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Mindless Violence
0119 days
by admin
in Uncategorized
Too often we honor swagger and bluster the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others.
by Teddy Fikre speech by Bobby Kennedy Song by Bob Marley written: Saturday, January 21st, 2012
This i read with sober thought and wish my sisters and brothers would understand the mindlessness of violence. We have lost countless millions and untold billions in wealth and health because of this violence. We fight over Badme in Africa, fight over stupid concretes in DC. All the while…we die…die die in this unending WAR… this is a speech given by Bobby Kennedy…please post and share this link on your wall…and give up this bullshit WAR…Bobbie Kennedy and Bob Marley…both shot down by WAR…bullets took these brave brothers… RIP Bobbie and Bob…
This is a time of shame and sorrow It is not a day for politics I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.
It is not the concern of any one race The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed No one – no matter where he lives or what he does – can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed And yet it goes on and on.
Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by his assassin’s bullet.
No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.
Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
“Among free men,” said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.
Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies – to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.
We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear – only a common desire to retreat from each other – only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers.
Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember – even if only for a time – that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek – as we do – nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.
“I don’t stand for the black man’s side, I don’t stand for the white man’s side. I stand for God’s side”~Bob Marley
[I ask forgiveness for my mindless violence against Rahiel Tesfamariam...PEACE]
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Teddy Fikre
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Ethiopians, Eritreans Face Double Suspicion in Post-Bomb Uganda
3672 days
by admin
in Uncategorized
Ugandan police inspect the destroyed Ethiopian Village restaurant in Kampala after twin bomb blasts tore through crowds of football fans, killing 64 people, 11 Jul 2010
by Peter Heinlein. Posted: Saturday, July 17, 2010
The bodies of seven Ethiopian and Eritrean victims of the Uganda bomb attacks have been sent home to their native countries for burial. Members of the Ethiopian and Eritrean expatriate communities face suspicion from all sides, in a city shaken by the realization that it is the latest front in Somalia’s war.
A crowd of about 100 mourners gathered at Kampala’s tiny Ethiopian Orthodox church Friday to remember 32-year-old Getayewakal Tessema, the only Ethiopian killed in the Kampala terror blasts.
Eritreans in the Ugandan capital held a similar service for six members of their community who also died in the attack on an Ethiopian restaurant, where fans were watching the World Cup soccer final.
The bodies were later taken to Entebbe airport for shipment home.
Members of the small Eritrean and Ethiopian expatriate communities expressed thanks to the Ugandan government for its help in returning the bodies and for the security provided in the hours immediately after the bombings, when anti-foreigner sentiments briefly flared in Kampala.
But the representative for Ethiopian refugees in Kampala, Aman Abile Dure, says Ugandans’ normally hospitable attitude toward outsiders changed abruptly when Somali insurgents took responsibility for the bombs, and word spread that police had arrested several foreigners.
“Sometimes when you lost something, you may suspect everything,” said Aman. “Because Uganda has not been used to such a problem. And then when someone is taking responsibility of such things they may suspect, but not all Ugandans. Ugandans are good people for us.”
Aman says the World Cup bomb attacks put Ethiopians in Uganda in an peculiar situation. On one hand, the Ethiopian restaurant appears to have been hit because of Ethiopia’s deep involvement in Somalia’s war in support of the western-backed transitional government.
On the other hand, the bombings led many Ugandans to see Ethiopians and others from the Horn of Africa as the source of their troubles.
Immediately after the bombings, Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye described the position of Ethiopians as “a double edge”.
“I have heard many reports so far that anybody who looks like a Somali is being attacked,” he said. “And unfortunately some of those people are being attacked [are] Ethiopians who are on the other [side of the] fence of the struggle.”
Ethiopians and others with lighter skin and thin features, normally associated with the Horn of Africa, say they have been staying off the streets of Kampala in recent days. Ethiopian community leader Banteyehu Haile says it is regrettable but understandable given the fear that raced through Kampala when people realized they were being targeted by Somali insurgents.
“It’s very sad,” he said. “Uganda is a very nice country. People are hospitable. We had enjoyed everything to date, but suddenly this thing happens. So it’s really very depressed.
As days go by, Ugandan tempers are clearly cooling. Attacks against foreigners have stopped.
Ethiopian community leaders Friday reported what could be good news. They were called to the Ugandan prime minister’s office and asked to produce documents about four Ethiopians held in connection with the bombing case. A community spokesman said the tone of the conversation indicated the four could be released within days.
Credit: VOA
Movie: 13 Months of Sunshine
0673 days
by admin
in Uncategorized
13 Months of Sunshine is the story of an Ethiopian man who marries a woman so she can get a green card and become a citizen of the United States
by Janet Smith. Posted Thursday, July 15, 2010
click to go to website
There are good reasons to call an Ethiopian film 13 Months of Sunshine. Not only is it true – the sun never sleeps there – but it’s also the country’s tourist slogan because of its orthodox calendar.
And, sweetly, the name echoes the exultant words of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers in their song in which they call to be taken to that land, feeling high, sun in the eyes. So this romance has a great name, and it’s not bad itself. Not bad at all.
