Category Archives: Racism

DACA: from the beginning…

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in DACA, Immigration, Racism, The United States

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President Obama Meets Beneficiaries Of The Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals Policy

WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 04: U.S. President Barack Obama meets with a group of ‘DREAMers’ who have received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in the Oval Office of the White House February 4, 2015 in Washington, DC. ‘DREAMers’ are children who were brought into the U.S. illegally and were then granted temporary relief under Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The above photograph features DREAMers or beneficiaries of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/04/politics/daca-dreamers-immigration-program/index.html

President Trump plans to deport immigrants who arrived in the United States as minors. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is a policy of the Obama administration  adopted in June 2012 and rescinded by the Trump administration in September 2017 (See Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Wikipedia.) DACA beneficiaries received a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and were eligible for a work permit.

DACA is rooted in the DREAM Act (acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act#2017

“The bill was first introduced in the Senate on August 1, 2001, S. 1291 by United States Senators Dick Durbin (D– Illinois) and Orrin Hatch (R– Utah), and has since been reintroduced several times (see Legislative history) but has failed to pass.” (See DREAM Act, Wikipedia.)

Lafayette and Washington at Valley Forge
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, 1
Dred Scott. Oil on canvas by Louis Schultze, 1888. Acc. # 1897.9.1. Missouri Historical Society Museum Collections. Photograph by David Schultz, 1999. NS 23864. Photograph and scan (c) 1999-2006, Missouri Historical Society.

John Ward Dunsmore‘s depiction of Lafayette (right) and Washington at Valley Forge, a battle fought in 1777-1778 (Wikipedia)
George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, 1797 (Wikipedia)
Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, 1798 (Wikipedia)
Dred Scott  (Photo credit: PBS)
Gilbert Motier, marquis de Lafayette by Joseph-Désiré Court, 1791 (Wikipedia)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

If one reads the Declaration of Independence, quoted above, without taking its historical context into consideration, one cannot reconcile the phrase “all men are created equal,” with enslavement. Matters are all the more puzzling since, as Minister to France (1784 -1789), Thomas Jefferson helped the Marquis de Lafayette draft the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), a monument to social justice drawing from the American Declaration of Independence. La Fayette had fought in the American Revolutionary War. Could it be that the Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, were hypocrites? I have pondered this question and it would be my opinion that, in their eyes, black slaves were not fully developed men. The Founding Fathers: George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison wished to create a union of white men. George Washington, the 1st President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, was a Mason and a slave owner, but did he know that blacks were human beings to the same extent as whites?

Thomas Jefferson is unlikely ever to have whipped his slaves, but I doubt that his attitude towards the blacks was substantially different from the view expressed, a century later, by Confederate General-in-Chief, Robert E. Lee’s (19 January 1807 – 12 October 1870)

“most noted comment, quoted by most Lee’s biographers, occurred in a [sic] 1856 letter to his wife, describing slavery as an evil institution, but one that had more adverse effects on whites than blacks. However, he viewed slavery as a “painful discipline” which elevated blacks from barbarism to civilization while introducing them to Christianity. He felt that the institution would come to an end in God’s good time, but that might not be soon.” (See Robert E. Lee, Wikipedia.)

The White Man’s Burden

In the White Man’s Burden, a poem published as the 19th century drew to an end, in 1899), Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) expressed views that portrayed the inhabitants of colonies as “primitive:”

“The implication, of course, was that the Empire existed not for the benefit — economic or strategic or otherwise — of Britain, itself, but in order that primitive peoples, incapable of self-government, could, with British guidance, eventually become civilized (and Christianized).” (See The White Man’s Burden, Wikipedia.)

