Judge: Padilla Competent To Stand Trial

MIAMI -- A federal judge decided Wednesday that alleged al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla is mentally fit to stand trial on terrorism-support charges, despite his attorneys' insistence that he is unable to help them prepare a defense.

Okay so the man is competent that's no story, he was always aware of what he was doing. The point is Padilla and his lawyers tried to pull wool over the American peoples head by claiming he was beaten so badly by the Bush administration that he went insane!

Padilla was competent on March 2002 when Khalid Shaikh Mohammed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and al-Qaida's operational planner asked him to target up to three high-rise buildings and use natural gas with a radiological "dirty bomb."

Padilla was competent on May 8, 2002 when he arrived at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport after an overseas trip, carrying $10,526, a cell phone and e-mail addresses for al-Qaida operatives.

Padilla was also competent on when he told his liberal lawyers that he has been subjected to torture, including sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, and enforced stress positions.

So how on earth is it that Padilla is not competent to stand trial?

Al Pacino's "Iraq" Inspirational Speech

This speech explains a universual truth that should be given to every Democrat congressman.We are Americans and we need to fight together.So without further ado, the Speech given by Al Pacino right before his team's big game during a season filled with turmoil and dissention. This was his attempt to get his boys back on track. While reading, just imagine Al's gritty, dramatic voice while you read.


"I don't know what to say really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives all comes down to today. Either we heal as a team or we are going to crumble. Inch by inch play by play till we're finished. We are in hell right now, gentlemen believe me and we can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb out of hell. One inch, at a time.

Now I can't do it for you. I'm too old. I look around and I see these young faces and I think I mean I made every wrong choice a middle age man could make. I uh.... I pissed away all my money believe it or not. I chased off anyone who has ever loved me. And lately, I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror.

You know when you get old in life things get taken from you. That's, that's part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out that life is just a game of inches. So is football. Because in either game life or football the margin for error is so small. I mean one half step too late or to early you don't quite make it. One half second too slow or too fast and you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in ever break of the game every minute, every second.

On this team, we fight for that inch On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us to pieces for that inch. We CLAW with our finger nails for that inch. Cause we know when we add up all those inches that's going to make the fucking difference between WINNING and LOSING between LIVING and DYING.

I'll tell you this in any fight it is the guy who is willing to die who is going to win that inch. And I know if I am going to have any life anymore it is because, I am still willing to fight, and die for that inch because that is what LIVING is. The six inches in front of your face.

Now I can't make you do it. You gotta look at the guy next to you. Look into his eyes. Now I think you are going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. You are going to see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows when it comes down to it, you are gonna do the same thing for him.

That's a team, gentlemen and either we heal now, as a team, or we will die as individuals.

Somebody please pass me a tissue..............

"Black Republican of the Month"

Angela McGlowan, is a political analys former beauty queen from Oxford, Mississippi best known as a Republican Political Analyst for the Fox News Network and frequent guest on political talk shows.

McGlowan, a Public Administration graduate of the University of Mississippi who moved to Washington, DC, in 1993 to pursue her interest in political advocacy. Seven months later she won the Miss District of Columbia USA 1994 title and went on to compete in the Miss USA 1994 pageant won by Lu Parker of South Carolina.[1] Throughout her reign she continued her activism, promoting higher educational opportunities for welfare recipients. In 1995, she became the Outreach Director for Senator Bob Dole's "Better America Foundation".

From 1996 McGlowan worked as a Legislative Assistant for Maryland Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-6th district) and later for Nevada Congressman John Ensign (R-1st district) where she rose to become his publicist during his successful 1996 re-election bid.

In 1999, she joined the Fox News organization as an analyst, where she continues to work. She has also appeared as an analyst on PBS’s To The Contrary, America’s Black Forum, This is America with Dennis Wholey and was a frequent guest on BET’s Tonight, and ABC’s Politically Incorrect. From 1999 to 2005 she served as director of Government Affairs and Diversity Development for News Corporation.

McGlowan married John Venners, CEO of Veneers Group, in February 2006.

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT NAMES FIRST SUSPECTS FOR WAR CRIMES

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

-Blaise Pascal

It taken nearly two years, but the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor in The Hague has announced the first names of people allegedly responsible for atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region. The Economist (Britain) writes:

"More than 200,000 people have been killed and at least 2m others driven from their homes in Darfur since 2003. In the past month alone, some 46,000 more people have been forced to flee their villages to escape the bombing, pillaging, rape and slaughter by Sudanese forces and the pro-government Janjaweed militia. Millions of civilians, most of them in overcrowded and insalubrious camps, are now dependent on humanitarian aid for their survival. The violence is making it increasingly difficult for international aid organisations to reach them. Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, has repeatedly sworn that he will not hand over any Sudanese citizen indicted by the ICC.

He insists that his own government is perfectly 'able and willing' to try the perpetrators itself, and that the international court therefore has no jurisdiction. In 2005 Sudan set up a special criminal court to deal with human-rights crimes in Darfur; 14 people are now in prison awaiting trial. But after investigators visited the suspects in Khartoum earlier this month, Mr Moreno-Ocampo remains convinced that there will be no duplication with the ICC’s own proceedings. He is after the big fish, not the small fry."

U.N. Weighs Deploying Force To Chad

Tribal leaders are desperate for the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force along Chad's border with Sudan to protect refugees and stop increasing spillover from the violence in Sudan's Darfur region. The U.N. Security Council is considering a mission, with up to 10,000 troops, largely because Sudan's government has resisted efforts to send U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur itself.

However, Chad's president is worried about inflaming tensions with Sudan. The two countries have strained relations because Chad supports the Darfur rebellion against the Sudanese government, and Sudan strongly backs Chadian rebels settled in Darfur, Western observers say.Tens of thousands of Darfur refugees live in scorching, wind-beaten camps on Chad's side of the border, competing with Chadian villagers over scarce water and firewood. Various rebel groups and militias roam the vast region.

More than 200,000 people have died since ethnic African tribesmen in Darfur took up arms four years ago, complaining of discrimination by the Arab-dominated Sudanese government. The U.N. blames the Sudanese government for the bulk of the atrocities. Of the 2.5 million people who have fled their homes, 230,000 have ended up in refugee camps inside Chad.

"Lest We Forget"

Farrakhan One Last Anti-Semitic Goodbye

Hatip to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/

According to NPR:

Farrakhan was speaking Sunday night to tens of thousands of Nation of Islam members in Detroit, where the movement began. "God is angry because of the ideas of neoconservatives," Farrakhan said. "Many so-called Jews and Christians have accepted the philosophy of an imperialist America, even without any aggression or provocation."

Farrakhan recently underwent surgery for complications from prostate cancer. And even though many within the Nation were hesitant to call this a good-bye speech, Farrakhan himself, his voice quivering, said it was just that"My time is up. The final call can't last forever."[Sammy Note: Baruch Hashem]

Minister Jeffrey Muhammad has been a member of the Nation for 17 years and works in the group's Chicago offices. For him, and many people at the speech, Farrakhan represents much more than a spiritual leader.

"Minister Farrakhan is a living example for me of how to be a father, of how to be a brother, of how to be a man, of how to be a man striving to life his life right," Muhammad said.
Lets not forget he is a living example of how to hate Jews. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, has long expressed anti-Semitic and anti-white rhetoric, that mark him as a notable figure on the extremist scene. A number of recent speeches testify to the unchanging nature of his views.

