Quote of the Day

The weird idea that someone who stands up and respects the Founders' belief that we needed a tribunal beyond human power that would guarantee to every individual, whatever their power, the courage and encouragement to stand fast in their human dignity--the idea that that notion has some resemblance to fanaticism or tyranny or oppression or Khomeini or anything else--shows how far some people are willing to go in order to score points when they don't have a point.

-Ambassador Alan Keyes

Congo-Kinshasa: A New Beginning?

In the best scenario, today's elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with more than 25 million voters, will demonstrate the will of the Congolese people for peace and the possibility of increased stability. In the worst case, the elections themselves may prove a stimulus for further violence. In any scenario, the fundamental issues of building a government that works and fighting poverty and corruption lie ahead.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a report from the UN's Integrated Regional Information Networks on violence in recent months, excerpts from a letter to churches in the Congo from the Reverend Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, and the executive summary of the report by the UN on the human rights situation in the Congo for January-June 2006.

For a short background summary on the elections, see http://allafrica.com/stories/200607240156.html

For extensive detailed reports, in English and French, see the website of the UN Mission in the DR Congo (http://www.monuc.org).

For earlier AfricaFocus Bulletins on Congo (Kinshasa) and additional links to news and background data, see http://www.africafocus.org/country/congokin.php

The Verdict is in: Dr. King's Dream Not Yet Realized

Thousands braved the cold Chicago wind and rain to witness the annual emergence of the Rev. Jesse Jackson from his warm winter burrow today. Would his appearance announce that at long last we’ve finally achieved the colorblind Utopia of Dr. King’s dream? Or would it predict another twelve months of righteous race baiting and demagoguery in his endless crusade against racial inequality? There was little hope in the gloomy gray sky, though for a moment the clouds seemed to part and the sun strained to poke through. But then it was gone, as was any chance of seeing the Reverend’s stately shadow this year.

The vast throng of gawkers seemed to sense it, too, and a deep moan of disappointment rumbled through the crowd as Jackson crawled out from a hole in the ground and morosely announced: “Dr. King’s dream has not yet been realized.”

It’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s true. Black politicians, celebrities, and business leaders alike agreed today that they are still by and large oppressed by The Man. Even though it is subtler and almost impossible to detect, racism still exists in every aspect of our society. Indeed, there is strong anecdotal evidence that we’re still living in 1950’s Mississippi. Mayor Nagin of New Orleans, for instance, knows a guy who knows a guy that couldn’t get a bank loan, then watched as a white man simply drove right up and loaded bags of money into his armored car. Oprah's white hairdresser constantly gives her an attitude, and my cousin’s best friend’s crack dealer was “dissed” at a Piggly Wiggly just this year. While he isn’t certain that it was racially motivated, it makes one wonder if society has progressed at all since Dr. King was gunned down by George Bush’s dad.

There was a time, not so long ago, when we were as close as we’d ever be to realizing Dr. King’s vision of an equal and racially just America. We even had our first Black president, and almost a second. But then came the Chimp, and with him a whole slew of white-sheet Republicans stealing their way into power on the backs of millions of disenfranchised Black voters. Almost overnight, Dr. King’s beautiful dream slipped from our fingers. Black churches burned. Hurricanes plowed into predominantly African-American communities. Black children’s books authors were rounded up and systematically exterminated. Jesse Jackson wasn’t allowed to bring hookers to the White House anymore. Officially, Bush replaced "Hymies" as the source of all Black strife, and the Black community is now just one more Republican peeResident away from horse whips and chains again.

As a progressive and long time crusader for racial equality, I yearn for that bright February morning when Rev. Jackson will crawl out of his hole and announce that he will no longer be requiring vast amounts of money to wage his valiant battle against racism. I’m sure he looks forward to that day as well. Yet there is still a long way to go before Dr. King’s dream of a Black community completely dependent on government hand-outs distributed by Democrat politicians will finally be fulfilled.

When in Doubt..Blame Bush

Now Bush is Putting Arsenic in Fiji's Drinking Water

I was scouring the web for more of Bush’s crimes last night when I stumbled upon an interesting news morsel. It seems that when the City of Cleveland conducted a chemical analysis of Fiji brand bottled water, they discovered that it contains dangerously high levels of arsenic – higher even than our own drinking supply.

Which raises the question: exactly why is Bush poisoning the Fijian people? What heinous plot has he hatched now? The answer didn’t come to me as easily as it usually does. Fiji is a major trade partner with the United States and a member of Bush’s Coalition of the Coerced and the Bribed, with over 17 Fijian troops serving in Iraq. English is the official language of the islands, and Christianity is the predominant religion.

Needless to say, Fijian womyn have no Right to Choose, and thousands of young grrrls are beaten by their grandparents on the way to the back-alley abortionist every year. All they need is a Fijian chapter of the Klu Klux Klan and it'd be a tropical version of Texas. So at first glance, one can find little reason for Bush to target the people of Fiji for extermination.

But bear with me. Proceed to your local library and find Baghdad on the globe. Using an ordinary black marker, draw a line from Baghdad to Crawford, Texas. Now draw another line from Crawford to Viti Levu, the main island of Fiji. Look closely. Notice anything peculiar? I didn’t either, although I was a bit distracted by all the shouting.

Sometimes, what appears to be a Rovian conspiracy against a sovereign nation state is something as simple as Bush merely wanting a few less brown people in the World. We learned that lesson in New Orleans, and Fiji is learning it now.

http://blamebush.typepad.com/blamebush/

Ike Turner On Cindy Sheehan's "Hunger Strike"

by Ike Turner

Cindy Sheehan, Cindy Sheehan, Cindy Sheehan. Everywhere I turn it's Cindy Mother-f---ing Sheehan with her loud mouth and big hunger striking ass. Who gave this trick a microphone and media access? Better yet, who's been slipping her the feed bag filled with gravy-soaked bacon double cheeseburgers?

A hunger strike?

I ain't never seen a hunger strike have the sort of effect on a woman like Cindy's has had on her. If she wasn't able to explain away those propeller marks on her back as a childhood incident that occurred when her daddy 'accidentally' threw her under an outboard motor, I'd swear to God she was a manatee. I'm still suspicious about that alibi. Girl, a little more fasting and I can get you some work as a stunt double in the Fahrenheit 9/11 sequel.
Don't get me wrong, I love a nice thick woman, but I'd have to put an end to all that yapping pronto. I know it's supposedly a 'new era' where women are allowed to speak their minds and learn things, and all that junk, and I think that's sort of cute. In small doses.

Believe me when I tell you, if she was my woman, I'd have her in check. No travelling around the country to protest the president (last time I checked, the president is a man and where I come from ain't no woman gonna protest a man). No more going on television and giving her opinion on foreign affairs, politics or anything else. Period.

However, just to show her that I am somewhat of an enlightened individual, I am willing to make some concessions. She can still pitch a tent in the back yard of the house and invite her lady friends to sleep over. As many as she'd like and as often as she'd like. Provided, of course, that they get on the Cindy Diet and not Saddam's version (he's still my man, but the boy is starting to look a bit gaunt).

Thanks to: Point Five, Wizbang, Samantha Burns

Sheehan Asked To Haul Ass, Forced To Make Three Trips

"Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan wows the crowd at her new Crawford, Texas ranch with her patented "boa floss" move from her critically acclaimed burlesque show, "The Gastrointestinal Monologues."

The performance was part of the larger week long festivities from the first annual "I'm Doing This All For You Casey! Pork Barbecue & Hunger Strike Housewarming Extravaganza".

It's hard out here for a pimp

"Martin Scorcese-0, Three Six Mafia-1"

Clearly the line of the night, and one that will resonate in the minds of Academy Award patrons for years to come.

I have to admit, however that there was something profoundly artistic and compelling about 3-6's performance (your thinking...what??). The other day I was disgusted by the fact that they were chosen to perform. After seeing the performance, I had to force myself to ponder the success of this movie, and likewise, this song. What is it about Terrance Howard that America suddenly loves so much? The immediate conclusion is that lightskin black men are back in style (fall back Taye).

But there has to be more to this. 3-6 was so serious about their performance, and we saw (although we didn't understand) their acceptance speech...serious to the point it has me considering the merits of minstrel rap. Think about it...as much as some people hate what we consider to be this degrading representation of black music/culture, have we ever stopped to consider that these dudes might actually be out there pimping, if they we'ren't rapping about it? The fervor in their performance suggests a limited perception of reality and possibilities, that characterizes the mentality of a lot of aspiring minstrel rappers. 3-6, jeezy, TI, and every other minstrel rapper to precede them are essentially all rapping about the same thing- the trap. And like Talib Kweli has so lucidly observed, "the drugs, the basketball, and the rap" is precisely how so many of them envision themselves.

Now I intentionally say "them", as opposed to "we", in spite of the fact that I'm a black male that's a product of an urban environment, which is in fact the mecca for hip hop culture. Although I was a freestyle fanatic myself that had pipe dreams of being a rapper in high school (more so in the mold, of talib, common, canibus, etc.- my idols at the time) I never saw that as the only option, certainly not the most feasible option, and not even the ideal option. The world was never that small to me. And when the only world in which so many urban youth reside- figuratively- becomes increasingly homogenous we have a problem. The problem is not misogynistic, materialistic, and gangsta-ridden hip-hop. The problem is that that sector of hip hop now has a monolopy on all other sectors.

In the 1992 Run DMC song, "Down With the Kings", one of the rappers (forgot who) dropped the line "and after 12th grade I went straight to college." There was nothing taboo about rhyming about college back then. Dumbing down your lyrics was not a priority back then- in fact the opposite was the mantra. That may have been the last time I heard a popular rapper allude to college until Kanye came along. AND RUN DMC WAS COMMERCIAL TOO.

So my point/question is this...although many rappers now abide by the blueprint that Jay Z laid out ("dumbed down to my audience and doubled my dollars"), with the ascent of Kanye, and the "resurrection" of Common, the mainstream may finally have to recognize that "conscious" or "backpacker" (I'll save the problematic contemporary usage of these terms for another post) music is marketable and profitable. But and should they?

Does more Common and less 3-6 mean more lyrics, and more pimping?

Does more Kanye and less Jeezy mean less gangsta music,
but more gangsta activity?

Intereresting stat of the week
# of black homicide victims in 1991: 12,226 (pre-commercialization of gangsta rap)
# of black homicide victims in 2003: 6,912 (post-commercialization of gangsta rap)

Source: FBI

Although I'm one of the most avid opponents of gangsta rap, I think I can tolerate us rapping about killing each other, if it leads to less of us actually doing it. Maybe minstrel rap does more to help than hurt the community than we'd previously thought. Maybe it's time to stop the tirade against BET, before we turn these actors back into gangstas.

Just something to think about.

-Conservative Hip Hop Iconolcast

Send The Boondocks, back to the Boondocks?

Interesting article attacking Aaron McGruder's cartoon series the Boondocks:

http://www.projectrace.com/hotnews/archive/hotnews-061899.php

I'm one of the few products of the hip hop generation I know that's not a huge fan of the Boondocks. My reason for that is I feel its entire success hinges on the fact that the main character is embroiled in a perpetual state of rage.

I mean why does Huey have to be angry ALL the time?

For many young blacks (myself included) anger becomes a stage in our cognitive development, after learning about the history of Africa's diaspora, but is it really necessary to have an entire show devoted to this theme?

Don't we see enough young black male anger in the media already? Although it can be funny at times (such as the R. Kelly episode), it's often counterproductive in its approach. But that's what happens when you try to entertain, persuade, and inform simultaneously. Now some might claim it's making a political cartoon.

I recall Talib Kweli saying on The Beautiful Struggle, "they call me the political rapper even after I tell 'em I don't f*** with politics." Somehow I'm pretty sure Aaron McGruder doesn't f*** with politics either.

The truth is the cartoon is little more than 30 minutes of, "tell 'em why you mad son!" from a someone who was born and raised middle class. McGruder is a pretty clever dude though...

http://cantbeboxedin.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_cantbeboxedin_archive.html

Jigga Man: The New American Dream is becoming old news

I recently received an email announcing a concert commemorating the release of Jay Z first album, Reasonable Doubt. Widely regarded as an unheralded hip hop classic in the mainstream, that true Jigga zealots eschew as possibly his most skillful display of the talent and intelligence he later "dumbed down" in order to "double his dollars", the celebratory concert is being promoted as Hova embodying the new American Dream. Hip hop culture seems to be running with this idea. I most recently found my boy adorned in an Ecko tee-shirt, boldly plastering the statement, "I am the American Dream" across the front.

Indeed, promoting Jay Z as the new American Dream, while celebrating his only album that, at least in retrospect, can't be classified as a mainsteam version of Jigga, is another audacious proclamation of hip hop's omnipresence. The drug rap that Jigga helped to popularize with this '96 album, through songs such as "Can't Knock the Hustle", now has a dominant hold on the industry. As ghostwriter, and underground legend Mad Skillz accurately proclaims "All you cats rap about is cars and crack."

People like Jigga Man should heed the words of artists like Skillz. Hip hop's lack of innovation and diversity these days makes me wonder if its nearing it's end. I was delighted to hear that one of my favorite emcees, Nas will be releasing an album called "Hip Hop is Dead." While I'm confident that Nas is alluding to the art form's almost complete departure from its roots, as opposed to prophesying about the end of its corporate profitablity, I for one am not uncomfortable in asserting that its mass appeal will soon decline if CEO's like Jay Z don't revamp its glorification of nihilism.

That's not to say that gangsta/crack rap and naked misogyny won't have an audience. The underground mix-tape scene isn't going anywhere. However, I know I'm not the only person that's getting tired of seeing the same old thing. I've been tired of it for over 7 years, but it's only been within the past year or two that I've essentially stop paying attention to most of it. And that's primarily because I got tired of seeing neo-minstrels test the limits of vulgarity. I finally realized I had to give up on mainstream hip hop when I heard 3-6 Mafia made a song called "Let's Plan a Robbery."

To each his own. That's my philosophy. However hip hop's overrepresentation of ignorant black people is bound to diminish in the next few years. I don't mean this in an offensive way. The choice to exhude ignorance as an entertainer is obviously a profitable venture, a way out of desperate situations for many, and an exercise in personal freedom. However, middle class negroes hoping to follow in the footsteps of their college educated peer Lil Jon should soon realize that 3-6 Mafia's Oscar might be the climactic point for the idiocy that is unconsciously legitimized and promoted in mainstream American music. In other words, minstrels better milk it for what it's worth while it's still here.

I suspect that one of two things will happen in the near future:

1) Hip hop minstrelsy will become increasingly diversified; or
2) The Kanye Wests will take over and push the 3-6 Mafia's and 50 cents out the mainstream

I see this happening within 3-5 years. I happen to think that the latter is more likely, and companies might finally be realizing that there are limits to the dumbing down of commercially successful music. You want to dumb down to your audience, not be dumber THAN them. Part of me feels that people like 50 and his entourage suspect that the same thing is happening, at least domestically. Hence the childish simplistic marketing ploy of beef. His popularity abroad doesn't appear to be waning, proably because no one in Portugal knows what the hell he means most of the time.

The upside-down popular culture with no regard for norms, public decency and shame that hippies, other white liberals, and black entertainers like Rick James (R.I.P.) created in the aftermath of the turmoil of the late '60s, before hip hop babies like myself were born, was the original version of "wildin' out" that we see being promulgated in hip hop entertainment today. This is the only trickle down effect that's occured in recent decades, a cultural one, not an economic one. Ironically, very few young adults seem to be interested in wildin' out in the club anymore, unlike the Studio 54 days. Then again, not all young adults are ready to behave as such, given the inundation of childish mores in popular culture that serve to keep us in our teen years in mind only. All statistics show how everyone's getting married later, having kids later, and maturing later (myself included) these days. Last time I was in the club, it was clearly much more about posting with a drink in hand. In fact, from what I hear and see (from the few visits I've made to NYC clubs in recent months), it seems like a lot of people are throughly bored in the club nowadays.

Thus, Jigga Man may be celebrating on the outside, but if the absolute flop of Young Jeezy's Thug Motivation suggests anything, the Can't Knock the Hustle era's dominance of hip hop will soon be over. The only hustle record companies might not be able to knock is that of Latino immigrants crashing the borders. Reggaeton anyone?

What is Up in the Horn of Africa?

So what is going on in Somalia anyway you may ask?

We are surprised you wonder because since the early 90s the only time that the whole world actually noticed events in Southern Somalia was when "Blackhawk Down" was released five years ago.

You see, trouble in Somalia was ordained by the absurd national mission forced down Somali throats without interruption from independence on by a succession of dictators - that all collapsed in 1991. That ersatz national destiny required the conquest of all of its more populated and powerful neighbors along with 'Revolutionary Democracy' style idiocies such as 'Somali Scientific Socialism' justifying the dictatorship of a few.

Such silly ideology was bad enough but along with a commitment to eternal war it can be no surprise that Somalis had little chance from the beginning and caused its neighbors quite a bit of bother, Ethiopia in particular. Even though Northern Somalia was able to escape what became a tradition of chaos, Southern Somalia became and remains a mess. Since then there has been a steady, almost imperceptible background drum beat of non crisis like stories about warlords, piracy, entrepreneurs providing basic services where there was no government, secret Al Quaeda training camps and the like.

In the past month or so that has all changed big time.

Where to start ... where to start .... OK, the Usual Suspect Clan Warlords (USCW) lost a battle for control of Mogadishu and eventually most of the region to the New Jack Islamist Warlords (NJIW) that we certainly had never heard of. Not only that, but the US was allegedly helping the USCW and Ethiopia definitely was helping them. Oh, and Eritrea was aggressively arming the NJIW in a bid to outflank Meles Inc (actually at this point it seems, just to mess with Ethiopia for hell of it).

The NJIW commenced immediately to vigorously attack Coca Cola drinkers, movie watchers, soccer fans, all females of our species and all men who did not immediately realize what they should have known all along. Namely that if the NJIW said jump - the only appropriate response was an ecstatic and obedient "how high?" Just imagine - the NJIW made even the USCW and Siad Barre 'regimes' look like great liberal democracies in a matter of days.

According to the USCW, Eritrea was joined by Egypt and Saudi Arabia in aiding the NJIW and according to many others the latter had some rather unsavory connections to international terror. As the USCW were being chased across the region, the UN backed (alert the media!), Ethiopian supported, For Real Somali Government in Internal Exile (FRSGIE) welcomed Ethiopian troops sent by Meles Inc. into Baidoia (the FRSGIE capital) and environs.

Meles Inc., however, denied it was attempting any hostile takeovers at all. The FRSGIE said that it was all a mistake due to Ethiopian donated uniforms on its own soldiers while Meles Inc. denied the whole thing with the same straight face it used to deny everything from blocking blogs onto keeping 70 million hostages. A few tame reporters claimed to see nothing but there could have been a legion of Galactic Storm Troopers straight from the Clone Wars right next door for all they were allowed to see.

An old Soviet cargo plane from Kazakhstan loaded with Eritrean arms landed in Mogadishu with goodies for the NJIW along with possibly hundreds of Eritrean troops. FRSGIE ministers started getting killed by somebody, many FRSGIE membere resigned in protest against Meles Inc. troop deployments, some USCW changed sides several times and claimed to be winning and the NJIW declared a jihad against Ethiopia.

Meles Inc. wanted to change the subject from its own bloody dictatorship to just about anything else to finance itself ... and 'fighting terrorism' was rather conveniently waiting right there next door ... especially as the US Congress was considering a bill to sanction the Meles Inc. corporate board for its violent business practices.

The New Jack Islamist Warlords wanted attention ... negative attention from the West and Ethiopia could be turned into positive attention from many other circles in the form of cash ... the invasion by Meles Inc. provided a perfect opportunity to have a real live jihad and to define authentic Somali-ness all at the same time.

This came from Foggy Bottom recently via Nazret
"There are many foreign elements in Somalia right now," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer said, citing reports Ethiopia was sending troops to back the interim government and Eritrea arms for rival Islamists.

"Neither the Union of Islamic Courts nor the Transitional Federal Government can take the high ground by saying the other is violating Somali sovereignty...they've all invited in foreigners, all been backed by foreign forces," she added.
Unless there is some really deep double game being played here it seems that Meles Inc. went into Somalia all on its own. However much Ethiopia's relatively professional army may dominate the field it is simply crazy to imagine Ethiopia sustaining a force in Somalia over time as foreign opposition mounts. Beyond that the attributes of a regular military force would mean little near or in Mogadishu.

Either the expense or logistics or political cost (or all three), of a sustained fight away from the border are well beyond the capacity of Ethiopia's expeditionary force and regime. It would not be humanitarian concerns like those that held back the UN and the US back in the early 90s that would turn back such an Ethiopian force. Unlike the US Rangers and the UN force that took casualties to spare collateral damage, Meles would not hesitate to raze all of Mogadishu to stay in power and collect cash for another day.

Meles Inc. has given all combative and peaceful Somali's the perfect reason to fight to the bitter end. That marks the criminal error of an invasion that costs almost as much if it doesn't go past the border and nothing is accomplished as if it does achieve its nebulous purposes ... Meles has invaded their country just because he did not approve a their potential government - no Somalis, including the temporary allies of Meles Inc will like that in the end.

Unlike Afghanistan, there is no history here of the NJIW supporting international terror (bombings in Ethiopia are generally carried out by the government and blamed on the villian of the moment). Unlike Iraq there is no history here of flouting the UN or waging aggressive international war or of using WMDs. Unlike with Hezbollah or with Chechnyan Islamists, there is no history of sustained acts of terror.

Meles has invaded Somali without any pretext at all that could be sustained in the most forgiving of forums. Via Nazret, this Economist article makes it clear that even those occasional Meles Inc. apologists aren't letting the wool be pulled over their eyes this time around,
Both the Ethiopians and the Islamists have something to gain from fighting. Ethiopia, which has often meddled in Somalia, is one of the world's oldest Christian-led countries, though it has many Muslims too. A war against militant Islam in the region might make it a useful ally of America, bringing cash and diplomatic support. It would also be quite a coup for the prime minister, Meles Zenawi, since America's Congress recently passed a bill condemning his government as an undemocratic abuser of human rights, which it is.
Does this herald an overall 'coming to their senses' phase for the international media after years of breathlessly false 'at least Meles is making the trains run on something resembling a schedule' and 'what a cute & brave former guerrilla fighter he is' nonsense ... we won't hold our breath waiting but every bit of reality is welcome.

Although we are bound to be sympathetic to long standing Ethiopian interest vis a vis Somalia and although we are also supportive of American interests in the War on Terror it seems to us that the policies of Meles Inc. will make everything far worse for everyone. Previous Ethiopian governments going back centuries (even including the reality and mentally challenged Dergue) avoided invading Somalia and did not even intervene except in the most exigent circumstances - and then only temporarily - without a proxy government to prop up.

Not out of fear mind you, but out of common sense because going into Somalia, just like going into any neighbor is like sticking a hand in a hornet's nest. Meles has gone into Somalia with no provocation on an uncertain mission with no end or even clear aim. One miscalculated purpose is finely tuned to influencing Congress with the current parade of tame supposed 'opposition' politicians while the real ones fear death in jail. Another may be a reflexive sense of competition with the former allies of Meles Inc. in Eritrean government.

Whatever the reason this was not thought out well - unless the reason is just to create and perpetuate crisis and instability with the purpose of being seen by the world as both the guarantor of the status quo and its principal manipulator as well. All to the tune of billions of Euros and Dollars and many more years to collect them and ship them into banks and properties abroad.

....................................

One last point about messes that Meles Inc. has and always will be getting Ethiopia and the world into ... because of the tribal based policies and politics of Meles Inc., Ethiopia has become a country which is legally / constitutionally only a barely legitimate collection of bantustans that can become independent at will for any reason at all or for no declared reason at all by anyone from the regional down to the neighborhood level.

In real terms the government uses that potential for chaos as a threat and uses brutal extra-legal means of its own making to hold it all together outside of the absurdities of current 'law'. Like the Sword of Damocles hung over one ruler to teach humility, utter disintegration awaits Ethiopia if it succeeds in getting rid of Meles Inc. - or so Meles Inc. would have us believe - Ethiopia is far more resilient than that.

But ... accepting the espoused logic of Meles and his government ... it seems like the 'Revolutionary Democratic' thing to do would be too ask the people of the Somali Killil what they want and accept that judgement regardless of the larger national interest. They probably wouldn't want to do so but maybe they want to join the Eastern third of Ethiopia immediately to the USCW or the NJIW or to the FRSGIE.

Or given the logic of the Ethiopian constitution, an equally legitimate case is a seat in the UN for any group of kids in Gode or Bishoftu or Adwa or Debre Birhan (or even on Bole Road) who play marbles or soccer together fairly regularly and who feel they have a right to form an independent country. After all, that is what it says in the Meles Inc. constitution right? Confused yet? If you are not you should be.

