Humans on display in Paris

PARIS -- It's a queasy experience, viewing chained tribal dancers do a white man's bidding, or African women stripped and photographed to feed European curiosity.

Until just a few generations ago, this is how most white people learned about those with skin of a different shade. A new Paris exhibit examines how for centuries, colonizers plucked villagers from Africa, the Americas or the South Pacific and put them on display half a world away. The demeaning tradition shaped racist attitudes that linger today.

Curator Lilian Thuram, a former soccer star and now anti-racism advocate, hopes the exhibit at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris makes people question deep-held beliefs about the "other."

Read more:http://picturebugs.blogspot.com/2011/11/museum-puts-humans-on-display.html

Listen to a story:http://www.blogtalkradio.com/centralvalley/2011/11/27/black-slaveson-being-a-jockey

Pimps, Johns, Prostitutes, Police in Spain

BY NICK SNELLING

In 2003, Spain’s Institute of National Statistics (INE) showed that just over one in four Spanish men under the age of 49 had experienced sex with a prostitute – with one in fifteen having done so within the previous year.  This was backed up by Maribel Montano of the ruling PSOE party who claimed in 2007 that: ‘every day 1.5 million men pay for sex’ in Spain.  In fact, there are an estimated 300,000 prostitutes working in Spain possibly turning over around 40 billion Euros per year, which roughly equates to the country’s education budget.  For good reason, Spain is sometimes dubbed the ‘Brothel of Europe’.

Certainly, the openness and extent of prostitution can be a surprise to north Europeans who still cling to the myth of Spain as a prim and proper, old-fashioned, hard line, Catholic country.  This notion is swiftly dispelled as you drive at night along any main road out of a large town or city.  In the outskirts, and often close to industrial estates, you will come across brightly lit buildings that normally have a garish neon sign pronouncing ‘Club’.  These are brothels in all but name and house, sometimes, up to a hundred or more prostitutes.  Called Clubes de Alterne (socialising clubs) by the Spanish, their location and nature are openly known and tolerated by the police, authorities and local population.

The clubs, of course, vary hugely and span the whole spectrum of prostitution from its lowest depths to a brothel system that is reasonably fair and transparent within a deeply emotive industry.  At their worst, the Clubes de Alterne are controlled by criminal gangs who have trafficked women from Third World countries on the promise of conventional work.  Deprived of their passports and physically intimidated, the women are forced to work as prostitutes, whilst earning their bosses huge sums.  Indeed, the International Labour Organisation in 2005 calculated that a forced sex worker would earn 67,200 Euros a year in an industrialised country.

Stop child sex slavery

The child sex trade is a huge problem in the US and abroad. No country is immune. In the US kids are often lured via the internet or corrupted neighborhood kids and adults. Girls and boys are bullied or lured with promises of love, money or other things. Usually the kids who are targeted are from broken homes and demonstrate emotional problems. The child may have already suffered issues of abandonment, neglect, low self-esteem, and physical and/or emotional abuse. The child may be in the foster care system or even disabled. She or he may be looking for food, money, self-worth, and shelter.
What the child finds is more violence and abuse when the man takes the child to a hotel room where he/she is beaten, sedated and confused with drugs and raped.
Then child is then sold via the Internet, transported to various areas around the country and the world, and sold to other pedophiles.
This is sex slavery and it even happens to adults, especially people who audition to be models.
Of note, churches often send their pedophile priests to foreign countries, like Africa, where they can escape American laws and continue to interact with children under the guise of priest.
I even heard of one country that incarcerated an American in a dungeon-like prison. The American was surprised to find he could buy a child in the prison to be his slave. He bought a child.
We must protect our children from these abusers of children.

Berkeley Protests Race Gender Bias

(CNN) -- Campus Republicans at the University of California Berkeley have cooked up a storm of controversy with their plans for a bake sale.

But it's not your everyday collegiate fundraiser they've got in mind. They've developed a sliding scale where the price of the cookie or brownie depends on your gender and the color of your skin.

During the sale, scheduled for Tuesday, baked goods will be sold to white men for $2.00, Asian men for $1.50, Latino men for $1.00, black men for $0.75 and Native American men for $0.25. All women will get $0.25 off those prices.

"The pricing structure is there to bring attention, to cause people to get a little upset," Campus Republican President Shawn Lewis, who planned the event, told CNN-affiliate KGO. "But it's really there to cause people to think more critically about what this kind of policy would do in university admissions."

Lewis says it's a way to make a statement about pending legislation that would let the California universities consider race or national origin during the admission process.

But the young Republicans have been on the receiving end of a fierce backlash. Reaction has been so negative they've been forced to cancel their customary lunchtime tabling duties, according to KGO.

Lewis told CNN's Don Lemon that they expected a certain amount of opposition but not the level of outrage they experienced.

"We didn't expect the volume, the amount of response that we got," Lewis said. "In the first few hours, hundreds of posts on our Facebook page. And the tone of some of the responses -- we expected people to be upset. We didn't expect personal threats to be made. They were implicit and explicit threats made to the organizers of the event, from burning down the table to throwing our baked goods at us and other kinds of physical threats."

Tim Wise, author of the book "White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son," calls the bake sale a "sarcastic and rather smarmy slap at people of color."

