A great five-minute “film” from Bianco, a Danish shoe brand

Receiving followers of my personal blog, it gives me also more possibilities to find writers from all over the world who have something good to contribute or giving others possibilities to discover other things.

Today I found my way to a

“Husband, dad, brother, uncle, nephew, friend, teacher, ex-swimmer, blogger, vegan, juggler, learner, introvert”

and as such someone who many more people could fit this cultural stereotype. As a “60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it” he does not mind going into minds of others or showing what others might think and feel. Doing that he gives us the opportunity to have some nice feeling coming over us. Sometimes he even might write a post he had not planned. {The 18 Uses for Dr. Bronner’s Amazing Soap}

I am not so good in following the fashion world any more (though I must admit I also made my way of living of it by choreographing fashion shows in the past). We should not be afraid to know presents brands, soon our children or grandchildren may let us know about them or give it to us. {The 18 Uses for Dr. Bronner’s Amazing Soap}. Mr. Jim Borden may always be looking for something to write about,

it almost became a necessity to proactively go out into the world and do things or to simply observe more closely what is going on. {Writing Is a Symptom of Thinking}

The blogger may know that the essence of Wheeler’s Which is that the customer should always be given a choice between something and something, not a choice between something and nothing. {What in the World Is Wheeler’s Which}

Good to notice that last year, the company Bestseller made great strides towards sourcing 100 percent more sustainable cotton and made a significant commitment to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions plus revealed plans to build its own solar power plant. More: Fashion FWD seems to be Bestseller’s ambitious strategy that will make sustainability central to its way of doing business. Bestseller wants to do its part to transform the fashion industry for a sustainable reality. It’s the right thing to do and it also makes good business sense.

There you can get shoes of Bianco, which was founded by René Piper Laursen in 1987 with a vision of developing an international brand based on a profitable franchise concept. Bianco tells its customers that it offers fashion-forward footwear with sublime international standards and at an affordable price to a wider audience of women and men. Bianco is represented in more than 100 retail stores (a mix between own stores and franchise) and wholesalers in Scandinavia. I must confess I do not know if they succeed to make great shoes, pumps, stilettos, trainers, hi-tops, boots, bootees, ballerinas and other cool accessories like bags, belts, clutches, scarves and jewellery, but for sure I was pleasantly surprised when by the article of Mr. Borden I could enjoy one of their “spectacular ad campaigns”.

Lovely to see they dare to touch social strings.

He presents a film of the Danish shoe brand, part of Bianco’s “Step Out of Your Head” campaign and gives their description of it from the campaign web site:

In this year’s campaign, we’re encouraging you to silence your worst critic, yourself. Most of us tend to let our thoughts run away with us, and let our insecurities take hold. But by giving our inner thoughts its time in the limelight, we might inspire a more positive way of thinking about ourselves.

He too had never heard of Bianco before watching this video, and he also would not have known that it was a footwear company based on watching it. {Falling in Love on a Lift} (Though when they look down at their feet one could perhaps notice the Product Placement – and by law in Belgium it should have the PP logo in the right corner when screened publicly.) (- On the video there is no PP-logo, so viewers might stay in the dark. -)

I loved the short film.

In any case it is by such findings and people writing about their explorations we too can find some other worlds and interesting things to see. Therefore, now my turn to introduce you to Mr. Borden his blog and the Bianco film. Please do enjoy his trying to figure out the world, and his place in it.

Borden’s Blog

Falling in Love on a Lift

Busy minds and words

Often our mind can be full of ideas and words rambling from very floor high stairs.

Sounds me seem very loud into our head but by others the busy mind keeps on talking to them silently. Akhila, the founder of wordsandnotion.com and qualitynotion.com reminds us:

And when there is a time to speak, to add a flavour of spoken words to the emotions, the otherwise busy mind just shuts down automatically and thus pushing me to a hell of silence.

Have you experienced this awkwardness? If yes, “You are not the only one” who have failed to explain yourself properly with spoken words.

When you are neither an introvert nor a less confident person you may continue to read:

Are you failing to formulate the thoughts into speech?

You would be good listener or a good reader, still sometimes mess up with words and ends on the contraries which even you might haven’t imagined.

Unedited Thoughts

We all have to choose between life and work, words between people or words on paper, white screens or social and other media.

