Occupy Movement itself been influeunced by the legacy of Dr. King and previous NONVIOLENT movements in America?
I think this is a movement such as Dr. King would support. I imagine that he and his supporters would be at Occupy demonstrations even if he were in his 80s.
I know black conservative Allen West would disagree, but most conservatives (and many liberals) haven't a clue to the vision and the values which motivated King.
To my friends in the Occupy Movement: Continue he legacy of King and others. Forward with the NONVIOLENT popular democratic revolution.
-Savant
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Bingo.
John should read “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” by Walter Rodney.
Also “Neocolonialism” by Kwame Nkrumah.
While the West (and Japan) developed, the colonies were kept undeveloped, the colonialists structuring them as providers of the prime materials they wanted. Roads and railroads went from the mines/plantations to the sea. Development of an infrastructure which would help indigenous farmers or connect the various nations for trading purposes as European nations are connected... none of this was done.
Nkrumah describes being given the flag of independence by the British, going into the govt buildings to find that the Brits had taken EVERYTHING from typewriters to light bulbs.
Rotten deals with World Bank, WTO, etc., ensures that this continues.
-Barros Serrano
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Do you have quotations of MLK jr endorsing the Tea-parties ? No ?MLKjr
In a 1958 interview, he expressed his view that neither party was perfect, saying, "I don't think the Republican party is a party full of the almighty God nor is the Democratic party. They both have weaknesses ... And I'm not inextricably bound to either party."[30]
King critiqued both parties' performance on promoting racial equality:
Actually, the Negro has been betrayed by both the Republican and the Democratic party. The Democrats have betrayed him by capitulating to the whims and caprices of the Southern Dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed him by capitulating to the blatant hypocrisy of reactionary right wing northern Republicans. And this coalition of southern Dixiecrats and right wing reactionary northern Republicans defeats every bill and every move towards liberal legislation in the area of civil rights.[31]
^ Oates, Stephen B.(December 13, 1993). Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. HarperCollins. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-06-092473-7. Retrieved October 26, 2011.
^ King, Jr., Martin Luther (2000). Carson, Clayborne; Holloran, Peter; Luker, Ralph et al.. eds. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Symbol of the Movement, January 1957 – December 1958. University of California Press. p. 364. ISBN 978-0-520-22231-1. Retrieved October 26, 2011.
Do you have quotations of MLK jr endorsing Reaganomics ? No ?
Do you have quotations of MLK jr endorsing a war against Iran and Jerusalem as eternal capital of the USA ? No ?
What are today the "Dixiecrats" of the 1960's ?... all Republicans : have a look on the Southern states in red.
Times are changing and the merchandise under the labels "Dems" and "Reps" is changing too.
However MLK jr would certainly not feel at ease with the lame centrist Dem-reps of 2008-2010 but he would more likely sound the trumpet against the KKK nostalgia of present Reps lead by Mormon Mitt.
a whiteboi
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Sir,
i never heard about Mr Nigel Gibson but he is wrong, completely, about the school question in colonial Algeria.
Under the 1830 pact, local people (les "Indigènes") kept their own islamic based law, their own islamic courts and so their Quranic village schools : children were not learning much in these very primitive type of schools you still find in North Sudan for ex. and some regions of African countries. Basically children are supposed to learn the Quran in Arabic by heart.
So no supposedly brilliant system was suppressed from the very poor Ottoman dominated Algiers bey country. There was no academic tradition in this place, Algiers has never been Cairo or Bagdad or even any of the striving ancient cities of Morocco (like Fès, Marakech).
The second part is correct : yes an elitist school system, a French one and for the European colonists, was settled ; very few "indigènes" could join this system.
However in the 1890's, the secularist IIIrd Republic created a Muslim academic system with 3 colleges (called medersas) in order to have graduates in Islamic law and with other knowledge to be appointed in the personal law administration (Islamic courts etc.). More surprisingly it is Senator Emile Combes, the rabid anti-catholic politician and promoter of the separation between State and Churches, who fathered this law for the Algeria "general government" and he made these Muslim colleges ... state institutions paid by public money [very few people have heard of that and i discovered the case by chance years ago].
a whiteboi
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British created one of the WORST disaster that's known to this planet in India. Even today, India has world's 2nd largest irrigable land just next after USA but in 1770 it has great famine where more than 10 million people were killed just in Bengal(east India and some part of today's Bangladesh) regions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of...
