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Poetry: The Art of Using Language
Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm.
Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and older, present wherever religion is present, possibly—under some definitions—the primal and primary form of languages themselves.
Origins and Purpose of Poetry
Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose.
It may use condensed or compressed form to convey emotion or ideas to the reader's or listener's mind or ear; it may also use devices such as assonance and repetition to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poems frequently rely for their effect on imagery, word association, and the musical qualities of the language used. The interactive layering of all these effects to generate meaning is what marks poetry.
Because of its nature of emphasising linguistic form rather than using language purely for its content, poetry is notoriously difficult to translate from one language into another: a possible exception to this might be the Hebrew Psalms, where the beauty is found more in the balance of ideas than in specific vocabulary. In most poetry, it is the connotations and the "baggage" that words carry (the weight of words) that are most important. These shades and nuances of meaning can be difficult to interpret and can cause different readers to "hear" a particular piece of poetry differently. While there are reasonable interpretations, there can never be a definitive interpretation.
Nature of poetry
Poetry can be differentiated most of the time from prose, which is language meant to convey meaning in a more expansive and less condensed way, frequently using more complete logical or narrative structures than poetry does. This does not necessarily imply that poetry is illogical, but rather that poetry is often created from the need to escape the logical, as well as expressing feelings and other expressions in a tight, condensed manner. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic Negative Capability. A further complication is that prose poetry combines the characteristics of poetry with the superficial appearance of prose, such as in Robert Frost's poem, "Home Burial." Other forms include narrative poetry and dramatic poetry, both of which are used to tell stories and so resemble novels and plays. However, both these forms of poetry use the specific features of verse composition to make these stories more memorable or to enhance them in some way.
What is generally accepted as "great" poetry is debatable in many cases. "Great" poetry usually follows the characteristics listed above, but it is also set apart by its complexity and sophistication. "Great" poetry generally captures images vividly and in an original, refreshing way, while weaving together an intricate combination of elements like theme tension, complex emotion, and profound reflective thought. For examples of what is considered "great" poetry, visit the Pulitzer prize and Nobel prize sections for poetry.
The Greek verb ποιεω [poiéo (= I make or create)], gave rise to three words: ποιητης [poiet?s (= the one who creates)], ποιησις [poíesis (= the act of creation)] and ποιημα [poíema (= the thing created)]. From these we get three English words: poet (the creator), poesy (the creation) and poem (the created). A poet is therefore one who creates and poetry is what the poet creates. The underlying concept of the poet as creator is not uncommon. For example, in Anglo-Saxon a poet is a scop (shaper or maker) and in Scots makar.
Sound in poetry
Perhaps the most vital element of sound in poetry is rhythm. Often the rhythm of each line is arranged in a particular meter. Different types of meter played key roles in Classical, Early European, Eastern and Modern poetry. In the case of free verse, the rhythm of lines is often organized into looser units of cadence.
Poetry in English and other modern European languages often uses rhyme. Rhyme at the end of lines is the basis of a number of common poetic forms, such as ballads, sonnets and rhyming couplets. However, the use of rhyme is not universal. Much modern poetry, for example, avoids traditional rhyme schemes. Furthermore, Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme. In fact, rhyme did not enter European poetry at all until the High Middle Ages, when it was adopted from the Arabic language. The Arabs have always used rhymes extensively, most notably in their long, rhyming qasidas. Some classical poetry forms, such as Venpa of the Tamil language, had rigid grammars (to the point that they could be expressed as a context-free grammar), which ensured a rhythm.
Alliteration played a key role in structuring early Germanic and English forms of poetry (called alliterative verse), akin to the role of rhyme in later European poetry. The alliterative patterns of early Germanic poetry and the rhyme schemes of Modern European poetry alike both include meter as a key part of their structure, which determines when the listener expects instances of rhyme or alliteration to occur. In this sense, both alliteration and rhyme, when used in poetic structures, help to emphasise and define a rhythmic pattern. By contrast, the chief device of Biblical poetry in ancient Hebrew was parallelism, a rhetorical structure in which successive lines reflected each other in grammatical structure, sound structure, notional content, or all three; a verse form that lent itself to antiphonal or call- and-response performance.
In addition to the forms of rhyme, alliteration and rhythm that structure much poetry, sound plays a more subtle role in even free verse poetry in creating pleasing, varied patterns and emphasising or sometimes even illustrating semantic elements of the poem. Devices such as alliteration, assonance, consonance, dissonance and internal rhyme are among the ways poets use sound. Euphony refers to the musical, flowing quality of words arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way.
Poetry and Form
Compared with prose, poetry depends less on the linguistic units of sentences and paragraphs, and more on units of organisation that are purely poetic. The typical structural elements are the line, couplet, strophe, stanza, and verse paragraph.
Lines may be self-contained units of sense, as in the well-known lines from William Shakespeare's Hamlet:
"To be, or not to be: that is the question."
Alternatively a line may end in mid-phrase or sentence:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
this linguistic unit is completed in the next line,
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
This technique is called enjambment, and is used to create a sense of expectation in the reader and/or to add a dynamic to the movement of the verse.
In many instances, the effectiveness of a poem derives from the tension between the use of linguistic and formal units. With the advent of printing, poets gained greater control over the visual presentation of their work. As a result, the use of these formal elements, and of the white space they help create, became an important part of the poet's toolbox. Modernist poetry tends to take this to an extreme, with the placement of individual lines or groups of lines on the page forming an integral part of the poem's composition. In its most extreme form, this leads to the writing of concrete poetry.
Poetry and rhetoric
Rhetorical devices such as simile and metaphor are frequently used in poetry. Indeed, Aristotle wrote in his Poetics that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor". However, particularly since the rise of Modernism, some poets have opted for reduced use of these devices, preferring rather to attempt the direct presentation of things and experiences. Other 20th-century poets, however, particularly the surrealists, have pushed rhetorical devices to their limits, making frequent use of catchphrases.
History of poetry
Poetry as an art form predates literacy. In preliterate societies, poetry was frequently employed as a means of recording oral history, storytelling (epic poetry), genealogy, law and other forms of expression or knowledge that modern societies might expect to be handled in prose. The Ramayana, a Sanskrit epic which includes poetry, was probably written in the 3rd century BCE in a language described by William Jones as "more perfect than Latin, more copious than Greek and more exquisitely refined than either." Poetry is also often closely identified with liturgy in these societies, as the formal nature of poetry makes it easier to remember priestly incantations or prophecies. The greater part of the world's sacred scriptures are made up of poetry rather than prose.
The use of verse to transmit cultural information continues today. Many English speaking–Americans know that "in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue". An alphabet song teaches the names and order of the letters of the alphabet; another jingle states the lengths and names of the months in the Gregorian calendar. Preliterate societies, lacking the means to write down important cultural information, use similar methods to preserve it.
Some writers believe that poetry has its origins in song. Most of the characteristics that distinguish it from other forms of utterance—rhythm, rhyme, compression, intensity of feeling, the use of refrains—appear to have come about from efforts to fit words to musical forms. However, in the European tradition the earliest surviving poems, the Homeric and Hesiodic epics, identify themselves as poems to be recited or chanted to a musical accompaniment rather than as pure song. Another interpretation, developed from 20th-century studies of living Montenegran epic reciters by Milman Parry and others, is that rhythm, refrains, and kennings are essentially paratactic devices that enable the reciter to reconstruct the poem from memory.
In preliterate societies, all these forms of poetry were composed for, and sometimes during, performance. As such, there was a certain degree of fluidity to the exact wording of poems, given this could change from one performance or performer to another. The introduction of writing tended to fix the content of a poem to the version that happened to be written down and survive. Written composition also meant that poets began to compose not for an audience that was sitting in front of them but for an absent reader. Later, the invention of printing tended to accelerate these trends. Poets were now writing more for the eye than for the ear.
