Lost and Anonymously Found: Life

Tags

basic text, H&I, hospitals and institutions, narcotics anonymous, prison, recovery, twelve steps

Being able to place principles before personalities has afforded me opportunities to anonymously walk prison inmates caught up in an environment where race trumps all – religion , sexuality, geography, and all other ways we identify ourselves, to the door to a whole new way of life, a fresh mindset, a new, truer self, and closer to what they either identify as or, if they continue, will eventually identify as the god of their understanding. I’ve sponsored men over the years who have shared the most hateful, evil ideas and most treacherous deeds exacted upon members of the various cultures in which I am a member of. I’ve been told of the cancers of NIGGERS, JIGABOOS, SPICS, WETBACKS, RED NIGGERS, SAVAGES, SLAVES, MONKEYS, MOOSE-LIMS, TERRORISTS, PORCH MONKEYS, HORSE THIEVES, etc.  Through it ALL, I have always stayed on message and have seen dead men live as a result. Under ANY OTHER CIRCUMSTANCE this could hardly be possible, considering the ways we chose, then lost the control to choose to live our lives. Most of the men I’ve sponsored over the years, walked through the steps toward a new spirit would not so much as shake my hand, let alone tell me their most intimate secrets or fears were they to ever see my face, my politics, my religion – generally just how I get down.  Through this fellowship, through G-d, we identify only as addicts.  I thank Allah tremendously for this simplicity.

I’ve received letters from brothers who have paroled to states from NY, to Kentucky, Texas, to California sharing their gratitude, pictures of their kids being referred to as my nieces and nephews, and offers of compensation. I usually laugh as I read them, but also beam with gratitude myself. My answer, always: You cannot repay me for something that was never mine. You cannot pay me for something that was freely given to me. G-d gave you life, I just showed you where you left it; and the only form of payment possible is to show someone who is lost where their life is.

Working the steps with inmates is the way I choose to provide service to the fellowship which found me and led me to life and to G-d.

Red Tails glory…and then

Tags

african american, black, George Lucas, racism, red tails, riots, tuskegee airmen, WWII

I just returned from the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, Ca.  It was made clearer to me earlier today that support for the new release, “Red Tails” is not only needed, but necessary.  Initially I was not buying George Lucas’s sense of self-importance.  After learning more about the controversy surrounding the production and release of this film, I was successfully coerced into believing my patronage was crucial.

Overall, an entertaining flick.  Although, I was expecting a bit more.  I’m waiting for the Facebook/Twitter updates to roll in over the course of the weekend testifying to its greatness and its importance.  Oh, hold on, incoming…

Years ago I was informed (via Facebook status updates) of how “Avatar” was quite certainly the greatest movie ever made and of its social significance (I was not impressed until I just happened to see it playing recently on TNT or something and decided to watch it for its aesthetic quality).

As I mentioned, I enjoyed the movie.  The dogfight scenes were spectacular and the acting was, um…aight.  Throughout the movie, several people were clapping.  I admittedly clapped twice, once during something something and once at the end.  Just after clapping, however, something else occurred.  While I could hear several people openly crying during the film, I myself did not find a moment in which such a thing was necessary.  That is, until the movie was finished and the credits started to roll.  Now, I didn’t begin weeping or anything, but I was overcome with a recognizable sadness I have experienced from time to time.  Many were clapping and weeping at the heroics and the few sad moments.  Not I.  What caused my eyes to well up momentarily was imaging what those, then proud Black men would be returning to.  Those that know our history know full well the heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen were only lauded on the battlefields on the other side to the Earth.

The sadness I experienced was the knowledge of the hardships these men, these men who believed they were risking their lives and dying in the name of freedom, would face when returning home.  After all the heroics, the successful missions, the camaraderie shared with their brothers-at-arms, even the respect and gratitude gained from their white, fellow countrymen, these heroes would return to a home in which they would be forced to surrender the well earned title “American Hero” for the lesser, more popular title in America – Niggers.  Yes…after all the lives lost, the fighting for dignity across the world, these men, their children, their children’s children, and their children’s children’s children would still have to fight, still have to burn down cities, still have to riot – still have to play the same old game they and their ancestors had been playing since the early 1700s.

