Alice Walker was disinvited to the Bay Area Book Festival after Zionist groups threatened to carry out protests. The public and presenters are complicit in her blacklisting if they attend.
Walker's poem is brilliant. How hard is it, really, to grasp the essential nature of free speech reflecting free thought? Voltaire left us with so many excellent quotes on the topic. The one that springs to mind as being most a propos for these censorious times: "Cherish those who seek the truth, but beware those who find it."
As always, Chris is thought provoking. Raised a Baptist, I left as a young adult and became a Buddhist and left that faith as well because of the murders and genocides committed by them in Southeast Asian countries. Religion and religiosity itself is poison. Better to look at morality or ethics instead. "Love thy neighbor as thy self" is the best rule to live by.
Respectfully, if you 'left' Buddhism because of the actions of murderers who are 'culturally' Buddhist but have no understanding of Buddhism itself, then you were never a practicing Buddhist. There is nothing in Buddhist teachings that advocates violence in any form — quite the opposite.
Finally, Buddhism isn't a 'faith' as faith is understood in the West. It's actually the opposite. The Buddha admonished followers to learn the truth for themselves through the practice of meditation and never blindly believe what he taught as a matter of faith.
Ms. Alice Walker WILL speak at the Mississippi Book Fair: "Ellen Daniels, the executive director of the Mississippi Book Festival, says that they were aware of Walker’s past comments, but invited her anyway “to honor the 40th anniversary of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ‘The Color Purple’ and the release of ‘Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, 1965–2000′.”
"I don’t know these people,” Walker said of the festival organizers who disinvited her. “It feels like the south. You know they are out there in the community, and they have their positions, but all you see are sheets. That’s what this is. It’s like being back in the south.”
When you want to create a world in which you are comfortable and feel in control, you will stop at nothing to obliterate anything that makes you uncomfortable and which you cannot control. You will find yourself with a small mindedness of no tolerance, open-mindedness, or changeability.
It's disturbing, however, that Alice Walker calls the works of a madman "brave." I don't want an author like Walker "cancelled" yet I do worry about her judgment.
As usual, if the US had not intervened, Palestine and Israel would have sorted everything out long ago. I'm not saying exactly, but it seems that in Ireland they talk about the English: if two neighbors quarreled, it means that an Englishman came to visit one of them the day before. The same can be said about Americans.
Icke seems like a fairly unremarkable, purposeful iconoclast whose worldview is as kooky/irrational as any religion.
Why would Walker would recommend him? I'd be guessing. in any case, she doesn't seem like she's leading any kind of anti-Jewish effort: Donald Trump and his Very Fine People are in the forefront there.
What's significant about all of this is that she's managed to tangle with the wounded but still potent pro-Israel factor in our political and cultural landscape.
Taking their lead from the Israeli government, they attempt to label anti-Israel positions and activity as anti-Semitic, a continuation of Christian Europe's persecution of Jews. Their work becomes ever more challenging, as a leading Israel civil rights group, B’Tselem, has now slapped an appropriate "apartheid" label on the place.
Genuine anti-Semites make the struggle more difficult by giving air cover for false assertions of anti-Jewish bigotry.
Their core argument is that the the US is controlled by an all-powerful Jewish cabal.
The best counter is the truth: which is the polar opposite of what the conspiracy types say.
Israel is the American Mini-Me.
Both nations present themselves as being appointed by "God" and given rights that supersede anyone else on the planet.
Both nations hold this incurable delusion as a core belief, which shapes all their interactions with others.
Both nations are founded on replacing other people: the US on ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, Israel on basically same idea -- being implemented right in front of our eyes.
Both states were settled and shaped by desperate, violent people.
The US was widely populated with religious fanatics, criminals, debtors, groups fleeling economic collapse, poverty and hopelessness. Same for the rest of the "New World."
Israel was populated with Jews being expelled from Europe: first by the Balfour Declaration and then at the end of WWII. The European idea was to get as many Jews as feasible off its soil, send them to some place they might or might not survive.
