tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81677276799176066662024-03-12T21:37:14.962-07:00the GADFLYTHE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-29262054609232102332012-12-05T19:54:00.000-08:002012-12-05T19:54:37.162-08:00Middlebury College President Admits to Investment in Arms Manufactures and Fossil Fuels
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">President Liebowitz sent an email concerning divestment to
students, faculty and staff on Tuesday December 4, 2012. He announced that <b>at
least $33 million of the endowment is invested in fossil fuel companies and at
least $7 million is invested in arms manufacturers</b>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Ron urges that we be “inclusive of all opinions.” To invest
in fossil fuel companies is not an opinion. It is an act of violence against
our planet. To invest in war is not an opinion. It is an act of violence
against people.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Ron wants to consider “what the implications might be for
the College, for faculty, staff, and individual students.” What we should
consider is: what are the implications for our planet and its people —
including but not limited to the College, faculty, staff and students — if we
continue to invest in these companies?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Does our “fiduciary responsibility” take into account what
we ought to be paying to clean up after these companies? Does it take into
account the human costs? If it did, would we still invest in fossil fuel
companies and arms manufacturers?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">How many bullets can you buy with $7 million? How many bombs
can you build? Is that 0.8% of the endowment so profitable that it is worth the
price in human life to hold on to it? Knowing that it is such a relatively
small amount of the endowment, it is unconscionable to not divest.</span></div>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">And so the first
question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will
happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the
question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to
him?" <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-small;">–Martin Luther King
Jr. “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top”</span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-66412490242353912512012-11-14T04:00:00.000-08:002012-12-11T18:43:56.282-08:00Luaay Was Here<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E6ybg3jvACQ/UMfvEUiqBtI/AAAAAAAAAEA/o8iLEDs2AME/s1600/luaay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E6ybg3jvACQ/UMfvEUiqBtI/AAAAAAAAAEA/o8iLEDs2AME/s640/luaay.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">One year ago today, a backpacker and self-described “student
of life” came to Middlebury College. He stayed for one week, until he was
forced to leave by five officers for making students uncomfortable. During his
visit, he spent most of his time in town or in the library translating medical
articles into his native Serbo-Croatian. He engaged everyone he met
inquisitively, eager to listen, ask questions and share his own perspective.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Regardless of his actions that made others uncomfortable, he
also stood out. He was immediately identified as an ”outsider” and suspiciously
questioned by some staff and students. We must ask ourselves: why? Why did
Luaay, a tall black man with dreads, stand out so much on our campus? After his
removal, accusations abounded that he was homeless, an accusation not only
false but fundamentally reflective of a classist worldview. Luaay could be removed
but the prevailing ideology of xenophobia and judgments steeped in race and
class remain.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Let us take this day to engage and grapple with issues of
race and class on campus.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Let us reflect on the exclusion that is fundamental to our
elitist education.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
Let this be a day of reflection on Love, Understanding, Anti-racism, Anti-classism,
and (the former) Yugoslavia. LUAAY.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ipNv0woCpNs/UKOtxpCfpKI/AAAAAAAAADw/VcBtm6HLkrQ/s1600/DSC03431.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ipNv0woCpNs/UKOtxpCfpKI/AAAAAAAAADw/VcBtm6HLkrQ/s400/DSC03431.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://midd-blog.com/2011/12/07/fyc-in-stewart-fired/" target="_blank">context</a></span><br />
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<!--EndFragment-->THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-37403272955442988292012-11-05T09:13:00.001-08:002012-11-05T09:13:47.373-08:00Why I Won't Vote — W.E.B. Du Bois<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><i>Originally Published in The Nation, 20 October 1956.</i></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Since I was twenty-one in 1889, I have in theory followed the voting plan strongly advocated by Sidney Lens in The Nation of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">August 4, i.e., <strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">voting for a third party even when its chances were hopeless, if the main parties were unsatisfactory; or, in absence of a third choice, voting for the lesser of two evils</strong>. My action, however, had to be limited by the candidates’ attitude toward Negroes. Of my adult life, I have spent twenty-three years living and teaching in the South, where my voting choice was not asked. I was disfranchised by law or administration. <span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In the North I lived in all thirty-two years, covering eight Presidential elections. </span>In 1912 I wanted to support Theodore Roosevelt, but his Bull Moose convention dodged the Negro problem and I tried to help elect Wilson as a liberal Southerner. Under Wilson came the worst attempt at Jim Crow legislation and discrimination in civil service that we had experienced since the Civil War. In 1916 I took Hughes as the lesser of two evils. He promised Negroes nothing and kept his word. In 1920, <span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">I supported Harding because of his promise to liberate Haiti</span>. In 1924, I voted for La Follette, although I knew he could not be elected. In 1928, Negroes faced absolute dilemma. Neither Hoover nor Smith wanted the Negro vote and both publicly insulted us. <span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">I voted for Norman Thomas and the Socialists, although the Socialists had attempted to Jim Crow Negro members in the South.</span> In 1932 I voted for Franklin Roosevelt, since Hoover was unthinkable and Roosevelt’s attitude toward workers most realistic. I was again in the South from 1934 until 1944.<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> Technically I could vote, but the election in which I could vote was a farce. The real election was the White Primary.</strong></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Retired “for age” in 1944, I returned to the North and found a party to my liking. <span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In 1948, I voted the Progressive ticket for Henry Wallace and in 1952 for Vincent Hallinan.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><br /></strong></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"></span><br />
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered.</span> I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. <span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say. There is no third party.</span></b> On the Presidential ballot in a few states (seventeen in 1952), a “Socialist” Party will appear. Few will hear its appeal because it will have almost no opportunity to take part in the campaign and explain its platform. If a voter organizes or advocates a real third-party movement, he may be accused of seeking to overthrow this government by “force and violence.” <span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Anything he advocates by way of significant reform will be called “Communist” and will of necessity be Communist in the sense that it must advocate such things as government ownership of the means of production; government in business; the limitation of private profit; social medicine, government housing and federal aid to education; the total abolition of race bias; and the welfare state.</span> These things are on every Communist program; these things are the aim of socialism. Any American who advocates them today, no matter how sincerely, stands in danger of losing his job, surrendering his social status and perhaps landing in jail. The witnesses against him may be liars or insane or criminals. These witnesses need give no proof for their charges and may not even be known or appear in person. They may be in the pay of the United States Government. A.D.A.’s and “Liberals” are not third parties; they seek to act as tails to kites. But since the kites are self-propelled and radar-controlled, tails are quite superfluous and rather silly.</span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The present Administration is carrying on the greatest preparation for war in the history of mankind.</strong> Stevenson promises to maintain or increase this effort. The weight of our taxation is unbearable and rests mainly and deliberately on the poor. <b><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">This Administration is dominated and directed by wealth and for the accumulation of wealth.</span> It runs smoothly like a well-organized industry and should do so because industry runs it for the benefit of industry. Corporate wealth profits as never before in history.</b> <strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">We turn over the national resources to private profit and have few funds left for education, health or housing.</strong> Our crime, especially juvenile crime, is increasing. Its increase is perfectly logical; <b>for a generation we have been teaching our youth to kill, destroy, steal and rape in war; what can we expect in peace?</b> <strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is “legal” we call it high profits and the profiteers help decide what is legal.</strong> If the theft is “illegal” the thief can fight it out in court, with excellent chances to win if he receives the accolade of the right newspapers. Gambling in home, church and on the stock market is increasing and all prices are rising. It costs three times his salary to elect a Senator and many millions to elect a President.<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> This money comes from the very corporations which today are the government. This in a real democracy would be enough to turn the party responsible out of power.</strong> <b>Yet this we cannot do.</b></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The “other” party has surrendered all party differences in foreign affairs, and foreign affairs are our most important affairs today and take most of our taxes</strong>. Even in domestic affairs how does Stevenson differ from Eisenhower? He uses better English than Dulles, thank God! He has a sly humor, where Eisenhower has none. Beyond this Stevenson stands on the race question in the South not far from where his godfather Adlai stood sixty-three years ago, which reconciles him to the South. He has no clear policy on war or preparation for war; on water and flood control; on reduction of taxation; on the welfare state. He wavers on civil rights and his party blocked civil rights in the Senate until Douglas of Illinois admitted that the Democratic Senate would and could stop even the right of Senators to vote. Douglas had a right to complain. Three million voters sent him to the Senate to speak for them. His voice was drowned and his vote nullified by Eastland, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who was elected by 151,000 voters. This is the democracy in the United States which we peddle abroad.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Negroes hope to muster 400,000 votes in 1956. Where will they cast them? What have the Republicans done to enforce the education decision of the Supreme Court? What they advertised as fair employment was exactly nothing, and Nixon was just the man to explain it. <span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">What has the Administration done to rescue Negro workers, the most impoverished group in the nation, half of whom receive less than half the median wage of the nation, while the nation sends billions abroad to protect oil investments and help employ slave labor in the Union of South Africa and the Rhodesias?</span> Very well, and will the party of Talmadge, Eastland and Ellender do better than the Republicans if the Negroes return them to office?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">I have no advice for others in this election. <strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Are you voting Democratic? Well and good; all I ask is why?