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Monday, July 18, 2016

Stoking The Fires

(Note: I rarely publish a post with so many links for readers to explore. But this time, I'm watching my step, especially in the portion below the fold. I don't want to face charges of copyright infringement!)


We don't need inflammatory rhetoric. We don't need careless accusations thrown around to score political points or to advance an agenda. We need to temper our words and open our hearts ... all of us. — Barack Obama (2016)
Video that Gavin Eugene Long (Cosmo Ausar Setepenra) made while in Dallas after the police killings there. The link, from Zero Hedge, includes more information about the Baton Rouge killer.

Note that Gavin Eugene Long was a member of Nation of Islam.

More about Gavin Eugene Long aka Cosmo Ausar Setepenra, including the following:
1. Long, Who Served in the Marines, Registered a Website Under the Name Cosmo Setepenra in April After 2 Years Living in Africa

2. He Went to Dallas After the Attack on Police There & Called Shooter Micah Johnson ‘One of Us’

3. He Dropped Out of College for a ‘Spiritual’ Trip to Africa, His ‘Ancestral Homeland’.
What else is stoking these fires?

Our education system.

Please take a look at this recent poem “@ the Crossroads—A Sudden American Poem” by 21st Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, America's poet laureate 2016.  I will not reproduce the poem here because of possible copyright infringement.

This poem is part of the Poem-a-Day Series, distributed by the Library of Congress and is used in English literature classrooms all over the United States, in Grades 5-12. Sample lesson plans HERE.

Required Summer 2016 reading for many public schools: $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.

This book is not on the required-reading list: Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.

41 comments:

  1. Several years ago I posted NY schools feature Van Jones anti-cop lesson plan. They won't let up.
    https://bunkerville.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/new-york-schools-features-van-jones-anti-cop-lesson-plan/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I find Van Jones articulate and, let's face it, pretty damned handsome! I have to constantly remind myself where he came from...Oakland will never be the same due to this man...but it only takes about five minutes of his opening his mouth to remember that.!

      Delete
  2. From today's WaPo:

    The day after five police officers were fatally shot during a protest in Dallas, 29-year-old Gavin Long took to YouTube to express a controversial view on the incident.

    “I’m not gonna harp on that, you know, with a brother killing the police. You get what I’m saying?” Long said, according to a video posted online. “That’s, it’s justice.”


    More information at the above link.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Also this at the above link (emphasis mine):

      In one clip — purportedly filmed in Dallas after the shooting of police officers there — he said merely holding demonstrations had “never worked, and it never will” and praised Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion, and Malcolm X.

      “If you all want to keep protesting, do that, but for the serious ones, the real ones, the alpha ones, we know what it’s gonna take,” Long said. “It’s only fighting back or money. That’s all they care about. Revenue and blood.”

      Delete
  3. "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun, because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.” -Barack Obama (2008)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Replies
    1. (CNN) - Baltimore Police Lt. Brian Rice was found not guilty on all charges tied to the death of Freddie Gray. Rice, the highest-ranking officer to stand trial over Gray's death, had been charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office. Judge Barry Williams issued the ruling.
      Rice is the fourth of the six officers charged in the case to stand trial. Earlier this year, officers Edward Nero and Caesar Goodson Jr. were acquitted on all charges in bench trials. The trial of officer William Porter ended in a mistrial in December after a jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on any of the four charges against him.

      Delete
    2. FJ,
      Excellent article about Judge Barry Williams!

      Delete
  5. How did Obama travel back in time to 2006 to get the Bush administration's FBI to release an intelligence assessment documenting white supremacist infiltration into law enforcement agencies?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The unclassified version is heavily redacted and censored because...?

      Delete
    2. ..we can't be trusted to know law enforcement investigated itself and found nothing wrong ;)

      Delete
    3. Beamish,
      I think that law enforcement investigating itself can be problematic.

      But that kind of self-investigation is the norm in government and in private concerns as well.

      Delete
    4. I think it's more problematic that it took a Freedom of Information Act inquiry to find out that the FBI was even assessing the threat of organized racists infiltrating and compromising the integrity of out law enforcement agencies, and what they found IS TOO DAMNING TO REVEAL.

      Delete
  6. Careless accusations? "If I had a son he would look like Trayvon."

    Bunkerville thanks for that link, too. Van Jones is a despicable, divisive commun-ist. I wonder if he believes half that stuff in his course. He DOES believe it will help divide and conquer our republic for his cause.

