“I pledge to fight hard to rid our ranks of racists and extremists,” Gen. Austin pronounced during his confirmation hearings. He also pledged to overturn several discriminatory bans on military service put in place by the previous administration. The confirmation vote cleared by a 93-2 margin – Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) were the lone no-votes.
As we contemplate various ways to celebrate Black History Month, we must ask ourselves how do we pay proper hommage to this sacred narrative we know as Black History? How do we think and talk about this, the oldest of human histories and about the fathers and mothers of humanity and human civilization who made it? And how do we honor the lives given and the legacy left in and on this long march and movement through African and human history?
In this time of warmongering, weapon brandishing and the waging of war of various kinds against the vulnerable, revisiting this Kawaida stance and statement on the importance and essential good of peace is both needed and reaffirming.
As we weave our way through the daily dose of lies and illusions, hype, hatred and hypocrisy from the White House, we must constantly question and be actively concerned about the relative sanity and real danger of those who continuously fake “imminent threats” and cry wolf to make war, and then try to wash away their sins of savagery with the dishonest indictment and blood of others.
It was a fundamental teaching and central source of battlefield talk, derived and discussed in the Sixties about the motion and meaning of history. There are, we assumed and argued with no small amount of certainty, two tendencies in history, that which is rising, grounding itself and growing stronger and that which is dying, decaying and passing away. And we defiantly declared that we and other oppressed and struggling peoples of this country and of the world belong to that rising tide of history. Likewise, we asserted with equal surety that oppressors of all kinds—racists, colonialists, capitalists, imperialists—and their lackeys, collaborators, hirelings, henchmen and handmaidens, belong to the declining side of history. And they would eventually be defeated, and freedom and justice for all would emerge and triumph in the world.
White ex-officer is working to change the culture
How much do you know about ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria? Sure, you probably know that it is an extremist Muslim sect which claims to be a caliphate headquartered in Syria.
It was an historic power grab. Not the Republicans taking back the White House after a controversial, razor-thin win by George W. Bush over Al Gore. It was the vice president-elect, Dick Cheney, out-maneuvering George Jr. and becoming the puppet master.
The birth of the #MeToo movement and the awarding of the Nobel Prize to he and Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad, who has detailed her life as an ISIS sex slave, illustrate that mentalities are slowly beginning to change and that there’s a gradual evolution in mindset, Dr. Mukwege said.
Known as the rape surgeon, Dr. Mukwege has helped care for more than 50,000 survivors of sexual violence even as he himself is at risk and attacks against women are on the upswing.
The moderated morning discussion will include Martin Zogg, Director of the International Rescue Committee L.A.; Eliane Fersan, Director of the Initiative on Immigrants & Global Migration, USC Gould School of Law; Patricia Ortiz, Project Director at Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project; and Rigoberto Reyes, Acting Director for the L.A. County Office of Immigrant Affairs.
Kofi Atta Annan, former Secretary General of the U.N., is being remembered today for his leadership over ten tumultuous years when the world faced a crisis of poverty, injustice and disease. Mr. Annan passed away this month at age 80.