The famine was directly because of British policy where they were forcing people to cultivate cash crops instead of food crops and increase in taxes. Today we hear about sustainable farming and India had more than 5000 years of sustainable agricultural industry and 1000+ of different variety of rice alone. British efforts destroyed most of this crops and farmers were left to choose only few variety of grains. Today many non-profit organizations are trying to form the seed-bank in India to get and save many exotic seeds.
Killing 10 million people is much worse disaster than what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many Bengalis willingly become "coolies"(or bonded labors) and exported to Britain, South Africa, etc to escape famine and rest fled into jungle.
British rule also hurt many adi-vasis/primitive people who were outside caste system, as British started capturing their land and sub diving and taxing them.
Some people in here are so lame that they were declaring how British rule helped India. May be in the same way slavery helped black people. I believe India has made much progress in 65 years for what it has gone through in British and Moghuls rule.
-EkDesiLadki
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10 Million victims? That why Aime Cesaire in DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM argued that Europe became the perpettrator of Nazism before becoming its victims. Birts who killed millions of Indians, Belgians who killed millions of Congolese, Spaniards who killed millions of Incas, Aztecs and others, whould be in as much ill repute as the madman with the moustache who murdered millions of white Europeans. The Belgians alone "Christinized and civilizd" over half the Congolese population out of existence.
-Savant
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Considering King's severe criticisms of BOTH parties during the 1950s & 60s, and considering how much further to the Right they've moved since then, I can only imagine the indignation these parties would arouse in him now.
I'm reasonably sure that King would be with us in the Occupy Movement. And if Obama lacked the nerve to openly support the working people in Wisconsin, Dr. King would be there---even if (in his 80s) he had to move about in a wheel chair at the demonstratons
-Savant
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I'd missed this post earlier and I want to acknowledge it.
Yes - no rational but exploitative ruling class wants its citizenry to have more education than they can use to make a living. I assume that the elites that run countries like Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc., have much the same attitude.
-Harrisson
Read the opening chapter of Frantz Fanon's THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH.
It also would nto hurt to read CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY by Eric Williams, HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA by Walter Rodney,
THE WORLD AND AFRICA by W.E.B. Du Bois. The chapter called "The Souls of White Folk" in Du Bois' DARKWATER is interesting on this issue as well.
And if you're not put off by his poetic prose, you may also find interesting Aime Cesaire's DISCOURSE ON COLOHIALISM.
-Savant
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@Edesiladki, Harrison & Attai.
The three of you happen to know my name. So, you can find the king book advertised.
That's as much as I will say in this looney Topix place.
Some of you have contact with others such as SoulBrother, Blondegirl & Jurisprudence. Maybe you can help spread the word.
I will be doing a number of trips and lectures regarding King as a thinker and his relevance to contemporary movements for social justice.
As a philosopher engagee, my aim was never just to had to add to my list of publications for scholarly recognition (though I certainly don't mind recognition).
My aim is to aid the the triumph of the struggles of the oppressed, the courageous struggles of the common people--whence I myself came--in the great battle for democracy and against plutocracy and racism.. The struggle of humanity to become more truly human
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These sources quoted here can be found on line now. The second source quoted is from vol 2 (if I remember correctly) of the KING PAPERS edited by Clayborne Carson. I think all SEVEN volumes may now be on line. Carson, who edited and published this collection of King's writings, addresses and even letters, is to be commended for his priceless contribution to King acholarship and (at least indirectly) our common quest for the freedom and dignity of every human being on earth.
-Savant
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Not only was Dr. King espousing the highest of human ideals, in the tradition of his mentors Jesus and Gandhi and others, but, like them, he died for his beliefs.
The great heroes of humanity are such as him. I feel a great imperative to never slack off in fighting for justice, never leave the struggle for which Dr. King and so many others died. This is the greatest legacy any of us can leave of our pathetic short lives.
