Wishing All of Us a Successful 2016!

As we turn in on another year, may we look forward to 2016, a time when we may see the death struggle of hierarchies come even more to light.

With the presidential election this year, and the political party who supports hierarchies the most, the Republicans, in disarray and their beliefs they have been cultivating for years being brought forth by Donald Trump, we may be in for a very interesting year indeed.

Happy New Year to one and all!!

Peter Norman, the Third Hero on the 1968 Olympic Podium

This last October marks the ninth anniversary of Peter Norman's passing. Most people don't know Norman. But in 1968, he joined John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s rebellious gesture at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City during their medal ceremony for the 200 meters.

The SF Globe has reprinted an assay by Italian writer Riccardo Gazzaniga on the life of Australian Peter Norman after he wore a  Olympic Project for Human Rights badge during the medal ceremony. He was subsequently left off the 1972 Summer Olympics team in Munich, Germany, even though he had run qualifying times for the 200 meters thirteen times and the 100 meters five times.

Norman died suddenly from a heart attack in 2006, and at his funeral Tommie Smith and John Carlos were his pallbearers, sending him off as a hero. 

Only in 2012 did the Australian Parliament approve a motion to formally apologize to Peter Norman and rewrite him into history 

http://sfglobe.com/2015/12/07/white-man-in-the-photo-is-the-third-hero-that-night-in-1968

New Orleans Confederate Statues Coming Down

Today was another significant milestone in the trend to change honoring racist history when it comes to the Confederacy. The city of New Orleans will remove four Confederate statues. Councilwoman Susan Guidry said the statues would be stored until a place could be found to display them in proper context.

And Lee Circle may soon be called something else. The ordinance the council approved called it by its original name: Tivoli Circle.

The four statues were erected between 1884 and 1915, after Reconstruction and during the era of Jim Crow. While three depict figures deeply influential within the Confederacy, the fourth, the Battle of Liberty Place, honors an 1874 insurrection of mostly Confederate veterans who battled against the city's police and state militia.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/12/confederate_monuments_lee_circ.html

Disneyworld – Go For Safety As Well as Fun

Just think, in Disneyworld and other Disney properties, you can really enjoy a fantasyland different from being outside its gates. 

You can now be assured that some gun nut won't shot you and everyone around you. You can even rest your mind that some kid whose parent wants him to be a gun nut won't pull out a toy gun on you.

Disney Parks have installed metal detectors and banned the sale of toy guns and costumes for anyone over the age of 14, as of today.

Republicans and the NRA insisting that we have to have guns everywhere has finally affected the fun of Disney. At least Disney is a private corporation and can say no, not like everyone else in this country who have to live their lives knowing the person next to them could be angry and packing.

 http://www.mercurynews.com/celebrities/ci_29268576/disney-parks-installing-metal-detectors-banning-toy-gun

Wheaton College Suspends Professor for Proclaiming There is One God

In hierarchical religions, we are used to hearing that one religion has the best and possibly only way to their image of "God."

Now Wheaton College in Illinois has suspended a tenured professor for stating that Christians and Muslims worship one God. Apparently there is now more than one "God, and the people who worship the right "God" can even better claim the top of the religious hierarchy.

Larycia Hawkins, the suspended professor, is the first African American women to become a tenured professor at the evangelical college.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/christian-college-suspend-professor/421029/

Canada Welcomes Refugees Declaring They Honor Their Diversity

As people who want to continue to build and maintain our hierarchies are working hard to keep refugees out, Canada is truly opening its arms. Maybe next they will declare that we should move the Statue of Liberty a few hundred miles north.

In the United States, several Republican governors have tried to stop Syrian refugees from coming into their states after the deadly attacks that have been blamed on Islamic extremists in Paris and California.

They forget that the ancestors of most Americans are immigrants, and those whose ancestors aren't immigrants welcomed those who were.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/12/10/world/ap-cn-canada-syrian-refugees.html

Saudi Arabia Holds a Women's Conference without a Female in Sight

How would men in Arabic countries feel if women held a conference on men's rights and men were not in the room? How would men feel if women passed laws saying men could not drive or leave the country without a female present? How would men react if women decided men could ride a motorcycle or bike only if fully veiled and accompanied by a male relative?

Taken in 2012, but resurfacing and going viral currently, a picture of a women's rights conference in Saudi Arabia is a wonderful example of laws in Arabic countries. No where is there a woman in sight.

Instead, row upon row of men in traditional keffiyeh and white thobes and one single Westerner in a flannel shirt appear. The conference was reportedly held at the University of Qassim and was apparently attended by representatives of 15 countries.

According to the article, "Religious police in the Gulf Kingdom which is governed by Sharia Law only recently lifted a ban on females riding motorbikes and bicycles – as long as they wear the full-length veil and are accompanied by a male relative. It is illegal for Saudi women to travel abroad without male accompaniment. They may only do so if their guardian agrees by signing a document know as a 'yellow sheet' at an airport or border crossing."

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/28/saudi-arabian-womens-conference-picture_n_3515062.html