    ReplyDelete
  7. IBD has an excellent piece today on Obama's reckless statements that have been stoking the fire. E.g., the death of Michael Brown (review: a criminal thug who just robbed and assaulted a store owner and beat a policeman through his open car window) "stains the heart of black children." Huh? How about 'impugns the character development of a generation of black children'?

    http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/once-again-obama-tries-to-deflect-blame-for-police-shootings/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. To see Obama stoking the fires of racism, one only has to remember Henry Gates and the Beer Summit, done because Obama shot his mouth of (only the first of many) before he had the truth. And he hasn't really stopped.
      He seems to finally be getting the idea that Americans, Black OR White (most, anyway) aren't fond of cop killers...this time around, Baton Rouge and Dallas, he's almost said the right things. Would that he'd restrained himself from politics at the Dallas Memorial. hideous.

      Delete
  8. Well it's good to know nobody needs Jesus Christ with all these innocent cops around to die for our sins.

    Is it coincidence that concern over white supremacist infiltration into law enforcement agencies led to an FBI intelligence assessment documenting the same over two years before Obama was even a US Senator?

    Is it coincidence that of the cops that were gunned down by that Dallas psycho Last week, one of them was an avowed white nationalist with White Power insignia tattoos?

    We live in a country where the IRS regularly sends tax refund checks to Lithuanian hackers, China has exploited the FDIC's file systems for over a decade, hackers take NASA's Global Hawk drone for a spin while engineers do lines of coke on the space ahuttle dashboard, and on and on and on, but God forbid we question the integrity of the people the government arms to patrol our neighborhoods?

    There's a disconnect here, and loathing the government but loving its henchmen (as long as they only kill minorities?) is a very nasty symptom of that disconnect.

    So Democratic Party union donors are killing people that vote for Democrats. Is there a problem here, officer? ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If that's true about the white nationalist cop with insignia tattoos, he should have been fired immediately. Amazed that the mainstream media hasn't mentioned that; they all seemed like very fine men to hear all sides of the aisle reporting.

      Nobody approves of "as long as they only kill minorities," beamish.

      Delete
    2. Lorne Ahrens. Huffington Post and other left-leaning sites are all over it.

      Delete
    3. Beamish,
      I'll check. I've been having Dietls Crisis after Dietls Crisis the past few days as I drastically cut my dosages of Tramadol.

      Delete
    4. Z,

      Imagine their was some fraternal culture with message boards and blogs that hailed the killings of people by one of their own, and engender camaraderie amongst themselves with all manner of sick jokes and repulsive cartoons mocking and demonizing their pet enemies and whenever the spotlight shines on them they double time with the "we're so oppressed" and "we are an organization of peace" routines.

      No, I'm not talking about Muslims. I'm talking about cops.

      Spend some time perusing just about any police / law enforcement centered websites where the posters "talk shop" and it won't take long to find the ugly.

      You can say you can find racism and hatred in just about any place you look if you look long enough, but my response would ask why it's easier to find among cops than, say, dog groomers.

      The FBI didn't just create an intelligence assessment about white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement agencies because they were bored.

      Delete
    5. Beamish,
      I found the HuffPo essay "Slain Dallas Cop Might’ve Been A White Supremacist: Still A Hero?". Lots of maybes there -- as well as this: So, is he still a hero? He never was to me....

      Delete
    6. As a non-leftist, my thinking is not stunted to either / or binary propositions. It's possible that Ahrens was a hero and a white supremacists or one of the other or neither. All we can say definitively is that he was a cop on a day some psycho decided to kill cops.

      From there the case, circumstantial and better, is that Ahrens' tattoos, online activities, and employment history put him in the company of known white supremacist cops from the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department. Maybe he was merely a poseur that wanted to look like a white supremacist. Maybe a good man can accidentally seek to be mistaken for a douchebag.

      No, it's a rather credible narrative that Ahrens was in fact a white nationalist / racist, or at least was at the time he inked himself with neo-Nazi symbols.

      To me the question of "was he a hero" is way down the list of needs-to-know. My question would be how did a racist tattooed asshole from a busted ring of white supremacist deputies in the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department get a job as a cop in Dallas? Did he use the right color of crayon on his application?

      Delete
  9. Comments unrelated to the topic of this blog post have been and will continue to be removed.

    I am hoping that at least some of you will discuss the poem alluded to in the body of the blog post.


    After all, one of the labels for this blog post is "education."