</strong> Are you voting for Eisenhower and his smooth team of bright ghost writers? Again, why? Will your helpless vote either way support or restore democracy to America?</span></div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Is the refusal to vote in this phony election a counsel of despair?<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> No, it is dogged hope. It is hope that if twenty-five million voters refrain from voting in 1956 because of their own accord and not because of a sly wink from Khrushchev, this might make the American people ask how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of protest.</strong></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Yet if we protest, off the nation goes to Russia and China. Fifty-five American ministers and philanthropists are asking the Soviet Union “to face manfully the doubts and promptings of their conscience.” Can not these do-gooders face their own consciences?<b> </b><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Can they not see that American culture is rotting away: our honesty, our human sympathy; our literature, save what we import from abroad?</span> Our only “review” of literature has wisely dropped “literature” from its name. Our manners are gone and the one thing we want is to be rich–to show off. <b>Success is measured by income. University education is for income, not culture, and is partially supported by private industry. We are not training poets or musicians, but atomic engineers. Business is built on successful lying called advertising.</b> <strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">We want money in vast amount, no matter how we get it. So we have it, and what then?</strong></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Is the answer the election of 1956? We can make a sick man President and set him to a job which would strain a man in robust health. So he dies, and what do we get to lead us? With Stevenson and Nixon, with Eisenhower and Eastland, we remain in the same mess. <strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">I will be no party to it and that will make little difference. You will take large part and bravely march to the polls, and that also will make no difference.</strong> Stop running Russia and giving Chinese advice when we cannot rule ourselves decently. Stop yelling about a democracy we do not have. Democracy is dead in the United States. Yet there is still nothing to replace real democracy. Drop the chains, then, that bind our brains. Drive the money-changers from the seats of the Cabinet and the halls of Congress. <span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Call back some faint spirit of Jefferson and Lincoln,and when again we can hold a fair election on real issues, let’s vote, and not till then.</span> Is this impossible? Then democracy in America is impossible.</span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: xx-small;">Republished from <a href="http://www.blackeconomicdevelopment.com/why-i-wont-vote-by-web-du-bois-the-nation-20-october-1956/" target="_blank">Black Economic Development</a></span></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>P.S. The Gadfly lives</i></div>
</span>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-64115667498103956862012-02-12T21:14:00.000-08:002012-02-15T15:16:51.620-08:00The Institution Strikes Back<div class="MsoNormal">Forest residents are likely aware that some individual(s) took it upon themselves to begin the re-decoration (de-institutionalization) of LoFo. In an email sent out to residents, Linda Schiffer made it clear: “It was the decision following the building’s renovation, to leave these walls just painted. As blank as they are, that is the decision.” Who was involved in this decision at the time of renovation? Who was not involved?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I question the ease with which the original student art was painted over, and again how quickly it was repainted when a threat to this institutional decision materialized. LoFo as it exists now is a neutered space, deprived of the art that gave it character and made it a beloved student space. How much time and money was just spent to re-institutionalize LoFo back into a grey-washed space? And why? Because “the decision” has been made?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The act of re-decoration seems to be primarily a political act, organized against the institutionalization of the space. We must address this underlying message and not write it off as senseless dorm damage.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We must ask ourselves why this space exists – and for whom. Ultimately, we must begin a conversation about how we want our space to be used, including how it should look. It cannot be a decision made by administrators alone and handed down from the top. It must come as a dialogue between students, deans, and staff. That is, if we place any value on student input.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
For the sake of full disclosure, here are two other pieces of art that were not <a href="http://imgur.com/a/eV2ii" target="_blank">included</a> on the email to Forest residents:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/5BFIy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://i.imgur.com/5BFIy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/S3tmY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://i.imgur.com/S3tmY.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-65070664901296065122012-01-25T11:23:00.000-08:002012-01-25T11:23:33.517-08:00Institutional Assault on Student Space <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">I would like to preface this post by stating outright that I am angry and frustrated. I have wanted to write on this topic, in which I am emotionally invested, for a long time but have been unable articulate my concerns ‘objectively’. So, what follows are my opinions, drawn from my experiences as a student volunteer in The Gamut Room.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What is student space? In one way or another, virtually every component of Middlebury College’s campus could be qualified as student space. I do not deny that all of our buildings, infrastructure and open spaces <i>serve</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> students, no matter how removed they appear to be. However, to equate space used to serve students with student space grossly undervalues the spatial dynamics at play. When examined critically these dynamics demonstrate that our campus is in fact more or less devoid of student spaces. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But space, and more significantly place, is important to human experience. Shouldn’t student space be important to ours as students? Humans are territorial beings. Look around and you will see that the way we organize our world is deeply connected to social, political and economic factors (to name but a few). Everywhere we go we participate in a complex and dynamic relationship with our physical environment. We relate to place, and depending on the nature of that relationship, we act in place. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Surely our institution understands the ways in which space and place shape and define our small community of intellectuals, artists, athletes, activists etc. Look no further than Old Chapel and you will find a geographer sitting in the president’s office. We live in a built environment crafted over hundreds of years to meet a specific set of criteria, to help us students achieve the ideals of liberal arts education espoused by our college on the hill. Certainly someone (in the administration?) must be thinking critically about how spatial relationships shape our community. This is not about marble floored libraries, state of the art athletics centers or a megalomaniacle science facility that dominates the rural landscape in ways those who dwell inside cannot comprehend. This is about how our institution structures students’ <i>spatial relationships</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> with campus places.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I define student space as space for which students are responsible. Ask yourself, was the person who vandalized your social house or dormitory last Saturday night responsible for the space they damaged? Were you? Am I responsible for my dirty dishes in the dining hall? Sure, the costs of irresponsible behaviors get passed on monetarily through tuition and fees but is that the only way to quantify their costs? Unfortunately, those are the only costs that really seem to matter in this community, because quite honestly, space doesn’t have a lot of meaning. I respect our scenic campus very much. I wouldn’t intentionally vandalize it because I value it and I value our community. In general, that is how I relate to all public space. I wouldn’t harm it, but I wouldn’t necessarily put myself in significant discomfort to protect it, whereas in my home, where I am responsible for space not only for myself but also for my family, I go to great lengths to prevent harm and stop harm once initiated. This is a no brainer. I relate to my home (space with layered meaning and responsibility) differently than I relate to public space. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To varying degrees, our campus is comprised of public space… but it doesn’t have to be. I do not suggest that we need more private spaces on this campus; that would be counter-productive to our objectives as students. A distinction must be made between shared space (on the public end of the spectrum) and student space. Dorm lounges could be considered a form of shared public space. In theory, they act as a communal room for a residence hall where people come together to study, relax and talk late into the night. But let’s face it, that model failed with the true commons system. Dorm lounges all look the same, smell the same and feel the same because they are all extensions of the same institution that controls them, Middlebury College. Lounges aren’t student spaces; they are college spaces for students. Therefore, I’ll let the aggressive dorm drunk take a shit in my college lounge because even though I might live next door, the lounge has no meaning to me. It is not a part of me, and I am not a part of it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, why don’t spaces with layered meaning under the protection of students exist on this campus? The college actively works to destroy them. Enter The Gamut Room. Controlled by students for students. One of the few places on campus where that statement holds true. I have been involved there for the better part of four years and every semester I’ve seen the space (and community) underachieve while overworked managers struggle to realize its limitless potential to be a place of positive community interaction. The Gamut Room has a rich history that stretches back over forty years. Murals cover the walls above cozy couches in the unique subterranean den. One step inside and you know this place is different, it has the character, authenticity, life and warmth possessed by places where thoughtful users shape their environment to meet their own needs. Yet last semester The Gamut Room made zero revenue and more often than naught, was empty, dark, uninhabited. Why? Why does The Gamut Room underachieve?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I have struggled to answer this question for years. Do students not yearn for a space that is their own? Are we truly satisfied with the spaces provided by the institution? Is it the drinking culture that swallows swarms of our peers each weekend? Our heavy workload that makes casual socialization nearly impossible? The design of our campus? The design of the room itself? The food we serve? Our reputation? In my search for answers I have blamed myself, my peers and fellow managers (Sam, Lizzie, Emmeline and Ryan, I am sorry if I held you responsible). </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My anger and frustration reached boiling in the fall of 2010 when Tim Spears, Vice<i> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">President for Administration at the college, sent an all school email requesting applications for a student run café in the space recently vacated by the Juice Bar. I couldn’t think let alone speak about the subject without muttering curses under my breath. Did they not know about The Gamut Room? Why would the college establish a student-managed café when one already existed? With a little extra support, couldn’t The Gamut Room fill the void left by the Juice Bar? My indignation only grew as details of Crossroads Café trickled my way.