Here and Now...What's Happening?

[araucaria]

Posted by Carmody (here)

Posted by araucaria (here)
A ‘lone nut’ is something of a pleonasm.

Ooo. New word, at least for this one.

Carmody be Pleonistic. Carmody exemplify being as an in situ Superfluous orgasmic explosion of Pleonastomy at it's brightly lit radiant finest greatness.

‘tautaulogically the same thing’, as James Joyce puts it, adding the spelling mistake for extra effect. You would expect nothing else from a holographic universe; except that in the real world there are slight variations, such as writing ‘tautologically’ with an o. ‘Tauto’ means the same (t’auto, t’ same), i.e. selfsame. So the world is really only pleonastic up to a point: over an eon it is plastic, things change, stuff happens; we do not live in a kaleidoscope.

Pleonasm on the other hand conveys the idea of being excessive or superfluous. Crazy means wanting to do away with the excessiveness, i.e. cosily in a perfect kaleidoscope. This is uncomfortably impossible because 'plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change'.

[Violet]

A while ago you posted another interview of Maya somewhere else but it wouldn’t open for me.

Posted by Rahkyt (here)
Btw, Maya's most recent run on C-Span this past weekend, in regards to minority entrepreneurship following the 2008 crash.

I watched the interview in this link, this time it worked. It was so very much time to sleep last night with about 40km of bad weather cycling on my counter but what can I say: it was too interesting to put on the list.

She is right about so many things. Inclusion, for instance. Agreeing on inclusion and agreeing on it being of a diverse nature still is a problem here. We sing songs about that, the toddlers learn riddles about inclusiveness in school, we love to pride ourselves in showing art that embraces the world but comes puntje bij paaltje (as we say in Dutch; if push comes to shove), the labour market seems to have its own rules:

you can't be black (I hardly ever see black people in Flemish administration), you can't wear fabric on your head (banning both largely and modestly veiled ladies, except sometimes for migrant related-matters, if government-ruled, they might allow it. Private corporations: very unlikely. And no Sikhs either), you can't look Chinese (I hardly ever see Chinese or Asian people in administrative jobs yet we have them and they were born here. These are the people who make the stuff that runs administration. The Chinese then seem to primarily opt for running their own businesses).

I chose the example of administrative jobs for illustration because that’s where you can actually see people, see the diversity of society. A diversity that is a fact. It’s not an interpretation, it’s a situation. You can’t make it disappear by manipulating the labour market such that these foreign faces can’t be seen.

I mean: come on. It has to stop.

Making the (rest of the) general population believe that all these ethnic minorities "simply" have serious issues integrating and using that as a never-ending explanation as to why they are so invisible on the labour market is getting bo-ring. It also miserably fails to explain why we have people like Maya. And no: she is not an exception.

That doesn't work anymore. We are too many exceptions now.

It always remains a mystery to me why so many people keep buying into the rhetorics. It is intellectually insulting. To me as a fellow-human, but as much so for the ones buying it.

Pseudo-arguments like that work to appease those that are convinced that people of colour are lazy bastards leeching the social system (cf. the republican caller from Arizona, 46 min) and are creating economical problems for the autochtonous (as we say for original locals, as opposed to: allochtonous) people. “Wé can’t keep paying for that." And those votes play an important role. Especially for the politicians currently in power as it is their ideology and they need that ideology standing to survive the next elections.

I picked this up last night from a newspaper headline: Flemish education scores bad on equal chances (Itinera study based on Pisa-test 2012, under supervision of Oeso). And that is problematic, of course, but the thing is, I can't recall a positive test result yet. It's the same every time. Bad scores for equal chances. If you come from a "priviliged" environment, the article says, you have seven times more chance of becoming a top student than if you come from a weaker environment. And this has to do with teachers as well, when will these reports start emphasizing that? Teachers are influenced by these differences in their perception ànd evaluation. Some unconsciously and some know very well what they're doing. And these are the people who from ages as early as 2.5 help in determining the educational trajectory of the child.

Included in the report (pun intended) "We need inclusive education".
- Yes, I know, now when will it be ready?

Does Maya have specifics as to how the foundation wants to see education evolve? Where I can I get the report she refers to?

Maya mentioned that people of colour despite growing in the US are many among the marginalised. It is a structural problem. It's also a local frustration where we have youth wondering why, even though they are born here, participate just like any other child, still have to face the risk of such a prospect. This in turn ties into the terror threat. Two weeks ago, there was a young man from a foreign background on the radio who was invited after he had initiated a Twitter project aimed at confronting terrorist propaganda. Confronting and refuting, with the aim of making it unattractive for the - as he said - many young people willing to buy into it. Why? Because it targets their frustrations. It promises them a solution, and it comes from people who present themselves as having gone through the same thing. It facilitates identification.

So, just going on inclusion, you can see that there are so many layers.

I must say I never heard of people of colour being charged more for a mortgage. Very surprised and shocked to hear that.