The development of literacy gave rise to more personal, shorter poems intended to be sung. These are called lyrics, which derives from the Greek lura or lyre, the instrument that was used to accompany the performance of Greek lyrics from about the seventh century BCE onward. The Greek's practice of singing hymns in large choruses gave rise in the sixth century BCE to dramatic verse, and to the practice of writing poetic plays for performance in their theatres.
In more recent times, the introduction of electronic media and the rise of the poetry reading have led to a resurgence of performance poetry and have resulted in a situation where poetry for the eye and poetry for the ear coexist, sometimes in the same poem. The late 20th-century rise of the singer-songwriter and Rap culture and the increase in popularity of Slam poetry have led to a renewed debate as to the nature of poetry that can be crudely characterised as a split between the academic and popular views. As of 2005, this debate is ongoing with no immediate prospect of a resolution.
Love poems proliferate now, in weblogs and personal pages, as a new way of expression and liberty of hearts, "I have won many female relations with this valid resource", has said a contemporaneus writer called Federic P. Sabeloteur.
More About Poetry
Poems by Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou – The Civil Rights Activist
Poems By Phillis Wheatley
Rabindranath Tagore – Biography
About SEAN-O-VISTA
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News (april 2018)
25 April 2018, Mr. Andrei Naumovich and Ms. Elena Anisim, deputies of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus, will take part in the meeting of the Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Political Affairs and Democracy which takes place in Strasbourg (the French Republic).
On April 11, bilateral consultations are held in Ankara between the Standing Commission on International Affairs of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Grand National Assembly of the Republic of Turkey.
From 10 to 12 April 2018 in Ankara (the Republic of Turkey) will be held the consultations on international cooperation between the Standing Commission on International Affairs of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus and Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Grand National Assembly of the Republic of Turkey.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Posts Tagged 'propaganda'
SPLC — Another "Honorary" President?
In the aftermath of the recent scandals that rocked the Southern Poverty Law Center this past March, in which SPLC founder Morris Dees was fired after decades of alleged sexual misconduct and long-time president Richard Cohen quit (or jumped ship) after taking full responsibility for ignoring Dees' alleged conduct for all those years and also for perpetuating a corporate culture in which minorities were never promoted to senior positions, it became clear that some serious public relations work was required before the donors started asking questions and expressing doubts.
Enter SPLC "Interim President" Karen Baynes-Dunning.
Karen Baynes-Dunning
For the PR-savvy fundraisers at the SPLC, Ms. Baynes-Dunning represents the perfect stopgap measure. According to her company bio, Ms. Baynes-Dunning is a lawyer, a former juvenile court judge, and has 25 year's worth of high-level experience in the non-profit sector.
Most importantly, Ms. Baynes-Dunning is not an old white male. She serves, from a public relations standpoint, as the ultimate "Anti-Dees." She combines the best qualifications of her two predecessors without the negatives: Richard Cohen, who is a lawyer, but white, and genuine Civil Rights icon, the late Julian Bond, who was black, but not a lawyer.
While Julian Bond was a figurehead president, as we shall explore shortly, President Cohen was the real brains behind the SPLC for years and genuinely does bear full responsibility for the company's policies. After Morris Dees was unceremoniously ejected from the company he created, several current and former staffers publicly stated that Dees' alleged inappropriate behavior was a well-known in-house secret, including a March 21, 2019 article in the New Yorker by staff writer Bob Moser.
Richard Cohen and the SPLC Board of Directors had to be aware of these claims, but did nothing for decades.
In 1979, Dees' second wife, Maureene Buck Dees, who was seeking a divorce from Dees, filed court papers that accused him of various sexual infidelities and what many would consider "peculiarities" unfit for publication here. Maureene Dees also accused Morris of slipping into her 13-year-old daughter's bedroom one night to present the girl with a vibrator.
(A somewhat choppy mechanical transcript of the document can be found on the Internet Archive site here, though several more legible iterations can be found online at websites of varying credibility. The content of the texts are identical)
Again, Cohen and the Board had to be aware of these allegations, but did nothing. The fact that Mr. Dees recently divorced his fifth wife might have suggested that the man has "issues" when dealing with women.
Cohen and the Board turned a blind eye because Dees, who told the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper that he hadn't tried a case in over a decade and had not participated in the day-to-day running of the SPLC for years, was a fundraising superstar.
Richard Cohen kept Dees on the payroll at his full $350,000 salary for years for doing little more than making the occasional phone call to big donors. The Board of Directors approved. And the whole time, the SPLC, with hundreds of millions of donor-dollars in the bank, continued to send out dire fundraising letters like clockwork.
It seems far more likely that Karen Baynes-Dunning who had only been serving on the company's Board of Directors for about a year before being promoted to "interim president," is destined to serve as a mere token, in the mold of the SPLC's first president, Julian Bond.
After opening the SPLC in 1971, millionaire mail-order magnate Morris Dees realized that raising money for the company was his first priority. Dees wrote in his 1991 autobiography:
"Before we could ask for money, we had to establish credibility. We needed a prominent figure whose presence would announce the center's values and promise. Julian Bond seemed the perfect choice.
When I told [Bond] about our hopes and plans, he agreed to serve as president of the Law Center, a largely honorary position" (Dees, A Season for Justice, p. 132).
"Honorary" President Bond spent his entire administration in his hometown of Atlanta, a good three-hour drive from SPLC headquarters in Montgomery. Internal documents held in the Julian Bond Papers archive at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, show that Bond's primary presidential function was to sign fundraising letters crafted by Dees in Bond's name.
"And two letters, drafted in your name…"
In return, the "president" of the company received a monthly "fee" of $1,000, as opposed to an actual salary. President Bond had no more to do with the running of the SPLC than Michael Jordan had with the running of Haynes. They were both simply spokesmodels for the brands.
"Your fee for September, 1971 is enclosed."
Karen Baynes-Dunning serves much the same function. As a black woman, she can act to deflect some of the heat of the recent scandals while giving lie to the serious charges that the revered civil rights institution doesn't promote people of color.
We at Watching the Watchdogs have reported on this most incongruous charge and have posted photo galleries of the SPLC's all-white Executive Suite every year for nearly a decade, which include transcripts of the 1994 week-long exposé of Dees and the SPLC in the Montgomery Advertiser that originally broke the news of "No blacks in Center's leadership."
Ironically, or perhaps "strategically" is a better term, Interim President Baynes-Dunning's first official article for the SPLC deals with some of the same damning charges currently leveled at the company, racism and misogyny. In this instance, though, Baynes-Dunning turned her righteous anger toward the US Treasury Department's recent decision to to delay the release of a new $20 bill featuring an image of famed abolitionist, Harriet Tubman.
The choice of topics could not have been safer and its (unverifiable) claim that the decision by the Trump Administration "clearly seems to be undergirded by racism and misogyny" is guaranteed to agitate the almighty donor base.
Any comment including the Bogie-Man-in-Chief, even blatant speculation, is guaranteed to bring in the donor-dollars, and that is the primary function of all SPLC presidents, "honorary" and otherwise.
"These policies are the result of the bigotry and hate toward women and people of color that has seeped into mainstream thinking and policy development."
Well, if anyone should know about policies that result in bigotry toward women and people of color, it would have to be the SPLC. They have an unbroken track record of 47 years behind them of doing just that.
The odds are very strong that this press release was written by a company PR hack under Baynes-Dunning's name. It includes several safe, boilerplate fundraising tropes, such as "For nearly 50 years, the SPLC has been working tirelessly to develop "underground railroads" for children, youth, families, and communities…"
The original release of the article also included a saccharine "reach for the stars" quote at the end, allegedly attributed to Harriet Tubman, which was obviously anachronistic to anyone speaking from the 19th century. Tubman biographer, Dr. Kate Clifford Larson, has traced the origins of the smarmy quote back to 2007, nearly a century after Tubman's death.
The bogus quote has since been trimmed from the article currently residing on the SPLC website.
Baynes-Dunning's company bio also indicates that she is the president of Baynes-Dunning Consulting, LLC, of Greenville, SC, and, in the age of instant Internet communication, has even less need to set foot in Alabama than Julian Bond did.
Additionally, the Montgomery Advertiser articles (linked above) exposed the SPLC's Board of Directors, on which Baynes-Dunning had served only for a year, following the death of board member emeritus, Julian Bond, as a rubber-stamp, populated with Morris Dees' cronies. One of them, Dees' divorce lawyer, Howard Mandell, who was mentioned in the 1994 exposé, is still on the board today.
In February, 1972, Julian Bond admitted in a letter to North Carolina politician Martha Clampitt McKay that "It's no consolation, I'm sure, but it's not a real Board, in that it has no decision making ability, and is purely advisory."