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Allow me to put this in perspective. I began my term as manager in the fall of 2009 with high hopes for the coming year. Those hopes were dashed the third week of the semester when the folks at CCAL told me I had to close the kitchen until it was licensed by a state health inspector. This movement toward greater regulation had been coming for a long time, but why wait until the third week of the semester to tell me? I’d already volunteered dozens of hours to plan events and staff the kitchen. As the conversation continued, I realized that none of them had any idea what it would take to qualify for a license. Thus began a four month long wild goose chase. I had no choice but to do it myself. Don’t get me wrong, I never could have gotten a license without the support of the college, but it could have been much easier had they been well informed or given me just a little bit of notice. That semester and the following j-term, I sacrificed academics, friendship and health to keep The Gamut Room afloat. So, perhaps you can understand my frustration when I learned that during the planning process of Crossroads Café, the management <i>team</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> assembled by the administration received substantial support from high level administrators and got paid, sometimes as much as forty hours per week, for their service to the college. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I was outraged. I didn’t understand. Sure, Crossroads is great. I can now say that I am glad it exists. Yet, I couldn’t fathom why the college would treat two student cafes so differently. What about Crossroads merits this level of support while The Gamut Room flounders in a perpetual state of asphyxiation in the basement of Gifford? My answer lies in a fundamental difference between the two spaces. Students manage The Gamut Room for students while students manage Crossroads Café for the college. Thus, Crossroads Café is not a true student space. In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense why the college would invest so much in Crossroads and so little in The Gamut Room. For many months I have harbored doubts about these convictions. Earlier this month, my doubts were extinguished. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As I mentioned above, The Gamut Room is on the edge of collapse with weak prospects for the future. Thus, several other students and I offered to take over management for j-term to inject new life into the space. Now here’s the kicker… on Monday the 9<sup>th</sup> of January, we received an email from JJ Boggs, Doug Adams and Matthew Biette notifying us we had to close the kitchen until further notice due to non-compliance with state health regulations. Fortunately, I dealt with this same regulation two years ago and learned from the state health inspector that compliance at the level proposed by CCAL was unnecessary for a kitchen of our nature. Had I been a first time manager, I might have spent months trying to satisfy this requirement. Instead, I fought back and for the time being, the issue is on hold. I want to make absolutely clear that I do not believe The Gamut Room deserves special privileges under the law. If it turns out that we need to send a dozen of our employees to a $200 eight hour training session to operate legally, we should, and we will. What I object to is the style with which this decree was delivered. One would think that the indefinite closure of a student café on campus would be worthy of an emergency meeting to help student volunteers surmount a formidable obstacle. Instead, it was only worthy of a vague email with no reference to the origin of concern. Would Crossroads Café receive the same treatment? It is my sincere hope that the lack of support given The Gamut Room during my time as a student is the result of honest oversight and not motivated by an institutional ideology that undervalues student efficacy. I will not speculate any further on this matter. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">However, I will explain why I believe the college acts against its own interests by under-supporting student spaces like The Gamut Room. As we all know, we are in the midst of an epidemic that manifests itself in damaged property. I am talking about reckless social behavior that in worst-case scenarios ends in assault, the hospital or even death. And those are the costs we can quantify. I ask myself, what makes binge drinking and its associated damages socially acceptable? SPACE. Think about the spatial characteristics of the social spaces provided by the college. Do they demand respect and preservation? The basements of our social houses are designed to contain and minimize destruction while enabling destructive behavior, that is why they are barren and we only use them once or twice a week. Is containment and minimization the best way to prevent the kind of behavior the college is currently leading a crusade against? What we need are student spaces with value and meaning beyond the white on blue stamp of Middlebury College, where our relationship to the environment motivates and regulates behavior in line with our values as a community. I am talking about places where students are part of space, where they are invested, where they are willing to confront a friend in order to preserve something that has meaning to them. College policies and ideologies have left us living in a desert of institutional space. When The Gamut Room dies, will the fight be over? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">No. The Gamut Room does not stand alone. Weybridge House, The Bike Room, Old Stone Mill and Middlebury Musicians Guild all have student spaces that unite, empower and teach. Given the popularity of these programs, it is clear that students want space to make their own. Yet, like The Gamut Room, these spaces frequently face resistance from the administration and struggle to thrive in a system that chronically undervalues their existence. Even if they appear safe from incorporation into institutional space we must be wary. The administration didn’t have any trouble evicting the Mountain Club from the attic of Adirondack House last spring even though the group, a mainstay of our institutional image, occupied the space since the 1970s. With actions like this (and the whitewashing of LoFo) the college has proven that they can destroy student space with near autonomous authority. If we value these spaces and their ability to create a better Middlebury experience, we must fight to protect them. Only we have the power to tell the administration what we want. The time has come to use our voice.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">- arp </div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-9286937069884209032012-01-13T12:00:00.000-08:002012-01-13T12:03:01.263-08:00Happy Friday the 13th<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zLzTkSCg5PQ/TxCMrK7ZvXI/AAAAAAAAADc/0zh5yviW-PQ/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-13+at+12.55.39+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zLzTkSCg5PQ/TxCMrK7ZvXI/AAAAAAAAADc/0zh5yviW-PQ/s640/Screen+shot+2012-01-13+at+12.55.39+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>So today I received an email from the esteemed MCAB president regarding the sad state of the Middlebury Bunker. Google took the opportunity to make some recommendations as to what I may be interested in.THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-43026448964648694702011-12-12T16:32:00.000-08:002011-12-12T17:52:45.441-08:00A Brief Report on the Most Bothersome Internet Posts Today<div style="text-align: center;">A neo-columbian take on the eastern seaboard. Abhorrent and divisive? Yes.</div><div style="text-align: center;">But who knew that NJ had such contested internal politics? This map is both fascinating and disgusting.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Below you should find a Cartography final created by a Rutgers University<br />
student majoring in Ethnic Studies and Political Communications.<br />
He recently failed the semester.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/photo/-73d3c8bf7dd38bb7.jpg" target="_blank">Click here for a full-size image.</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">--------------------------</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/photo/-73d3c8bf7dd38bb7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://media.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/photo/-73d3c8bf7dd38bb7.jpg" width="369" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-43230260942383965042011-12-11T18:57:00.000-08:002011-12-11T18:57:36.228-08:00Israel Brings Racist Discrimination Policies to U.S CapitalCourtesy of <i><a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2011/12/lawsuit-fights-hotels-decision-to-bar-muslim-employee-from-serving-israeli-officials.html" target="_blank">Mondoweiss</a>,</i> covering "The War of Ideas in the Middle East"<br />
<br />
***Especially recommended reading for 1) soon-to-be Middlebury graduates looking forward to those burgeoning State Department job opportunities and 2) members of Middlebury Hillel, who continue to sponsor propaganda "<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/young-u-s-jews-aim-occupy-movement-at-birthright-israel-1.394871" target="_blank">Birthright Vacations</a>" and stifle debate over the occupation. Enjoy!<br />
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<h1 class="entry-title" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: #003366; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Lawsuit fights hotel’s decision to bar Muslim employee from serving Israeli officials (UPDATED)</span></h1><h1 class="entry-title" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: #003366; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 32px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #888888; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">by <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/author/alex-kane" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Posts by Alex Kane">Alex Kane</a> on <span class="uppercase" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">December 9, 2011</span></span></h1><div class="entry-content" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 40px; padding-top: 12px; vertical-align: baseline;"><h5 style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: black; font-size: 0.85em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Arafi" height="325" src="http://mondoweiss.net/images/2011/12/Arafi.jpg" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: silver; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-color: silver; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: silver; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-style: initial; border-top-color: silver; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; padding-top: 5px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="600" /><br />
Mohamed Arafi is suing his employer for barring him from servicing an Israeli delegation staying at a Washington, D.C. hotel</h5><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Scroll down to see Max Blumenthal's thoughts on the case.</em></div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was in town to <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/events/2010/1210_saban_forum.aspx" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">address the Brookings Institution’s Saban Forum</a>, and Mohamed Arafi, a Moroccan-born U.S. citizen, was ready to work. An entire Israeli delegation, including Barak, was staying at Washington, D.C.’s high-end <a href="http://www.mandarinoriental.com/" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mandarin Oriental Hotel</a>, where Arafi has been a valet dry cleaner since late 2009. But when he showed up to work on December 10, 2010, he was told that he was barred from working the two floors where the Israelis were staying. The reason given, according to Arafi, was because he is Muslim, and the Israeli delegation did not want to be served by Muslims.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Now, Arafi and the <a href="http://www.cair.com/" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)</a> are fighting back in the form of legal action alleging employment discrimination by the hotel against Arafi. The recently filed case is currently in district court in Washington, D.C, and comes on the heels of an inconclusive Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruling on the case.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The hotel is not backing down, and <a href="http://jonathanturley.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/mandarin-oriental-lawsuit.pdf" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">responded in a Nov. 28 filing</a> (pdf) that they were following a national security directive from the State Department that barred Arafi and 11 other employees from serving the Israeli delegation.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Arafi says that the hotel has also punished him for speaking out by cutting his workweek from five days to two days, and that his work colleagues said demeaning things about Muslims to him after the incident became known to them.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What they want me to do is just quit,” Arafi said in a phone interview. “I don’t want to run away…I want to stay there until I have my rights.” The company has denied Arafi’s charges.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The case could also be seen as a stark illustration of the consequences of Israeli-style “war on terror” attitudes towards Muslims.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The <a href="http://www.cair.com/Portals/0/pdf/Complaint%20ARAFI.pdf" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">lawsuit describes what happened</a> (pdf), according to Arafi, when the Israeli delegation came to the hotel:</div><blockquote style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: #f8f8f8; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(232, 232, 232); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-color: rgb(232, 232, 232); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 2px; border-right-color: rgb(232, 232, 232); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 2px; border-style: initial; border-top-color: rgb(232, 232, 232); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 2px; clear: both; color: #101010; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-left: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 30px; padding-right: 30px; padding-top: 10px; quotes: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms. Escander, [Arafi’s supervisor], stated to Boris [another employee], “Boris, Israel is here. You go up and get the dry cleaning for Mohamed.” Mr. Arafi was confused and asked for an explanation. Ms. Escander stated to Plaintiff, “You know the Israeli delegation is here. You cannot go on the 8th and 9th floor (to pick up or deliver laundry).” Plaintiff asked for further explanation. Ms. Escander stated, “You know how the Israelis are with Arabs and Muslims. It’s better if you just let Boris go.”</div></blockquote><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><a name='more'></a><br />