Buying a house is not a priority for ethnic minorities here, I think. I can't speak for others of course, but it's increasingly impossible, and some venture. (Liveable) Houses are at round 180.000-190.000 EUR and higher. Even the people who can afford it, get help from grandparents and parents in the form of in-advance-inheritance. People with low income usually just struggle getting social housing (for rent), the lists are long. So, they are too busy either finding ways to rent liveable private appartments at 600 EUR-700EUR (2 bedrooms) or unliveable appartments at slightly lower, and don't think so much about buying property. But it used to be different. Among the migrant workers who came here in the late sixties there was a portion that at one point bought a house, and still own it or their children inherited it. So, as early as the first generations you will be able to spot property holders.

A Tennessee caller stressed that family is important, and I would like to underline that, without making people feel guilty who were/are in situations where family became untenable due to violence, abuse, etc, and where attempts at restoring balance, exhausted. These are not healthy situations, not for the partners and definitely not for the children. I write this because there was a caller refering to black single mums. And he made it sound like a careless option.

It was interesting also that Maya made a link with the entertainment/cultural industry because it plays a larger societal role than assumed. And she refered to the last Oscars and people mitigating that (btw Jada if you're reading: please, do a Nina movie with a black Nina). What is projected on the television screen, in theater plays, in the group of popular book writers, in the group of local painters, etc., as "society", on a daily basis imprints your brain (even if genetically foreign*) to divide the world as you will enter it from the moment you leave the house, into belonging and not belonging. Compared to the Netherlands, for instance - and with all due respect to national TV VRT's efforts over the last couple of years (where are the local black people in TV-land) - we're doing...deplorable.

At the end of the interview there was a caller from Virginia who suggested a monument and also mentioned the "root of slavery". And I keep thinking about that because, we have no root of slavery to trace our problems back to.

It's sad to see that Maya is having a hard time establishing republican partnerships. There were republican callers, so they're aware and seem to care enough to call and be heard, then why not take on that challenge and actively join to work towards a solution? Is it, like I think I heard her say, a problem of visibility? See the example of labour market above, is it inappropriate for the republican public image? Will the standards forever prescribe an as uniform/neutral (whatever other words they (mis)use for it) appearance?

Coming back to the core of the interview, business ownership. I can see this locally trending as a reaction to labour market exclusion. And whereas one caller pointed out capital as the primary block, I would estimate that here we would have: regulations/compliancy. Regulation for business ownership requires excellent command of the local language. That's where things start going wrong. You need to understand sufficient legal, accountancy, fiscal terminology if you want to dive into that pool. Now, we will find the entrepreneurs brave enough to try it, but there is a great risk of failure because soon enough one finds difficulty complying (timely) with regulations, and when fines pile up, costs pile up, it ends.

I had a business myself at one point and because I couldn't afford an accountant, I did all the administration myself. A couple of times, I forgot a deadline; I used to combine this business with a part-time job. And risked being fined, were it not my timely proactive reaction to get things sorted.

In my case, I've succesfully completed the full educational trajectory and when I look at the entrepreneurs I'm talking about, who may have come here as old as 20 to 30, older, no valid degrees (secondary education in foreign lands or higher education not recognised in EU), having had to learn the language at that age, having gone through a period of unemployment and the social isolation that comes with it (not very promoting of practising newly learned language), I worry about that. They definitely need more support, perhaps in the form of mentoring, ideally by someone who also speaks their home language, knows their culture and knows how to help these people transition into the rigid bureaucracy that we have here, and that you need to understand very well, if you want to be succesful at what you're doing. These people are highly motivated for trade, some have roots in trade, and our economy needs them but the trade alone is not enough. I had to stop because once I started building a solid client base and income substantially went up, my due taxes became so high that the business was no longer profitable. Belgium has a tax reputation. We've seen large corporations leave one after the other because they get better tax offers with our neighbours or further.

Maya said in the beginning that African-American women are least likely to have businesses with employees. That's a trend I spot here as well. Most businesses if owned by people of colour, will have males as entrepreneurs. She made me so curious as to how this report would look based on our local situation.

Let me close with saying that I found Maya's appearance impressive. She was very eloquent and so elegantly handled the questions. Very laudable what this woman is doing .


* = meaning that even people of colour will be imprinted the idea of acceptance of a dominant white society where their own role is predestined subordinate, and into being unreasonably critical of other people of colour

[RunningDeer]

Posted by ulli (here)
Rahkyt's sister is being interviewed on C-Span
http://www.c-span.org/video/?319079-...ial-wealth-gap

Posted by Rahkyt (here)
My sister and her husband work very hard for all Americans within the structure of the system as it is. I love her to death and support her as I can, her sense of purpose is exceedingly high.

Posted by Violet (here)
A while ago you posted another interview of Maya somewhere else but it wouldn’t open for me.

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)
Mark, who is the beautiful, articulate, bright, compassionate woman that shares your last name? Is Maya your wife or your daughter... or your sister, or...?