-The_White_Man's_Burden-_Judge_1899.png

The British John Bull and the American Uncle Sam bear The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling), taking the coloured peoples of the world to civilisation. (Victor Gillam, Judge magazine, 1 April 1899) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rudyard Kipling is the author of the Jungle Book (1894) and the Just-so stories (1902), classics of children’s literature. As for Lafayette, although he was an abolitionist and a Mason, he fought in the American Revolutionary War and probably realized that George Washington and other Founding Fathers of the United States could not be brought to view their black slaves as altogether human or “men,” but that they were good human beings.  The United States Declaration of Independence was worded in the language of John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) and also reflected Freemasonry. Equality would be the subject matter of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778)  Discourse on Inequality (1754) and a main theme in Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762). These documents are “cornerstones in modern political and social thought.”

 

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John Locke by Godfrey Kneller, 1697 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1200px-Jean-Jacques_Rousseau_(painted_portrait)

J.-J. Rousseau by  Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1753 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798

  • Three Acts
  • Dred Scott

The case of Dred Scott is most revealing. In 1857, Dred Scott, a slave taken to free states by his owners, sued for his freedom and lost. Dred Scott vs Sandford  60 U.S  393 is considered one of the worst mistakes of the Supreme Court of the United States. Its decision was made shortly before the American Civil War (1861-1865) and it proved to be an indirect catalyst for the American Civil War.” (See Dred Scott vs Sandford 60 U.S.393.)

African-Americans had been taken to the Americas forcibly, yet they were not recognized as citizens of the United States until the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1868, three years after the South surrendered to the Union. As for American Indians, they were not  citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

“This law limited naturalization to immigrants who were free white persons of good character. It thus excluded American Indians, indentured servants, slaves, free blacks and later Asians although free blacks were allowed citizenship at the state level in certain states.” (See Naturalization Act of 1790, Wikipedia.)

John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts

The Naturalization Act of 1798, is one of four acts, the Alien and Sedition Acts, signed into law by John Adams, the 2nd American President of the United States and its 1st Vice President. The four laws under John Adam’s Alien and Sedition Acts are the following:

(See Alien and Sedition Acts, Wikipedia)

The Naturalization Act of 1798 was repealed by Thomas Jefferson and replaced by the Naturalization Law of 1802, which reduced the residence requirement of immigrants from 14 years to 5 years, as it had been under the terms of the Naturalization Act of 1795.  However, the Alien Enemies Act, was used after Pearl Harbor was attacked, on 7 December 1941. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 would allow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt “to imprison Japanese, German, and Italian aliens during World War II.” Canadians followed Franklin Delano Roosevelt and also interned Japanese Canadians. (See Internment of Japanese Canadians.) The Alien Enemies Act was also used by President Harry S. Truman “to continue to imprison, then deport, aliens of the formerly hostile nations.” It has been revised but remains in effect. The Alien Friends’ Act and the Sedition Act went into dormancy. A modified Alien Enemy Act is still in force.

“The Sedition Act resulted in the prosecution and conviction of many Jeffersonian newspaper owners who disagreed with the government.” (See Alien and Sedition Acts, Wikipedia.)

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 6 May 1882 is particularly sad, and the United States was not the only country in which the Chinese were viewed as a peril, the Yellow Peril. It was the first American federal law prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers. Chinese had first emigrated to the United States during the California gold rush (1848-1855). Later, in the 1860s, they were employed to build the First Transcontinental Railroad from Nebraska to the Pacific Ocean. The Burlingame Treaty, signed in Washington (1868) and ratified in Beijing (1868), granted the Chinese equality with Americans. Yet, on 24 October 1871, 500 rioters entered Los Angeles’ Chinatown “to attack, rob and murder Chinese residents of the city.” Rioters “tortured and then hanged” 17 to 20 Chinese. The Massacre was “racially motivated,” and “it took place on Calle de los Negros (Street of the Negros), also referred to as ‘Nigger Alley.’ “It was the largest mass lynching in American history.” (See Chinese Massacre of 1871, Wikipedia.)

 

YellowTerror (1)

The Yellow Terror in all His Glory (1899) is a rebellious Qing Dynasty Chinese man, armed to the teeth, who stands astride a fallen white woman representing Western European colonialism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau, the author of the Essai sur l’inégalité des races (The Essay on the Inequality of  Human Races, c. 1848), feared the Yellow Peril above all. As we have seen, he developed the theory of the Aryan master race, but he was not an anti-Semite.

