I've already done a posting about how Black Alaskans feel about their governor,Sarah Palin.Today she told commentator,Glen Beck,that since Obama won "color is no longer a barrier". Well, I hope she realizes what she said should be true,but that it is not. In his case,Obama was able to overcome the color barrier & become the first black president of the U.S. But,the barrier is still up in many cases all over this country.And we can look at the state of Alaska as an example of that.In case you didn't catch my previous post on this subject,you can get the gist of it from this excerpt from The Huffington Post:
"Gwen Alexander, the president of the African-American Historical Society of Alaska, told me that Palin stated defiantly that she had no intention to hire any minority staffers. And according to Bishop Dave Thomas, senior pastor of Anchorage-based African-American church Jesus Holy Temple, the Palin administration excluded black business owners from the Alaskan oil and gas pipeline board. "We wasn't even able or allowed to go into the meetings" to seek contracts for the pipeline, Thomas told me.
Palin further alienated Alaska's black community by becoming the first Alaskan governor in recent memory to not recognize the Juneteenth celebration of the emancipation proclamation. "She doesn't hire any black people, she doesn't have any on her staff, so it's not a surprise that she doesn't support our Juneenth celebration," Alexander said."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/how-sarah-palin-has-exclu_b_134403.html
Monday, January 19, 2009
"Slumdog Millionaire" Is One Of The Best Movies That I've Seen!
This video has a review of the movie "Slumdog Millionaire". It's one of the greatest pictures that I have seen in awhile. It takes place in Mumbai & showcases the poverty-stricken hard life of a child of the slums.There's romance,violence,& intrigue in this movie.As soon as I started watching it,I couldn't tear my eyes away from it.This movie is so poignant that a charity is using it to draw attention to the plight of the real "slumdogs". Here's more on that from the Telegraph:
"Slumdog Millionaire's success is being used by charity Save the Children is being used to highlight the true misery of living in the slums of Mumbai.Children living in India's slums have little chance of going from rags to riches, unlike the star of hit film directed by Danny Boyle.
The charity is keen to highlight the difference between the real children in India's slums and Jamal Malik, played by Dev Patel, who grows up as a "slumdog" in Mumbai but goes on to win Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
Shireen Vakil Miller, Save the Children India's head of policy, said that the chance to go to school would be the equivalent of hitting the jackpot for these children.
She said: "Mumbai is a city of dreams where people think the streets are paved with gold. But many families who migrate there become trapped by poverty.
"In slums across India families live, sleep and eat in tiny shacks, working 24/7 in the desperate hope that they will be able to scrape together enough money to eat that night.
"One in four children is born into poverty in the country. For them hitting the jackpot simply means being able to go to school and get an education so that they can fight their way out of it."
More than 120 million children live in poverty across India, around twice the population of the UK."(END OF EXCERPT) Read the rest here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/4287737/Slumdog-Millionaires-success-used-by-Save-the-Children-to-highlight-misery-of-slums.html
Is Mexico Becoming"One Of The World's Biggest Security Risks"?
The focus has been on the Middle East whenever you talk about national security.But, with all of the violence from Mexico spilling over into the United States,folks are starting to worry that things are beyond control over there.In fact,some are saying that Mexico may become a bigger headache than Iraq for President Obama.Here's more from MSNBC:
"Retiring CIA chief Michael Hayden told reporters on Friday that that Mexico could rank alongside Iran as a challenge for Obama — perhaps a greater problem than Iraq.
The U.S. Justice Department said last month that Mexican gangs are the "biggest organized crime threat to the United States." National security adviser Stephen Hadley said last week that the worsening violence threatens Mexico's very democracy.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently told The New York Times he ordered additional border security plans to be drawn up this summer as kidnappings and killings spilled into the U.S.
The alarm is spreading to the private sector as well. Mexico, Latin America's second biggest economy and the United States' third biggest oil supplier, is one of the top 10 global risks for 2009 identified by the Eurasia Group, a New York-based consulting firm.
Mexico is brushing aside the U.S. concerns, with Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez-Mont saying Wednesday: "It seems inappropriate to me that you would call Mexico a security risk. There are problems in Mexico that are being dealt with, that we can continue to deal with, and that's what we are doing."
Still, Obama faces a dramatic turnaround compared with the last time a new U.S. president moved into the White House. When George W. Bush was elected in 2000, the nation of 110 million had just chosen Vicente Fox as president in its fairest election ever, had ended 71 years of one-party rule and was looking forward to a stable, democratic future."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the whole article here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28719835/
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