It is 'governments' and 'leaders' such as these that make us wish conflicts between dictators and aspiring dictators could only be settled by single combat with the victor and vanquished both being shipped off to Devil's Island afterwards. Ethiopia and Somalia (with the exception of Northern Somalia) have never gotten on too well and Somalia has never had a friendly border for that matter.

None of the 'leaders' in question has even a vanishing connection to the interests of the people they supposedly act for. Throughout most of living memory - nation, ideology, tribe, clan and now religion have been the tools of heartless men for the purpose of their personal power.

That is what is up in the Horn of Africa.

http://ethiopundit.blogspot.com/

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I wish Cam'ron spent his vast money holding press conferences, dissing punk ass Congress for taking tainted money from Verizon, SBC, and Comcast instead of going after Jay-Z. Im glad Jay-Z ignored Camron, unfortunately he remained silent as the President of Def Jam on this important issue."

-Davey D on the hip hop commmunity's failure to respond to Congress's attempt to override Internet neutrality

http://community.allhiphop.com/showthread.php?t=264305

Keep it up and the Internet will become another heavily regulated private entity with restrictions on free speech.

Liberals and urban schooling:

Just another reason why I left the Left


http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=376661

This is a very revealing and honest interview with a Democratic coucilwoman from NYC. For years everyone has been arguing that the problem with inner city schooling is unequal funding. Logically, this has always bothered me, because it seemed to imply that increasing funding alone will improve education. Well in recent years, much research has surfaced to show that the conventional wisdom is WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Conservatives, and free-market advocates have repeatedly questioned this notion by claiming that the monopoly on public education is an even bigger problem, but have the Democrats budged? Nope. Meanwhile, low-income, minority kids continue to suffer, because of an uncritical assertion that more money is the answer to everything. Well, over the past several years school funding in many urban areas has come close to being leveled off and we haven't seen much improvement.

It should come as no surprise that in NYC, Republican Mayor Bloomberg, a business guru prior to his political days, instituted reforms centered on accountability, decentralization, and smaller schools and, what do you know...test scores are rising. This is one of the primary reasons why I left the Left. Education and economic issues have led me to be somewhat of a moderate-conservative. Of course people don't vote on this stuff. They vote on gay marriage, flashy smiles, and statements from Hillary Clinton insulting the intelligence of black people by saying, "The Republicans are running Congress like a plantation!" Yes, we know the Republicans are failures. But can you address something substantive when you come to Harlem?

One of the best books I've read about the urban education policy is "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning", published in 2003. It is an eye-opening account of how big bureacracies are failing inner city kids, along with a plethora of other factors that liberals are too scared to address because of political correctness, among other things. First it was open-ended welfare, then it was the public school monopoly...what has the Left done in the past several decades to help low-income people? Why are they insistent on keeping kids in failing schools, by limiting school choice?

New Age moderate Democrats, like Cory Booker in Newark, recognize that items like vouchers are essential, in the short-run, until broad reforms occur. Hopefully he won't allow himself to be intimidated by teachers unions, who are highly responsible for the slow process of school reform because they are a leading Democratic interest group.

But this is only part of the story. As I aspire to enter the arena of policy, I've been doing a lot of research on educational reform and policy. There are a lot of problematic issues with liberal politicians. This is why I'm independent, and will not vote for Democrats simply because my parents did. We have to be a little more critical of their policies.

One of the most interesting things to ever come out of Dubya's mouth was his call for "compassionate conservatism." At the time he uttered this, I was college student, and a close-minded liberal that thought Republican = racist, evil capitalist at all times. So, like many of us, I saw through this empty rhetoric about him being compassionate, which he obviously hasn't been. But it's an interesting concept. Here's a good article on what differentiates "compassionate conservatism" from "liberal paternalism" and the welfare state:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_2_compassionate.html

Mayor's plea to stop gun violence.

In a sad sign of the times the African American mayor John Street of
Philadelphia appeared on local televison to ask that the gun violence in his city
stop.

Watch his impassioned plea for peace by clicking this link

_Mayor's Plea_ (http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/page/page/1307246.htm)

Bolton Bitch Slaps John Kerry

Kerry is defending Clinton's policy of accepting an agreement with the North Koreans that even the Clinton administration didn' believe they would keep.

Typical Kerry, he walks knowing little except his staff's memo.
Bolton is one awesome dude.
Best damn "ambassador" we've had in a long, long,long,long,
long,long time.

DoD Report: 50 Trucks Carried Iraqi WMD To Syria

DoD Report:

50 Trucks Carried Iraqi WMD To Syria The following is a translation of a newly posted Iraqi document done by an "unofficial" translator.

The document, posted in Arabic, is from a Department Of Defense program.

In the document an Iraqi opposition source working in Syria reports on the movement of Iraqi trucks to Syria before the start of the US invasion of Iraq.

It is his understanding that the trucks contained proscribed weapons of mass destruction. The translation is dated July 13 — probably 2003.

But the original document is dated March 14th, 2003. (Moharram 10th is the tenth day of the Muslim New Year, which in 2003 began on March 4th.)

The International Coalition Forces attacked Iraq on March 20, 2003.

What exactly is an "unofficial" translator?

When it is not CAIR approved?

Link:

http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/dod-report-50-trucks-carried-iraqi-wmd-to-syria

Documents:

http://static.flickr.com/62/200505473_51a5c9b170_o.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/78/200505419_f83b5ee970_o.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/71/200492554_d83926db9e_o.jpg

Hip-Hop in Education: Do You Wanna Revolution?

So while we're on the subject of books (a subject I just can't seem to shake lately), I want to recall a recent topic of spicy debate. In all that I do and discuss these days, my favorite hat to wear is the young "millennial" one. That is, by most adults' standards, the rebellious, misunderstood generation cap. This is also where I usually contend with my fellow conservative associations.

A few weeks back, it came to light that a summer school program in Worcester, MA made "gangsta rap" a part of their curriculum when they placed one of Tupac's collections of poetry, The Rose That Grew from Concrete on their summer reading list. Many people have already tackled the subject of Tupac's poetry being used in the public system. Last month, author and columnist Michelle Malkin delivered a scathing report in her article 2 Lazy 2 Teach.


The backlash was interesting, yet typical. Conservatives got on their moral high horses and spouted their "infinite wisdom" on how we should be teaching, while the usual Tupac lovers emerged from their dens of mourning to defend his honor.

Neither reaction has produced any fruit in my opinion. I have yet to see useful dialogue in this whole topic of the hip-hop generation. I love Michelle Malkin as much as the next, but she and I dissent on a couple of things, and neither of them is Tupac. Due to the hat I wear, I need to come at this from another direction.

(Before we go anywhere, let's clarify the difference between rap and hip-hop. Rap is the act of saying rhymes to the beat of music. Seems rather basic and amoral when you put in those terms doesn't it? Hip-Hop on the other hand, is a four-part cultural movement. It encompasses breakdancing, graffiti art, rapping (aka emceeing) and DJ-ing. For those interested, Rap New Direct has a more in-depth look at the differences.)

The first mistake intellectuals (especially conservatives) make when discussing the topic of slain rapper Tupac Shakur, is to write him off as just that; a slain rapper. Not so boys and girls. Unfortunately, he's a Hip-Hop icon. There has yet to be another person to enter the sphere of hip-hop with the same cross-cultural effect on the masses.

Tupac was a prophet of doom and voice to his generation. Albeit a hurt and wounded voice that cried vapid declarations and lies, he managed to slip in some tangible truth every now and then. That is of course, the essence of true deception.

With lyrics seeping in anger, he empathized with the fatherless generation, dated his gun, called his own dad a "nigga", and ultimately prophesied his own death. Truth be told, an unsettling percentage of my generation related to this, or related to the "fantasy" of this (white folks included). I never did, although I knew some of his lyrics even without owning any of his albums. The guy was everywhere. He was tangible, palpable, and "real"--as real as you can be when you don't even know yourself.

Listening to Tupac's music alone MAKES you want to be angry. This is an artist who even in his death continues to hold his listeners in bondage. I call him the "Black Elvis", referencing the masses' inability to accept his death. There continue to be numerous theories around the validity of his death and his "second-coming" (warning sign for cult activity). I'm sure it doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it any way. Tupac is dead. Gone. In the grave, and probably in a place you don't want to be. The legacy he's left is more of a stronghold than anything else. I would argue that he's the single most prominent rapper to touch my generation. Hands down. The bells don't go "rah-rah" for this one. It's a sad reality.

The Worcester, MA school's decision to add Tupac's poetry to their reading list is embarrassing and irresponsible. Let's just get that on the table. Conceptually, this attempt to be "hip" and "relevant" is like shooting blanks in the dark. Not because they're using alternative text, but because they're using text steeped in death, lies, and anger.

In her article, Michelle Malkin writes,"The presumption that children -- and particularly inner-city children -- can only be stimulated by the contemporary and familiar smacks of lazy elitism and latent racism. These educators, and I use that term as loosely as gangster rappers wear their pants, are clearly more interested in appearing cool than in inculcating a refined literary sense in students. Their aim is not enlightenment but dumbed-down ghetto entertainment."May be true. In fact, probably true. I don't trust most educators as far I can throw them. But let's be careful here. Hip-Hop doesn't equal dumbing down. Is this instance, that may be their motive, but this is not a black and white issue (take that for face value please).

In fact, given the right lyricist, rap is one of the most intelligent music genres out there right now. I don't say that lightly. Hip-Hop embodies something more than just rap. It's a movement, and it's full of messages. We can choose what those messages should be. Right now, the dominating message is self-destruction.

In terms of Malkin's comments on elitism, I actually think we teeter on the line of elitism when we begin to define what forms of writing can't be considered poetry. It's like the discussion on what art is. In school I read poets, (white men mind you) who were raving lunatics of death, high on every drug imaginable. Yet we consider them great poets. I'm not suggesting Tupac is, but our standards are questionable.

Let me tell you where conservatives get in trouble. They can't disassociate rap's co-conspirators with the artform. "Gangsta rap" and various other offshoots of the original art form have given the genre a bad rap--if you know what I mean. In its purest form however, rap is amoral. Like money, it's merely a magnifier or in some cases, a modifier of its owner. Most conservatives don't see this.

My new found friend, Avery Tooley of the Conservative Brotherhood discussed Malkin's column in a piece he wrote called Et Tupac?. Avery's my resident music buff, so he breaks it down gently,

"I've seen Michelle Malkin on television before (thank the Lord for good eyesight!), so I'm pretty sure that her beef here is not with the selection of Tupac specifically, she doesn't like the idea of using hip-hop in the classroom, period. Once again, if somebody doesn't like hip-hop, they just don't like it. That's a matter of taste. However, I think it's intellectually dishonest to suggest that hip-hop is somehow unsuitable for classroom consumption, particularly if a person doesn't listen to it enough to distinguish between the genres within hip-hop.

Certainly there are elements of hip-hop that lack substance, and unfortunately that's what gets the most attention and makes the most money, but there's a whole lot of other records that could be useful in a classroom context. I know when I was teaching math, I couldn't wait to ask the kids what Redman meant when he said, 'I hit the spot like x,y.' It's not all idiot stuff."Avery's perhaps said it better and more nicely than I would. Once again, this is a place where conservatives and I part ways. I don't agree with teaching Tupac in secondary school, but I also don't agree with our marriage to Westernized teaching structures. Growing up, I could memorize song lyric upon lyric, but yet struggled through the Pre-Amble of the constitution. Even today, I memorize things better if I know a corresponding song or set it to a mental beat. Music is a powerful medium. This was the success of shows like Sesame Street and School House Rock.

Mnemonic devices and teaching methods involving music and culture are probably the most untapped area in the arena of education. Hip-Hop has quickly become the top selling musical form amongst all races. Even in all its accompanying garbage, there's something we need to take heed of about the culture. Toyota, Pepsi, Sprite, Chrysler, and McDonald's have realized it. Hip-hop is the next wave of everything. It's not going to die down as analysts have predicted.

If you thought you were uncomfortable now, just you wait. Thankfully, in the midst of the foolishness, there are people who are being raised up to set a righteous standard lyrically, and in lifestyle. Their albums sit in my collection as we speak. Mark my words. The first person who can package hip-hop in a way that teaches a difficult classroom subject will be a multi-millionaire. You can quote me on that.

http://www.nykola.com/archives/000144.html

Miss Indonesia under fire over 'insulting' Islam

Insulting to Islam??

Sharia Alert from modern, moderate Indonesia. From Reuters, with thanks to David:
A MILITANT Islamic group has filed a police report against Indonesia's Miss Universe candidate, accusing her of indecency.

Nadine Chandrawinata's participation in the contest and display of her body in a swimsuit "is actually insulting for Indonesian dignity and women", Islamic Defenders Front lawyer Sugito said yesterday.

Ms Chandrawinata did not make it to the competition's final in Los Angeles on Sunday, which was won by Miss Puerto Rico, but she had drawn heavy media coverage in Indonesia.

Mr Sugito said the Islamic Defenders Front had also filed complaints against four people involved in sponsoring and organising Ms Chandrawinata's participation.
Under Indonesian law, police would have to investigate whether there was sufficient evidence for a case under the complaint, and if so, turn their findings over to prosecutors for a decision on whether it merited going to court.

The offences carried potential sentences ranging from two to six years in jail, Mr Sugito said. The posing requirements of the competition offended the standards not just of Islam but of other religions, he said.

A government decree against participation in beauty contests issued when strongman Suharto was president is still technically in effect in Indonesia, although in practice it has been disregarded since he lost power in 1998.

Video: Matthews Vs Coulter

Conservative women sure do seem to bring out the tiger in him, don’t they?
Two bits of advice for AC. One, it’s time for a new dress.

And two, the idea that we shouldn’t focus too closely on words isn’t the most persuasive defense coming from a writer.

Memo to Media: You are being used

Memo to Media: You are being used

Found in documents secured from one now-deceased Al Zarqawi:

1. To improve the image of the resistance in society, increase the number of supporters who are refusing occupation and show the clash of interest between society and the occupation and its collaborators. To use the media for spreading an effective and creative image of the resistance.

Mainstream Media can pretend that it is objective and non-partisan in all matters. However that position is only valid as long as all parties being covered recognize that position. Islamofascists do not even pretend to honor such a position. Media outlets exist as a tool for their propaganda efforts. It’s to your best interest to recognize this and act accordingly.

Great Signs

Dark skin 'does not block cancer'

Contrary to common perception, people with dark skin are more likely to die from skin cancer than those with fairer skin, warn US researchers.
Although the disease is less common, when it does occur it is typically more aggressive and diagnosed later, which leads to more deaths, they explain.

The Cincinnati University work is a warning to anyone who wrongly assumes skin tone makes some immune to cancers.

Experts advise people of all races to protect their skin from sun damage.

Misconception

Lead researcher Dr Hugh Gloster said: "There's a perception that people with darker skin don't have to worry about skin cancer, but that's not true.

"Minorities do get skin cancer, and because of this false perception most cases aren't diagnosed until they are more advanced and difficult to treat.

"Unfortunately, that translates into higher mortality rates."

He said it was true that the extra pigment in darker skin did afford some added protection against the sun's harmful UV rays and that darker skin is, therefore, less susceptible to sunburn.

But he said this should not lull people with darker skin into a false sense of security.

Dark skin has increased epidermal melanin which provides a natural skin protection factor (SPF) - a measure of how long skin covered with sunscreen takes to burn compared with uncovered skin.

Very dark, black skin has a natural SPF of about 13 and filters twice as much UV radiation as white skin, for example.

Sun protection

However, health experts advise people to use sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15.

Dr Gloster told a meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology in San Diego that doctors should make sure that all of their patients, regardless of race, use sunscreen and self-check for skin cancers.

This study shows that even people with darker skin need to be aware of the signs of skin cancer

Ed Yong, cancer information officer at Cancer Research UK

Malignant melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer, can present differently in different races.

Fairer-skinned people may notice a change in a sun-exposed mole, whilst darker-skinned people might develop the cancer on areas protected from the sun such as the soles of the feet.

There are over 70,000 new cases of skin cancer diagnosed each year in the UK, making it the most common type of cancer.

Ed Yong, cancer information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "This study shows that even people with darker skin need to be aware of the signs of skin cancer.

"Although those most at risk of skin cancer are people with fair skin, lots of moles or freckles or a family history of the disease, it is also important for black people to check their skin regularly.

"Black people are most likely to develop skin cancers on the palms of their hands or the soles of their feet.

"Checking your skin for unusual changes is crucial as it can mean that the disease can be spotted earlier, when it is easier to treat."

Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act.

by R.D. Davis

Former basketball star and current Democratic presidential candidate Bill
Bradley hasn't fouled an opponent on the basketball court in years, but
lately he's fouling the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bradley claims the
congressional vote on the Act led to which political party he would join.

Oh, really?

On October 9, 1999 at an Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, Bradley
exclaimed: "I remember the exact moment that I became a Democrat. It was the
summer of 1964; I was an intern in Washington between my junior and senior
year in college.

And I was in the Senate chamber the night the 1964 Civil
Rights Act passed that desegregated public accommodations in America... And
I became a Democrat because it was the party of justice. It was Democrats
that stepped forward that evening in the Senate and cast their vote that
washed away the stain of segregation in this country."

I believe that Democrats have lied about who supported the Civil Rights Act
for so long that they actually believe their lies. But anytime this lie is
retold, I feel compelled to debunk it. So here we go again...

The Congressional Quarterly of June 26, 1964 (p. 1323) recorded that, in the
Senate, only 69% of Democrats (46 for, 21 against) voted for the Civil
Rights Act as compared to 82% of Republicans (27 for, 6 against). All
southern Democratic senators voted against the Act.

This includes the current senator from West Virginia and former KKK member Robert C. Bryd and former Tennessee senator Al Gore, Sr. (the father of Bradley's Democratic
opponent).

Surely young Bradley must have flunked his internship because
ostensibly he did not learn that the Act's primary opposition came from the
southern Democrats' 74-day filibuster. In addition, he did not know that 21
is over three times as much as six, otherwise he would have become -
according to the logic of his statement - a Republican.

In the House of Representatives, 61% of Democrats (152 for, 96 against)
voted for the Civil Rights Act; 92 of the 103 southern Democrats voted
against it. Among Republicans, 80% (138 for, 34 against) voted for it.

Since Bradley was interning in the Senate, why doesn't he remember the major
role the Republicans played in fighting for civil rights?

During the Eisenhower Administration, the Republican Party made more progress in civil rights than in the preceding 80 years. According to Congressional Quarterly,
"Although the Democratic-controlled Congress watered them down, the
Administration's recommendations resulted in significant and effective civil
rights legislation in both 1957 and 1960 - the first civil rights statutes
to be passed in more than 80 years" ("The Republican Party 1960 Civil Rights
Platform," May 1964).

It reported on April 5, 1963 that, " A group of eight
Republican senators in March joined in introducing a series of 12 civil
rights bills that would implement many of the recommendations made in the
Civil Rights Commission report of 1961."

The principal measures introduced by these Republicans broadened the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, making it "designed to pass unlike Democratic 'public
relations' attempts" (CQ, February 15, 1963, p. 191). Republican senators
overwhelmingly "chided" President John Kennedy about his "failure to act in
this field (civil rights).

" Republican senators criticized the Kennedy
Administration's February 28, 1963 civil rights message as "falling far
short" of the Civil Rights Commission's recommendations and both party
platforms.

"If the President will not assume the leadership in getting
through Congress urgently needed civil rights measures," the Republican
senators said, " then Congress must take the initiative" (CQ, April 5, 1963,
p. 527).

At the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson
praised the Republicans for their "overwhelming" support. Roy Wilkins,
then-NAACP chairman, awarded Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett
Dirksen of Illinois the Leadership Conference of Civil Rights Award for his
"remarkable civil rights leadership.

" Moreover, civil rights activist Andrew Young wrote in his book
An Easy Burden that "The southern segregationists
were all Democrats, and it was black Republicans... who could effectively
influence the appointment of federal judges in the South" (p. 96).

Young added that the best civil rights judges were Republicans appointed by
President Dwight Eisenhower and that "these judges are among the many unsung
heroes of the civil rights movement."

The historical facts and numbers show the Republican Party was more for
civil rights than the Democrats from "the party of justice," as Bill Bradley
called it. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, in reality, could not have been
passed without Republican votes.

It is an "injustice" for contemporary Democratic politicians
and the liberal news media to continue to not give
the Republicans credit for their civil rights triumphs.

Now is the time for Republicans to start informing black Americans
of those historical triumphs to lead them back to their "home party."

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NVDavisBradley1299.html

Bush Signs Voting Rights Act

(AP)— President Bush on Thursday signed legislation extending for 25 years the Voting Rights Act, the historic 1965 law which opened polls to millions of black Americans by outlawing racist voting practices in the South. "Congress has reaffirmed its belief that all men are created equal," he declared.

Bush signed the bill amid fanfare and before an South Lawn audience that included members of Congress, civil rights leaders and family members of civil rights leaders of the recent past. It was one of a series of high-profile ceremonies the president is holding to sign popular bills into law.

The Republican controlled Congress, eager to improve its standing with minorities ahead of the November elections, pushed the bill through even though key provisions were not set to expire until next year.

"The right of ordinary men and women to determine their own political future lies at the heart of the American experiment," Bush said. He said the Voting Rights Act proposed and signed by then-President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 "broke the segregationist lock on the voting box."

With the Republican Party's majority status in Congress in jeopardy and Bush's approval ratings low, the White House has turned to the South Lawn to provide a high-profile backdrop for signing popular bills into law.

Later in the day, Bush is to sign another bill sure to resonate with voters in this congressional election year: legislation establishing a national Internet database designed to let law enforcement and communities know where convicted sex offenders live and work.

By contrast, Bush chose to exercise the first veto of his 5 1/2 years as president in privacy last week, no audience, no cameras, no reporters. The bill he vetoed would have expanded federally funded research of embryonic stem cells, which is opposed by social conservatives but has wide support among the rest of the public.

White House officials said an open ceremony to veto a bill seemed inappropriate, although other presidents have done just that. Forty minutes after the Oval Office veto, Bush gave a major address on the issue in the East Room, open to the press and surrounded by families who have "adopted" leftover frozen embryos and used them to bear children.

In May, Bush took to the South Lawn to sign into law a bill that extended $70 billion in previously passed tax cuts. That package was also seen by Republicans as an opportunity to boost the popularity of the president and the Republican-controlled Congress

The South Lawn is hardly a common venue for presidential bill-signings, which usually occur in an office building next to the White House or, for particularly important legislation, in the East Room. The majestic backyard of the White House is typically reserved for pomp-filled welcoming ceremonies for foreign leaders or large social affairs like the annual Easter egg roll.

On Wednesday, workers scurried to get the expanse of lawn ready for the Voting Rights Act signing, setting up water stations and a large stage for Bush and the bill's primary supporters.

The list of some of the 600 expected guests reads like a who's-who of prominent black leaders and civil rights veterans: the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson; friends and relatives of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks; Dorothy Height, the longtime chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women; and National Urban League head Marc Morial. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, despite its rocky history with Bush, was sending several representatives, including current president Bruce Gordon, chairman Julian Bond and former head Benjamin Hooks.

The White House also anticipated heavy participation from Capitol Hill, where a long line of lawmakers were looking for a chance to share the spotlight.


Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


As usual the Democrats pushed there way to the fron of the line,
to get there picture taken, they will then attack Bush next week
claiming he was "forced" to sign the bill. As usual history will be rewritten
and Republicans will still be called racist.

A perfect example of the the rewriting of history is Edward Blum who says the Bush administration has really done a flip-flop on this," a senior fellow at the Center for Equal Opportunity who.

Mr Blum is no doubt a democrat, who uses he profession to bash Republicans.

"This is not where he was, and this is not the kind of philosophy that then-Governor Bush had when it comes to getting Texas out from under the thumb of the federal government."

Given that Texas was Democrat for many years I am sure the Democrats
opposed it the longest, but Mr. Blum will play dead on this fact.

Ethiopian forces take second town in Somalia

Ethiopian troops moved further into Somalia yesterday, opening a new front in the American-led "war on terror". An estimated 5,000 Ethiopian soldiers are believed to be inside Somalia, protecting the weak transitional government from an Islamist force that controls half the country.

The US does not want Somalia to fall into the hands of the Islamists; so far, regional observers point out, neither the US nor any other UN Security Council member has condemned the Ethiopian invasion.

The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) - which defeated an alliance of US-backed warlords to take control of Mogadishu last month - boycotted proposed peace talks on Saturday. The Islamists, who are far more popular among ordinary Somalis than the fragile transitional government, are now expected to try to take control of the rest of the country.