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<div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The lawsuit alleges that the hotel first claimed to be complying with an Israeli government request not to have Muslims serve them. Arafi said that after he went<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/14/AR2010121407584.html" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">to the <em style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Washington Post</em> with his story</a>, the hotel’s reasoning changed to saying they had no choice in the matter because of the State Department directive. The hotel says the directive came as a result of the department finding “irregularities” in Arafi’s and the other employees’ background checks.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A Mandarin Hotel spokesman repeated that reasoning in a phone interview, and said the lawsuit was “all sizzle and no steak.” The State Department press office did not respond to two phone calls requesting comment.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But Nadhira Al-Khalili, the CAIR attorney working on Arafi’s case, says that neither of the reasons the hotel has given excuse their actions.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Even if [the State Department] did [issue a national security directive], we say that it was unlawful and the hotel cannot use this national security exemption to discriminate against Mr. Arafi,” said Al-Khalili. She noted that “this is an untested area of the law” and that a ruling could set a precedent.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The specific law the Mandarin Oriental Hotel says the State Department used is <a href="http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/national_security_exemption.html" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">a provision in Title VII</a> of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">1964 Civil Rights Act</a>. The law prohibits employment discrimination but also states that a national security interest provides an exemption to the law’s requirements. But Arafi and Al-Khalili say that it makes little sense that Arafi would have “irregularities” in his background check or be considered a security threat. Arafi has routine access to government officials and he says that he personally serviced former President George W. Bush just days before the Israeli delegation came through.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The case “really does have the appearance of racial discrimination of the rawest kind,” <a href="http://jonathanturley.org/" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jonathan Turley</a>, a law professor at George Washington University and a national security expert, <a href="http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/30/hotel-cites-national-security-defense-in-discrimination-suit/" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">told <em style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CNN</em></a>. “But the hotel is able to use the State Department to say, any complaint you have, you should take up with the State Department.”</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Regardless of whether it was a State Department directive or an Israeli request that the hotel complied with, important questions need to be asked about the case. Is the State Department ordering private businesses to discriminate because of Israeli attitudes? Or is a private employer being cowed by an Israeli government demand?</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If nothing else, the case illustrates how pervasive anti-Muslim sentiment is in some workplaces in the U.S.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Since I’ve worked at CAIR, employment discrimination has been the number 2, and sometimes number 1, complaint,” said Al-Khalili. “It’s disturbing that one additional aspect of the law is being used to discriminate against Muslims. We’re going to try and challenge it and try to say it does not apply in this particular case.”</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al-Khalili has a lawsuit filing due in the coming weeks, and vowed to appeal even if Arafi’s case is ruled against. The entire process, she acknowledged, could take years.</div><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Update: </strong>I asked <a href="http://maxblumenthal.com/" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Max Blumenthal</a>, the <a href="http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/occupation-%E2%80%9Coccupy%E2%80%9D-israelification-american-domestic-security" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">author of an important piece on the "Israelification" of U.S. law enforcement</a>, to weigh in on this case:</div><blockquote style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: #f8f8f8; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(232, 232, 232); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-color: initial; border-left-color: rgb(232, 232, 232); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 2px; border-right-color: rgb(232, 232, 232); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 2px; border-style: initial; border-top-color: rgb(232, 232, 232); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 2px; clear: both; color: #101010; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-left: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 30px; padding-right: 30px; padding-top: 10px; quotes: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It shows how American institutions and law enforcement take such a deferential attitude to Israel and Israeli officials that they are willing to violate basic American standards of behavior and the rule of law, which forbids discrimination on the basis of race, gender or religion. And it is more evidence of the price Americans pay for treating Israel as a normal, democratic country.</div></blockquote></div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-33132816147397112112011-12-11T14:51:00.000-08:002011-12-11T14:51:16.042-08:00Democracy in America is a sick joke and the masses aren't laughing anymore.<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-van-zandt/democracy-in-america_b_1139463.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-van-zandt/democracy-in-america_b_1139463.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false</a>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-31240336729215086052011-12-08T17:04:00.000-08:002011-12-11T01:17:29.133-08:00Don't Ignore the Climate Talks: A Problem Greater Than Inaction<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>The COP17 Durban Climate Ministers are sending a clear message, if ever so politely: "Fuck you, Africa." Keep reading to find an article after the break featuring South African Professor Patrick Bond on the new privatization of soil, activist intimidation, and a Seattle '99 style walkout. </b></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><br />
</b></span><b> </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>But first you gotta ask- who let this guy crash the party?</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, 'times new roman'; font-size: 12px;"><h1 style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: #f2f2f2; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 2px; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, 'times new roman'; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px; text-align: left;">A dirty deal coming down in Durban</h1><div style="text-align: left;">December 6, 2011</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><em>As former Bolivian Ambassadar to the UN, Pablo Solon said at last week’s Wolpe Memorial Lecture, “The COP17 will be remembered as a place of premeditated genocide and ecocide.”</em></div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><em></em><span id="more-6149"></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><strong>by Patrick Bond</strong></div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">What, now, are the prospects for a climate deal by Friday at the UN climate summit in Durban?</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The biggest problem is obvious: COP17 saboteurs from the US State Department joined by Canada, Russia and Japan, want to bury the legally-binding Kyoto Protocol treaty. Instead of relaxing intellectual property rules on climate technology and providing a fair flow of finance, Washington offers only a non-binding ‘pledge and review’ system.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">This is unenforceable and at current pledge rates – with Washington lagging everyone – is certain to raise world temperatures to four degrees centigrade, and in Africa much higher. Estimates of the resulting deaths of Africans this century are now in excess of 150 million. As former Bolivian Ambassadar to the UN, Pablo Solon said at last week’s Wolpe Memorial Lecture, “The COP17 will be remembered as a place of premeditated genocide and ecocide.”</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Within the International Convention Centre, everyone in their right mind should resist this. First, it is patently obvious, after the 1997 Kyoto negotiations where Al Gore promised US support in exchange for carbon trading, and after Hillary Clinton’s 2009 promise of a $100 billion Green Climate Fund – both reneged upon – that Washington cannot be trusted.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Second, it appears that the European Union, South Africa and the Climate Action Network – the latter representing big international NGOs mostly without any commitment to climate justice – are pushing what is called a ‘new mandate’. And not surprisingly, Pretoria’s team and the biased pro-Northern chair, SA foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, appear ready to sell out the African continent.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Some countries, led by Mali and Egypt, are holding firm on demands by the African Group, the Group of Least Developed Countries and the Latin American ‘Alba’ countries for binding northern emissions cuts of 50% by 2020 and 95% by 2050. These are critical targets to get the overall climate change to below 1.5 degrees. At 2 degrees, the UN estimates, ninety percent of current African agricultural output will cease.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">If African countries fold in coming hours, even the traditional leaders of science-based demands – Bolivia, Tuvalu and a few others – probably cannot block a sleazy Durban deal.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Unfortunately, the SA and EU delegations are behind-the-scenes managers devoted to bringing emissions trading markets into this new mandate, largely because of the vast investment that Europeans have made in now-failing carbon markets. Jacob Zuma’s endorsement of the World Bank’s ‘Climate Smart Agriculture’ scheme last week is a return to nakedly neoliberal management of society and nature – an approach that over the last decade proved so disastrous in water privatization and carbon trading.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Explains Anne Maina of the African Biodiversity Network, “Climate Smart Agriculture comes packaged with carbon offsets. Soil carbon markets could open the door to offsets for genetically-modified crops and large-scale biochar land grabs, which would be a disaster for Africa. Africa is already suffering from a land grab epidemic – the race to control soils for carbon trading could only make this worse.”