A friend offered the following via text after I expressed my sadness:

Aren’t things getting better though?  If only slowly?

I’m truly sorry for sounding like such a pessimist, however things have been “getting better…if only slowly” for far, far too long.  All deliberate speed is pacifying us.  Smothering us into an illusion of progress.  My heart hurts for the Tuskegee Airmen.  Truly, it does.  You shouldn’t have had to return home to this:

Harlem 1935
Los Angeles 1943 (Zoot Suit Uprising)
Detroit 1943
Harlem 1943
Peeksill, NY 1949
Little Rock 1957
Harlem 1964
Rochester, NY 1964
Philadelphia 1964
Watts 1965
Chicago 1966
Cleveland 1966
Benton Harbor, MI 1966
Atlanta, 1966
Newark 1967
Plainfield, NJ 1967
Detroit 1967
Cairo, IL 1967
Tampa 1967
Buffalo, NY 1967
Washington D.C. 1968
Baltimore 1968
Chicago 1968
Kansas City, MO 1968
Louisville, KY 1968
Camden, NJ 1971
Attica State Prison 1971
Tampa 1987, 89, 1992
Los Angeles 1992
Benton Harbor, MI 2003
Oakland, CA 2010, 2011…

These men didn’t deserve this.

It is So Possible

On Thursday, November 10th, I and nearly a hundred others witnessed the violent murder of Kayode Ola Foster in broad daylight near the Occupy Oakland site.  After the murder, I and another brother I’d met at the camp weeks earlier, also a witness to the murder, sat down on the steps of Oscar Grant Plaza for nearly two hours without saying so much as a word.  Just watching as medics attempted to revive the victim, the swarming vulture-like media frenzy, and police sweeping the crime scene.  This is not a post about that murder, or about Occupy Oakland.  I knew the brother and I were thinking the same things, and there was no real need for dialogue.  As I got up to leave, though, I told him simply “We have a big problem… you have my email, hit me up.”

Yesterday, he finally emailed me.  This is an email correspondence of the conversation we never had that night.

It’s all good ___________. You know, sitting there on the steps after the brother, Kayode Ola Foster was murdered, I kind of think we had the same things going on in our minds. Here we have this movement, Occupy, which, if 100% successful, could overturn whole systems. But that wasn’t what was occupying my mind as much as the bigger issue we have, and must address. It doesn’t get easier, no matter how many times we’ve personally witnessed it, no matter how many of our friends died just like the brother did that night… it’s the same, over and over again. Us killing us. We have a real problem, not just here in Oakland, but everywhere.  As a kid I can remember Chicago’s South Side, and East St. Louis. It was always the same thing.

I was heartbroken that night. The commodifying of the brother as he was coming to terms with his own demise… cameras all around, jousting for the money shot. The desensitization of our people to violence, as most of them walked around, looking on as though there goes another one. All this while we have real, actual enemies. All this time we look at each other as enemies, fighting wars that don’t even really exist, for territories that don’t belong to us, spaces we do not reap the benefits of. It’s all a cartoon.

I sat there thinking, how do we convince our people who the real enemies are. How do we infuse them with a truer knowledge of self? What do we look like as a united, proud people? Who could stop us from claiming what is rightfully our own? Our bodies, our spaces, our pride…

We have a real problem. No movement will succeed until we address it. Any movement that goes on without the unification of us, the unification of the people will only stand to create another marginalized class of people; and again it will be us. As I sat there heartbroken, I thought, if I only had a bigger platform, a larger voice, a larger team. I thought about then that Huey and Bobby probably sat back one day and thought the same thing.