Saviours Day, Chicago, Illinois, 2/26/06 These false Jews promote the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American people and the people of the world and bringing you down in moral strength.It's the wicked Jews the false Jews that are promoting Lesbianism, homosexuality. It's wicked Jews, false Jews that make it a crime for you to preach the word of God, then they call you homophobic!

Is Jerusalem surrounded by armies now? [Crowd: yes, sir!] These neocons and Zionists have manipulated Bush and the American government and our boys and girls are dying in Iraq and in Afghanistan for the cause of Israel, not for the cause of America! Israel is the tail wagging the dog, which is America. You may not like me, and I really don't give a damn. I'm throwing the gauntlet down today.

Millions More Movement rally, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 8/31/05 I'm not an anti-Semite, I never have been one. I do not hate the Jewish people; put that down! What I hate is the degree of control that they exercise over Black intellectual, cultural expression. I do not think that no human being should determine how high we can go, that can only be determined by God and by us; not by no white man, no black man, no human being [crowd cheers].

Saviours Day: Chicago, 02/27/05 Listen, Jewish people don't have no hands that are free of the blood of us. They owned slave ships, they bought and sold us. They raped and robbed us. If you can't face that, why you gonna condemn me for showing you your past, how then can you atone and repent if somebody don't open the book with courage, you don't have that, but I'll be damned, I got it.[I believe what he got is called terminal bull crap, I dont know about you folks but at the time he said my ancestors were owning slave ships they were in Russia getting beaten by the Tzars armies] The Minister was just as blustery in his "Ta Ta" yesterday.

He left his loyalists with homework a reading list of books promoting hatred of the Jews.

Farrakhan 'Reading List' Includes Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel Tracts Source: ADL
New York, NY, February 26, 2007 … Minister Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic and racist leader of the Nation of Islam, concluded his Saviour's' Day address by recommending to his audience several notoriously anti-Semitic books, including "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews."

"Farrakhan may have held his anti-Semitic views in check while on the dais, but if this is what he wants people to read, then the leopard hasn't changed his spots," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "Minister Farrakhan's reading list includes books that purport to expose 'the truth' about Jews and their control of the federal banking system or their role in the African slave trade.

"It's a shame that Farrakhan had an opportunity to change his legacy, and he didn't," added Mr. Foxman.Toward the conclusion of his Saviours' Day address at Ford Field in Detroit, which was described as his last major speech, Minister Farrakhan told his audience, "I want you to become readers" and "Put these names down."

Among the authors and books he recommended:

• The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, which argues that the history of slavery in the New World was dominated by Jewish ship owners and merchants. The book presents a multi-layered attack against the Jewish people, assaulting the integrity of the Jewish religion, the meaning of Jewish history, and the foundations of Jewish scholarship upon which the book's own fraudulent charges are based.

• The Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustice Mullins, an anti-Jewish conspiracy theory propagandist, one of the key conspiracy books claiming that the banking system in the U.S. is controlled by a few elite families (most of them Jewish). It is a key text used by anti-Semites on the far right.

• By Way of Deception by Victor Ostrovsky, a discredited book that makes unsubstantiated claims about Israel's Mossad.

• Palestine Peace Not Apartheid by President Jimmy Carter, a biased, simplistic and distorted view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that portrays Israeli policies in dealing with Palestinians in the territories as inherently racist.

Copies of The Synagogue of Satan, written by nation of Islam member Ashahed Muhammad, which claims that the world is being manipulated and corrupted by Satanic powers led by Jewish elites, were available for purchase at the event.

http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2007/02/farrakhan-one-last-ant-semitic-goodbye.html

"Black Republican Myspace"

I found these great Myspace accounts
online. There are great discussions going
on in most of these groups.

Group Url: http://groups.myspace.com/blackminds

Group Url: http://groups.myspace.com/msaar

Group Url: http://groups.myspace.com/BlackRepublicans

On The Oscars

From BookerRising

Well, I batted .500 in my picks.

My "think like a white, Hollywood liberal" strategy worked, as this is the best that I've ever done in my Oscar predictions!

I usually do atrocious in my guesses. I did correctly predict that Hollywood liberals were not gonna award three of the four top acting awards to black folks - Hollywood elites are self-congratulatory, but not that self-congratulatory - and that folks who claimed otherwise were smoking crack that it would be a historic night. Sure enough, at least one of the three coloreds considered a frontrunner for an acting Oscar lost. However, I was wrong that it would be Forest Whitaker, when instead it was Eddie Murphy.The ceremony: In the past, I've watched the Oscars with where Tivo was available.

This year, I did not. Huge mistake, as I had forgotten just how tedious the Oscars can be. And it definitely felt rushed towards the end. The Oscars were about 3.75 hours, when they could easily cut two hours. Just highlight the categories that most viewers actually care about and want to see, and save the rest for a non-televised portion that kicks off the ceremony.Good things about the night: Hollywood is (belatedly) coming up, awarding half of the top acting Oscars to black folks. Forest Whitaker's speech was moving.

Of course, Chicago is on fire about Jennifer Hudson's win, and our local media has been all over it. I look forward to when Hollywood regularly nominates and especially awards black folks for roles other than the stereotypical roles mix of slaves, pimps, servants, whores, criminals, athletes, or entertainers (the Academy has only 110 black members out of 5,830 members). One day, but we are getting nominated more than in the past. I also loved the "Dreamgirls" medley, which was billed as a "reunion" moment.

Definitely a highlight of the night. And Martin Scorcese finally got an Oscar. I even liked the segment where comedic actors Jack Black, Will Ferrell, and John C. Reilly sang about how comedic actors get no respect at the Oscars.BS moment of the night: For the second year in a row, the Best Original Song category provided it. At least Hollywood partly redeemed itself from last year's minstrel show performance and Oscar award for thug rappers Three 6 Mafia, for "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp". However, Melissa Etheridge winning for best song - "I Need To Wake Up", from the global warming film, "An Inconvenient Truth", was a case of politics over merit. While better than that dull "Our Town" cut by Randy Newman and James Taylor, her song was inferior to any of the three of the nominated "Dreamgirls" songs. When my black leftist best friend and I do a "did you see that b___t?" moment, you know it's foul. Apparently, I didn't think enough like a white, Hollywood liberal or else I'd have marked Ms. Etheridge's song down over a "Dreamgirls" pick.

After all, I forgot that gay is the new black. However, if Jennifer, Beyonce, and Anika had been singing about being hos, one of those "Dreamgirls" songs would've won.The politics: While making strides, Hollywood liberals are way too self-congratulatory congratulatory about this year's geographical and racial diversity, something that they should have done long ago anyway. I also loved how some folks waxed on about global warming (a topic that I agree we must address, although I believe its key proponents overstate their case).

Meanwhile, celebs want to preach to us but get transported in gas-guzzling stretch limos and SUVs, power their homes with tons of electricity, and fly in private jets. Yeah, real environmentally friendly there. Puhleeze. Even film critic Richard Roeper snidely commented on this point. On another note, I noticed small Mexican flags waving for the three Mexican directors who were nominated last night. Fine by me to do a visual shoutout to Mexico in the house, but had Americans done so, it would probably be called "fascist".Sistas & fashions: None of the brothas stood out - bad or good - so I'll focus on the sistas.