</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Zuma is not well advised by his climate team, for the carbon markets upon which the strategy rests are dying. The Union Bank of Switzerland, Europe’s largest, last month estimated the price per tonne collapsing to just 3 euros in 2013, down from a peak of over 30 euros five years ago and around eight euros at present. If forest credits are also sold into the markets, as proponents hope, it will swamp supply and crash the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme to the level of Chicago’s: around zero.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">By all accounts we need prices of at least 50 euros/tonne for market incentives to begin substantively switching us out of carbon and into renewable energy and public transport. Can we trust maniac bankers to deliver the planet’s salvation?</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Face it, the neoliberal strategy is failing on its own terms. As a result, Trevor Manuel’s idea that half the Green Climate Fund should be drawn from carbon markets instead of stingy Northern governments and corporations is fatally flawed.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">There is a tiny remaining hope for COP17, but only if we soon see a 1999 Seattle-style move by African delegates who know their constituents will be fried if the rich countries and SA have their way. Exactly twelve years ago, the African delegates refused to let the World Trade Organisation do a deal against Africa’s interests. SA’s trade minister at the time, Alec Erwin, tried but was unable to prevent this sensible obstructionist approach.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">This time it will be harder, not only because Nkoana-Mashabane presides over COP17, but also because of Ethiopia’s tyrant ruler Meles Zenawi, a top African Union negotiator who ‘sold out’ the continent in 2009-10 by halving finance demands and endorsing the Copenhagen Accord, according to Mthika Mwenda of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Since the African Group represents 53 countries, the Group of Least Developed Countries represents 48, and there are a half-dozen more in the Alba block, it is not impossible that this shifting alliance can overcome the rich countries’ power and the tendency of the four leading middle-income countries – Brazil, China, India and SA – to represent their own national interests.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">As German NGO activist Rebecca Sommer of Ecoterra sums up, “Developed nations are trying to shift their responsibilities for drastic emissions cuts onto developing countries that have done the least to cause the problem. Rich industrialized countries are busy trying to carve out new business opportunities for multinational corporations and their financial elites. It would be disastrous if the internationally binding emission reduction commitments would lapse or end altogether in Durban.”</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Most likely, our city will go down in infamy as the site that the temperature was dialed up on Africa. Against that, a spirited march on Saturday passed the ICC but its impact was tempered by what climate justice activists called the ‘Green Bombers’ (named after Robert Mugabe’s paramilitaries).</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Complained march organizer Des D’Sa of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, “About 300 protesters, dressed in official COP17 volunteer uniforms, tore up placards, physically threatened and attacked activists participating in the march. In spite of heavy police presence throughout the march, including mounted police, riot police, air-patrol and snipers, and requests to address this disruption, police did not take any action.”</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The group had “green eThekwini tracksuits with city branding and emblems, but acknowledged themselves to be ANC Youth League supporters, displaying pro-Zuma and anti-Malema placards,” says D’Sa, with the message “100% COP17”. And that tells you all you need to know about the stakes and dirty politics in play here in central Durban.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><em>Patrick Bond’s new books are </em>Politics of Climate Justice<em> and </em>Durban’s Climate Gamble<em>.</em></div><div style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>Article reposted courtesy of <a href="http://climateandcapitalism.com/" target="_blank">Climate and Capitalism</a></i></div></span>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-63596734751419631832011-12-07T22:40:00.000-08:002011-12-07T23:21:24.532-08:00Enjoy Reading the News?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Trust us, this one is worth it. </span></b></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">WARNING: Conscience-Rattling Infographic Ahead ;)</span></b></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b> </b></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', fantasy;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b></b></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', fantasy;"><b></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', fantasy;"><b><a name='more'></a></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Courtesy of </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Family financial blogger </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><a href="http://frugaldad.com/2011/11/22/media-consolidation-infographic/" target="_blank">Frugal Dad</a></span></b></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', fantasy;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><b><br />
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<a href="http://frugaldad.com/2011/11/22/media-consolidation-infographic/"><img alt="Media Consolidation Infographic" border="0" src="http://frugaldad.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IllusionofChoice.jpg" width="500" /></a><br />
Source: <a href="http://frugaldad.com/">Frugal dad</a>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-31067609445355772182011-12-06T21:26:00.000-08:002011-12-06T23:53:45.513-08:00A Gadfly, A New Year: Notes on Politics and our Next Print Issue<div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dear Friends,</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This semester has been a slow one for the GADFLY. Please don't fret- we have many fine articles from our contributors on their way. Expect a hardcover print (Issue 2.1) to be out in the first half of J-term, which should include extensive commentary on OWS, Wikileaks, campus politics, college propaganda, and the ongoing discussions over Money at Midd. We are lucky to have a range of students who send us some outstanding material, however many students tend to be 'activists' in their own right, and this semester has (quite surprisingly) provided a load of distraction to this end. In the meantime, please note that past print issues are always available in PDF format (look to the blog's masthead) or a physical copy can be found in The Gamut Room.</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Overall, we still maintain a belief in the necessity for continuing our printed medium, keeping materials and cost at an absolute minimum, while maintaining an accessible format which will (in theory) remain for perpetuity. Also, we know you love our dope graphic designers; shout-out to our fans in the Department of Public Safety (any likeness is entirely unintentional). </span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dean Collado may feel it necessary to remind us that there are </span></b><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">people</span></b></i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> working in 'Old Chapel,' but here at the GADFLY we know (that you know?) that</span></b><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">indeed, </span></b></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">people</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> also inhabit Foucault's panopticon, even if in the metaphorical sense. Such is Old Chapel's inclination- to "observe and normalize."</span></b></span></i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> A recent example is the new personal key-code entry on the Bike Shop? </span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The administration likes to talk </span></b><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">as if we don't all have a web-tracker </span></b></i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>installed on our laptops from the day we arrive here</i>... how silly of them. We'll keep to our commentary on making this college a more just and unbiased placed to learn. It should go without saying that to achieve such ends, very little escapes critique!</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lastly, one cannot avoid addressing the controversy the GADFLY found itself at the heart of last week, which concerns quite serious accusations of racism and the behavior of armed police officers on campus. Thanks to a guest post on this blog, and persistent instigation of </span></b><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Middlebury Campus</span></b></i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> editors, the controversy has been widely disseminated and is expected to appear in next Thursday's paper. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While new details and counter-accusations have come to light, one shudders to think that the entire controversy could easily have remained undisclosed. That would have truly been a shame, regardless of one's perspective. </span></b></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We encourage you to visit a new blog setup in support of Barrett Smith '13, who was recently fired from his position as FYC of Stewart Hall over alleged misconduct in connection to the controversy. It truly is heartwarming to see students rally together when they perceive injustice- no matter how big or small. You can find the blog through our link here:</span></b></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></b><a href="http://blogs.middlebury.edu/keepbarretthere/"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">http://blogs.middlebury.edu/keepbarretthere/</span></b></a></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">More updates to come later on this week. In the meantime, good luck with finals, work, or the celebration of false idols (Pleasant Saturnalia, Pagans). </span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Keep fighting the good fight.</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In Solidarity,</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the GADFLY</span></b></div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-51839643617641657712011-11-23T01:51:00.000-08:002011-12-14T11:18:52.291-08:00Institutional Racism: Alive and Well at Middlebury College<div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><i><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';">The author has been fired for judgment, conduct and views unbecoming an FYC.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><i><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';">While there are details not present about Luaay's case in this article, it still presents an important perspective on the events that transpired. For better or worse, I chose to focus on Luaay’s removal and the openness of our community. For a more full account of Luaay’s visit check out the <a href="http://midd-blog.com/2011/12/07/fyc-in-stewart-fired/" target="_blank">Midd-Blog article</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><i><span style="color: #343434; font-family: 'Courier New';">The dialogue surrounding this post has been beautiful. Luaay's case is not the only instance where race and class are implicated in very real ways on campus and in our society. We attend a college whose function is to reproduce the ruling class in an imperialist, white supremacist, patriarchal society. Given the society in which we find ourselves, together we must confront issues of race, class, gender, ability, et cetera to work toward a more just and inclusive community. Share your stories, listen to everyone, engage in dialogue, challenge and grow.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><i><span style="color: #343434; font-family: 'Courier New';">This article was removed between December 1st and 14th, while the my position in the Stewart community was being discussed. <a href="http://middleburygadfly.blogspot.com/2011/11/institutional-racism-alive-and-well-at.html?showComment=1323889864521#c1890407111890007797" target="_blank">Here</a> is the letter that was posted for some of that time. Because it was never my intention to permanently remove this article, here is the original text, returned again to its rightful place in the public forum:</span></i><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';">Xenia</span></b><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';">. </span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';"> </span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';"> <b>And I don’t mean the social house</b>. Xenia is Greek for the concept of guest-friendship. The idea is that you welcome all guests into your home, you feed and house them, and you build lifelong bonds of friendship and connection with them. Xenia is about creating an inclusive community.