And then, as I dealt with all the heartbreak, I thought to myself, just before my boy came up and I prepared to leave… it is so possible. We just gotta get to it. The following Friday I consulted with an imam from East Oakland I have come to like and trust a lot. I told him I felt I could really have some sort of effect on remedying our situation. Not as a hero, but as a soldier.

I kind of feel you have the same ideas. I don’t mean to sound all dramatic. I’ve just got a lot of this in me right now. Sorry for the long email too. I’ve been getting with some other people with similar concerns and ideas. I think we need a collaborated effort, a team – from the street “thug” / lumpen to the PhD – and everyone in between. But it’s possible, brother.

Peace,
Aharon

#OccupyOakland – By Any Means Necessary

Most may disagree, but in an occupation, in a revolution whose sole purpose is to destroy the capitalist system that exploits only to further imperialistic goals – of which the majority of us do not reap the benefits of – violence may indeed by necessary.  This is not about the so-called “Black Bloc” sabotaging our movement.  The Oakland Commune is a community of ideas, tactics, and goals.  The disagreements make us who we are.  Last Tuesday night we decided to take Oscar Grant Plaza back by any means necessary.  You all know how our collective conscious was met.  Violently.  The very next day, however, what did we do?  We took back our site and have rebuilt and are stronger than we were before.

I suggest a special polling committee.  We create a rubric, then take to the streets and engage local businesses.  Collectively, at our GA we determine measures that must be met in order to do business in our neighborhoods.  These must be businesses that support the communities they profit from.  Those that meet the specified, agreed upon measure we not only leave alone, but we do everything in our power to promote them and help them to flourish.

The others, the usurpers, we “scarlet letter” them.  Red “X’s” perhaps?  These, the vampire businesses will be greenlit for eviction and we will decide on best tactics to oust them from our communities – by any means necessary.  Whether this means making it impossible for them to receive patronage, or by any other means.  These evictions will not only be collectively agreed upon (however observed) but deemed necessary.  This will either force these pirates out of Oakland, or coerce them into contributing to our communities.

Short story -
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the closest model of what we are doing right now used to go into a Safeway with a grocery list.  Nothing extravagant – oatmeal, milk, juice, diapers, cleaning supplies, etc. to help fund the programs they’d established.  They had every right to make these demands as these large entities made it impossible for local businesses to compete, thereby taking all of the local residents’ hard earned dollars and stuffing the coffers of some Safeway executive with no investment in the communities of Oakland whatsoever.  They were pirates, vampires and the Panthers were going to take from them what they’d been taking from the communities.  The Panthers would give the store a day to either make the donations, or they would mob so deep in there and take the supplies off the shelves themselves and walk right out.

This is not a carnival, people.  Not some festival of flowers and puppies.  This is a real, working, breathing revolution.  We are going to change everything that exists as it presently exists.  There is no other way.  Big Daddy Kane taught me long ago, “Ain’t no Half-Steppin.”

Requiem to a Dream – Perhaps…

      .هذه هي التشتت تافه من شخص قد يكون أو لا يكون معين بالكامل. لقد اخترت الكتابة باللغة العربية بحيث لا يمكن تحديد كلماتي بسرعة أقراني. الانتظار، في الواقع، فإن معظم زملائي يعرفون العربية. طيب ، ولغة جديدة

