Remembering Bob (passed away yesterday): Comment left at a site reviewing the Mayor activities in xxxxx .........was just.about two (2) weeks ago......fyi.........<3
Kudos/applause/thanks to him for speaking Truth.
Animosities towards people of color continues well past the American Civil War, the Plessy case.
Example: "A poll early this year by McClatchy News Service-Ipsos found "51 percent of Americans agreeing that 'it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.'" With President Obama following Stalin's lead in claiming his right to kill citizens overseas without trial, in controlling citizens' right to travel, in asserting citizens' can be arrested and held indefinitely, and that citizens' homes can be broken into on the flimsiest pretexts, maybe the Treasury Department should issue a two-dollar bill with Stalin's picture on the far left and Obama's on the far right. They seem to have more in common every day."
see full article at: http://www.opednews.com/articles/More-Americans-Losing-Thei-by-Sherwood-Ross-100926-878.html MORE AMERICANS LOSING THEIR LIBERTIES EVERY DAY Sept 2010
Everyone should question the reason for reciting the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE at meetings, at church, at schools, etc.
Robert represents many and his actions were louder than his words. Wake up America!
aloha.
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also posted at a forum, the following:
Calling All SHEEP: Wake Up..............Maka Ala!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/More-Americans-Losing-Thei-by-Sher...
More Americans Losing Their Liberties Every Day
Become a Fan (11 fans)You might give the FBI the benefit of the doubt that it had some incriminating evidence when it raided the homes of eight antiwar activists in Minneapolis and Chicago September 24th except for the fact that its past record in such cases is stinko. The F.B.I. broke down Mick Kelly's door around 7 a.m., and it wasn't to get an early cup of coffee from a man employed as a food service worker at the University of Minnesota. The agents were probing to see if the occupants of any of the homes they burst into were supporting "terror organizations." Uncle Sam here might be a trifle jealous of private citizens' backing violent entities when it has always assumed it had a superpower's exclusive franchise to fund violence. The Midwest raids are correctly seen as "a U.S. government attempt to silence those who support resistance to oppression and violence in the Middle East and Latin America," by the International Action Center of New York, an anti-militarist group. Kelly, after all, was a key figure in organizing the successful 2008 anti-war street protests that embarrassed the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. In today's America, standing up for peace automatically makes you a terror suspect.
Concerning the FBI's record of past transgressions, the Chicago Tribune reported Sept. 21, "FBI agents improperly opened investigations into Greenpeace and several other domestic advocacy groups after the Sept. 11thterrorist attacks in 2001, and put the names of some members on terrorist watch lists based on evidence that turned out to be 'factually weak,' the Justice Department said Monday." The evidence against the 1-million other Americans on the no-fly lists likely is equally flimsy. Last year, Justice Department's own Inspector General(IG) found many subjects of closed FBI investigations "were not taken off the list in a timely manner, and tens of thousands of names were placed on the list without appropriate basis," the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reported. And The Tribune added that an internal review by the IG concluded that the FBI was guilty of improprieties but did not purposely target the groups or their members. (See, it wasn't on purpose. The FBI just makes tens of thousands of mistakes with other people's lives and reputations.)
The travails of Mick Kelly increasingly are being repeated across the U.S. against many others in a variety of unconstitutional ways, according to a review of President Obama's first 18 months in office by the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU), which fears Obama is "normalizing" some of the egregious practices of predecessor George W. ("The Invader") Bush. There is a very "real danger," the ACLU says, Obama "will enshrine permanently within the law policies and practices that were widely considered extreme and unlawful" during the Bush regime. These include denying the very rights of torture victims to bring suit in the U.S. Court, the refusal to release torture photos and refusing to prosecute the torturers, plus keeping secret the records of his predecessor's policies on rendition, detention and interrogation. Like any odious dictator of the past, Obama claims he can hold 48 Guantanamo detainees indefinitely without charge or trial; and that, like Russia's Joseph Stalin who had rival Leon Trotsky assassinated in Mexico, he can reach out and kill any of his citizens anywhere in the world without trial.
Obama's regime has manufactured "kill lists" of suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, he claims he can eradicate with impunity. The creation of these lists, as far as we know, is done without judicial review, totally in secret. As the ACLU points out, "Such a program of long-premeditated and bureaucratized killing is plainly not limited to targeting genuinely imminent threats." It is "far more sweeping than the law allows and raises grave constitutional and human rights concerns. As applied to U.S. citizens, it is a grave violation of the constitutional guarantee of due process." The ACLU further notes over the past eight years the U.S. has repeatedly detained persons as "terrorists" only to discover later the evidence was "weak, wrong, or non-existent." The very idea of killing terror "suspects," therefore, is chilling.