Darwinism

As biology, botany, ethnology, and related disciplines developed, the matter of racial superiority or inferiority among races started to lose its grip. The findings of English naturalist, geologist and biologist Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) were a revolution. According to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, two years after the Dred Scott vs Sandford, humans had evolved “through a process of natural selection.” (See Charles Darwin, Wikipedia.) Darwin’s views were controversial. Wasn’t man created by God? There is such a thing as Scientific Racism (see Wikipedia), but Darwin was not a racist.

Lafayette and Washington

Gilbert Motier de Lafayette was a very good friend of George Washington. He named one his sons after the 1st President of the United States. (See Georges Washington de La Fayette, Wikipedia.) Georges Washington de La Fayette, Lafayette’s son went to the United States during the French Revolution. He studied at Harvard and lived at the home of George Washington, and Americans did all they could to save the life of the Lafayette’s during the French Revolution. As for Thomas Jefferson, during his stay in France, just prior to the French Revolution, he was a distinguished guest at Lafayette’s home. Lafayette was an abolitionist and a Mason. He was a member of la Société des amis des Noirs  (The Society of Friends of the Blacks). In a letter to George Washington, written in 1783, “he urged the emancipation of slaves and their establishment as tenant farmers.” (See Gilbert Motier de Lafayette, Wikipedia.) He bought land in the French colony of Cayenne to “experiment.” However, there was little he could to do to change the embedded mindset of his American friends. Slavery had long been looked upon as morally acceptable, the slaves were blacks, an inferior race, and one did not have to pay slaves.

320px-Gilbert_du_Motier_Marquis_de_Lafayette

Gilbert Motier, marquis de Lafayette by Joseph-Désiré Court, 1791 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Conclusion

By rescinding DACA, President Trump would show that he has little respect for immigrants, especially, but not necessarily, coloured immigrants. DACA beneficiaries arrived in the United States as minors and, at times, alone. The only home they know is the United States. If President Trump deports immigrants who arrived to the United States as minors, and, at times, unaccompanied, America will not be “great again;” it will be cruel and it will be walking back to an age when immigration to the United States was restricted to “free white persons of good character.” Immigration to the United States is currently taking a turn for the worse. DACA beneficiaries featured in the photograph inserted at the top of this post are dark-skinned.

I prefer to think that ethnicity is not a factor in the Trump administration’s decision to deport DACA beneficiaries. But what about immigrants from the Near to Middle East. They may have pale skin, but ethnicity might deprive them of a home.

In a letter to his wife Adrienne, Lafayette wrote:

“The welfare of America is bound closely to the welfare of all humanity. She [America] is to become the honored and safe asylum of liberty! Adieu! Darkness does not suffer me to continue longer. But if my fingers were to follow my heart, I should need no daylight to tell you how I suffer far away from you, and how I love you.” (See Adrienne de La Fayette, Wikipedia.)

When Lafayette was in United States, it was a country in the making, a project. And it is still a project. It took a long time to accept African-Americans as citizens of America. As for DACA, Mr Trump might change his mind and not deport them. President Trump wants to reverse every decision made by the Obama administration. The Affordable Care Act is his main target.

In all likelihood the Founding Fathers believed that “all men were created equal,” but they lived in an age when humans looked upon the blacks and American Indians as inferior to white men. Matters have changed. The United States is now or should be “the honored and safe asylum of liberty!”

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Love to everyone ♥

800px-Official_Presidential_portrait_of_John_Adams_(by_John_Trumbull,_circa_1792)

John Adams by John Trumbull, 1793 (Wikipedia)

© Micheline Walker
30 October 2017
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Comments on Racism

02 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Racism, the World, United States

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1024px-Mines_1

Slaves working in a mine. Ancient Greece. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Slavery

We have looked at the abolition of slavery, but we have not discussed racism. The image placed at the top of this post shows that slavery is an ancient institution. In classical Athens two to four-fifths of the population were slaves. (See Slavery, Wikipedia.)