OK, whoever dressed Jennifer Hudson in that turkey-baster...oops bolero jacket....and blah, frumpy brown dress with tacky pockets that she wore on the red carpet know that he/she was wrong. Luckily, JHud took off that space-age looking jacket by the time the ceremony started and wore only the dress for her acceptance speech, and later changed in two other gowns - a red number for the "Dreamgirls" medley and later a light brown sequinned gown - that were much more flattering on her.Jada Pinkett Smith looked great, and she very rarely makes a fashion faux pas.Forest Whitaker's wife looked smashing in that yellow dress.

Beyonce looked decent, and she is clearly coming back from her "trying to look as white as possible" days. I was worried about her for awhile, because it seemed every time I saw her she looked ever whiter. I see she is eschewing the blond locks for more brownish ones.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Real Time w/Bill Maher

Is Islam a religion of peace? Panel members Steven Weber, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) discuss terror, religion, and freedom in this clip

Challenging Re-Enforcing White Supremacist Paradigms

By Dell Gines

During my organizational theory course in my PHD program we are learning the various philosophical ways to evaluate organizations. During the post-modernist perspective of organizational evaluation the author used a specific example of a concept called ‘deconstruction’ which stopped me in my tracks and challenged my whole paradigm on race. In working to provide examples of this post-modernist idea of deconstruction the author used the following example:

~"Take the example of race. Racism (white center, non-white periphery) has been shown to lead to disparities in income, housing, healthcare and education, with whites systematically enjoying more of these benefits than non-whites do. Deconstructive analysis provides an explanation of these and other effects of racism by pointing out that whiteness has been made a focal center within discourse but that its centrality depends upon maintain the difference between white and non-white. Thus the meaning of whiteness provided by contrasts with non-whiteness determines the value of all other races by their proximity to the white center that, in turn, justifies inequality within any discourse community that uses this terminology (Hatch, 53). "~

As I reflected on this statement from my text book and stepped back to take a panoramic view, what I came to understand is that we as blacks are complicit in reinforcing the white supremacist paradigm. We are complicit because we have conceded to determining our relative value in America as it relates to the value of ‘whiteness’. This deductively indicates that we hold whiteness as the superior model of action or behavior as it is the standard by which all other variables and measurements (in America) are compared too. Many of us (if not most of us) fall into this same trap, present author included. We fall into the trap of centralizing whiteness and evaluating everything of relevance against that standard.

In evaluating “black progress” we use the “white standard” explicitly or implicitly as a back drop. Our unemployment rate is 2x higher than whites, our wage rates are 1.5x times lower than whites, our test scores are X in relation to whites. The list of comparables to whiteness is virtually endless. Even in our struggles for elevation we talk about and use terms such as ‘parity’ and ‘equality’. We are struggling to be at parity or equal to what? Whites. The fundamental fabric of our socio-economic identity is rooted in our belief that we “need to be like whites”. Ergo we are inherently positioning our existence as inferior to whites when we compare ourselves against their standards and point out the ways we do not measure up.

What we are doing in effect is the same as what the little black girls who chose the white doll over the black doll did in Dr. Kenneth Clark’s 1940 psychological test. The little black girls overwhelmingly chose the white dolls as the superior standard. We do the same thing collectively only in a much more complex and abstract fashion. Our choice of the white standard as opposed to the development of an independent autonomous black standard is tantamount to choosing the ‘white doll’ over the ‘black doll’.

Until we develop our own independent models, measurements and standards of collective black behavior that we define as ‘acceptable’ we will constantly be reinforcing the white supremacist concept and devaluing ourselves. Why should ‘parity’ which can only be found in relation to whites be the standard and measurement of ‘progress’. Why can not we determine our own acceptable destination and objective as a group in this country irrespective of what the ‘data and statistics’ show whites are doing and how we are doing in relation to whites? The elimination of white supremacy is not simply working to be equal to whites, but it is also the elimination of using whites and the standard of behavior by which we measure ourselves. Until we change our paradigm we will be constantly reinforcing the white supremacist mindset.

Consider ourselves.

Mother sues school district for banning son's Jesus costume...

Mother sues school district for banning son's Jesus costume...

Poor boy he should have gone in drag!
Jesus is out drag is in did'nt any one tell his
poor mother.

Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes

Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes provides a riveting examination of manhood, sexism, and homophobia in hip-hop culture. Director Byron Hurt, former star college quarterback, longtime hip-hop fan, and gender violence prevention educator, conceived the documentary as a "loving critique" of a number of disturbing trends in the world of rap music.

By Richie

While this video is by any stretch of the imagination a breath of fresh air it misses the major point. The problem with this type of documentary and others is instead of looking at the "root causes" of violence, sexism, homophobia and hyper masculinity the video ends up blaming America and corporations (the lefts two boogeymen).

This video excuses the behavior and turns the artist into a victim while trying to come off

as an expose while the documetory does make some good point's the video does a better job in exposing the depth of victimolgy within black culture.

One interesting point that was driven in the film was its constant suttle mentions of the words "Industry" ,"Bush" ,"America" and other terms to create in the observer an acute awareness of the real scape goat which would be white old men in business suits.

The problem with the "industry made me do it" argument is that it neglects to mention that when hip hop was up an coming to the scene and being sold out of car trunks it was still at it's core brutal, raw, homophobic and sexist. In the 80's corporate America were being slammed as racist for not supporting the new industry.In fact BET was a direct creation of this anxiety. And today coprporate America is again being slammed this time for supporting

the music.

Another myth that should be debunked is that its moslty white CEO's who are pushing behind the scences for more violent lyric's. It is "the man" who is pushing innocent, shy artist to use the "N" word or they will get canned.The truth is not all of the hits are produced by white people and in many cases are put out, produced and recorded by black recording studios.

A perfect example of this is Death Row Records which was was founded in 1991 by Suge Knight and Dr. Dre.It was not Columbia Records but artists like Grandmaster Flash and N.W.A. that brought Hip Hop to the forefront.In fact N.W.A. was name was "Niggaz With Attitude" which went on to achieve widespread commercial success without radio airplay or mainstream promotions. In fact, they were banned from most radio stations.

This documentary like so many on the left(Spike Lee's) fail to articulate where the real anger, violence and sexism behind Hip Hop is coming from. Hip Hop's real issues have to do with the destruction of our black families.Tupac ironically admirably articulated this for the world in his "You are appriceated" a grammy-nominated song.


Listen to a clip of his lyrics as he explains what the problem
is.

No love from my daddy cause the coward wasn't there

He passed away and I didn't cry, cause my anger wouldn't

let me feel for a stranger

They say I'm wrong and I'm heartless, but all along

I was lookin for a father he was gone

I hung around with the Thugs, and even though they sold drugs

And this is not from a right wing website the anger and rage within Hip hop music starts very early. It is the absent Father that is the basis of the failers in the black community.The sexism and hypermascualinty in Hip Hop in many are symptoms of pain and neglect not white men in suits.

-Richie

The Video

Say It Ain’t So!

Senator Robert Ford of South Carolina believes it is political suicide for the Democrat Party to endorse Barack Obama because he is black. He stated, "Then everybody else on the ballot is doomed. Every Democratic candidate running on that ticket would lose because he's black and he's at the top of the ticket. We'd lose the House, the Senate and the governors and everything. I'm a gambling man. I love Obama. But I'm not going to kill myself."