    ReplyDelete
  10. AOW: Now that you asked! : I'LL CAPITALIZE:

    Let us celebrate the lives of all

    As we reflect & pray & meditate on their brutal deaths

    Let us celebrate those who marched at night who spoke of peace

    & chanted Black Lives Matter

    Z; HOW MUCH MORE POWERFUL FOR THEM TO PEACEFULLY CHANT 'ALL LIVES MATTER'

    Let us celebrate the officers dressed in Blues ready to protect

    Let us know the departed as we did not know them before—their faces,

    Bodies, names—what they loved, their words, the stories they often spoke

    Before we return to the usual business of our days, let us know their lives intimately

    Z; NOT SURE ABOUT INTIMATELY, BUT IT IS IMPORTANT THAT WE DO HEAR ABOUT THEM AND WHAT THEY LOST. AND WHAT AMERICA LOST. SOMETIMES IT'S A GREAT COP, SOMETIMES IT'S A NOT-SO-GREAT COP, SOMETIMES IT'S A CRIMINAL TRYING TO KILL A COP, OR SOMEONE WHO SUPPORTS FIVE CHILDREN WITHOUT MARRIED PARENTS BY SELLING ILLEGAL CDs. OR AN INNOCENT BLACK MAN IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME, PERHAPS A VERY TENSE TIME FOR EVERYONE AROUND.

    Let us take this moment & impossible as this may sound—let us find

    The beauty in their lives in the midst of their sudden & never imagined vanishing (Z; TO BE CONTINUED...)

    ReplyDelete
  11. CONTINUED;
    Let us consider the Dallas shooter—what made him
    what happened in Afghanistan what flames burned inside

    Z; RARELY DOES THE MEDIA LEAVE OUR MILITARY DUTY AS IF IT'S A PREREQUISITE FOR MURDERERS HERE, AS IF THEY'RE DEMENTED FROM THEIR SERVICE. TRUTHFULLY, SOME ARE TERRIBLY AFFECTED...BUT TO LEAD WITH 'MARINE KILLS...' EVERY TIME SEEMS AGENDA DRIVEN TO ME, AND HERE IT IS AGAIN.


    (Who was that man in Baton Rouge with a red shirt selling CDs in the parking lot
    Z; HE WAS A FATHER OF FIVE WHO CLEARLY COULDN'T SUPPORT THEM ALL BY SELLING CDs...BUT HIS FAMILY IS HONORABLE AND HAS CALLED FOR PEACE EVER SINCE HE WAS KILLED, CALLING FOR PEACE AGAIN IN BATON ROUGE; I RESPECT AND ADMIRE THEM FOR THAT. WE ALL SHOULD. GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE.

    Who was that man in Minnesota toppled on the car seat with a perforated arm

    & a continent-shaped flood of blood on his white T who was

    Z; YOU MEAN THE POOR MAN WHOSE GIRLFRIEND PLAYED CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR INSTEAD OF REASSURING SHE'D GET HELP, THAT HE'D BE OKAY, 'DON'T WORRY, HONEY...HANG ON!'? AND IS ON VIDEO SAYING THEY TOLD THE COP THEY HAD A REGISTERED GUN BUT NOW SAYS THE COP COULDN'T HAVE KNOWN THEY DID? THAT GUY? BY THE WAY, MY HEART BLEEDS, TOO, FOR HIM, AS HE LAY THERE DYING AND EVEN THE MOM OF HIS CHILD WAS ONLY IN 'VIDEO MODE'....I'LL NEVER FORGET THAT..POOR MAN.

    That man prone & gone by the night pillar of El Centro College in Dallas)
    Z; THE ONE WHO KILLED FIVE COPS IN COLD BLOOOODD??>
    This could be the first step

    in the new evaluation of our society This could be

    the first step of all of our lives

    Z: AOW, I actually like much of this but, clearly, take umbrage at some of it....our hearts should bleed for both sides...young mostly Black men caught in a cycle in which they're assured by their black leaders (jackson, sharpton, obama, etc.) will never change because of 'Whitey' and 'income inequality' ("Don't worry, we'll tax the rich and they'll support you" vote HILLARY!) and those cops whose kids lost fathers. Even if those cops are bad, their kids don't deserve that any more than those Black kids deserve the message they're getting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Z,
      Is this poem appropriate for use with 5th graders? I have serious doubts about that.

      Delete
    2. Z,
      Forgot to say...thank you for addressing the poem alluded to in the body of the blog post.

      Delete
    3. The poem asks to understand those involved in this disastrous syndrome as people to be understood.

      With that understanding may come a way to mitigate the hate that is driving us mad.

      I think a 5th grader can handle that idea. Or we can try to shield them (bound to be ineffective in the media environment).
      Myself, I suggest being open.

      Delete
    4. Z, is it possible that the man's girlfriend was disassociating?

      Was it possible that she felt her life was also threatened and flt recording the killing was the best defensive she and the child had?

      The poem suggests we try to understand and be open rather than just running her down.

      Delete
    5. Ducky, how could ignoring her loved one DYING next to her disassociate her but also rally her enough to make sure they get the biggest money in court? (ya, cynical, but...she is on video saying "we told the cop he was armed and it was registered" and now she's saying "the cop couldn't have known we were armed." not good...I'd even done an apology comment saying she sounded so loving in an interview after I'd slammed her pretty good for not saying something like "HOney! HOLD ON, I'll get help! You'll be OKAY!"...now , after hearing her new story, I'm sorry I apologized on my blog.

      and Ducky, I TOTALLY get that about trying to understand the whole pathos of this poem and I believe I captured/echoed that in my comments above, don't you?