Exile to Palestine was Hitler's pre-extermination plan. Same as Lord Balfour.
One key difference: there are not enough Jews in the world to do in Palestine what the European invaders did in the Americas.
The US is a rogue, criminal state. If it were a person, it would be jailed and likely executed for its sociopathic crimes.
The end of Israel will be a monumental, crushing defeat for US imperialism, not a reversal for the Jews of the world -- many of whom are visibly and vocally disgusted by its actions and pretense of speaking in their name.
A most appropriate piece on the 68th birthday of political prisoner Mumia abu Jamal, another truthteller thwarted by the fraternity of police - a brutal force rooted in the hard power of slave brigades and the soft power of misdirection - at the service of wealthy, powerful, influential and merciless “leaders.”
The truth about Jesus is that he was a human being who lived and died as every person born ever has. He never meant to start a religion he was never resurrected he had no magical powers. All myth.
Well, by all means, if you fancy yourself more knowledgeable than Mr. Hedges, get some articles of your own out there, point out Hedges’ inaccuracies, and straighten us all out. Fill the post with your intelligence!
Briefly. Several of his comments on the Bible and Israel simply aren’t true. And he brings up a book that was widely condemned and almost led to an indictment and jail for the authors as an example of the general attitude in Israel.
I'm no expert on the bible, but what Chris said matches my recollection (and he is an expert). What did he say that wasn't true about the bible? It certainly seems easy enough to check the source...
I'm even less knowledgeable about Israel. Are you referring to Torat Ha'Melech? If so, it's distressing that Chris didn't mention the widespread condemnation. Even so, there are any number of hateful, racist, misogynistic, religiously bigoted books/articles written in the US which are both widely condemned and still an accurate reflection of the real attitudes of a significant fraction of the population. Could the same be true of this Israeli book?
Chris is no expert on the Bible, that much is obvious. And he is guilty of the same type of mistake the misusers are guilty of when they take verses out of context and twist them for perverse and unintended ends. People spend years and tens of thousands of dollars to become experts on the Bible. You don’t get there by reading it once or twice through modern western eyes.
Ummm, Chris is an ordained Christian minister (Presbyterian, if memory serves). I've never been to divinity school, but I'm pretty sure his familiarity with the bible is not on the level of "...reading it once or twice through modern western eyes."
As for "...taking verses out of context and twist[ing] them for perverse and unintended ends.", which verses did you have in mind? For example, I think Chris' characterization of the plagues visited on the Egyptians to secure the liberty of the Jews is pretty faithful to the context and the intended ends.
You must have missed the part in this article where Chris mentions that he "studied as a seminarian at Harvard Divinity School". Chris's father was also a minister, so I suspect that maybe he knows the Bible. You're not a very thorough reader, that much is obvious.
@Donald Ganer and @forceOfHabit touché. I obviously need to pay better attention.
I still maintain that he’s reading the text through modern, western eyes and applying standards we could not even get to were it not for the Bible as a whole.
It's interesting. I have less and less confidence in his competence as a journalist. He likes to position himself as an independent journalist. I don't know what he is independent of, definitely not from his prejudices and biases.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not for silencing writers, but Walker could have chosen a better source than David Icke if she wanted to praise the criticism of Israel. After all, Icke is the writer who argues that blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptilian humanoids from the Alpha Draconis star system are behind a worldwide conspiracy against humanity (from his book The Biggest Secret). That David Icke? Anyway, Walker is still a brilliant writer, and they were wrong to disinvite her.
And how many people dare criticize Israel? I am a nobody and I can vouch for the rabid hatred that spews forth when I bring up Jewish apartheid and/or that misguided notion that Israel is the Jew's homeland.
“Our decision was based purely on Ms. Walker’s inexplicable, ongoing endorsement of David Icke, a conspiracy theorist who dangerously promulgates such beliefs as that Jewish people bankrolled Hitler, caused the 2008 global financial crisis, staged the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and more.”