Apparently the White Man could not handle a black president. He then offered the most bizarre "apology" I have ever heard of. He stated, "If I caused anybody – including myself – any pain about the comments I made earlier, then I want to apologize to myself and to Senator Obama and any of his supporters." It is nice to know that this senator is apologizing to himself for allegedly causing himself pain.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, expresses the exact opposite view of Robert Ford. He said, “If I don't win this race, it will be because of other factors: . . . (that) I have not shown to the American people a vision for where the country needs to go . . . that they can embrace…”

Also I wonder what would have happened had a Republican said this!

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes

Hatip to Lashawn Barber gives here opinion
about what drives hip-hop

by Lashawn Barber

A new style of music called rap (also called hip-hop)infiltrated my small southern hometown sometime around 1980. I remember playing The Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” on my stereo before and after school, trying to learn the words. I was a 13-year-old cheerleading, crush-on-the-quarterback-having fan of rap music.The kids I hung around all listened to rappers like The Sugar Hill Gang and Kurtis Blow, including some of the white kids.

I’ll never forget how funny the lyrics of The Sugar Hill Gang’s “Apache” sounded coming from a white guy who sat behind me in math class. Imagine someone with a serious southern drawl chanting, “Apache, jump on it!” Toto, we’re not in Harlem anymore!But that was 27 years ago. The rap music I grew up with began to evolve as people experimented with the genre and pushed it to the extreme. Throughout the 1980s, new styles of music and dance influenced by rap hit the scene, and it all was still innocent, relatively speaking.

Gangsta rap, supposedly only a subgenre of hip-hop, though gangsta rap is what people associate with hip-hop, became popular in the early 90s. I admit that I used to like the in-your-face, aggressive, heavy sound of Public Enemy, but my taste in music had grown up with me, and I left rap behind. In the knick nick of time. (New York Knicks on the brain…)During the 90s, I first noticed how overtly sexual rap music and videos had become. The “fun” rap associated with my youth was gone for good. The new rap was not just aggressive; it was downright subversive. Admittedly, music that young people like tends to be somewhat subversive to begin with, but gangsta rap broke the mold. It was dangerously subversive…and nasty.

One of its defining elements is the nihilistic, gotta-get-mine-don’t-care-if-I-die, fu**-you, murder-you fixation on instant gratification and thuggishness in pursuit of “females,” who are no more than sexual props, objects by which thugs use to get off in the most degrading way.Well, that’s my opinion of gangsta rap, anyway. There is no way to separate music from culture, so it’s no surprise that gangsta rap is a subculture.

If you can stand it, watch a few disgusting gangsta rap videos on Black Entertainment Television (BET), and you’ll see that everything I wrote is true. Don’t take my word for it.It must be time to air dirty laundry, because PBS is airing a documentary called (Link warning: some images not appropriate for children) “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” (and here) created by a black filmmaker named Byron Hurt. From Reuters:

[Hurt] goes on a journey of discovery around the United States, challenging hip-hop artists and record producers in the multibillion dollar industry…The documentary, due to be aired on national PBS television on Tuesday, has been screened to dozens of audiences of young people and students, said Sabrina Schmidt-Gordon, the film’s co-producer. Most critics of hip-hop argue that it shows women as sex objects but the documentary focuses on images of hyper-masculine men and says black youths fall into the trap of trying to emulate the thug life of the videos.

“We are hoping to…challenge that narrow, destructive vision of masculine identity particularly for young men and boys that are the faces of hip-hop,” Schmidt-Gordon said in an interview.
“They are the ones who are dying young from gun violence and women are victim of domestic violence. Our communities have most to lose by buying into violence and sexism,” she said.
I’m no shrink or “social scientist,” but in my lay opinion, gangsta rap took root so strongly in the black subculture because so many of its boys are growing up without fathers.

No documentary would be complete without at least mentioning the utter instability of families in the black community, and not just in so-called ghettos. It permeates all socioeconomic classes.
Continuing with my amateur assessment, I’d say there’s an important difference between listening to gangsta rap and becoming completely absorbed in the lifestyle. In other words, if suburban kids from intact families are listening to gangsta rap and are tempted to emulate the lifestyle, a father in the home and a strong community may serve as deterring and stabilizing influences.

I missed the first airing of “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” but I’ll catch it this Saturday. I want to know what “hip-hop artists and record producers” have to say. Well, that’s all I have to say on the topic. I look forward to reading your comments about rap, gangsta rap, and the documentary.By the way, if you allow your children to watch those nasty, vile, disgusting, and degrading videos on BET, black or white, you’re an unfit parent, in my opinion.

Have a nice day!

Bill Cosby On The Simpsons

NYU College Republicans Plan 'Illegal Immigrant' Game

(CBS/AP) NEW YORK In what it says is an attempt to get students to debate the issue of illegal immigration, a student Republican club at New York University has dreamed up a novel game that has some on campus calling the event "racist."

In the game planned for Thursday, called "Find the Illegal Immigrant," members of the club who present their NYU identification become immigration agents looking for an illegal in the crowd. The agent who successfully identifies the illegal immigrant wins a gift certificate.

Students have sent club officials e-mails calling the event "racist" and "disgusting." But the club said it is about stoking debate on the issue of illegal immigrants.

"It's not a racist event, first and foremost," said Sarah Chambers, the 21-year-old president of the College Republicans. "Just because we don't want illegal immigrants being able to completely disregard the laws of our country doesn't make us racist."

CBS 2 received the following statement from NYU spokesman John Beckman regarding the game:

"At universities, providing a forum for the exchange of ideas -- even difficult and unpopular ideas -- is a key mission. We hope the debates will be conducted with respect and civility, and will be driven by an impulse to provoke thought rather than anger. Illegal immigration is a totally appropriate topic for debate, though this event seems principally calculated to produce outraged reaction rather than dialogue.

"Our inclination is always to support free speech. Just as one group of students will conduct this so-called 'game,' others will be protesting it. At a university, this is exactly the kind of outcome we hope for from engaged students and scholars."

http://wcbstv.com/watercooler/local_story_052083020.html


-"NYU College Republicans Plan 'Illegal Immigrant' Game"

All three of them???

Caught up in the System

by Tavares Forby

When a person serves time in jail for a crime that they have done, supposedly they have paid their debt to society for that crime. If a person does 5 years for Grand Theft Auto, dept paid. Or if a person does 10 years for having sex with a minor, dept paid. Actually no, the debt is not paid. Depending on the type of crime youhave done, for the most part, you will be paying your debt to society for a very long time. You will be paying this debt by being affected on obtaining jobs. Serving time in jail is supposedly rehabilitation (another story). Once out, supposedly you are let out into the world again with a fresh start.

Go out, get a job, and start over. But how do the government expect someone out of prison to get a job if every job is rejecting them because of a felony or registered sex offender tag found from a background check. The way the system is set up is that a person with a criminal history is more liable to go back to jail for doing a crime to survive because the disability of finding a job.

I have known a few people in this situation. They have paid the debt to society, get out of jail, and cannot find jobs. Every time they go out to find a job, every thing is great until the background check. Once an employer sees a felon from a background check, they will treat that person like they have a disease or something. This is really not fair, especially when a person did not do a crime that has anything to do with the position they are applying for.

For example, if a person has a felony for possession of drugs and that person is applying for a customer service position, it is not fair for that person to be rejected from his/her felony when drug possession has nothing to do with a customer server position. Now if the situation was such that a person that is applying for a position at a financial institute and that person have a felony from tax fraud, I can then understand why it would be fair for that financial institute to reject that applicant.