Minority Entrepreneurship Maya Rockeymoore talked about a Center for Global Policy Solutions report on minority entrepreneurship, The Color of Entrepreneurship: Why the Racial Gap Among Firms Costs the U.S. Billions. The report projects that closing the racial gap would add nine million jobs to the U.S. economy. She responded to telephone calls and electronic communications, including a telephone line reserved for minority business owners. A video clip was shown of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaking at her organization’s summit April 21, 2016.

[RunningDeer]

Posted by TargeT (here)

Posted by PurpleLama (here)
Take the time to deal with minor health issues now, before your body (vehicle) makes them into major, even life threatening or debilitating issues.

My two cents... if you are living a physically comfortable life (no stresses, no physical labor, no "breaking sweat") you are failing, you are giving into entropy.

Be active
Be stressful (push your structure to the furthest you think it can go, it WILL surprise you!) this is what makes you healthy and live longer, it always has been so.

the phrase "no pain, no gain" has much wisdom.

Exercise = different strokes for different folks, i.e. age and physical condition(s).

I use to believe the ‘no pain, no gain’ mantra, but for the last 28 years it’s more about sharpened focus, breath and simple enjoyment of movement which enhances flexibility of mind, body and health.

I touched down on the earth plane with a busy mind and body. I’ve been active my entire life: softball, field hockey, basketball, racquetball, simple yoga stretches, weights, 3-5 mile runner, Kung Fu, Tai Chi fighting and form, etc.

Below are snippets from Covert Bailey’s book, “The Ultimate Fit or Fat,” and a link to a calculator that’s based on the formula from his book for percentage of body fat.

pg. 8-9 - "If you gain weight more easily now than when you were young, it is because your muscles can no longer burn up all the calories you feed them. The ultimate control of metabolism is exercise…

…Exercise can change your metabolism in such a way that you become more and more resistant to gaining weight…

…The control mechanism for obesity is not diet, it’s muscle metabolism….

…Even if you loose weight on a diet, your aren’t fixing the slow metabolism that makes you quickly gain weight again."

pg. 83-4 - "The fewer muscles you use, the longer you need to exercise. If you want to shorten your exercise time, you have to find activities that incorporate lots of muscles. The more muscles you use, the greater the systemic, whole-body response and, therefore, the less long you gotta do it!"

Here’s another personalized principle:

If you’re fit, exercise long.
If you’re fat, go short but often.

"In very fit people, exercising for long periods affects more than just the fat-burning enzymes. These people notice improvements in mood, sleep, and appetite control that those who exercise for only twenty or thirty minutes a day don’t experience. Fat people, because their muscles tend to switch to sugar-burning more easily, don’t get these improvements even if they exercise for long periods. They just get sore, crank, and hungry. For this reason, I recommend that if you’re fat you should exercise for ten to fifteen minutes two to three times a day. As you become fitter, you should extend your exercise for longer and longer period but also give yourself longer rests between exercise sessions."

Along the same lines, consider this:

The fatter you are the more often you should exercise.

*********

pg. 85

The older you are, the LONGER you need to exercise.
BUT!
You need to exercise more gently.

“… If you exercise too hard, the muscles spend all their energy repairing damaged tissue instead of growing new tissue. And here’s another exception for older folks:

If you’re older, don’t do the same exercise every day. This ties in with what I just said about older people taking longer to repair. By vary their exercises, they can work different muscles while the previously exercised muscles are being repaired.”

pg. 41 - “Big people are not always fat. Skinny people are not always lean.”

“…when we did the body fat test, Alice was overfat . At 32 percent, she looked slender, but she was fat inside. Over the years, fat had seeped in and around her under exercised muscles, giving them the appearance of the marbling we see in tender, high-fat steaks. Her fat had piled up while her muscles had atrophied from disuse. In a sense, fat had replaced muscle, so she hadn’t gained weight. She was getting fatter but not heavier. But muscles can hold only so much fat! Eventually fat is deposited outside of muscle, under the skin. This subcutaneous fat doesn’t replace anything; it is simply an addition, so the person’s weight begins to climb. It would be only a matter of time before Alice’s marbled muscles refused to hide any more fat and it would ‘spill over’ under her skin; she would gain weight.”

pg. 138 - “Exercise if worthless if you don’t recover from it!”

“…some body builders lift every day, but they're careful to not use the same muscles each time. They might work the upper body one day, the lower body the next.

The amount of recovery time needed after aerobic exercise isn’t so clear-cut. We say that twenty-four hours is usually sufficient, but that number varies with how old you are, how hard you exercised, and how long you did it…. Use your common sense.” “…If you’re older, allow more time for recovery. Do a greater variety of activities so that, like the body builders, you use different muscles.”

pg. 97 - Get a balance diet of good exercise: aerobics, cross training, wind sprints, weight-lifting.


Another good book by him is “Smart Exercise: Burning Fat, Getting Fit”.

[Carmody]

Posted by araucaria (here)

Posted by Carmody (here)

Posted by araucaria (here)
A ‘lone nut’ is something of a pleonasm.

Ooo. New word, at least for this one.

Carmody be Pleonistic. Carmody exemplify being as an in situ Superfluous orgasmic explosion of Pleonastomy at it's brightly lit radiant finest greatness.

