Category Archives: Rock on-Peace Out

Is There a Point in Trying to Engage in a Dialogue With Your Oppressor? | Dame Magazine

Despite the anger of the president, who threatened the students with expulsion from their own graduation ceremony, the students stood as a group and turned their back on DeVos, indicating that they were both unwilling to listen to her and they did not recognize her right to speak to them. The students were absolutely right to do this: What is the point of trying to engage in dialogue with people who will not even recognize your basic rights to exist?

Source: Is There a Point in Trying to Engage in a Dialogue With Your Oppressor? | Dame Magazine

Inoreader – Privilege or Right? A segregating question

Certainly, there are varying degrees of privilege but they all have one thing in common – privilege acts as a prejudicial filter to how a person perceives the world.

  • A person with privilege may not understand, or forgotten, what it’s like living paycheck to paycheck.
  • A person with privilege may not understand why the Civil Rights Act is still needed.
  • A person with privilege may not understand why, for some, Obamacare was a godsend.
  • A person with privilege may not understand why in some communities law enforcement is feared rather than seen as an agency of help.
  • A person with privilege may not understand why or how life is so bad somewhere that people are willing to risk their lives and personal safety to reach the US side of the border.
  • A person with privilege may not understand how some parents choose to pay rent over buying food for their children.
  • A person with privilege may not understand someone working 18-hour days, at two jobs, still doesn’t have healthcare but will have a smartphone.
  • A person with privilege may not understand why can’t everyone just get along.

Source: Inoreader – Privilege or Right? A segregating question

Noga Erez: ‘I get told by people not to talk about what is happening in Israel’ | Music | The Guardian

If there’s any hope to be found, it could come from among Israel’s small but diverse underground music scene. In Tel Aviv, at venues such as the Block, Jewish and Arab audiences are said to dance together, united by electronic DJs. “It’s all about trying to form a new conversation and trying to be normal,” says Erez. “This is probably the only idea that I believe in now 100% – building communication through normalising the connection. If that’s something that we aim for, I think it could create some change.” Erez says that she hopes one day to collaborate with Palestinian artists but her ambitions are also that of any global pop artist: to break out of her local scene and make her songs “something that people can relate to from different parts of the world. As personal as the music is, it’s as universal as it can be.”

Source: Noga Erez: ‘I get told by people not to talk about what is happening in Israel’ | Music | The Guardian

Combat Photographer’s Last Photo a Resounding Media Failure – Reading The Pictures – “Fake news from greater need for profit than doing the job correctly!”

I would qualify these photos as war porn. I say that because too many publishers couldn’t bother with the larger context or even the basic facts when they had the news cycle to contend with and these macabre and sensational photos to display. Instead, these suddenly employable four-year-old photos and their hasty circulation serve as an indictment of spectacle — just like the news and the pictures of the near nuclear-scale “mother of all bombs” did a few weeks back — when the corrosive war in Afghanistan remains otherwise invisible.

Source: Combat Photographer’s Last Photo a Resounding Media Failure – Reading The Pictures

Who’s Afraid of a Changing World Order? | DQ-en – Danny Quah

The form that Asia’s soft-power story will take remains a work in progress: Asia’s intellectuals still need to forge that vision. In some circumstances, networks can usefully replace multilateral agreements. In many situations, a duties-based social understanding can perfectly substitute for a rights-based one. Reverence for learning and scholarship is not a Western monopoly. Gentle pluralism beats arrogant universalism. And that fetishism that for creativity one needs space to rebel, flies in the face of all manner of important disciplined scientific investigation. All these sit easily with and, indeed, are on ample offer in Asia.

  • But certain other things need to be excluded right away from Asia’s narrative. When Trump and his circle display xenophobia, racism, anti-Islamic policies, nationalist populism, and an extreme zero-sum mentality, Asia needs to NOT say, “We see no problem with that.”
  • When Trump undermines the free press and subverts America’s democratic institutions or America’s judiciary, Asia can NOT say, “We are okay with Trump and his people doing those things; we have the same problems here. “ Asia must NOT say, “Let’s focus on Trump’s business acumen and deal-making instincts” – for that too is what Asia knows best and likes most.
  • These ideas have no place in Asia’s soft power narrative; Asia must categorically reject them.
  • Otherwise, Asia has no story.

Source: Who’s Afraid of a Changing World Order? | DQ-en

Key findings about U.S. immigrants | Pew Research Center

About 1 million immigrants arrive in the U.S. each year. In 2015, the top country of origin for new immigrants coming into the U.S. was India, with 110,000 people, followed by Mexico (109,000), China (90,000) and Canada (35,000).By race and ethnicity, more Asian immigrants than Hispanic immigrants have arrived in the U.S. each year since 2010. Immigration from Latin America slowed following the Great Recession, particularly from Mexico, which has seen net losses in U.S. immigration over the past few years.Asians are projected to become the largest immigrant group in the U.S. by 2055, surpassing Hispanics. In 2065, Pew Research Center estimates indicate that Asians will make up some 38% of all immigrants, Hispanics 31%, whites 20% and blacks 9%.

Source: Key findings about U.S. immigrants | Pew Research Center

To Everyone I Gave My Power To: I’d Like It Back Now. | Rebelle Society

From now on, my energy, my source of light, my power and strength will remain solely in me. I will still reach out and help care for you, listen when you need someone to talk to, hold you if you need to cry, and share in laughter that makes our sides hurt. But that is where it is going to end. I am not going to worry about your comments, second glances, critical words or looks.

I am not going to take on your problems as mine, or your goals and dreams as mine.I’m taking my power back. I’m going to bottle up all of my strength and energy, and focus internally until I can remember all of the dreams that I let disappear. Until I can feel my own talents bubbling up out of my fingertips. Until I feel like I am choking on love, beauty, and happiness when I can feel the love for me rise up in my chest.

I have given you enough of my strength to help you shine, but I’m going to take it back now so I can become my own sun.

Source: To Everyone I Gave My Power To: I’d Like It Back Now. | Rebelle Society

The US Department of Justice is literally prosecuting a woman for laughing at Jeff Sessions – Vox

The trial will continue at the Superior Court in DC this week. If convicted, Fairooz faces a fine up to $500 and up to six months’ imprisonment for the laugh-related charge. She is also charged with another misdemeanor for “allegedly parading, demonstrating or picketing within a Capitol, evidently for her actions after she was being escorted from the room,” Reilly reported.Fairooz has a history of disruptive protests. During protests over the Iraq War, she put fake blood on her hands and confronted then–Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.This time, however, Fairooz claims she was not trying to be disruptive — but merely laughing.These details are all salient for the legal case, but it’s important not to lose sight of the big picture here: The federal government is literally prosecuting someone for laughing. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Justice Department — which Sessions now leads as attorney general — is doing the prosecuting when the laughter was directed at its leader. At the very least, it’s not a good look for the top law enforcement agency in the country.

Source: The US Department of Justice is literally prosecuting a woman for laughing at Jeff Sessions – Vox

Silence of a Chink: Collected pieces from a survivor of gang rape and suicide wrestling with her Japanese American identity: Stephanie Shiori Okuaki: Amazon.com: Books

Review: Not So Silence of a Japanese True Survivor! ByTaneyshia Flemingson January 4, 2017

It was well written and brought tears to my eyes. I picked it up and couldn’t put it down. Two glasses of wine later and I was finished with the book. It is hard to see someone write about so much pain and suffering, yet lives to tell you about it. This person is truly a blessing and a survivor!