That applicant has done a crime that is related to the employer’s line of business. I believe the solution for this is to categorize crimes and each employer will only have access to the categories that is specific to their line of business. If the crime that was on a persons criminal record does not have any relevance to the line of business to which they are applying for, then that business should not have any access to that crime.

~Tavares Forby is a Republican who grew
up in Compton, CA he blogs over at

http://blackpundit.com/

Gambian president's cure for AIDS: green paste and bananas

The recent claim by President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia that he is in possession of a herbal cure for Hiv/Aids has left quite a few people bemused and as many others out-raged by its audacity.

Speaking during a gathering of foreign diplomats last month in Banjul, The Gambia, the 42-year-old Jammeh had startled his guests by declaring that he cures not just Hiv/Aids but also asthma. What was even more astonishing was his assertion that the whole cure would be complete in three days flat and that persons infected if examined, would be found negative.

It was not the first time that a cure has been claimed by some herbalists, homopathic medical practitioners and the likes in Africa since the Hiv/Aids pandemic broke out in the later part of the 20th century without an apparent cure. Most of these claims have been found as, at best, exaggerated.

But coming from chief of a state like President Jammeh, the cure claim has become of more than incidental interest to the global community. And reactions have come thick and fast from both quarters who dismiss the claim and those that hold out hope that The Gambian President may know what he is talking about.

A researcher on Hiv/Aids had dismissed Jammeh's claims as bogus. "A response within three to 10 days and a three-day course is almost inconceivable for a disease like Hiv/Aids, so the fact that someone announces a cure like this is exceedingly difficult to accept." This is what Prof Jerry Coovada of South Africa told the BBC in an interview.

However, Gambian Minister of Health Dr Tamsit Mbow, has pitched in for his president stating that the herbal remedies are taken orally and applied to the body. Dr Mbow added however that "we cannot tell you the type of herbs it will be known to the whole world later on".

All this is mind-blowing in terms of the havoc which Aids and asthma have wrecked on African populations in recent decades and the apparent inability of the world's pharmaceutical and medical researchers to find ready and affordable cures for the diseases.

In human and economic costs alone, these diseases drain the continent of needed resources.

Therefore, for a President to risk his reputation to lay claim to cures to Hiv/Aids and asthma is indeed some piece of good news- if it turns out to be true.

Which is just the problem. Many an Hiv/Aids cure claim have been sensationally made in recent years. And no matter the efficacy of such cures, skepticism has trailed them because they tend not to conform to the scientific way of doing things.

Indeed, it would be unfortunate in our peculiar environment where ignorance and gullibility predispose citizens to believing even the most bizarre pronouncements of their leaders, if President Jammeh had merely been engaging in an ego-trip and attention-seeking.

Still and all, since most of the objections to Yahya Jammeh's cure claims have come from the scientific community which decries the secrecy and immesurability of the claims that "violate every foundation of science and public health", the Gambian leader may well be advised to subject his methods to public scientific inquiry.

That way, if found efficacious, Jammeh's cure would benefit wider society besides making him a very rich herbalist in the process.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200702201511.html


Now that there's a cure, I don't want to hear anybody whining anymore about how drug companies should be providing cheap AIDS drugs to African countries...unless its a lie!

" GOP" Donor Hit with Terror Charges

This just came in through the little leftist moonbat elf's over at Yahoo News wire.They are claiming a "Michael Mixon" whose real name is Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari pleaded not
guilty to supporting terrorist groups in Afghanistan today.

I do not recall Yahoo News rushing to report connections when Democrats had similar
shady connections.Is this not the same left who hates racial profiling?

So please tell me how the hell would a Republican group know if the money came from a supporter. Also I wonder how many liberals who were willing to rush to attack Bush on
other terrorist cases will ignore this case since he is a registered Republican.

Where is the ACLU or CAIR?

Also we mus not forget that Democrat Illinois congressman Danny Davis and an aide took a trip to Sri Lanka last year that was paid for by the Tamil Tigers, a group that the U.S. government has designated as a terrorist organization for its use of suicide bombers and child soldiers, law enforcement sources said.

Whole story here Rebel group funded congressman's trip to Sri Lanka, sources say


The Daily News on Oct. 25 reported that the American Muslim Alliance sponsored a June fundraiser that gave Hillary Clinto $50,000.

The problem?

According to the story's opening paragraph, the group's "leader backs the Palestinians' right to use 'armed force' against Israel."

http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/02/news/index.html


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070220/ap_on_el_ge/republican_donor;_ylt=Am7JgwQAgtiTeuu43bJluJayFz4D

"Yahoo's Biased Newswire"

Is it me or is Yahoo's News Wire liberal?

Every freaking day the Yahoo News wire is attacking some Republican and praising some Democrat. According to newsmeat.com Jerry Yang Yahoo's co-founder gives a great deal on money to the Democrat Party?

Could it be that this guy is up to no good and is using Yahoo's news wire to get people to support a particular candidate?

Is Yahoo News reporting news's or making news's is it in bed with the DNC???

This is a typical line of stories

• Baghdad surge gets mixed welcome from Iraqis = Bush Sucks

'Terror den'•

Hamas hopes for softer U.S. line on unity government= Bush sucks

White House defends Rumsfeld from McCain criticism=Bush sucks

Rice Grilled on Extra Funding Sought for Iraq, Afghanistan

• Former guerrilla leads opposition in Colombia= Revolution(GOOD)

Democrats vow to seek limits on Iraq war

Lethal-injection debate puts many U.S. executions on hold (EVIL REPUBLICAN'S)

If this is not biased reporting I do not know what is.

I am not sure I even feel safe with having a Yahoo account given how biased these guys are.
This guy could go into any Republican email accounts and give Democrats ammo to win an election.


These are his donations

http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/Jerry_Yang.php

$28,000 Republican (a lousy 28, 000 bucks)

$123,441* Democrat

$23,000 special interest

total: $174,441


Looks awfully shady to me!

Cult Worship over American GI

This story from the BBC is just weird!



Every February they parade in old US army uniforms with wooden weapons.

Others go bare-chested with the letters "USA" painted in bright red letters on their bodies.

Nearby, a giant Stars and Stripes flutters in the breeze from the main flagpole.

This is the heart of John Frum country on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu.

Villagers at Sulphur Bay worship a mystical figure who they believe will one day bring them wealth and happiness.


Time of upheaval

"John is our god," declares village chief Isaac Wan, who beats his fists into the ground to emphasise his words.

"One day he will come back," he says.

Believers are convinced that John Frum was an American.

The name could well have come from war-time GIs who introduced themselves as "Jon from America."

Devotees say that the ghost of a mystical white man first appeared before tribal elders in the 1930s.

It urged them to rebel against the aggressive teachings of Christian missionaries and the influence of Vanuatu's British and French colonial masters.

The apparition told villagers to do all they could to retain their own traditions.

Anthropologist Ralph Reganvalu told the BBC that the sect was a "cultural preservation movement" that was born during a time of upheaval.


"There was a whole period in history known as Tanna Law where the missionaries put in this series of rules about what people weren't supposed to do and the movement emerged because of this oppression," he said.

Homage to the US


World War II and the arrival of US troops on Vanuatu was a defining time for the movement. They had a name for their spiritual deity. He was John Frum.

Villagers believe that their messiah was responsible for delivering to them the munificence of the US military.

They were awestruck by the army's cargo of tanks, weapons, refrigerators, food and medicine.

John Frum day is held annually on 15 February. This year's celebration marks the 50th anniversary of the sect's formal establishment.