‘tautaulogically the same thing’, as James Joyce puts it, adding the spelling mistake for extra effect. You would expect nothing else from a holographic universe; except that in the real world there are slight variations, such as writing ‘tautologically’ with an o. ‘Tauto’ means the same (t’auto, t’ same), i.e. selfsame. So the world is really only pleonastic up to a point: over an eon it is plastic, things change, stuff happens; we do not live in a kaleidoscope.

Pleonasm on the other hand conveys the idea of being excessive or superfluous. Crazy means wanting to do away with the excessiveness, i.e. cosily in a perfect kaleidoscope. This is uncomfortably impossible because 'plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change'.

We may not live in a kaleidoscope - but it might be a tumble dryer.

[RunningDeer]

Interesting point: with no planets in the air signs we may notice less communications on forums, socializing, networking…

5 planets retrograde, no air, spot check.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=A414PWDGmGU

[Carmody]

Posted by Carmody (here)
Yes, complexity of structure is an illusion that comes riding in on ignorance -- lack of knowing. Finding the underlying connection point tends to wipe away the perception of incompatible complex components.

There's many ways to describe the issue at hand, hence the difficulty of finding the correct point or placement from which to view. That is it's nature, until the given 'oh!' (aha!/eureka!) moment arrives.

Reduction of complexity into simplicity is the norm, when enlarging one's overall experiential position. But, that it may be hard won. Or not.

Note that science, as it stands and within how it is strictly maintained, involves much in the way of incompatible and incontrovertible complexities. The people within it are flawed and they are also within an inability to understand the basic maxims of expanding logic...which is that reduction to simplicity is the norm. That science must revise entire channels of established logic, in order to go forward into a wide ranging simplicity.

Essentially, it can be noted that the problems of a complexified and locked science that seems indecipherable and bound to being goosestepped dogmatic haze .... is an issue of the humans within it, not one of logic.

When the overview comes, it collapses into simplicity -is sort of what I was saying.

Like so.

[Violet]

Posted by RunningDeer (here)

Below are snippets from Covert Bailey’s book, “The Ultimate Fit or Fat,” and a link to a calculator that’s based on the formula from his book for percentage of body fat.

Something went wrong with the first link.

It should redirect to this copy, right?

[RunningDeer]

Posted by Violet (here)

Posted by RunningDeer (here)

Below are snippets from Covert Bailey’s book, “The Ultimate Fit or Fat,” and a link to a calculator that’s based on the formula from his book for percentage of body fat.

Something went wrong with the first link.

It should redirect to this copy, right?

Violet. I fixed it up above, too.

[ulli]

Posted by Carmody (here)

Posted by araucaria (here)

Posted by Carmody (here)

Posted by araucaria (here)
A ‘lone nut’ is something of a pleonasm.

Ooo. New word, at least for this one.

Carmody be Pleonistic. Carmody exemplify being as an in situ Superfluous orgasmic explosion of Pleonastomy at it's brightly lit radiant finest greatness.

‘tautaulogically the same thing’, as James Joyce puts it, adding the spelling mistake for extra effect. You would expect nothing else from a holographic universe; except that in the real world there are slight variations, such as writing ‘tautologically’ with an o. ‘Tauto’ means the same (t’auto, t’ same), i.e. selfsame. So the world is really only pleonastic up to a point: over an eon it is plastic, things change, stuff happens; we do not live in a kaleidoscope.

Pleonasm on the other hand conveys the idea of being excessive or superfluous. Crazy means wanting to do away with the excessiveness, i.e. cosily in a perfect kaleidoscope. This is uncomfortably impossible because 'plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change'.

We may not live in a kaleidoscope - but it might be a tumble dryer.

I now live in dog consciousness....
Which might amount to the same thing.

[seah]

and don't dogs live in the now? I believe they do. You can't go wrong with "dog consciousness", ulli.

[RunningDeer]

Posted by seah (here)
and don't dogs live in the now? I believe they do. You can't go wrong with "dog consciousness", ulli.

FYI: Emma and Skype. New members to the Ulli's family on April 6ish.

Posted by ulli (here)
Here they are: Emma and Skype. I should have named them Shredder and Shredette.

[seah]

they're beautiful. They are keeping the bad guys away, right? Actually they look like my Duggan, I can't imagine two of him, he keeps me going, so much energy and he's eating more than ever...and he's twelve.

[Mark]

Thanks RunningDeer, for answering Dennis's question. I'm on and off PA in recent months, but more regularly on than off in recent weeks, although I generally just peruse the most recent content looking for alternative news.

Violet, thank you for your commentary. I'll try to answer as best as I can. I've contracted with Maya over the years - as my formal training is in geographic information systems (GIS), which she uses in some of her grant projects - and was also a Fellow with her company, Global Policy Solutions (GPS) for a while, back in 2010, so I have a general familiarity with what her work is and what it covers.