"…it's not a real Board…"
The Montgomery Advertiser exposé came to the same conclusion 22 years later.
Considering the Board turned a blind eye to Dees' alleged sexual harassment activities for decades, it's unlikely that an "interim president" plucked from their ranks will become a permanent fixture around company headquarters.
If so, if the most junior member of the Board possesses all of the attributes needed to run a half-billion-dollar corporation, in the manner of a Richard Cohen, why bother with the "interim" status? Why not appoint Karen Baynes-Dunning to the presidency of the SPLC and be done with it?
More likely, Ms. Baynes-Dunning's temporary status is more of a sign of a second "honorary" president, to keep the seat filled until the heat blows over and a new, more experienced president can be selected.
Last November, we put forth a proposition that Messrs. Dees and Cohen had accomplished their missions and should step down "at the top of their game" and pass the torch to a new generation, one that more resembled the people the SPLC purports to help. We suggested the new president of the SPLC should be long-time company director, Lecia Brooks.
Lecia Brooks, who is black and a lesbian, had been with the company for 15 years and was the only SPLC staffer to hold TWO concurrent directorships, for more than a decade, though she had NEVER been listed among the company's highest paid executives.
Since the SPLC presidency is more about fundraising than law, (the lack of a JD was no impediment to the Bond Administration), Brooks, who had been SPLC Outreach Director for a decade was a perfect choice. She was certainly well known to the Almighty Donors.
About a week before the defenestration of Morris Dees in March, Lecia Brooks disappeared from the SPLC website and was all but airbrushed from the archives. She later turned up at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), also of Montgomery. No explanation of her departure was given, and no word of thanks for her years of service.
Last week we noticed that our Ms. Brooks had quietly returned to the SPLC, probably in April, in the new role of "Chief Workplace Transformation Officer," which was no doubt created in response to the Dees/Cohen debacle.
At that time, we surmised that the role of a "transformation officer" certainly implies a sense of a definite transformational beginning and ending. Either the SPLC reforms its discriminatory and predatory practices or it does not. It sure sounds "interim" to us. Surely someone of Ms. Brooks' experience would not give up a new job at the EJI to return to the fold for a temporary gig.
On June 4, 2019, (yesterday, as of this writing), Lecia Brooks gave testimony before the US House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which seems a bit odd for a "Workplace Transformation Officer" but exactly mirrors the kind of spurious "testimony' President Richard Cohen has been giving Congress for years.
The "testimony" includes all of the standard SPLC propaganda claims about "hate groups" and "Alt-Right extremists," and could have been written for Cohen months ago and simply updated for Brooks. We have been debunking those claims for nearly a decade now, and we once again warn of the dangers of this kind of unvetted fundraising propaganda entering the Congressional Record as "fact." The claims do not hold up to even the most rudimentary examination.
While we are not in the prediction business, it sure looks like Lecia Brooks is being groomed for the post of president of the Southern Poverty Law Center. She checks off a lot of boxes, public relations-wise, is a "name" familiar to the donors, in the mold of Julian Bond, and most importantly, she can be relied upon to do what is asked of her.
You heard it here first, folks.
Tags:fundraising, hate groups, Julian Bond, Karen Baynes-Dunning, Lecia Brooks, Morris Dees, propaganda, Richard Cohen, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC
Posted in 2. Public Relations Techniques | Leave a Comment »
How Fake News is Made
First off, a statement of fact: Donald Trump is a lightning rod. People either really, really love him or really, really despise him. There just aren't that many folks in the middle. Knowing this, companies, institutions and media organizations on BOTH sides of the political aisle exploit these passionate extremes to great profit.
Donald Trump says and does a lot of [insert adjective(s) here] things that get him a lot of attention, both positive and negative. He's very good at this and really doesn't need any help at it. This has not stopped the Hate Industry (or Trump supporters) from fabricating stories about the man so they could cash in on the outrage.
In early 2017, just weeks after his inauguration, a wave of bomb threats were made against Jewish community centers across the US. The Hate Industry and their media stooges swore that this was irrefutable evidence that white supremacists and anti-Semites "were emboldened" by Trump's election, until it was discovered that the real culprits were a Black man attempting to frame his white ex-girlfriend and an Israeli teenage hacker. Whoosh! The Memory Hole opened and swallowed the story. Nothing to see here.
The Ku Klux Klan was "emboldened" to spray paint "Vote Trump" on the side of a Black church in Jackson, Mississippi, before burning it down, and neo-Nazi arsonists boldly painted "Heil Trump!" on the side of a church in Bloomington, Indiana, before setting it ablaze. Heinous hate crimes that could be traced irrefutably back to President Trump, except for the annoying facts that the first church fire was set by a Black parishioner and the second by its openly gay organist.
Do you recall the avalanche of corrections and retractions that filled the media in the following days? Us neither.
The excellent website, fakehatecrimes.org, has logged over a hundred hate crime hoaxes committed since Election Day, 2016, many of which were explicitly claimed to be Trump-related, until they weren't.
And the beat goes on. Just last week many "legitimate" media sources breathlessly regurgitated a "report" by two University of Virginia academics who claimed that they had proof that teasing and bullying in middle schools across Virginia had "risen by 9%" in 2017, specifically in areas that had voted for Donald Trump. Did any of the media experts actually examine the report before reprinting the claims? Not so much.
And really, why would they? Even if the story turned out to be inaccurate it's still solid gold click bait. And when these stories are disproved, they simply go away. No messy cleanup required.
Francis L. Huang and Dewey G. Cornell based their claims on a set of three surveys they have administered to roughly 155,000 seventh- and eighth-grade students across Virginia in 2013, 2015 and 2017, that asks the students their opinions about bullying and teasing in their schools. It's a worthy effort and the data seems to be as good as any these kinds of instruments produce. It's worth noting that the results are agnostic, with no sign whatsoever of the terms Obama, Trump, Republican or Democrat to be found.
The problem lies in the way in which Huang and Cornell interpreted the data in their subsequent 2018 report, "School Teasing and Bullying After the Presidential Election." In that report, the pair claimed an increase in responses to the statement: "Students in this school are teased or put down because of their race or ethnicity" in the 2017 survey over the previous one. So far, so good.
The duo then take it one step farther by claiming that they have discovered a correlation between the increase in responses and those schools residing in Republican districts. Here is where things start to break down.
Survey results were broken down by eight separate regions across the Commonwealth and numbered 1 through 8. While the percentages of students who answered yes to the "teased because of their race or ethnicity" prompt did increase significantly, the data shows that this is a trend that began during the Obama Administration and shows sizable increases between 2013 and 2015. Where is that "report"?
According to Huang and Cornell's own data, teasing in the Shenandoah Valley jumped by 63% in President Obama's second term. Statewide, teasing increased by 35% under POTUS 44. Where's the outrage over that?
In other news, outright bullying, a separate measure from mere teasing, rocketed under President Obama and actually dropped under President Trump, according to Cornell and Huang.
Affirmative responses to the prompts "I have been bullied," "I have been cyber bullied," and "I have bullied others," exploded statewide between 2013 and 2015, by 150%, 167% and an unbelievable 220% respectively!
Obviously, it's pretty easy to cherry-pick data points to put any kind of slant you want into your "report." Remember the adage about "lies, damned lies, and statistics"? And as we have stated numerous times on this blog, ANY TIME you see a percent symbol in the media, run, do not walk, to see the source documents. And after you've done that, follow the money. Who is going to profit from unsubstantiated claims and what consequences do they face if proven wrong?
This isn't rocket science, folks. Anyone with an Internet connection can do it, providing they want to get at the truth.
Other inconsistencies not addressed in the Huang and Cornell piece include the facts that the three surveys are not identical (some questions are universal to all three, but not all), the 2017 survey includes sixth-graders for the first time, and that the 2017 survey was administered between February and April, when Donald Trump had been in office for less than 100 days, versus Barack Obama's eight year administration.
If you're going to blame Trump for teasing then you're going to have to blame Obama as well.
Lastly, what conclusions did Huang and Cornell actually reach in their study? Despite the hundreds of headlines proclaiming "Trump Causes Teasing!," the authors themselves concede:
"These findings are correlational and cannot establish a causal relationship but invite the need for further study."
"The phrase "teasing and bullying" is used broadly in recognition that there are various forms of peer aggression and that student reports do not necessarily conform to an academic definition of bullying."
"We did not have measures of the quality and intensity of peer aggression or its impact on victims."
"It is obviously difficult to demonstrate a causal link between statements by a public figure and schoolyard bullying."