আমি ব্যক্তিগতভাবে শুধু এক অন্য ব্যক্তি যিনি সম্ভবত এই ও, ভাল, সে পড়া না পড়তে অবগত. তাই, বাঙ্গালী হয় নতুন ভাষা. আমার সমগ্র জীবন, আমি এক জিনিস উপর বসবাস করেছি … এক জিনিস দৃঢ়বদ্ধ হয়েছে. আমি বিশ্বের পছন্দ করি না. আমি শুধু এটা না. আমার প্রথম স্মৃতি একটি অবমাননাকর পিতা এবং চরম দারিদ্র্যের হয়. আমি জোর গলায় বলেছেন, তিন বছর বয়সে এটি বিশ্বাস করি বা না, এটা সব পরিবর্তন. আমার প্রাথমিক প্রেরণা ছিল আমার পরিবার, আমার ছোট্ট ভাই, দুই বয়স্ক বোন, এবং আমার মা – আমি ভালো জন্য তাদের জীবন পরিবর্তন চালু ছিল. তারপর সাত বছর বয়সে 1985 সালে, আমার শৈশবের হিরো, মাইকেল জ্যাকসন, সহযোগীতামূলক “আমরা বিশ্বের” অ্যালবাম উপর শিল্পী একটি নম্বর দিয়ে. মার্কিন আফ্রিকা সহযোগীতা জন্য একটি সম্পূর্ণ নতুন দুর্ভোগ থেকে আমার চোখ খোলা. আমি দেখেছি যারা ​​অন্নহীন ছিল একটি জনসংখ্যা,, ঠিক যেমন আমার পরিবার ছিল. মাইকেল জ্যাকসন আমার জন্য একটা অনুপ্রেরণা. তিনি বিশ্ব আরোগ্য চেষ্টা ছিল. সাত বছর বয়সে, আমি সিদ্ধান্ত নিয়েছি আমি এই জন্য আমার জীবন উত্সর্গ করিয়া যাচ্ছে, তৈরি বিশ্বের একটি ভাল জায়গা ছিল. এক অপ্রয়োজনীয় বহন মধ্যে অনুপস্থিত. এই, আমি বিশ্বাস, ছিল না কেবল আমার পেশা, কিন্তু আমার কর্তব্য. যে দিন থেকে, আপনি কেউ কি Aharon আহমদ মরিস না যাওয়া ছিল জিজ্ঞাসা ছিল, তারা আপনাকে বলতে হবে, Aharon সমগ্র পৃথিবীর পরিবর্তন যাচ্ছে – এবং আমি.

এবং আমি.

পর্যন্ত দুই রাত আগে. কিছু অনুঘটকীয় ঘটনা সবচেয়ে বলবে পর দুই রাত আগে, আমার ধারণা হঠাত্ পরিবর্তনের আসল কারণ আমি একটি সাধনা ছিল. একটি নিকট যীশুর আবির্ভাব. এর সবই হয়েছে মিথ্যা. বিশ্ব পরিবর্তন আমার স্বপ্ন শুধুমাত্র হয়েছে একটি মোকাবেলা ব্যবস্থা যেখানে আমি নির্ভর করে এই ভয়ানক স্থানে বাস থেকে. আমি কিছু পরিবর্তন করতে পারেন. একা না – না সহযোগীতা -. মোটেই না সমস্যা খুবই মহান; তাই পুঙ্খানুপুঙ্খভাবে সমাজ জুড়ে পরিপূর্ণ. কোন অভিভূতকারী নেই. আমরা না পরাস্ত হইবে. এই জীবনের কোন ক্ষতিপূরণ থাকবে.

So, jetzt, zumindest jetzt, fühle ich mich der Kampf ist vorbei. Meine Träume, Sehnsüchte, fertig. Gone. Dies schafft ein großes Problem für mich. Ich kann nicht in einer ungerechten Welt, die ich nicht ändern kann leben. Ich kann nicht in einer Welt, in der ich bin hilflos, um Ihre Schmerzen zu lindern leben. Dein Schmerz ist mein Schmerz. Ihre Tränen sind meine Tränen. Wirst du aufhören zu weinen? Höchstwahrscheinlich nicht.

Ich habe zu verschwinden.

In dieser Nacht, der Nacht gab ich auf, ich habe eine Liste aller Leute, die ich irgendwie meine Hingabe zu informieren würde zusammengestellt.

Diese Dame – meine wahre Liebe.
Meine Mutter.
Meine Schwestern.
Mein kleiner Bruder.
Meine Nichten und Neffen.

