It's sad (for me, at leasst) that on this issue, the USA has allowed itself to fall behind other democracies. The USA was once in the forefront of the fight for human rights, and at least after the end of slavery was able to have some moral authority.
This is no surprise. European countries in general are not supportive of the death penalty. In fact they will not extradite suspects the US is looking for, even US citizens, if the accused is to face the death penalty upon their return to US soil.
"Many countries and areas, such as Australia, Canada, Macao,[1] Mexico, and most European nations, will not allow extradition if the death penalty may be imposed on the suspect unless they are assured that the death sentence will not be passed or carried out. In the case of Soering v. United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights held that it would violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights to extradite a person to the United States from the United Kingdom in a capital case. This was due to the harsh conditions on death row and the uncertain timescale within which the sentence would be executed. Parties to the European Convention also cannot extradite people where they would be at significant risk of being tortured inhumanely or degradingly treated or punished."
-Savant
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I think CLR James has it right since the US has always been backwards socially and yet technologically advanced enough to create weapons of mass destruction. I am glad that the French protested since it makes Americans look uncivilized to engage in such practices.
I've been wondering about this as well. This past Friday's edition of the Baltimore AFro-American Newspaper posted a photo of French people protesting the death penalty, and the then impending execution of Troy Davis.
The death penalty is one of those primitive practices which America refuses to let go, and which may make some people wonder if the USA isn't, in the words of CLR James, "technologically advanced but socially and politically backward."
-Mack
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America has always been hypocritical concerning human rights, stating it was a free country but having slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, genocide against Native Americans and overt discrimination.
It's sad (for me, at leasst) that on this issue, the USA has allowed itself to fall behind other democracies. The USA was once in the forefront of the fight for human rights, and at least after the end of slavery was able to have some moral authority.
-Mack
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Then you have an interesting history. Were you with the United Farm Workers while Cesar Chavez was still around? If so, that makes you a bona fide member of the revolutinary generation of the 1960s.
Yes. UFW. I used to work for them. César was a great man, and equally a great woman Dolores Huerta, whom I've known. The 2 of them against great odds and danger organized a Union among people who were forgotten, stepped on and not considered worthy of decent working conditions even by other Unions at the time.
They changed that. The UFW is an AFL-CIO Union with global respect. Of course since Reagan the circumstance of farmworkers has deteriorated, as for all workers in the USA.
César was poisoned, many of us are convinced of that. Just as King's death was not the act of a single lone cracker, James Earl Ray. Leaders such as those 2 the system cannot allow to live.
Your comments on O'Connell were inspiring. A man who saw the need for solidarity among all oppressed people.
There is no excuse for racism among Irish-Americans, but I will say that they were used by the system in the usual divide-and-conquer manner. It had to be intentional... they got off the boat and were drafted and told to go and fight for the freedom of the black slaves, when they themselves had just stepped out of virtual slavery, and were wondering when they would get THEIR freedom, when even in the USA they were reviled and treated like dogs.
They should have paid attention to their leaders back home, like O'Connell, who had a far less narrow and myopic vision of the world.
I owe my political education to that generation, especially to former Black Panthers and some veterans of SNCC. Though their movements were suppressed, many of them are still around. A few here and there became teachers who influenced me while I was in college, some even before then who became tutors of the young in the inner city of East Bmore where I grew up.
What happened to the UFW? Did they suffer the same fate as the Black Panther Party?
-Savant
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I know of a brother from E. Bmore who, to the best o fmy Knowledge, is still in Europe since he fled back around 1969 or 1970. He was a member of the Baltimore Black Panther Party. I'm not sure whether this happened before or after the 1970 police raids against the Panthers here in Bmore.
I think CLR James has it right since the US has always been backwards socially and yet technologically advanced enough to create weapons of mass destruction. I am glad that the French protested since it makes Americans look uncivilized to engage in such practices.
But at some point, police drove up in front of his house and OPENED FIRE! From what I hear they weren't even there to make an arrest. They simply began shooting into his home. A bullet lodged in the head board of his baby son's crib, and his wife narrowly escaped injury.