Nobody, friend or foe, can deny that President Donald Trump says a lot of stupid, irrational and sometimes irresponsible things. There is more than enough controversy to go around without cooking up fake news like this malarkey.
Trust, but verify. It's what used to be known as "journalism" in the old days.
Tags:Barack Obama, bullying, Dewey Cornell, Donald Trump, Francis Huang, propaganda, statistics, teasing
Posted in 5. Damned Lies and Statistics | Leave a Comment »
"The SPLC is Lying to Us"
We came across this excellent YouTube video not long ago. The video's creator, who identifies herself as Annette Rivers and an experienced fact checker, uses great imagery and well reasoned dialog to expose how the Southern Poverty Law Center (and by extension, other major Hate Industry players) manipulates the "facts" for fundraising purposes.
Ms. Rivers manages to sum up in nine minutes what we at Watching the Watchdogs have been trying to explain for nine years.
Thank you, Ms. Rivers, for showing us how fact checking should be done in the 21st century. Well done!
Tags:Annette Rivers, fundraising, hate incidents, media, propaganda, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC
SPLC — White "Hate Groups" Declining
Did some number crunching today, using the impeccably accurate data produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
According to the "experts," white "hate groups" have declined an average of 44% since 2011.
Black and Black Muslim "hate groups," on the other hand, have increased by 44% since 2011.
As we noted a few months ago, Black and Black Muslim groups are the largest single category on the SPLC's lucrative "Hate Map" fundraising tool.
Odd that you don't read more about that statistic in the media, no?
When you subtract the 191 "Statewide" phantom groups the SPLC added to this year's map, those "groups" that the company cannot provide a known city or town location for (they're out there, friends. The SPLC says so), the numbers become even more ludicrous:
Christian Identity — 1 phantom = 20
KKK – 30 phantoms = 100
Neo-Confederates — 7 phantoms = 36
Neo-Nazis — 45 phantoms = 44
Racisct Skinheads — 61 phantoms = 17 (Seriously?)
White Nationalists — 30 phantoms = 70
Black and Black Muslims — 5 phantoms = 196
These are the SPLC's numbers, folks. They come right from the SPLC's own website. That they are utter garbage, do not blame us.
Tags:black hate groups, hate groups, Hate Map, propaganda, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC
SPLC — Whither Mark Potok?
It is a dark day at Watching the Watchdogs. A short while ago we were reading an article about a black musician who was fighting racism by befriending white nationalists when we read the following words: "Mark Potok, an expert on extremism formerly with the Southern Poverty Law Center."
FORMERLY with the SPLC? WHEN did that happen? HOW could that happen? And why wasn't it a major news item? For millions of people, Mark Potok has been the public face and voice of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the brains behind the insanely lucrative annual "Hate Map" fundraising tool for nearly two decades.
It would nearly impossible to estimate how many millions of donor-dollars Mr. Potok has brought into SPLC coffers over the years.
And now he's gone? Without so much as a "So long, Mark. Thanks for everything!" from Morris Dees or Richard Cohen?
We immediately turned to our favorite sleuthing tool, the Internet Archives' cantankerous Wayback Machine to see if we could pinpoint Mr. Potok's untimely departure.
As of February 20, 2017, Mr. Potok was still listed as a "Senior Fellow" on the SPLC website.
As of now, Mr. Potok's biography page, if you can find it, refers to him as "Former Employee." No "Former Senior Fellow," or "Senior Fellow Emeritus," as SPLC co-founder Joe Levin and the late SPLC celebrity spokesman Julian Bond got upon their retirements.
Potok was still listed on the "Leadership" circle page on the site in February.
Today, his picture has been removed from the page with all of the subtlety of an old-time Pravda airbrushing.
In fact, Mr. Potok's bylines on the hundreds of hit pieces he wrote for the company now refer to him as "Former Employee."
Potok's Facebook page has one cryptic note from March: "Left Job at Southern Poverty Law Center." No mention of "retiring" or "exploring new opportunities." Not even a "wants to spend more time with his family."
Twenty years of faithful, profitable service and the man is kicked out without so much as a thank you or a Fare-thee-well. What happened?
Apparently Mr. Potok has his own website now, where he is offering his "expertise" on the open market. "I'm an expert on the radical right who spent 20 years at the SPLC."
While there is no denying that Mr. Potok was a master craftsman of fear-mongering and the smear while at the SPLC, it seems unlikely that he will find another gig that pays anything near the six-digit salary Dees and Cohen have paid him for years.
Potok's website includes several testimonials regarding his career, but the only one from the SPLC comes from retiree Joe Levin. There is no sign of Dees or Cohen to be found anywhere.
What a sad end to a brilliant career. Here was a man who could find unfettered access to every form of media and every leading news outlet with the snap of his fingers. Cut down in his prime at the very dawn of the company's Golden Era.
With Donald Trump in the White House and Nazi-wannabees holding torchlight processions in Charlottesville, Mr. Potok's best material ever would have all but written itself. The money is pouring into the SPLC so fast these days that there will no doubt be fat raises for all of the white millionaire proprietors.
Just last week alone, Mo Dees found a way to cash in on the death of Charlottesville protester Heather Heyer. Every tragedy has a silver lining at the SPLC.
It only goes to show the extent of the SPLC's transformation from "civil rights organization" to "advocacy group." There are tens of millions of donor-dollars at stake and it's quite possible that veteran Mark Potok is no longer the "face" of the company that will best appeal to fickle Millennial donors. Maybe he was back-stabbed by ambitious co-workers or somehow crossed his overlords.
For now, we'll just have to wait until somebody spills the beans. If anyone knows the story, and that includes Mr. Potok himself, please let us know.
There is an old German term, Schadenfreude, which translates more-or-less to "joy or happiness felt at someone else's misfortune." Let the record show that we at Watching the Watchdogs take no pleasure at Mark Potok's departure. While we have spent much of the past decade chronicling his various fear and fundraising campaigns, as a life-long student of communication, rhetoric, persuasion and propaganda, you just have to admire the man's mastery of the arts.
Though we'll never agree on much, unless Mr. Potok has a tell-all book up his sleeve, we sincerely tip our hat to a true legend of the art of persuasion.
The man deserved better.
Even if your former colleagues have abandoned you, Mark Potok, we offer you a heartfelt "Fare-thee-well" and we look forward to writing about your work in the future.
"I think a lot of people feel, 'Oh, groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, they find, you know, the two hundred Nazis running around the country, they build them up into great big groups, they make a big deal about it and then ask for your money,' right? In other words, it's kind of a scam. You hype up this little tiny threat into something scary, uh, and then go and try to make money off of it."
Mark Potok speaking to Bill Holiday in 2008, Track 2.
Tags:Heidi Beirich, Mark Potok, Morris Dees, persuasion, PR, propaganda, Richard Cohen, Ryan Lenz, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC
Posted in 2. Public Relations Techniques | 3 Comments »
SPLC — Cashing in on Charlottesville
While the violence and death at last week's "Unite the Right" riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, was a national tragedy and a source of horror for most Americans, it follows as surely as the night follows day that the Southern Poverty Law Center would find a way to make money off it.
It was only a few weeks ago, in June, when the SPLC was writhing under some of the most negative media coverage it had possibly ever seen, in the wake of the GuideStar debacle. Reliable media allies such as Politico and the Wall Street Journal were openly criticizing GuideStar, a leading rating agency of non-profit organizations, for adding the SPLC's spurious "hate group" label to dozens of its entries.
[The Politico article is one of the best exposés of the SPLC written in decades and well worth a read.]
Then came Charlottesville. The violent idiots on both sides of the fighting were right out of Central Casting and a godsend for the SPLC. Images of torchlight parades across the University of Virginia campus were tailor-made for the endless barrage of fundraising tweets, press releases, and, no doubt, fundraising letters. The cash has been pouring in ever since. The company will probably have to open several more off-shore bank accounts to house it all.
All of that paled in comparison to the tragedy of Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer's death after being struck by a car that careered into a crowd on Saturday afternoon. Video footage of the incident gives an impression that the act may possibly have been intentional, and the driver of the car, James Fields, Jr., who was identified marching with white nationalists earlier in the day, is currently being held on charges of second-degree murder and several other counts.
Once Heyer's name was released on the following day she was immediately canonized by the media and the Left, for their own financial and political purposes, but none of them could hold a candle to the Southern Poverty Law Center when it comes to monetizing murder.
Less than a week after Heyer's death, the SPLC announced that it was "honoring Heather Heyer at Civil Rights Memorial Center."
"Like the civil rights martyrs whose names are inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial, Heather took a stand against hate and bigotry and made the ultimate sacrifice," said Lecia Brooks, director of outreach for the SPLC, which built and maintains the memorial."
Will Heyer's name be immortalized on the SPLC's "Martyr's Monument," a black granite disc designed by Vietnam Veterans Memorial artist Maya Lin? Well no, that monument cost the perpetually cash-strapped SPLC $5,000,000 in 1989 (nearly $10 million in today's dollars.)
