Textbooks of Hate

ACTION ALERT- Follow Our Lead on Friday And Say #Thank You @Twitter. Muslims and non-Muslims in New York City and across the country have been upset by the news about the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims. The news is disturbing and deeply concerning to say the least. However, we are heartened by and very appreciative of the number of people and organizations that have come forth to support us, to speak out with us and for us – and to defend civil rights for all.

Unfit for Democracy? – NYTimes.com. We Americans spout bromides about freedom. Democracy campaigners in the Middle East have been enduring unimaginable tortures as the price of their struggle — at the hands of dictators who are our allies — yet they persist. In Bahrain, former political prisoners have said that their wives were taken into the jail in front of them. And then the men were told that unless they confessed, their wives would promptly be raped. That, or more conventional tortures, usually elicited temporary confessions, yet for years or decades those activists persisted in struggling for democracy. And we…

Wow. Unbelievable. Seriously reconsidering where and how I shop. h/t Savage Minds. I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave | Mother Jones. “DON’T TAKE ANYTHING that happens to you there personally,” the woman at the local chamber of commerce says when I tell her that tomorrow I start working at Amalgamated Product Giant Shipping Worldwide Inc. She winks at me. I stare at her for a second.  “What?” I ask. “Why, is somebody going to be mean to me or something?”   She smiles. “Oh, yeah.”