The US has already tried once to defeat the Islamists and has repeatedly said it fears Somalia could become a safe haven for terrorists. Ethiopia fears an Islamist state on its doorstep and has invaded Somalia in the past. Its troops entered Somalia in 1996 to defeat Islamists who were backing a rebel group in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia.

Ethiopian troops entered Somalia again on Thursday and have been seen in the town of Baidoa, the seat of the transitional government. Over the weekend, they took control of a second town, Waajid.

One Somali analyst, based in Nairobi, said it is likely that the current invasion was supported by America. Ethiopia and the US "share a security agenda," he said. "There is a lot of military co-operation between the two countries. They have been carrying out joint exercises along the Ethiopian-Somali border, tracking suspected terrorists. Ethiopia certainly seems to be acting as if it has a free hand. We are at a tipping point right now. The Islamists would not be unhappy with a conflict. It is shaping up to be a zero-sum game - winner takes all."

Analysts throughout the region share this view. John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group has warned that the region is heading for "full-scale war".

Somalia has not had an effective central government for 15 years, since warlords overthrew the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other.

The likelihood of the conflict in Somalia becoming part of the war on terror appears high. Osama bin Laden, in his most recent tape recording, backed the UIC and said Somalia must remain Islamic. The new leader of the UIC, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, is on America's most-wanted list of terrorists and other senior members of the UIC are wanted by the US for involvement in the 1998 bombing of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Unconfirmed reports say that some of the UIC's troops are foreign, possibly having travelled across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen.

No love is lost between the two major players in Somalia. The president of the transitional government, Abdullahi Yusuf, and Sheikh Aweys fought each other in the mid-1990s in the Puntland region in central Somalia. Mr Yusuf succeeded then in expelling Sheikh Aweys from the region.

* Gunmen have killed 682 civilians, including a Swedish journalist, in executions over the past year in Somalia, according to a report published yesterday by the Dr Ismael Jumale Human Rights Centre.

Ethiopian troops moved further into Somalia yesterday, opening a new front in the American-led "war on terror". An estimated 5,000 Ethiopian soldiers are believed to be inside Somalia, protecting the weak transitional government from an Islamist force that controls half the country.

The US does not want Somalia to fall into the hands of the Islamists; so far, regional observers point out, neither the US nor any other UN Security Council member has condemned the Ethiopian invasion.

The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) - which defeated an alliance of US-backed warlords to take control of Mogadishu last month - boycotted proposed peace talks on Saturday. The Islamists, who are far more popular among ordinary Somalis than the fragile transitional government, are now expected to try to take control of the rest of the country.

The US has already tried once to defeat the Islamists and has repeatedly said it fears Somalia could become a safe haven for terrorists. Ethiopia fears an Islamist state on its doorstep and has invaded Somalia in the past. Its troops entered Somalia in 1996 to defeat Islamists who were backing a rebel group in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia.

Ethiopian troops entered Somalia again on Thursday and have been seen in the town of Baidoa, the seat of the transitional government. Over the weekend, they took control of a second town, Waajid.

One Somali analyst, based in Nairobi, said it is likely that the current invasion was supported by America. Ethiopia and the US "share a security agenda," he said. "There is a lot of military co-operation between the two countries. They have been carrying out joint exercises along the Ethiopian-Somali border, tracking suspected terrorists. Ethiopia certainly seems to be acting as if it has a free hand. We are at a tipping point right now. The Islamists would not be unhappy with a conflict. It is shaping up to be a zero-sum game - winner takes all."

Analysts throughout the region share this view. John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group has warned that the region is heading for "full-scale war".

Somalia has not had an effective central government for 15 years, since warlords overthrew the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other.

The likelihood of the conflict in Somalia becoming part of the war on terror appears high. Osama bin Laden, in his most recent tape recording, backed the UIC and said Somalia must remain Islamic. The new leader of the UIC, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, is on America's most-wanted list of terrorists and other senior members of the UIC are wanted by the US for involvement in the 1998 bombing of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Unconfirmed reports say that some of the UIC's troops are foreign, possibly having travelled across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen.

No love is lost between the two major players in Somalia. The president of the transitional government, Abdullahi Yusuf, and Sheikh Aweys fought each other in the mid-1990s in the Puntland region in central Somalia. Mr Yusuf succeeded then in expelling Sheikh Aweys from the region.

* Gunmen have killed 682 civilians, including a Swedish journalist, in executions over the past year in Somalia, according to a report published yesterday by the Dr Ismael Jumale Human Rights Centre.

Socialism: Even their vegetables suck

http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=4414

Fruit and vegetables in Swedish stores may look like they are bursting with nutrition, but tests by a national newspaper claims to show that greens sold by the five largest supermarket chains are often lacking in both taste and goodness. Of the 120 different types of fruit and vegetable tested by the newspaper, 64 were classed as having 'poor' levels of vital nutrients, 56 were 'adequate', and none were classed as 'good' or 'excellent'. Of the 33 tomatoes tested, 28 contained so much water that they were not good enough to make juice from.


This is what happens when you let GreenPeace tell you how to farm.

Lance Bass is Gay..So What

NEW YORK(AP) -- Lance Bass, band member of 'N Sync, says he's gay and in a "very stable" relationship with a reality show star.

Bass, who formed 'N Sync with Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick, tells People magazine that he didn't earlier disclose his sexuality because he didn't want to affect the group's popularity.

"I knew that I was in this popular band and I had four other guys' careers in my hand, and I knew that if I ever acted on it or even said (that I was gay), it would overpower everything," he tells the magazine.

'N Sync is known for a string of hits including "Bye Bye Bye" and "It's Gonna Be Me." The band went on hiatus in 2002. Bass has also found headlines for undertaking astronaut training and failing to raise money for a trip into space.

Bass says he wondered if his coming out could prompt "the end of 'N Sync." He explains, "So I had that weight on me of like, 'Wow, if I ever let anyone know, it's bad.' So I just never did."

The singer says he's in a "very stable" relationship with 32-year-old actor Reichen Lehmkuhl, winner of season four of CBS' "Amazing Race."

Bass and Fatone, 29, are developing a sitcom pilot inspired by the screwball comedy "The Odd Couple," in which his character will be gay.

"The thing is, I'm not ashamed -- that's the one thing I went to say," Bass says. "I don't think it's wrong, I'm not devastated going through this. I'm more liberated and happy than I've been my whole life. I'm just happy."

He also confirmed his relationship with former reality show star Reichen Lehmkuhl. There had been considerable speculation about his sexuality due to numerous paparazzi snapshots of him with the openly gay Lehmkuhl. The two had been spotted together in many different locations, often seen wearing each other's shirts.


A band member of N'Sync is GAY?
That has to be the fucking surprise of the millenium.
I'd have been more shocked if they were all straight.

Bush Nominates Gay Physician as Global AIDS Coordinator

Dr. Mark R. Dybul serves as the Acting United States Global AIDS Coordinator in the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC), which leads implementation of President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Prior to beginning his role in the Coordinator’s Office, Dr. Dybul served on the Planning Task Force for the Emergency Plan, and he was the lead for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for President Bush’s International Prevention of Mother and Child HIV Initiative.

Dr. Dybul comes to OGAC from HHS, where he has served as the Assistant Director for Medical Affairs, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Co-Executive Secretary of the HHS HIV therapy guidelines for adults and adolescents.

He continues to be a Staff Clinician in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at NIAID/NIH and maintains an active role as the principal investigator for clinical and basic research for U.S. and international protocols with an emphasis on HIV therapy, particular those that may be applicable in resource-poor settings, including intermittent therapy and HIV reservoirs and immunopathogenesis.

Dr. Dybul is a captain in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the uniformed service of HHS. He is also a former member of the World Health Organization's Writing Committee to develop global HIV therapy guidelines.

Dr. Dybul received his A.B. (1985) and M.D. (1992) from Georgetown University before completing his residency in internal medicine at the University of Chicago Hospitals (1995) and a fellowship in infectious diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (1998).
by GayPatriot

While folks like Raj and Ian think that there are concentration camps in Idaho and that Muslims/Palestinians are our friends, President Bush shows that being straight or gay has no bearing on his decisions to put qualified people into important roles.

Bush nominates gay man to head global AIDS office - Washington Blade

President Bush nominated gay physician Mark R. Dybul July 17 to be United States Global AIDS Coordinator, a post at the State Department that has the rank of ambassador. If the U.S. Senate ratifies his nomination, Dybul would replace pharmaceutical industry executive Randall Tobias as head of a $15 billion program initiated by Bush and approved by Congress to combat AIDS in developing countries, with a focus on Africa. Bush appointed Tobias to another administration post. “[Dybul] is widely recognized as someone highly qualified for this position,” said Carl Schmid, a gay Republican activist who serves as federal affairs director for the AIDS Institute, a national AIDS advocacy group. Dybul currently serves as acting U.S. global AIDS coordinator and chief medical officer at the State Department.

He would become the third openly gay person to hold a U.S. ambassadorial position. President Clinton appointed businessman and philanthropist James Hormel as ambassador to Luxemburg. In his first term in office, Bush appointed gay career Foreign Service Officer Michael Guest as ambassador to Romania.

Um wait.. let me understand. President Bush has nominated two gay men for ambassador roles for the United States and Gay Messiah Clinton (father of DOMA and DADT) only nominated one?

Oh and by the way, Romania is a key ally in the War on Terror (*cough* unlike France *cough*), so Michael Guest representing the United States is a very big deal.
Ah, more busting of myths!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

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Steele Admits He Criticized GOP in Interview

Unnamed Candidate Said Being Republican Was Like Wearing 'Scarlet Letter'

By John Wagner and Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 26, 2006


Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's Senate campaign acknowledged yesterday that he was the anonymous candidate quoted by a Washington Post political reporter as saying that being a Republican was like wearing a "scarlet letter" and that he did not want President Bush to campaign for him this fall.

The campaign made the disclosure after a day of speculation in the blogosphere and among political reporters about which Republican Senate candidate had made the disparaging remarks reported by Dana Milbank in the Washington Sketch column in yesterday's Post.

Democrats in Maryland and Washington pounced on the comments to portray Steele as either a chameleon or a hypocrite.

"He realizes that he can't win being a conservative Republican in Maryland in 2006," said Maryland Democratic Party spokesman Arthur Harris. "He's out of touch with the majority of Marylanders."

State Democratic Party Chairman Terry Lierman pointed out in a statement that Steele has held fundraisers with the president, Vice President Cheney, Bush adviser Karl Rove and National Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman.

"He has taken millions from Bush and his top aides and even endorsed Bush in a prime-time Republican National Convention speech in August 2004," Lierman said.

During a luncheon with reporters at which he agreed to be quoted only as a Republican Senate candidate, Steele criticized the Iraq war effort and Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina and said congressional Republicans have "lost our way," according to Milbank's report.

Asked whether he would invite Bush to campaign for him, he replied, considering Bush's low approval rating in Maryland, "to be honest with you, probably not."

Steele spokesman Doug Heye did not dispute the accuracy of Steele's quotes in the paper but said Steele spent little time at the luncheon talking about the subject and said the article did not include some comments Steele made praising Bush.

"When he agrees with the Republican administration, he absolutely does so," Heye said. "When he disagrees, he speaks his mind."

Heye did not say why, if that were the case, Steele refused to be quoted by name originally. He said Steele had made similar statements in the past that had not attracted as much attention.

Other Republicans kept a stiff upper lip. Dan Ronayne, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign, said there would be no drop in national party support for Steele.

"Michael's always been an independent voice and speaks his mind, always has been," Ronayne said. "Michael Steele's name is on the ballot. His campaign is going to make its own decisions."

Maryland Republican Party spokeswoman Audra Miller referred questions to the Steele campaign.

Bush, Rove and other prominent Republicans recruited Steele to run and are happy to have an African American candidate as their party's standard-bearer. They have said that his campaign strategy of running an independent race makes sense in a state where Democrats hold an almost 2 to 1 registration advantage over Republicans.

"It's a carefully calculated ploy to run as a Democrat and Republican at the same time," said Matthew Crenson, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University who is closely watching the race. He added, "There's nothing the Bush administration is going to do to him, because they need him."

Indeed, the White House stood by Steele yesterday.

"We're not going to respond to anything the lieutenant governor may have said," said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. "The president strongly believes in Michael Steele's candidacy and strongly believes he will be the next senator for the state of Maryland."

Recent polls show Steele trailing in a general election matchup against Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin but running close against Kweisi Mfume. The two are leading a pack of 18 Democrats seeking the nomination to replace Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D). The nominee will be chosen Sept. 12.

Steele acknowledged his strategy at Monday's lunch. Asked whether he could run as a proud Republican, he said: "That's going to be tough. It's going to be tough to do. If this race is about Republicans and Democrats, I lose."

Although Steele's distancing himself from Republicans could help him among some Democrats and independents, it could turn off GOP voters, who the polls show give more than 85 percent of their support to Steele.

When Bush went to Maryland recently for a GOP fundraiser, he was warmly greeted by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), but Steele was absent. Steele's campaign said that he had a long-scheduled fundraiser of his own in Las Vegas and denied that he was trying to distance himself from the president.

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki Addresses Congress (VIDEO)

“Iraq is the frontline in this struggle and history will prove that the sacrifices of Iraqis for freedom will not be in vein, Iraqis are your allies in the war on terror.”

—- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki in his address to the United States Congress


VIDEO – WMV

VIDEO – .MOV

All Day Like Harry Belafonte?

The world would be a lot simpler if people would focus on their specialties. Actor Harry Belafonte has a laudable history of civil rights activism. At the BET Awards he attempted to preserve this legacy by delivering a politically inflected speech amidst a celebration of achievement. Unfortunately, aside from being cloaked in the rhetoric of victimhood, this anachronistic call to action did little more than ruin the mood of the evening.

After watching the BET Awards, I smiled and took solace in the fact that regardless of how anyone feels about the state of hip hop (including me), it's not going anywhere. For all my personal frustrations with today's wack artists, aside from welfare reform, hip hop may be the best thing to happen to Americans of color since the Civil Rights Act. Obviously the industry's growth and transformation hasn't come without its costs, the most significant of which is the immeasurable cost of dignity. Let's hope that as the industry continues to evolve it can regain the cross-cultural respect both hip hop and black entertainment overall, once commanded.

Stallworths like Belafonte are testaments to the eloquence and excellence that black entertainment once embodied. However, in spite of the tremendous respect and admiration we all should have for the entertainer-activist, the political stagnation, redunancy, and lack of clarity implicit in his speech has me wondering if it might be time for him to pass the torch. Am I the only person who wonders what he means by statements like "the enemy is still out there"? Obviously he's not talking about Al Queda. Then there was the reminder that we are victims of the system. Who the heck in that audience can still be considered a victim? Jay Z grew up in the hood but he's a millionaire now. Beyonce was solidly middle class, although her affinity for thugs might lead you to believe otherwise. And the way Chris Brown smiles leads me to think he might be a victim of lockjaw, but nothing else. I think you see my point. You can't be blinging yet be considered a victim of the system by any stretch of the imagination. Taking Belafonte's statement at face value would imply that victimization is a permanent facet of black existence. Thanks to the determination of earlier generations of blacks, we have it better than ever before. To argue otherwise would be silly, and a form of historical dementia.

Obviously I'm not suggesting we live in the Promised Land. But Belafonte's speech was characteristic of the "race is destiny" mindset, which places whites as eternally depraved oppressors and blacks as perennial victims. This arouses the historical imagery of the pain and suffering our ancestors endured, which often causes us to replace rational thought with emotionally-driven reactions. The minute Belafonte said "we are the victims", it was as if a switch went on that produced a robotic applause among us. This emotionally induced reaction is part of the reason Hillary Clinton can walk into Harlem thinking she can ensnare the black vote by saying "the Republicans are running Congress like a Plantation!" (I didn't realize Hillary knew anything about plantation life) But when roughly 90% of black people vote Democrat there's no need to offer any meaningful solutions to the problems the black poor and working classes face.

A friend once told me that racism will never die because there are too many people who profit off of its existence. Well, that's capitalism for you. Some sociologists may not have a job if racism wasn't around. Much of what they conclude after tons of research is common sense. (Such as the fact that people are less likely to be racist if they are exposed to people of different races...DUH! Did you really need to produce a 300-page book to substantiate this?) While it's obvious that racism is far from dead, I have trouble believing that because some Whites suffer from subconscious racism, this has the same socially repressive effect as KKK cross-burning and lynching.

People on the lookout for racism will act as if it's 1910 when they hear ignorant comments. This is called confirmation bias. I prefer to laugh them off, unless they have the ability to do serious harm. An in-depth reading of black history reveals that few TRUE leaders were ever concerned with whether whites thought they were competent. They just wanted the opportunity to prove their competence. Even Aaron McGruder- the spokesman for Angry Black Men From the Suburbs Inc.- once said "we care too much about what white people think of us." If it so happens that a few whites resent black success, and this includes the success of black entertainment and hip hop, that probably means black people are advancing. Racism and resentment are not one in the same.

Belafonte' speech represents a mindset that was appropriate 40 years ago, but is out of touch with present-day reality. It's a shame so much race scholarship is politically motivated. It's also a shame that many members of the civil rights establishment can't see beyond race, when Dr. King's agenda after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was focused on poverty and war. Holding on to victimhood status does little aside from reinforcing the artificially imposed psychological stumbling block of racial stigma. So when Belafonte implicitly defines black as victim, he may think he's helping us but he's not.

http://cantbeboxedin.blogspot.com/

Hip Hop Iconoclast is a 23-year-old male, American-born son of Black Jamaican parents, raised in an urban, residential, predominantly 1st generation, working-middle class neighborhood of Queens, NYC

Quote of the Day

"Twenty years ago, Congress passed the mandatory sentencing legislation heavily penalizing the possession and sale of crack cocaine. Although it is a favorite charge in African-American Studies department term papers and by callers to black talk radio shows that this was “racist,” the Congressional Black Caucus was squarely behind it."

- John McWhorter,

"Ending Victim-Like Thinking"Full article found here:
http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getmailfiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2006/07/20&ID=Ar01102

Humans Rights Watch Bias

On July 17, 2006, Human Rights Watch issued a document entitled "Questions and Answers on Hostilities Between Israel and Hezbollah" with the stated purpose of "provid[ing] analytic guidance for those who are examining the fighting as well as for the parties to the conflict and those with the capacity to influence them."

The piece purports to be a neutral guide setting out the legal rules governing the current hostilities in Lebanon. However, the authors' distorted views of the underlying facts, selective omission of crucial legal issues, and insistent characterization of Hezbollah and Israel as the primary legal actors - with the attendant implied denial of legal responsibility of Lebanon, Syria and Iran to end their support for Hezbollah - all mislead readers and betray the bias of the piece. This is a consistent pattern followed by HRW in activities related to the Middle East.

The most outstanding example of HRW's approach is provided by its question "What is Hezbollah's status in relation to the conflict?" and the answer:

"Hezbollah is an organized political Islamist group based in Lebanon, with a military arm and a civilian arm, and is represented in the Lebanese parliament and government. As such a group, and as a party to the conflict with Israel, it is bound to conduct hostilities in compliance with customary international humanitarian law and common Article 3."
This description completely omits several legally important facts about Hezbollah. International law precedents such as decisions of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia make it clear that militias like Hezbollah, given de facto authority by the government of Lebanon (in which Hezbollah has ministerial representation) and acting on behalf of Lebanon, are bound to follow the legal commitments of the state of Lebanon, which extend well beyond common Article 3 and customary law. Moreover, Lebanon itself has the legal responsibility to ensure that Hezbollah abide by international humanitarian law and other bodies of international law.
Furthermore, under Security Council resolution 1373, adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, Lebanon is legally required to take a host of actions against international terrorist groups.

Hezbollah is a group that has deliberately targeted and murdered civilians in Israel, Argentina and elsewhere in order to intimidate the population of Israel, and thereby clearly falls into the definition of an international terrorist group. Lebanon is therefore required to end even passive support of Hezbollah; freeze Hezbollah funds; suppress Hezbollah recruitment; eliminate the supply of weapons to Hezbollah; deny safe haven to all Hezbollah persons who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts and bring all such persons to justice; and prevent Lebanese territory being used for the commission of such acts. Similarly, Syria and Iran are forbidden to supply arms to Hezbollah, supply funding or supply safe haven. Shockingly, the only reference to legal obligations related to terrorism in HRW's document is an accusation that the "logic" of alleged Israeli actions "opens the door to ... terrorism," followed by a warning to Israel (!) that "international humanitarian law explicitly prohibits attacks of which the primary purpose is to intimidate or instill terror in the civilian population."

Additionally, under article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Lebanon and all other signatories of the Convention are required to prevent further killings of Jews by Hezbollah and punish Hezbollah for past killings. Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as killings committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.

Hezbollah has expressed its intent to destroy Jews as such a number of times, as reported, for example, by Badih Chayban in the October 23, 2002 Lebanese Daily Star, where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was quoted as saying "if they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." Each incident in which Jews are killed by Hezbollah is therefore an act of genocide, which countries like Lebanon and Israel (as signatories to the Convention) are legally required to punish and prevent. HRW makes no mention of the parties' legal duties under the Convention.
Another example of bias may be found in HRW's insinuation that Israel is not permitted to target the Beirut airport because, according to HRW, it is "at best debatable" that the Beirut airport "constitutes a station for the transport of arms and infrastructure used by Hezbollah" and a possible means of transporting kidnapped Israeli soldiers to another country.

Contrary to HRW's suggestion, it is indisputable - except perhaps by HRW - that Hezbollah has no capability within Lebanon for fashioning weapons such as Katyusha rockets, Raad and Zilzal longer-range missiles, and anti-ship Silkworm missiles that have been used in the fighting of the last few weeks. Since this weaponry cannot be spontaneously generated, the airport is without doubt an important potential way station for transport of war materiel and also hostages. Indeed, Western (including Israeli) intelligence suggests that the airport has already been used in the past for such purposes if HRW has any contrary evidence, or even any ability to obtain contrary evidence, HRW has yet to identify it. Airports and other ports of entry, as well as other means of transportation like roads and bridges are well-recognized in customary international law as legitimate targets in war.

Further bias may be seen in the selection of issues. Eight questions are posed regarding Israeli military activity, and seven of the eight answers provided by HRW imply Israeli wrongdoing, often without legal or factual basis. By contrast, only three questions regard Hezbollah activity, with only one of HRW's answers directly acknowledging Hezbollah wrongdoing. HRW treats superficially Hezbollah's repeated violations of the laws of war in targeting civilians, using indiscriminate weaponry designed to needlessly enhance suffering, threatening the civilian population, using civilian shields and the like. Indeed, while Hezbollah's use of civilian shields and deliberate placement of military assets in civilian areas are gross violations of the laws of war, HRW refers to such acts only in passing.

HRW amplifies the image of Israeli wrongdoing by speculating as to the existence of improper Israeli motives and then sternly warning Israel against the speculated thought. HRW engages in no similar speculation regarding Hezbollah motives. Thus, for example, HRW speculates that the "real, unstated reason for Israel's attack on the airport may be precisely to impose a cost on Lebanese civilians."

Similarly, HRW issues a number of warnings about possible future actions of the parties that might constitute war crimes - such as a possible Israeli failure to permit free passage of food or medical supplies. Here again, HRW's speculations are limited to imagined future Israeli wrongdoing, rather than imagined future Hezbollah wrongdoing.

Numerous sections of the piece mislead. Consider, for instance, HRW's discussion of the illegality of Hezbollah's cross-border attack on July 12 against an Israeli patrol (killing eight) and kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. HRW asks "was Hezbollah's capture of Israeli soldiers lawful?" and answers "[t]he targeting and capture of enemy soldiers is allowed under international humanitarian law[; h]owever captured combatants must in all circumstances be treated humanely."

This answer is extremely deceptive. It is true that this one of the few Hezbollah attacks that actually abides by the "distinction" rule in international humanitarian law that requires that military actions be aimed at military rather than civilian targets. However, the rule of "distinction" is not the only relevant rule of international law. International laws of war forbid Hezbollah and other Lebanese-Iranian militias from violating Israeli sovereignty with a military attack unless justified by factors not available in this case to Hezbollah (such as self-defense). Thus, a complete answer would say that this attack was probably a crime of aggression, although it is one of the few Hezbollah attacks that is not, in addition, a violation of the legal rules of distinction.
HRW buries Hezbollah's crime of aggression under jargon in a different place in the document where it alludes obliquely to the illegality of the attack, equally obliquely suggests (contrary to international law) that Israel has no right to self-defense and concludes, bizarrely, that "[i]n accordance with its institutional mandate, Human Rights Watch maintains a position of strict neutrality on these issues of jus ad bellum because we find it the best way to promote our primary goal of encouraging both sides in the course of the conflict to respect international humanitarian law"

Crimes of aggression are serious violations of the law of war that were prosecuted at Nuremburg, and are prosecutable under a number of international legal instruments today. How HRW fulfills its institutional mandate or promotes respect for the law by whitewashing Hezbollah's crimes of aggression - and by hiding Lebanon's, Syria's and Iran's legal responsibilities, diminishing other Hezbollah war crimes, and amplifying imagined Israeli wrongdoing - is not clear.

