Anti-Protesting

Today, there are reports of anywhere between 10 and +23 Sudanese migrants protesting the U.N. refugee agency’s refusal to consider them for refugee status. There are varying accounts from the NY Times, CNN, and Al-Jazeera (never just look to one source for answers) but it has been universally recongized that a number of those killed were young children (as young as four), elderly people, and women. Additionally, the NY Times has particularly gripping pictures including one of a small child being ARRESTED along with his father as their peaceful protest is violently broken up.

Some people will say that this massacre is justified since there were repeated attempts by police to have the people disperse that were not heeded. Aren’t the repeated requests of the protesters the same thing? If the supposedly upright police resorted to violence after repeated requests for change went unheeded, what are protestors supposed to do when similar requests go unheeded? A basic thing here that people must realize is that protesting unjust laws or policies often brings about breaking these unjust laws and/or policies. The recent transit strike in New York City highlights another drastic suppression of protest by powerful government officials. Fines as high as $25,000 a day were pursued by the city’s legal representatives PER TRANSIT WORKER. People’s human right to protest is being taken from them at highly exorbitant financial and mortal costs.

happy holidays!

Thanks for coming by! As you can see, we’re in hibernation for the holiday break, eating and sleeping and trying to catch up on various classes. We will, however, be back in full force come reading period, so don’t forget to join us then. Soon after that point, we will begin to redesign the site and recruit new writers, so ideas (for writers or features you’d like to see on the site) would be more than welcome! Send them along to me (golis@fas) and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Hope you’re enjoying your time off! Happy holidays!

What a World It Would Be…

Could you imagine a world with truthful politicians and leaders who did not spend obscene amounts of your tax dollars on unneccessary wars that killed your friends and family (not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqis? Could you imagine a world where the first thing you noticed about a person was not whether they were from an in-group or out-group on the basis of race, gender, or some other visually distinguishable (often) characteristic? Could you imagine a world where purportedly sacred holidays were not commodified for global capitalism’s consumption (again proving that ANY and EVERYthing can be sold)? John Lennon can.

Readers, what would YOUR ideal world look like?

Happy Holidays, everyone!!!

Chappelle’s Show Conspiracy

There is now a website up that purports to tell the truth about Dave Chappelle’s immensely popular show’s abrupt cancellation earlier this year. Highly intriguing. Highly scary. Highly unsubstantiable (new word for ya). The website’s author holds that a group of highly influential Black political and entertainment figures conspired over the course of over two years to destroy Chappelle’s Show and stop it from “setting race relations back 50 years.” The group is referred to as “The Dark Crusaders” and reportedly is made up of Bob Johnson, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson. This mixture of conservative and liberal, Muslim and Christian, activist and actor is amazing and may have caused the biggest television (or entertainment PERIOD, for that matter) event of 2005 to never occur–Season Three of Chappelle’s Show. In my opinion, the site lacks absolutely any established credence as legit. However, as George W. Bush’s election and subsequent re-election (stupid Ohioans!) tells us, credibility is not always necessary in today’s wacky world. What are your thoughts, readers?!?

the BIG ?: Are we whack? Continued…

Friday’s BIG Question with New Orleans students sharing their thoughts on life at Harvard was apparently another success, and I want to offer this thread as a continuation of that discussion. A few follow-up questions from one of the organizers:

1) To what degree are the characterizations of us by the New Orleans students true? (E.g., that we often leave no free time in our schedules or feel guilty when we are not doing something ‘productive.’) If so, do such qualities make us whack? =)

2) To what extent is it expected that we do not live perhaps the most normal or balanced lifestyle? Isn’t this how we were brought up? Isn’t this what got us here? Isn’t this what places like Harvard are ultimately designed around?

Whether or not you went, you can probably imagine the way the discussion went, so whether or not you went, SHARE SOME WISDOM!

spying on Americans

The Huffington Post has a collection of articles about this astonishing story.

brilliant

Jack Cafferty, the curmudgeon of CNN’s The Situation Room, sums up the Bush’s administration’s incompetence and arrogance in one minutes with just one phrase: just do it! Watch! (video: wmp and quicktime)

the BIG Question: Are we whack?!

Don’t forget, for all you dialogue-seekers and pizza-lovers, the BIG Question is tonight at PBH and the question is:

***ARE WE WHACK?!?*** Visiting New Orleans Students Share Their Thoughts On Harvard Life
*A Pizza-Filled Discussion About Our Oft-Forgotten Eccentricities*

Every week, a group of 30 or so random student get together to discuss and think and enjoy pizza. Go find out if we’re whack and then come back here to share your thoughts!

Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize Speech

I had been waiting to post about this until I could come up with something coherent to say about it. Unfortunately, I am both too ignorant and too busy to say something wise about a speech that is so big, that covers so much, and that (wonderfully) speaks to so many things that Americans so rarely speak of or think about. The speech is called “Art, Truth and Politics” and covers a broad range of things including the War in Iraq, America’s tendency to prop up right wing dictators in the name of anti-communism, and the problem of finding truth in our hyper-political world:

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

Rather than claiming to be able to say anything much about it, I’ll simply say this: set aside 45 minutes and watch it. And, if you feel so inclined, set aside 5 minutes and tell us what you thought.

a quick note

As classes for the semester wind down this week and next life gets a little crazy for everyone. On the one hand, there seems to be no better time for online discussions, because all of us are sitting at our computers bored by our essays and looking to procrastinate. On the other hand, those of us who write on the front page are also trying to write those papers and finish off the semester strong.

So, in the interest of trying to make this space useful for the next week, I’m going to have to ask for you, the readers, to get involved in leading and contributing to our dialogue. I will post open threads with provocative questions and try to help facilitate those types of conversations, but I hope you will be willing to share your thoughts and wisdom to carry the burden of providing reading material for each other. We’ll try to write when we can, but it won’t be as regular.

So, for those open threads…
What do you want to talk about in the next week? What aren’t we covering that you think we should? What do you think is important?
SHARE SOME WISDOM!