Not all slaves were born to slaves. Many slaves were persons held in captivity during a war, ancestors to our prisoners of war. Poet Horace‘s[1] (8 December 65 BCE – 27 November 8 BCE) father was a slave for several years. He had been “taken captive by the Romans during the Social War.” (See Horace, Wikipedia.)

During the Ottoman wars, Christians were enslaved, but once again enslavement was the result of an armed conflict except that the conflict opposed people of different faiths. These religious conflicts have been numerous, the worst being the Crusades. Mercedarians often rescued captive Christians.

800px-Fathers_of_the_Redemption

The work of the Mercedarians was in ransoming Christian slaves held in Muslim hands (1637). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Serfdom[2] also constituted a form of slavery. In fact, slavery endures: debt bondage, the sex industry, child labour, etc. but many slaves and most serfs were and are of the same ethnicity as their owner, lord or seigneur, which precludes racial discrimination.

  MEDIA FOR: serfdom “Luttrell Psalter” “Luttrell Psalter” Two serfs and four oxen operating one medieval agricultural plow, 14th-century illuminated manuscript, the Luttrell Psalter.

“Luttrell Psalter”
Two serfs and four oxen operating one medieval agricultural plow, 14th-century illuminated manuscript, the Luttrell Psalter. (Photo credit: The Encyclopaedia Britannica)

I must skip examples or never publish this post. Moreover, we have reached a topic defined by the United Nations as “racial discrimination.” (See Racism, Wikipedia).

Slavery differs from Racial Discrimination

racial discrimination
ethnic discrimination

Slavery differs from racial discrimination or racism. In an earlier post, I noted that the United Nations does not define “racism.” Defining racism is difficult because there has been and there is discrimination between ethnic and religious groups. However, the United Nations does define “racial discrimination.”

According to the United Nations‘ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,

“the term ‘racial discrimination’ [a term adopted in 1966] shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.” (See Racism, Wikipedia.)

The above definition of racial discrimination is consistent with Gobineau’s racial theories, in that it combines race and ethnicity.

Arthur de Gobineau

Arthur de Gobineau (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau

gobinisme
Caucasians
Aryanism

Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau[3] (14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) is the author of L’Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines (An Essay on the Inequality of Human Races) (1853 – 1855). According to Gobineau, there was inequality between the races: the white, the black and the yellow, the white race being the superior race. However, although the “white” race was deemed superior to the “black” and “yellow” races, Gobineau looked upon some Caucasians, the white, as inferior to other Caucasians. The term Caucasian is still used, but less frequently, to describe members of the white race. As for the word Aryan, it existed before Gobineau. (See Aryan, Wikipedia)

“He [Gobineau] advanced the theory that the fate of civilizations is determined by racial composition, that white and in particular Aryan societies flourish as long as they remain free of black and yellow strains, and that the more a civilization’s racial character is diluted through miscegenation, the more likely it is to lose its vitality and creativity and sink into corruption and immorality.”[4]

Gobineau’s theories may have influenced Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, but Gobineau was not anti-Semitic and cannot be linked, at least directly, to the slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews by Hitler’s Nazis. Gobineau’s Aryans were “the peoples of European and Western Asian heritage,” including the peoples of the Middle East and India, as in Indo-European languages. (See Caucasian race, Wikipedia.) As for Hitler’s Aryan race, it excluded the Jews.

The “allies” fought Germany not only because Hitler was invading other countries, beginning with the Sudetenland and Poland, but because of Aryanism. In other words, ethnicity played a major role in World War II and, once Hitler seized power, no dissent was tolerated in Germany.