UN Chief accuses "Hezzies" of being Cowards

Shocking! The UN finally calls a spade a spade, but still doesn't get it!

UN humanitarian chief accuses Hizballah of ’cowardly blending’ among civilians

Yes, you read that right. A UN rep has actually dared to criticize the mujahedin, and draw attention to their reprehensible tactics, although of course he also parroted the "disproportionate" line against Israel, without noting the self-contradiction in which he was entangling himself: if Hizballah launches its actions from civilian areas, how is Israel's response in civilian areas disproportionate? "UN humanitarian chief accuses Hezbollah of ’cowardly blending’ among civilians," from AP

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/July/middleeast_July545.xml§ion=middleeast&col=

LARNACA, Cyprus - The UN humanitarian chief accused Hezbollah of “cowardly blending” among Lebanese civilians and causing the deaths of hundreds during two weeks of cross-border violence with Israel.
The militant group has built bunkers and tunnels near the Israeli border to shelter weapons and fighters, and its members easily blend in among civilians.

Jan Egeland spoke with reporters at the Larnaca airport in Cyprus late Monday after a visit to Lebanon on his mission to coordinate an international aid effort. On Sunday he had toured the rubble of Beirut’s southern suburbs, a once-teeming Shiite district where Hezbollah had its headquarters.

During that visit he condemned the killing and wounding of civilians by both sides, and called Israel’s offensive “disproportionate” and “a violation of international humanitarian law.”

On Monday he had strong words for Hezbollah, which crossed into Israel and captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12, triggering fierce fighting from both sides.

“Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children,” he said. “I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don’t think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men.”

“We need a cessation of hostilities because this is a war where civilians are paying the price,” said Egeland, before flying to Israel.

Malcolm X vs.The NOI

Malcolm X explains the real reason why he was kicked out of the Nation of Islam and reveals Elijah Muhammad's infidelity. (First few seconds are silent)

Ethiopia .....Being Taken for a Ride

A Somali civil war with Ethiopian players and / or an Ethio-Somali conflict along with a destabilized Horn of Africa serve the interests of both Somalia's new religious warlords and Meles Inc. rather neatly.

Both have now acquired the 'worthy' opponents of their dreams (and everyone else's nightmares) to justify and excuse all of their myriad crimes - past, present and future - while they fortify and refortify their respective revolutions.

No one else benefits except for the web of aggressive international mayhem that is attempting to hijack Islam (arms dealers and Swiss bankers too). Ethiopians and the donor patrons of Meles Inc. are, in turn, unwillingly and quite willingly being forced to go along for a ride that will end badly ...

... that is except for the top ranks of Ethiopia's Revolutionary Feudal Aristocracy and Somalia's Revolutionary Islamist Warlords. The War on Terror and Ethiopia's future will certainly be damaged.

The comparison that Meles Inc. wants the US to make is with the just American efforts on terror and with the just Israelis efforts against Hezbollah and Hamas. With Ethiopia supposedly firmly on 'Team America', so to speak, all the bothersome noises about elections, human rights and sanctions are expected to end in Washington and Brussels.

Actually, Meles Inc. wants the connection to be made specifically to itself and not to Ethiopia at large. That way, non-regime actors in the opposition whose interests also coincide with Washington as well and who are more reliable allies, will be viewed with suspicion. Meanwhile, a flood of unaccounted for aid from American taxpayers may flow in.

The comparison that the Islamist Warlords wants made is with the same world events. Opposition from the convenient and traditional Ethiopian boogeyman will hopefully translate into cash from all over the Middle East and respect from the same quarters. The invasion was a gift to the Islamist Warlords starved for attention, excuses and arms while the jihad that was declared is a gift to a Meles Inc. in dire need of the same things.

What do the Islamist Warlords want? Well, they want to take over first Southern Somalia, then Northern Somalia & Puntland, then Eastern Ethiopia, Djibouti and Northeastern Kenya. That is all familiar - but in tune with the Islamist movement they want to help take over the world - seriously, they do.

Somalia's current non-government is in their way, their weakness, isolation and Ethiopia is also in their way. Despite popular images and the reality of fractitious Somalia, the North is at peace and the rest has no recent history of religious fervor. Somalia's Civil War has previously been more about clan rivalry than anything else.

Now the Islamists for the first time can say they speak for Somali nationalism wrapped up in religion as well. What the rest of the world and potential supporters might never have noticed is suddenly a religious issue. That suits Meles Inc. just fine - although it wants to control only all Ethiopian lives and souls worldwide, it needs a pretext for treating them all badly in the name of stability.

Militarily in the initial stages of any conflict or even a sitzkrieg, Ethiopian forces that are relatively professional and well supplied will emerge dominant. Over the length of the short term however, it will cost Ethiopia a whole lot of money to maintain an army in Somalia and it is not clear if aid will pay the bills. Even more will be the focused enmity of potential supporters of the new warlords that heretofore either ignored Ethiopia or just occasionally tried to hurt her when convenient.

Indeeed whereas Israel suffered years of provocation and actual military invasion from Lebanon before taking action against Hezbollah, Meles Inc. is acting with no provocation except for disapproval of the winner in the bloody game of Somali politics. Imagine trying to defend that stance in the UN - if it is even noticed there.

Even just pre-emptive wars must have a rational pretext but none can be seen in this conflict.

The major factor in religious friction in Ethiopia (the little there is) is the government itself who rules by tribal, and when convenient, religious divide and rule. The terrorist acts supposedly carried out from Somalia have been blamed over the past years on Haile Sellassie & Dergue loyalists, allegedly genocidal members of the opposition, hooligans and Eritrean agents just to name a few - when convenient Somali's Islamists joined the musical chairs blame game of Gibee propaganda.

Not that the new warlords wouldn't do such a thing mind you - but they haven't yet and you can't just start wars like that. When a regime's rule is predicated on keeping a country poor, weak and divided against tens of millions of internal opponents - starting external conflicts is a design for short term gain from possible American aid and silence on human rights in exchange for how the conflict will leak back in the future.

The failed state dependent on international largesse that Meles Inc. has purposefully created in Ethiopia can't sustain any foreign adventure on its own. Even if general bad feelings from the new warlords had translated into some action, Ethiopia is not rich and secure like the America that can act, almost at will, in Iraq or Afghanistan. America certainly had far more provocation from Al Quaeda and Saddam than the fevered propaganda of Meles Inc. would put on the warlords.

Sticking the collective Ethiopian neck out for the right to oppress Ethiopians while having someone pay for it all serves the regime but no one else including the would be paymasters. It all may work and hold together this week or next month but as the seasons are counted this will prove to be a disaster and a move that strengthened the Islamist warlords beyond measure.

Former Ambassador Herman Cohen agrees that Meles Inc. routinely makes up stories about Somali and Sudanese terror links to silence American criticism on all fronts. No one in Washington except for folks in Congress and the Ethiopian diaspora seems to take a democratic face for Meles Inc. seriously so the Islamist victories are seen as all that is needed to shut down H.R. 5680 where millions in lawyer, lobbyist and private investigator fees failed.

No doubt some feeble attempts will be made to link the conflict to Ethiopian nationalism just as Mengistu did when Somalia invaded in 1977 and Meles did when Eritrea invaded in 1998. Both sincerly espoused their beliefs in the illegitimacy of Ethiopia until it could become a useful tool to pretend otherwise.

Just as Stalin temporarily invited Mother Russia and the Church into the Soviet space in 1941 when Hitler invaded - watch for calls now from the Gibee to duty for Mother Ethiopia to come out and pictures taken with religious figures. This will also seem like a good moment for all 'Good Ethiopians' to rally to the flag that the PM sincerely described as a rag.

No one will take any of this seriously but it will be just another excuse to shed blood amidst the 70 million in the opposition and to terrify them with another set of excuses. More excuses are needed you see as the careful though transparent propaganda buildup of the first fourteen years of revolutionary democracy came crashing down when Ethiopians and the opposition decided not to play their part in the fake election.

In the same way the Islamist Warlords can now kill people who dance at weddings and watch soccer on TV confident that nationalism will, at least on the surface, bind the will of Somali's to resist them while serving as a fundraising pitch in the radical Islamic world.

Meles Inc. started this war at this time to ensure that it remain in power right now and perhaps for the next few years more - while any general Ethiopian interest in perhaps waiting to be attacked or at least provoked before invading - or even checking to see how the cost will be paid, was decided.

American taxpayers will pay with cash and Ethiopian ones will pay with blood and the last birr squeezed from their bodies if it all goes according to plan. As far as American interests are concerned it should be made clear that the long term and short term interests of Meles Inc. are in INSTABILITY.

That way the top ranks of Meles Inc. can do whatever they want to whomever they want with no consequence and an indefinite place in power. If the Horn of Africa, or Somalia or Ethiopia come tumbling down be assured that those top ranks have golden parachutes to escape to riches in the West that few corporate CEOs ever dreamed of.



http://ethiopundit.blogspot.com/

Michael S. Steele..."Keeping it Real"

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele has promised to bring “the hood to the Hill” if he is elected to the U.S. Senate.

But yesterday he trekked to the old stomping grounds of one of his possible opponents, Kweisi Mfume.

Mr. Steele came to the mean streets of the Northeast Baltimore neighborhood of Park Heights in the morning to announce his public safety plan and join in an impromptu sidewalk gospel concert.

“For too long, this neighborhood, and many others like it across Maryland have been forgotten,” said Mr. Steele, a black man and a Republican.

“We cannot close our eyes and ignore the condition of our community any longer,” Mr. Steele said. “We can no longer allow the tale of two comunities to exist, where on one side opportunity and empowerment flourish, and form the foundation of dreams, and where on the other drugs, crime and poverty form the foundation of every child’s reality.”

Mr. Steele was introduced by Israel Cason, founder of “I Can’t, You Can” (ICYC), a neighborhood drug treatment center in the middle of a rundown strip mall, just down from Luke and Lou’s Delly, Ms. D’s Boutique (”All You Need and More!”) and Discount Liquors.

Mr. Cason, a former heroin addict who cleaned up in the mid-90s, called Mr. Steele “an asset to any soul looking for recovery.”

And Mr. Steele, dressed in a striped short-sleeve shirt and green slacks, spoke to a crowd on the sidewalk that included numerous recovering drug addicts who receive treatment and counseling at ICYC.

“Let’s not criminalize the addict. Let’s uplift the addict,” Mr. Steele said, to applause. “It’s not enough to lock them up. You’ve got to love them too.”

The Republican got a warm welcome, but it wasn’t hard to see he was deep in his potential opponent’s terrritory: A liquor store across the street from ICYC displayed an “Mfume for Senate” sign, and Mfume stickers had been stuck on street signs and on parking meters.

Once Mr. Steele finished, Mr. Cason launched into a roaring gospel song that began with the line, “I’m going to take a trip, on the good old gospel ship, and we’ll go sailing through the air.”

About 10 people who had been sitting in folding chairs in front of ICYC jumped from their chairs and hurried to two microphones in front of a full band, with an electronic keyboardist, a drummer, and a bassist.

[Download the video here.]

Mr. Steele clapped along and posed for pictures with a group of young children, but he did not shake hands with the 20 or so street toughs standing at the edges of the crowd.

Mr. Steele’s public safety plan focused on fighting gang activity, drug trafficking, violent crime and sex offenders, while restoring funding for law enforcement that Mr. Steele said has been left out of President Bush’s federal budget.

Jon Ward, Maryland correspondent, The Washington Times

Sir Mix-a-lot's S.W.A.S.S. - Clinton vs. Condie

Sir Mix-a-lot answers the burning question "Who is hotter Hillary Clinton or Condoleeza Rice?" ... (more)

President Bush Addresses NAACP

well, at least he tried...

Support the Troops

sup·port

Pronunciation: s&-'pOrt, -'port1 : to endure bravely or quietly : BEAR2 a (1) : to promote the interests or cause of (2) : to uphold or defend as valid or right : ADVOCATE (3) : to argue or vote for b

(1) : ASSIST, HELP

(2) : to act with (a star actor)

(3) : to bid in bridge so as to show support for c : to provide with substantiation : CORROBORATE

3 a : to pay the costs of : MAINTAIN b : to provide a basis for the existence or subsistence of

4 a : to hold up or serve as a foundation or prop for b : to maintain (a price) at a desired level by purchases or loans; also : to maintain the price of by purchases or loans

5 : to keep from fainting, yielding, or losing courage : COMFORT6 : to keep (something) going

We don’t know which of those definitions those who say they “support the troops but not the war” think of when they use the word, but we can’t seem to make any of them work.

In truth, if you do not support the war, you do not support the troops. That is not to say you wish them harm (though some do), but support is something more than good wishes. Nobody “supports the police but not crime fighting”. To support the troops you must support their cause; support what they do. And to help show our support, we’ll use definition number five.

To show that you care, and to put a little joy into their hard times,

follow one of these links.

Cookies and Coffee for the Troops

America Supports You

Support US Troops

Adopt A Platoon

Is Racism Really A Big Deal Anymore?

By Steve

That question serves as the basis for decisions made and/or actions taken from either a conservative or liberal point of view.

The arguments are old and established: 1) Liberals promote dependency, government handouts, and are a general drain to those hardworking citizens that pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. 2) Conservatives advocate independence, self determination, and a “no excuses” philosophy which dictates that individual action will supersede anything anyone can do to you or for you.

Neither philosophy is complete, correct, nor whole: Any individual that waits for a job program or a tax break to come along and solve immediate problems is delusional. On the flip side, believing that individual action (alone) will solve all problems assumes an equal playing field; or “enough equality” to counter any remnants of racism that were left over since the Civil Rights Movement.

One observation regarding the fallacy of both these ideals is that individualism is clouding both philosophies: “I’m OK, so everything is fine” –or- “I’m not doing well, you gotta help me ‘cause it just ain’t fair!” We perceive the world according to our personal circumstance. This is one of the biggest differences between Black folks 50 years ago and today: when problems were affecting everybody, we were all “together”. If we all don’t perceive problems the same way, the group is no longer unified, hence the cliché’: “Black folks are no monolith.” We have different ideas, points of view, beliefs, perspectives, etc. But we are all still Black.

Black folks are:

* Subject to more discriminatory sentencing practices

* Are at the tops of many negative health statistics from diabetes to cancer

* On average, pay higher interest rates than their white counterparts

* As a group, has less wealth (home ownership, net worth, etc.) that their (our) white counterparts

Are the reasons for these discrepancies purely due to lack of government handouts or an inability to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps?

I found an interesting article written by an Indian engineering student. He was commenting about his observations regarding the caste system in his country:

* Denial of racism protects the dominant class members’ personal and societal self-esteem and precludes any scruples of conscience. “If the charges of racism are false, I am not part of any wrong-doing, so I can rest easy,” is a typical rationalization.

* Another manifestation of this is to pretend that racism is only practiced by a minuscule loony right and justify it on the grounds that such abnormal behavior by a small fraction of people is unavoidable.

* An innovative way of denying charges of racism is to reverse the charge — the accuser is accused of oversensitivity and exaggeration, of seeing racism where there is none…

* Another ruse that’s commonly adopted is to set a very high bar for what qualifies as racism, so that racism disappears from public discourse. Thus, notwithstanding any ideological similarities, a racist ideology can’t be equated with Nazism until it has already taken several million lives.

* Whatever the mode, denial of racism is most damaging when it is part of public socio-political discourse, for then it reaches a very wide audience and persuasively helps mold public opinion to the desires of the dominant class. When the dominant consensus is that there is no racism, anti-racist struggles have to start by proving racism exists.

His observations serve as a template for what has happened in this country. And “we” Black folks are buying into the idea that racism is inconsequential – hook, line, and sinker. Again, “If I’m OK, everybody else is OK too.” This is not only sad, and blind, but destructive.

Will all of us (Black folks) agree on everything? Of course not. No ethnic group does. That’s not the point, nor has it ever been. On the flip side, no other ethnic group ceases to recognize members of their group as part of “the group” like Black folks have.

When we cease to identify ourselves as Black, not by skin color but by group identification, then we cease to recognize the problems unique to our people. We begin to view our identities as something opposite to “those nasty, lazy niggers”. (But for the grace of God go I….)

Group identification then leads to something that takes precedence over being “Black”, IE: “Republican”, “Libertarian”, “Democrat”, “Conservative”, Liberal”, whatever. These titles dictate philosophy which assumes inclusion, to the point that racism is inconsequential.

Sorry, but I wasn’t born Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Liberal… none of those things are listed on my birth certificate, nor are they titles (or extreme incarnations of philosophies) that appear in any significant way in the several centuries of Black people’s history in this country. The Democrat doesn’t “own” liberalism any more than the Republican “owns” self determination. (You can get confirmation from the Nation of Islam on that one.)

If we acknowledge who our brothers and sisters are as a group, then recognize the plight they/we face (step outside of that caustic individualism), then the question: “Is Racism Really a Big Deal Anymore?” shouldn’t be the question. But rather: “How can we best defeat it - together?” should be the question.

Topics: URBANPROFILE.COM, racism, prejudice, bigotry, racist, politics, conservative, liberal, self identification, african american experience

Countdown to the new roots album

The Roots have a new album coming out in August...thank God. For more click here:
http://okayplayer.com/

The album will come 10 years after the release of the underground classic "Illadelph Halflife." I remember when my Jewish friend put me onto the Roots for the first time by giving me a tape (I was late with the CD player) with some of their songs in 9th grade.

The lyrics were so inspirational I decided I wanted to be an rapper...thank God I gave up that dream. But you can understand how lines like these got me pumped up:

"Pretend-to-be cats don't seem to know their limitations/
Exact replication and false representation"
-Black Thought

This was shortly before Pretty Boy Mase blew up with lines like:

"You know Mase huff with Puff we blow your house down"

WHAT??

Mase was actually much more talented than that line suggests. Before Diddy got a hold of him he was tearing up the underground circuit. But Diddy is a businessman, and good business in hip hop means bad lyrics.

"Check it out, 'blah, blah, blah, blah' that's what he said/
Then I came back and just f***ed up his head"
-Q-Tip, Phony Rappers ('96)

Tip hit it on the nail with "blah, blah, blah, blah"...hip hop is starting to sound like Charlie Brown's mother to me.

I know the companies think nobody cares about lyrics. But as you dumb down the lyrics to double your dollars, the lyrics become more accessible to children. Why? Because children are dumb...err, impressionable.

I realized this when, during a recent visit to the barber shop, a girl that clearly wasn't any older than 5, was reciting the lyrics to Young Joc' "Going Down." I just hope she can recite her ABC's.

http://cantbeboxedin.blogspot.com/

NY TIIMES, 4 July 1776

Philadelphia: A small group of right-wing extremists continues to foment trouble here in the colonies, this time with the publication of a "Declaration of Independence" seeking to break away from Mother England and institute their own religious dictatorship.

Readers might remember the carnage that occurred last year when General Thomas Gage attempted to seize a cache of assault weapons from a dangerous group of gun nuts up in Lexington. Feeling emboldened by their temporary victory, these extremist and their allies now think they can overthrow His Majesty's legitimate government.

For some reason, these religious zealots and malcontents seem obsessed with the idea of doing away with the taxes we pay for the protection of the Crown, just so they can line the pockets of their rich friends. They seem to have the idea that they have some sort of "divine right" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". (At least they didn't succumb to the blandishments of that lunatic John Locke and include a "right" to property.)

Among the complaints of these malcontents is the idea that the King has been over-riding their wishes concerning the proper running of the local colonial government. Obviously, they want to throw out hundreds of years of legal traditions and replace it with the anarchy of some new form of government, without any real strategy for success.

These separatists are taking a few minor complaints and blowing everything out of proportion, all in an effort to implement their own dangerous vision of domination of the New World. Fortunately, when the bodies of our young soldiers start coming home in wooden boxes, the colonists will certainly cry out for an end to this miserable failure and we can all go back to living in peace and enjoying the security of His Majesty's government.

The First Proud TV Black Republican..Carlton Banks

Carlton Banks was a fictional character portrayed by Alfonso Ribeiro on the television sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Carlton was a firmly conservative Republican, and often proved both friend and foe for Will. Carlton's role model is talk show host Bryant Gumbel and his favorite musician (and, according to him, guardian angel) is Tom Jones. His favorite actor is William Shatner, whom he annoys by making lame Star Trek jokes. He is very similar to Family Ties character Alex P. Keaton in that he is a Republican, dresses in a preppy style, is obsessed with money, is short (Ribeiro is 5ft 6.25in, or 168cm), with his height a common butt of jokes by Will, and does not enjoy the popular music of most people his age.

In earlier seasons, Carlton made frequent references to virginity (which was by choice), and also planned to attend Princeton (Philip's alma mater). In later seasons, these arcs were both resolved: Carlton did indeed lose his virginity, but was not initially admitted to Princeton. He instead first attended the (fictional) University of Los Angeles, where he briefly managed ULA's student store, the Peacock. However, in the 6th and last season, he finally gained transfer admission to Princeton, and leaves for the East Coast in the series finale.

Thanks Carlton for lighting the torch...lol


Carlton's real name was Alfonso Ribeiro!
Below is some facts about Carlton!


Alfonso Ribeiro as Carlton Banks in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Alfonso Ribeiro (born in New York City on September 21, 1971) is an American actor and singer of Dominican descent.

His parents immigrated to New York from the Dominican Republic.


Career

He began his acting career on the drama Oye Willie at the age of eight. By the time he was ten, he had released such songs as: "Dance Baby", "Not Too Young", "Sneak Away with Me", and "Time Bomb". Ribeiro also starred in one of Michael Jackson's Pepsi commercials as a dancer in 1984. The same year, Ribeiro was also cast as Rick Schroder's best friend on the TV series Silver Spoons. Alfonso starred on Broadway in a show called The Tap Dance Kid. He also sang in a commercial for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Ribeiro is best known for his role as spoiled rich-kid Carlton Banks in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from 1990 to 1996, in which he was mercilessly teased by Will Smith's lead character, often targeting his height (Ribeiro is 5'6"). He also was the director of some episodes of Fresh Prince. The Carlton character was often called upon to do a comic, usually improvised dance routine to Tom Jones's "It's Not Unusual", which Ribeiro later stated he hated doing. Ribeiro is in fact a very good dancer; he showed some skills with Will Smith in several episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, including a tap dance routine in the show's Soul Train episode that featured a moonwalk.

Ribeiro in Smith's Wild Wild West video

He is also known for his role on LL Cool J's show In the House and as the host of Your Big Break. Ribeiro has acted and been part of the crew on many movies and TV shows. In 1997, he performed the voice of Roland Jackson in Extreme Ghostbusters. He has also appeared in Smith's "Wild Wild West" video in 1999, and in a McDonald's commercial in 2003.

He currently lives in Los Angeles and has developed an interest in auto racing. He is a two time winner of the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race (in 1994 and 1995).

Jamaicans Are Among The World's Most Entrepreneurial People

Jamaicans are among the most entrepeneurial people in the world, according to the Global Entrepeneurship Monitor. About 391,000 Jamaican people owned businesses last year.

The GEM was launched by Jamaican Minister of Industry, Technology, Energy and Commerce Phillip Paulwell, who recently stated, "Jamaica has one of the highest levels of entrepreneurial activity as measured by the Total Early Stage Entrepreneurial Activity [TEA] with approximately 17 per cent of the adult population, at the time of the compilation of the report, actively planning or recently established a new business.” The TEA index is a measure of the extent of small business activity in a single country.

According to the GEM document, Jamaica - considered a "middle income" country by global standards - compares favorably with countries such as New Zealand. Entrepreneurs in Jamaica are beginning to compete with their peers in more advanced economies by tapping into facilities - including an island-wide small business incubator project - made available to Jamaicans just a year ago. However,Jamaica, still ranks lower in terms of established businesses with only 9% of businesses operating for more than 3 months or having paid wages to staff for more than 3 months. Currently Jamaica ranks 43rd on the “ease of doing business” on the World Bank's Doing Business Indicator.

African-Americans May Get African Citizenship

African and black American leaders meeting this week in Abuja, Nigeria debated an unusual proposal to spur investment and interest in the continent: securing African citizenship for American descendants of Africans taken away as slaves.

The idea came out of a summit bringing African governments and the U.S. private sector together in search of partnerships to end Africa’s poverty. Presidents from 12 African countries attended the four-day conference, along with former U.S. President Bill Clinton and World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz.