Posted by Violet (here)
Inclusion, for instance. Agreeing on inclusion and agreeing on it being of a diverse nature still is a problem here. We sing songs about that, the toddlers learn riddles about inclusiveness in school, we love to pride ourselves in showing art that embraces the world but comes puntje bij paaltje (as we say in Dutch; if push comes to shove), the labour market seems to have its own rules:

you can't be black (I hardly ever see black people in Flemish administration), you can't wear fabric on your head (banning both largely and modestly veiled ladies, except sometimes for migrant related-matters, if government-ruled, they might allow it. Private corporations: very unlikely. And no Sikhs either), you can't look Chinese (I hardly ever see Chinese or Asian people in administrative jobs yet we have them and they were born here. These are the people who make the stuff that runs administration. The Chinese then seem to primarily opt for running their own businesses).

I chose the example of administrative jobs for illustration because that’s where you can actually see people, see the diversity of society. A diversity that is a fact. It’s not an interpretation, it’s a situation. You can’t make it disappear by manipulating the labour market such that these foreign faces can’t be seen.

I mean: come on. It has to stop.

Institutionalized mores take quite a while to overturn because they are semi-automatic. The United States is a nation that has had to tackle these issues of diversity head on because we are one of very few nations in the world that have been created around an ideal, that of natural law and citizenship within a nation of equals. Almost all other nations in the world are ethnic nations, evolving around ethno-racial groupings in the region of their societal and physical evolution. E Pluribus Unum, "Out of Many, One" is a credo that has meant a lot in this nation to disparate populations over time. To all of the immigrant populations as they come to this country and are assimilated, no less so with the indigenous black population, as we have taken on the issues that now affect ALL populations below the 1%. Darker populations in Oligarchies, have been target populations, "canary in the coalmine" populations, now, for centuries. What has been done to us historically became part of a blueprint that is being applied across the nation, in many other nations, and across the world. Now, with technology being what it is, global, voluntary slavery is ubiquitous in ways that we here are all very familiar with.

Our parents educated us in black history early. We had access to a voluminous library, spent many hours in libraries and were not sheltered by our parents from the nature of black life in the US of A, even though we were physically sheltered in our early surroundings. We were raised as military brats, our mother was a teacher our father an NCO who became an officer and we traveled this nation and the world in our youths, living for the most part on military reservations that are the closest thing this nation has come to true, integrated and egalitarian communities. Despite being raised in such a bubble-like environment, we identify fully and proudly as black American. Quintessentially American/Omni-Americans, in fact, as our genetic line includes African, native American and European genetic strains. Don't get no more American than that. Because of the tradition of black insurgency here in the US, it is, quite literally, built into us. Ingrained as a genetic expression. We are designed for this and Maya encapsulates and expresses the nature of our very being ably.

Posted by Violet (here)

Making the (rest of the) general population believe that all these ethnic minorities "simply" have serious issues integrating and using that as a never-ending explanation as to why they are so invisible on the labour market is getting bo-ring. It also miserably fails to explain why we have people like Maya. And no: she is not an exception.

That doesn't work anymore. We are too many exceptions now.

We are. And, to top it all off, the 2008 financial crash was important in another way. In that event, we witness the formal ending of the tacit agreement between the 1% and middle class whites. This resulted in the youngest generations of whites realizing their status and exclusion from a system that is unsustainable over time. They discovered the nature of the system, some chose to begin to explore the rich protest literature which has exemplified other people's navigation of this system and which has been written and honed by blacks and other minority populations in America for centuries. People such as Maya, my other sister, Meredith, or even myself, raised within the system but without many of the material strictures experienced by other blacks in urban areas or country environs, have no boundaries upon our potentialities and so are not constrained mentally by some more overt and generally recognized forms of racial conditioning. While only a small percentage of black Americans have this life experience, others - also limited in number - who lived corporate lives, or who come from the entrenched "black elite" that this nation has also always had, have some facsimile of this type of mental freedom as well. The exceptions continue to abound.

Posted by Violet (here)
It always remains a mystery to me why so many people keep buying into the rhetorics. It is intellectually insulting. To me as a fellow-human, but as much so for the ones buying it.

Well, here in the US at least, intellect is not always in evidence in these questions. They are very visceral for many people, apparently, kind of atavistic or even innately xenophobic. While there are studies that tend to show that very young children are inherently racist, social conditioning in the modern area can override what may indeed be natural, xenophobic tendencies as our society becomes truly global in nature. A process that seems to be coalescing at break-neck speed currently.

It seems to be primarily self-interest. The well-being of ones self and family. In-group behavior that is also very ancient and tribal in nature. Universalism does not one seem to be one of humanity's natural tendencies.

Posted by Violet (here)
Does Maya have specifics as to how the foundation wants to see education evolve? Where I can I get the report she refers to?

You can visit her website, the link to the report should be available there somewhere. If it is not, then it has not yet been formally been released by the corporate entity that commissioned it. Their website would be the place to check, then.

Posted by Violet (here)
I must say I never heard of people of colour being charged more for a mortgage. Very surprised and shocked to hear that.