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';"> <b>So my friend Luaay has been staying with me for the past week</b>. As I was informed this afternoon, that is in violation of public safety’s guest policy: “A guest of a student may stay in a dormitory no more than three days in any one term.” Surely, Luaay is not the only one to have violated this policy.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';"> <b>But Luaay’s case is unique in that public safety, without ever having contacted with him, deemed Luaay a "threat to the community" at which point the middlebury police department was called to apprehend him, issuing a No Trespass Order.</b> Some of y’all may have seen him being detained Monday night by five officers in the lobby of davis library. The behavior of middlebury police and the department of public safety officers was consistently condescending and disrespectful towards both Luaay and myself. This appalling behavior continued and was aimed towards other students who subsequently became involved. public safety was not interested in hearing his side of the story; they simply wanted him gone.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';"> <b>One officer remarked that my friendship with Luaay was “disturbing.”</b> Back in my dorm, gathering Luaay's belongings, middlebury police officers threatened to arrest myself along with three other students, also for trespassing, if we did not "remove Luaay" more expediently.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';">I have a broken foot. </span></b><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';">I can only move so quickly down four flights of stairs.</span></b><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';"> Yet too much attention to my own condition distracts from the larger context. What one needs to be conscious of is how race and class play into this. Is Luaay, a large, dark-skinned, dreadlocked male, who is "unvetted" by our admissions committee, somehow outside our community norms enough to draw such an aggressive response? How secure are the members of our community who also fit into one, two, or three of Luaay's descriptors? Would he have been so forcibly evicted if he were a wealthy or white friend of mine? Can you imagine a situation in which such a friend might be considered “a danger” to the community? I certainly cannot. </span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';">Whom do we welcome into our community and whom do we call the police on? </span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';">This is surely a question that must be addressed. </span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';">This is not the way we treat members of our community. </span></b><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';">This is not the way we treat our guests.</span></b><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #272727; font-family: 'Courier New';">-So-crates</span></div></div></div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-21302511268397840392011-11-07T17:48:00.001-08:002011-12-06T21:39:21.586-08:00Occupy Wall Street... On Acid!<a href="http://www.vice.com/read/occupy-wall-street-on-acid">http://www.vice.com/read/occupy-wall-street-on-acid</a><br />
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fuck yeahTHE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-57889958555935245102011-10-19T17:59:00.000-07:002011-10-19T18:56:00.533-07:00A Brief Response to "Why Occupy Wall Street Will Not Succeed"<link href="file://localhost/Users/pcoccoma/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0/clip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link> <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">The name calling that we are perpetuating in this forum attests to just how widespread capitalist cultural control extends and how it fragments our society into subgroups till the point when we loose our collective power.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">What is interesting about Occupy Wall Street? It is a call for an open dialogue, and not just one centered on petty quips and debates over the best forms of political reform, but about asking ourselves what has capitalism culturally instilled in us as “proper dialogue” and “acceptable activism”. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">It is first and foremost about inclusivity. Capitalist society assures that those in power stay in power by fragmenting knowledge and society into sub-disciplines and subcultures. This “movement”, as no other term has arisen to name it, is about breaking down the walls of our public rhetoric, of what we accept as “rational” thought so that we can benefit from the extensive wealth of knowledge that humanity has generated, but, since the rise of the post-renaissance, modern era, has been subjugated into culturally reproduced and therefore legitimized knowledge, and culturally marginalized and therefore illegitimate or “radical” knowledge. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> Allowing the cultural controls of capitalist society to exclude necessary fields in human knowledge from public conversation is as much of a tool of oppression as militarism or economic exploitation. In fact, it may be even more dangerous as it is not readily evident to most people who are the most effected by it. Disciplines of philosophy, idealism, utopianism, original Marxism, anarchism, communalism, syndicalism, primitivism, modernism, quantum theory, psychology, evolutionary theory, eastern thought, to touch only on the surface level, have all been excluded from the discourse by those who turn the wheels of our globalizing world, and the reaffirmation that these fields of knowledge are somehow separate. They have been excluded from the conversation so that classical economics and the rationalization of irrationalites become the dominant tools of rhetoric; anyone not versed in this conversation is immediately excluded as a radical (another example of a term that has been used to illegitimate large sects of our society), or not holding the institutionally certified credentials to be a validated participant. The point is that these are not “radical thoughts” (in the negative definition that is connoted by that label). </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">There have been systemic changes in history, collapses of empires, experiments with other systems that have failed, and there is something to be learned from them all. It may seem like an impossibility standing up against such a large web of systemic control, but that is another mechanism that is intrinsic to capitalist cultural control that prevents any challenge to the system from generating any momentum. Just because capitalist society has perpetuated itself to a state of dominance does not validate it, and what we are learning is that there are other, natural systems that are not compatible with this system and if things don’t drastically change shit will hit the fan. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Why does Occupy Wall Street deserve attention? In many ways it is a hope that there can be a new form of revolution. I’m not arguing that Occupy Wall Street is a revolution waiting to happen, rather that it is merely an instance in what we need to envision as a multitude of smaller global revolutions that are interconnected. It doesn’t matter how small one individual explosion of discontent is, but instead how globalization can be used as a tool to fight. We can pat ourselves on the back for the end of slavery, the civil rights movement, womens' rights movement, public discourse on gender, and all the other “victories” within the system, but within all these the tiniest bit of liberty is won -- just enough so that a real revolution doesn’t take place.<br />
Capitalism is complex. It involves intricate systems of cultural control that are often imperceptible, but to anthropomorphize it for a moment, it knows what it’s doing. It will keep handing us tiny advances to placate our temporal frustration as we bicker with one another about who has a right to speak out against it. Rights aside, we all need to put aside our narcissistic viewpoint and realize we are making one another into enemies. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> Here is my take away message for this Internet forum in a few more than a few sentences. This argument, this polarization, this antagonism, this subjugation, this fragmentation, this selfish want to be the one to bring about change is exactly what capitalism utilizes as a tool to keep itself alive. We are all guilty of it, but we shouldn’t feel guilty about it. It is part of an oppressive system. As easy as it is to throw mud at each other, pick and choose who has a right to speak out against an exploitative system, who really and truly is the most marginalized, who has slept a night in the gutter, we have to fight against this tendency because that is exactly what leads to paralysis. It’s hard and it takes the will of every individual to push against the selfish tendency to want to BE the bearer of real change, when really we should ALLOW for change to happen regardless of an individual hand ushering it in. Life is circumstantial and we shouldn’t ostracize one another for that, but rather recognize that our anger stems from the same focal point.<br />
Let’s allow ourselves to learn from one another and not just speak so we can feel better about asserting our viewpoint as right. Students perpetuated this conversation, and let’s remember that we have knowledge that is constructive and we can educate one another outside of institutions, not because we are Students (or those who are legitimized by the system as the holders of knowledge), but because we are questioning our systems and ourselves. It’s not about being the first to recognize it, or the most vocal, or the right one, but about not working with capitalist control to smother any attempt at real, systemic change.<br />
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Peter </div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-7723206181847360722011-10-18T15:29:00.000-07:002011-10-18T18:48:47.261-07:00Why Occupy Wall Street Will Not Succeed<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Times;">The Occupy Wall Street movement seeks to protest the greed of the one percent. In the words of Professor Cornel West (one of the protestors), “We are tired of seeing Wall Street’s greed getting rewarded…anytime they make any profits they are privatized, and when losses come up the government decides to socialize them (through the bailouts)…Obama has failed working class America.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Times;">We believe that the Occupy Wall Street is a movement that has grown due to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">crème de la crème</i> of the United States. It is rumored that George Soros, Forbes richest man having made his money from Wall Street, funded Occupy Wall Street in its preliminary stages. Most protestors, namely the ones ‘in it for the long haul,’ are direct beneficiaries of the corporate forces that Occupy Wall Street condemns. The Movement is thus hypocritical because they are protesting against the hand that feeds them; it goes without saying that most of these protestors going to Occupy Wall Street, much like Occupy Middlebury, are ‘trustafarians’ who have little to no first hand experience of what they preach. Rather, it is merely a call for solidarity that is fun and exciting to attend and worth experiencing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;">The truly overlooked by corporate forces should to be the protesters. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Where are they?</i> They are most likely working their nine to five jobs, making ends meet and, unless they sacrifice their vacation time used for loved ones, family and friends, they will have no time for around the clock protesting. A recent article comparing the Slutwalk to Occupy Wall Street put it perfectly, “</span><span style="font-family: Times;">To get people to join your movement, they need to see themselves reflected in it.” </span><span style="font-family: Times;">This idea brings us to our main argument: The movement is taking away agency from the people who really need to be protesting and as a result, perpetuating marginalization and powerlessness. Mahatma Gandhi was once asked by a well-meaning British citizen what he could do to help the Indian independence movement. Gandhi asserted, “Nothing!” He understood for independence to be realized for the Indian people they needed to do it for themselves. This same critique is applied to the “in it for the long haul” protesters who are benefactors of the system they criticize.</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Have you actually explored the site we are the 99 percent? Those who have been subject to the greed of the few, upload a picture of themselves, with a hand-written statement about what they have suffered and must make sure they write, “I am the 99 percent.” The protestors are perpetuating what Zizek refers to as ‘cultural capitalism,’ explained with a brief story, “in the morning he grabs the money and in the afternoon he gives half of the money back to charity.” In the case of the protesters, they have “grabbed” the leisure of time and money that in turn they put towards a protest. Occupy Wall Street is a pat on the back for those attending and supporting. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;">This façade of a people’s movement might actually hinder the potential for a successful movement consisting of the proletariat toppling the corporate greed that is controlling their immediate lives. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Times;">The Declaration of Occupy Wall Street cites, “We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.” Occupy Wall Street protesters are indeed allies and are not all people. Banality of evil can help us explain where to go from here. We are all accountable. We have all used the oppression of marginalized groups in order to achieve success. We must acknowledge our role in the white noise we created and use our privileges accordingly. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Times;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Co-written by Janet Rodrigues ’12 and Mugo Mutothori ‘12<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-86524323490900579582011-10-12T19:29:00.000-07:002011-10-12T19:29:07.783-07:00One Dean's ViewThought this was worth sharing. Read the blog post then take a look through the comments. I think you will find that Ms. Rodrigues does in fact get a little help from her friends. <br />