“Just as the people of different races in America have a place they call home, I believe we should have a place we call our ancestral home,” said Hope Masters, daughter of the U.S. civil rights campaigner for whom the Leon Sullivan Summit is named.Anthony Archer, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based lawyer, is heading a committee to consider how citizenship could be awarded. “Dual citizenship will start the process of mutual and spiritual reconciliation of differences between the two continents that came as a result of slavery,” he said. “If we can feel like we really belong, we’ll feel more joyful about participating.” Key challenges include determining the ancestral homelands of black Americans, said Mr. Masters. The upheaval of the slave trade left many without knowledge of their place of origin. One possibility is granting continent-wide citizenship to slave descendants through the African Union. Another is to work for citizenship of blocs of countries through regional organizations.

It was unclear what rights would be granted under those scenarios. A third proposal would have countries grant citizenship independently to those who seek it.

My response: I already know some of my ancestral homes, thanks to a mitochondrial DNA test: Cameroon, Chad, and Nigeria. So do I get dual citizenship with all three countries...or just one? I would be very interested in helping an African country develop...but not one mired in rampant corruption that will just siphon my hard-earned dollars into some leader's Swiss-bank socialism scheme. Rule of law, cracking down on corruption, and eliminating red tape for entrepreneurs will draw more folks (of various races) to invest in Africa.

Charles Charles Taylor Bitchin about Jail Conditions

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Former Liberian President Charles Taylor complained Friday about "Eurocentric" prison food and limited access to telephones at his first appearance before a war crimes tribunal since being flown to the Netherlands for trial.

The former warlord faces 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly overseeing the murder, rape and mutilation of thousands of people during Sierra Leone's bloody 10-year civil war, many hacked to death with machetes. He has pleaded not guilty, and faces a life sentence if convicted.

Taylor, wearing a gray double-breasted suit and tie and looking relaxed, sat flanked by two U.N. guards in a courtroom of the International Criminal Court that is being rented by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

The U.S.-trained economist listened intently to lawyers discussing the case, but did not speak during the 50-minute hearing aimed at paving the way for his trial.

His attorney, Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, complained about poor food in the "draconian" U.N. cell block where Taylor is being held.

It was not clear what food Taylor gets in the Hague prison, but traditional Dutch meals include meat, potatoes and at least one vegetable. Khan only described the fare as "Eurocentric."

The U.N. detention unit in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, where Taylor was held before being transferred to The Hague in June, served prisoners a local favorite — a stew made of cassava or potato leaf. Other meals included roast chicken and fruit juice.

Khan also complained that staff shortages at the U.N.-run detention center meant Taylor was sometimes locked in his cell for up to 16 hours a day and was unable to make the same number of phone calls he could while detained in Sierra Leone.

The detention system in The Hague, Khan said, is "far more draconian ... than operates in Freetown."

Taylor is being held in a cell block operated by the International Criminal Court in a wing of the same maximum-security Dutch prison where former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died in March while on trial for genocide and war crimes.

Herman von Hebel, deputy registrar for the Sierra Leone court, described the complaints as "startup issues" for the detention unit and said he would visit Taylor next week to ensure they are ironed out as soon as possible.

Khan also angrily denounced U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for allegedly referring to war crimes suspects as criminals during a July 3 visit to Sierra Leone. Khan described Annan's comment as "not just unseemly; it is repugnant to justice."

Presiding Judge Richard Lussick assured Khan the tribunal would ignore Annan's comments. "We are totally uninfluenced by what people might say outside the courtroom," he said.

Prosecutors had hoped to start the trial early next year, but Khan said that was unlikely.

"For a case of this size and magnitude, particularly given the geographical displacement of this court from Sierra Leone. ... I do think that the earliest this trial can properly start is around July of next year," Khan said.

Taylor was flown to the Netherlands in June amid fears that staging his trial in Sierra Leone could trigger fresh unrest in the war-scarred African nation.

The charges against Taylor stem from his alleged backing of Sierra Leonean rebels, who terrorized victims by chopping off body parts.

Taylor also launched a Liberian insurgency in 1989 and won elections that handed him the presidency in 1997. Rebels took up arms against him three years later, and he fled to Nigeria in 2003 at the end of Liberia's 14-year civil war.

In March, he was captured as he attempted to slip out of Nigeria after the country agreed to hand him over to authorities seeking his prosecution.


ooh poor baby boo hoo hoo' ..this idiot spreads terror in the lives of his people for years
and now he is bitching about a jail cell...The chutzpah, !!!!

The Liberal Theme Song

'Hey ho Hey ho western civ has got to go'....

Somali Islamists declare jihad against Ethiopia

MOGADISHU: The leader of Somalia's Islamic courts union on Friday declared a "holy war" against neighbouring Ethiopia, whose troops have moved into the country to protect its weak transitional government.

"The Somali people have to fight against Ethiopia, this is a holy war in which we are defending our country," Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys said on local radio, speaking from his native Galgudud region in central Somalia.

"The Ethiopians have invaded our country and we must force them out of the country and this will be a holy war of Jihad."

Aweys' Islamists, who have taken control the capital Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia, have demanded the immediate withdrawal of Ethiopians who according to eyewitnesses sent more military vehicles into Baidoa, the seat of the transitional government, overnight.
In Baidoa, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) northwest of Mogadishu, residents said at least nine more large Ethiopian military vehicles carrying supplies, but no troops, moved into the town early on Friday.


These followed an initial convoy of more than 100 trucks with several hundred Ethiopian soldiers that witnesses said rolled into Baidoa and surrounding areas Thursday, after Islamist militia advanced on a nearby town.
Ethiopia has said it will defend the transitional government from any attack by the Islamists, who it and the US accuse of harboring extremists, including Al-Qaeda members wanted for attacks in east Africa.

Somalia has been wracked by lawlessness since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, which plunged the nation of about 10 million people into anarchic bloodletting.



"These barbaric ass holes want to take over one of the oldest Christian nations on earth, the Islamist have made Ethiopia a treasure to behold.

I hope Ethiopia beats the crap out of these fuckers if they enter the city.

Wake up Ethiopia youre Muslim love affair is over!

No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning

No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning

by Abigail Thernstrom

Black and Hispanic students are not learning enough in our public schools. Their typically poor performance is the most important source of ongoing racial inequality in America today. Thus, say Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, the racial gap in school achievement is the nation's most critical civil rights issue and an educational crisis. It's no wonder that "No Child Left Behind," the 2001 revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, made closing the racial gap in education its central goal.

An employer hiring the typical black high school graduate or the college that admits the average black student is choosing a youngster who has only an eighth-grade education. In most subjects, the majority of twelfth-grade black students do not have even a "partial mastery" of the skills and knowledge that the authoritative National Assessment of Educational Progress calls "fundamental for proficient work" at their grade.

No Excuses marshals facts to examine the depth of the problem, the inadequacy of conventional explanations, and the limited impact of Title I, Head Start, and other familiar reforms. Its message, however, is one of hope: Scattered across the country are excellent schools getting terrific results with high-needs kids. These rare schools share a distinctive vision of what great schooling looks like and are free of many of the constraints that compromise education in traditional public schools.

In a society that espouses equal opportunity we still have a racially identifiable group of educational have-nots -- young African Americans and Latinos whose opportunities in life will almost inevitably be limited by their inadequate education. When students leave high school without high school skills, their futures -- and that of the nation -- are in jeopardy. With successful schools already showing the way, no decent society can continue to turn a blind eye to such racial and ethnic inequality.


No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning

The Harlem Book Festival

CSPAN 2 is covering the Harlam Book Fair live this weekend. Starting at 11 a.m. Saturday, Book TV will air panel discussions on "Black Media and Black Stereotypes," "Assuring Fair Elections," "Literacy and African-Americans" and "Biography and Memoir." Featured authors include Al Sharpton, Dick Gregory, but John McWhorter will be there also.


John McWhorter is Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, earned his PhD in linguistics from Stanford University in 1993 and became Associate Professor of Linguistics at UC Berkeley after teaching at Cornell University. His academic specialty is language change and language contact. He writes and comments extensively on race, ethnicity and cultural issues.

Commentary on Harry Belafonte, NPR Talk of the Nation, 10-25-02
Interviews

Booknotes.org March 2, 2004

Going at the Changes In, Ya Know, English by Emily Eakin, New York Times, 11-15-03
City Journal Articles

Bush Gets Heckled By Idiot at NAACP Meeting

As usual a liberal nut case tried to be a media whore and get some press and silence the president from speaking at the NAACP meeting,and like clock work he was swifly kickedout the confrence room.

He must feel like shit to be kicked out of all places
the NAACP...haahaa.

What a jerk, he deserved it.

I couldn't hear what that man was saying, but given what Bush was
talking about.

I would suppose the idiot was referring to how Bush lost the
first election, and how that data solutions company "disqualified"
many voters, and how Bush hates black people!

Don't ya love the Bush smirk.

Bush isnt bothered by some stupid moonbat..he just laughs it off.

Great Job Mr.President!

Bush Gets Standing Ovation at NAACP Convention

NYC Stand With Israel Rally, Elie Wiesel

Tens of thousands showed for the Stand With Israel rally. Even in the very blue state of New York, Bush wa cheered. Listen to the crowd when Elie Wiesel says Thank G-d President Bush is in the White House. See all the video and pics at AtlasShrugs.com ...

Dr Khallid Muhammad Interview

Black Nationalist and former Nation of Islam member Dr Khallid Muhammad on Donahue show answering numerous questions and shocking the hell out of the caucasian audience ... (more)

Democrat Hypocrisy on Iraq..Video

The webad, from www.GOP.com, highlights the hypocrisy of Democrat leaders on the War on Terror.

Text of President Bush's speech at the NAACP

Text of President Bush's speech at the NAACP's annual convention Thursday in Washington.


BUSH: Thank you all very much. Thank you very much. Bruce, thanks for your introduction. Bruce is a polite guy, I thought what he was going to say, it's about time you showed up. And I'm glad I did. See, I see this as a moment of opportunity. I have come to celebrate the heroism of the civil rights movement, and the accomplishments of the NAACP.

I want to talk about ways to build what the NAACP has always sought, a nation united, committed to destroying discrimination and extending to every American the full blessings, the full blessings, of liberty and opportunity. It's important to me. It's important to our nation. I come from a family committed to civil rights. My faith tells me that we're all children of God, equally loved, equally cherished, equally entitled to the rights He grants us all.

For nearly 200 years, our nation failed the test of extending the blessings of liberty to African Americans. Slavery was legal for nearly a hundred years, and discrimination legal in many places for nearly a hundred years more. Taken together, the record placed a stain on America's founding, a stain that we have not yet wiped clean.

When people talk about America's founders they mention the likes of Washington and Jefferson and Franklin and Adams. Too often they ignore another group of founders, men and women and children who did not come to America of their free will, but in chains. These founders literally helped build our country. They chopped the wood, they built the homes, they tilled the fields, and they reaped the harvest. They raised children of others, even though their own children had been ripped away and sold to strangers. These founders were denied the most basic birthright, and that's freedom.

Yet, through captivity and oppression, they kept the faith. They carved a great nation out of the wilderness, and later, their descendants led a people out of the wilderness of bigotry. Nearly 200 years into our history as a nation, America experienced a second founding: the Civil Rights movement. Some of those leaders are here. These second founders, led by the likes of Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr. believed in the constitutional guarantees of liberty and equality. They trusted fellow Americans to join them in doing the right thing. They were leaders. They toppled Jim Crow through simple deeds: boarding a bus, walking along the road, showing up peacefully at courthouses or joining in prayer and song. Despite the sheriff's dogs, and the jailer's scorn, and the hangman's noose, and the assassin's bullets, they prevailed.

I don't know if you remember, three weeks ago, I went to Memphis, Tennessee. A lot of people focused on the fact that my friend, the Prime Minister of Japan, was an Elvis fan, because we went to Graceland. But we also went to another stop, a stop Reverend Jesse Jackson knows all too well, a painful moment in his life and in the life of our nation, reflected in the Lorraine Motel.

The Prime Minister and I went there, which is now the National Civil Rights Museum. By the way, if you haven't been there, you ought to go. Among the people greeting me there was Dr. Benjamin Hooks. It's good to see you again, sir. He led me out onto the balcony of Room 306. I remember Dr. Hooks pointed to the window that was still half-cracked. You know what I'm talking about, Jesse. It's not very far away. It was a powerful reminder of the hardships this nation has been through, the struggle for decency.

I was honored that Dr. Hooks took time to visit with me. He talked about the hardships of the movement. With the gentle wisdom that comes from experience, he made it clear we must work as one. And that's why I've come today. We want a united America that is one nation under God, where every man and child and woman is valued and treated with dignity. We want a hopeful America where the prosperity and opportunities of our great land reach into every block of every neighborhood. We want an America that is constantly renewing itself, where citizens rise above political differences to heal old wounds, to build the bonds of brotherhood and to move us ever closer to the founding promise of liberty and justice for all.

Nearly a hundred years after the NAACP's birth, America remains an unfolding story of freedom. And all of us have an obligation to play our part.

I want to thank your chairman, Julian Bond, for his introduction. And thanks for greeting me today, Mr. Chairman. I asked him for a few pointers on how to give a speech. It doesn't look like they're taking.

I want to thank Roslyn Brock, the Vice Chairman of the board, as well. I thank all the board members, all the participants, all the members of the United States Congress for joining us today, as well.

I congratulate Bruce Gordon on his strong leadership. I've gotten to know him. See, shortly after he was elected, he came by the Oval Office. He doesn't mince words. It's clear what's on his mind. He's also a results-oriented person. I'm pleased, I'm pleased to say that I have, I'm an admirer of Bruce Gordon, and we've got a good working relationship. I don't know if that helps you or hurts you. But it's the truth. I admire the man.

We've had frank discussions, starting with Katrina. We talked about the challenges facing the African American community after that storm. We talked about the response of the federal government. And most importantly, we talked about the way forward. We talked about what we can do working together, to move forward. As a result of that first meeting, we found areas where we share common purpose, and we have resolved to work together in practical ways. I don't expect Bruce to become a Republican, and neither do you. But I do want to work with him, and that's what I'm here to talk to you about.

So we've been working together in helping the citizens along the Gulf Coast recover from one of the worst natural disasters in our nation's history. You know, when we met, I told Bruce that I would work with the Congress to make sure we dedicated enough money to help the folks. He kind of looked at me like, sure, he's heard these political promises before. It's not the first time that he had heard somebody say, well, we'll work together to see if we can't get enough money, and I suspect he might have thought, well, he's just trying to get me out of the Oval Office.

But I meant what I said, and I want to thank the United States Congress for joining with the administration. We committed over $110 billion to help the people in the Gulf Coast. That's money to go to build new homes, good schools. Bruce and I talked a lot about how do we make sure the contracting that goes on down there in the Gulf Coast goes to minority-owned businesses.

The road to recovery is long and difficult, but we will continue to work together to implement the strategy that Bruce and I worked on along with people, other people like Donna Brazile and other leaders. We've got a plan, and we've got a commitment. And the commitment is not only to work together, but it's a commitment to the people of the Gulf Coast of the United States, to see to it that their lives are better and brighter than before the storm.

We also worked together to ensure that African Americans can take advantage of the new Medicare drug benefit. Look, I understand that we had a political disagreement on the bill. I know that. But I worked with the Congress to make sure that the days of seniors having to choose between food and medicine is over. And that's the case of this new Medicare benefit. The federal government pays over 95 percent of the cost for our nation's poorest seniors to get this new drug benefit.

And I want to thank the NAACP for recognizing that it's important to help our seniors sign up for this benefit. We put politics aside. We said, the day is over of arguing about the bill; let's make sure people receive the benefits of this bill. Bruce Gordon has shown leadership on this important issue, and I want to thank you for that.

We'll work together, and as we do so, you must understand I understand that racism still lingers in America. It's a lot easier to change a law than to change a human heart. And I understand that many African Americans distrust my political party.

AUDIENCE: Yes!

THE PRESIDENT: I consider it a tragedy that the party of Abraham Lincoln let go of its historic ties with the African American community. For too long my party wrote off the African American vote, and many African Americans wrote off the Republican Party.

That history has prevented us from working together when we agree on great goals. That's not good for our country. That's what I've come to share with you. We've put the interests of the country above political party. I want to change the relationship. The America we seek should be bigger than politics. And today I'm going to talk about some areas where I believe we can work together to reduce the obstacles for opportunity for all our citizens. And that starts, by the way with education.

Surely, we share the same goal: We want an excellent education for every child. Not just some children, but every single child. I can remember being the governor of Texas, I don't know if there's any Texans here or not. Tell them "hi" at home.

I remember going to a ninth grade class when I was the governor. It was in a neighborhood that's, a low-income neighborhood there in Houston. And I asked the ninth grade teacher, I said, how's it going? The man looked me in the eye and said, my students cannot read. That's wrong to hear a ninth grade teacher say, my students cannot read.

I decided to do something about it when I was the governor, and I decided to do something about that when I became the President. See, we must challenge a system that simply shuffles children through grade to grade, without determining whether they can read, write, and add and subtract. It's a system, see, I like to call it this: We need to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations. If you have low expectations, you're going to get lousy results. We must not tolerate a system that gives up on people.

So I came to Washington and I worked with Democrats and Republicans to pass the No Child Left Behind Act. Let me tell you the strategy behind the act. It says that the federal government will spend more money on education in primary and secondary schools, and we have increased the budgets by 40 percent. It also says, and in return for additional help, you must measure. We didn't say the federal government is going to measure, we said, we want the local, the states and the local districts to measure.

And so why do you ask that? Why do you say that in return for increased money, you need to measure? And the reason why is because, in order to solve a problem you've got to diagnose the problem. Measuring results can tell us whether or not teaching methodology is sound. Measuring results can enable us to figure out which children are falling behind early.

You know, one of the interesting things about the No Child Left Behind Act, it says that when we find a child falling behind early there will be extra money for tutoring, extra money for help. The whole purpose is to make sure people are at the starting line. The whole purpose is to make sure that the teacher that told me that, my children can't read, no longer happens in the 9th grade. Measuring helps us determine how we're doing.

There's an achievement gap in America that's wrong for America, an achievement gap that says we're not fulfilling the promise. One of the barriers to opportunity, one of the obstacles to success is the fact that too many of our children aren't reading at grade level. And we know that because we measure, and we're doing something about it. Actually, the achievement gap is beginning to close. There's more work to be done. Measuring allows parents to see how the school that their child is going to is doing. It lets the parents determine whether or not they should be satisfied with the education their child is getting.

I strongly believe that parental involvement is important for our school systems. And I believe, and I strongly believe a parent knows what's best for his or her child. That's what I believe. And therefore, when we find schools that are not teaching and will not change, our parents should have a different option. If you want quality education you've got to trust the parents.

You know, an amazing thing about our society today is wealthier white families have got the capacity to defeat mediocrity by moving. That is not the case for lower-income families. And so, therefore, I strongly believe in charter schools, and public school choice. I believe in opportunity scholarships to be able to enable parents to move their child out of a school that's not teaching, for the benefit of the United States of America.

I also understand that we've got to do more for primary, more than just primary and secondary education. I'm proud to report that working with the United States Congress, the number of low-income Americans receiving Pell grants has increased by about a million Americans since I have become the President. Pell grants are an important part of educational excellence and opportunity.

We're expanding money for our community college system. I met my pledge to increase funding for historically black universities by 30 percent. A decent education is the gateway to a life of opportunity. It is a fundamental civil right. And I look forward to working with the NAACP to enhance educational excellence all across the United States of America.

Second, I hope we can work together in an America where more people become owners, own something, something that they can call their own. From our nation's earlier days, ownership has been at the heart of our country. Unfortunately, for most of our history, African Americans were excluded from the dream. That's the reality of our past. Most of your forefathers didn't come to this land seeking a better life; most came in chains as the property of other people. Today, their children and grandchildren now have an opportunity to own their own property, and good policies will encourage that. And that's what we ought to work together on.

For most Americans, ownership begins with owning your own home. Owning a home is a way to build wealth. Owning a home is to give something they can leave behind to their children. See, one of the concerns I have is that because of the past, there hasn't been enough assets that a family can pass on from one generation to the next. And we've got to address that problem. And a good way to do so is through home ownership. Owning a home gives people a stake in their neighborhood, a stake in the future.

Today, nearly half of African Americans own their own homes, and that's good for America. That's good for our country, but still got to do more. So we, working to do our part with helping people afford a down payment and closing costs, helping families who are in rental assistance to become home owners, helping people understand the fine print when it comes to mortgage documents.

One of the things I want to work with the NAACP on is to encourage more people to be able to open the front door of the place where they live and say, welcome to my home, welcome to my piece of property.

I also want to work to home ownership in other areas. We want to see more African Americans own their own businesses, and that's why we've increased loans to African American businesses by 40 percent.

We're taking steps to make it easier for African American businesses to compete for federal contracts. We're working to expand help to have African American workers own a piece of their own retirement.

You know, one of my friends is Bob Johnson, founder of BET. He's an interesting man. He believes strongly in ownership. He has been a successful owner. He believes strongly, for example, that the death tax will prevent future African American entrepreneurs from being able to pass their assets from one generation to the next. He and I also understand that the investor class shouldn't be just confined to the old definition of the investor class.

You know, an amazing experience, when I went to Canton, Mississippi, I asked the workers there, who were mainly African American workers, I said, how many of you have your own 401(k)? Nearly all the hands went up. That means they own their own assets. It's their money. They manage their own money. It's a system that says, we want you to have assets that you can leave from one generation to the next. Asset accumulation is an important part of removing the barriers for opportunity. I think it's really important, and I want to work with Bruce, if possible. The federal government should encourage ownership in the government pension program, to give people a chance to own an asset, something they can call their own.

Ownership is vital to making sure this country extends its hope to every neighborhood in the United States of America. And I look forward to working with the NAACP to encourage ownership in America.

I want to work with you to make sure America's communities are strong. I've got a friend named Tony Evans. Some of you may know Tony, from Dallas, Texas. He was one time giving a sermon. I heard him speak, and I want to share with you what it was. He said, he told a story about the man who had a crack on one of the walls in his home. So he got the plasterer to come by, and the guy plastered the wall. And about four days later, the crack reappeared. Got another plasterer in, put the plaster on the wall, and it reappeared again. He's getting frustrated. He finally called a wise fellow over. The man explained what the problem was with the cracks on the wall. He said, look, in order to solve the cracks on the wall, you have to fix the foundation.

What I want to do is work with the NAACP to help fix the foundations of our society. We want strong families. We want to help people who need help. We want to help the addicted, we want to help the homeless, we want to help those who are trying to reenter society after having been incarcerated. That's what we want to do. We want to help lives be improved. Government can hand out money, and we do, but it cannot put hope in a person's heart, or a sense of purpose in a person's life. That's why I strongly support institutions of faith and community service all around our country. I believe in the neighborhood helpers and healers.

And I put this policy in place. We've provided more than $5 billion to faith-based groups that are running the soup kitchens and sheltering the homeless, and healing the addicted, and helping people reenter our society, people who are providing compassionate care and love. Organizations of faith exist to love a neighbor like they'd like to be loved themselves. And I believe it's important for government to not only welcome, but to encourage faith-based programs to help solve the intractable problems of our society.

And this faith-based initiative is being challenged in the courts. They claim that, they fight the initiative in the name of civil liberties, yet they do not seem to realize that the organizations they are trying to prevent from accessing federal money are the same ones that helped win the struggle of civil rights. I believe if an organization gets good results, that helps people turn their lives around, it deserves support of government. We should not discriminate based upon religion. We ought to welcome religious institutions into helping solve and save America, one soul and one heart at a time.

Finally, you and I seek America that commits its wealth and expertise to helping those who suffer from terrible disease. We believe that every person in the world bears the image of our Maker, and is an individual of matchless value. And when we see the scourge of HIV/ AIDS ravaging communities at home and abroad, we must not avert our eyes.

Today more than a million of our fellow Americans live with HIV, and more than half of all AIDS cases arise in the African American community. This disease is spreading fastest among African American women. And one of the reasons the disease is spreading so quickly is many don't realize they have the virus. And so we're going to lead a nationwide effort, and I want to work with the NAACP on this effort, to deliver rapid HIV/AIDS, HIV tests to millions of our fellow citizens. Congress needs to reform and reauthorize the Ryan White Act, and provide funding to states, so we can end the waiting lists for AIDS medications in this country.

To whom much is given, much is required. This nation is a blessed nation, and when we look at HIV/AIDS on the continent of Africa, we haven't turned away. We believe it's our nation's responsibility to help those who suffer from this pandemic.

We're leading the world when it comes to providing medications and help. Today more than 40 million people around the world are living with HIV/AIDS; 26 million of those live in Sub Sahara Africa, including 2 million children under the age of 15. We're calling people together. We pledged $15 billion to provide medicine and help. We launched the emergency plan for AIDS relief. Before this AIDS emergency plan was passed, only 50,000 in Sub Sahara Africa were getting medicine. Today, that number has grown to more than 560,000 people, and more are getting help every day. By working together we can turn the tide of this struggle against HIV/AIDS and bring new hope to millions of people.

