Military hardliners called me a ‘security threat’ for promoting peace in South Asia and for supporting a broad-based government in Afghanistan.
Supporting
We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him. We gave him his first love, 96 percent of blacks voted for him in 2008. Yet today we are the number one in unemployment, with 16 percent of American blacks out of work.
The deepest change begins with men raising children as much as women do and women being equal actors in the world outside the home. There are many ways of supporting that, from something as simple as paid sick leave and flexible work hours to attributing an economic value to all caregiving and making that amount tax deductible.
There is no excuse for keeping wild animals in amusement parks or circuses. Until our governments take action, we should avoid supporting places where captive wild animals perform for our amusement. If the public will not pay to see them, the businesses that profit from keeping animals captive will not be able to continue.
Consumers of meat, eggs and dairy products might well ask what they are supporting. Do farmers care about anyone but themselves? Can’t anyone see the cow for the cheese?
The ability to make new work from old work – especially if that new work is different enough that it doesn’t dent the market for the old work – is something that benefits all creators, since so few can claim not to have a giant or 10 supporting them underneath.
I spent a lot of time with President Mandela supporting his efforts in the peace process in Burundi. The thing that impressed me the most was his humility.
Reparations – not just aid – should be provided by those responsible for devastating Iraqi civilian society by cruel sanctions and military actions, and – together with other criminal states – for supporting Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities and beyond. That is the minimum that honesty requires.
I thanked President Obama for the United States’ work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees.
I have already seen death, and I know that death is supporting me in my cause of education. Death does not want to kill me.