Das ist meine Liste. Wie kann ich ihnen sagen? Es ist vorbei. Ich habe kapituliert. Ich habe aufgegeben. Ich kann nicht in einer Welt, die auf diese Weise ist zu leben – das war schon immer so gewesen, mit nun Macht, es zu ändern.

私は双極性ですので、私は”おそらく”と言う。私は今、落ち込んでいないよ。それがことだ。私は、新しいインスピレーションで、今日目が覚めた – 自然のサイクルを重いうつ病後。通常は、しかし、私はしばらく落ち込んできたと思いますかとんでもない実現。今回は接続しません。この時間は、私は心の変容状態にもかかわらず、私は私の仮定について、不正なではなかったことに気づいた。私の最新の執着は世界をより良い場所にする方法はありませんが、それがすべて離れて行くようにする方法。

私は少ないが痛いの方法を見つける必要があります。ないもちろん私、が、あまり他人を傷つける。今の時点で、私は残している。私は方法を見つける必要があります。

“おそらく、”これはすべて変更されます。 “おそらく、”私はこの年末に触発されます。または”多分”これは本当に夢へのレクイエムです – たぶん。

I’m figuring none of this translates to an actual, decipherable language.  In fact, I’m counting on it.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,900 times in 2010. That’s about 9 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 12 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 101 posts. There were 16 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was June 4th with 203 views. The most popular post that day was Partial List of Banned Items to Gaza Strip.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, encyclopediadramatica.com, twitter.com, shacknews.com, and brettanderson.co.uk.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for haiti earthquake, ehud barak, cornel west, palestine, and nat turner.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Partial List of Banned Items to Gaza Strip June 2010
3 comments

2

Zionist Group in Israel Urges Students to Report ‘Subversive’ Professors December 2009

3

Muslim Countries: Fulfill Your Islamic Duty – Send Aid to Haiti! January 2010
2 comments

4

Holy Qur’an Appears on Russian Baby’s Skin (Video) November 2009

5

Dr. Cornel West: On Being Modern & American June 2010
1 comment

________________________________________

I’m looking for some input for the 2011 year. My blog site waned over the year (obviously) because I stopped putting effort into it. My Facebook and Twitter accounts are mad strong, though. Should I keep this site and actually put some more effort into maintaining it? Should I become a real live blogger?

Best,

Kicking Horse

Dr. Cornel West: On Being Modern & American

Though it shames me to admit it, for as long as I can remember, (so far as this present quest for knowledge, redemption, and usefulness I’m on is concerned, that is) I have dismissed the ideals, teaching, and overall wisdom of Dr. Cornel West. This, irrational avoidance stemmed from something I either read in a book or heard from someone at one time regarding Dr. West’s tendency towards proselytism, him being a Christian and all. This came at a time when I was barely discovering a G-d of my own understanding (read between the lines as you see fit) and had an incredible aversion towards religion as a whole… maybe around 2001-2002. Would you believe I managed to graduate from one of the most prestigious university systems (University of California) with a Bachelor’s degree in Black Studies of all fields and maintain this anti-Cornel West stance; having only read one essay from Dr. West the entire time, and only as a 5th year senior during a special seminar course on the sex worker industry in the Caribbean (taught by dissertation scholar Erica Lorraine Williams). West’s essay was about “otherness” and the animalization of African descendants both male and female. Having studied such things for a few years, while insightful, it was hardly enough to push me into the West camp.