These goals I've outlined are worthy of our nation. In the century since the NAACP was founded, our nation has grown more prosperous and more powerful. It's also grown more equal and just. Yet this work is not finished. That's what I'm here to say. The history of America is one of constant renewal. And each generation has a responsibility to write a new chapter in the unfinished story of freedom.

That story began with the founding promise of equality and justice and freedom for all men. And that promise has brought hope and inspiration to all peoples across the world. Yet our founding was also imperfect because the human beings that made our founding were imperfect. Many of the same founders who signed their names to a parchment declaring that all men are created equal permitted whole categories of human beings to be excluded from these words. The future of our founding, to live up to its own words, opened a wound that has persisted to today.

In the 19th century the wound resulted in a civil war. In the 20th century, it denied African Americans the vote in many parts of our country. And at the beginnings of the 21st century, the wound is not fully healed and whole communities, to heal this wound for good, we must continue to work for a new founding that redeems the promise of our declaration and guarantees the birthright of every citizen.

For many African Americans this new found began with the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A generation of Americans that has grown up in the last few decades may not appreciate what this act has meant. Condi Rice understands what this act has meant. See, she tells me of her father's long struggle to register to vote, and the pride that came when he finally claimed his full rights as an American citizen to cast his first ballot. She shared that story with me. Yet that right was not fully guaranteed until President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. President Johnson called the right to vote the lifeblood of our democracy. That was true then, and it remains true today.

I thank the members of the House of Representatives for re-authorizing the Voting Rights Act. Soon the Senate will take up the legislation. I look forward to the Senate passing this bill promptly without amendment, so I can sign it into law.

There's an old Methodist hymn that speaks of God guiding us with a hand of power and a heart of love. We cannot know God's plans, but we trust in his purposes, because we know that the Creator who wrote the desire for liberty in our hearts also gives us the strength and wisdom to fulfill it. And the God who has brought us thus far on the way will give us the strength to finish the journey.

Thank you for having me. May God bless.

Bush to address the NAACP

WASHINGTON - President Bush made a personal appearance before the NAACP on Thursday for the first time of his presidency, a gesture toward ending years of bad blood between himself and the nation's foremost civil rights organization.

Bush acknowledged to a packed convention hall that racism persists in America, and he admitted that his party and his White House are out of step with many African-American voters.

"I understand that many African-Americans distrust my political party," Bush said. "I consider it a tragedy that the party of Lincoln let go of its historic ties with the African-American community. For too long, my party wrote off the African-American vote, and many African-Americans wrote off the Republican Party."

Bush's remarks signaled a thaw in the relationship between the president and the NAACP leadership, which in previous years leveled criticism at White House policies that Bush took as so blistering and personal that he refused for five years to attend the group's annual convention. Bush was on course to become the first president since Herbert Hoover not to attend a NAACP convention while in office.

But with a new NAACP president, former Verizon executive Bruce Gordon, and a renewed GOP election-year effort to woo African-American voters, and with the convention site just blocks from the White House rather than more-distant cities, Bush found it hard to turn down the group's invitation this year.

"Bruce is a polite guy - I thought he was going to say, `It's about time you showed up,'" Bush said to laughter and applause in the packed ballroom at Washington's convention center. "I see this as a moment of opportunity. I have come to celebrate the heroism of the civil rights movement and the accomplishments of the NAACP."

Bush received mild applause during an address that featured some old themes from his 2000 and 2004 election campaigns and a pledge to sign a bill renewing the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which the Senate passed 98-0 later in the day.

He received a smattering of boos when he touted his education program, which provides for the creation of charter schools and advocates giving vouchers to help children at failing public schools pay for private school.

"Charter schools are a sore spot with us," said Bob Lydia, president of the NAACP's Dallas branch. He said the plan siphons much needed money away from public education systems. "We don't think we should go down that road. President Bush and (former Education Secretary) Rod Paige didn't do the job we thought they would on education."

Bush received only 9 percent of the African-American vote in 2000 but increased his share to 11 percent in 2004. Only 15 percent of African-Americans approve of the job Bush is doing, according to a Gallup Poll taken earlier this month.

His massive unpopularity is due to a legacy of African-American outrage at perceived racial discrimination in Florida's 2000 presidential balloting, the federal government's failed response in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina, and White House support of legal challenges to some affirmative-action programs in higher education.

Bush, for his part, signaled a desire to go beyond the acrimony of the past.

"What I want to do is work with the NAACP to help fix the foundations of our society," Bush said.

The president's appearance was greeted with hopefulness and skepticism from the conventioneers and civil rights leaders who attended.

Lydia of Dallas called Bush's talk a long overdue step forward.

"It's a move to do the right thing," said Shirley Johnson, first vice president of the NAACP's Miami-Dade branch. "I am hopeful that the words the president spoke ... that he will live up to his words."

Mary Degree, vice president of the civil rights group's Cleveland County, N.C., branch, said she wasn't impressed.

"We have a president who is on his way out of office coming to us and can't do anything for us," she said. "All the things he's proposing today, what can he do about it?"

Othetta Glover, a retired teacher from Long Beach, Calif., said she had low expectations of Bush before the speech and the same view afterward.

"I don't think he was speaking from the inside, but from the pages he was reading," she said. "It was what I expected him to say."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson noted that while Bush expressed support for renewing the Voting Rights Act, it was groups like the NAACP that pushed for it. "This has not been leadership top-down," Jackson said. "This has been rebellion bottom-up."

Jackson said he asked for a meeting with Bush after the president's speech. He said the president told him to talk to Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff.



-It was a principle that kept him from speaking in front of the NAACP and I'm glad he did it considering the attack AD the NAACP put out against Bush in 2000. Bush isn't up for reelection so now is a good time to speak in front of the NAACP.

Will Blacks and Latino's Clash??

Black-Latino Relations and the Public Discourse

by Tanya Hernandez

In a 2004 book entitled “The Presumed Alliance: The Unspoken Conflict Between Latinos and Black and What it Means for America,” Harvard Law School graduate Nicolás Vaca, asserts that Latinos in the United States have long had an acrimonious relationship with African-Americans. He further states that because Latinos are now the largest racial minority in the nation with no responsibility for the plight of African-Americans, that the status of inter-ethnic race relations will change to reflect a dominance by Latinos at the expense of African-Americans. Whether or not Vaca’s predictions are prescient, they have received a public attention that warrants closer attention because of the way they play into a public discourse that has consistently presented African-Americans as the sole cause of discord in “Black-Latino relations.”

To be specific, over the last four decades when the topic of Black-Latino relations has been broached, the discourse has often centered on just a few primary issues. These issues have repeatedly been: African-American fears of being displaced in the labor market by Latinos, African-American disenchantment with having the benefits of the civil rights movement extended to Latinos, African-American concern with the increased immigration of Latinos, African-American discontent with the growth of Spanish language usage in the United States, and African-American concern with the fear that bilingual education services divert resources from under-financed public schools in African-American areas. Similarly, discussions about the demographic explosion of Latinos and their desire to assume greater political clout has focused upon the presumed obstructionism and discontent of African-Americans who must “relinquish” their power to accommodate Latinos.



Absent from this list of favorite themes in the public discourse in the English and Spanish language media regarding the challenges to organizing Black-Latino coalitions, is any discussion of Latino agency. In fact, one is left with the simplistic impression that Latinos are the parties extending their friendship in solidarity, only to be consistently rebuffed by African-Americans.

Black-Latino political turf wars in Dallas, Texas over the selection of a school superintendent in 1997, in Miami, Florida, over the 1996 mayoral election, and in Chicago, Illinois over the allocation of public housing units in 1994, have all been depicted as zero sum struggles to gain Latino political power by wrenching it away from the begrudging hands of African-Americans. Yet upon closer examination, the reality is much more complex and reveals Latinos to be agents of bias and racism themselves. (See Palgrave Macmillan press 2005 book “Neither Enemies Nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos”).

The sociological concept of “social distance” measures the social unease one ethnic or racial group has for interacting with another ethnic or racial group. Social science studies of Latino racial attitudes often indicate a preference for maintaining social distance from African-Americans. And while the social distance level is largest for recent Latin American immigrants, more established communities of Latinos in the United States are also characterized by their social distance from African-Americans. For instance, in a 2002 survey of Latinos and African-Americans, the African-Americans had more positive views of Latinos than vice versa (See “Black-Brown Relations and Stereotypes,” by Tatcho Mindiola, Jr., et al. UT press 2002). This same study found that 46 percent of Latino immigrants who live in residential neighborhoods with African-Americans report almost no interaction with them whatsoever. The social distance of Latinos from African-Americans is consistently reflected in Latino responses to other surveys.

Similarly, in a 1993 study of inter-group relations, Latinos overwhelming responded that they had most in common with Whites and least in common with African-Americans (The National Conference Survey on Inter-Group Relations). In contrast, African-Americans responded that they felt they had more in common with Latinos and least in common with Whites and Asian Americans.

It is somewhat ironic that African-Americans who are publicly depicted as being adverse to coalition building with Latinos, demonstrate survey responses that are more in accord with all the socioeconomic data that demonstrates the commonality of African-American and Latino communities. While Latinos, in contradistinction provide survey responses that fly in the face of all the socioeconomic data demonstrating African-American and Latino parallels. The Latino affinity for Whites over African-Americans is part and parcel of the Latino identification with whiteness. (See BlackProf entry of May 3, 2006, “Is There Racism in Latin America and What Does That Mean for Race Relations in the United States?”). Indeed, in contrast to the many reports of a Latino preference for mixed-race census racial categories, there is a strong Latino preference for the White racial category and some Latino groups like Cubans disproportionately select the White racial category (See “Bleach in the Rainbow: Latin Ethnicity and the Preference for Whiteness” by William A. Darity, Jr., et al., at http://www.cpc.unc.edu/people/cv/darity.pdf).

In short, the public discourse about relations between African-Americans and Latinos is problematic because it over-simplistic and factually skewed. The changing demographics of the nation requires that we expand the analysis of racism to include considerations of how groups of color can be complicit and even active agents in the discrimination against other groups of color. But to be a useful tool against discrimination, the examination of racism amongst groups of color cannot be unidirectional and focused on just one group.

Support Black Republican's

MISSION: The mission of the National Black Republican Association (NBRA) is to be a resource for the black community on Republican ideals and promote the traditional values of the black community which are the core values of the Republican Party: strong families, faith in God, personal responsibility, quality education, and equal opportunities for all.

GOAL: The goal of the NBRA is to return black Americans to their Republican Party roots by enlightening them about how Republicans fought for their freedom and civil rights, and are now fighting for their educational and economic advancement.

OBJECTIVES: The objectives of the NBRA are to conduct a nationwide grassroots educational campaign in black communities; champion school choice opportunity scholarships to give black parents educational options and access to a quality education for their children; and provide training and resources for grassroots activists and candidates for elected office.

Click here to support black conservatives this election!And did you know Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a republican? Black representation at the 2004 National Republican Convention

Interview with Dictator Robert Mugabe in 1979

Robert mugabe is an idiot and should be tried for war crimes against his own people.

Secretary of State Rice Address to Southern Baptists VIDEO

Excerpt of Remarks by Secretary Condoleezza Rice

at the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting,

Same-Sex Handholding Now Illegal In Zimbabwe

(Harare) Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe's government has made it a criminal offense for two people of the same sex to hold hands, hug, or kiss.
The "sexual deviancy" law is one of 15 additions to Zimbabwe's criminal code quietly passed in Parliament last week.

The sections involving gays and lesbians are part of an overhaul of the sodomy laws. Until now laws against sodomy were limited to sexual activity.

The revised law now states that sodomy is any "act involving contact between two males that would be regarded by a reasonable person as an indecent act".

Mugabe has a long history of homophobia. He regularly refers to gays and people he suspects to be gay as "less than pigs and dogs".
Earlier this year the 82 year old went on a tirade calling homosexuality "a white disease".
"Leave whites to do that," he declared.

Mugabe told the cheering throng that same-sex marriage is a threat to mankind and condemned churches that bless gay unions.

He said his government would jail and clergy who performed a blessing ceremony for gay couples in Zimbabwe.

British LGBT civil rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has on several occasions attempted citizen’s arrests of Mugabe.

In 1999, he and other activists from the gay activist group OutRage! ambushed Mugabe’s motorcade and attempted to seize him in a London street. In 2001, he swooped on the President as he was leaving the Hilton Hotel in Brussels. Tachell was beaten unconscious by Mugabe’s bodyguards.

In 2004 a British court refused to issue an arrest warrant for the Zimbabwean leader.
Tatchell presented a 52 page brief that outlined a regime of brutality, homophobia, and repression of civil rights. It detailed accounts of political opponents being rounded up and imprisoned and quoted extensively from reports made by more than a half dozen international human rights groups and contains interviews with victims of the regime.

The judge ruled that Mugabe is immune from foreign arrest since he is a head of state.
Zimbabwe is not the only African country where gays are in danger.

Botswana, Kenya, Cameroon, and Mozambique punish sodomy with imprisonment.
Nigerian law has a 14-year prison sentence for homosexuals, but in Muslim northern Nigeria, where Islamic Sharia law is in force, it is punishable by death

Protest at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco

Protest at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, July 13, 2006The recent fighting in and around Israel spilled over onto the streets of San Francisco on Thursday, July 13, when Palestinian and left-wing groups staged a protest in front of the Israeli Consulate in the city's Financial District. An equal number of pro-Israel counter-protesters showed up to make their voices heard as well, and from the start the two sides were battling it out with a war of words and symbols.

The protest was organized by Al-Awda (a group devoted to dismantling Israel and replacing it with a Palestinian state), A.N.S.W.E.R. (a communist group) and a coalition of other Islamic and socialist organizations. (Editor's note: The pictures by me on this page were taken with a hidden camera, which is why some of them are out-of-focus or at odd angles. Other pictures, as noted, were sent in by contributors.)

http://www.zombietime.com/israeli_consulate_protest_july_13_2006/ .....MORE PICTURE'S

NYC Rally For Israel- Pics and Video

NYC Rally For Israel- Pics and Video


http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a365/israelday/RallyForIsrael/

WOO! RALPH REED LOST!

Casey Cagle won, and yes, he's a lot better than Ralph Reed. The Lt. Governor doesn't have much power in Georgia, but it's a good stepping-stone to run for Governor in the future. So long as Ralph Reed, who was supported by Bush, Perdue, and the Christian Coalition, is stopped, Georgia may get better.

Samuel L. Jackson as God?

I guess these people have been watching too much Pulp Fiction ,while Samuel L. Jackson is an amusing choice for the voice of God (VOG), the BEST, and most objectively perfect choice for the VOG is clearly James Earl Jones.

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/jackson%20voices%20god_1002655

Movie superstar SAMUEL L JACKSON will voice God in a new audio version of the Bible. The taped recording of the New Testament will feature many famous other black actors and musicians. Jackson was given the lead role because producers felt his deep, authorative voice was perfect for the role of God. A source tells British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, "Samuel's just finished recording a CD set of the New Testament. The recording is due to be released in September (06), with a box set of the Old Testament to follow next year (07). "Scores of other black actors, musicians and athletes will also figure, but Samuel was deemed to be the perfect person to play God."

NAACP Chapter President arrested in 2006 Black College Reunion

Cedric the Entertainer on Condoleezza rice

So Funny

Gerald A. Reynolds

Gerald A. Reynolds (1964-) is an American politician and lawyer, and the current chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, a position to which he was appointed by President George W. Bush on December 6, 2004. He succeeded Mary Frances Berry. He also serves as the Assistant General Counsel at Great Plains Energy, providing strategic advice to the company and managing the daily operations of its law department.

Reynolds received his law degree from Boston University School of Law, where he served on the editorial board of the American Journal of Law and Medicine. He received his B.A. in History from York College.
Prior to his government work, he served as the President of the Center for New Black Leadership, and worked as a legal analyst for the Center for Equal Opportunity. He practiced law with Schatz & Schatz, Ribicoff & Kotkin, a firm based out of Connecticut. He continues to serve on the National Advisory Board of Project 21, a program within the National Center for Public Policy Research, that seeks to privide a forum for conservatives within the black community.

On March 29, 2002, Reynolds was appointed by Bush to the position of Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office for Civil Rights. Notable for being an African-American opposed to affirmative action, he managed one of the largest civil rights law enforcement agencies within the federal government, and revised civil rights regulations.

He later served as a Deputy Associate Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice, providing legal advice on various matters to the Associate Attorney General.

He has also written articles on public policy issues, which were published in various publications, including Black Family Today, The Dallas Morning News, The CQ Researcher, Orange Register and The Washington Times. He also edited a book on race within the criminal justice system.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_A._Reynolds"

Fictional Black Republicans

Carlton Banks, from the NBC TV series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air .....Loved Reagan

Ray Campbell, from the ABC/WB TV series Sister, Sister

Thurgood Marshall "Goodie" Cumberbatch, from the CBS TV series 704 Hauser

Gordon Davis, from the 1999 novel Protect and Defend by Eric L. Harry

William Dent, from the UPN/CW TV series Girlfriends

Tom Dubois, from The Boondocks comic strip and the animated series of the same name on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim

Augustus Freeman IV, a.k.a. Icon, the title character from the Milestone comic book

Jimmy James, from the 2002 film Barbershop, the 2004 film Barbershop 2: Back in Business, and Showtime's Barbershop: The Series -- (His status as a Republican is not explicitly clear until the TV series)

Bruford Jamison, Jr., from the 1994 film Drop Squad -- (presumed)

George Jefferson, from the CBS TV series All in the Family and The Jeffersons

Ron Johnson, from the NBC TV series A Different World

Russell "Linc" Lincoln, from the Showtime TV series Linc's
Matty (Eleanor Emerson's boss), from the Fox TV series Roc

Frank Pembleton, from the NBC TV series Homicide: Life on the Street

Dondi Reece, the U.S. Secretary of State in the Marvel comic book Black Panther, as written by Reginald Hudlin -- (Clearly, she is an analogue for Condoleezza Rice)

Maxwell Stanton, from the NBC/UPN TV series In the House

Odafin "Fin" Tutuola, from the NBC TV series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

Republican Delegates vote African-American Physician for State GOP's Number Two Job



By Mike Hailey

Capitol Inside Editor


SAN ANTONIO, Texas - An African-American physician who grew up in a family of Democrats was chosen Saturday by delegates at the Texas Republican Convention to be the new vice-chairman of the state GOP. Texas Republican Chairwoman Tina Benkiser was re-elected without opposition to a second full term as the state party's top leader before the convention adjourned.


Robin Armstrong - a State Republican Executive Committee member from Dickinson - led the voting for vice-chair in 18 state Senate District caucus meetings while GOPUSA web site owner Bobby Eberle received more support in 13 caucus votes. Eberle conceded the election in a tear-choked speech that he used to express gratitude for the support he'd garnered in the competition for vice-chair and to commend both sides for staying on the high road throughout the race.

More than 4,000 delegates ratified the selection of Benkiser and Armstrong for the state party organization's top two slots in a voice vote from the floor of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in downtown San Antonio.


Armstrong prevailed in the race to replace David Barton as state GOP vice-chair after bypassing an opportunity to take advantage of revelations that Eberle had once hired a reporter who was eventually identified as a former male escort. Eberle said that he wasn't aware of the reporter's past exploits when he'd offered him a position with an online news service that he ran before founding his current web site - and he insisted this week that the story was a non-issue in the state vice-chair's race. Armstrong refused to make it an issue despite assertions by some Republicans who felt it was a legitimate concern to raise in a race against Eberle.


Pausing several times when overcome with emotion, Eberle called the race "a class act" from start to finish while acknowledging defeat once the outcome was obvious. Eberle said he and his supporters had done everything they could to bring people together and to get out the message he sought to convey during the race.



Armstrong was generally viewed as the more conservative choice in the competition for vice-chair - and that perception was reinforced when GOP leaders such as former state chairs Fred Meyer and George Strake endorsed Eberle. Armstrong suggested to reporters that he'd been compelled to join the GOP as a result of his conservative views on abortion, school choice and other issues.



In a state where about nine out of every 10 black voters tend to support Democrats in political contests, Armstrong gives the state GOP more evidence to point to in its quest to bring more minority voters into the fold. The new state party vice-chairman is the fourth African-American to win an election to a high-profile political position in Texas in recent years.



Three African-American Republicans - Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson and Supreme Court member Dale Wainwright - currently hold statewide offices. But while African-Americans have won statewide as Republicans in Texas and held high-level positions in President George W. Bush's cabinet, there are no black Republicans in the Texas Legislature or the state's congressional delegation. The U.S. House has one Hispanic Republican member from Texas - and the GOP's only Hispanic state legislator in Texas lost a bid for re-election in this year's primary vote.



But Armstrong suggested that minority voters embrace conservative positions on key issues - and he vowed to be active in outreach efforts in order to help the Republican Party expand its base in Texas.


Armstrong - who paid his political dues with stints as a precinct chair, election judge and convention delegate - is a doctor on the staff at the Mainland Medical Center in Texas City and an assistant clinical internal medicine professor. He's married to a physician - Martha Armstrong - and has two sons.


Barton was forced to give up the vice-chairman's job after eight years as a result of term limits.

Black Republican Candidates fro 2006

Black GOP Candidates

ARKANSAS
Chris Morris for Arkansas State Treasurer

CALIFORNIAPierre-Richard Prosper for Attorney General of California

COLORADOSenator Ed Jones re-elect to Colorado State Senate District 11

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIAMarcus Skelton for At-Large City Council

FLORIDARepresentative Jennifer S. Carroll to re-elect to FL House District 13 Eddie Adams, Jr. for US

Congress (FL 11)Gwen ("Dr. Gwen") J. Chandler for Jacksonville City CouncilCain Davis for Florida House District 23

GEORGIARepresentative Melvin Everson re-elect to Georgia House District 106Representative Willie Talton re-elect to Georgia House District 14

5Deborah Honeycutt For US Congress (GA 13th)

Catherine Davis For US Congress (GA 4th)

Mary Wilhite For Georgia House District 22

ILLINOISEric Wallace, PhD for Illinois State Senate District 19

Marc A. Wiley for Illinois State House District 80

INDIANAEric Dickerson for US Congress (IN-7)

LOUISIANABenita Williams Scott for Assessor 5th Municipal District (Algiers)

MARYLANDLt. Governor Michael Steele for US Senate

Ron Miller for Maryland Senate 27th district

Rene Swafford, Anne Arundel County Council Candidate

MASSACHUSETTSBob Parks for Massachusetts State House 2nd Franklin District

MICHIGANKeith Butler for US Senate

Senator Bill Hardiman re-elect to Michigan Senate District 29
Larry DeShazor State Representative District 61

MISSISSIPPIYvonne R. Brown for US Congress (MS-2)

MISSOURIState Representative Sherman Parker for US Congress (MO-2)

NEVADASenator Maurice Wasington re-elect to Nevada Senate District 11

NORTH CAROLINA

Dr. Ada M. Fisher For US Congress (NC-12)
Vernon Robinson For US Congress (NC-13)

Olga Morgan Wright for General Assembly House District 58Jim H Bention Sr., For North Carolina State House District 69

OHIOSecretary of State Ken Blackwell for Govenor of Ohio

Jimmie Hicks, Jr. For Ohio State House District 9

OREGONBruce Broussard for Oregon for US Congress (OR-3)

Senator Jackie Winters re-elect for Oregon State State District 10

PENNSYLVANIALynn Swann for Governor of Pennsylvania Ron Holt for Pennsylvania State Senate District 4

RHODE ISLANDLloyd Monre for State Senate District 18

Tennessee Novella Smith Arnold for Shelby County County Commission

Derrick Bennett for US Congress (TN 9th)

TEXASMichael Williams re-elect to Texas Railroad Commissioner Ken Bryant for Texas House District 27
VERMONTState Auditor Randolph D. Brock, III re-elect as State Auditor of Accounts

Joke of the Week

A popular Des Moines Barber shop had a new robotic barber installed.A fellow came in for a haircut.

As the robot began to cut his hair it asked him, "What's your IQ?"

The man replied, "130."So the robot proceeded to make conversation about physics, astronomy, investments, philosophy, history, and so on.

The man listened intently and said, "This is really cool."Later, another gent came in for a haircut and the robot asked him as it began the haircut, "What's your IQ?" The man responded, "100." So the robot started talking about football, baseball, T.V. programs, the latest movies and so on.

The man thought to himself, "Wow, this is really cool."Later on, a third guy came in to the barbershop. As with the others, the robot barber asked him, "What's your IQ?" The man replied, "70" The robot then said, "So, I understand you Democrats are really excited about Hillary running for president?"

