mnemosyne

rants, musings (& some link love) b4 the end of yr

b. medusa 10 December 2007 8:07:35 am

today is International Human Rights day. so let’s begin shall we…

EDIT: just found this after completing the post:

Seven Year Old Alexis Goggins Shot Six Times Protecting Her Mother

A 7-year-old-girl is being hailed as an “angel from heaven” and a hero for jumping in front of an enraged gunman, who pumped six bullets into the child as she used her body as a shield to save her mother’s life.

Alexis Goggins, a first-grader at Campbell Elementary School, is in stable condition at Children’s Hospital in Detroit recovering from gunshot wounds to the eye, left temple, chin, cheek, chest and right arm.

“She is an angel from heaven,” said Aisha Ford, a family friend for 15 years who also was caught up in the evening of terror.

The girl’s mother, Selietha Parker, 30, was shot in the left side of her head and her bicep by a former boyfriend, who police said was trying to kill Parker. The gunman was disarmed by police and arrested at the scene of the shooting, a Detroit gas station. Police identified him as Calvin Tillie, 29, a four-time convicted felon whom Parker had dated for six months.
[...]
Ford said she dialed 911 on her cell phone as she walked into the station.“The first operator clicked off and I dialed again and told that operator a guy with a gun was holding me hostage with a mother and baby and threatening to kill us. I told her the name of the gas station and then she said they didn’t have a unit to send.”Ford said she paid for $5 of gas and slowly returned to the vehicle, stalling for time as she handed Tillie the change. She said she kept stopping and starting the pump, hoping the police would show up.“I told him I needed more gas and took money out of my purse and went back into the station,” she said. The attendant, Mohammad Alghazali, 30, said he noticed Ford was crying and she told him what was happening. He called 911 as he heard shots coming from the vehicle.
[…]
Alghazali said a police car on a street nearby arrived in less than a minute after his call.

an update on her condition can be read here. a fund has been set up for Alexis, checks should be made out to the Alexis Goggins Hero Fund & sent to the following address:

Campbell Elementary School
c/o Alexis Goggins Hero Fund
2301 E Alexandrine St
Detroit, MI 48207

for information, call (313) 494-2052

ADDITIONAL INFO (courtesy of all about race): Alexis is a special needs child, due to a massive stroke she suffered as an infant. she walks with a limp & has a weak left eye. her right eye was just removed.

Alexis, who walks with a limp, slipped momentarily on the icy sidewalk and as she helped the girl up, she saw the man and recognized him as Tillie. He was holding a gun.
[...]
Before Tillie could fire again, Alexis jumped over the seat between her mother and the gunman and begged him not to shoot her mother.

The police report said Tillie “without hesitation” pumped six shots into the child.

G*TD*MN M*THAF*CKIN SORRY *SS PIECE OF SH*T!!!!!

(i don’t usually bleep myself here, but i don’t want to be excessively disrespectful to my readers. all 2 of them.)

also contact the msm & ask them why they’ve ignored this story.

CNN
Phone: 404-827-1500

Fox News Channel
Phone: 212-301-3000

ABC News
Phone: 212-456-7777

CBS News
Phone: 212-975-4321

NBC
Phone: 212-664-4444

MSNBC
Phone: 201-583-5000

Newsweek
Phone: 212-445-4000

Associated Press
Phone: 212-621-1500

Reuters
Phone: 646-223-4000

United Press International
Phone: 202 -898-8000

i don’t have to tell you why this is a human rights (as well as police brutality) issue do i?

i can’t believe i missed this story until now. much respect & gratitude to Sylvia, Nez, Carmen D., Ann & all other bloggers covering this.

scrooge didn’t have shit on these assholes (via black agenda report):

HUD Sends New Orleans Bulldozers and $400,000 Apartments for the Holidays
by Bill Quigley

The criminal conspiracy against Black New Orleans unfolds without pause, as the federal government prepares to demolish public housing in the city before Christmas. Gentrification proceeds at breakneck speed, fueled by millions of public dollars in giveaways to well-connected developers and other corporate vampires. full article

i keep reading about the strange bedfellows of ron paul (john birch, stormfront). puzzling is all the enthusiasm coming from strange (black & brown folks) & not so strange (white libruls*) places. he kinda reminds me of the president character in Octavia Butler’s ‘The Parable of the Sower’. actually all the candidates do, just moreso in his case.

someone remind me please. what exactly were sheep doing before someone decided they needed a shepherd?

* there’s nothing progressive or radical (left-wise) about racism

i’ve had it wrong all this time. the bible is not a book that should carry as much historical weight as the illiad. until i hear that the illiad was written 5 millenia (approx 560 centuries to be more precise) after some of the supposed “events” occurred, the bible has less historical credibility.

please, no trying to convince me otherwise convert me.

global warming & peak oil: first, i’m NOT a disbeliever. but for the sake of argument: if the consequences are sooo grave why are the costs associated w/ alternatives soooo prohibitive? is roi more important than “the end of life as we know it?”

the free market @ work?