Oh yes. From Roosevelt's New Deal to home loans for veterans after WWII and the mass suburbanization of the white population, blacks have been left out of America's rise into prosperity purposefully and with deliberate animus. Gerrymandering and redlining have been political strategies that have been put in place in order to retain control by whites, even over places with majority minority populations.

The funny thing is, in this country at least, whites want to keep blacks out of their areas, but then, they work as hard as they can to keep us from succeeding in our own areas as well. There are many tales of black communities being deliberately destroyed because of their prosperity, and of strategies designed to siphon money out of black communities as well as talent. Some call it "integration".

Posted by Violet (here)
A Tennessee caller stressed that family is important, and I would like to underline that, without making people feel guilty who were/are in situations where family became untenable due to violence, abuse, etc, and where attempts at restoring balance, exhausted. These are not healthy situations, not for the partners and definitely not for the children. I write this because there was a caller refering to black single mums. And he made it sound like a careless option.

Yeh...another narrative with a long and tedious, as well as ignorant, history in the USA. One that totally ignores the context and continuing institutional barriers in favor of a strict and blinkered look at census statistics. I could, but it's too long to go into here. Suffice it to say, if you're interested in such issues here in the US there are many, many resources available on the net that can shed more light on the topic.

Posted by Violet (here)
It was interesting also that Maya made a link with the entertainment/cultural industry because it plays a larger societal role than assumed. And she refered to the last Oscars and people mitigating that (btw Jada if you're reading: please, do a Nina movie with a black Nina). What is projected on the television screen, in theater plays, in the group of popular book writers, in the group of local painters, etc., as "society", on a daily basis imprints your brain (even if genetically foreign*) to divide the world as you will enter it from the moment you leave the house, into belonging and not belonging. Compared to the Netherlands, for instance - and with all due respect to national TV VRT's efforts over the last couple of years (where are the local black people in TV-land) - we're doing...deplorable.

A very important point, as the media serves as our oral historian and our campfire tales. The things that bind us together in a collective, cultural whole. Which we indeed are, despite our diversity and differences. While more diversity has been expressed on the boob tube pretty consistently over the years and decades, it has only been during the Obama era that those roles have transcended the narrow, stereotypical strictures which defined and limited black actors, and black people, for decades. Many point to the upcoming majority-minority evolution of the American polity as reason for this, many blame some sort of multicultural conspiracy. I've read and seen them all. I know that the sovereignty movement sees citizenship as defined here in the US under the 14th amendment (meant to give blacks freed after slavery legal rights) - which also gave corporations legal personhood - as corporate enslavement and they are probably right, which leads us into all kinds of problems. Us, against them, primary among these problems. Politically speaking, the black population in the US, because of the peculiar institution and our peculiar history, have always served as "entertainment", labor and, also, as a tool/threat to keep lower and middle-class white populations in line. Who is to say this is not a part of this increasing media visibility, as we see in Trump's rise and the increasing demagoguery of the Right, that a visceral and violent racism lurks just beneath the surface in a substantial proportion of the American population, even still ...

Posted by Violet (here)
At the end of the interview there was a caller from Virginia who suggested a monument and also mentioned the "root of slavery". And I keep thinking about that because, we have no root of slavery to trace our problems back to.

And this is why the US is so unique. And is also why black populations in other nations look to us as exemplars. Because we have been forced into struggle since we were forced here, for life itself. In other nations, the black populations are smaller, and not seen as threats. With no history of slave rebellions, no history of abolitionists, no history of the KKK and night riders, no history of black codes or Jim Crow, no history of native American genocide, a different type of history of eugenics, of operations like Paperclip and FBI COINTELPRO, a more recent history of Manchurian and Monarch programming, on and on, and on. It all remains interconnected and goes back to this nation's original sin, race-based slavery.

Posted by Violet (here)
It's sad to see that Maya is having a hard time establishing republican partnerships. There were republican callers, so they're aware and seem to care enough to call and be heard, then why not take on that challenge and actively join to work towards a solution? Is it, like I think I heard her say, a problem of visibility? See the example of labour market above, is it inappropriate for the republican public image? Will the standards forever prescribe an as uniform/neutral (whatever other words they (mis)use for it) appearance?

There is the Left, which Maya represents, there is the Right, represented by Conservatives, there is the middle, where many of her callers find themselves, and then there are the Outliers, like us, here. The outliers are getting more numerous and stronger, which is affecting the Left, Right and Center. A critical mass will soon be reached and that fundamental shift so many have talked about for so long now is well in progress and nigh unavoidable. No one can tell the time, but it is coming like a wave crashing on a beach. Inevitable. Thank goodness.

Posted by Violet (here)
In my case, I've succesfully completed the full educational trajectory and when I look at the entrepreneurs I'm talking about, who may have come here as old as 20 to 30, older, no valid degrees (secondary education in foreign lands or higher education not recognised in EU), having had to learn the language at that age, having gone through a period of unemployment and the social isolation that comes with it (not very promoting of practising newly learned language), I worry about that. They definitely need more support, perhaps in the form of mentoring, ideally by someone who also speaks their home language, knows their culture and knows how to help these people transition into the rigid bureaucracy that we have here, and that you need to understand very well, if you want to be succesful at what you're doing. These people are highly motivated for trade, some have roots in trade, and our economy needs them but the trade alone is not enough. I had to stop because once I started building a solid client base and income substantially went up, my due taxes became so high that the business was no longer profitable. Belgium has a tax reputation. We've seen large corporations leave one after the other because they get better tax offers with our neighbours or further.