Convinced that there would be another attack sooner or later, he slipped out of America and went to Europe--I believe Sweden.
As far as I know, he NEVER returned.
Europe has its issues, including racism--obviously. But it is no mere coincidence that African-Americans as far back as Frederick Douglass have had to flee America to Europe to evade persecution, or even to breathe a little more freely.
It hardly surprises me that Richard Wright once wrote "There is more freedom in ONE BLOCK of Paris than in the whole of the USA."
-Savant
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EkdesiLadki has started a thread on TROY DAVIS, and concerning the barbarity of capital punishment.
America has always been hypocritical concerning human rights, stating it was a free country but having slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, genocide against Native Americans and overt discrimination.
I don't recall the entire title, but TROY DAVIS are the words with which it begins.
-Savant
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Richard Wright was a brilliant man and the Native Son was a very powerful book. I reckon he wouldn't have been able to live in the US with a white wife and mixed kids.
America has always had its race problem. There was racism in other places, but not like the American South that would have destroyed this country, and were traitors just to keep slavery.
And beyond the race issues and capital punishment, which also ties into race, all the warmongering the US does dwarfs what the Europeans do. No one else is going broke playing the world's police officer. The US infrastructure is crumbling as we speak.
-Mack
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In fact, everything is ten times as hard for bigots like OhReally.
Once there's overwhelming evidence for something, the one who continues to disagree bears the burden of proof.
I've already pointed to NUMEROUS sources of scholarly sources which offer overwhelming evidence that King intended top end poverty for everyone, which obviously includes whites.
As fopr not having to profe the negative, that's true at the beginning.
One doesn't initially have to prove one is not guilty--not until the other side offers serious evidence that one is guilty.
OhReallly would not have to prove his claim that King wasn't concerned about ending white poverty---except that there's TONS of evidence that King was concerned.. Expressed the concern to end ALL poverty numerous times from the 1950s to 1968.
-Savant
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You've NOT read King, nor much else. What is posted above are anti-King comments from heaven knows what source.
But the very first paragraph would have been suspicious to anyone who read his address "A Time To Break Silence" in A TESTAMENT OF HOPE (pp. 231--245). Strange that NO comments (with sources, page numbers, etc) appear in OhReally's post. Certainly no comments (docmented with sources) from Dr. King himself.
Strange that in the research which I've done on King over the past couple of years for my upcoming book,NO King scholar adopts OhReally's point of view--not even those who disagree with King.
I wonder how many of the seven volumes of the PAPERS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR Ohreally has read? Or has he read even more accessible works like A TESTAMENT OF HOPE, STRENGTH TO LOVE, STRIDE TOWARD FREEDOM, WHY WE CAN'T WAIT, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY?, TRUMPET OF CONSCIENCE? Or has he familiarized himself with works of King scholars, works by Ira Zepp, Greg Moses, Taylor Branch, Lewis Baldwin and numerous others I could mention?
Or is he familiar with the PHILOSOPHICAL bases of Kingian thought, especially that of PERSONALISM, HEGEL, or SOCIAL GOSPEL theology.
If he is familiar with none of this, or with little of this, then he needs to do some HOMEWORK before he decides to dispute me on King. Cherry picked quotations designed to prove whatever one wants is LAUGHABLE to the well informed. And one doesn't get much better informed by the YouTube scholarship and dubious links from god knows where.
-Savant
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It's not being MISTAKEN for a Black which upsets Ekdesiladki, an Indian woman who has has warm friendships with Blacks, including one educated Black man.
it is your assumption that to be opposed to the barbaric and racist system of "justice" in America, that she would have to be Black. If that were the case, then why were so many demonstrators of ALL races and colors protesting the execution of Troy Davis?
Why were WHITE Europeans abroad protesting? It is not Blacks whom Ekdesi finds repubulsive, but white bigots like you and Ohreally.
The Turkish massacre of Armenian Christians, or the Nazi maasacres of Jews, the atrocities committed against Black Americans (not the mention Native Americans) readily equal if not exceed the heinous barbarities which one can find in nearly any foreign country--Muslim or non-Muslim.
-Savant
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