It also recognises the day when villagers raised the US flag for the first time.

Through this homage to the US, disciples hope their ethereal saviour can be encouraged to return.


"It's a little bit weird but it makes me feel really patriotic," said Marty Meth, a retired businessman from New York, who had travelled to Tanna to see the festivities.

"It's really nice to see Americans welcome here since in so many places in the world we're not so welcome these days," he added.

Waiting and hoping

Sulphur Bay lies in the shadow of Mount Yasur, an active volcano whose roar can be heard far away.

Many followers of John Frum believe his spirit lives deep within the volcano.

Every few minutes Yasur bellows.

Watching and listening from the crater's edge is both exhilarating and frightening. A deafening growl is followed by the blasting of molten rock high into the sky.

These rumblings are a constant reminder for villagers that the spirit of John Frum remains as potent as ever.

About 20% of Tanna's population of 30,000 follow the teachings of one of the world's last remaining cargo cults.

Other islanders can barely disguise their contempt for it.

A Christian youth worker told me how he thought the cult was childish. "It's like a baby playing games," he insisted. "Those people are holding on to a dream that will never come true," he said.

I put this view to Rutha, who's married to Chief Isaac's son. She was unfazed.

"I don't care what they think," she says gently without a hint of displeasure. "John is our Jesus and he will come back."

The John Frum Movement is still trying to entice another delivery of cargo from its supernatural American god.

In the meantime his disciples continue to wait and hope.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6370991.stm

Quote of the Day

~All people are equal but not all cultures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Video: Madrid Train Bombing Trial Opens

Here’s a video report from UK television on the opening of the trial of the Muslims accused of perpetrating the Madrid train bombings. (Hat tip: kasper.)

Evidence the “Surge” is Working

Hatip GayPatriotWest

While one “insurgent” leader responsible for the violence in Iraq, Moqtada al Sadr, has fled Baghdad, another has been wounded. According to the Associated Press, “ The leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq was wounded and an aide was killed in a clash Thursday with Iraqi forces north of Baghdad, the Interior Ministry spokesman said.” (Via The Corner).

UPDATE: Pajamas offers firsthand account of the appearance of the “surge” in the streets of Baghdad.

UP-UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds (AKA nstapundit) links Strategypage’s largely upbeat analysis of the situation in Iraq, noting the disarray of a number of militias. Glenn also references Jules Crittenden’s post offering the good and bad news from that emerging democracy, including the news that many Iraqis “want the surge to succeed.” Read both posts!

UP-UP-UPDATE: Reader Peter Hughes e-mailed an article reporting that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki believes that the new security plan “had seen dazzling success during its first days.”

Is Hillary Clinton Buying the Endorsement of a South Carolina Black Minister?

The blogger Independent Conservative has a story about a potential pay
off between Hillary Clinton and a firm owned by a South Carolina minsiter.

Below is the entire article!

by IndependentConservative

Filed under Nuts on Parade

This one is just one example of how candidates PAY OFF PREACHERS in the name of winning an election, in my opinion. US Senator Hillary Clinton recently closed a deal with a South Carolina PR firm.

It just so happens, that firm’s founder and owner is Darrell Jackson, Senior. He is the senior pastor at a mega-church named Bible Way Church of Atlas Road, in Columbia, South Carolina. Jackson is also a Democratic SC state Senator. He mentioned he will endorse Clinton for President, just days after the consulting deal was struck. And he wants us to believe his endorsement was not brought and paid for.

Read all the ugly details in this NY Post article. (Hat tip Michael Savage.)

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign reached a deal to pay a key South Carolina black leader’s consulting firm more than $200,000 just days before he agreed to endorse her run for president, it was revealed yesterday.

The arrangement involves South Carolina state Sen. Darrell Jackson, a well-connected African-American leader and pastor whose support is coveted by national campaigns.
Jackson confirmed to The Post yesterday that his public-relations firm struck a deal with the Clinton campaign just days ago for a contract worth up to $10,000 a month through the 2008 elections.
Jackson had also been in talks with Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign about endorsing him and entering into a consulting contract for more than $5,000, sources said - raising questions about whether Jackson’s endorsement was bought by a higher bidder.…
And check out why another big name in SC politics when it comes to playing on Black voters said he is endorsing Clinton over Obama.

…Jackson’s support first came to light when a colleague, state Sen. Robert Ford, told reporters on Tuesday that he and Jackson had decided to support Clinton.

Ford said he himself was swayed by personal calls from both Bill and Hillary Clinton, and he said Obama could end up being a drag on every other candidate on the Democratic ticket if he is the nominee “because he’s black and he’s top of the ticket. We’d lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything.”…

SC state Senator Robert Ford, who is Black himself will not endorse Barack Obama because Obama is Black. Imagine if a Black Conservative ever said that! Now that’s what I call reverse racism. When someone of your own race stands against you because you are of their race. It’s the ultimate endorsement of White supremacy. When Ford says “we’d lose” he means that he feels Democrats would lose. So by definition he won’t endorse a Black person from his own party, just because they are Black if he feels it will hurt his political party. I would expect a White racist Democrat to treat a Black person that way behind closed doors, but here we have a Black elected official trashing someone for being Black in the media. Absolute insanity!

Now back to Darrell Jackson. Since the heat is on and he’s a Black Democrat. What do you think he’s saying in response? Come on now, if you’ve been reading here long enough you already know…if you guessed that he’s playing the race card in defense you’re right!

Jackson defends his endorsement of Hillary Clinton

…State Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, said such accusations are offensive and smack of racism.…“I’m somewhat offended in the sense that … the national media thinks that an African-American in my position cannot support a candidate without being paid off,” Jackson said. “Second, they seem to have a hard time believing that in South Carolina there could be a legitimate African-American public relations firm that’s not a hustler.”…

Bahahaha!!! It’s 2007 buddy, that lame defense won’t work. There are others in SC politics that also have PR firms and deals with candidates, but the media knew about their business deals prior to endorsements being made by those individuals. Jackson first mentioned who he would endorse and the consulting deal with Clinton was discovered days later. And regardless of what anyone else is doing, Jackson’s deal and endorsement still stink, even if others have smelly deals. It’s all legal, but it still stinks. And his might stink worst of all.

Here we have a person who is not just a PR firm owner and politician with a deal that matches his endorsement. He’s also the head of a major church! Who do you think he has led his congregation to vote for given his endorsement? Who do you think will receive favor from his pulpit? In 2004 Jackson worked on John Edwards’ campaign and guess who visited Jackson’s church? John Edwards was right there at the Bible Way Church of Atlas Road. The visit by Edwards was what swayed some people at that church to vote for him and one person said:

You’da thought Michael Jackson was here,

Notice his visit swayed them, not his positions on the issues. Edwards, Obama and Clinton all endorse the federal government forcing states to allow people to kill their own babies in the womb via abortion, but this church and its pastor endorse Democrats. The pastor is so deep in the party that he’s a Democratic state senator. This is a prime example of how far the church has strayed from the truth. Some Black people are having a nice time dressing up and singing on Sunday mornings in a church, but too many of them fail to make the connection with an issue of life and death.

Jackson claims other candidates offered his company more money, but we know it probably was not Obama from the article above. Clinton and Obama have the greatest chance of winning the Democratic nomination for President. Edwards is already toast. In my opinion, if Jackson’s firm had cut a deal with another candidate for more money they probably would not have received it all, because those candidates will probably be knocked out of the running earlier. Jackson says he does not receive money from the company and only drives a company car. And if the company ever was big enough to go public are we supposed to believe he would not own a share? So long as his company remains lucrative, he can start taking some earnings whenever he’d like. But he does not need that money when he’s running a mega-church and that church has cut what appears to be a fairly major property deal with some builders.