Everything around us may inspire us and bring us further “on route”, so let the words, be it vocally or on paper or in books, always bring life into us and spread life to others.

Chai & Biscuits

The following is the unedited thoughts; inspired from the quote below.

Books

Because they don’t leave us,

Yes some of them may break our heart

But they never leave you, no matter what.

Some of them become a part of you

Some keep you in the bench

Like those benches at the railway stations

At the wintry or that rainy nights

The benches which had witnessed

The silent departures,

The happiest reunion

When you complete a book

It imbibe your soul,

It trades your heart

For the secret it had shared with you.

Then with that infected thought

You look for someone to share,

To explode. Peace.

You look at the book

Then at the clock

You make up your mind

To let the words conjure you

You pick the book

Books

Are better than people

And those who argue

Validate the statement

They are better than people.

Okay! Now…

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For One More day

Problem for those who have found their 7th or 8th decade on this world, finding they start loosing the capability to remember words from the many languages they could speak before they retired. (Is it dementia causing such problems in our head?)

I do agree at times, we can feel exhausted with words we are looking for or with looking for ways how we can say what we want to say. Half a century ago we could play with words and write poems, but this seems all to have gone at a certain age (and for me after some serious accident where I encountered even loss of memory in 1997 and was parallelised for half a year. After getting movements back it looked like the language-capability got paralysed.)

So, when we got the feeling of being drained out to write a sentence, which could gradually accumulate into paragraphs, and many other paragraphs which finally would have helped us to create an article worth reading, our head can be bouncing like mad of frustration or wondering if it would come over like it is intended?!?

What my problem is by reading my own texts is that I often read what should have been written their, so at first I do not notice the faults … only days later, after having taken distance of the article I am more able to see the shortcomings and faults.

For me, never would I like to compare my writings with legendary writers, because I consider my scrabbles just personal musings and furthermore thoughts to have others to get moving or doing something. We need more people taking action in this world, and that is my concern and on religious level I only hope with those more religious articles I write to bring people closer to the Most High Divine Creator. (Me just offering myself as a servant to Him.)

As the writer Josh, of this re-blogged article rightly noticed “what matters the most is the one who cares for us, not the one we care about.” We must be very careful not to be blinded by those who are against us or do not like our ideas. The world is full of people who would love to silence the others. For them we may be a nobody. It would be wrong in this chase, to forget to see the ones who are there for us and care for us. If we can find time (which there is a shortage of) it can be lovely to have books to remind us of that and to show us how precious each moment of the day is.

When I was younger I always had to laugh with those retired people when they said that had not enough time. Now being already a few years in the same boat I too must admit I have not enough time to do what I think I need to do. For sure I have not enough time to read the many books I would find or could be useful to read.

We should be careful when saying (like Josh does) “That is why I always say: Books are better than people. ” because it is always better to go in real conversation with people; and no human book can surpass the Bestseller of all times, the Bible.

To delve into the bags of memories and post some magical books that may impact many lives positively I would recommend the writings of some of my favourites like Charles Dickens, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky,Boris Leonidovitsj Pasternak, Rabindranath Tagore, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Knut Hamsun, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Charles Baudelaire, the Brontë Sisters, Jan de Hartog, Jan Terlouw and Toon Hermans.

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To remember

• writer’s block: Josh like to use that term to accentuate and make it sound like some cool gadget > we at times are lazy while at other times we are emotionally overpowered by the words + we are scared about damaging our reputation by writing the unedited version of the out-pouring of our emotions.
• take a pause + increase reading time
• writers who make you feel encouraged + push you to write <= by use of their simple + powerful usage of words => Their works make it more comfortable for your pen which in turn starts to fill the paper with emotions => that makes you feel free.
• Ruskin Bond, Cecelie Ahern, Nicholas Sparks, + Mitch Albom are the ones who make Josh feel great after muddling an emotional breakdown.
• Mitch Albom works: The Time Keeper + For One More day => He’s like that friend with whom though you wouldn’t talk much, yet he comes and stands with you when you need it the most.

Chai & Biscuits

At times, most of us feel exhausted with words and we feel drained out to write a sentence, which could gradually accumulate into paragraphs, and many other paragraphs which finally would have helped you create an article worth reading. You are not alone. Most of us do stare at the situation like we stare at the ticking clock, which ticks away our life, one second at one tick.

