This is for reference -- if you ever need to make the point that the majority of terrorists are not Muslim or that there is such a thing as Christian terrorists, here's the info. His conclusion is also very positive.
A troll demanded a Muslim man show examples of 'Christian terrorists.' He delivered.
'I know such acts don't represent Christ because I've studied Christ from Christians, not from anti-Christians. Learn Islam from Muslims, not from anti-Muslim bigots.'
Anti-Muslim protesters at Denver's "March Against Sharia" oppose the implementation of Sharia law in the U.S. — something that literally nobody is trying to do, so ... uh... Photo by Ross Taylor/Getty Images.
Author and attorney Qasim Rashid had just about enough of this harmful and incorrect connection.
When challenged by someone on Twitter to "show [him] the Christian terrorist attacks" — thinking he'd just backed Rashid into a corner — Rashid delivered an epic history lesson.
It's in the very last paragraph that Rashid really drives his point home.
"I know such acts don't represent Christ because I've studied Christ from Christians, not from anti-Christians," he writes. "Learn Islam from Muslims, not from anti-Muslim bigots."
Unlike the person who reached out to him demanding examples of non-Muslim terrorists, Rashid knows that, while the people and groups he listed may have identified as Christian, they do not reflect their entire religion — just as Muslim terrorists do not represent all Muslims or all of Islam.
And that really should be a lesson for everyone about projecting the actions of an individual onto an entire group. Whether it's profiling on the basis of race, gender, religion, or anything else, it's not only wrong, it makes us less safe.
So next time you hear someone say, "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim," there's a perfect response waiting right here.
This is to let you know what Americans have become. A woman was barred from contact with her baby due to unpaid fines. This happened in Pearl, Mississippi, but It could happen anywhere there is racism, discrimination against poor people, and worship of money. And still, the resigning judge said his resignation had nothing to do with this. Yikes. Thank goodness someone caught it and stopped it.
Pearl's Youth Court judge has resigned and the city's Youth Court has been permanently closed after the judge was accused of prohibiting a mother from contact with her 4-month-old child for 14 months until she paid court-imposed fees.
The Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law filed a complaint on behalf of their client, calling for Pearl Youth Court Judge John Shirley to be fired
Center Director Cliff Johnson said Shirley entered an order Aug. 22, 2016, prohibiting the mother from having any contact with her baby until she paid court fees in full. Despite the fact those fees have not been paid, an order was entered on Wednesday reversing Judge Shirley's earlier decision and returning the child to the mother.
"As a civil rights lawyer in Mississippi, I am no stranger to injustice, but for a judge to prohibit an impoverished mother from having any contact with her baby until monetary payments are made is shocking and repugnant. Such orders are tantamount to judicial kidnapping," Johnson said.
Shirley said Thursday he couldn't specifically discuss the woman's case, but said, whenever he issued a no-contact order, it was due to abuse or neglect of a child that hadn't been corrected.
Also, Shirley said he resigned his Pearl Youth Court and municipal judges positions because of dispute with the city's mayor.
"I didn't resign because of any pressure," Shirley said. "I resigned because I got tired of the policies in that administration."
Shirley said Mayor Jake Windham, who took office in July, wanted to close the Youth Court to save money and is using the case as a tactic to get what he wants.
Windham, a 16-year law enforcement veteran, said Thursday that Shirley has his facts wrong. He said the mayor and Board of Aldermen were presented with information and did an investigation.
"We acted under objective facts," Windham said. "It was simply that we had to act on a situation to safeguard citizens and the city of Pearl."
Windham said it is an unfortunate incident and he is sorry that Shirley is allowing his emotions to get the best of him.
All Pearl Youth Court cases will now be transferred to Rankin County Youth Court, Windham said
Johnson said the woman, a resident of Jackson, was traveling through Pearl while looking for employment. She was a passenger in a friend's car, and her child rode with them in a car seat. When the car was stopped for a minor traffic violation, it was discovered that both adults had outstanding warrants for routine misdemeanor offenses. Upon arresting the women, the officer contacted the Mississippi Department of Human Services that the child was "abandoned" as a result of the women being detained. The baby's grandmother arrived on the scene within minutes, yet the officer still insisted that the child be taken before Shirley at Pearl Youth Court. Less than half an hour later, Shirley awarded custody to the baby's grandmother. An order was later entered prohibiting "Mother A" from having any contact with her baby until court fees were paid in full.
