By James Hibberd (EW) Hardware store giant Lowe’s has yanked ads from the ‘All-American Muslim’ series after the Florida Family Association encouraged members to email the program’s advertisers.
“The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish,” the group said about the show, a docu-soap chronicling everyday Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan that debuted last month. “Clearly this program is attempting to manipulate Americans into ignoring the threat of jihad and to influence them to believe that being concerned about the jihad threat would somehow victimize these nice people in this show.”
The organization posted a letter allegedly from a Lowe’s representative agreeing to pull its ads: “While we continue to advertise on various cable networks, including TLC, there are certain programs that do not meet Lowe’s advertising guidelines, including the show you brought to our attention. Lowe’s will no longer be advertising on that program.”
By Edward Wyatt (NY Times) Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said Saturday that part of his immigration policy would be to build an electrified fence on the country’s border with Mexico that could kill people trying to enter the country illegally.
The remarks, which came at two campaign rallies in Tennessee as part of a barnstorming bus tour across the state, drew loud cheers from crowds of several hundred people at each rally. At the second stop, in Harriman, Tenn., Mr. Cain added that he also would consider using military troops “with real guns and real bullets” on the border to stop illegal immigration.
Read the rest: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/cain-proposes-electrified-border-fence/
By Michelle Alexander (Colorlines) The U.S. Bureau of Justice estimated that as of 2008, there were over 846,000 black men in prison, making up 40.2 percent of all inmates in the system. But in a recent talk, noted author Michelle Alexander put those numbers in grave historical perspective.
“More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Alexander, an Ohio State law professor, recently told listeners at the Pasadena Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Alexander’s seminal book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, argues that prisons have become the latest form of economic and social disenfranchisement for young folks of color, particularly black men.
“Most of that increase is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color,” she said.
via Michelle Alexander: More Black Men in Prison Than Were Enslaved in 1850 – COLORLINES.
By Chasen Marshall (OCWeekly) Sure, we’ve all seen stores and restaurants play up holiday sales for the sakes of their bottom lines. But there are times when someone with a decent head on their shoulders should speak up and call a bad idea a “bad idea.”
By Chasen Marshall (OCWeekly) Sure, we’ve all seen stores and restaurants play up holiday sales for the sakes of their bottom lines. But there are times when someone with a decent head on their shoulders should speak up and call a bad idea a “bad idea.”
(Time) First, it was offensive and insensitive to build an Islamic center two blocks away from Ground Zero. Now it’s offensive and insensitive to publish photos of American Muslims peacefully praying, on or around 9/11.
The Portland Press Herald has apologized to its readers for publishing images of Muslims celebrating the end of Ramadan, which this year coincided with the 9/11 anniversary. Among the outrageous statements that the accompanying article made: that Portland-era Muslims met to mark the end of the month-long holy fast, that they made a traditional call for charity, and that children played soccer.
Noting that thousands of local Muslims marked a holy day peacefully near the anniversary of a day when a few Muslims committed a mass murder (whose victims included other Muslims) was apparently beyond the pale. The paper’s editor and publisher wrote: “We erred by at least not offering balance to the story and its prominent position on the front page.”
Here’s where we are in America, 2010: There is now one group of Americans whose peaceful religious observance cannot be noted by decent people, unless it is “balanced” by the mention of a vile crime committed in 2001 by people, with a perverted idea of the same religion, from the other side of the world.
This is a depressing statement about the state of dialogue in America. Nine years after 9/11, there is now a widespread belief that, for one religious group of law-abiding Americans, the boundaries of acceptable behavior are narrower than for everyone else. Yes, you have the right to worship. But it would be decent of you to do it somewhere else. Or on another day. Or in such a way that the rest of us don’t have to know about it.
By Andrea Christina Nill (LAProgressive) Tuesday, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released a report essentially debunking the right wing myth that immigrants steal jobs from U.S. citizen workers. In fact, the study concluded, “immigrants expand the U.S. economy’s productive capacity, stimulate investment, and promote specialization that in the long run boosts productivity.” The study conclusively states, “there is no evidence that these effects take place at the expense of jobs for workers born in the United States.”
Read the rest New Study Shows Immigrants Boost Wages And Productivity | The LA Progressive.