Every Patriot, please read!

I dont know how often the commercials are showing around the country so im still posting reminders.

http://www.WTCMovie.com/



On August 9th, World Trade Center comes out in theaters nation-wide. Im trying to get as many people as possible to go. Not for a contest, not for an assignment. But for duty. We all saw the horrors of that day. We remember our cause, our purpose, our new place in the world.

Protectors of the peace, servants of freedom, saviors of Humanity.Please, I am BEGGING you with tears in my eyes. Go see this movie. We must never forgive, and never forget.Our world changed on that day, we have a new purpose through our tragedy.

"It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves, this is true of a nation as well. In this trial, we have been reminded, and the world has seen that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave. We see our character in rescuers working past exhaustion, in long lines of blood donors, in thousands of citizens who have asked to work and serve in any way possible. And we have seen our national character in eloquent acts of sacrifice.

"President George W. Bush, September 14, 2001

Bishop Pius Ncube Vs Robert Mugabe

Pius Ncube, the Archbishop of Bulawayo, and a leader of Zimbabwe’s embattled human rights movement received a 2003 Human Rights Award at Human Rights First dinner on October 23. As an outspoken critic of the Robert Mugabe government, the Archbishop has been slandered, and lives under constant threat to his personal safety. Despite this, the Archbishop continues to be a shining light in the fight for human rights – demanding that his government address the mounting food and economic crises and put an end to torture and rape.

Archbishop Ncube has spoken out on many occasions to denounce political violence and manipulation of food aid, in particular. He has helped to mobilise a multi-denominational church coalition in Zimbabwe, which is now seen as one of the major potential forces in resolving the crisis. Church leaders and representatives have themselves been targeted by the regime. In early March Archbishop Ncube organized a prayer meeting in Bulawayo where torture and rape victims spoke about their experiences. The police subsequently sought to arrest him over several days, but were prevented from doing so.

The Archbishop recently organized other bishops and church leaders in Zimbabwe to put out a report on pro-government youth militias which are responsible for torture, rape and murders. The report, based on the church officials’ observations in the field, estimates 30,000 to 50,000 young boys have been recruited to play a part in these militias.

The Archbishop called for increased international pressure to dismantle the National Youth Service Training Programme created in 2001, which the report said was in reality "a paramilitary training programme for Zimbabwe's youth with the clear aim of inculcating blatantly antidemocratic, racist and xenophobic attitudes. The youth militias so created are used as instruments of the ruling party, to maintain their hold on power by whatever means necessary, including torture, rape, murder and arson."


Pius Ncube

Pius Ncube (1946 - ) is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, widely known as a human rights advocate and an outspoken critic of President Robert Mugabe. He heads a multi-denominational church coalition that seeks to improve the conditions of Zimbabweans. He has received a Human Rights Award from Human Rights First on October 23, 2003, for speaking out against torture and confronting the Mugabe government for starving certain regions of Zimbabwe for political reasons. He has received many death threats for his activities.
Previous elections in Zimbabwe have been plagued with violence and corruption, and Ncube has been outspoken against this.

Believing that the 2005 Zimbabwe parliamentary elections would be fixed, Ncube called for a "popular mass uprising" in the style of the Orange Revolution or Tulip Revolution to remove Mugabe from power. "I hope people get so disillusioned that they really organise against this government and kick him out by non-violent popular mass uprising," Ncube was quoted as saying. In response, Mugabe has called Ncube a half-wit and a liar. After the March 2005 elections, Ncube repeated his call for a peaceful rebellion. Referring to Mugabe, he said I am praying that he goes home gently - At 84, he has lived a full life.


External links

A profile by Human Rights First

Information from Amnesty International

The Times Online report

Voice of America news

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pius_Ncube"

Campaign Update

Our very own Marcus Skelton will be on 89.3FM WPFW Wednesday, July 19th from 11pm-12am discussing city politics and grassroots community involvement. For more information please contact

www.wpfw.org or www.skeltonforcouncil.org

Democrats pull Hate Ad

ROCK HILL, S.C. - Democrats pulled an Internet ad that showed flag-draped coffins Friday after Republicans and at least two Democrats demanded it be taken down on grounds the image was insensitive and not fit for a political commercial.

The ad by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called for a "new direction" and displayed a staccato of images, including war scenes, pollution and breached levees as well as a

The campaign committee replaced the ad with a radio commercial that targets Rep. John Hostetler, R-Ind., for opposing an increase in the minimum wage. Democrats have made a minimum wage increase a central theme of this year's election.

Democrats had featured the video ad for nearly two weeks on the DCCC Web site where it had gone largely unnoticed until Republicans began objecting to it this week. On Thursday, more than a dozen Republicans, many with military backgrounds, called on DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., to apologize. Democratic Reps. John Spratt of South Carolina and Chet Edwards of Texas asked Emanuel to pull or alter the ad.

"We're moving to another major effort that we're highlighting on our Web site," DCCC spokesman Bill Burton said.

In South Carolina, Spratt's Republican challenger, state Rep. Ralph Norman, commended the removal. It was "the right thing to do for the state, country and especially the brave men and women who serve in our military," said Norman's spokesman, Nathan Hollifield.

Louis Farrakhan's Son the Baskeball Player!!!

He would like to talk about basketball, and only basketball. It is an impossible wish, a hopelessly naïve wish, but it is that charming naiveté that could insulate this teenager as he becomes a man.


Mustapha Farrakhan showed savvy and skill at the Nike All-America Camp.
He will have friends because of his name. He will have enemies because of his name, too. His name is Mustapha Farrakhan.

He is a 6-foot-3 shooting guard out of the Chicago area, and yes, he's related to the Honorable Farrakhan leader of the Nation of Islam. Louis Farrakhan is Mustapha's grandfather.

On this day, last week at the Nike All-America Camp at Indianapolis, Mustapha Farrakhan has been summoned to the media room. On the court he is smooth and confident, dunking with two hands and throwing no-look passes and flicking righteous-looking lefty 3-pointers. In the media room he is humble and shy, with huge eyes and a small smile and an earnest, surprised look that implies he had no idea he would be asked about his grandfather or his father, also named Mustapha Farrakhan, who as the Nation of Islam's supreme captain is the likely successor to Louis Farrakhan.

The eventual elevation of his father would put the younger Mustapha Farrakhan -- this one, this wide-eyed teenager standing before you -- potentially in line to lead the Nation of Islam himself some day. This is what you want to discuss with 17-year-old Mustapha Farrakhan. His birthright. His future. His politics.

But he only wants to talk about his sport.

"I'm just focusing in on basketball right now," he says. "I'm just thinking about basketball."

Mustapha Farrakhan, a rising high school senior, definitely will be a college basketball player. He'll never be a "normal" college basketball player, not with one of the most divisive surnames names in modern American society on the back of his jersey, but Mustapha Farrakhan will get a scholarship. He'll earn it, too. Farrakhan was chosen for Nike's senior all-star game Sunday and acquitted himself well: eight points on five shots from the floor, plus five rebounds and three assists in 16 minutes.

I'll be honest, if for a moment I can completely interject myself into this story: When I saw Mustapha Farrakhan's name on the Nike Camp roster, I assumed he had been invited by Nike leader George Raveling for the publicity, or as a favor to Louis Farrakhan, or both. Sure, the camp brochure indicated Mustapha Farrakhan had averaged 17.1 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.6 assists as a junior at Thornton Township (Ill.) High, but come on. Louis Farrakhan's grandson? No way he's a legit Division I player. That's what I assumed.

I assumed wrong. In a camp setting like Nike where most guards are selfish and/or out of control, Farrakhan stands out for his smooth jump shot, his clever passing and his overall savvy play. That's no surprise considering his 3.5 high school GPA. Not only is he being recruited at the solid mid-major level -- Missouri Valley Conference teams are on him the hardest -- but he's better than that. Mustapha Farrakhan might never be a Big Ten star, but he can play in that conference. He's that good.

He'll never be known for his basketball, however, which is too bad. Everyone deserves a chance to carve their own legacy, but for familial reasons some never get the chance. John F. Kennedy Jr. had no chance. Pete Rose Jr. had no chance. Mustapha Farrakhan has no chance, either. We can wring our hands about that, or we can get mad at anyone (me) who would be so crass as to suggest in writing that a 17-year-old kid has no shot at making a name for himself as a basketball player, but Mustapha Farrakhan is what he is: very good basketball player, grandson of Louis Farrakhan. And not in that order.

As impressive as he was at Nike Camp, Mustapha is the subject of this story because of his grandfather. Wherever he goes to college, his background will be a focal point for the local media. Is Louis Farrakhan coming to the game? Will he have bodyguards? (For the record, Louis Farrakhan has attended several of his grandson's high school games, protected by large men in dark suits.)

Here's a prediction: By the time Mustapha Farrakhan's college career is finished, he will have been written about in all of this country's major sports magazines and several of its major newspapers, and he will have been featured on ESPN. If he becomes a great college basketball player, that would help, but that's optional. Regardless of his game, his name is that big. Wherever his college team plays, Mustapha Farrakhan will be a storyline. Opposing fans will be happy to see him. Imagine the chants young Farrakhan might hear on the road. On second thought, don't.

Louis Farrakhan is an enormous figure on the socio-political landscape, a brilliant orator and persuasive Muslim leader capable of dreaming up and pulling off the 1995 Million Man March. He also is a vitriolic demagogue who has uttered more than his share of hateful words, words that won't be repeated here.

None of that, of course, has the least little thing to do with Mustapha Farrakhan's jumper or his ability to defend on the perimeter. Even though Louis Farrakhan's politics are irrelevant to this story, they are still crucial to this story.

Mustapha Farrakhan had better get used to it. It's reality for the basketball-playing grandson of Louis Farrakhan. Even when you're the story ... you're not the story.



Louis Farrakhan HONORABLE?!?!

How can Doyel call Louis Farrakhan "honorable", and then say "He also is a vitriolic demagogue who has uttered more than his share of hateful words, words that won't be repeated here."

Farrakhan's grandson is automatically a better person because he's NOT Louis Farrakhan. I hope that he keeps his distance from his grandson so that he may have a chance at basketball and life.

Watch Ayaan Hirsi Ali Interview

I wish I had 1/10 of this woman's courage!

Watch ...Van Gogh's film Submission

-QUOTE OF THE WEEK"

Despite the pet theories of liberals and conservatives, blacks aren’t killing each other because they are violent, crime prone by nature, because they are poor and oppressed or even because they are acting out the obscene and lewd violence they see and hear on TV, films and in gangster rap lyrics on the streets. The violence results from a combustible blend of cultural and racial baggage many blacks carry."

-Earl Ofari Hutchinson

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/stateof/hutchinson623

Man Convicted of Murder for Hate Crime

"As long as she had blond hair and blue eyes, she had to die,"- Grant

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

WHITE PLAINS, July 11 — A homeless sex offender was convicted of murder as a hate crime on Tuesday in the stabbing death of a white woman near a downtown mall here last summer. He had told the police that he killed her because he wanted to start a race war.

After four hours of deliberations over two days, a jury in State Supreme Court found the defendant, Phillip Grant, 44, who is black, guilty of a racially motivated killing, which took place on June 29, 2005, at lunchtime in a parking garage near the Galleria mall.
The killing near the busy mall stunned people for its savagery and cast a harsh light on the way Westchester County dealt with its homeless population.

Mr. Grant was one of several high-level sex offenders who spent their nights sleeping at a county-run homeless shelter and their days roaming White Plains. The victim, Concetta Russo-Carriero, 56, a petite woman with green eyes and sandy blond hair, was stabbed as she walked through the garage on her way to her car.

About 2 p.m. in a packed courtroom in the Westchester County Courthouse, the jurors deciding Mr. Grant’s fate — seven white men, four white women and one black woman — filed into the courtroom. None looked at the defendant.

Stocky and expressionless, Mr. Grant showed no emotion as the verdict was read. But he turned toward one of his lawyers and whispered something afterward.
As he was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom, Mr. Grant kept his head down and did not look at the gallery, where dozens of Ms. Russo-Carriero’s relatives and former colleagues filled four rows of benches.

The jurors refused to speak with reporters as the courtroom emptied. They said nothing when approached by the victim’s relatives and walked quickly away from the courthouse.
After the verdict, Ms. Russo-Carriero’s parents and two grown sons spoke at a news conference, using language like “beast,” “savage” and “vicious” to describe Mr. Grant.

“When that animal stuck a knife in my daughter’s heart,” said the victim’s father, Ted Granata, 83, as he sobbed and turned red with grief, “he stuck it in our hearts too.”

Ms. Russo-Carriero’s eldest son, Jonathan Russo, 29, choked back anger as he spoke.
“My mother was leaving work and did not deserve to come upon such a vicious animal as Phillip Grant, a remorseless human being,” he said. “He murdered my mother for no other reason than that she is white.”

Mr. Grant faces 20 years to life in state prison at his sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 11. As a hate crime, the murder charge carries the same maximum sentence but a higher minimum one.
But legal experts say it is almost certain that Mr. Grant will never be released if the State Legislature adopts a civil commitment measure, known as Connie’s law, for the victim’s nickname, that would keep the most violent sex offenders locked in institutions even after their time is served.

A bill that would create the measure is being considered in the State Assembly.
Mr. Grant was a felon with a history of violent rapes when he began staying in a county-run shelter at the Westchester County Airport in 2003. Every morning at 6 a.m., he was put on a bus to White Plains with other shelter residents. But after the killing, the county faced such fierce criticism that it ended the busing and hired trained monitors to shadow the most dangerous sex offenders staying in its shelters.
The victim’s family sued the county and the City of White Plains in September, accusing them of negligence. The suit is pending.

The hate crime charge against Mr. Grant stemmed from statements he made in a rambling, 45-minute confession videotaped by detectives. On the tape, which was played in court, Mr. Grant said he suffered from depression and anxiety and was desperate for medication.
Paranoid that a group of white men were following him and plotting against him, he shoplifted a steak knife, hid on the top floor of the garage and waited for hours, he said, until he spotted a white person.

Ms. Russo-Carriero, a paralegal from White Plains, was found lying in a pool of blood by a passer-by about 1 p.m.; she had two stab wounds to her chest.
“I said to myself, ‘The first person that I see in this mall that looks white, I’m killing,’ ” Mr. Grant told his interrogators. “I had never seen this woman before and I didn’t care. All I knew was she had blond hair and blue eyes and she had to die.”

But Mr. Grant’s lead defense lawyer, Eugene Traynor, insisted throughout the trial that Mr. Grant had made a false confession because he was mentally ill and had been pressured by detectives. He argued vociferously that Mr. Grant had not been read his Miranda rights and suggested in his closing argument that Mr. Grant had been roughed up.
“This defendant did not get the treatment you would expect to get from police,” he said. “He got the homeless black guy treatment.”

Prosecutors pointed to strong DNA evidence, including drops of the victim’s blood that were found on Mr. Grant’s trousers and under his fingernails.

After the verdict, Mr. Traynor said he would appeal, citing “procedural issues” with the case, including pretrial publicity and his insistence that Mr. Grant’s confession was unconstitutionally obtained. Throughout the case, he fought to have the confession thrown out and repeatedly demanded that Judge Lester B. Adler call a mistrial, prompting the judge to lose his patience on Monday.

“One thing I know about this defense strategy is that it is to delay, obfuscate, throw this jury off and cause as much disruption as possible,” Judge Adler said.

Interview with Marcus Skelton Candidate for DC City Counsil

Growing up in Seat Pleasant, Maryland, Marcus believes that playing sports and his parents sending him to a local church to participate in Boy Scouts were major factors that deterred him from the dangers of the neighborhood he lived in. As a son of a former union president Marcus developed a strong work ethic and an understanding that business and labor need balance and communication to exist.

Marcus was a two-sport athlete at Crossland High School lettering in football and track. And as part of his Eagle Scout project Marcus restored his high school stadium, which saved the county thousand of dollars in labor hours.

He went on to Bowie State University where he received his B.S. in Communications and his M.A. in Human Resource Development. Academically, he received Bowie State’s Scholar Athlete Award in 2001 and 2002. On the field he received 1st Team All-CIAA and 2nd Team Daktronics All American honors as a three-year starter on Bowie’s football team. Marcus also volunteered with The Office of External Relations fundraising for athletics and Bowie’s general scholarship fund.

As chapter president of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. he raised thousands of dollars for local charities. As a service to on-campus students, Marcus managed the fraternity’s wake-up call program. He coordinated fraternities tutoring program which helped students pass the Maryland Functional Math Test.

Marcus has a strong passion for career development and local politics. He help redesigned the Community College of Baltimore County’s Fellows Leadership Development Program and trained Southern Maryland Tri County Community Action Committee Head Start program staff after they hired a new executive staff.

Currently, Marcus resides in Southeast Washington D.C. He enjoys distance running, football, golf, and reading.

Why Run for Council Member At-Large……….?

My decision to run for City Council is based on my strong commitment to community involvement and my belief that together we can make better decisions beneficial to the future for the District of Columbia. We have the opportunity to stop run-away taxing and irresponsible spending by electing Marcus Skelton for D.C. Council Member At-Large.

Because public education, public safety, and job growth are three hotly debated issues in our community. I am committed to meeting as many of you as possible and learning how you feel about these and other issues that affect the city because there are multiple solutions to every problem. I also believe that all citizens agree on a few principles.

Bi-partisan government is beneficial to the future of the district because monopolies tend to lead to corruption.

Strong values and community involvement keep our streets and children safe.
The District of Columbia has a responsibility to prepare its youth to compete in today’s global economy.

More businesses mean more jobs.
Citizens need to keep more of what they earn to keep up with the rising cost of living.

Please support Marcus Skeltons run for DC City Counsil.
http://www.skeltonforcouncil.org/

Black Republican Comes Out of the Closet

Reginald Bohannon is a Republican.That in and of itself is not remarkable. But what is unusual--although certainly not unheard of--is that he is a black Republican, raised in a culture in which 90-95% of the ethnic group to which he belongs is Democrat, and in a family with a politically active Democrat mother.Not altogether unlike myself, actually, come to think of it (although I'm not a Republican; I'm an Independent).

And, in another similarity, Bohannon has written about his "change" experience, in a book entitled Coming Out of the Republican Closet: Coming to Terms With Being Black, Patriotic, and Conservative (it could be subtitled: not an oxymoron.)Here's a recent interview with Mr. Bohannon. His "coming out of the closet" metaphor is especially apt, I believe. It's one that has come up quite often on threads on this blog that discuss the experience "changers" have had (see this, for example).

As you all no doubt know, "coming out" is a phrase that previously had been used primarily to describe the experience of gays who'd been hiding their sexual identities for fear of discrimination and recrimination, and who finally decide they can no longer live the secret life. They tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may; sometimes they fall hard and painfully. Before my own change experience, I would not have believed in any possible comparison to the experience of gays; I actually might even have considered it preposterous if someone had asserted discrimination from liberals because of "turning" in a conservative--or a neocon--direction. But now I'm a believer.

Personal experience, and being the recipient of emails from all over the world describing the phenomenon, have convinced me. And yet I still feel some amount of shock at the depth and breadth of it all. I like to think--and really, I know, since I always had a few conservative friends--that in my liberal days I would never have had this reaction to a "changer."

After all, doesn't it seem especially antithetical to the openmindedness and respect for opinions of others that liberals profess to feel?But, as I've written before, a political identity is much more than that: it often becomes a moral and personal identity, and there are groupthink aspects that lead to ostracism of the apostate.

Zell Miller likens political identity to a birthmark, and in a way it is. In his interview, Bohannon discusses the tagline to his book, "Not wanting to disappoint his family and bring ill-repute on them, Bohannon chose to keep his political viewpoints to himself." He feared name-calling and anger directed not only at him, but at his family.But over time he gained the courage of his convictions, bolstered by the history of the Republican party's support of freedom for blacks during and after the Civil War. An especially interesting aspect of his position is that he believes black people to actually already be more conservative on many issues than they themselves know. He sees himself as a person willing to point this out and make it easier for more of them to cross over into formerly-dreaded Republicanism.

Bohannon sees the scarcity of blacks in the Republican Party as a function of lack of education as to what Republicans really stand for--now, and historically--and an incorrect perception of the Party as racist.Bohannon says:...it takes some intelligence to be a black Republican because you have to do your homework. ...To be a Democrat, you just have to join the Party that your family belongs to and you don't have to learn anything at all.No, it's not true that black Democrats--or Jewish Democrats, or any other ethnic or socioeconomic group that's predominantly and overwhelmingly Democratic, for that matter--are unintelligent. Not at all, and I would strongly quarrel with Bohannon's use of the word.But I do identify with Bohannon's larger message--which is that, as I grew more interested in reading about political events, both domestic and international, as well as historical--I grew away from the Democratic

Party and more to the right. That certainly is not an inevitability; I know that some people go in the opposite direction. But, as I've written here, it appears to be a trend. Reginald Bohannon is part of it--and, if he has his way, more black people will join him.

http://www.rbohannon.com/index.html

Is "Freedom Of Religion" Conditional?

Asks Duane Brayboy, a black conservative blogger, about the efforts of church leaders in Pompano Beach, Florida to demand that political leaders keep a mosque from opening in the community. They argue that the land should instead be used for affordable housing, and that Islam has no place in the city's northwest side - which is predominantly black and Christian - where the new mosque would be located: "These Muslims should be free to build their Mosque wherever they own land and it meets all local building codes. This is a very bad move by these churches and they need to just sit down and focus on more important things. I wonder if these same 'opponents' felt that the land where these churches reside would also be better suited for affordable homes? Naaaah!"My response: I agree, and regular readers know that I am no fan of Islam. However, the issue of whether Islam has a place (or not) in this mostly black community will be determined by market forces. If folks are not interested, then the mosque will not acquire members. Period.

However, Independent Conservative disagrees with us. The black blogger writes about one of the preachers leading the protest against the mosque, who recently had to resign from a local government advisory post when he declared that Islam is a cult: "It is still socially convenient for a minister to protest the opening of a strip club and I thank God for all ministers that do. But it is socially inconvenient for a minister to protest the opening of a temple of false doctrine, that is entering a neighborhood full of people who worship Jesus Christ and God the Father. Once upon a time in America, a Christian minister embraced by politicians could speak against such, but not today.....But today, for a minister to even speak about another faith in anything but the nicest terms results in that minister being ostracized. Rev. O’Neal Dozier is pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, Florida. He is a Conservative Republican and had a long history of favor with the GOP and the Bush family. That is, until the day he said Islam is a cult and he had a problem with a Muslim mosque being built in his community. Then he was asked to step down from the Broward Judicial Nominating Committee. It is said that he was 'controversial' because he, a minister of a Gospel of Jesus Christ would ask judicial candidates if they were 'God-fearing'. Oh my, to think a minister would actually ask someone going into a post of authority if they fear God. What’s 'controversial' to me is not his question, but that anyone would think it’s somehow out of line for a minister to ask."

Jeffries: "Black On Black Violence As A Hate Crime"

The Seton Hall University law professor and liberal writes:

"Newsweek reports that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are using hate-crime laws to prosecute Latino gangbangers for a series of racially motivated attacks on Blacks. The context may seem somewhat novel, but at a higher level of generality the claim is familiar: The Latino gangbangers allegedly attacked African-Americans in order to dissuade Black folk from moving to predominately Latino neighborhoods.

Reading the report, however, provoked another question: Why not use hate-crimes laws to attack Black-on-Black crime? Much of Black-on-Black crime, I’d submit, reflects the extent to which Black folk have internalized stigma-informed signals about their capacity and worth. Stigma suggests to Black folk that their humanity is less valuable than that of Whites. To that extent, stigma cheapens the value of Black life — perhaps to the point that, when internalized, the self-constraint Black folk might otherwise exercise when contemplating deadly force is nullified.

According to social scientists, stigma concerns a trait so thoroughly discredited that the existential character of those bearing the trait is called into question. Stigma therefore challenges the essence of the kind of being the stigmatized constitute. Largely because of stigma, our forebears readily reconciled liberal, democratic values with the gross inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow: If Black folk weren’t fully human, they had no right to human entitlements. Assuming stigma continues to represent a salient aspect of American society, the concept of Black-on-Black crime seems less a descriptive notion and more a normative one. To this extent, the racial identity of the victims of Black violence is a precipitating cause of the violence itself. That sounds precisely like the legal definition of a hate crime.

"My response: as much as I am tempted to view black on black violence as a hate crime, I must disagree. The stigma that Professor Jeffries mentions was vastly stronger during Jim Crow, but yet black folks weren't offing each other like nowadays. Today's crime stats are happening not because of stigma, but because some folks lack decent moral values...unlike older generations of far poorer black folks. The prevalence of fatherless homes is taking its toll, and that is where the focus should lie.

