Sunday, November 27, 2016

With some reports of burning flags, how far did Hampshire College go in abusing the American Flag?

Crystal Wright reports here at www.mediaite.com:

Didn’t Michelle Obama speechify to liberals during her hopeless crusade to elect Hillary Clinton that “when they go low, we go high?”

Some liberal nut jobs decided to ditch Michelle’s credo and dive to new lows in expressing their unhinged hatred for President-elect Donald J. Trump (and not to mention, for America).

It’s not enough for students at overpriced, liberal colleges like Brown University to stomp on flags during a Veterans Day event, or spoiled brats at American University to burn flags and shout “Fuck, white people.” Oh no…

Liberal administrators at Hampshire College in the blue-est of blue states, Massachusetts, have stopped flying the American flag because they decided it’s racist now that Trump was elected president by the people, per the Constitution and the law. Yep, the American flag—not the Confederate flag—is now a symbol of hatred.

Veterans, on the other hand, are planning a protest, Rachel Fazio reports here at www.wwlp.com:

In response, local veterans plan to line the streets on Sunday outside Hampshire College holding hundreds of U.S. flags. Veterans of Foreign war post 754 will meet outside the colleges west street entrance at 1pm for a peaceful demonstration of freedom.

Springfield Mayor Sarno will be standing in solidarity with local veterans at Hampshire College Sunday to protest the schools decision not to fly the American flag.

With some reports of  burning flags, how far did Hampshire College go in abusing the American Flag? Snopes.com says while an American flag was indeed removed from campus, some reports about the incident were misleading:

Excerpts from Snopes report:

WHAT'S TRUE: Hampshire College removed the American flag from the campus' main flagpole.
WHAT'S FALSE: The college did not instate a campus-wide ban on American flags; The campus did not announce that the flag was a symbol of oppression; The flag was not removed in protest of Donald Trump.

ORIGIN:On 18 November 2016, Hampshire College decided not to fly an American flag from its main flagpole on campus, a decision that (predictably) sparked outrage in some circles and led to exaggerated reports about the incident.

For instance, PopularMilitary.com published an article reporting that the flag had been removed to appease students, who called it a "symbol of racism and hatred." Other sites claimed, incorrectly, that the flag had been outright banned from campus.

The drama around the presence of the American flag on Hampshire College started shortly after Donald Trump was elected president on 8 November 2016, when a group of people at the university lowered the flag to half-staff. College secretary Beth Ward wrote in an e-mail that the college decided to leave the flag at half-staff out of respect for those who were upset or grieving (and the school says it has had a long standing policyto periodically lower the flag to half staff to honor those who have died by violence around the world) but that they planned to raise the flag again the following Friday, for Veterans Day.

Before the flag was raised again, however, someone took the flag down and burned it:
We intended to raise the flag again this morning, on Veteran's Day, also out of respect. Hampshire is home to a multiplicity of perspectives and life experiences, and among us are both students and employees who have served (and currently serve) in the military. However, this morning we discovered that the flag was burned overnight and, as a result, veterans and others in out community will come to campus to find the flagpole empty. We are deeply saddened that the flag is absent and the reason for its absence.

A short time after the flag burning incident, the college decided to briefly stop flying the American flag on campus while they discussed what to do about it. 

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Australia's New Flag

Many Australians feel that the embedded Blue Ensign in the their flag is obsolete now.

Harold Scruby established Ausflag in 1981 to support the idea of a new Australian flag.

Australia's national anthem has already been changed from "God Save The Queen" to "Advance Australia Fair" in 1984.

The Ausflag site states that their objective is:

The adoption of a truly Australian flag, a flag which clearly and unequivocally proclaims our identity to other nations, a flag which is internationally recognisable and not confusing to other nations, and a flag which unites the Australian nation in all its diversity.

Ausflag has received more that 50,000 designs. One of the winning designs has been:


Become a supporter of Ausflag or mail your feedback to ausflag@ihug.com.au.

See some great cartoons on this Australian "struggle" are here.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

India's Flag and Glory

India's Flag achieved it moments of glory on foreign soil and in space at various occasions:
  • August 22, 1907: Bhikhaji Rustom Cama was the first Indian to raise India's flag on foreign soil (International Socialist Conference in Stuttgart, Germany) to declare India's Independence from the Britishers. Cama, Veer Savarkar and Shyamji Krishna Varma desgined that flag (a variation on the Calcutta Flag) - green (top), golden saffron and red (bottom). It featured eight lotuses, representing the eight provinces, Vande Mataram (gold) , Crescent (hoist-side), and the Sun (other-side).
  • May 29 1953: BBC reported the waving of flags when the Mount Everest was conquered first - "Mr Hillary took several photographs of the scenery and of Sherpa Tenzing waving flags representing Britain, Nepal, the United Nations and India."
  • 1984 (2 April - October 02): Cosmonaut Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma wore the Indian flag as a medallion on his spacesuit during the Indo-Soviet joint space flight - Soyuz T-11.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

The 24 Virtues

One of most elaborate vexillogical symbol is the The Ashok Chakra, which reminds us of 'DharmaChakra' - the wheel of Dharma - an endless cycle of this universe. It proudly adorns the Indian Flag in the center.



The twenty four spokes of this chakra represent twenty four virtues:
1. Love
2. Courage
3. Patience
4. Peacefulness
5. Kindness
6. Goodness
7. Faithfulness
8. Gentleness
9. Self-control
10. Selflessness
11. Self sacrifice
12. Truthfulness
13. Righteousness
14. Justice
15. Mercy
16. Graciousness
17. Humility
18. Empathy
19. Sympathy
20. Godly knowledge
21. Godly wisdom
22. Godly moral
23. Reverential fear of God
24. Hope/trust/faith in the goodness of God.
How many of these virtues do you practice?

Flag - The Oldest Communication Tool?

Take a piece of cloth, make a unique symbol and you have created a community, organization or a nation! What an amazingly simple and powerful tool! Certainly, one of the oldest communication tool in the history of mankind.

Flags are believed to have been invented in India and China and then gradually spread elsewhere. Surprisingly, nations have not been 'creative' enough with the design of their flags. For example, the flags of Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland) are based on the 'cross design' of Denmark.

Flags of the Scandinavian countries - from left: Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Taken outside Bella Center, Copenhagen. Author: Hansjorn.

Bangladesh & Pakistan seem to have copied from Japan and Turkey, respectively.

Netherlands's flag is supposed to be the oldest tricolor, leading so many tricolor flags - including India & Ireland- India's flag unveiled in 1921 and Ireland became republic in the same year. India took 43 years to 'develop' the flag that was unfurled on 15th August 1947. It had many disparate versions and numerous 'authors' - starting with Sister Nivedita (1904 - Red & Yellow), an Irish disciple of Swami Vivekananda; Subhas Chandra Bose had a variant of the tricolor with a springing tiger; finally, the chapter was closed in 1947 by a committee headed by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India.

More on this in the next posts. But, what have we been discussing?

An independent subject in itself!

Add '-ology' to Latin word vexillum and you get vexillology, defined by the FIAV (Fédération internationale des associations vexillologiques) as:
The creation and development of a body of knowledge about flags of all types, their forms and functions, and of scientific theories and principles based on that knowledge.
The International Congress of Vexillology (ICV) is held every alternate year - 2007 was in Berlin, Germany. 2009 will be in Yokohama, Japan.

Interested?