Johnson said the mother contacted the MacArthur Justice Center last week, and Johnson immediately conducted an investigation and contacted Pearl officials to inform them of Shirley's order and his belief that the judge had issued similar orders in several other cases conditioning custody or visitation on payment of money.
After receiving Johnson's demands, including that Shirley be fired and the Youth Court closed, an emergency meeting of the Pearl Board of Aldermen was scheduled for Wednesday evening. The agenda items for the meeting were "threatened litigation by the MacArthur Justice Center" and a vote on whether to close Pearl's Youth Court.
At that meeting, Shirley resigned from both his Youth Court and Municipal Court positions and the board voted unanimously to close the Youth Court permanently, according to Johnson.
Pearl was the only city in Mississippi with its own Youth Court. All other Youth Courts operate at the county level. Matters previously handled by the Pearl Youth Court now will come under the jurisdiction of the Rankin County Youth Court.
"As a Mississippian with deep roots in this state that I love, I am deeply troubled by the many ways in which poor Mississippians, especially African Americans, are victimized by Mississippi's legal system," Johnson said. "We have litigated matters involving excessive bail, illegal jailing of misdemeanor offenders for unpaid fines and the refusal to provide poor criminal defendants with counsel, and now we see that not even the right to raise one's children is beyond the reach of the injustice that befalls poor Mississippians."
Some other citizens have called The Clarion-Ledger to complain that they had been through a similar situation with Pearl Youth Court as the mother in the MacArthur Justice Center case.
And now for something completely different.... I thought this was interesting and I don't know whether to believe it or not. they say that we won't believe it.
How Jackson Pollock and the CIA Teamed Up to Win The Cold War
Unlikely bedfellows, ironic subterfuge, and the American Left
"I could do that."
We've all thought it, whether out loud or in secret, standing in the hallowed halls of museums of modern art across the world witnessing the violent glorified entropy of abstract expressionism.
An art form defined by lack of form, it has become an easy target for both scorn and idolatry. It is the butt of so many jokes, and yet produced three of the ten most expensive paintings in history.
What began as a rejection of ideology has become an ideology all unto itself; modern art requires a certain faith. There are those who "get it" and those who just simply don't.
So, at the advent of abstract expressionism, why did the CIA want people to "get it" so badly?
That may seem like an odd question.
In the early 1950's, folks had much greater criticism for abstract expressionism than the fact that it looked easy to make. Remember, this is the time of grey suits, white picket fences, and McCarthyism. Harold Harby, Los Angeles councilman, declared:
"Modern art is actually a means of espionage. If you know how to read them, modern paintings will disclose weak spots in U.S. fortifications, and such crucial constructions as the Boulder Dam."
George Dondero, a Republican from Missouri, made a simpler proclamation, on floor of Congress no less:
"All modern art is Communistic."
This paranoia would rapidly become policy when, in 1947, the State Department withdrew a touring exhibition of modern art that it had sponsored, titled "Advancing American Art".
A congressman made the argument that this exhibit was an attempt to "tell the foreigners that the American people are despondent, broken down, or of hideous shape." The show was cancelled and the State Department issued a directive that it would no longer financially sponsor any art produced by those with leftist connections, even of the second degree.
And the story of the government's connection to the art form could've ended there.
Pollock in studio
See, nearly all avant-garde artists at the time had flirtations with the left. Jackson Pollock worked in the Communist workshop of Mexican muralist David Alfalo Siquieros. Adolph Gottlieb and William Baziotes were Communist activists.
So one could forgive McCarthyites for seeing only red in the palette of abstract-expressionism. But the CIA saw an altogether more colorful picture.
