Tuesday, September 30, 2014

More Information in the Fall of 2014

That experience wouldn't give him authority on King, especially not on King's social and political philosophy. It wouldn't verify his CLAIMS that King was conservative (if that's his view). At any rate, people from East Baltimore who grew up in the time of King do not all think in the same way. How has Marcus' views any more authority than that others who grew up in aast Baltimore at the same time?(By the way, I encountered VERY FEW Blacks in east Bmore who believed that ALL of the problems of Black America were caused by "whitey". I think it's a MYTH that most Black people think that. They do believe--CORRECTLY--that a large part of the problem is rooted in racism and economic injustice) As regarding King's philosophy, has honestly studied it? Or does he simply pick words or phrases that suit him to make his point. I can cherry pick comments from speeches or writings of some Marxists or Anarchists, or revolutionary Blacks like some 1960s Black Panthers. Overwhelmingly, King was a PROGRESSIVE.

 -Savant

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There's something I've been thinking about that may be (or may not be) wholly impractical. The idea of Federation. I seem to recall Huey Newton---after the BPP abandoned "revolutionary nationalism" for "revolutionar y intercommunalism "--suggested some kind of intercommunal federation of Jews and Palestinians. Only problem is that it seems to imply the moving away from ideas of either a Jewish or Palestinian state. Neither would agree. The federation---prefe rably socialist, according to Newton--would encompas Jewish and Arab communities, but with regional autonomy and equal RIGHTS written into a new democratic constitution. There would be (if I understood him correctly) no prohibition of either Jew or Palestinians traveling outside his respective Jewish or Palestinian region, but there would be self-governance in each group in each region. Honestly, I don't know that it would work given all the bloodletting that has already happened. But if a significant number of both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs could agree on this, and on the particulars of how to go about it, it might be worthwhile. And in fifty years or more descendants of both Jews and Arabs would look back on their bloody past and wonder: "How could this be? How could our ancestors treat each other that way?" Oh well....maybe just a dream....a liberated federation of free Jewish and Arab peoples. But as John Lennon put, "Imagine! "



 -Savant

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