Bush Plans To Headline Blackwell Fundraiser

A presidential fundraising foray to the Cleveland, Ohio area next month could add $1 million or more to the campaign coffers of Secretary J. Kenneth Blackwell (pictured), a conservative Republican who seeks to become the state's first black governor. President George Bush will headline the event for Ohio's current secretary of state on August 2 at the home of Edward F. Crawford, chief executive officer of Park-Ohio Holdings Corp. The president raised about $3 million for GOP candidates during a July 30, 2004, fundraiser at Mr. Crawford’s home. Tickets for the Blackwell fundraiser are $1,000 per person, or $10,000 for those wishing to be photographed with the president.

President Bush’s visit will help Secretary Blackwell replenish his war chest after a successful primary campaign against Attorney General Jim Petro left him with $1.3 million on hand, compared with the $2.6 million that his opponent, Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), had in the bank going into the general election.

Democrat Zombies

I love Bob Hope!

I Was Once a Democrat...

This man explains why he left the Democrat Party and became a Republican.

Steele endorses Mfume

Well, kind of. From The Baltimore Sun:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kweisi Mfume was fielding questions on WBAL radio when the leading Republican contender phoned in.But instead of a scrap, what ensued was a cross-party love feast. Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, the GOP's likely nominee for Senate, said he wanted WBAL listeners to know just how fond he was of Mfume. Steele spoke glowingly about a recent speech on economics and development given by Mfume, a former congressman and national president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"When he got done, I went up to him, I said, 'Yo, brother, you sound like a Republican,'" Steele recounted last month on the Ron Smith Show. "He just looked at me and started laughing. I said, you know, so we have this kind of relationship that is a good one, it's a strong one. I think it's good for Maryland. You have two, you know, smart, energetic, African-Americans running for the United States Senate. I think that's exciting for our state. It's certainly exciting for the country."

If you weren't around Sixers on Friday, here's why Steele made this call...the African-American vote in Maryland is up for grabs if Mfume doesn't win the Democratic primary.

Reggae concert canceled after gay protests

Reggae concert canceled after gay protests
Beenie Man and the group T.O.K. have released songs deriding gays

Beenie Man performs at the Second Annual Vibe Awards at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif., in this Nov. 15, 2004, file photo. A reggae concert meant to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS is coming under fire from some black gay bloggers and activists who are incensed that the lineup includes two artists they consider to be anti-gay.
View related photos

NEW YORK - Citing concerns about potential violence, an organizer on Wednesday canceled a reggae concert meant to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS after protesters complained two of the scheduled performers were anti-gay.

The organizer, LIFEbeat, came under fire by black gay activists and bloggers after it was announced that Jamaican dancehall artists Beenie Man and the group T.O.K. were scheduled to perform during a July 18 concert at Webster Hall. Protesters asked that the artists be dropped or forced to denounce controversial lyrics.

LIFEbeat executive director John Canelli said the group had been flooded with calls, some of them threatening, in recent days and was concerned safety would be an issue at the concert.

“The possibility of violence at the concert from the firestorm incited by a select group of activists makes canceling the event the only responsible action,” said a statement from the group, which uses the music industry to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS.
Board member Tim Rosta said the motive behind the concert was to raise awareness about AIDS and its impact, especially in Caribbean communities, but the uproar made it clear how deeply people were hurt and offended by the lyrics of the artists’ songs.
“I think that we misjudged the depth of the hurt around some of the issues that are raised by some of the lyrics,” he said.

Beenie Man and T.O.K. have released songs that deride gays through slang terms. One Beenie Man song calls for a lesbian hanging, and a T.O.K tune suggests gay men be burned.

“The idea that they would invite artists who encourage murdering gays and lesbians is so outrageous, insulting and unbelievable,” activist Keith Boykin said before the announcement of the cancellation.

Earlier this week, the concert organizer rejected the anti-gay lyrics but said including the artists would help reach a larger audience thanks to the popularity of their beat-driven dancehall music.

“By both artists agreeing to perform at an HIV/AIDS prevention concert in 2006 shows they have recognized the devastation this disease has had on their communities and that they want to effect some positive change,” Canelli said.
He added that the artists, who are not being paid, agreed before the protests not to use any “potentially offensive lyrics” at the show.
In statements earlier this week, T.O.K. said it had “matured over the years,” and Beenie Man said, “AIDS is an epidemic that doesn’t discriminate. It’s not a gay or a straight thing, it is a fight for life.”

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A Black Cop Infiltrates The KKK

A Black Cop Infiltrates The KKK This is an amazing story and my hat is off to this amazing police officer.

You can see video by clicking link below:
http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/page/page/1307246.htm_ http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/page/page/1307246.htm)

Ralp Reed, Discussed "Mortgaging Old Black People"

By Paul Kiel

Ralph Reed's primary is only a week away and things are heating up.

In advance of its August publication date, GQ has released a big piece on Ralph Reed today, with one gem in particular: a plan hatched by Reed and Jack Abramoff which sounds suspiciously like "mortgaging old black people," as a former Reed associate told the magazine.

In July of 2003, Abramoff and Reed considered launching something called the Black Churches Insurance Program.

We know how this scheme would have gone, because Abramoff pitched something similar to a cash-strapped Texas tribe, the Tigua. Basically, since the tribe couldn't pay Abramoff, he offered to arrange "a life-insurance policy for every Tigua 75 or older." When those elders died, the death benefits would have gone to Abramoff through one of his non-profits. The Tigua didn't take Abramoff up on the offer, but it was too good of an idea to let go.

So Abramoff apparently thought black churches were a good target. This would have been the same thing, according to GQ's Sean Flynn, except that it was African-Americans. Or as "a former associate of Reed's" told GQ, "Yeah... it sounds like Jack approached Reed about mortgaging old black people.”

According to Abramoff's email exchange (under the subject line "Black Churches insurance program") with Reed in July of 2003 pitching the idea, it would have been huge:

Per our previous discussion, Abramoff wrote. Let me know how we can move forward to chat with folks who can set this up with African American elders. It can be huge. Thanks.
A file called “Charity Elder Program2.doc” was attached.

Three days later, Reed replied: Yes, it looks interesting. I assume you’ll set up a meeting in DC as a next step, or whatever we should do next, let me know.


Reed would have been the point man with the church leaders, one assumes, ushering them through the sticky process of getting all of their elders to sign up for life insurance policies payable to Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed.

Reed's flack's response to the story was as off-point as always:

Reed’s communications director, Lisa Baron, initially said, “Your sources are wrong,” but not how or in what way. A day later, she notably did not say those sources were wrong. Ralph receives unsolicited requests of a political or business nature all the time, she wrote in an e-mail. Our records show no meeting took place to discuss the proposed project. Ralph had no involvement whatsoever in marketing such policies to African-American churches.

Another Stupid Liberal: Tom Delonge

According to an Internet news-site posting, former Blink-182 star Tom Delonge has now spoken out in public about his doubts concerning the official version of the events behind the September 11, 2001 attacks.He also reportedly declared his belief that the attacks were an inside job, not just the work of "a bunch of people who just learned to fly planes.

" And Delonge should know, after all he was lead singer for Blink-182, a southern Californian punk/pop quartet noted for their fart jokes, running naked in videos and two US Billboard number-one albums, which includes their 1999 album "Enema of the State" (an album that infamously featured a porn star on its jacket cover)."We do know that the buildings came down in a fashion extremely similar to a controlled demolition of a building," said Delonge.

"We do know that expertise that is needed to fly those gigantic planes into that exact location could never have been achieved by someone that just learned how to fly a small plane."He also charged, regarding the failure of NORAD to enact standard operating procedure and intercept the planes, that "Cheney knew that the planes are coming in and he capped the order to leave it alone so it could hit.

It's so weird how our own government did it to us."Yeah, because you know, Bush and Cheney just planned the whole thing, and amazingly were clever enough to get the entire government to say nothing about their plans to kill more than 4,000 people on 9/11 and take over the world. All for oil, Halliburton and Texas of course. Because as the liberals constantly remind us Dick Cheney is the one who really pulls the strings in the White House.

Cheney, the man behind the evil Halliburton (which by the way one noted liberal by the name of Michael Moore has stock in), failed to stop the planes from crashing into the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon as part of the sinister plot to control the world's oil.Wow.Now either we save the world and put a quick stop to that evil Cheney guy or Tom Delonge may be forced to shut his stupid trap up and stick to his music. Tough choice.

Condoleezza Rice's Favorite Songs

The Independent, a British newspaper, published a no-news special edition yesterday that featured the secretary of state's favorite music. Rice provided the list as a favor to rock star Bono, who guest-edited the paper as part of a charity appeal to fight AIDS in Africa. Half the revenue from the edition will be donated to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS.









Mozart : Piano Concerto in D Minor

Cream : "Sunshine of Your Love"

"I love to work out to this song."
Aretha Franklin: "Respect"

Kool and the Gang: "Celebration"
Brahms : Piano Concerto No. 2

"It's a stormy, difficult piece, but I am going to learn to play
it before I leave this earth!"

Brahms: Piano Quintet in F Minor

U2: Any work
Elton John: "Rocket Man"

"It brings back memories of college, friends, my first boyfriend."
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7

"Quite simply the greatest symphony of all time."
Mussorgsky : "Boris Godunov"

"The greatest opera of all time. If you love Russia, you have to love Godunov."

Where is the Conservative/Libertarian John Stewart??

It would seem like Hollywood libs are
using comedians as a way to cut through debate.

Since they can not have a clear debate they use comedians to get there message out.

Who is the conservative John Stewart?

Are all comedians liberal?

Video European Racism and Soccer

Interesting expose of European racism.

Malik Shabazz on Hannity & Colmes

Mailk Shabazz defends Farrakhan's theories on New Orleans'
levees being blown up.

Noam Chomsky vs. William F. Buckley Debate

Watch Buckley Tear Noam Chomsky to threads!




Noam Chomsky vs. William F. Buckley Debate : Part 2 of 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Samvw6Z08&search=William%20Buckley

Chippla Vandu on Sharia Republic

Chippla Vandu

The Nigerian-born moderate blogger, who now lives in Europe, comments on growing Islamic extremism in Somalia and in elsewhere on the African continent:

"From Northern Nigeria to Somalia, the craze by the ruling class to see that people abide by Arabic cultural values as promulgated by their interpretation of the Islamic religion is baffling. Why should 21st century African societies be subject to 7th century Arabic laws?

Furthermore, even in the Arab nations of North Africa, Sharia law holds less sway than it does in say Northern Nigeria and of recent, in Somalia.....My question is this: what room does Sharia law give for the creation of a pluralistic society?

Or, how does Sharia law accommodate the existence of pluralism? As with most things with Islam as practiced in Northern Nigeria, asking too many questions could be dangerous--only a thin line exists between what is considered a genuine question and an open attack on Islam. Until the day comes when Islam can be openly and frankly discussed on the streets of Northern Nigeria without the fear of a mob attack, enlightenment of the individual mind in that part of the world would remain an illusion.

As for Somalia, it needs one of two things to set it on the right path—a miracle, or foreign intervention. The last thing any African nation needs today is Taliban-style madness, which is precisely what one sees in Mogadishu."

So Much Ill and So Little Good

Great critique of William Easterly from http://ethiopundit.blogspot.com/



William Easterly, the author of The White Man's Burden : Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good begins his book stating that there are two tragedies for the world's poor.

First, that so many suffer because they lack access to existing inexpensive solutions and second, that the $2.3 trillion (that is $2,300,000,000,000 in cash money / 23 followed by eleven zeros or 2.3 thousand billion bucks!) spent on foreign aid over the last five decades has still not managed to get those existing inexpensive solutions to the poor.

Indeed, foreign aid often makes the lives of the poor far worse.This point of view is a far cry from the Jeff Sachs school of "throw so much money at the third world that even the most rapacious elites can't manage to steal it all ... then maybe something good will happen ... maybe". The Easterly book manages to actually judge and evalutate human reality and the results of aid, accountability, institutions and governance.His scholarship encompassess the modern history and policy of economics and aid with a sharp eye out for what actually works ... not what it is easy or convenient to accept. We will try and let the book speak for itself as we admittedly cherry pick through it. We were impressed with this work because the author agrees with us on many things sure, but mainly because he brings decades of broad scholarship and intimacy with the subjects at hand to the fore - all supported by fact that he constantly evaluates and questions.

Page numbers are from the 2006 Penguin Press edition. .......................................Some aid is expected to have impact on growth in the short term while other forms like humanitarian aid are expected to help in the long term. A study from the IMF in 2005 revealed that there was "no evidence that either 'short impact aid' or any other aid had a positive impact on growth." (p. 49)The results of studies from the Center for Global Development, which have been used by Sachs and Blair to justify quadrupling or at least a doubling of aid under the MDGs and the Commission for Africa actually showed that "aid had a zero effect on growth whe it reached 8 percent of the recipent's GDP, and after that the additonal aid had a negative effect on growth". (p. 50) A 2000 World Bank Study stated that "[d]espite the billions of dollars spent on development assistance each year, there is still very little known about the actual impact of projects on the poor". (p.194) Indeed, "bureacracies will devote effort more to activities that are more observable and less to activities that are less observable". (p. 179)Observable can mean headlines or simply amounts of cash involved or just some combination of hype thereof.

Popular accountability could make the less observable more important but there is, according to Yale Professor James Scott an "inherent contradiction between planning ... and democratic politics" that are normally implied by accountability. (p. 145)Easterly says that the IMF and the World Bank don't show respect for democracy in general. The IMF charter officially bans consideration of domestic politics "[b]ut a problem with the apolitical approach is that it is not apolitical. Supporting a sitting government with funds is unavoidably a political act". (p. 147)Taking up the example of Mobutu and numberous IMF bailouts he received Eaterly notes that the thefts were no secret.

The brutal selfishness of local dictators began long before aid even began - one early 19th century observer noted of Haiti that The present government seems to consider the poverty and ignorance of the people as the best safeguards of the security and permanence of their own property and power.Dictatorships like the Duvaliers got credits galore when aid began although nothing changed politically. (p.149) Later in 2001 Congo the World Bank went out of its way to give the Kabila fils government 'early wins' but "[d]idn't explain why it wished on the Congolese people a government made up of political actors who had demostrated an exceptional ability to use violence". (p.289)Easterly points out that while the rich can use their money and power in markets and accountable government that the poor are utterly alone against governments whose interests may have nothing to do with their own. "The central problem is that the poor are orphans; they have no money or political voice to communicate their needs or motivate others to meet those needs" while no one in the aid circuit considers what may actually work and what may not actually work. (p. 167)

Please understand that the foreign aid problem is inherently difficult because of the complexity of development, the weak power of the poor, and the difficulty of getting feedback from beneficiaries and of learning from failure. Throw into the trash can all the comprehensice frameworks, central plans, and worldwide goals. Just respond to each local situation according to what people in the situation need and want. (p.206) Accountability for public services is called democracy. (p. 381)

donors also put a positive spin on awful recipient governments by asserting that while things are bad, they are getting better. The use of gerunds such as "developing," "emerging," and "improving." The language effects even scorecards that are supposed to hold governments accountable for poor results. (p.138)The issue of playing with words in the face of millions suffering and billions being wasted comes up again with 'loans' - "[c]alling a loan to the poorest countries a 'loan' has become even more fictional. (p. 232) Then there is the issue of foreign aid volume as though it is an input to development and not an output.

Advocates for the world's poor throughout the decades have focused on increasing the volume of foreign aid. The recommended increase displays a strange fixation on double.McNamara defined success at the World Bank in the 60s and 70s in terms of doubling loan volumes (p. 182) This trend has continued through to Blair, Sachs and the vast aid apparatus of which they are only the most visible elements.Another issue beyond brutality and corruption is that of the society itself.

As Francis Fukayama also pointed out in Trust Easterly quotes a pair of World Bank economists who "found that low income societies have less trust than rich societies, and societies with less trust have less rapid economic growth". (p.79) Now imagine the result when a local government strives to create LESS TRUST in a society by tribal divide and rule and/or the creation of a police state. In previous paper by Easterly and Levine 'Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions' reviewed in Foreign Dispatches the authors define these problems and their costs
Africa's economic history since 1960 fits the classical definition of tragedy: potential unfulfilled, with disastrous consequences. In the 1960s a leading development textbook ranked Africa's growth potential ahead of East Asia's and the World bank chief economist listed seven African countries that "clearly have the potential to reach or surpass" a 7 percent growth rate.

Yet, these hopes went awry. On average, real per capita GDP did not grow in Africa over the 1965-1990 period, while, in East Asia and the Pacific, per capita GDP was over 5 percent and Latin America grew at almost 2 percent per year. Much of Africa has even suffered negative per capita growth since 1960, and the seven promising countries identified by the World Bank's chief economist were among those with negative growth. Sub-Saharan Africa's growth tragedy is reflected in painful human scars. Easterly also identifies what works.

For example financial markets are a source of free market efficiency and create opportunities for the creation of wealth by borrowing and investing resulting in a positive feedback loop (p. 76) of service for the supposed consumers of economic growth - the so called people. Another crucial element is property rights which underly financial markets and economic growth. "Property rights are an incentive to accumulate assets over time and across generations, which is often necessary to have a productive capacity to meet consumer needs. When I sacrifice consumption to buy land, factories,or other assets, I don't want someone else seizing those assets. (p. 90)Easterly makes two crucial points on what should be done.

The utopian agenda has also led to an unproductive focus on trying to change whole political systems. The status quo - large international bureaucracies giving aid to large national government bureaucracies - is not getting money to the poor. Conditions on aid don't work to change government behavior.[...]Remember, aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development based on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that. (p.368)Above all the author is opposed to BIG PLANS that are supposed to change the world with just a few tens of billions more.

What is really needed is FREE PEOPLE...............................There is no reason to believe that as things stand in the aid game that countries like Ethiopia will do better for their people in the future. Ethiopia is a clear case of how divergent the interests of rulers and ruled can actually be - and how divergent the interests of the ruled and the 'development partners' of the rulers can be as well.

The Ethiopian government is doing everything wrong IF one assumes that its aim is development. From the point of view of gaining more power and money for a tiny aristocracy from day to day while the getting is good, then the Ethiopian government is doing everything right.Remember the quote above from the early 19th century observer of Haiti that
The present government seems to consider the poverty and ignorance of the people as the best safeguards of the security and permanence of their own property and power.We all want to assume that such is not the case and that generosity erases poverty because it is more often easier to believe so than to accept how really bad a government can be or how complex the world is. Ethiomedia posts a recent article by a Western reporter who quotes an embassy official
"With direct budgetary support, donors aren't just dating the Ethiopian government, they're married to it". A key force in earning that trust was Meles Zenawi. The prime minister, as both critics and fans will say, is a persuasive man, able to talk like a democratic reformer or a World Bank technocrat when needed. "I always thought that Meles was going to save this country," says a long-time Western diplomat based in Addis. "He comes across as a calm and rational leader, but right under the surface is a hard-core ideologue with a psychopathic willingness to kill his own people to keep power." (Like most people interviewed for this article, the official refused to be identified.

To us this is a bit like the scene in the classic movie Casablanca where Rick's casino is shut down by an official who is "shocked , shocked to find out that gambling is going on" - in the next shot the same official is handed his roulette winnings as he orders everyone out.You see, all WANTED desperately to believe in Meles DESPITE all evidence because it served the purposes and illusions of all concerned - except the 70 million Ethiopians who it was all suppposed to be about.Foreign aid donors are the sole consituents of the government and they are only fitfully concerned with the brutality towards and future economic prospects of the government's 70 million hostages to donor good behavior. Donor good behavior is defined in terms of the respect and above all the money paid into the coffers of government and the elites at their core. None of this is a secret to anyone concerned.

Donors give money for a host of geopolitical reasons that have nothing to do with development and growth. Aid given for frank feelings of altruism or the betrayal of feelings of altruism are all served with the now ridiculous notion that 'at least something is being done'.Aid has created an Ethiopian political system designed to serve aid donors as long as they don't touch the political power of the government or even look too hard to see how the 'people' are being served. The donors play along at every level. The governments as we noted have realpolitik interests while their bureaucrats and NGO bureaucrats have career interests in the status quo and the promised 'doubling' of aid with no view to results.

The Ethiopian government dictates who is hired locally and internationally by NGOs. Indirectly for foreigners but it is clear that if they don't play ball they won't do well dealing with the government. Ethiopians, native or foreign based must be ... 'cooperative' and serve the interests of the government more directly to be acceptable to the regime.Every measure of NGO operation is thus influenced by one of the most brutal, corrupt and least attractive to foreign investment regimes on earth.

This is mutely accepted as the price for building careers and that proverbial 'chance to make a difference'. Both government or NGO bureaucrats are graded far more by how they get along with the local dictator and his minions or by pushing paper back and forth than by any measurable sort of results.This is why absurd government claims of growth or investment are largely met with cooperative and complicit silence from the aid community.

To them it makes no difference anyway and despite bouts of Meles worship they never really believed that they were creating growth and change but rather just enough 'positive' stirrings to keep their own taxpayers silent.People joke about how the Immigration bureaucracy in the US is the very worst one because citizens don't have to deal with it.

The actual reality of that imagined efficiency and dedication is found in foreign aid bureaucracies which literally don't have to deliver results at all to stay in business.Imagine the existence of such agencies for a moment! Aid bureaucracies are judged by how much money they spend and plan to spend - not by how many people they lift out of poverty. For example, Ethiopia's government, tens of billions in aid in hand after 1991 has yet to allow its people to develop by any measure.Now, we are sure that all those aid bureaucrats are indeed 'good' people.

However, they only need to look across the table at their government, party and govt/party cronies during the next negotiation or dinner party to know the faces of those who are their real development partners and also the authors of ongoing, accelerating Ethiopian misery.That vanishingly small elite that you hang out with and pay off for minimal access to Ethiopians controls the inseperable party and government as well as their attendant business empires and monopolies that account for the great majority of allowed economic activity.

After all you know who gets most of your aid contracts and all of the budget support and loans don't you? The same folks own all the land, control all the credit, pretend to have courts, laws and parliaments, routinely kill people and no longer even pretend to have free press or politics. But, you already know that don't you?

Everything that made donor countries rich or former poor countries develop is not being done in Ethiopia where the government's greatest pride is the amounts of aid it has managed to beg from societies where Ethiopians are acutally allowed to create wealth. Neither lowly ethiopundit, nor Easterly on high nor any other of the myriad bearers of common sense everywhere are any sorts of prophets here.

Everyone knows what works and what doesn't and what the human costs are in that choice for a long time already.Note, no one is speaking of not providing food to the starving here - making that the issue along with crocodile tears are the usual tactic used to avoid discussing the benefits and harm that aid causes. Essentially, aid should be about more than subsistence welfare to last just from season to season and year to year.The point should be to help the supposed recipients in the long and short run by allowing actual growth to take place and avoiding what has failed already. The old saying that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' is particularly apt here.Some brutal regimes have oil or inherited a relatively developed economy that will take years to destroy while they strip it bare at leisure -

Ethiopia has instead the endlessly renewable blood, sweat and tears of 70 million human beings - the evils of harvest time are horrible to behold..........................There are ways to deliver aid responsibly - read No More Appeasement for background and examples of what can be done to actually help - responsibly.

Video: British Islamist defends London bombings

They don’t call it Londonistan for nothing.

Actually, this was filmed in Birmingham. The organization is al-Ghurabaa, a successor to the notorious and now defunct al-Muhajiroun.

The speaker is Muslim convert/”revert” Trevor Brooks, a.k.a. Abu Izzadeen. Rusty’s got all the background you could ever want and more. A year after 7/7, this human tapeworm is still free to preach, threaten, and reduce himself to public fits of laughter over 9/11.

Keep in mind as you watch that there are journalists in the room, taking notes right in front of him. He doesn’t care. Why should he?

VIDEO HERE>>> Allah now has the video up<<<<<<>Hackney, East London, and originally from Jamaica.

He is the new leader of the islamist group Al Ghurabaa (the strangers), is a fluent Arabic speaker and a communication engineer by training. He is a psychopath who has openly admitted that he wishes to die as a suicide bomber.

{{refhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1724541,00.html)) Abu Izzadeen converted to Islam when he was 17-year-old.

After becoming a Muslim, Trevor Brook changed his name to Omar but preferred to me known as Abu Izzadeen (commonly used term Father of...).

Influenced by his brother Abu Abdul Rahman, also a convert to Islam, the islamic leader is married to an Arab woman with whom he has three children. He told Asharq al Awsat that 1994, the year he embraced Islam, was a watershed.

He continues to regret the 17 years he spent prior to embarking on the religious path, he added. “I still vividly remember the day I pronounced the Shahadah, in my father’s house. It was a day before I turned 18, on 17 April 1994.”

Izadeen has described the 7/7 suicide bombers in London as "completely praiseworthy" [1]