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http://blogs.middlebury.edu/onedeansview/2011/10/11/with-a-little-help-from-my-friends/THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-168334940316212602011-10-11T18:01:00.000-07:002011-10-12T17:42:48.929-07:00This Week On Campus<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The following is a list of </b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b>scheduled </b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b>events on the Middlebury College campus this week.</b></span></div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">As of this posting, we at the The Gadfly do not explicitly endorse any of these events, but encourage our readers, contributors and fellow inquisitives to attend, in order to better inform one's own position and perspective. All events engage with issues that are of major concern to The Gadfly <span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: line-through;">collective</span>, and are ordered strictly by chronology. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Enjoy your week- perhaps "the bubble" could be in trouble!</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">- The Gadfly</span></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Wednesday Oct 12th</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><ul><li><span style="font-size: large;"><b>"Black Male Incarceration." <br />
Prof Keith Reeves (Swarthmore)</b><br />
@ 4:30pm in the Robert A. Jones House (RAJ conference room)<br />
<br />
</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Corporate Exploitation Film: <br />
"<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1439127714">Crude</a><a href="http://www.crudethemovie.com/">: The Real Price of Oil</a>" </b><br />
@ 7:15pm in Bihall 104 <br />
<br />
</span></li>
</ul><span style="font-size: large;">Thursday Oct 13th<br />
</span><br />
<ul><li> <span style="font-size: large;"><b>ES Colloquium Series "The Problem of Proximity: Black Male Incarceration and the Urban Environment." <br />
Prof Keith Reeves (Swarthmore)</b><br />
@ 12:30pm in The Orchard at Hillcrest<br />
<br />
</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://vtmfsp.org/">VT Migrant Farmworker Solidarity Project</a>: <br />
Danillo Lopez visit</b><br />
@ 4:30pm in The Orchard at Hillcrest <br />
<br />
</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Student Solidarity March <br />
in Support of Occupy Wall Street</b><br />
@ 4:30pm outside the Davis Library <br />
(march to be followed by a "General Assembly" at the Gifford Amphitheater)<br />
<br />
</span></li>
</ul><span style="font-size: large;">Friday Oct 14th <br />
</span><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Occupy Wall Street Panel (Professors and Students followed by an open forum) </b>@ 12:00pm in the Robert A Jones House (RAJ conference room)<br />
<br />
</span></li>
</ul><span style="font-size: large;">Saturday Oct 15th<br />
</span><br />
<ul><li> <span style="font-size: large;"><b>***Careers on Wall Street Parent's Weekend Panel</b>*** <br />
<br />
Come one, come all. <br />
We know you have many questions to ask! <br />
<br />
We are required to ask that <b>everyone</b> behave in a "civilized manner." (read as you wish)<br />
<br />
<b>@ 9:30-10:30 am in the Robert A Jones House (RAJ conference room)</b></span></li>
</ul>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-20572207874968162092011-10-11T09:47:00.000-07:002011-10-11T09:47:52.609-07:00Video: CBC's Kevin O'Leary gets schooled on #Occupy Wall Street movement by Chris Hedgeshttp://rabble.ca/rabbletv/program-guide/2011/10/best-net/cbcs-kevin-oleary-gets-schooled-occupy-movement-chris-hedges<br />
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this gave us a good laugh.THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-31783717391100239022011-10-03T13:21:00.000-07:002011-10-03T13:21:20.134-07:00Video: FOX News Meets Intelligent Wall Street Protestor And Doesn't Air It - Instead hilariously objectifies topless protestershttp://gothamist.com/2011/10/03/video_fox_news_meets_intelligent_wa.php<br />
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EnjoyTHE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-70265087991112014152011-09-29T13:12:00.000-07:002011-10-19T18:52:58.014-07:00a critique of study abroad + my extraordinary everyday<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">[ This is an essay written for a sociology of tourism class. i've decided to post it here because it expresses some unorthodox ideas about travel, in particular as it pertains to midd students. i encourage others to likewise consider posting schoolwork to the blog. ]</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> i attend a college where i am a minority because (1) i do not study a foreign language, and (2) i choose not to study abroad. This raises several questions. Why does a school like Middlebury College place such emphasis on its language and study abroad programs? What objectives does it believe these avenues access? Where do they actually arrive? What is my relation to these directions and destinations as someone who digresses from the trodden path? Why do i digress?</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> In seeking to understand the act and rhetoric of studying abroad, it is helpful to draw on the field of tourism studies to investigate how modern humans relate to travel. For Dean MacCannell, the tourist industry represents the proffered solution to modern feelings of alienation (from work, from family, from community, from self) which run rampant in urban and suburban populations. By engaging with the authenticity of others, we are supposedly afforded a dose of reality that makes the unreality of the everyday life tolerable (paradoxically). John Urry’s approach to tourism pursues a similar idea, where modern beings make a temporary departure from the “regulated spheres” of routine life to “engage with a set of stimuli that contrast with the everyday and mundane”. To these understandings Nelson H.H. Graburn adds the dimension of rituality, which invokes discourse about the sacred and profane and about the structure surrounding ritual activities. Moreover, Erik Cohen complicates things by pointing out that escape from alienation is not necessarily the root of all tourist activities, but that a more nuanced “interest in or appreciation of that which is different” spurs variations of “movement away from the spiritual, cultural or even religious centre of one’s ‘world’ into its periphery, towards the centres of other societies”. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Since Middlebury has made no official statement regarding the purpose of its study abroad programs, i turn instead to the college’s mission statement under the assumption that study abroad operates along similar guidelines. From the mission statement:</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">“We strive to engage students' capacity for rigorous analysis and independent thought within a wide range of disciplines and endeavors, and to cultivate the intellectual, creative, physical, ethical, and social qualities essential for leadership in a rapidly changing global community. Through the pursuit of knowledge unconstrained by national or disciplinary boundaries, students who come to Middlebury learn to engage the world.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">What we can glean from this is that Middlebury exports its students to build this cherished “knowledge unconstrained by national boundaries” for the production of global community leaders. The emphasis here is on intellectual and professional cultivation. To expedite these processes the college implements a standard of language proficiency as the touchstone for immersion. By putting students in close touch with unfamiliar cultures, the college aims to foster the tenets of “universal sympathy” and “international responsibility” that underlie to global citizenship. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">These objectives draw on Cohen’s appreciation of difference, but with undertones of cultural relativism that reject MacCannell and Urry’s arguments. i, however, would contest that this portrayal represents the reality for many students. For a considerable number of Middkids, studying abroad is an escape from Urry’s regulated spheres of everyday life, from the mundane of the Middlebury bubble wherein inauthenticity is endemic. In step with Gmelch, i would also point to the function of studying abroad as a rite of passage into adulthood. The conventional rite of passage, college itself, does not always develop adaptability and self-confidence as advertised, due to an array of factors including the proliferation of easy and inexpensive means by which to maintain rigorous contact with parents, and the nurturing nature of the institution itself which feeds and houses and employs; thus studying abroad supplants or supplements this ritual. Other travel motives for Middlebury students include diversion (have fun!), experimentation (imagine yourself as a Tanzanian/Tralfamadorian), and existentialism (Western life is meaningless, i'm bustin’ out to the real world: the third world). These personal and institutional objectives of course intertwine within the student to structure his/her experience abroad. Lofgren writes about the role of narratives in producing experiences, how tourists make use of preprogrammed interpretive methods to make sense of their travels. If we can consider the objectives explicated above as narratives, we can explore to what degree they shape the Middlebury student’s study abroad experience (and to what degree they align with an objective reality, if there is one). </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Graburn tells us that rituals of preparation/anticipation and of nostalgia/recollection create meaning in and around the ritual itself. Given this, the daydreaming and fantasies that a student engages prior to and following their travels are part of the study abroad experience. The Middlebury community constructs substantial hype around studying abroad; on the one hand, this sets the stage for disappointment. However, it is more than probable that a Pygmalion effect is at large, causing students to realize their journey as a “life-changing experience” precisely because they expect it as such. Moreover, upon reentry they employ those preprogrammed interpretive methods to recall the experience as transformative. The frame of the rite of passage narrative is perhaps also self-fulfilling prophecy in this way. Students hoping to achieve adaptability and self-confidence are prone to do so. Of course, there is room for skepticism—can we trust students’ evaluations of their experience? Is it possible to truly achieve maturation or independence through a program that is highly regulated by the college? When students report their elation at engaging with genuine cultures, shouldn’t we be cynical of a staged authenticity carefully constructed, packaged, and sold by the schools? Do the students exhibit any measurable changes in thought or behavior upon return (other than an exponential growth of annoyingness)? Does any of this matter so long as the students, parents and trustees are satisfied?