Our imperative now is to find new ways to implement this higher morality, new ways to succeed in struggle, realizing that the forces of evil arrayed against us now may be greater than at any time in history.
-Barros Serrano
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In his speech "A Time to Break Silence"(his denunciation of Vietnam War), Dr. King states:I don't think that rich nations should pay poor nations but may be they should just stop interfering with the growth and prosperity of developing nations.
By the way, most countries in Europe aren't known for being rich in natural resources. They become rich by exploiting other nations which were doing good and were good in natural resources. For comparison if you see the revenue of India before British invasion was better than Britain itself. Even today, most rich nations are using developing nations in one form are another. Most companies set up their hub in poor nations so that they can escape US labor laws and do whatever they like in other countries.
Even western interest in middle east has made only few people who help west rich and powerful. rest common people are poor. 18 out of 19 9/11 terrorist were from Saudi, yet USA doesn't have inhibition when it comes to buying oil from Saudi, but it still imposes rules on many undeveloped countries from buying oil from Iran.
Rules aren't set by any moral or humanitarians values. Winners sets the rule and play unfairly, so poor countries stay poor.
"Ture compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar...It comes to see that an EDIFICE which produces beggars needs RESTRUCTURING. A true revolution of values will look uneasily on glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take profits out with no concern for the social betterment of those countries and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry in Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just." (from A TESTAMENT OF HOPE,p. 241).
-Savant
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Too little, too late. If Barack Obama intended to move on a PROGRESSIVE agenda-against the racists and plutocrats--he'd have needed to do so immediately, certainly not later than the FIRST year in office. He gave signs that he might do that before taking office. When the Chicago Window and Doors workers occupied the plant which intended to lay them off without even their severance pay, Obama actually said that the workers were RIGHT in doing so? This was before President-elect Obama had even taken office. I wondered: "Could it have happened? Can it POSSIBLY happen in politically backward America? A president who is on the side of the WORKING PEOPLE, the poor and the oppressed?" Then we saw him compromise away the health care initiative. OK, it's better than NOTHING --which is what the Republicans offered, and all America previously had. But we could have gotten SINGLE PAYER universal health care, or at least the PUBLIC OPTION. All we got was some tinkering reforms of a still corporate ruled health care industry. Obama at least floated the idea of a bail out for HOMEOWNERS and renters. After all, the banks had been bailed out by both Obama and GW. So, Obama reasoned--and quite correctly--the banks and corporate cliques who destroyed the economy should not be allowed to continue evicting people. At the very least a MORATORIUM on foreclosures and evictions for a year to 18 months ought to be enforced. Sounds good? Yeah, but Obama backed out when he got opposition from Republicans and even some Democrats. Instead of taking his case before the American people and putting pressure on Congress, he blinked. And as I heard Bmore Occupy protestors saying "The banks got bailed out and we got sold out." Why the continued embargo on Cuba? Why the compromise with the cops after the Skip Gates incidents? Can't Obama even defend the BLACK BOURGEOISIE from racist attacks? Why not come to the defense of Mrs. Sherrod --a heroine and (I believe) widow of the Civil Rights Movement? His words on behalf of the Trayvon Martin family was ok, but still too little and too late. OK, there's some movement---also very late in the day--to easy the racially discriminatory judicial practices related to the disastrous "war on drugs." Again, way late in the day. It's so late in the day now that if Obama were to try to morph himself into a synthesis of Dr. KIng, Malcolm X, John Brown, Bill Haywood, and Nelson Mandela --all rolled up into one--there's little that he can do in the two years he has left. And will he do even that little?
-Savant
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"All labor has dignity. But you're doing another thing. You are reminding not only Memphis, but you are remind the nation, that it is a CRIME for people to live in this RICH nation and receive STARVATION wages." King would probably have been down with the Occupy Movement, and with the exploited Walmart workers. He would have been with the Wisconsin workers when their governor stripped them of the same collective bargaining rights for which KIng fought on behalf of the even more exploited Black sanitation workers of Memphis
-Savant
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