The 9/11 terrorist attacks were indeed staged. It’s obvious now, really, it was from the beginning. Academically, 9/11 truth has already won. 3500+ Architects & Engineers ain’t just your average “conspiracy theorists”! Seek truth and set yourself free if you are so inclined or compelled. If you have eyes to see, ears to hear. The truth is self evident at ae911truth.org. Who done it? You tell me!
Bay Area Book Festival has a contact form (baybookfest.org)...get over there and let them know that because cancel culture/censorship brings its own backlash fear of backlash is futile and missing the point by a mondo mile....more voices not less!.....oh, and also....I let them know they should be embarrassed and schmeared with shame..........
Done! I hope many others let them have it too. They need to hear from a lot of us that this is totally unacceptable, regardless of who David Icke is or what his views are (never heard of him before this, and I really don't care, he's not the issue here).
exactly!.......now people are being cancelled because they have friends others don't like/approve?.....book fest's fear of offense reveals not only a lack of chutzpah but often results in a bland/banal panel of speakers..... cancel culture is where the left and the right sit down together to suppress information and discussion.......
Walker's poem is brilliant. How hard is it, really, to grasp the essential nature of free speech reflecting free thought? Voltaire left us with so many excellent quotes on the topic. The one that springs to mind as being most a propos for these censorious times: "Cherish those who seek the truth, but beware those who find it."
Wow,
thank you for that....we have so much to learn! Love to all those suffering hate for stating the TRUTH. FREE JULIAN ASSANGE!
As always, Chris is thought provoking. Raised a Baptist, I left as a young adult and became a Buddhist and left that faith as well because of the murders and genocides committed by them in Southeast Asian countries. Religion and religiosity itself is poison. Better to look at morality or ethics instead. "Love thy neighbor as thy self" is the best rule to live by.
Respectfully, if you 'left' Buddhism because of the actions of murderers who are 'culturally' Buddhist but have no understanding of Buddhism itself, then you were never a practicing Buddhist. There is nothing in Buddhist teachings that advocates violence in any form — quite the opposite.
Finally, Buddhism isn't a 'faith' as faith is understood in the West. It's actually the opposite. The Buddha admonished followers to learn the truth for themselves through the practice of meditation and never blindly believe what he taught as a matter of faith.
Ms. Alice Walker WILL speak at the Mississippi Book Fair: "Ellen Daniels, the executive director of the Mississippi Book Festival, says that they were aware of Walker’s past comments, but invited her anyway “to honor the 40th anniversary of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ‘The Color Purple’ and the release of ‘Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, 1965–2000′.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mississippi-book-festival-sticking-with-alice-walker-despite-her-link-to-conspiracy-theorist/ar-AAWnLmp
Ms. Walker is welcome in my southern town. She was a speaker in 2015: https://afam.uga.edu/events/alice-walker
"I don’t know these people,” Walker said of the festival organizers who disinvited her. “It feels like the south. You know they are out there in the community, and they have their positions, but all you see are sheets. That’s what this is. It’s like being back in the south.”
This description is SO powerful!
When you want to create a world in which you are comfortable and feel in control, you will stop at nothing to obliterate anything that makes you uncomfortable and which you cannot control. You will find yourself with a small mindedness of no tolerance, open-mindedness, or changeability.
we are all Palestinians now
It's disturbing, however, that Alice Walker calls the works of a madman "brave." I don't want an author like Walker "cancelled" yet I do worry about her judgment.
Pretty much my take. I have read Icke. I have immense tolerance for the counter-narrative.
Icke though, is seriously mentally ill.
I have no use for him or his 'facts', and would never quote or promote him in any way.
As usual, if the US had not intervened, Palestine and Israel would have sorted everything out long ago. I'm not saying exactly, but it seems that in Ireland they talk about the English: if two neighbors quarreled, it means that an Englishman came to visit one of them the day before. The same can be said about Americans.
Also see: Ukraine.
Well done, Chris.
Chris this is truly an incredible article. Thanks
Icke seems like a fairly unremarkable, purposeful iconoclast whose worldview is as kooky/irrational as any religion.