In the same way the Soviet Union standardized language, education, and industrial production, it similarly standardized art. By Stalin's directive, there was only one aesthetic which was acceptable: socialist realism. During the Soviet Congress of 1934, acceptable art was defined as:
1. Proletarian: art relevant to the workers and understandable to them 2. Typical: scenes of everyday life of the people 3. Realistic: in the representational sense 4. Partisan: supportive of the aims of the State and the Party
A classic example of socialist realism, Geli Korzhev's "Raising the Banner"
The CIA noticed one very crucial fact about abstract expressionism: it was the polar opposite of socialist realism.
Donald Jameson, former CIA agent, said
"We recognized that this was the kind of art that did not have anything to do with socialist realism… Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of nonconformity… So one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticized that much and that heavyhandedly was worth support in one way or another."
More than that, abstract expressionism was fundamentally American. Born in New York City, there was nothing else like it in the world. There was a "cowboy" element to it — Jackson Pollock, for instance, was born on a sheep farm in Cody Wyoming, slinging paint from the hip like a six-shooter. It was loud, brash, unrefined, and unapologetic — much like America.
However, due to the aforementioned ban instituted by the State Department, this abstract-expressionism had to be supported in covert through several degrees of separation. Soon, the CIA found the ideal conduit for resources: the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Nelson Rockefeller, president of the museum (and son of its founder) had various agency and government connections. He was Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) in WW2, heading the wartime intelligence agency for Latin America. He was a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a New York think tank subcontracted by the government to study foreign affairs (and through which much of the CIA's financial support of the new art would be laundered).
He would go on to be appointed Eisenhower's special advisor on Cold War strategy, chair a committee overseeing CIA covert operations, and eventually become Governer and Vice President.
The Museum's board was a who's who of CIA connections. William Burden chaired the CIA's Farfield Foundation. Rene D'Hanoncourt worked with the CIAA and reported regularly to the State Department. Nearly everyone involved at the museum had government connections, whether in the State Department, Foreign Service, or CIA.
In 1952, the CIA, through the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, gave MoMA a five year grant to fund the "International Program", loaning out so many of the museum's paintings to European entities that New Yorkers began to complain of an emptied museum. By 1956, 33 full international exhibitions had been organized for abstract expressionism; a remarkable feat.
"Police Gazette", De Kooning
America's new artistic export caught on rapidly, displacing many European styles and succeeding in its mission of evangelization by force, show, and money. One anecdote seems particularly apropos— in 1960, at the exhibition "Antagonismes" in Paris, movers had to saw off the top of the museum entrance door to carry in a large Pollock canvas.
In the same year, John Canaday reflected that "an unknown artist trying to exhibit in New York couldn't find a gallery unless he was painting in a mode derived from [abstract expressionism]." Adam Gopnik would later state that the monolithic artistic dominance of the art form had forced "two generations of realists to live in basements and pass around still-lifes like samizdat."
Fundamentally, the CIA made Jackson Pollock rich. They made De Kooning and Rothko household names. And in doing so, they won the cold war. Not with guns, but with abstract expressionism and rock and roll.
And there's something deliciously ironic about that, isn't there? The CIA fought communism by making a communist painter wealthy (with capitalism). The abstract-expressionist movement, meant to reject ideology and politics, was used as an ideological hammer for political ends.
Today, in a world where the threat of communism no longer looms, cultural warfare seems as absurd as dripping paint on canvas. Just as capitalism is a profound global normalcy, so is abstract art. Hotels, offices, and banks all over the world now hang abstract expressionist pieces for their diverse clientele; perfectly inoffensive, the visual equivalent to elevator music.
So many dollars, minds, and lives went into the proliferation of abstract expressionism. And yet for all this collective effort, there's something profoundly and individualistically American about it.
We are all protagonists here. It's the American dream — when we see an abstract painting, we think the same words as when we see an American entrepreneur, or when a child sees an astronaut.
Something inside us says, "I could do that."
All quotes, unless otherwise noted, from "The Cultural Cold War" by Frances Stonor Saunders. Special thanks to Lucrezia Di Martino, whose thesis led to me discovering this topic.
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