The Congaree Pointe initiative seeks to have a direct impact on the number of homeowners who come to, live in, and remain in this area. The Bible Way Church of Atlas Road (BWCAR) recently purchased 100+ acres of property along the Bluff and Atlas Road intersection and will collaborate with Hallmark Homes, Inc. and the Midlands Community Development Corporation (MCDC) on a major housing initiative that will bring new life to the Atlas and Bluff Road areas. These partners are planning a major mixed-use development that will contain residential, commercial, recreational, and civic components along the Bluff at Atlas intersection.…
I’m having a hard time seeing how churches cutting property deals helps teach people about Jesus, but plenty of mega-churches run deals like this.

Darrell Jackson, when you speak of Black people owning a company and not being shady, you are a terrible excuse for incorruptibility.

http://www.independentconservative.com/

Poverty Is A Poor Excuse For Violence

Asserts the moderate-conservative columnist:

"Before the victories of the civil rights movement, the murders of black people during the most intense redneck reigns throughout the South were committed
by those once called 'poor white trash.'

These were the people who became homicidally enraged at the idea of a black man acting as if he was a free person. What is now so appalling is
that while the street gangs that presently terrorize black communities across the nation do so with astonishing levels of murder and mayhem, they are so often defined by supposedly empathetic liberals as victims of race and class. No such glib hogwash was spewed when the murderers were white and the resultant corpses were black.

No one ever explained that the lower-class rednecks who were presenting themselves under peaked sheets while burning crosses, setting homes afire, bombing homes, offices and churches or murdering and mutilating their black victims, did so because they were feeling inferior to the white upper class of the South. When the killers were white, the issues were justice and injustice, not social status or income.....Lower-class black people may not know statistics, but they do know that the overwhelming majority of black people who are not economically fortunate do not murder, rape and brutalize other people. The monsters among us are always a decided minority, even within a minority, somewhere just above 1%.

That is the hardest and most enduring fact, but the one that those who put all blame at the feet of 'the system' never want to hear. They prefer to think of black people and Hispanics as wind-up toys who can make no decisions of their own. That is part of the burden and the tragedy of our time."

"Hip Hop Pro-Life Artist"

Fox Comedy News Show Debuts Sunday Night

This Sunday at 10pm Eastern, Fox News Channel is going to show a pilot episode of a news satire show it's commissioned from "24" executive producer Joel .This is pretty much a conservative version of the daily show with John stewart and those that do not find it funny probably are not Republicans.

The "Originial Dream Girl's" Perfomance

A performance of the originial "And I Am Telling You" by the ORIGINAL Effie, Ms. Jennifer Holliday. She blows away almost anyone else in modern times with this performance, securing herself a rightful place amongst this era's greats (Aretha, Whitney, Ella, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Mahalia Jackson).

From the 1982 Tony Awards, where she won the award for Best Actress for her creation and portrayal of Effie in the then-breakout smash musical "Dreamgirls." The scene and preceding song lead up to "And I Am Telling You," which begins at around 3.25, but the whole scene is an invaluable look at what Jennifer Holliday was really made of (And she's only 21 here?!?)

And to think she performed this EVERY night for TWO YEARS straight... Wow. Let's see Whitney, Christina, Mariah, or anyone else do that

The Elements of Style

By Debra Dickerson

Born a working-class Negro girl from podunk, Pennsylvania, in a world designed to minimize her, B. Smith set out to build herself a new one. The empire she's built may be about food and frivolity, but its cultural significance hints at the coming face of race in America.

Notwithstanding her annoyance at being known as the "black Martha Stewart," B. (Barbara) Smith, the restaurateur and lifestyle author, has managed to turn herself into a $17 million franchise on gracious living. The publication of B. Smith: Rituals & Celebrations is timed to coincide with the release of Smith's new lifestyle magazine, B. Smith Style. Her half-hour weekly TV show, B. Smith With Style, is entering its third year, airing in 22 countries. Much more than just the hottest new style guru, however, the 49-year-old Smith's true power lies in her ability to make both black and white America the kind of offer it has difficulty refusing: upward mobility. She's teaching women to live like landed gentry, and to not feel shy about it. But, already awash in debt and materialism, do we really need someone else to convince us that the antidote for an unfulfilled life is to be found at Crate & Barrel? And what exactly is the significance of the fact that America is taking deportment lessons from a sister?

B. Smith: Rituals & Celebrations is intended to "let us in on the tricks of entertaining with flair and personal style." It offers modularized celebrations for each month, complete with menus, recipes, and guidance on making them special. Her successful first book, Entertaining and Cooking for Friends (1995), was among the first tabletop entertainment books by an African American; there isn't another similar in scope, sales, or interracial appeal. It's that appeal, of course, that makes assessing Smith's impact so complicated. She's dark-skinned but sounds white. She parties with the rich and famous but serves them chitlins. Seventy-five percent of her audience is white, yet a large segment of her audience is the black bourgeoisie that has always lived lavishly but somewhat clandestinely. For centuries, black women have been culturally understood as hopelessly masculinized. So when Smith advises them to leave a lipstick kiss on a mirror fragment as a Valentine's memento, black women realize that they've been waiting to exhale for more reasons than they'd been able to articulate. Smith is leading America to reimagine black women as black ladies.

It's legitimate to wonder if Smith is a bourgie sellout-why she doesn't point out how many of her people can't afford the pâté she's spooning onto toast points. But there's also the argument that by incorporating what she pleases from the mainstream (which blacks have always done) and exporting to it what she pleasesfrom black domesticity (which has never been done), Smith is bringing the two closer together. This may be shrewd packaging, but the result is a cultural conundrum. Smith doesn't try to transcend her race. She entices whites to transcend theirs. The lack of friction eases their transition into black living, where Smith then feeds white curiosity and their unquenchable need to (safely) consume the "other." If Smith can induce whites to attend, let alone host, a Juneteenth party, she will have, to some small degree, changed America. Is that micron of progress worth a bittersweet celebration neutralized out of its sharp edges? Is it even progress?

Smith isn't really peddling recipes and crafts; she's peddling dreams. She's preaching that anybody can be anything, as long as they're willing to do the work. So, she seems to say, if you'll get your tired ass out of bed early on Saturday and watch her show, if you follow her instructions "it's about passion, rather than perfection," you can aspire to living on a private beach with a handsome and successful man who worships you and a well-adjusted stepdaughter who doesn't want you dead. Yours might be just a cookie-cutter tract home, but on the inside? Sag Harbor. Celebrity guests. A harmonious household where everyone dresses for dinner. For some, Smith is a charm-school oasis; for others, more anesthesia for the already inert and quiescent.

Smith's most startling act is her frequent invocation of her maid mother and steelworking father without ever mentioning their oppression. Instead, they were "the original Martha Stewart and Bob Vila." Homeboy Bob and Martha routinely made something magical from nothing, throughout a childhood that Smith recalls as filled with food, family, and festivities. The collards Smith once ate fresh from their make-ends-meet garden, she now sautées in olive oil and slathers on frittatas. She realized that her love of style and, more important, her determination to be in control of her surroundings could be forced upon the outside world the way Christo tries to wrap the world in pretty colors.