Some intellectuals call this phenomenon as “writer’s block”, but people like me use that term to accentuate and make it sound like some cool gadget. The truth is, at times we are lazy while at other times we are emotionally overpowered by the words and we are scared about damaging our reputation by writing the unedited version of the out-pouring of our emotions. I can understand the second scenario of damaging the reputation, because I have been there too; and about being…

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From the 18th century museums to the present Jewish Museum in New York city

The great museums of the 18th and 19th centuries — the British Museum in London (1753), the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg (1764), the Louvre in Paris (1792), the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (1891), and many others — were encyclopedic in scope and ambition. Born, in part, of an imperial impulse, they aimed to demonstrate the geographical and intellectual range of great national powers by becoming repositories of some of the most precious objects on earth. Simultaneously, they were shaped by the Enlightenment conviction that both the natural and human worlds could be understood and even mastered by subjecting their diverse offerings to scientific analysis and discerning the universal laws at work in the midst of miscellany. The Enlightenment museum tried to answer great human questions: where did we come from? what is the significance of what we see? how have we come to be its overseer?

For humankind such questions are important and should regularly be posed. At the same time musea should be a reflection of peoples and their culture. One expects than enough artefacts, letters, paintings and objects that can be a witness of the culture spoken about.

By the turn of the 20th century everywhere, interest in ethnicity and folk heritage was growing. In 1908, the composers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály traveled the Hungarian countryside, memorializing the music of Magyars; the American ethnomusicologist Frances Densmore, foremost American authority of her time on the songs and music of American Indian tribes, and widely published author on Indian culture and life-styles, was recording, for the Smithsonian, 3,000 wax cylinders of songs by Indian tribes. In Eastern Europe, Shlomo Zanvl Rappoport (pen name S. Ansky), educated in a Ḥasidic environment was as a young man attracted to the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) and to the populist doctrines of the Narodniki, a group of socialist revolutionaries, became conducting an ethnographic survey among the rural Jewish communities of Russia and Poland.

Cyrus Adler (1863–1940), American educator, Jewish religious leader and scholar.

Along with the amassing of music and oral testimony came the amassing of objects. At the Smithsonian, a Judaica collection was begun in 1887 by Cyrus Adler, who, having obtained the nation’s first doctorate in Semitics at Johns Hopkins University, would found the American Jewish Historical society in 1892. In 1904, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York received a gift of 26 artifacts that it displayed in its library; they became the seeds of the Jewish Museum, which after World War II would move into its current home in the Warburg mansion on Fifth Avenue. A similarly small-scale collection, mainly of family heirlooms, was housed in the Hebrew Union College, the seminary of Reform Judaism, in Cincinnati. In 1913, the holdings became incorporated as the first Jewish museum in the United States; today its successor is the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles.

Such were the halting beginnings of the Jewish museum in the United States, and once again a difference is to be observed. In other museums, collections of artefacts were often associated with a culture’s thriving continuity; the objects were there to testify to that culture’s power and range. By contrast, a Jewish religious object put on exhibit was no longer playing its vital role in synagogue or home; taken out of its context and function, it had been turned into a relic, more closely resembling the artefacts of a fading Native American tribe in a museum of natural history than a 17th-century Dutch portrait at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

JTS building at 3080 Broadway in Manhattan

Warburg mansion in New York, today the Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum was founded in 1904 with only 26 pieces and was originally located in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. In 1946 the museum moved to the Felix Warburg mansion (see Warburg family) located on New York City’s “Museum Mile.” The Jewish Museum is one of the foremost museums of its kind.

The present exhibition and the position of the museum is reviewed in the article: New York Jewish Museum’s Discomfort with Religion

Historian Deborah Lipstadt Assesses the New Anti-Semitism

Historian Deborah Lipstadt has published an accessible and comprehensive book about contemporary anti-Semitism called “Antisemitism: Here and Now.” The book, in which she spells anti-Semitism as “antisemitism” for reasons she outlines—is structured as a series of letters she writes to a fictional student and colleague — both of whom are composites of people Lipstadt has taught and worked with at Emory University in Atlanta.

Lipstadt, the author of books on Holocaust denial and the Adolf Eichmann trial, has experienced anti-Semitism as a result of confronting Holocaust deniers. In the early 2000s, she prevailed in a defamation lawsuit brought by David Irving, one of the more prolific and notorious Holocaust “revisionists.” Her victory was dramatized in “Denial,” a 2016 movie starring Rachel Weisz.

