[Saya]

Originally Posted by x-deviant-x

Sorry Alan, my mistake. You must have been referring to a different Velvet Revolution. I couldn’t find any reference to a Velvet Revolution taking place in 1968. The only information I could find involved a Velvet Revolution that took place in 1989 in Czechoslovakia, in revolt against the communist government.


So are you saying that’s not the same revolution that you are referring to? There is information about an event called the Prague Spring, which took place in 1968 in Czechoslovakia. I didn’t read the entire article, but it seems to have been a failed attempt to do what the Revolution in 1989 was successful in doing.

I’m not trying to pretend I know more about Marxism than you, that would be stupid. I’m just trying to understand it. So are you saying that my current interpretation is also incorrect? If it’s not a state, and it’s not a vehicle to such a state, then I’m confused.

Sure, Solumina, here are a couple just off the top of my head.
http://www.world-science.net/exclusi...2_racefrm2.htm
And, a longer article (6 pages) here which gives much more detail:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newswee...criminate.html

I could dig up more if you’d like. I haven’t had a lot of time recently to devote to all this research though, so I’m mostly pulling from bookmarks.

Saya, back then both democrats and republicans could be considered racist warmongers. President Eisenhower, a republican, was one of the first who pushed for civil rights. He pushed to desegregate the military, but thought that desegregation of schools should be left up to the individual states to decide. He did however send in military forces to ensure that black students were allowed into schools. Prior to the 60's most blacks voted republican, not democrat, and MLK never officially endorsed any candidate because he believed strongly that it wasn't right. JLK pulled strings to get him released from jail, most likely in return for his vote. He also had MLK's phones tapped because it was suspected that MLK was in bed with the communists - something that neither democrats nor republicans liked.

JFK on the other hand, voted against the civil rights bill, until he realized that blacks meant votes. The KKK was always dominated by members of the democratic party far more than republicans ever were, and people like Jerry Fallwell would actually more likely be considered dixiecrats than republicans. Are you familiar with dixiecrats? They were a short-lived political party formed by Strom Thurmond - a very outspoken racist DEMOCRAT, who felt that democrats weren't being racist enough. (Funny thing, he had a black daughter who he paid all his life to keep her mouth shut about it, which she did until he died). Dixiecrats became republicans, but only in name, their views remained the same. Growing up in the south, democrats were always viewed as being far more racist and bible thumping than republicans, and they were usually the ones with far more money and power, which is not surprising, they had their churches behind them paying for their racist shit spewing. Reagan, one of the most hated presidents on the left today, was a democrat before becoming a republican, and it's my speculation that he only switched to republican to get the popular vote. (He's also the reason that monopoly laws are no longer enforced, unless congress decides they should be enforced, which they do selectively).

And yes, I believe that everyone should be free to read and say whatever they want and draw their own conclusions. That is why the first amendment exists. Would you rather people be forced to read only what the government allows them to read? All information, if intended to be taken as fact, should be thoroughly vetted, double and triple checked for truth and accuracy, before ever being published UNLESS, and only unless, its intended to be fiction and nothing but fiction. Why would you want to publish information as fact without it first being thoroughly researched? Opinions aren't fact.

So what you're saying is that because MLK was black, he was Republican? Nice to group everyone together despite his own insistance that he wasn't. And yeah, I know what a dixiecrat is, and after the civil rights movement, they decided to move to the Republican party. The reason Republicans get away with so much racism now is because they like to cater to those same people. I never said the Democrats weren't ever racist, but MLK thought they could be reformed, which put him a bit at odds with the more radical civil rights activists, who never trusted either party, particularly after the rise of the Black Power movement.

And no, no information has to be vetted to be published as "non fiction". For example, there's this book called The Pagan Christ that lists sources, but those sources have long been debunked, and if you read those books, they do not list sources except for each other, they claim that the Christ story is identical to the story of Horus but list no Egyptologian source, nothing. The original books were frauds, are still being sourced, and continue to inspire conspiracy theories today.

There's also the issue that even if information was vetted at the time, it doesn't mean that science or religious studies or whatever have since found it to be untrue and outdated. You insist Joseph Campbell is a wonderful resource for religious studies, but nobody studies him or takes him seriously anymore because we know the monomyth doesn't exist, except movie producers who perhaps find his model to mean success. In his time he was taken more seriously, but we've all moved on since. Should old information be discontinued? Should we no longer read about Freud? There's nothing wrong with reading that kind of thing, but most people don't have the education to realize that what they're reading is outdated.

I didn't even notice this one until I went back.

Uhm, Saya, Race is not a social construct, it is a biological construct. While it's true that today most people have a smattering of multiple races in their ancestry to some degree, your nation or city of origin does not determine your race, it only determines - at most - your cultural background. The reason that most people can't tell the difference between a Japanese person and someone from Okinawa is because they're both Japanese. Persians and Arabs are both Arabs, for the most part at least. And the holocaust does not make all Jews the same race, though it did most definitely thin out the gene pool.

There are very significant differences between races, that go far deeper than the color of one's hair or skin. Bone structure, muscular structure, susceptibility to various illnesses, etc. If memory serves, I think its a basic 4 races that make up the human SPECIES, which is homo sapien. Yes, genetically there are far more similarities than differences, but the differences that do exist are still significant none the less.

There is more genetic diversity within a race than between them. And ethnic groups are a better way of understanding genetic diseases than race; for example Newfoundland has been a closed gene pool for such a long time we have different risks for genetic diseases than other white people have. We're not a different race though because we look the same. Metis people often look white, but they are not. Africa and Asia, which we usually think of homogenous (didn't you know that Okinawans are the largest minority group in Japan? Or ever hear of the Ainu?) have within themselves thousands of different of ethnic groups. What we define as "race" we define as white people who see all those who appear different as Other, and we break them down as we see them, we don't ask, we just assume.

And as we go on to find out, babies just stare a bit longer at black people if they haven't seen black people before. So take your racism and stick it up your ass.