Fast forward to March, 2010. My entire viewpoint changed as I watched the following interview of Dr. Cornel West on Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines:

Hearing the man speak, actually observing his charisma, and, most especially, his analysis of “colorblindness” and MLK at around 12:50, and his analysis on Israel/Palestine at 17:08… courted me… as though he was flirting with my brain cells. Whatever he was doing, he got me. I started to look for more and more from the man… now my teacher/mentor. This research led to the fairly recent release of Dr. Cornel West & BMWMB (Black Men Who Mean Business) – CD Project Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations. The number 6 track on the album, The N Word is a true treat. The N Word is a discussion, mediated by Tavis Smiley, with Michael Eric Dyson, a brother that commanded my attention years ago, about the use of the word nigger in and out of the black community. The discussion tastefully overlays “James Brown-ish” funk background. The entire album is amazing, featuring the likes of Prince, KRS-1, Andre 3000, Jill Scott, the late Gerald Levert, and more. You can listen/read an interview with Tavis Smiley and West about this project specifically, here.

Forward again to the topic at hand. Since coming into my own regarding Dr. West I have become, as I mentioned earlier, a believer, a follower, and a student of this man. Insha’Allah one day I will actually get to meet and study under him, but until such time I’m doing my own independent studies. At the bookstore I opted out of buying his most famous publication, Race Matters, and, instead went straight for The Cornel West Reader. Let me tell you, the brother does not disappoint. I’ve had to pace myself on account of being overstimulated on occasion. I want so much to share this experience with others as I read it and experience it that I’ve decided to devote the occasional blog post to just this. The following excerpts are from the introduction:

To be modern is to live dangerously and courageously in the face of relentless self-criticism and inescapable fallibilsm; it is to give up the all-too-human quest for certainty and indubitability owing to the historicity of our claims.  Yet to give in to sophomoric relativism (“Anything goes” or “All views are equally valid”) is a failure of nerve, and to succumb to wholesale skepticism (“There is no truth”) is a weakness of the will and imagination.  Instead, the distinctive mark of modernity is to pursue the treacherous trek of dialogue, to wager on the fecund yet potentially poisonous fruits of fallible inquiry, which require communicative action, risk-ridden conversation, even intimate relation.

This experience of dialogue–the I-Thou relation with the uncontrolled other–may result in a dizziness, vertigo or shudder that unhinges us from our moorings or yanks us from our anchors… This loss of our footing and gain of our freedom compel us to acknowledge that the very meaning of being modern may be the lack of any meaning, that our quest for such meaning may be the very meaning itself–without ever arriving at any fixed meaning.

American culture accentuates what is to come, what is not yet as opposed to what is and what has been.  Of course, such a futuristic orientation often degenerates into an infantile, sentimental or melodramatic propensity toward happy endings, so that dreams of betterment downplay the dark realities of suffering in our midst.  In this way, American discourses on innocence, deliverance or freedom overlook the atrocities of violence, subjugation or slavery in our past present.  To be American is to downplay history in the name of hope, to ignore memory in the cause of possibility.

Ok, wow… the previous quote, on being American, has caused me to take a deeper, fairer look into the minds of my many critics, friends and foe alike.  It has provided a better basis upon which I’ve been able to understand their incredible faith in this social project called America.  Mind you, I just barely read this a few days ago and it has already caused me to completely reevaluate how I see my patriotic friends and family.

To be American is to raise perennially the frightening democratic question:  What does the public interest have to do with the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society?  This query of democratic import goes back to Cleisthenes of 508 B.C. in Athens.  Shouldn’t democracy be a form of plebodicy–not theodicy–that focuses our attention on the unjustified suffering and unnecessary social misery of ordinary human beings here and abroad?  And yet isn’t American democracy one in which arbitrary power is not fully curtailed and, hence, the political, corporate and financial elites–unregulated by substantive public accountability–wield forms of power that cause pain and grief for fellow citizens that need not be?