Lipstadt writes that anti-Semitism is challenging to define:

“It is hard, if not impossible, to explain something that is essentially irrational, delusional, and absurd.”

She recently spoke to JewishBoston about her new book and the ongoing scourge of anti-Semitism around the world.

°°°

Is today’s anti-Semitism “old wine in new bottles?”

On some level, it is old wine in new bottles. There are certain aspects of the stereotype which continue to exist and don’t go away. What’s different today is a number of things. First of all, it’s coming from the right and the left simultaneously. That’s different. At the same time, we’ve got a third source, and that is Islamic extremists who have been responsible for dangerous, deadly events in Europe. In some sectors of the Muslim community, it has become embedded among people who wouldn’t think to do anything violent but think evil things of Jews. This combination is different, but the charges are classic.

Actor Rachel Weisz and author Deborah Lipstadt on the set of their film “Denial,” a Bleecker Street release. (Photo credit: Liam Daniel/Bleecker Street)

In your introduction, you write, “By the time this book appears there will have been new examples of antisemitism.”

In some ways, the book is a work in progress. I was sure by the time it was published there would have been a number of instances that could have appeared. Five weeks after I hit the send button, Pittsburgh happened.

Speaking of ongoing anti-Semitism, what inspired you to write a book about it?

I wrote an article right after Gaza happened the summer of 2014 for The New York Times op-ed page. What struck me was the degree of anti-Semitism that got mixed up in opposition to that war. But it wasn’t just the war. There was the 2006 murder of Ilan Halimi. In 2012 there were the murders at a Jewish school in Toulouse. Then there was the shooting at the Jewish Museum of Brussels just before Gaza. Anti-Semitism was coming back in a way that deserved attention. The Times article was very popular, and my agent asked where my book proposal was. I sent him a brief proposal as a favor. He came back to me shortly afterward and said he sold the book. That’s how I came to write a book about anti-Semitism.

You talk about what I describe as “low-voltage anti-Semitism” that can happen casually at dinner parties or in dorm rooms. How do Jews deal with that?

While this book has received mostly amazing reviews, like any author, I tend to linger on the one or two negative ones. One of the reviews said I should not have told my fictitious student Abigail that when she encountered anti-Semitism among her roommates to go back and have a discussion. The reviewer said, “I would have told her to find new friends.” That’s the wrong answer. We’ll run out of friends very quickly if we do that. There is a lot of misunderstanding of what anti-Semitism is and what constitutes it. Our job should be to try to explain that to people. However, when you call me a termite [as Louis Farrakhan did] because I’m a Jew, I’m not going to try and educate you anymore. We have to discern between ignorance and what is absorbed from the ethos sphere, and the committed anti-Semite.

What do you say to young Jews participating in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement? And what are some of the anti-Semitic tropes associated with BDS?

Many people on campus who support BDS probably couldn’t find Israel on a map. I don’t immediately brand every person who supports BDS as an anti-Semite. Some people erroneously equate BDS with their parents’ votes against apartheid. But if you drill down to what BDS is all about it, it calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. That is anti-Semitism. As for the tropes, it’s this talk of power, control and money. It’s the anti-Semitic stereotypes put into a Middle Eastern context. A few days ago, people said the seven Labour lawmakers who resigned over anti-Semitism in their party were being paid to do so by Israel. If that supposition weren’t so dangerous, it would be simply absurd.

(Courtesy image)

Are anti-Zionists and anti-Semites the same?

They are backing into each other. If you look at each of them in 1935 or 1945, they are not one and the same. Bret Stephens had a great article about the difference. I second what he says very much. Look at the division and we now see something quite distinct. We see something that has become this hostility to Israel. Opposition to Israeli policy is not anti-Semitism. It’s important to recognize that. We’re talking about a myopic view that all the troubles in the world are the Palestinians’—the only one at fault in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Israel. Something is wrong with that.

I recently heard a story about a student in a New York City public high school who asked her teacher to sign a letter of recommendation for a summer program. She brought him the form, and when he saw it was for Israel, he said he wouldn’t write a letter for her. She asked if he would write a letter for a program in North Korea, China, Myanmar or Sudan, and he said yes.

