Category Archives: News
World Human Rights Day 2012
Today, December 10, is World Human Rights Day. Since the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, this day has been set aside to honor and respect the dignity of all people on Earth. Even though this is just one day, human rights is a year-round, every day affair.
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Billboards from Hell
Right-wing blogger Pamela Geller, Executive Director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, has purchased advertising space in several New York City subway stations to display her anti-Islam message. The graphic ads feature the former New York skyline with World Trade Center Towers I and II ablaze, as they were on September 11, 2001, when terrorists struck. Accompanying the pictures is a quote from the Quran that reads: “Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers.”
Geller – whose multiple web sites include “Atlas Shrugs,” Rick Santorum’s substitute for the Catholic Church – has long railed against the Muslim faith; warning about the ongoing “Islamization of America.” Geller worked with New York’s Metro Transit Authority, which manages the subway space, to post the ads. MTA denies any subliminal endorsement. “This is a paid advertisement sponsored by American Freedom Defense Initiative,” an official MTA disclaimer reads. “The display of this advertisement does not imply MTA’s endorsement of any views expressed.”
Geller and AFDI went crazy with anti-Islamic ads last year; the 10th anniversary of the 09/11 attacks. Another round of them this past September prompted an Egyptian-American journalist, Mona Eltahawy, to deface one particular ad, which equated Muslims with savages. It had stated: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.” It added, “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad,” in between two Stars of David. Eltahawy, 45, was videotaped spray-painting the advertisement and subsequently arrested. Every other ad in that series also ended up defaced.
The MTA had addressed salacious advertising at its monthly board meeting; trying to amend its guidelines to refuse “demeaning” ads and rules that would prohibit “images or information that demean an individual or group of individuals on account of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation.” Their regulations collided with the constitutional protections of free speech; thus, the new disclaimers.
Geller is unrepentant. “I refuse to abridge my free speech so as to appease savages,” she told The New York Observer. “Thousands of anti-Israel ads have run across the city and not one has been defaced. My ads, 10 went up in New York City, and they were destroyed in hours. You don’t agree with me, fine; run an ad. I have no problem with other people’s ideas.”
There you go! That’s the Hanukkah / Christmas spirit!
When the Lambs and Donkeys Fought Back
Since Christians, like Jews, have suffered from centuries of oppression in the United States, a group of determined evangelicals have decided to stand up for their rights. Members of the Christian Defense Coalition (CDC) gathered with live manger-like animals in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building last Wednesday, the 5th, to stage their annual ‘Nativity Project.’ They want to share the message of Christmas, while confronting the relentlessly hostile environment in which they’ve had to live for so long.
“Sadly, we are seeing an erosion and hostility toward public expressions of faith in the public square,” said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the CDC. “This is especially true during the Christmas season.”
“‘The Nativity Project’ is a reminder that our Constitution provides freedom of religion not freedom from religion,” Mahoney clarified. “By encouraging people of good will to publicly display nativity scenes all across America, we are not only supporting religious liberty andFirst Amendment freedoms but we are loudly proclaiming the powerful message of Christmas.”
Ignoring the possibility that cavorting with farm animals in public could get them arrested, the CDC group (not to be confused with the Center for Disease Control) remains steadfast in its holy mission. I’m so glad to see Christians storming out of their ecumenical closets to combat the evil bestowed by Wiccans, Muslims, feminists and, of course, those ubiquitous homosexuals! I mean, someone has to do it.
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Native Americans and Northern Europeans More Closely Related Than Previously Thought
I know this will send the folks at FOX News and in the Republican Party into epileptic fits, but research published last month in Genetics, the journal of the Genetics Society of America, shows that people of Northern European and Native American ancestry are closely related. In fact, very closely related.
Using genetic analyses, scientists have discovered that Northern Europeans descend from a mixture of two different ancestral populations, and one of these populations is related to Native Americans. The revelation helps to provide some explanation for genetic similarities between what would otherwise be divergent groups.