      I honestly didn't notice it was for Fifth Grade.
      AOW...sorry about that........
      I think DUCKY is right about discussing it openly with children except I think the poem isn't all true, frankly.
      And I think BLM is hard to explain to children....I believe ALL LIVES MATTER and I also TOTALLY understand the BLM matter thinking...why they picked that name.....I DO SYMPATHiZE. But IMAGINE if they'd come out with ALL LIVES MATTER instead? IMAGINE? HOW WONDERFUL! And THAT would be a conversation for Fifth graders.
      How's about: "WE ARE PEOPLE, TOO!" "OUR LIVES MATTER, TOO" "ALL LIVES MATTER AND WE ARE ALL AMERICANS AND NEED TO ATTEND TO THIS...MEET, DISCUSS, GET IT OUT IN THE OPEN"

      Delete
    6. 11th grade and up -- certainly. And some younger students could handle the discussion. But not ALL younger students. At least not in my experience.

      One size does not fit all!

      While America is certainly far from perfect, we should be careful to emphasize to students that America has been, overall, a force for good. People flock to America's shores for particular good reasons.

      Delete
    7. AOW, maybe 11th grade, yes....I'm all about age-appropriate information...it's why I said ALL LIVES MATTER is something I'd share with 5th grade, NOT Black Lives Matter....
      Our small children have enough of hating ourselves for whatever bad our country's done; they need to be taught THE TRUTH...ALL THE TRUTH...the GOOD.
      And, as I've said frequently on my own blog, we have to teach small children the patriotic songs, and we should never tell them sitting through the pledge is allowed, and when they love this country, knowing all the good about it, and have PRIDE< then we talk openly of slavery and other history, TRUE history...not HATE AMERICA FIRST HISTORY which they get now.

      Delete
    8. Z,
      Thank you for saying EXACTLY what I'm not well enough to say myself! I've never before been this ill.

      But enough of me....

      There is indeed too much of HATE AMERICA FIRST HISTORY.

      And "the experts" wonder why so many American students LOATHE history -- to the point that they are now turned off my non-fiction books, more and more of which Common Core requires them to read.

      I'm telling you that the overkill is destroying students' desire to exist anywhere other than a fantasy land. And I'm speaking of high school students!

      Our small children have enough of hating ourselves for whatever bad our country's done

      So true!

      Now, contrast all that with the joy with which homeschool students typically approach the study of history. And, often, even if they've been ruined by the public school system, I can turn that around in a month.

      How?

      By "accentuating the positive" from the git-go.

      Later in the year, we approach the warts, but with balance. Children -- and adults -- need to embrace optimism even as they tackle the worst of problems.

      Delete
    9. SO SORRY you are ill! FEeling better now, I hope??

      Thank you for what you do with children...I've always said we need thousands like you in the public school system but teachers unions would have a FIT. "Truth!? how can we raise little entitlement voters if they know what this country was founded on? HORRORS!"

      Delete
    10. Z,
      I'm worse by the day. The pain is excruciating and feels eternal.

      I just returned from a consultation with my urologist. 95% likely that I will be having major surgery: ureteroplasty.

      Meanwhile, more dosing with Tramadol, the side effects of which are terrible.
      The Summer from Hell!

      Delete
  12. @ the Crossroads—A Sudden American Poem

    Juan Felipe Herrera, 1948



    RIP Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Dallas police
    officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith,
    Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa—and all
    their families. And to all those injured.



    Let us celebrate the lives of all

    As we reflect & pray & meditate on their brutal deaths

    Let us celebrate those who marched at night who spoke of peace

    & chanted Black Lives Matter

    Let us celebrate the officers dressed in Blues ready to protect

    Let us know the departed as we did not know them before—their faces,

    Bodies, names—what they loved, their words, the stories they often spoke

    Before we return to the usual business of our days, let us know their lives intimately

    Let us take this moment & impossible as this may sound—let us find

    The beauty in their lives in the midst of their sudden & never imagined vanishing


    Let us consider the Dallas shooter—what made him

    what happened in Afghanistan

    what
    flames burned inside


    (Who was that man in Baton Rouge with a red shirt selling CDs in the parking lot

    Who was that man in Minnesota toppled on the car seat with a perforated arm

    & a continent-shaped flood of blood on his white T who was

    That man prone & gone by the night pillar of El Centro College in Dallas)


    This could be the first step

    in the new evaluation of our society This could be

    the first step of all of our lives

    ReplyDelete

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