U.S rejects stiff 2020 greenhouse goals in Bali

oh, & in case you haven’t heard by now (not surprising considering i only got 3 news results when i googled it), Iran stopped accepting $$$ for oil.

chinese human rights – i know the gov’t is a serious violator, but i’m real sick of the “pot calling the kettle black” shit. ya know, like you come to my house & berate me for not dusting, when i’d be able to write “dust me” on your coffee table. its seriously lame.

cia destroyed evidence of torture…that’s just the most recent i’ve heard. i could go on. and on. and on. but this post is long enuf already.

“ain’t got shit, can’t say shit.” as in the mistaken sentiment that those who own (the propertied class) have more right to a voice than those who don’t. that may be true (NOT!), but the more one has, the more one has to lose, right? the threat of loss silences the “haves’. i think it s/b “got shit, won’t say shit.”

miss landmine? WTF?! in a few years will this spin off into yet another international pageant? how about miss blood diamond? miss ied? equal opportunity: little miss landmine? miss teen landmine? mister landmine? shit, i’m prolly giving these assholes ideas. participation in a pageant makes someone beautiful? winning gets one a prosthesis? you read that right, the winner receives a prosthesis, the other participants get to keep their outfits. this is more levels of fucked up than i can wrap my mind around. (from sokari via bfp)

on bfp’s other small post

I’m very very *very* tired of how sex work is framed as a labor issue by many anti-pornography activists–they chronically insist that porn is the worst worst worst job ever because it hurts females.

I hear this logic, and all I can think is, “Really?”
[...]
I know that there’s more than one way to get fucked.

yeah, that’s it. these folx concentrate so hard on those poor porn stars, strippers, prostitutes & how they’re being fucked (fucked over). most of us are fucked (even if we don’t know it). so much easier to concentrate on those who exploit sex workers (or sex workers themselves), than having to confront our own position (pun intended) as fuckee.

as bfp points out, one of the many (many, many, many) ways to get fucked – literally & figuratively – is farmwork. are organic farmworkers paid more, working less hours, under less abusive conditions? or are we just eating healthier while continuing to have no concern for those who bring the food to our tables? and no concern for those who don’t get to “eat healthy”, some of whom are the ones who bring the food to the table?

this post & comments were amazing. it helped me see things in ways i hadn’t thought of before (or articulated them better). here’s a gem from a commenter (chuckie k):

“Once people at work disappear from sight and thought, it is only natural to think that what you buy or don’t buy would be the answer to injustices in the ‘economic’ system
[...]
The disappearance of production from consciousness dovetails more complexly with moral and individualistic thought to produce ‘complicity.’ On the one hand, this blindness to labor as *the* *fundamental* market mistakenly assumes that the capitalist and the worker are equally responsible for the injustices of production. This blindness does not see how waged work is wage slavery. Behind the ‘freedom’ to choose between this job and that job (as though this choice even existed for most workers) this blindness does not see the threat of hunger, homelessness and destitution that coerces people into ‘jobs.’ This blindness implicitly accepts the status of workers as things to be bought and sold and fails to recognize them as people.”

history lesson going on @ abw – those who forget the lessons of history a meditation on what governments get up to during war time.

Most American adults are aware that, back during World War 2, our government rounded up Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans and put them in internment camps. But were you aware of who the government chose to round up during the first Great War?
[...]
“In 1918 the US Government instituted a program to round up and put into detention camps women who were believed to be prostitutes working on or near US military bases. Government agents set traps for and rounded up real prostitutes. There are reports of Feds hiding in bushes in parks, waiting to spring out and jump any woman who walked by on the arm of a soldier.”

did you know about this? i didn’t.

on. and on. and on…

announcements

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan

This spring, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) is revealing the reality of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In what will be history’s largest gathering of U.S. veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Iraqi and Afghan survivors, eyewitnesses will share their experiences in a public investigation called Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.

Winter Soldiers, according to founding father Thomas Paine, are those who stand up for the soul of their country, even in its darkest hours. With this spirit in mind, IVAW members are standing up to make their experiences available to all who are concerned about the direction of our country.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time America has needed its Winter Soldiers, in 1971, over one hundred members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered in Detroit to share their stories with America. Atrocities like the My Lai massacre had ignited popular opposition to the war, but political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions. The members of VVAW knew differently. full article

@ last a happy note: congrats to xp on winning the tx progressive alliance silver star!

& finally a (slightly) off-topic shout-out
baby whispering loudly – i miss reading your blog! i just found you & now i can’t read what you have to say

i’ll stop whining now. i understand why blogs have to be closed to the general public sometimes, & i respect those boundaries. mostly i’m concerned & i hope you are ok. please stop by when or if you feel up to it.

one luv everybody!