Besides dispatching the FBI to break down the doors of peacemongers, Obama has expanded the warrantless electronic eavesdropping on American citizens and has told border agents they can "engage in suspicionless searching of Americans' laptops and cell phones at the border," the ACLU says. Its report adds that Americans' returning home "may now find themselves confronted with a border agent who...insists on copying their electronic records---including emails, address books, photos, and videos---before allowing them to enter the country." What's more, the ACLU has learned, border agents have used this power "thousands of times." And rather than reform the watch lists, Obama's regime "has expanded their use and resisted the introduction of minimal due process safeguards" while adding "thousands of names to the No Fly List, sweeping up many innocent individuals," ACLU says.
As a result, the watchdog organization warns, "U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents have been stranded abroad, unable to return to the United States. Others are unable to visit family on the opposite end of the country or abroad. Individuals on the list are not told why they are on the list and thus have no meaningful opportunity to object or to rebut the government's allegations." ACLU calls this "an unconstitutional scheme under which an individual's right to travel...is under the complete control of entirely unaccountable bureaucrats relying on secret evidence and using secret standards."
And is the U.S. public outraged over these denials of their basic liberties as the Colonists were outraged by the transgressions of King George? Apparently, not that much. A poll early this year by McClatchy News Service-Ipsos found "51 percent of Americans agreeing that 'it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.'" With President Obama following Stalin's lead in claiming his right to kill citizens overseas without trial, in controlling citizens' right to travel, in asserting citizens' can be arrested and held indefinitely, and that citizens' homes can be broken into on the flimsiest pretexts, maybe the Treasury Department should issue a two-dollar bill with Stalin's picture on the far left and Obama's on the far right. They seem to have more in common every day. #
(Sherwood Ross is an American journalist who has worked as a reporter for major dailies including the Chicago Daily News and The New York Herald-Tribune, as a columnist for wire services, and as a news director for a large civil rights organization. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)
aloha.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nFRi3TSkY8
7:09 Added to queue Stevie Ray Vaughan - Mary Had A Little Lamb
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Mary Had A Little Lamb - Pistoia Blues Live in Italy 1988
by gaukur | 4 years ago | 553,868 views
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Aloha and Malama Pono...........
Apache Honoring Song................aloha.
Reference(s):
[ Sonoma Independent | MetroActive Central | Archives ]
Race Matters
By Paula Harris
SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY Professor Robert Coleman-Senghor, a 56-year-old African American with gray flecks in his dark hair, leans forward and gazes intently at the sun-struck campus garden, silently formulating his thoughts before speaking in his resonant voice. "People don't want to talk about race--they feel discomfort--but there's a need to talk, a need to look at the whole spectrum," says Coleman-Senghor, who teaches English and American Multicultural Studies at the Rohnert Park campus.
Yet the pending California Civil Rights initiative, which seeks to end racial and gender preferences in affirmative action programs; possible changes in immigration law; and other diversity and civil rights issues are creating confusion, particularly in California, Coleman-Senghor says.
"We are rapidly moving in a more multicultural direction than ever before, but we're not prepared to deal with it," he adds.
With this in mind, Coleman-Senghor and several other SSU faculty members are organizing a three-day symposium intended to open up a dialogue on diversity.
The conference, entitled "The Dividing Line: The Legacy of the Doctrine of 'Separate but Equal' and the Future of Civil Rights in California," will also acknowledge the 100-year anniversary of Plessy vs. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled in favor of segregation.
The 1896 ruling affirmed a Louisiana statute requiring railway companies to provide "separate but equal" accommodations and facilities for "the white and colored races."
"'Separate but equal' was determined by whites in power and it meant separate bathrooms, separate water fountains, and separate places in the train," explains Coleman-Senghor, noting that the ruling led to a century of apartheid-like conditions in the Deep South that ended only with the '60s civil rights movement.
Although subsequent Supreme Court decisions have overruled Plessy vs. Ferguson, many say the impact of that earlier ruling is still felt today. "Present-day events are powerfully infused with the forces of the past. The Plessy vs. Ferguson decision has defined the way we think and go about our daily lives," says Coleman-Senghor. "The legacy of cultural segregation is still here--we still have 'red lining,' where banks won't provide loans to people in certain areas [defined by race]; and we still have covenants and private clubs [that exclude certain races, religions, and genders]."
He adds that conversations about ethnic differences and questions arising from diversity have to be addressed with frankness and persistence. "This has to be a long process; it cannot be given over to Sesame Street, " he says. "The images of racial harmony on Sesame Street didn't translate into the attitudes on the street."
According to Coleman-Senghor, the moment children leave the benign world of Sesame Street and begin school, they are bombarded with other kinds of images and associations pertaining to race, so they struggle with their identity and end up being separated into ethnic groups, primarily for a sense of protection. "In America, a group identity, in racial terms, is everything," he says.
While Coleman-Senghor speaks of the "enrichment" of diversity and of tolerance for other races, he eschews the "politically correct" idea that race should be ignored completely.
"We don't want people to be colorblind," he says. "Being colorblind means that you don't recognize my difference, which is not necessarily my physiology, but my whole outlook. We're not blind to people's religions, nor do we want to be ethnically blind; we appreciate the idea of the diversity of the nation.
