Free Republic

Writing as an anti Trump democrat. Slowly with this R accusation... The racists that cry "racism" (the phenomenon after exposing some of Bari Weiss' former colleages at New York Times). I do not know these former colleague personally. Yet, it is about the phenomenon in and of itself, Let's take specifically Bari Weiss' accusation. Excerpt: "My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several...

CAIRO, Egypt – Pulitzer-prize winning author Alice Walker, who wrote "The Color Purple," is traveling to Gaza along with other female activists to highlight the devastation of the Israeli offensive on Gaza's residents. "I feel that what is happening in the Middle East is very important because the situation is so volatile," said Walker, speaking by telephone Saturday from the Rafah border crossing as her group waited to travel into Gaza. "I love people, and I love children and I feel that the Palestinian child is just as precious as the African-American child, as the Jewish child." Walker is part...

Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who’s made her moral case against the Cuban embargo scathingly clear. In a letter to then-President Bill Clinton, she said, “Even if you despise Fidel and even if the Cubans should not have shot down the planes violating their air space. the embargo is wrong because it punishes people for being who they are.” As it happens, we have sympathy for the argument that opening up regimes to the world may well do more to fight oppression than boycotts and embargoes. But when it comes to Alice Walker, the same woman who has...

Last week, Newsweek’s Jeff Stein ran a sensationalist story detailing alleged Israeli spy activities in the United States. Stein, citing dubious sources, claimed that Israeli spies attempted to monitor Al Gore’s bathroom activities (an image too frightening to imagine) while drugs and women are routinely employed by Zionist spies to entice U.S. officials into handing over information of value. The sources for these and other absurd allegations contained in the article were mainly anonymous with one notable exception, an obscure ex-intelligence character and former CIA employee named Paul Pillar. One look at Pillar’s past articles, publications and speeches puts the...

Her words, not mine. Alice Walker is the author of The Color Purple, The Color Purple, The Color Purple, and probably some other books. She also has some really awesome ideas about science. But first things first. Last week, Walker wrote about her deliberately factless, emotion-based reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict. It was on the Guardian‘s “Comment Is Free” blog, because of course it was: "I deliberately watched none of the Zimmerman trial, just as I have deliberately not read a draft of a new book by Jen Marlowe and others, soon to be published: I Am Troy Davis,...

American writer Alice Walker, who has long made clear her antipathy toward the state of Israel, “has taken her extreme and hostile views to a shocking new level” in her latest book of meditations on life and her personal activism, according to a review of the book by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Walker’s “The Cushion in the Road” devotes 80 pages to fervently anti-Jewish ideas, explicit comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. The 12 essays of the section, titled “On Palestine,” which make up a quarter of the book, are rife with comparisons of Israelis to Nazis, denigrations of Judaism...

Alice Walker, the author of “The Color Purple” who was also a “jurist” in the kangaroo court “Russell Tribunal on Palestine,” believes that Israel is an apartheid state. She also believes that the world is run by shape-shifting reptilian aliens who practice mind control from the Moon. I’m not sure which opinion is more bizarre. On her blog, she waxes poetic over the book that taught her so much about the aliens: that control our world: Earlier I wrote that David Icke reminded me of Malcolm X. I was thinking especially of Malcolm’s fearlessness. A fearlessness that made him seem...

Citing Israel's "apartheid state," Alice Walker, who wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Color of Purple' reaffirms support of BDS movement. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, refused to authorize a Hebrew translation of her prize-winning work, citing what she called Israel’s “apartheid state.” In a June 9 letter to Yediot Books, Walker said she would not allow the publication of the book into Hebrew because “Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.” In her letter, posted Sunday by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of...

You are best known for your works of fiction and evidently have failed to come to grips with the facts of the Israeli/Arab conflict. You have no concern at all for the Israeli children of Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashod, and other southern Israeli towns. You recently wrote an essay, “Why I’m Sailing to Gaza,” in which you tried to defend the indefensible; namely, your intention to violate international law by attempting to penetrate Israel’s legal blockade of Gaza, purportedly for the purpose of delivering aid to the suffering Gazans—although in this case the aid was only a cache of letters of...

You recently wrote an essay, “Why I’m Sailing to Gaza,” in which you tried to defend the indefensible; namely, your intention to violate international law by attempting to penetrate Israel’s legal blockade of Gaza, purportedly for the purpose of delivering aid to the suffering Gazans—although in this case the aid was only a cache of letters of solidarity and the true purpose of your voyage is a misguided, self-aggrandizing incitement designed to ultimately reflect badly on Israel. You are a writer and know that words are important and can be powerful, but you are best known for your works of...