Instead, the SPLC is going to honor Heyer on its less-static and infinitely more economical "Wall of Tolerance." Longtime Watching the Watchdogs readers may recall our 2016 investigation of the Wall of Tolerance fundraising scam. We found that, like the lucrative "Stand Strong Against Hate" map scam that preceded it, the Wall of Tolerance was little more than a fundraising tool designed to recruit new donors.
While invoking the names of the "civil rights martyrs," the Wall of Tolerance scam is built solidly upon the age-old persuasion technique of "reciprocity," in which an organization sends out free gifts to potential donors in the expectation that the recipients will feel obliged to make a donation. Many readers may remember receiving packs of return address labels from various veteran's groups. It's a simple, cost-effective method that has been around for decades.
In the Wall of Tolerance scam, prospective donors receive a suitable-for-framing certificate from the SPLC thanking them for joining the ranks of the civil rights martyrs by supporting the company in its never-ending "fight against hate." In addition to the certificate, the recipient will be memorialized forever on the "Wall of Tolerance," a 20-by-40-foot Jumbotron screen at SPLC headquarters, where hundreds of thousands of names drift autumn-leaf-like across the screen "as the gentle rain from heaven."
Recipients, honored to be included among such auspicious company, feel obligated to send along a little something in appreciation. Others can add their names simply by passing along their personal contact information to the Fundraising Department.
As our report noted, at least one honoree, Marcus Epstein, had the dual honor of having his own page on the SPLC website that denounced him as a racist. Oops!
SOFII, the Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration, was hugely impressed by the elegant simplicity of the Wall of Tolerance:
SOFII's view
The Southern Poverty Law Center, who launched this campaign, is a hugely impressive organisation with a long and well-deserved reputation for effective donor development.
Though we don't have the results, we think we can presume that this direct mail capital appeal must have worked really very well.
This is one of the most moving and long-lasting donor involvement campaigns in the USA and represents some of the best that the direct marketer's art can produce.
It cost the SPLC nothing to add Heather Heyer's name to the Wall o' Tolerance Jumbotron but the tax-free donor-dollars will be rolling in by the truckload for weeks and months.
Incidentally, Lecia Brooks, who is quoted above in the Heyer press release, holds two concurrent Directorships at the SPLC. One of the few African-Americans in the SPLC hierarchy, Double-Director Brooks has never been named among the company's highest paid executives.
One wonders what Heather Heyer would have made of that?
Tags:Charlottesville, fund raising, fundraising, Heather Heyer, Lecia Brooks, propaganda, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, Stand Strong Against Hate, Unite the Right, Wall of Tolerance
Posted in 2. Public Relations Techniques, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
SPLC — The "Anti-Muslim" Scam
The Southern Poverty Law Center released its latest "Hate Map" fundraising tool a couple of weeks ago and its "Senior Fellow" Mark Potok has been making the usual media rounds and making the usual empty claims.
The "Hate Map" is a highly lucrative fundraising tool that claims to track the number of SPLC-designated (there is no legal definition for the term) "hate groups" in the country for the previous year. As such, the most recent 2017 map refers to the U.S. in 2016.
Here are some of the highlights from the latest map, according to Mr. Potok:
We'll be breaking down some of the other "hate group" claims in future posts, but let's have a closer look at the big news for 2017:
"Anti-Muslim Groups have exploded by 197%!!"
Ah, Mr. Potok does love his percent sign. It makes the most mundane figures pop with alarm and that brings in the donor dollars. Mr. Potok has been breathlessly announcing that anti-Muslim groups have "nearly tripled" in the past year, by growing from 34 alleged groups to 101, but shies away from the actual details in his media interviews.
We're not shy at Watching the Watchdogs. We'll be happy to flip the flat rock and see what scurries away.
The vast majority of Mr. Potok's alleged explosion, (69% in Potokian terms) comes from one single source. In 2015, Potok added one single instance of something called "ACT for America,"from Virginia Beach, Va., to his Hate Map.
For 2016, Potok counted ACT 45 times! A Potokian increase of 4,400%!!
The group itself has been around since 2007, though Potok only discovered it in 2015. Even more amazing is that the ACT website boasts of more than 1,000 chapters nationwide. That's a huge discrepancy that Mr. Potok seems eager to avoid.
Another ten groups arrived for the first time in 2016 in the form of "The Soldiers of Odin," an apparent American offshoot of a Finnish anti-Muslim outfit founded in 2015. Of the ten chapters claimed by Potok he can only put a known city or town to two. The other 80% is part of the 191 "groups" Mr. Potok cannot locate on any map, including his own. Instead, he papers them over with a catch-all label of "statewide."
We know all 191 of those groups are really, really out there because Mark Potok tells us so.
Most of the remaining "groups" are a rag-tag collection of one-off, one-man websites, something Potok claims he doesn't count, except when he does, which is frequently, such as the "Sultan Knish: A blog by Daniel Greenfield" "group,""Islamthreat.com" and a couple of yahoos peddling pork-tainted anti-Muslim ammunition online.
It is with great sadness that we witness the passing of our all time favorite Potokian "hate group," Casa d'Ice Signs, which was actually an Italian restaurant and bar in a K-Mart strip mall on the outskirts of Pittsburgh.
It's not that we agreed with the crude messages that owner Bill Balsamico would put on the marquee sign outside his bar each week, but Casa d'Ice was the ultimate poster child for just how far Mr. Potok would go to stretch his definition of "hate group."
The good news, according to Daniel Greenfield, is that Balsamico sold the business and retired, undefeated.
In all fairness to Mr. Potok, though, he never claimed that Balsamico was guilty of anything but "wrong thoughts." As the stalwart Senior Fellow has proclaimed on man occasions:
"Our criteria for a hate group, first of all, have nothing to do with criminality, or violence, or any kind of guess we're making about 'this group could be dangerous.' It's strictly ideological."
And so, there you have it. The suits at the SPLC decided that anti-Muslim "hate groups" were going to be the featured flavor for 2017 and instructed Mr. Potok to show "explosive growth" thereof for fundraising purposes and overnight one "group" becomes 45.
Some may remember that last year Potok swore that "the Klan had more than doubled in size!!" in 2015 by claiming it had grown from 72 chapter to 190 overnight. Potok failed to mention that he himself had slashed his Klan count from 163 to 72 the year before.
This year, as the graphic above notes, the Invisible Empire shrank by 32% to a mere 130 chapters, 30 of which Potok cannot find. And as usual, nobody in the media called him on it.
The graphic does include one truly astounding number, besides the spurious "197%" malarkey. Mr. Potok claims there are 193 Black "hate groups" in the country today, far outnumbering the KKK and every other category, respectively, and he knows where every one of those chapters are but two.
But that's a topic for our next post.
Tags:anti-muslim, fundraising, Hate Map, Mark Potok, propaganda, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC
Posted in 5. Damned Lies and Statistics | 2 Comments »
SPLC — "200 Post-Election Hate Incidents"
UPDATE — As noted below, on November 11, 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center claimed on its website that it had "had counted 201 incidents of election-related harassment and intimidation across the country as of Friday, November 11."
On November 14, Watching the Watchdogs noted that the SPLC's "count" included "reports" from a web page it had set up where people could report alleged incidents anonymously, with no verification whatsoever.
The very next day, on November 15, the SPLC updated its "count" to 437, this time adding the interesting note that:
"These incidents, aside from news reports, are largely anecdotal."
This disclaimer is conveniently absent from the November 11 post.
Was the disclaimer a result of our reporting or simply coincidence? You be the judge.
The SPLC followed up its "anecdotal" admission with the claim that "The SPLC did follow up with a majority of user submissions in an effort to confirm reports."
Really? Okay. Prove it. Show us your proof, SPLC. You didn't simply include "a majority" of the alleged claims that no one but you have seen in your count; you counted ALL of them. If you've confirmed any of them, just show your proof on your website. Your word alone isn't good enough.
It's not like you lack publicity. In fact, it will be interesting to see how many media outlets regurgitating your "437 incidents" claim will include your "they're largely anecdotal" disclaimer.
You can read our original post below:
[Nov. 14] In the wake of Donald Trump's surprise victory in the November 8 election, the Southern Poverty Law Center has been ramping up the fear-mongering rhetoric, and, right on cue, the media has been regurgitating the SPLC's claims without performing even the most rudimentary fact checks.
Dozens upon dozens of mainstream and local newspapers, magazines and blogs have been quoting an unvetted USA Today claim that: "Since Election Day, there have been more than 200 incidents of hateful harassment and intimidation across the country, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center."
The claim has been picked up and repeated by such publications as Fortune, Time and the New York Times, all of whom should know better. As with most SPLC fundraising copy, it makes for lurid reading which is guaranteed to agitate certain sectors of the population, (donors), and, as with most SPLC fundraising copy, even the slightest investigation of the company's claims ring hollow.
According to the breathless "Hatewatch" special report on the SPLC website the company has counted "Over 200 Incidents of Hateful Harassment and Intimidation Since Election Day." And how did the SPLC come up with these "incidents"? "By pulling from news reports, social media, and direct submissions at the Southern Poverty Law Center's website."