Why would Walker would recommend him? I'd be guessing. in any case, she doesn't seem like she's leading any kind of anti-Jewish effort: Donald Trump and his Very Fine People are in the forefront there.
What's significant about all of this is that she's managed to tangle with the wounded but still potent pro-Israel factor in our political and cultural landscape.
Taking their lead from the Israeli government, they attempt to label anti-Israel positions and activity as anti-Semitic, a continuation of Christian Europe's persecution of Jews. Their work becomes ever more challenging, as a leading Israel civil rights group, B’Tselem, has now slapped an appropriate "apartheid" label on the place.
Genuine anti-Semites make the struggle more difficult by giving air cover for false assertions of anti-Jewish bigotry.
Their core argument is that the the US is controlled by an all-powerful Jewish cabal.
The best counter is the truth: which is the polar opposite of what the conspiracy types say.
Israel is the American Mini-Me.
Both nations present themselves as being appointed by "God" and given rights that supersede anyone else on the planet.
Both nations hold this incurable delusion as a core belief, which shapes all their interactions with others.
Both nations are founded on replacing other people: the US on ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, Israel on basically same idea -- being implemented right in front of our eyes.
Both states were settled and shaped by desperate, violent people.
The US was widely populated with religious fanatics, criminals, debtors, groups fleeling economic collapse, poverty and hopelessness. Same for the rest of the "New World."
Israel was populated with Jews being expelled from Europe: first by the Balfour Declaration and then at the end of WWII. The European idea was to get as many Jews as feasible off its soil, send them to some place they might or might not survive.
Exile to Palestine was Hitler's pre-extermination plan. Same as Lord Balfour.
One key difference: there are not enough Jews in the world to do in Palestine what the European invaders did in the Americas.
The US is a rogue, criminal state. If it were a person, it would be jailed and likely executed for its sociopathic crimes.
The end of Israel will be a monumental, crushing defeat for US imperialism, not a reversal for the Jews of the world -- many of whom are visibly and vocally disgusted by its actions and pretense of speaking in their name.
A most appropriate piece on the 68th birthday of political prisoner Mumia abu Jamal, another truthteller thwarted by the fraternity of police - a brutal force rooted in the hard power of slave brigades and the soft power of misdirection - at the service of wealthy, powerful, influential and merciless “leaders.”
A stunningly ignorant article.
Hedges is spot on! You’re probably some religious nut like he’s talking about!
Nope! Just a regular guy calling out an ignorant man who apparently has even more ignorant followers.
Do you have an argument skipper? This is not Twitter.
You can go now.
You are not the boss of me. btw I don't "tweet"
I was replying to Zig.
Stick to Twitter. It's easier to understand.
Hedges is many thing but ignorant he is not
The truth about Jesus is that he was a human being who lived and died as every person born ever has. He never meant to start a religion he was never resurrected he had no magical powers. All myth.
https://www.truthdig.com/dig/the-truth-about-jesus/page/1/
You miss the whole point of the article. Just go ahead and tear down Christianity as that will be a solution for what?
Well, by all means, if you fancy yourself more knowledgeable than Mr. Hedges, get some articles of your own out there, point out Hedges’ inaccuracies, and straighten us all out. Fill the post with your intelligence!
Care to elaborate?
Briefly. Several of his comments on the Bible and Israel simply aren’t true. And he brings up a book that was widely condemned and almost led to an indictment and jail for the authors as an example of the general attitude in Israel.
I'm no expert on the bible, but what Chris said matches my recollection (and he is an expert). What did he say that wasn't true about the bible? It certainly seems easy enough to check the source...
I'm even less knowledgeable about Israel. Are you referring to Torat Ha'Melech? If so, it's distressing that Chris didn't mention the widespread condemnation. Even so, there are any number of hateful, racist, misogynistic, religiously bigoted books/articles written in the US which are both widely condemned and still an accurate reflection of the real attitudes of a significant fraction of the population. Could the same be true of this Israeli book?
