12 February 2017. The Church Is NOT Rightwing… Konvertsy Rants to the Contrary Notwithstanding

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Rod Dreher (and those of his ideological deformation) claim that the Church and the rightwing are soulmates… natural allies. Nothing could be farther from the truth! Look at the above image and be enlightened. The Church does NOT endorse, teach, or bless the evil spouted by Anglosphere “conservatives”. In particular, it condemns the Free Market that’s at the very centre of “conservative” “thought”. You may follow Archbishop Iakovos Koukouzis or you may follow Pat Buchanan, the author of the racist “Southern Strategy” and the arranger of Reagan’s visit to Bitburg (with its SS graves). Rod Dreher follows Pat Buchanan (and takes Buchanan’s money)… I follow Archbishop Iakovos.

Whom do you follow? You can’t follow both… they’re incompatible. Choose wisely…

BMD

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30 August 2015. Bernie on the War on Women

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14 June 2014. Just What IS the Standard of Freedom?

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Of course, we all heard the loud caterwauling from the usual cast of suspects about how V V Putin attacked the “free speech” of the Pussy Riot girls. How nasty of those religious believers to want to have them prosecuted! They were just exercising their free speech rights, dontcha know!

Let’s ask a simple question… what would’ve happened if they did likewise in St Pat’s on Fifth Avenue? There’s no question about it… the cathedral clergy would’ve called NYPD and Pussy Riot would be in a holding cell waiting for a night court date on a Disorderly Conduct charge. They wouldn’t have gotten off scot-free, that’s for sure. Opie and Anthony found that out the hard way! They had a contest on their show for the couple who’d do the nasty in the most wild place. Well, one couple did what comes naturally at St Pat’s! The Archdiocese of New York was NOT amused… Opie and Anthony found themselves pink-slipped and on the unemployment line. It was all legal… Opie and Anthony had the right of free speech, all right… but they also had to face up to the consequences of that free speech. In other words, the Archdiocese of New York had the clout to get them bounced, and there was nothing that they could do of it. Hell, they were lucky not to get put in the slam for setting up the affair.

 In other words, what happened to Pussy Riot, happened to Opie and Anthony. In both cases, there was reckless disregard for the rights of others. In both cases, the perps KNEW that what they were doing was INFLAMMATORY. In both cases, the powers-that-be got even with the perps in a major way. In both cases, there was deliberate provocation done with “malice aforethought”. In short, such people aren’t exercising Freedom of Speech… they were exercising their Right to be Assholes, which is something else entirely. I think that all people of good sense know when something’s “free speech” (albeit offensive) and when something’s merely recklessly “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre”. The former is a protected right (indubitably)… the latter is not (also indubitably). I don’t think that decent folks need a course from me to know the difference.

Pussy Riot got what they deserved… Opie and Anthony got off light… and that’s the end of the story…

BMD

Jacksonville Residents Demand Renaming of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School

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Nathan Bedford Forrest High School is a public high school in the Duval County School District located on the Westside of Jacksonville FL. The district named the school for Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate General, and first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. It seems that the residents of Jacksonville don’t agree with the remnants of the racism of the Confederate States of America in 2013. With more than 157,000 signatures on petitions and growing mass pressure on the Duval County School Board, community activists are waging a campaign to rename Nathan Bedford Forrest High School.

From its opening in 1959, Forrest High School remained an all-white school until the fall of 1966, when the district allowed a small and carefully selected number of African-American students to enrol. Beginning in 1971, mandatory integration of Duval County Schools by federal district court order introduced a more diverse population, based on geographic attendance districts. Currently, over 1,800 students attend Forrest, 54 percent are African-American. In November 2006, activists submitted the latest in a long line of petitions to change the name of the high school to the Duval County School Board. Some students from Florida State College at Jacksonville wanted to have the school renamed in honour of Eartha M M White, a Jacksonville native and philanthropist, due to Forrest’s connection with the Klan. In November 2008, the Duval County School Board voted 5-2 to keep the name the same.

Spearheaded by the Jacksonville Progressive Coalition (JPC), the campaign to rename Forrest High School hopes to deal another blow against racism and the oppression of African-Americans as a nationality in the South. Mike Stovall, one of the JPC’s leading organisers and one of the architects of the rename campaign, said, “I think the Forrest issue is important to Jacksonville in a few ways. One, it’s a home-grown reaction to a history of subtle racism in this town… the hate under the polite exterior, as it were. Part of what we’re fighting is ignorance of, and the revision of, history”. In July 2013, local residents started a campaign to rename Forrest High School. As of 27 September 2013, the petition had over 113,000 signatures and growing. Today, more than 157,000 residents signed the petition.

The name “Nathan Bedford Forrest” is a blunt reminder of racist hatred, violence, and terror. Forrest was a brutal slave trader, he ordered the infamous Fort Pillow Massacre, and he led the KKK. At Fort Pillow, Forrest’s troops executed hundreds of captured and surrendered Union soldiers, most of whom were African-American, which Forrest bragged about in military dispatches. The United Daughters of the Confederacy chose the name to intimidate courageous African-American civil rights activists, many of them teenagers, struggling for freedom. Stovall said, “I don’t think we can talk about this fight and not talk about current and future students, and about the entirely different message that the city is sending to those kids”. Fernando Figueroa, an organiser with the JPC said, “We’re getting out in the community, so, it’s so clear that people want to rename the school”.

18 October 2013

Voice of Russia World Service

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_10_18/Jacksoville-residents-demand-renaming-Nathan-Bedford-Forrest-High-School-0180/