Racism: The Black & the Coloured

Atlantic slave trade
Slavery and racism linked

In the case of the lucrative Atlantic slave trade, or Translatlantic slave trade, which took place between the 16th and the 19th centuries, racism, as most of us understand it, i.e. Gobineau’s black, white and yellow races, was a major factor. In this instance, slavery  and racism were linked. The slaves were black and the black had been considered a less-than-human race before the Transatlantic slave trade. Ironically, black people often captured black people to sell them to slave traders who would send them to both South and North America. You may remember that Ignatius Sancho’s father committed suicide to avoid being subjected to slavery. (See RELATED ARTICLES.) Black Africans themselves were slave traders and slave owners.

During the 14th century CE, Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun (27 May 1332 CE – 19 March 1406 CE) wrote that:

“beyond [known peoples of black West Africa] to the south there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves, and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings.” “Therefore, the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Negroes) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.” (See Racism, Wikipedia.)

“[D]umb animals!” In the United States, the slaves were also black. Consequently racial discrimination often followed the ignominy of enslavement, especially in the former slave states. But racial discrimination soon extended to people of colour who were neither black nor slaves. They were Amerindians or persons of mixed ancestry (métis). Amerindians were an inferior “race” compared to the white “race,” yet they were not black slaves. They were people of colour.

In a former post, entitled From “Manifest Destiny” to Exceptionalism, I quoted Senator John Caldwell Calhoun (18 March 1782 – 31 Mars 1850) who believed only Caucasians, but which Caucasians, should enter into “our Union:”

“We have never dreamt [sic] of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race…. We are anxious to force free government on all; and I see that it has been urged… that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty over all the world, and especially over this continent. It is a great mistake.”  (See Manifest Destiny, Wikipedia.)

I suppose it would be difficult to enslave a person one had not first divested of his or her humanity. It remains that being born black is what I have called, in an earlier post but different context, an accident of birth. If one is white and born to an aristocratic family, it is also an accident of birth.

Being rich is also, to a very large extent, an accident of birth. In Russia, serfdom  was not abolished until 1861 and it impoverished landowners. In North-America, the loss of slaves—free labour—led to a civil war and contributed to racism. The abolition of slavery had impoverished the slave-owners. Shouldn’t former slave-owners and their descendants be compensated for the loss of their slaves? Why should they pay taxes and promote a decent minimum wage? Why should the children of their inferiors be given access to higher education?

There are people who do not want to attend university or cannot pass the entrance examination. It is best for some people to enter a community college and learn a trade. My plumber once told that he would rather be a plumber than a university teacher. There are many ways of earning a living and a decent living. As President Obama noted, in his State of the Union Address (2015), one cannot survive on $15,000.00 a year.

The United States & …

From Slavery to Racism
Impoverishment

As we know, long after the abolition of slavery, racism persists and many citizens feel they should carry a gun to defend themselves. The abolition of slavery did not transform the black into white citizens and it impoverished slave owners and their descendants. Hence the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists, violence by the police and against the police, and, as far as I can see, disrespect towards the President of the United States, who is a man of colour.

Hardline Republicans are the laughing-stock of the world. Yet the world is not exactly innocent. It’s a mea culpa. We’ve all “sinned.”

Romans_(Niketas_Oryphas)_punish_Cretan_Saracens

A 12th-century Byzantine manuscript illumination depicting Byzantine Greeks punishing Cretan Saracens in the 9th century. From the Madrid kylitzes. (Caption and photo credit: Wikipedia)

The truth is that President Obama, the 44th President of the United States, is one a handful of truly superior Presidents of the United States. Not all American Presidents have been qualified to govern a nation. Need I remind anyone of the events of the 2000s? Remember the recession of 2008.[5] The United States nearly went bankrupt and the economy being a global economy, other countries suffered. Was that President Obama’s fault?

I have often wondered whether or not the mental representation of coloured people, expressed by Senator John C. Calhoun a long time ago, has survived. In other words, I have wondered whether or not what we call racism is a built-in mental content. If it is a built-in mental concept, there’s very little room left for reason to lead to a change.