Chris is no expert on the Bible, that much is obvious. And he is guilty of the same type of mistake the misusers are guilty of when they take verses out of context and twist them for perverse and unintended ends. People spend years and tens of thousands of dollars to become experts on the Bible. You don’t get there by reading it once or twice through modern western eyes.
Ummm, Chris is an ordained Christian minister (Presbyterian, if memory serves). I've never been to divinity school, but I'm pretty sure his familiarity with the bible is not on the level of "...reading it once or twice through modern western eyes."
As for "...taking verses out of context and twist[ing] them for perverse and unintended ends.", which verses did you have in mind? For example, I think Chris' characterization of the plagues visited on the Egyptians to secure the liberty of the Jews is pretty faithful to the context and the intended ends.
You must have missed the part in this article where Chris mentions that he "studied as a seminarian at Harvard Divinity School". Chris's father was also a minister, so I suspect that maybe he knows the Bible. You're not a very thorough reader, that much is obvious.
@Donald Ganer and @forceOfHabit touché. I obviously need to pay better attention.
I still maintain that he’s reading the text through modern, western eyes and applying standards we could not even get to were it not for the Bible as a whole.
a stunningly empty defense of a quip.
I made my point. I don’t care what you think.
Really? Then why speak at all?
Lol! Your comment doesn’t even make sense.
You literally said stuff Chris said wasn’t true and left it at that.
What fucking vapid cuntery is this?
You're nothing but a troll.
It's interesting. I have less and less confidence in his competence as a journalist. He likes to position himself as an independent journalist. I don't know what he is independent of, definitely not from his prejudices and biases.
Totally agree. He’s clearly driven by his prejudice and hatred. It’s sad, because he’s a talented writer.
CH is neither prejudiced or hateful. Look in the mirror
Amen!
Ummmm, when one slanders an entire group of people on a regular basis, that’s pretty good evidence they are hateful.
Like your fact and argument free, four word post.
And I suppose that you want to be taken seriously?
Elaborate using examples of his purported ignorance (if you're able).
Spoken by a stunningly ignorant poster. LOL.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not for silencing writers, but Walker could have chosen a better source than David Icke if she wanted to praise the criticism of Israel. After all, Icke is the writer who argues that blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptilian humanoids from the Alpha Draconis star system are behind a worldwide conspiracy against humanity (from his book The Biggest Secret). That David Icke? Anyway, Walker is still a brilliant writer, and they were wrong to disinvite her.
And how many people dare criticize Israel? I am a nobody and I can vouch for the rabid hatred that spews forth when I bring up Jewish apartheid and/or that misguided notion that Israel is the Jew's homeland.
“Our decision was based purely on Ms. Walker’s inexplicable, ongoing endorsement of David Icke, a conspiracy theorist who dangerously promulgates such beliefs as that Jewish people bankrolled Hitler, caused the 2008 global financial crisis, staged the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and more.”
The 9/11 terrorist attacks were indeed staged. It’s obvious now, really, it was from the beginning. Academically, 9/11 truth has already won. 3500+ Architects & Engineers ain’t just your average “conspiracy theorists”! Seek truth and set yourself free if you are so inclined or compelled. If you have eyes to see, ears to hear. The truth is self evident at ae911truth.org. Who done it? You tell me!
The Mossad is who done it.
Bingo! Saudi’s, Israelis and the Cheney administration
Bay Area Book Festival has a contact form (baybookfest.org)...get over there and let them know that because cancel culture/censorship brings its own backlash fear of backlash is futile and missing the point by a mondo mile....more voices not less!.....oh, and also....I let them know they should be embarrassed and schmeared with shame..........
Done! I hope many others let them have it too. They need to hear from a lot of us that this is totally unacceptable, regardless of who David Icke is or what his views are (never heard of him before this, and I really don't care, he's not the issue here).
exactly!.......now people are being cancelled because they have friends others don't like/approve?.....book fest's fear of offense reveals not only a lack of chutzpah but often results in a bland/banal panel of speakers..... cancel culture is where the left and the right sit down together to suppress information and discussion.......