These were from the introduction alone… next posting in this “series” will be either about Dr. West’s Christianity, the very thing that once turned me off from him (forgive me… I’m older/wiser now) or his comments regarding Marxist social thought… oooh… or perhaps both because there is a definite overlap in the reading.
- Kicking Horse

Partial List of Banned Items to Gaza Strip

Items considered contraband entering the Gaza Strip (Partial list):

• sage
• cardamom
• coriander
• ginger
• jam
• halva
• vinegar
• nutmeg
• chocolate
• fruit preserves
• seeds and nuts
• biscuits and sweets
• potato chips
• gas for soft drinks
• dried fruit
• fresh meats
• plaster
• tar
• wood
• cement
• iron
• glucose
• industrial salt
• plastic/glass/metal containers
• industrial margarine
• tarpaulin sheets
• fabric (for clothing)
• flavor and smell enhancers
• fishing rods
• fishing nets
• buoys
• ropes
• nylon netting for greenhouses
• hatcheries and spare parts for hatcheries
• spare parts for tractors
• dairies for cowsheds
• irrigation pipe systems
• planters (for saplings)
• heaters
• musical instruments
• size A4 paper (letter/legal size)
• writing implements
• notebooks
• toys
• razors
• sewing machines
• horses
• donkeys
• goats
• cattle
• chicks

Gisha.org

Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asking him to instruct the security authorities to implement a policy of free passage of civilian goods into and out of the Gaza Strip, subject only to individual security inspections.

August 21, 2017

On February 12, 1831, an annular solar eclipse was seen in Virginia. Nat Turner saw this as a black man’s hand reaching over the sun, and he took this vision as his sign.  On August 13, there was another solar eclipse, in which the sun appeared bluish-green.  Turner took this occasion as the final signal, and a week later, on August 21, he began the most notable slave rebellion on US soil.

Next solar eclipse visible from the United States:  August 21, 2017 Sweeping a 70-mile-wide path across the United States, moving across Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

“The time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first… And by signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work, and until the first sign appeared I should conceal it from the knowledge of men; and on the appearance of the sign… I should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons.” – Nat Turner

Just an fyi

French parliament report calls for burqa ban

A woman wears a burqa as she shops with her family at a street market in Roubaix northern France, August 9, 2009. France's ruling party has announced plans to present a bill to ban Islamic veils in all public places. Farid Alouache/REUTERS

“The wearing of the full veil is the tip of the iceberg,”
“There are scandalous practices hidden behind this veil,”
“Can we accept covered faces in the 21st century in our streets and in the public space? That’s the question,”

- Andre Gerin, President, French Parliamentary Mission on the Full Veil.

“The burqa plays out as something more spectacular than the minaret as a political symbol,”
“It hides the face. It seems alien. There’s something a bit appalling about it, and it relates specifically to what is seen as a dangerous part of the world and to an extreme variant of Islam. Using the burqa is a very smart political strategy.”

- Pap Ndiaye, School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, Paris

The report recommends:

A parliamentary vote supporting the rejection of the full veil:

a symbolic move designed to demonstrate that “all of France” rejects the full veil and that it should be “prohibited in the French Republic”.

A ban on the wearing of the veil in public institutions:

Rather than opting for an outright ban on the veil as proposed by Jean-Francois Copé, the commission recommends that the ban should only apply to public places – hospitals, post offices, public transport and the like. Even so, the proposal carries significant legal risks, including the possibility that the ban may contravene European Human rights legislation.

Educational programmes:

The commission seeks to avoid stigmatising the 1,900 women in France who wear the veil, and by extension the wider Muslim community. The report recommends ongoing educational programmes aimed at reducing fundamentalism and promoting France’s republican values.

Measures to reduce stigmatising the French Muslim community:

Less discussed than the veil issue, the report also recommends measures aimed at the wider Muslim community, including the creation of a “national school of Islamic studies”, debates on the nature of Islamophobia, direct aid for the building of mosques and Islamic cultural centres, and the creation of new national holidays to celebrate religious festivals such as the Islamic Eid and Judaism’s Yom Kippur. However, some of these proposals were not unanimously approved by the commission, and are included in the report simply as “individual suggestions”.

Related Links:

• The burqa, the law and other EU countries
• Friction mounts as parliament awaits ‘burqa’ ban report
• A law to ban the full face veil in France?