Washington

On what valid grounds can anyone sue the President? On what valid grounds can he be impeached? Opposition is acceptable, but systematic obstructionism and scapegoating are not. Doesn’t John Boehner realize that his behaviour is not acceptable. (Scroll down the following link to “This fiasco reveals…” .)

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/01/30/israeli-ambassador-throws-speaker-boehner-netanyahu-speech-bus.html

Obviously there is a flaw in the system. Congress should not be in a position to paralyze a duly-elected administration and make it necessary for a president to resort to executive orders and his presidential right to veto “bills” so he can carry out his duties.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/01/31/veto-filibuster-threats-ahead-vote-next-week-to-fund-homeland-security-roll/

So I must agree with the author of The Cold Hard Truth who published the image featured below.

Obama.3

Conclusion

Fortunately, we can end racism. President Barack Obama was elected to the presidency of the United States. President Obama did not buy his position. It is clear, therefore, that racism is waning, but racism remains a major issue.

We, humans, must now fight poverty, violence, terrorism. We have to put an end to flogging and beheading.

However, we could first put an end to racism. It can be a society’s decision. There are white supremacists in Canada!

King regards to all of you.

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_________________________

[1] “Horace”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 05 janv.. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/271624/Horace>.

[2] “serfdom”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 01 févr.. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/535485/serfdom>.

[3] “Joseph-Arthur, comte de Gobineau”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 04 janv.. 2015 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/236572/Joseph-Arthur-comte-de-Gobineau>.

[4] op. cit.

[5]  “The Great Recession of 2008-09: Year In Review 2009”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 31 janv.. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1661642/The-Great-Recession-of-2008-09-Year-In-Review-2009/286636/The-US-Response>.

Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-George(s)


images© Micheline Walker
1 February 2015
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James Foley: Tragic Events

28 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by in Black history, Racism, Terrorism, United States

≈ 15 Comments

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James Foley.s Murder: the Real Issues

James Foley (Photo credit: Reuters)

James Foley

Tragic events have kept me away from my computer for several days. American journalist James Foley was beheaded in cold blood by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a terrorist organisation masquerading as a nation. It appears ISIS is now preparing to murder Steven Sotloff.

I agree with Pope Francis that “it should not be up to a single nation to decide how to intervene in the conflict.” The following is the Pope’s complete statement:

“18 August: Pope Francis, leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, said that the international community would be justified in stopping Islamist militants in Iraq. He also said that it should not be up to a single nation to decide how to intervene in the conflict.” (See Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia.)

The killer, or one of the killers, has a British accent. It appears he is a Londoner. David Cameron, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, is therefore taking matters very seriously. It seems the alleged executioner, or one of the alleged executioners, has been identified, but revealing his identity before he is in custody would be a breach of security.

Mr. Foley’s killer(s) will be brought to justice. I should note that since Barack Obama became President of the United States, the United States has seldom had better allies.

I hope that no single nation retaliate. Terrorism is not a nation. It could be the terrorists might enjoy generating a war. The US and its allies have élite commandos they can deploy. That’s how Bin Laden was found and killed. The terrorists must, of course, release the journalists they have captured.

Michael Brown

Also tragic and disturbing is the shooting death of 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown by a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri. The matter is still under investigation, which prevents conclusive statements. (See Shooting of Michael Brown, Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia.)

Racism, if it was racism, can be curbed considerably through proper education. We underestimate the role of good teachers in this regard.

I extend my condolences to James Foley’s family and friends and wish to tell them how sorry I am for their loss. Nothing is more painful than the death of a child, whatever his or her age.

I also extend my sincere condolences to Michael Brown’s family and friends.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/28/michael-brown-shooting-jay-nixon-daniel-isom-only-black-cabinet-member

My kindest regards to all of you.

f75

— La Guirlande de Julie (Photo credit: BnF)

Marc-André Hamelin plays Mozart

President Obama
President Obama (Reuters)
 
© Micheline Walker
August 28, 2014
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