Let's parse that out a little, shall we? Sadly, there have been a number of very real incidents reported in the media, which, as of this writing, are still under investigation. It is sincerely hoped that the perpetrators of these mindless acts are identified, charged and punished.
Until the police have finished their work on these cases, it is worth noting that some of them may be hoaxes perpetrated in the name of "advocacy" as we have reported in the past, here, here and here. If this turns out to be the case in any instance, it is even more sincerely hoped that the perpetrators of these mindless acts are identified, charged and punished. History has shown, however, that hate crime hoaxers are given far more leeway than your average idiot.
So what we're left with, after the ongoing investigations listed in the media are social media accounts, meaning that anyone on the planet can submit whatever they want, and even more stringent, the "direct submissions" to the SPLC website.
If you click the "direct submissions" link above you will be taken to an SPLC web page where you can report any instances of allegedly election-related "harassment," which the SPLC conveniently fails to define. How do we know these accounts are rock-solid true? Because the SPLC insists that you include your first name, the date of the alleged incident and check off one of several locations for the event, such as school, place of worship, business, etc.
That's all it takes, sports fans. An anonymous post from anyone on the planet and a new "election-related hate incident" is born.
Ironically, when the SPLC was running its spurious "Erasing Hate" campaign against symbols of the Confederacy last year if you wanted to report a school named for Robert E. Lee or a Stonewall Jackson street in your town, (all information the SPLC could easily get through Google or government websites), you had to give your full name and email address.
Of course, the point of that exercise was to get your contact information into the company's fundraising apparatus.
Granted, even this form doesn't provide any conclusive identification, but it's a minor step up from absolutely anonymous "reporting."
The company even has the chutzpah to cite its previous garbage statistics on the same web page, the so-called "Trump Effect" report it issued last April to even larger unvetted regurgitation that claimed that "hate incidents" were spiking in grade schools because of the negativity in the US Presidential debates.
That "report," which the company itself labeled as "not scientific" because the "survey" underpinning it was not distributed randomly and the company had no idea if the people responding to it were even teachers to begin with.
"Our survey of approximately 2,000 K-12 teachers was not scientific. Our email subscribers and those who visit our website are not a random sample of teachers nationally, and those who chose to respond to our survey are likely to be those who are most concerned about the impact of the presidential campaign on their students and schools."
Even more telling was the fact that same "report" claimed that Teaching Tolerance, the wing of the SPLC that created the "survey," reaches more than 400,000 teachers a month, and yet the entire "report" was built on only 2,000 anonymous responses. Really?
Either 398,000 teachers ignored the email survey or the SPLC cherry-picked 2,000 reliable operatives who would give the "right" answers that would allow the company to agitate its mostly-Progressive donor base by invoking Trump's name while narrowly skirting the strict IRS regulations that prohibit all 501(c)(3) non-profits from endorsing or denouncing political candidates.
And once again, the media and the Blogosphere cannot regurgitate SPLC fundraising tripe fast enough, even when the company itself comes out and says that their data is crap.
One last point, to the SPLC's credit, it was entirely truthful when it reported "over 200 hateful incidents." According to the website, the actual count was 201.
God bless America, people.
Tags:fund raising, fundraising, media, propaganda, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC
Posted in 4. Lies | Leave a Comment »
Tags:fund raising, fundraising, hate groups, Hate Map, PR, propaganda, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC
Posted in 2. Public Relations Techniques, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
SPLC — Great "Wall of Tolerance" Scam
Last October, we first noted that one of the Southern Poverty Law Center's most cynical fundraising gimmicks, its long-running "Stand Strong Against Hate" map was conspicuously absent from the company's web site.
The gimmick was elegant in its simplicity. By simply clicking a link on the SPLC web site you could demonstrate your commitment to "stand strong against hate," and to "stop the racist backlash from infecting your community."
In return for nothing more than your name, address and email address, you fought the good fight by becoming a digital pinhead on an interactive map. By moving the cursor over your pinhead your first name and last initial would pop up magically.
"Bob J., Chicago"
How exactly this "stood up to hate" was never explained. In the meantime, your personal contact information went into the SPLC's massive database, where it would be added to the company's mailing list and turned over to their growing team of professional fundraisers.
As mentioned, it was a simple but effective gag, and no doubt brought in a lot of new donors and donor dollars, but the company seems to have retired it in 2015.
Today we stumbled across a parallel SPLC fundraising ploy that is every bit as simplistic as the "Stand Strong Against Hate" ploy, but takes the game to a whole higher level.
In this morning's RSS roundup of articles about the SPLC was a press release written by one of those "exclusive" public relations outfits that target individuals, usually professionals, offering to polish up and pad out their resumés, in exchange for an exclusive fee.
This particular gentleman is an attorney, practicing law somewhere Down South. We're going to change his name here to protect his identity, but the final line of his press release reads:
"In 2005, Mr. Smith was awarded the Wall of Tolerance Certificate by the Southern Poverty Law Center."
We are embarrassed to admit that, even after "tracking" and studying all things SPLC for the past seven years, we had never heard of the company's "Wall of Tolerance" and had to learn more about it.
Our first thought, quite naturally, was that, like most nonprofit fundraising ventures, which might feature a "Golden Circle" or "Leadership Club" tier for their top donors, the SPLC was simply recognizing Mr. Smith for handing over the big bucks year after year.
But we were wrong…
According to the SPLC website:
"The Wall of Tolerance digitally displays the names of more than half a million people who have pledged to take a stand against hate and work for justice and tolerance in their daily lives. Their names flow continuously down the 20-by-40 foot wall within the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Alabama."
In order to get your name on this auspicious digital billboard you must first swear a solemn oath:
By placing my name on the Wall of Tolerance, I pledge to take a stand against hate, injustice and intolerance. I will work in my daily life for justice, equality and human rights – the ideals for which the Civil Rights martyrs died.
Half a million people have taken this pledge to honor "the ideals for which the Civil Rights martyrs died," or did they?
While searching for information about the Wall of Tolerance we came across this blog post on the Democratic Underground website in which Mr. Joshua Allenberg expressed surprise to have received the same certificate of appreciation and had his name added to the wall, even though he'd never heard of the award and wasn't even sure when, or even if, he had made a contribution to the SPLC. If he had, it wasn't much.
At any rate, he never took a pledge, solemn or otherwise. Maybe getting on the wall is easier than it seems.
I just got an envelope in the mail addressed from author Toni Morrison. Enclosed was a form letter, a solicitation for a donation, and a Certificate of Appreciation. Now I typically donate 20 bucks here and there from organizations who send me mail, and I kind of lose track. So, what I got is:
Certificate of Appreciation
presented to
Joshua Allenberg
In recognition of an important contribution to the ongoing fight against hatred and intolerance in America. The name shown above will be added to the Wall of Tolerance in Montgomery, Alabama, to provide inspiration to all of those who choose to take a stand against hatred.
Thank you for taking a stand.
Morris Dees, Founder
Does anybody know where this came from?
The answer was swift in coming when several other posters figured out that the SPLC got Mr. Allenberg's name from a mailing list purchased from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Mr. Allenberg's certificate was signed by SPLC founder Morris Dees and author Toni Morrison. Earlier iterations of the document were co-signed by Rosa Parks.
The certificates are accompanied by several sheets of return address stickers bearing the honoree's name and address, one of the oldest fundraising gimmicks in the book, but still quite effective among that segment of the population that still sends a lot of snail mail, i.e., the elderly.
Directly below Mr. Allenberg's web post was a piece by SOFII, the Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration, an organization that rates and reviews fundraising pitches. Here are a few of the more telling comments about the Wall of Tolerance campaign:
"Some of the best that the direct marketer's art can produce." And why not, the man behind this PR campaign is none other than Morris Dees, who made millions in the direct mail-order business in the 1960s before opening the SPLC.
In 1998, Dees was inducted into the Direct Marketing Association's "Hall of Fame," not for his civil rights work, but rather for his prowess in direct mail fundraising. Mr. Dees is an undisputed master of the sales pitch.
We have to admit that it's impressive to see and definitely as fine an example of a master-level fundraising tool as we've ever seen, as this short Youtube video demonstrates. You gotta admire the craftsmanship:
While the video notes how people can add their names directly to the wall from SPLC's civil rights theme park, no mention is made of whether one's contact information is a prerequisite for the honor, but if SPLC history is any guide, you can make book on it.
Another direct mail fundraising industry web site, DonorPowerBlog.com had this to say about the Wall of Tolerance "donor acquisition kit":
"Can you overdo recognition of a donor? I don't think so. There's a donor acquisition kit out there that tries."
One final example of just how cynical this marketing ploy is was demonstrated by one other web posting in our search results. Marcus Epstein posted on the VDARE website that he too had been honored by the SPLC for his "important contribution in the ongoing fight against hatred and intolerance in America"
Not only does the SPLC consider the VDARE website so heinous that it deserves its own page on the company's website, but Mr. Epstein himself, that great benefactor and paragon in the "ongoing fight against hatred" was found worthy of an entire article by the SPLC's own Heidi Beirich, for allegedly being an arch-racist, and yet he is eminently qualified to be enshrined for all time on the company's Wall of Tolerance.
Apparently anyone with a postal address can receive a "Wall of Tolerance" certificate and get their name on the electronic billboard in the hope that they will make that crucial first donation.
So much for pledging to support the "ideals for which the Civil Rights martyrs died."
What an exclusive honor.
Tags:fund raising, fundraising, Heidi Beirich, Morris Dees, press release, propaganda, public relations, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, This is one of the most moving and long-lasting donor involvement campaigns in the USA and represents some of the best that the direct marketer's art can produce.This is one of the most moving and l
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text:
iCommunity
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Connecting to our Indic identity using language
Lakshmi Kaul
Published on : 21 Sep, 2020 , 4:47 am
The last time I enjoyed my dearest niece Aadhya's sweet company in person was when I was summoned by her to watch her Christmas play at nursery. I proudly occupied the front seat to make sure I don't miss even a tiny bit of the group's performance, particularly hers.
For three-year-olds, these performances are a lot of work – for the teachers and for the children themselves. Long sentences must be memorised, words spoken in near perfect diction and then for them to perform together as a team. If you've watched nursery plays, there are the teachers prompting and guiding the children, encouraging them when there are missed acts or forgotten lines.
Simply learnt
Language in a growing child, develops almost naturally. External stimuli lead them to learn words, form meanings and associations and long sentences are spoken, seemingly effortlessly. According to research, language is simply learnt. There is no evidence that they will learn their own ethnic language. Dr Bruce Perry, a language expert says: "We are born with the capacity to make 40 sounds and our genetics allows our brain to make associations between sounds and objects, actions, or ideas. The combination of these capabilities allows the creation of language.
"Sounds come to have meaning. The babbling sound "ma – ma – ma" of the infant becomes mama, and then mother. In the first years of life children listen, practice, and learn. The amusing sounds of a young toddler practicing language (in seemingly meaningless chatter) is really their modelling of the rhythm, tone, volume, and non-verbal expressions they see in us."
Native tongue
From broken, half-formed words to confident big words, I've watched Aadhya's and before that saw my daughter's vocabulary develop as she grew up. Our mother tongue is Kashmiri, so Aadhya's parents took it upon themselves to teach her the language. I benefited in the process as I am not a very confident Kashmiri speaker.
As a Kashmiri parent, I worried about not being able to pass on the native language speaking ability to my daughter barring a few words here and there. At four years old, Aadhya is able to communicate in Kashmiri, Hindi and English and knows a few prayers and shlokas in Sanskrit.
Learning the Sanskrit language is increasingly gaining popularity, particularly in the West. A number of Indian diasporic communities are signing up to Sanskrit classes, particularly as many courses are now being taught in the e-learning format. Sanskrit is an Indian classical language, which was the primary vehicle of intellectual and literary expression in India for thousands of years.
Perfected language
In fact if you are in London, you might have come across St. James Independent School, that made Sanskrit a compulsory subject for its junior division since it helped students grasp math, science and other languages better.
According to Warwick Jessup, Head of the Sanskrit department at the school, explains: "This is the most perfect and logical language in the world, the only one that is not named after the people who speak it. Indeed the word itself means 'perfected language."
As I watched many friends take a keen interest in learning Sanskrit, I discovered how Kashmiri was so deeply connected to Sanskrit language; much of literature and scriptures that form a reference point of Kashmir's early history were written in Sanskrit.
I came across Dr Rishi Handa, who teaches Sanskrit at St. James Senior Boys' school in London and also started doing Zoom classes for anyone interested in learning the language. I asked him why Sanskrit and who exactly needs it in the UK?
He said: "Many have a limited understanding that the only value school subjects have is in their overt contribution to gaining employment because of their factual content. The reality is that this is not how subjects work. Not only does one forget the content, most subjects have little relevance in that way.
"What is important is the cognitive skills that a subject develops and Sanskrit does this par excellence. It sharpens logic, reasoning, awareness, attention, and expression, to say the least. This is true for adults too; one of my adult students is a computer programmer who said to me that since studying Sanskrit, his approach to coding has become more lateral."
Curious, I wanted to obviously know who exactly learnt Sanskrit with Dr Handa.
He revealed: "The St James Schools' Sanskrit students are of all backgrounds – white, black, brown, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist etc. I'm often asked by surprised Hindus as to why Muslims take Sanskrit. This question is rooted in the misunderstanding that Sanskrit is a religious language, which is why many modern Hindus don't give Sanskrit any value.
"It's sad that this is so while there are non-Hindus who absolutely love Sanskrit; many of my school students hold it to be their favourite subject. The idea that it is a religious language is rooted in the Colonialist narrative of the binary pair that is the sacred and the profane, the religious and the secular. When such divisions didn't exist in pre-modern Bharat, then how can one classify what is religious and what is secular?"
Rebel move
As a school that made Sanskrit compulsory, this might be seen as a rebel move. But Dr Handa explained: "At St James, we teach the three sister languages – Latin, Greek and Sanskrit – with Sanskrit being one of the reasons for the birth of St James school in 1975. Incidentally, I'm the first Indian/Hindu teacher of Sanskrit there as until 2013, Sanskrit was only taught by Westerners who are devoted to the language. An ethos of advaita (non-duality) and Sanskrit are two of the school's key pillars.
"The students don't have any prejudice towards Sanskrit that many Hindus do and see it as a classical language like they do Latin and Greek. Sanskrit gives the industrious students a challenge and they love the rigour and beauty of it."
I feel that the United Kingdom suffers from a gross misrepresentation of everything Kashmir, as one notices propagandists fan their political agendas. Amidst all this noise, the cultural heritage of us, ethnic Kashmiris suffers.
Dr Shonaleeka Kaul, a cultural historian wrote in one of her articles:"Perhaps one of the most glaring misrepresentations of Kashmir is the theory that it was historically isolated from the rest of India and therefore developed a cultural insularity and uniqueness. It has also been assumed retrospectively that Kashmiri culture, including the tradition of history-writing, was influenced by West Asia and Central Asia.
"However, research shows that all cultural markers in early Kashmir from at least the 5th century BCE onwards for another two thousand years – material culture, textual representations, foreign accounts, inscriptions, coins, language, art, religion, philosophy – attest overwhelmingly to Kashmir's Indic and Sanskritic identity and character."
Fragile Threads
Indic and ethnic language becomes a most important connector for two generations to communicate. It is in this important context, I came across the work being done by Pragnya Kumar. She runs a project called Kachey Dhage, which translates to fragile threads.
Describing the project, Pragnya explains: "Communication gaps are like fragile threads which, if not paid attention to, may break and stop vital communication. These communication barriers may also lead to low self-esteem and even mental health issues in later lives.
"I designed a narrative art project to explore unsaid stories of young people from Southeast Asian cultural background addressing the need of communication between generations. Through this project I wanted to start a creative research to understand the intergenerational cultural communication barriers in young people, specifically from Southeast Asian descent.
"The prime focus of this online project was to introduce narrative art as tools to boost well-being of the participants. The project helped me understand the perspective of both generation and the communication gaps that needs to be expressed in order to gain respect between generations and cultures. It also helped me with my research into the effectiveness of using visual arts and storytelling as a tool to improve mental health and wellbeing."
Lakshmi Kaul is the London-based UK Head & Representative at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and an active Indian diaspora campaigner. In this regular Talking Point column for 'iGlobal', she will focus on issues that deserve spotlighting within the Global Indian community, referencing her personal experiences.
© iGlobal News 2021
www.iglobalnews.com