The tale is that of a young man taken to the US and naturalized there by his African parents in Little Ethiopia, Whitworth, south of Fairfax in LA. He dreams of opening his own coffee shop to rival Starbucks where he will worship the great bean, the buna, and the memory of his grandmother who was once honored by Haile Selassie.
But there’s not enough money for that, so when advantage beckons in a family’s desire for their daughter to have a Green Card, life twists – and the Earth, as Marley says, gives food.
Made by Yehdego Abselom, the film teases your senses with its constant reminder of coffee beans thrown lightly on a pan on a hot gas stove. It’s about disappointment – especially from women, whose betrayals wrap around a man’s fist like a wet cloth – but mostly about love. Definitely worth a watch.
Ethiopians Converge in San Jose
0689 days
by admin
in Uncategorized
Ethiopians from around the United States travel to San Jose to take part in an annual celebration of Ethiopian history, culture, and tradition.
Posted. Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Netsanet Solomon (cq), 38, from Mendocino, Calif., proudly displays her Rastafarian clothing on June 27, 2010. Ethiopians from around the United States and abroad are gathering in San Jose this week for this year's Ethiopian Sport and Cultural Festival at Spartan Stadium. (Masaru Oka/Mercury News)
Haile Abera and three friends gathered in the shade of a big white tent after a soccer game at Spartan Stadium on Sunday, telling stories of their Ethiopian homeland and sharing a spicy meal.
Abera, a wartime refugee, had traveled from San Diego to participate in a weeklong soccer tournament and cultural festival, coming to San Jose to meet up with friends from the old country and celebrate their heritage.
“You feel like home,” said Abera, 41. “You hear your own language and eat your own food.”
Some 20,000 people, including players from 22 teams from Canadian and U.S. cities, are expected to descend upon downtown San Jose through the week for the Ethiopian Sports Federation of North America tournament. Many are spending their days at Spartan Stadium for the tournament and food festival, and their nights at downtown hotels and nightclubs listening to Ethiopian musicians.
After Sunday’s soccer game, in which the San Diego Tewdros defeated the Philadelphia Addis 2-0, some 30 food booths on the field next to the stadium took center stage. Abera and his friends tore off pieces of injera — a thin, spongy flatbread — to grab mouthfuls of spicy collard greens called gomen, raw beef with hot peppers called kitfo and soft white ayeb cheese.
“People joke about why Ethiopians are good runners,” said Abebe Gelagay, a member of the festival’s organizing committee. “It’s because they eat teff,” an Ethiopian grain used to make injera.
After nine years of trying, San Jose’s Ethiopian community and its San Jose Lions soccer team won the bid to host the Ethiopian national championship, held in a different city each year. About half of the Bay Area’s roughly 40,000 Ethiopians live in the San Jose area.
The Ethiopians don’t have a business district or neighborhood here, but the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Cathedral off Senter Road in South San Jose is a primary spiritual and social gathering place where young children are taught the Amharic language.
Many Ethiopians immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s as insurgents began their ultimately successful attempt to overthrow the Marxist military regime. Most Ethiopians settled in Washington and Los Angeles.
In 1991, Abera settled in San Jose because his uncle lived here. At the time, he said, many of his neighbors back home, some as young as 13, were being conscripted into the military.
When he attends these annual soccer tournaments, he often runs into old friends and finds himself saying, “I never thought I’d find you alive.”
Credit: Mercurynews.com
Locust Lounge Topic: Complacency?
0696 days
by admin
in Uncategorized
How do you differentiate between being pleased with what you have versus knowing you deserve better than what you have?
by Corey Jackson. Posted: Wednesday, June 23, 2010
At some point in our lives, we have all battled with ourselves in the struggle against complacency. This insidious battle stems from our goal towards achieving self-actualization. Our struggle to achieve our professional goals, our aim to perfect our relationships with lovers, our ability to cope with non-supportive or drama king/queen friends are all part of this struggle to define ourselves and live a life free of conflict. The ability to deal with these complexities often requires approaches that we take in the proximity we give others into our lives.
This is an issue that I am drawn to, as I reach an understanding within myself and have dialogues with others; I find it both comforting that I am not the only one who faces these issues in life. The more I embark on a journey to figure out this issue, both internally and externally, the more that I find that the common denominator is our place of employment and our relationship with the folks I mentioned above has us in “golden handcuffs”. By the “golden handcuffs” I mean that our job and our friendships/relationships with others are based on getting just enough to get by. We are left yearning for more, but grow comfortable in the situation that we have.
This comfort breeds complacency, and the complacency leads us to rationalize why we should stay where we are at. Maybe our job is just flexible enough; maybe we like the no-dress code or that we live 10 minutes from where we work or any one of hundreds of rationalizations that we come up with to justify our inability to move on to something different. This same complacency haunts us at times in our relationships; maybe you deserve better than whom you are with but choose to rationalize why you should stay. Is it that the person you are with makes it easy to be you, or is it that you are scared to start over again? How do you differentiate between being pleased with what you have versus knowing you deserve better than what you have? So I ask you, how do you resolve this insidious struggle of complacency or should we just be thankful for what we have?
“Corey Jackson a/k/a Lenny Locust of the The Locust Lounge.”