"We are a society that operates on the basis of racial differences, and we do not necessarily have to abandon the idea of recognizing racial differences in order to achieve national unity."
The symposium will focus on roundtable discussions and small group conversations on issues such as "Plessy and the Culture of Segregation"; "Beyond Black and White: The California Model"; "Can the Arts Transform the Politics of Ethnic Difference?"; and "Does Race Matter?"
"We're not going to do a black/white thing," says Coleman-Senghor, referring to similar conferences at Harvard and Princeton universities. "We're Californians and we've got more diversity and differences within this diversity."
He describes the panel of speakers, which include Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans from the business, art, and law communities, as "a microcosm of the community we are already a part of and moving toward."
Among the many symposium participants, six keynote speakers will frame the discussions: Sherley Ann Williams, critic, poet, educator, and author of Dessa Rose: A Riveting Story of the South During Slavery; Gerald Viznor, poet, novelist, and scholar whose works include Manifest Manners: Post-Indian Warriors of Survivance; Brooke Thomas, author and chair of the English Department at UC Irvine; Angelo Ancheta, attorney and director of the Asian Law Caucus; Frances Aparicio, professor of Romance literature and American culture at the University of Michigan; and George Fredrickson, professor of U.S. history at Stanford University and author of The Arrogance of Race.
"At the heart of Plessy vs. Ferguson is the question of the viability of a national ethos of political and social equality," says Coleman-Senghor. "We want to ask if it's possible to achieve a national consensus around the meaning of equal protection and whether or not, as a people, we have the will and means to achieve it."
"The Dividing Line: The Legacy of 'Separate but Equal' and the Future of Civil Rights in California" will be held Friday-Sunday, Oct. 18-20, at SSU, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. For more information, call 664-4056 or see the World Wide Web site.
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From the October 3-9, 1996 issue of the Sonoma IndependentThis page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
Copyright © 1996 Metrosa, Inc.
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Additional Notes: Robert was one of the early speakers of Martin Luther King, represented many in speeches given in foreign countries.
Robert was a recipient of Oxford College Awards, etc.
Dion - "Abraham, Martin & John" (1968)
"Abraham, Martin & John" is a 1968 song written by Dick Holler and first recorded by Dion. It is a tribute to the memories of icons of social ...
by musicvidmovmaker | 9 months ago | 31,328 views
SonomaState NewsCenter
(a facebook page was created for Bob.)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=148258811907874
Much condolences to Bob's family, his wife, Drew, his two young sons, and Michael....met Drew a long time ago, such a cutey....Bob will continue to be part of our prayers and memories....Bob was very supportive in encouraging me to move towards a PhD....he was an active Civil Rights speaker who went to Russia, etc. in support of Martin Luther King's works, etc. He had awards from Oxford University in England, and was one of the few alpha males I've known. His son Michael has some of his looks and qualities as well. Was glad to have known him, and in Hawaii we have a saying "Aloha" means hello, love, good-bye (until we meet again --- hope his next assignment isn't as taxing (we believe in life after)..aloha. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeLXcHWxjkQ
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note: this is the definition of an alpha male....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_%28ethology%29
In social animals, the alpha is the individual in the community with the highest rank. Where one male and one female fulfill this role, they are referred to as the alpha pair (the term varies when several females fulfill this role – it is extremely rare among mammals for several males to fulfill this role with one female). Other animals in the same social group may exhibit deference or other symbolic signs of respect particular to their species towards the alpha.
The alpha animals are given preference to be the first to eat and the first to mate; among some species they are the only animals in the pack allowed to mate. Other animals in the community are usually killed or ousted if they violate this rule.
The term "alpha male" is sometimes applied to humans to refer to a man who is powerful through his courage and a competitive, goal-driven, "take charge" attitude. With their bold approach and confidence "alpha males" are often described as charismatic. While "alpha males" are often overachievers and recognized for their leadership qualities, their aggressive tactics and competitiveness can also lead to resentment by others.[1]
The term "alpha female" is used to refer to females that possess similar traits.
The status of the alpha is often achieved by means of superior physical prowess. The individual in the alpha position usually changes when another challenges it to a fight, in some species to the death, and wins. Consequently, alphas may have to fight individuals in their own group several times to maintain their position throughout their lifetimes. In species where the fight is to the death, alphas rarely reach old age. In some species, a nomadic individual may approach the alpha, successfully beat him, and thus become the new alpha. When this occurs in the lion community, the new alpha usually kills the previous alpha's cubs. In addition, several lions may share alpha privileges in what is usually called a coalition. The social group usually follows the alpha to the hunt and to new breeding or resting grounds. The alpha is thus sometimes seen as deciding the fate of the group. If two groups of the same species find themselves competing for the same ground, they may let the alphas fight, letting the outcome decide which group stays.
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aloha.