text:
Jones is an unincorporated community in Morehouse Parish, Louisiana, United States. The community is located along U.S. Route 165,  north-northeast of Bonita. Jones has a post office with ZIP code 71250.

References

Unincorporated communities in Morehouse Parish, Louisiana
Unincorporated communities in Louisiana

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The OSR is republished every two years and the latest edition is for 2016-2017. A hard copy can be purchased from the World Sailing Secretariat or you can dowload it either in full or by category and view the interpretations of the World Sailing Special Regulations Sub-Committee below.
For information about archive editions of the OSR please contact the World Sailing Secretariat.


text:
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/**
 * Log facility for SagePay, files at "var/log/SagePaySuite/*"
 *
 * @category   Ebizmarts
 * @package    Ebizmarts_SagePaySuite
 * @author     Ebizmarts <info@ebizmarts.com>
 */

class Sage_Log
{

    public static function log($message, $level = null, $file = '')
    {
        Ebizmarts_SagePaySuite_Log::w($message, $level, $file);
    }

    public static function logException(Exception $e)
    {
        Ebizmarts_SagePaySuite_Log::we($e);
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


ii. Set your Instagram account to "PUBLIC", upload your loving photos and share your love story with us!
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text:
Mark Cannizzaro
Mess with Texans could cost Kubiak his job
Social Links for Mark Cannizzaro
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Isiah Pacheco's late siblings tragic deaths spur his drive for greatness
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Damar Hamlin's recovery weaved bond between rival Bills, Bengals
Two years ago, Texans owner Bob McNair and general manager Rick Smith made a pragmatic decision to stay the course with the team's head coach, maintaining continuity and not succumbing to impatient public pressure to fire Gary Kubiak.
Now, with the 2-4 Texans one of most shocking disappointments in the NFL, McNair and Smith find themselves at a critical crossroads regarding what they should do (or not do) about Kubiak.
The Texans, after a 2-0 start, have been outscored 72-16 in their past two games, including a 38-13 home loss last week to the Rams, a 10-point underdog. After a Week 3 blowout loss to the Ravens, they blew a 20-3 second-half lead to Seattle and lost 23-20 three weeks ago. Dating back to last season, in the Texans' last seven regular-season losses they have either blown leads or been blown out.
On Sunday, the reeling team plays the 6-0 Chiefs in Kansas City. Good luck with that.
Franchise quarterback Matt Schaub has come unglued, prompting a classless portion of the Houston fan base to harass him at his home and cheer when he injured an ankle last Sunday.
Somehow, the Texans are one of the NFL's biggest messes despite having the No. 1 ranked overall defense in the league, one of its most dominant defensive players in J.J. Watt. Somehow, they cannot get out of their own way on offense despite having the second-leading rusher in the NFL in Arian Foster (531 yards) and the league's leading receiver in Andre Johnson (44 catches).
So, what gives?
The Texans' quarterback play has been horrible at the most critical times. Four of Schaub's nine INTs have been returned for touchdowns, and backup T.J. Yates also has one, giving the Texans five pick-6s in five games — a dubious NFL record.
Is this all Kubiak's fault? Certainly not, but Kubiak, a former NFL quarterback, is supposed to be a quarterback guru. That makes this situation troubling.
Just three NFL head coaches have a longer current tenure with their respective teams than Kubiak's eight years with the Texans.
Bill Belichick is in his 13th year with the Patriots and has won three Super Bowls and finished runner-up twice. Tom Coughlin is in his 10th year with the Giants and has won two Super Bowls. Marvin Lewis, in his 11th year the Bengals, and made the playoffs four times. Mike McCarthy and Sean Payton are each in their eighth seasons with the Packers and Saints, respectively, and have both won a Super Bowl.
Kubiak, after not making the playoffs in his first five years with the Texans, has been to the playoffs in each of the past two seasons, winning two wild-card games but never advancing past the divisional round.
The big picture, though, is less of a problem than the present for Kubiak.
He is coaching a team that went 12-4 last season and was a Super Bowl favorite this year, with cornerstone talent at almost every key position, and the impatient fan pressure in Houston is becoming excruciating.
Interestingly, when McNair awarded Smith and Kubiak contract extensions before the 2012 season, he was going to extend them to 2016. Smith signed on through 2016, but Kubiak, perhaps hoping to cash in again with success leverage, opted for a shorter contract and only signed through 2014.
Now, with Schaub's future seemingly in question, you have to wonder whether it will be Kubiak picking and grooming the next franchise quarterback.
Incredibly, though, as bad as it has looked in the last month, all is not lost for the Texans. If they upset the Chiefs and the Broncos defeat the Colts on Sunday night, the Texans return from a bye week for a Nov. 3 home game against Indianapolis with first place in the AFC South on the line.
That, of course, is the best-case scenario.
The reality is the fans in Houston feel teased and let down and are restless. The feeling among Houston insiders is that Kubiak cannot make it to that 2014 final year of his contract without at least making the playoffs this season, and given the talent on his roster (an AFC-most nine Pro Bowl selections last season) even that might not be enough.
Clearly, Kubiak is testing the patience of McNair and Smith. Whether they continue to stay the course and maintain continuity or make a change in an effort to make a move to the next level remains very much in question.
bob mcnair
Read Next Jets eager to get back into AFC race by feasting on Patrio...


text:
Q: Selecting text with google app script in Docs Is it possible for an app script to highlight (as in select) text? I want to run the script from the menu and then have all matching instances of some text selected so they can be formatted in one go.
Specifically, I want to write a script to highlight all footnotes in a Google Doc so that they can be formatted simultaneously. I am the creator of the Footnote Stylist add on for Docs, which allows users to style footnotes. But I want to include the option of using any formatting, without having to include every available formatting choice in the add on itself.

A: How about skip the highlighting portion and just format them direct? The code below searches for the word "Testing" and bolds it & highlights it yellow. Hope this helps.

function bold() {
var body = DocumentApp.getActiveDocument().getBody();
var foundElement = body.findText("Testing");

while (foundElement != null) {
    // Get the text object from the element
    var foundText = foundElement.getElement().asText();

    // Where in the element is the found text?
    var start = foundElement.getStartOffset();
    var end = foundElement.getEndOffsetInclusive();

    // Set Bold
    foundText.setBold(start, end, true);

     // Change the background color to yellow
    foundText.setBackgroundColor(start, end, "#FCFC00");

    // Find the next match
    foundElement = body.findText("Testing", foundElement);
   }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Hands in front of stomach: There is another gesture that you can use to identity a confident person which is clasping the hands in front of the stomach (not shown in pictures). This one is more popular and is usually seen on television when a president,a minister or a government official is standing. (You will rarely see a president or a minister crossing his arms on television).
Superiority position: The third picture shows the superiority position; the person takes this posture when he feels superior or overconfident. In the superiority position the person places his hands behind his head while putting one leg above the other. That's why its called the state of over confidence or superiority. For example, when someone finishes a hard task or completes an exam quickly you may find him taking the superiority posture..
The half-superiority position: In some cases where a person feels confident but not extremely superior he might only do half of the superiority position. In such a case the person will place one leg over the other in such a case that the higher leg will be parallel to the floor. Note that this gesture can be replaced by putting one leg over the other normally without making one leg horizontal due to cultural issues. A woman for example might take the later position instead of the first because it might be inappropriate for her to sit like that in some places.
Both legs on the floor: He stands with both his legs firmly planted on the ground and rarely crosses them.
Walking with wide steps: He walks with wide steps because he is not afraid to encounter new situations. This may sound far from logic but its how the subconscious mind thinks.
Fewer speech mistakes: The spoken words are considered a part of body language. When a person feels anxious or afraid a part of his brain's resources will be busy thinking about those emotions and so he won't have a 100% clear mind that allows him to construct language properly. This is why speech mistakes might show that a person lacks confidence.
Your confident body language postures can make you appear more attractive. Almost 93% of the impression people form of you is based on your body language. If you managed to use proper body language then you will alter the impression people form of you to a great extent.
In my book, How to make someone fall in love with you I explained how slight changes, such as keeping a straight back, can make you more attractive and so increase the chance of making people fall in love with you.
2knowmyself is, without doubt, the only complete guide to body language information on the entire internet. If you dare challenge this statement, then check the 2knowmyself's body language section and you will know what I am talking about.


Childhood Lead Prevention Program - Child Care of the Berkshires, Inc.
Education & Training – we provide information, education and trainings about lead poisoning, state laws and testing regulations & resources in the community to address lead issues.
Case Management – Community Health Outreach Workers make home visits to families with children who have elevated lead levels that are referred to us by the Department of Public Health (DPH).
© Child Care of the Berkshires, Inc.


Good news all you PS3 owning Facebook lovers. Sony has confirmed that the new PS3 firmware v3.10 will indeed incorporate Facebook integration, just like its major rival at Microsoft.
tbh Sony need to work hard on making the Interface more accessible like the 360. I wouldn't use Facebook on PS3 because navigation is cumbersome, they need a dash redesign that incorporates the store, etc.
Your nuts xmb is 100x easier than nxe.
Anyone know when this update will be release?
much as with my view of it on the 360, i hope it is a seperate optional install, and not madatory bloatware wasting my HDD space. My HDD is for storing game realted stuff not wanna be PC bloatware. I won't even soil my PC with this junk, the missus tries to use it on my PC but I have blocked facebook.com on it now and told her it must be a windows 7 problem .
Wouldn't want to waste that whole quarter of a megabyte! Also I don't believe you have a [sic] missus, enjoy your hand.
The XMB maybe better but the Facebook integration is poor compared to the one on X360.
xmb is truly superb and has been used on all sony lines of products from consoles to handhelds, even tv's and dvd players.
has sony innovated any new features? seems to me every feature added to the ps3 xmb is just a knockoff of one m$ already has.
Yep, blame sony for that then, 60GB designed for game usuage on a console that really does need the space for games, so any space wasted for unusued hermit creating software is indeed a waste of my limited HDD space. And no I will not buy a larger HDD, 60GB is fine so long as I don't have to bloat it out with the "social networking" nonsense. Going out and meeting people in person is my idea of social networking, if you wat to meet new peopl go to the pup or clubbing, not sat behind a keyboard.
Don't think he's old enough to frequent a pub, just read his childish posts all over the forum, this child needs to be banned!
perhaps he got internet and a new computer for his 13th birthday!


Welcome to the second Bulletin. The final of the selection series is drawing closer and the Team is nearing its completion.
There are some important issues that need your attention in this Bulletin, in particular the Team Presentation at Redcliffe after the last race and accommodation for the Worlds.


Unveiled for the first time last month, the De Bethune DB28 Skybridge is the most spectacular looking watch from the brand. Similar to the unique piece made for Only Watch 2011, the DB28 Skybridge is a variant of the DB28 with spring-loaded lugs and mechanically it is identical to the earlier iterations of the DB28.
It displays the hours, minutes and also has De Bethune's patented spherical moon display. The dial of the Skybridge, however, is a visual delight. Made from flame blued titanium which leaves it a remarkable and intense blue, the dial is concave with each of the 12 spherical hour markers applied to the dial.
Scattered around the dial are stars, made of white gold or diamonds, forming the night sky. And in the centre of the dial is a blued titanium bridge, pointing upwards, that spans the dial – the Skybridge.
Being mirror polished, the dial catches the light at all angles, and the tone of blue changes according to the light. This is not the only De Bethune watch with a blue titanium cosmos dial, the DB25T Dead Seconds Tourbillon is another, but the Skybridge is certainly the most beautiful, largely thanks to the depth of the concave dial.
The theme of polished and blued metal is continued over on the back. The movement bridges are mirror polished, while the triple parechute bridge and base plate are blued steel.
Though this is reminiscent of the ornate pocket watches made for the Chinese market in the 19th century, the movement features many of De Bethune's innovative concepts like the silicon and platinum balance wheel, silicon escape wheel and triple parechute shock absorber.