Something is wrong when your singular focus is on one country. Something is wrong when you look at this complicated situation in Israel where there are wrongs on both sides. We see a dedication to Palestinian organizations that have a major commitment to the destruction of Israel within their charters. And you have to ask, why this myopic view? That’s when you come to anti-Semitism.

It’s almost Purim, and your middle name is Esther. Do you feel you have a Queen Esther-like role in the Jewish community?

Someone once sent me a quote from the Book of Esther where Mordechai comes to Esther to tell her she has to approach the king, or our people will be murdered. She initially says she can’t go to the king because she will be killed. But then she does talk to him on behalf of her people. In fighting deniers and anti-Semitism, I don’t feel I’m a queen of anything. What I do feel is very gratified that I’ve been given a chance to do this work. I wish anti-Semitism were an old problem, but there’s an urgency to understand it. People are so grateful and appreciative that I do that. I feel humbled and thankful that I’m getting this kind of reaction. I’m not a Queen Esther, but I have been given a similar gift of being in the right place at the right time. This enables me to contribute to an important battle.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

By Judy Bolton-Fasman for JewishBoston

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Related

• 

  Holocaust Historian Deborah Lipstadt Prevails in “Denial”

  

  Judy Bolton-Fasman

l’Enfant caché – l’Enfant sauvé

Présentation, par l’auteur, du livre de l’Enfant caché-asbl intitulé “L’Enfant Sauvé, de la cache au statut”. Elie Wiesel, déporté adolescent, a demandé pardon de ne pas avoir été conscient de la souffrance endurée par les enfants survivants. C’était en 1991, à New York, lors de la première réunion internationale des enfants cachés, à laquelle participait Sophie Rechtman, fondatrice de L’Enfant caché-asbl. Après le rescapé des camps et le résistant, l’enfant caché n’a été reconnu comme tel qu’un demi-siècle plus tard. Les enfants de la guerre sont demeurés longtemps cachés dans la paix. Ce livre, qui retrace leur histoire et leurs combats à travers l’association L’Enfant Caché, rend aussi hommage à leurs sauveurs, dont ils ont reçu en héritage, la résilience.

Le livre offre des études originales d’Histoire et des analyses inédites de Psychologie des enfants cachés. Il est illustré par une anthologie de récits et par un album de photos de sauveurs juifs et de Justes parmi les Nations. L’Enfant caché-asbl est une grande famille qui dépasse les clivages politique et religieux.

Publié aux Editions Institut d’Etudes du Judaïsme- Didier Devillez Editeur Collection Mosaïque avec l’aide de la Fondation du Judaïsme de Belgique, European Jewish Fund, la Fondation Auschwitz, Kazerne Dossin.

Informations

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Quand : Dimanche 17 Mars 2019 à 15:00

Contact : 02/543.01.01 ou info@cclj.be – Réservation obligatoire

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The Mystical Tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights, Symbols of the Heart of Secrets

How many people do not chase a dream they allow mastering their mind? Lots of people are blind to what they should see but want to go looking for something which seems unavailable and far away, but often seems better than where they live, instead of searching the richness in their own habitat.

People should know the treasures are not hidden in a secret cave but are hidden in the own heart to which the own spirit and the set-apart or Holy Scriptures are the key to enter.

Kone, Krusos, Kronos

“We lay veils upon their hearts lest they understand it…”

Qur’an (17:46)

Many years ago in my youth when I meet my Spiritual Teacher, I heard someone ask him what were his favorite movies, to my surprise he said:

“I love those movies, about Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba, The thief of Bagdad, and that type of movies.”

I was floored, an avid movie fan at the time I couldn’t figure out a man of his Spiritual realization would care for such cheese B movies made on the fifties, and sixties, with second rate actors like Steve Reeves, and other perhaps more memorable, like Douglas Fairbanks earlier and many others, since Hollywood love for the exotic, an adventures has been a cash cow, and every so many years they bring to the screen the tales of the Arabian Nights in a new form, with little, or any artistic relevance, .

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The written, the spoken, and the audible a part of the soul and a blessing to humanity but also the trigger to those who love Crusades and the Inquisition

Bill Ziegler who started studying the Geography of the Middle East in 1965, two-years before the Six-Day War, completed his M.A. at Kansas State. Having got a translation eduction and Master’s degree at the University of Cincinnati, he followed a year of post-graduate studies at Justus Liebig Universitãt in Giessen, West Germany. Getting Around in German at Tristate German-American School for 22 years 1989 – 2013, now lives in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, where he specialises in

Manufacturing	Business/Commerce (general)
IT (Information Technology)	Construction / Civil Engineering
Telecom(munications)	Materials (Plastics, Ceramics, etc.)