I have lived in Belgium for a time. A town called Vilvoorde outside of Brussels. Maya lived in the Netherlands, spent a semester at the University of Leiden. I don't recall if she mentions the prevalence of Latino-owned businesses. We see that a lot down here in the Southwest, but, the culture down here supports bilingualism in a way that I'm sure your nation may not. She did a study that I made the maps for a few years ago, looking at the aging Latino population, where they were, and if services were available in those locations. We found that, in many cases, they were not, as this population has begun to spread all around the nation, instead of being concentrated in the southern regions.

Posted by Violet (here)
Let me close with saying that I found Maya's appearance impressive. She was very eloquent and so elegantly handled the questions. Very laudable what this woman is doing .

I'm sure she would thank you for your kind words. She works very hard and is now very experienced. The world is changing. She is at the forefront of that institutional shift, along with her husband. We will see what comes next.

[Carmody]

Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is the most multicultural city in the world. By a notable amount.

The violence rate is quite low.

There are entire countries which will say that it is not possible.

Yet.... there it is. Happily farting in the KKK elevator for all to smell.

[Mark]

Posted by Carmody (here)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is the most multicultural city in the world. By a notable amount.

The violence rate is quite low.

There are entire countries which will say that it is not possible.

Yet.... there it is. Happily farting in the KKK elevator for all to smell.

The two years I just spent in Canada were noticeably racism free. I was in Montreal/Hudson, and Cornwall, Ontario. Now, the 1st Nations folks I knew, know differently. I think the history of black Americans fleeing slavery in the US may have something to do with that. Montreal was very diverse in my eyes as well. Amazingly so. It became one of my favorite cities in the world.

[Violet]

We actually have three official languages: Dutch, French and German. They are all three officially supported.

By way of charicature: The francophônes (French-speaking*) refuse to speak Dutch/Flemish, the Flemish refuse to speak French and the German-speaking* tiny bit in the east,...I don't know. They're a bit remote from the general scene, and not so much higlighted in daily life.

Each country has its history. There is a historical reason why both country parts don't like the other language that much. A.o. the French and Dutch rulerships and related linguistic issues. And how the Flemish have had to fight for their language to be recognised and institutionalised when French was dominant. They were historically looked down upon because they were "just" peasants, and their language got the same respect. They fought for a Flemish identity, a Flemish culture and independence.

The relationship with the Dutch is also interesting. There are bits of Belgian history on the forum, more relating to the royals and their ancestry, I think, but the cultural perspective and these constant shifts have left marks in many ways.

The Dutch, original owners of Dutch, also had/have(?) their idea of what ideal Dutch is. I always get the remark from Dutch people that Flemish is cute. Whatever "cute" means. Sounds a bit patternal to me. And sometimes I get a bit irritated when Flemish and Dutch intellectuals gather for debates because the Dutch can't resist correcting the Flemish. Thus history flares up now and then.

When I read through your text, but I'm going to have to read it again more thoroughly (I find American history difficult to follow and memorise), I thought of how when people go back in time to understand the present, there is a question that often arises: why do people hang onto the past so much?

When the jews commemorate the Holocaust, some people ask the same question: "are they always going to hold (Germany/us/everyone/...) accountable for that?"

The same with slavery, the same with colonialism.

The word used is victimisation (Don't be a victim, make something of your life. Move on.)

Racism is another such controversial word. The person who feels discriminated might see a racist. The racist sees a self-victimiser, or if he's the worse of racists he might see something else. The circle is round.

Maya also mentioned the United States being a nation of Immigrants, except for the native Americans. How does she or you deal with criticism relating to victimisation?

Thanks for your time, feel free to answer any time.

[Mark]

Posted by Violet (here)
When I read through your text, but I'm going to have to read it again more thoroughly (I find American history difficult to follow and memorise), I thought of how when people go back in time to understand the present, there is a question that often arises: why do people hang onto the past so much?

When the jews commemorate the Holocaust, some people ask the same question: "are they always going to hold (Germany/us/everyone/...) accountable for that?"

The same with slavery, the same with colonialism.

The word used is victimisation (Don't be a victim, make something of your life. Move on.)

When you say, "some people ask the same question", you are talking about white people. People who have internalized racism, from whom the institutionalized expression of racial dominance has spread across the world, into every nation and culture. You are talking about people who live white privilege unconsciously for the most part complaining about hearing about an issue that is still not over. Racism. it still exists. it is still killing people. it is beneath everything that is currently going on. It is still the cultural perspective that is raping the world. Gaia Sophia. The Black madonna and child, the First People of this planet.