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker will join the flotilla of ships next week that will try to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip. She says the goal is to bring supplies and raise awareness of the situation there. Last May, during a similar attempt by activists, Israel raided six ships. On one, clashes broke out and Israeli commandos killed nine people. (snip) AW: I think Israel is the greatest terrorist in that part of the world. And I think in general, the United States and Israel are great terrorist organizations themselves.

This new interview with American author Alice Walker gives a brilliant insight into what motivates trendy pro-Palestinian sentiment in the West today. Notice how effortlessly she flits between talking about Palestinians in Gaza and chickens in factory farms. In one breath she talks about the “cruel and inhuman” treatment meted out to Palestinians, who are “frazzled and suffering everyday”. And in the next she talks about chickens that are “raised under horrible, torturous conditions”, and the fact that people who tuck into chicken dinners don’t realise that they are eating “something precious, beautiful, rare”. Palestinians and chickens – these seem...

The state's California Hall of Fame got its first 13 members Monday. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and first lady Maria Shriver jointly unveiled names of the honorees, who formally will be inducted Dec. 6. Honorees are: Ronald Reagan, the former California governor and U.S. president. Cesar Chavez, former leader of the United Farm Workers. Walt Disney... Amelia Earhart... Clint Eastwood... Frank O. Gehry... Dr. David Ho, a trailblazer in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Billie Jean King... John Muir, a conservationist and environmentalist whose image appears on the California state quarter. Sally K. Ride... Alice Walker, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel...

She's revered as a trail-blazing feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women. A champion of women's rights, she has always argued that motherhood is a form of servitude. But one woman didn't buy in to Alice's beliefs - her daughter, Rebecca, 38. Here the writer describes what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a cultural icon, and why she feels so blessed to be the sort of woman 64-year-old Alice despises - a mother.

Alice Walker, best known as the author of the novel The Color Purple, is one of the most renowned feminist authors and activists of her generation. She is also a mother, and that fact brought her public and private lives into direct conflict. --snip-- That is because Alice Walker’s brand of feminism was the kind that taught that “motherhood was about the worst thing that could happen to a woman.” So says her daughter, Rebecca, who suffered the consequences of that thinking. In a recent London Daily Mail article, Rebecca Walker reflected on the neglect she experienced with her divorced...

She's revered as a trail-blazing feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women. A champion of women's rights, she has always argued that motherhood is a form of servitude. But one woman didn't buy in to Alice's beliefs - her daughter, Rebecca, 38. Here the writer describes what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a cultural icon, and why she feels so blessed to be the sort of woman 64-year-old Alice despises - a mother.

The other day I was vacuuming when my son came bounding into the room. 'Mummy, Mummy, let me help,' he cried. His little hands were grabbing me around the knees and his huge brown eyes were looking up at me. I was overwhelmed by a huge surge of happiness. I love the way his head nestles in the crook of my neck. I love the way his face falls into a mask of eager concentration when I help him learn the alphabet. But most of all, I simply love hearing his little voice calling: 'Mummy, Mummy.' It reminds me of...

In the mid-1980s, The New York Times ran a profile of the American writer and activist Alice Walker. Her novel, The Color Purple, had won the Pulitzer prize and was being turned into a film by Steven Spielberg. The article was illustrated by a photograph of Walker sitting on her teenaged daughter’s knee. It was meant to be a “fun” picture; but, in retrospect, according to Rebecca Walker, the photographer unwittingly portrayed the true nature of her relationship with her mother. Alice Walker was, and remains, an icon of the American civil rights movement. “People adore her. I can’t tell...

-snip- When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known - the plantations - because they attempted to exercise their "democratic" right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that white women have copied all too often the behaviour of their fathers and their brothers. In...

HAVANA -- About 200 intellectuals, activists and artists from Latin America and elsewhere issued a letter Monday urging the top United Nations human rights watchdog to side with Cuba in an expected battle over the communist country's rights record. A U.S.-backed resolution to condemn the island's record is usually presented at every spring meeting in Geneva of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which this year was to open Monday and run through April 22. No resolution targeting the island has emerged this year, but Cuba expects such a proposal will be presented and considered in mid-April. Last year's resolution passed...