 

As a Certified Teacher of German Language: State of Ohio Department of Education he also is a member of the American Production and Inventory Contro, TriState German-American School. He is presently teaching German language and culture to students ranging from Kindergarten to adults: beginners to advanced levels at the TriState German-American School and integrated techniques practised at Cincinnati Waldorf School to dramatically involve each student’s learning with a wide range of teaching methods.

He is aware that

The culture where I live does not seem particularly interested in learning foreign languages. But the written, the spoken, and the audible become a part of the soul and a blessing to humanity when civilized thought can gain a foothold. {Thinking about Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, Gießen and Savak}

Bill Ziegler writes

Main building of the research university in Giessen, Hesse, Germany, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen

My interest in German language led to an opportunity for study in Giessen, at that time West Germany, from 1971 to 1973. Upon arriving at Justus Liebig Universität I learned German as a second language with fellow students from Iran, Japan, Egypt among others. German was the tongue we shared, so that we could talk to the brain. Then we could join the citIzenry and talk to the heart. {Thinking about Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, Gießen and Savak}

For him

Learning a second or 3rd or 4th language is like escaping the gravity of your native land. You probe about in another way of being, of thinking, of observing. Better still — if you’ve the inclination — learn another tongue via a second or third language. Meet the stranger in a place foreign to each.  {Languages, Escape Velocity and Bigly Lies}

He reminds us of a fact we may never forget

Propaganda relies upon endlessly repeated mistranslations, designed to obfuscate. Weaponized language to serve hidden agendas, to move geopolitical stakes through sabotage, bigotry, racism, straw men, false flags, pacification, liquidation; in other words, chicanery of any convenient kind. Whatever works. No questions asked.  {Languages, Escape Velocity and Bigly Lies}

In this world we can find lots of people who tell a lot of lies and nonsense bout other people or about other organisations. They are eager to make use of the knowledge that people can not check certain things because they do not know the language of the others. In many countries we find the presidents or leaders of that country telling lies about “the others”.

Mark Chmiel wonders about certain moments in history

Were the Democratic and Republican presidents who consistently lied to the American people merely making slips of the tongue? … or  …. Were U.S. war crimes merely bumbled into, over and over, month after month for years, an oddly uncorrectable error? {Mistake}

A lot of misunderstandings do come from not having or not grasping the essence of what is being said and meant. Everywhere can be found pepole who hate our world, our way of life, the free spirited, the one who thinks differently than some one else, the one who has an other faith than the main stream religions. Some want to have everything in control or want to dictate their own rules and ways of life. Non-Trinitarians and others who preach pacifism and a life where everybody can accept the differences between each other, are by many considered a danger for society, and as such have to be attacked and must be eradicated. This is not new and has happened more than once. Such an extermination of a certain people or a certain faith group has taken place more than once in history.

All dictatorships are sexually repressive and anti-life. All affirmations of life are diametrically opposed to dogmatic regimes. It was logical for Fidel Castro to persecute us, not to let us fuck, and to try to suppress any public display of the life force.
-— Reinaldo Arenas {Our Only Salvation Lies in Words: On Arenas’s Before Night Falls}

Religious groups have always been the target of those who did not like the free thought of others. To silence those who thought differently the most used weapon was and still is disinformation and telling lots of lies, not giving the other the opportunity to defend himself publicly. (One good example for today is how a certain Dave Norris writes lots of articles about several denominations, but has his readers to believe all the nonsense he writes about those groups. Cfr. his loads of articles on the Belgian Bible Students like “The Watchtower Belgian Biblestudents” using a name for an organisation which even does not exists.) Some love to make crusades against others and would love to see the inquisition re-installed.

The Crusades and the Inquisition (The Church Militant) were not good ideas. Spreading lies like Joseph Goebbels lends not a single grain of truth. Truth went into exile from 1933 to 1945. No literature or art of any value springs forth under Fascism. Nothing good comes of Fascism. “When I hear the word ‘culture’…”

Islamophobia (from the xeno family of racism) will not lead to a better gentler world.
~ Arabic is a tapestry

 

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Institutional Racism

Not only the United States of America has its problems with racism. It is a growing problem in Europe as well where populism and nationalism are gaining terrain.