</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Middlebury College, via its liberal liberal arts education, already installs and hones qualities of global citizenship prior to the student’s study abroad experience. Studying abroad merely reinforces those attitudes by exercising them in a more “authentic” setting than the classroom. Just as Graburn’s tourist seeks specific reversals to “come back refreshed as better versions of their same old selves,” or as Cohen’s tourist who “adheres to the ‘spiritual centre’ of his own society or culture, prefers its life-ways and thought-patterns,” the Middlebury student rarely experience a complete upheaval of their world. Instead, he/she uses the study abroad experience to fortify their preexisting ideas about international responsibility and cultural relativity. To this extent, the hypothetical “immersion” which the program touts is infrequently achieved (and to a degree, might even be detrimental to its aims—they want their Middkiddos to stay loyal after all). In fact, traveling as part of an academic agenda decisively colors the experience; every act or thought abroad is weighed down by the Middlebury anchor. This gives rise to a particular sort of deformation of experience, where students extract relevant or utile aspects from the context of their travels, reinterpret them, and reintegrate them into a larger, disparate fabric of understanding. This process also transpires within the average tourist, but for the Middlebury study abroad student it is regulated by the college to fitan its objective of professionalization. As Lofgren writes, “We neither have nor can be given experiences. We make them in a highly personal way of taking in impressions, but in this process we use a great deal of established and shared cultural knowledge and frames”. In our case, the frames are determined by both broader understandings of study abroad programs and by the specific trajectory proposed by Middlebury. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> This predeterministic, professionalizing pastiche of immersion is precisely what repels me from the program. The commodification of foreign (and often fragile) cultures for the purpose of further sophisticating Middlebury students seems unfair to both sides. Also, i have serious doubts about the academic value of studying abroad—it has nearly become an excuse to take a year off from college, reap the sensual pleasures of a nation, and get scholastic credit for it. If i am to travel abroad one day, it will be on a morning when Middlebury College is no longer the gum under my shoes. It will be without premises of growth, without engines of despair, and it will be a one way ticket. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">These sentiments stem from a particular aversion to hackneyed touristic practices. Trust me, if you’ve seen one basilica you’ve seen all basilicas. Besides, i think that the imagination of oneself as a tourist everyday is by far a more invigorating exercise. In a segment of their “The Trouble With Tourism and Travel Theory?” article, Franklin & Crang suggest that the modern acceleration of global flows yields a constant state of flexible reconstitution of culture. They write, “We casually take in these flows, never fully in possession of their extent or their temporality, never expecting them to be complete or finalized as a knowable cultural landscape around us”. This brand of perpetual uncertainty resonates with my personal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">modus operandi</i>. i already feel fairly adept at standing outside of American culture—everything is foreign to me all the time. Moreover, the pursuit of authenticity is, in my eyes, a rather pointless one, since performative modes of existence have come to saturate just about every corner of this globe. “Touristic culture is more than the physical travel, it is the preparation of people to see other places as objects of tourism, and the preparation of those people and places to be seen,” says Franklin & Crang, but i believe that the majority of the moments of our lives are invented in preparation to be seen. And evermore, especially in the West, we feel the impetus to invent ourselves as highly individualized or different, which permits all onlookers to conceive of us as living curios. If we buy MacCannell’s anatomy of the attraction where the reproductions and markers of a sight create the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aura</i> and construct a sight’s importance, we might consider that every reproduction of every person, place or thing, and the information that circulates around it, constitute an attraction. A fitting example of this is the Facebook page, which reproduces images of an individual and provides markers of information about them (Facebook is a huge guidebook to the world!). Approaching everyone and everything as an attraction may seem bizarre and distancing, but i find it profitable. After all, the tourist gaze supposedly invokes a “greater sensitivity”, and touristic practices as rituals frame sacredness and produce meaning. As such i don’t feel the need to hop across the planet to find stimuli that contrast the mundane everyday; the elegance of water suspended on webs, the way some people just can’t dance, the endless stretches of suburbia’s cement, the strangeness of kind acts—these things are attractive, these things are attractions, for me. </span></div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-65015424697607393492011-09-27T14:55:00.000-07:002011-09-27T14:55:34.713-07:00"Cops Beat Up People Because They Know They Can Get Away With It "<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Mainstream media (MSNBC) decrying police conduct at <a href="https://occupywallst.org/">#OccupyWallSt</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Cops are never your friends. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">They are not looking out for you. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">It has always been this way. It will always be this way.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Never trust a cop.</div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-16674088806112709072011-09-22T00:33:00.000-07:002011-09-22T01:55:18.520-07:00First Post for a New Fall Season: An Irony for our Times<blockquote><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards."</span></span></b></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>-Samuel Huntington, </b></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order</b></span></i></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><br />
</b> </span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Contemporary critical scholarship has brought more than enough evidence/analysis to fundamentally reject Huntington's racist apologism for post- Cold War neocolonialism. In an ironic twist to his controversial 1993 thesis on championing U.S and European capital interests, two events took place tonight which once again call this "waspy" Harvard neocon to light.</b></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Tonight at 11:08pm EDT Troy Anthony Davis</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">, </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">a</span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> black male from Savannah who by any objective measure was wrongfully convicted of murder, was put to death by the The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. </span></b></span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Troy_Davis_Paris_demo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Troy_Davis_Paris_demo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Additional info please see </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/cases/usa-troy-davis"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Amnesty International Coverage</span></b></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">plus see the Atlanta </span></b><a href="http://www.iww.org/en/content/atlanta-gmb-statement-planned-execution-troy-davis"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IWW Solidarity Statement</span></b></a><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></b></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Just hours later, after responding to intense pressure from President </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian Judiciary released two Cal Berkley activists who had been imprisoned on suspicion of spying, in another political move, this time by Iran in which two lives were spared. </span></span></b></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.katu.com/images/100524_Iran_Hikers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://media.katu.com/images/100524_Iran_Hikers.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 16px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Additional Info at </span><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/tags/iran_hikers"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Democracy Now!</span></a></b></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 16px;">These two white college graduates can now rejoin their families and enter into a world where they will come to be considered expert witnessed on Iran's politics. The latter observation is in no way dismissive of their innocence or judgmental of their intensions, but rather illustrative of contemporary white privilege. The truth is that Troy Davis was put to death either to make someone's life in Georgia a bit easier or to let the Supreme Court Justices in D.C get their beauty sleep.</span></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 16px;"><b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 16px;"><br />
</span> </b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">On Samuel Huntington's thesis:</span></b></span><br />
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<blockquote><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"A reductive and vulgar notion," an illustration "of the purest invidious racism, a sort of parody of Hitlerian science directed today against Arabs and Muslims"</span></b></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
<b> -Professor Edward Said</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><br />
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<blockquote><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"For these reasons we have been forced to the solution outlined by Professor Huntington: to crush the people’s war, we must eliminate the people."</span></b></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
<b> -Professor Noam Chomsky</b><br />
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<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><br />
Despite these powerful sentiments from two respectable critical thinkers, we must ask ourselves these questions: Do we even still need the academic criticism to recognize the farce that is Huntington's thesis? Of course you'll undoubtably read it against Fukuyama in any intro IR/PSCI class at Middlebury. What a spectrum. Has it really stooped to this? Can a cursory reading of corporate media headlines provide the obvious insight that you may not even get with your education at Middlebury? Disagree? Fire away in the comments...</b><br />
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</b></span></span></div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-36602833572348714672011-07-08T10:33:00.000-07:002011-07-08T10:33:14.379-07:00We were reviewedover at <a href="http://www.zinereviews.blogspot.com/">One Minute Zine Reviews</a>.<br />
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<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Rockwell; font-weight: bold; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">"</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Rockwell; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 23px;">Students at Middlebury have been thinking about big issues and it shows in the articulate and passionate writing within The Gadfly. This issue ranges from musings on the nature of corporate educational control to food insecurities, dealing with the cops, resisting labels and questioning capitalism. I’m older and jaded and have wondered: where are the alternative thinkers on campuses today? They’re reading The Gadfly.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Rockwell; font-weight: bold; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">"</span></span></blockquote><br />
<a href="http://zinereviews.blogspot.com/2011/05/zine-review-gadfly-spring-2011.html">Check it out!</a>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8167727679917606666.post-75588008180890968602011-04-28T07:43:00.000-07:002011-04-28T07:45:42.665-07:00gadfly on zinelibraryVol 1.2 is also now available on <a href="http://zinelibrary.info/">the zine library</a>. Get it by click on the image below<br />
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<a href="http://zinelibrary.info/gadfly-vol-1-2"></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://zinelibrary.info/gadfly-vol-1-2"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WSmSVh1j3Ow/TbWhkP4_ElI/AAAAAAAAADA/n24wq7vUyoo/s640/marcyjpeg.jpg" width="412" /></a></div>THE GADFLYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09320465603458761943noreply@blogger.com0