“There is a genetic link between the paleolithic population of Europe and modern Native Americans,” says Nick Patterson, co-author of the report. “The evidence is that the population that crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia into the Americas more than 15,000 years ago was likely related to the ancient population of Europe.”
Patterson worked with David Reich, Harvard Medical School Professor of Genetics, and other colleagues to study DNA diversity and found that one of these ancestral groups was the first farming population of Europe. Their DNA survives in Sardinians, people of the Basque Country and perhaps the Druze population of the Middle East. The other ancestral population probably comprised the initial hunter-gatherers of Europe. These two populations were considerably different when they met, but today the hunter-gathering ancestral populations of Europe appear to have its closest affinity to people in far Northeastern Siberia and Native Americans.
Scientists have long since theorized that people traversed eastward out of Siberia into North America during the Great Ice Age. Initially, some placed the migration between 15,000 and 11,000 B.C., while others push it back to 25,000 B.C. Oddly, though, Dr. Ron Janke, a professor of geography at Valparaiso University in Indiana, presented a theory in 2008 that the first peoples in the Americas actually came from Europe. Considering that the Human Genome Project pretty much proves that we’re all related as a people, no one should be too surprised by these revelations. Regardless, as someone of mixed European and Indian ancestry, I feel I’ve been vindicated!
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Pets Aren’t Toys
As they every year at this time, the ASPCA is reminding folks that animals aren’t toys and therefore, shouldn’t be given as gifts to unsuspecting recipients. They may seem cute at first sight, but many gift animals end up abused and / or abandoned. Take the pledge and help stop the abuse.
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Coulter Capitulates
“OK fine, let’s do that, but in the end, at some point, if the Bush tax cuts are repealed and everyone’s taxes go up, I promise you Republicans will get blamed for it. “It doesn’t mean you cave on everything, but there are some things Republicans do that feed into what the media is telling America about Republicans.”
– Ann Coulter, admitting to Sean Hannity on FOX News that taxes on the wealthy should be raised.
At last! There’s a victory on the reasonable front! Now, if we could get more conservatives to admit George W. Bush’s tax policies are what screwed up the economy in the first place, we’d be on the road to recovery. Getting over denial is always the toughest part.
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In Memoriam – Dave Brubeck, 1920 – 2012
Legendary jazz composer and musician Dave Brubeck died this morning, December 5, at Norwalk Hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut, just one day shy of his 92nd birthday. Brubeck, who was born in Concord, California, is best known for his 1959 piece “Take Five,” from the album “Time Out.” “Take Five” is one of the most complex jazz instrumentals every composed and helped to redefine the musical genre. He moved it beyond the “4/4 time,” or what he called “march-style jazz.” “Time Out” became the first jazz album to sell a million copies.
Brubeck’s mother had forbade him and his two brothers from listening to music; believing that, if you wanted to hear music, you should play it. The Brubeck brothers all played various instruments and studied classical music, as well as spirituals and cowboy songs. Born cross-eyed, Dave Brubeck learned most of this music by ear, since sight-reading was difficult. At the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California, Brubeck was initially intent on pursuing a career in veterinary medicine. But, as he worked his way through college as a pianist in jazz bands, he switched his major to music. While in college, Brubeck met and married Iola Whitlock. Upon graduation, though, he was immediately drafted into the military, as part of U.S. involvement in World War II.
In 1946 Brubeck formed an octet and three years later, created the Dave Brubeck Trio. He formed the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951 following a near fatal car crash.
In 1954 Brubeck became only the second jazz musician, after Louis Armstrong, to be featured on the cover of Time magazine.
In 1999 Brubeck was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. Ten years later he received a Kennedy Center Honor for his contribution to American culture. He gave his archives to his alma mater.
Brubeck’s son Michael died in 2009. In addition to his other sons and his daughter, Brubeck is survived by his wife; 10 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Brubeck once explained succinctly what jazz meant to him. “One of the reasons I believe in jazz,” he said, “is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born – or before you’re born – and it’s the last thing you hear.”
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Chief Writing Wolf 