Prometheus 6

Yesterday I sent this message to one of the AfroSpear forum members after being invited to join:

It seems to me that AfroSpear is trying to be two things at once: a portal for Black bloggers, and an activist organization. You can't be both at the same time, at least not under the same name and organizational structure. If AfroSpear wants to be a portal, then it can't apply membership criteria to people who want to join the portal, beyond basic legal stipulations. A portal service has to be ideologically agnostic to be legitimate. On the other hand, in your efforts to form an activist organization, you have the right to apply whatever membership criteria you please. I think many people are resentful and suspicious of what you're doing because you haven't clearly distinguished between those two unrelated goals, and it appears that you're trying to define who is and isn't a legitimate Black blogger, and unilaterally appoint yourselves as representatives of the Afrosphere, which is bound to create conflicts.

I have no idea if they got the message, since their forum is closed and I refuse to sign up on principle. As long as folks aren't being intentionally disruptive or flagrantly abusive, they should be free to participate on their own terms. At any rate, I know other folks have raised these issues with them, but I don't know if they ever saw fit to do anything about it, or even care.

I heard about all that, rough outlines anyway.

If you keep your advocacy seperate from your hub activity like Truth Laid Bear does, it can work. But that doesn't seem to be what's happening.

LATER: I'm not at home right now, otherwise I'd get into it a little deeper.  

UPDATE: It looks like they're opening up the conversation .

Has anyone been to paris post-riot? How receptive is the environment there to african americans?

I haven't visited but friends who have report that things are okay with regard to African Americans. If you are worried, though, go to Lisbon and hang out in Portugal for a week or two. Check out Oporto (if you do visit Oporto then go to the Port Wine Tasting Bar and plan to spend a few hours.) You can take a train from Lisbon to there or drive. Friendly folks despite the troubles in Angola and elsewhere. Lisbon is a beautiful city. Not as beautiful as Paris but what is...

Keto:

My only overseas trip was to Japan, and that was a while ago.

Curious though, you going for business or relaxation? 

Thanks for the advice PTC.

I'm planning a winter trip to europe and the orient (mid east), and while I don't plan to relax much, per se; I don't need to have the usual weight of american-style racism, either.

Bancroft family accepts News deal: DJ executive 29 minutes ago

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Dow Jones & Co. Inc.'s controlling Bancroft family "has accepted" News Corp.'s $5 billion offer to buy the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, an executive of a Dow Jones unit said on Tuesday.

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"The Bancroft family has accepted," John Prestbo, editor and executive director of Dow Jones Indexes, told reporters on Tuesday in Chicago. Dow Jones "will be part of News Corp," he said.

Prestbo told Reuters the information came from an internal company memo.

(Reporting by Sam Nelson)

That's why I threw away the discount WSJ subscription offer I got a weeks or so back.

I don't need to have the usual weight of american-style racism, either.

The only time I have ever encountered American-style racism outside of our borders was when I encountered Americans. It was always quite subtle but it was there. I never picked it up off the table, though. I kept moving.  

"At first glance, next year’s Presidential election looks like a blowout. But it might not be. Luckily for the incumbent party, neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney will be running; indeed, the election of 2008 will be the first since 1952 without a sitting President or Vice-President on the ballot. At the moment, survey research reflects a generic public preference for a Democratic victory next year. Still, despite everything, there are nearly as many polls showing particular Republicans beating particular Democrats as vice versa. So this election could be another close one. If it is, the winner may turn out to have been chosen not on November 4, 2008, but five months earlier, on June 3rd.

Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California’s electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district. Nineteen of the fifty-three districts are represented by Republicans, but Bush carried twenty-two districts in 2004. The bottom line is that the initiative, if passed, would spot the Republican ticket something in the neighborhood of twenty electoral votes-votes that it wouldn’t get under the rules prevailing in every other sizable state in the Union."

Links, dammit, links!

Texas Reds or Louisiana Hot?

Album: Blue Scholars - The Long March
TV Download: Firefly