Several right-wing politicians are helping it to grow and use the immigration as their flagship to make people afraid for Mohammedanism. At the same time the other politicians are too much afraid to loose votes, by giving a clear voice against the exclusion of certain people and religions.

From the church, synagogues and mosques are not enough voices coming up and letting people see their true face.

We can not longer stand at the side and be silent. We do have to play our role to have people their eyes opened and to overcome to see the differences which are not and should not frighten us. We should take care to be in time to disarm those who take every effort to blacken others and to have those who have a gloomy side of things to see the world more positive and to see the others not as a threat.

We need the right people to show others are not the menace to fear, and that we can live together in peace with a multicultural society, which shall enrich us more than deteriorating us.

It is high time to see those to stand up who can and will be the ones who reform policing and empower all to build up one united society.

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To remember

• Much of the resistance to government intervention and assistance comes down to a belief that “They” are getting the benefits – the mysterious “other” that is easily blamed for everything. It prevents us from having a useful discussion about “Us”, a free and united people ready to tackle the changes of our world bravely and directly.
• White Privilege is generally little more than the benefit of the doubt. But when the volume is turned up and the noise is deafening, only baser senses remain. The simple benefit of the doubt often adrenalizes into violent, destructive action. {White Privilege}
• A simple assumption accelerates into a terrible collision. {White Privilege}
• society as a whole is still incapable of comprehending how simple yet terrible it is. {White Privilege}
• We won’t end racism overnight, but we can continue to make progress.
• There is a horrible lack of leadership everywhere in the developed world right now > requires strategic thinking, + strategy = horribly under-appreciated. {Strategy as Leadership}
• separation between Strategy and Tactics is what usually trips people up. {Strategy as Leadership}
• lack of leadership we see at the top = merely a reflection of the lack of understanding of leadership throughout our society, which is to say how to think strategically.{Strategy as Leadership}
• institutional racism, =/= issue defeated head-on > Once lines are set => frozen. Everyone hunkered down in a defensive position, ready for the attacks. => quickly dissolves into trench warfare, = nasty game of inches rather than yards.
• It will take understanding, love, patience, + humor to get at the heart of racism.
• key = to engage it in a way that disarms majority of people who have racist thoughts but are empathetic enough to realize it is wrong. They need tools to cope and an invitation to stand proud rather than hunker down defensively.

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Preceding articles

If you’re going to be a hater, make sure you’ve done your homework.

Refusing to Be Silent

Tact? Knowing when it is better to remain silent!

My Multi-Cultural Childhood Could be the Answer to Racism & Xenophobia

Anti-Semitic pressure driving Jews out of Europe

It’s Time real lovers of God to Stand and Speak Out!

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Additional reading

1. Martin Luther King’s Dream Today
2. Immigration consternation
3. Forms of slavery, human trafficking and disrespectful attitude to creation to be changed
4. Migrants to the West #3
5. Migrants to the West #8 Welbeing
6. Speciesism and racism
7. Rome mobilisation to say no to fascism and racism

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Related

1. More about the Legacy of Race in Seventh-day Adventist Culture
2. Anti-racism – definition of anti-racism by The Free Dictionary
3. Jon Jones blasts Colby Covington for racism, throws shade after Fabricio Werdum altercation
4. Social Issues: #2 Racial Prejudice and Racism
5. Everyday racism
6. AmeriKKKan Racism ~VS~ World Racism
7. Institutional Racism Finally Addressed at Inquest into Toronto Police Killing of Andrew Loku

Barataria - The work of Erik Hare

For Dr. King’s Day, we have to acknowledge there is a war on between races.  It is a war which can only tear this nation apart, as it has done for centuries.  This,from 2016, is on how we have to engage it.

My thesis is this: there is nothing more important to the future of our nation than ending racism, particularly institutional racism. This has become a desperate matter of survival for far too many people when it comes to the issue of police killings. These tragedies happen disproportionately to minorities largely because of racism.

Yet the problem goes far beyond that. There is not a single issue in this nation which does not ultimately become polarized and frozen by race. Much of the resistance to government intervention and assistance comes down to a belief that “They” are getting the benefits – the mysterious “other” that is easily blamed for…

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