While beginning formally in the US in the late 1700s, it is an expression of an older imperative that has been passed down in the attempt to obscure historical truths and to create a false history that passes as the mainstream even unto this day for most people, although that also is changing slowly.

It is a question based upon ignorance. About how the past is still with us, how it is still affecting the present. How it is not gone. How time is an illusion. How genetics are affected (epigenetics) by memory, how trauma is passed down through the generations.

It is a question that pisses black people and others off, frankly, coming from white people who, because of their privilege, don't have to experience the same types of lives, the same types of prejudiced experiences no matter where they are in this country and to different extents in other countries. It is a question that, when answered in the way that I'm answering you right now, pisses off other white people, who don't want to have or hear this discussion either and wish that we'd shut up about it.

I answered your questions in good faith. And honestly. I do prefer educated responses and I'm sorry not to be able to educate you about our history as it would take half a lifetime.

Posted by Violet (here)
Racism is another such controversial word. The person who feels discriminated might see a racist. The racist sees a self-victimiser, or if he's the worse of racists he might see something else. The circle is round.

Maya also mentioned the United States being a nation of Immigrants, except for the native Americans. How does she or you deal with criticism relating to victimisation?

Thanks for your time, feel free to answer any time.

It is not controversial to those who experience it. It is controversial to those who engage in it. And who don't want to hear about it. Even in nations where there are what we in the West call minority populations in charge, Africa, S. America or Asia, you still find expressions of racism and white supremacy.

I deal with such criticism by telling those who come to me with those perspectives to educate themselves. Multidimensionally. To look at the reality in different areas of people interaction. To understand how hypocritical it is for victimisers to blame the victims for their situation. And to realize that they should see this failure to reason logically within themselves. If they don't see it, they have a glimpse then of the very boundaries of their own self-awareness, and also of the parameters of the greater issue, the depths to which they themselves are brainwashed by the supremacy complex within which they live and breath.

And to come back to me when they have alleviated their ignorance somewhat, so I don't have to laboriously type answers to questions that reveal the questioners lack of research or desire to truly know something.

[Violet]

I appreciate your prompt response. These things catch my attention because of parallels.

And now a new layer has arrived, the refugees. My sister works with refugees. Sometimes it's hard. She too sees parallels with those that came before.

The passion that speaks from your words makes me think all in paint again. Artistic expressions can be passionate like that. My canvas boards should be here any time now...

Here's a Dutch art project as a wake-up call to the way we deal with refugees. It's called Moving People.

Almost 60 million people are on the run, worldwide. That amounts to nearly 60 million individual stories. Stories nobody wants to hear. Worse still, stories of people nobody really wants to know about.We want to give these stories, these people, these refugees a human face. By telling their stories and opening eyes. Making connections and showing people a different way of looking at refugees. Encouraging empathy and strengthening social cohesion.

Which is why we are launching our guerrilla street art project Moving People. Be ready for thousands of miniature refugees appearing all over Amsterdam and The Hague. On park benches, at stations, at traffic lights, along the canals, in the zoo, in front of various ministries….they will pop up everywhere! Nowadays, they even appear all over Europe, in the USA, Canada and China.

Moving People is a street art project in which everybody can show commitment to refugees and let their voice be heard in a creative way. If you do happen to find one of the miniatures, you can take it with you and place it somewhere else. In this way you can contribute physically to the project by moving the miniatures around the city. Let other people be moved by their stories too!



Site

Pictures of work in progress

Guerilla street art project .



The man, Tourad, on which this miniature was based appeared in a news interview earlier this week. And some other miniatures too, came to life. The way these people's faces lit up, because people were listening to their story.

It's going to a be a weekend of pause and reflection for me.

A nice - and hopefully sunny - weekend to you all!

[ulli]

Each individual must come to terms somehow with what's wrong with the world.
Racism cannot be eliminated by force, and blacks, being underprivileged, can't ever convince a racist of his wrongdoing.
Racism can only be eradicated from the top down, by the _voluntary_ transformation of racists, by their voluntary acts of seeing their own programming and then immersing themselves in the black culture.
By reaching out, and opening their homes and socialize with whoever appears on the screen of their lives, regardless of race.
That way showing the world by example that staying stuck in their own materialistic privileged castles is no longer an option for them.

Legislation works only up to a point. There is too much force behind it, making matters worse in many cases.
I'm wondering if 'busing' worked ( taking school kids to neighborhoods of different race) as it might have been too forceful, too, and cause backlashes by not allowing for the process to happen naturally and voluntarily.

The two real causes of US racism today is a) the individual who is unaware of their racism, of the cultural programming that made them that way and b) the satanic white elite, who control the media and who allow private prisons for profit, and portrait blacks as good for sports and music as best and as untrustworthy at worst.

Only spiritual awakening to our common roots (Africa) as well as our common destiny (death) will bring about change, and that should never be forced.
I agree with Violet about the role of art, although even the art world can be infiltrated and misused by those with racist agendas, too.
Community potluck gatherings is one method that works. Then slowly those from the two extreme camps (of either side) might discover that they are missing out.