"There are a lot of ways to make a point about your disagreement with affirmative action," Wise told Lemon Saturday night.

"I get the joke," he continued. "How very original. It's been done for 15 years. The point that I think needs to be made ... is that by the time anyone steps on a college campus ... there has already been 12- to 13-years of institutionalized affirmative action for white folks, that is to say, racially embedded inequality, which has benefited those of us who are white. And it's only at the point of college admissions that these folks seem to get concerned with color consciousness."

Lewis insists, however, that Campus Republicans will go ahead with their bake sale and are committed to their controversial pricing structure.

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COMMENT: The irony is that Asians have for years out-performed whites in placement testing. So, more Asians would have gone to their first-choice schools, if not for racial bias which limited the Asian admissions. 

Blacks have been excluded from quality education at all grade levels for over 200 years. The civil rights movement was able to change laws in the sixties, but racial hatred and discrimination persisted - and continues to this present day. Blacks will need at least three generations of education security to reduce the damage done by slavery, systematic exclusion and institutionalized racism. I feel it will take until 2055 to eliminate the imposed educational achievement gap and special race considerations and assurances will be needed for approximately fifty more years.

As we get closer to 2055, whites will feel all of the damage is gone and feel jealous that Blacks have an "educational advantage." Learning, education and cultural development goes deep - cytoplasmic. It can not be rushed.  Many Blacks are still caught in the web on the 1950's. Their cytoplasm is still untouched. Reversing the evils of the past will produce benefits in the future for all Americans and is necessary. As you enjoy the TV show "Pan Am" today, remember those glorious Pan Am days depict a time when Black women we not allowed to work as a stewardess, Black males were allowed to be porters or skycaps. I imagine Black women were allowed to be janitors. Blacks were forced into the lower class and, for most Blacks, education was not a reality. White universities would not accept more than a few Blacks as students and most Blacks were educated at segregated institutions. Yes, this was America. Don't forget US history just because you are at Berkeley.  

Just as current adults are leaving a debt for our children's children, the adults of early American created a huge debt for you and your children to pay off. No one wants to pay their debts. But, they must be paid, and once paid, all is well in the US again.


Example: Consider the life if racism and obstruction incurred by First-lady Michelle Obama: Luckily, she was smart and succeeded. http://womensissues.about.com/od/influentialwomen/p/MichelleObama.htm
Consider her generation 1, her children are generation 2,and their children will be generation 3.

CALIFORNIA MEXICANS HELP ABOLISH SLAVERY

Every year, as we approach the 5th of May, stores and companies begin to promote Cinco de Mayo in their storefronts and through their advertisements. There are office parties, full of festive decorations, and children at school might have the opportunity to take a swing at a piñata. This splendor is to celebrate a date of significance to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans alike.


While this is not Mexican Independence Day (that is on September 16th), it is a date pivotal to the history of Mexico. In 1861, Mexico was bankrupt, and had outstanding debts to Britain, Spain, France and the U.S. While the Monroe Doctrine warned European nations to avoid intrusion into the affairs of the Americas -- France, England and Spain signed the Covenant of London, where they agreed to send troops to collect on those debts. England and Spain came to peaceful agreements with Mexico, while France prepared to attack.

On May 5th, 1862, the French attacked the city of Puebla, but under the leadership of Texas-born Mexican General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin, the Mexican Army was triumphant in the battle. It brought the country together and helped create a sense of unity.

Interestingly, the first celebrations of Cinco de Mayo started one year later in California, which had recently become part of the United States. According to a paper published last year by the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture, as the French continued to attack Mexico, beginning with a subsequent attack on Puebla just one year after the initial attack, Cinco de Mayo brought together the people of California. The date brought together native-born Californios (individuals from the region prior to annexing by the U.S.); recent immigrants from Mexico, as well as Central and South-America; and the new generation of English-speaking American children. Since 1863, Californians have celebrated the fifth of May, and now people across the U.S. recognize the occasion as well. Yet it is virtually ignored in Mexico. From its inception, Cinco de Mayo has been a day for those with Mexican heritage in our country to celebrate our roots, marked with patriotic speeches and celebrations, displaying both U.S. and Mexican flags.

Another important fact to consider is how this battle played into U.S. history, as the Civil War waged on. France, and other European nations, were concerned about the rapid expansion of the United States, and had an interest in staving off U.S. expansion towards the South. Seeing the young nation split into two less powerful and less threatening nations was an ideal vision of Napoleon III, then ruler of France.

While the Covenant of London was being finalized, General Robert E. Lee was winning battles for the Confederacy. Had the French been victorious in that original Battle of Puebla on May 5th, 1862, they could have continued their influence across the Mexican nation, and would have likely supported the Confederacy in its battle against Union forces. Instead, the French had to regroup their forces and concentrate on their war with Mexico, which was much more united just one year after the first attack. Of course, just fourteen months after the Battle of Puebla, the U.S. Civil War would see a major battle when Union forces claimed victory at Gettysburg and effectively brought a close to the Civil War.

As we attend Cinco de Mayo celebrations, let us take a moment to remember the history behind this event-- significant for its impact on Mexico, its impact on the U.S., and for bringing together those with ties to both countries.

Rep. Joe Baca