Her aim in writing the book, she claims, is to give people a reason for a party a month. Whether canny idea for an overcrowded market or recognition of an epidemic of existential angst in America, Smith charts out a year of unreflective fun. None of her scripts have teeth, no matter how weighted the event. The Juneteenth celebration she templates carries no more psychic weight than the Chinese New Year gala. (Smith blithely appropriates others' culture in the same way that blacks' always has been. She's pictured in a cheongsam, that tight Suzy Wong dress with thigh slits and frog closures offset at the neck and the kind of gold-braided yachting hat that just screams whites-only clubs.) It's equally easy to see her as a manipulator of whites or as a carpetbagging profiteer, deracinating and mass-producing significant events boiled down to broth so as not to choke massa. But there's a third option. Could it be that blacks have finally earned the right to cultural laziness? No one weeps over the travails of Revolutionary ancestors at a July 4 barbecue.

Smith seems to expect her fellow citizens to share in commemorations that are meaningful to blacks, whatever they might or might not mean to others. One can only imagine the pressure her business overlords put on her to leave the black stuff out. Unless, of course, they're all in cynical cahoots, consciously trivializing black culture for anyone with $35. But there's a chance that Smith sees herself simply as a citizen, a person who doesn't have to justify why she makes a living coordinating napkins with tea towels while Haitian immigrants are gunned down in the streets. Smith may just be a woman who feels at home in the world because she is determined to be. She might just think that this really is a free country.

http://www.villagevoice.com/books/9944,dickerson,9636,10.html

Quote Of The Day

"Notwithstanding their silence on the subject, blacks at the top are aware (and possibly troubled?) by [Sen. Barack] Obama's lottery winnings: 'black' but not black. Not descended from West African slaves brought to America, he steps into the benefits of black progress (like Harvard Law School) without having borne any of the burden, and he gives the white folks plausible deniability of their unwillingness to embrace blacks in public life.

None of Obama's doing, of course, but nonetheless a niggling sort of freebie for which he'll have to do some groveling....Whites, on the other hand, are engaged in a paroxysm of self-congratulation; he's the equivalent of Stephen Colbert's 'black friend.' Swooning over nice, safe Obama means you aren't a racist. I honestly can't look without feeling pity, and indeed mercy, at whites' need for absolution. For all our sakes, it seemed (again) best not to point out the obvious: You're not embracing a black man, a descendant of slaves. You're replacing the black man with [a child of] an immigrant of recent African descent of whom you can approve without feeling either guilty or frightened.

If he were Ronald Washington from Detroit, even with the same résumé, he wouldn't be getting this kind of love. Washington would have to earn it, not just show promise of it, and even then whites would remain wary....To say that Obama isn't black is merely to say that, by virtue of his white American mom and his Kenyan dad who abandoned both him and America, he is an American of African immigrant extraction. It is also to point out the continuing significance of the slave experience to the white American psyche; it's not we who can't get over it.

It's you. Lumping us all together (which blacks also do from sloppiness and ignorance, and as a way to dominate the race issue and to force immigrants of African descent to subordinate their preferences to ours) erases the significance of slavery and continuing racism while giving the appearance of progress. Though actually, it is a kind of progress. And that's why I break my silence: Obama, with his non-black ass, is doing us all a favor."



— Debra Dickerson

Houston blogger arrested for terrorism?

AP, via ABC News:

A former Houston man arrested in Kenya last month has been charged in Texas with teaming with al-Qaida to overthrow the Somali government and form an Islamic state there.

Daniel Joseph Maldonado, 28, also known as Daniel Aljughaifi, was ordered held without bail Tuesday on federal charges of undergoing military training with a terrorist organization and conspiring to use a destructive device.

Maldonado was returned to the United States on Monday night and appeared Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Calvin Botley, the U.S. attorney’s office in Houston said. A detention hearing is set for next week.

Maldonado’s arrest marks the first criminal prosecution of an American suspected of joining terrorists in Somalia, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein said in a statement.

According to the criminal complaint, Maldonado traveled from Houston to Africa in November 2005. By December 2006, the complaint says, he was in Somalia and had joined with the Islamic Courts Union and elements of al-Qaida to fight in a rebellion designed to overthrow the Somali government and install an Islamic state.

The complaint says Maldonado was issued an AK-47 rifle and attended two military training camps at which members of al-Qaida were present.

Maldonado was captured by the Kenyan military on Jan. 21 as he fled Ethiopian and Somali forces. He was expelled by Kenya and turned over to U.S. officials for his return to Houston.

AIDS in Black America

Tavis Smiley "State of the Black Union"

Tavis Smiley's "State of the Black Union" made sure mo black Republican's or Libertarian's came to the Union.Understand something first and foremost people: nobody on the left likes to debate black republicans/conservatives on "black" issues. Why? because they will lose every time...this isn't my opinion, it is fact. In Juan Williams' new book "ENOUGH" he interviews bill cosby and cosby says it out flat: "they are worried that i might hurt their pockets", and the only person to really challenge Cosby is Michael Dyson and he refuses to debate with cosby (I wonder why?)...Dyson couldn't even debate with Jesse Lee Peterson!! every black "leader" that has been on Jesse lee Peterson's radio show hangs up on him because he asks the tough questions...with that said, I wouldnt show up on that program if I were a black conservative either. Stanley Crouch was on there a few years back and schooled the whole panel on this "thug culture".

They looked at him like he was crazy (because they are out of touch) and the audience gave a few claps, but all in all he made folks uncomfortable and nobody really respected his opinions because of the "black conservative" cloud over his head...had sharpton made the same comments, the entire stadium would have erupted in applause...

~Woods

Is Hip Hop harmful to minors?

PART 1



PART 2



The clip above is a half-hour length classroom discussion on “hip-hop's impact on young people”. We at D&HHP would more than likely dub any discussion around young people and hip-hop as “young people's impact on hip-hop” being that we consistently challenge the predominant way hip-hop is framed.The second comment given by a young black man gave, to me, the best approximation of hip-hop's relation to youth that no self-proclaimed hip-hop intellectual could compete with. His comment alone inspired this blog entry, “I think rap does have a impact on kids, but I don’t think it’s a negative impact, because…most of the kids who listen to it, it’s the same [things] that they would see around where they live anyway.

So its not like the rappers are teaching them something new. The words they hear in rap songs, I’m pretty sure that’s not the first time they are hearing [adult themes].”Towards the end a girl named Tiara says something profound, “I don't understand why they try to hold these rappers to higher standards than all these other celebrities.” Fucking brilliant.The answer is quite clear. It's because older white folks are terrified of their kids “acting black”, plain and simple.

The only reason there is such a hew and cry from people like Hannity and Colmes is not because they are concerned about, for example, black kids getting hurt while ghostriding (see General Baker's piece on this subject). They're concerned when white kids are doing it.And it ain't just ghostriding, these folks are scared that their traditional racial identities are being broken down.

When their kids identify with black folks, and black rappers at that, that's terrifying to them, because it’s not just a sports star or something safe like that, but a culture that rejects the traditional values of society.Great video. These kids are smarter than most people who try to write about this stuff and if anybody out there thinks that what goes on at this blog is dope, it's only because we take our cues from kids like these. We let them teach us about hip hop instead of being pompous enough to think that we have something to teach them.

Be sure to check out the Democracy and Hip-Hop YouTube channel and watch as the dialogue continues.

Peace.

http://democracyandhiphop.blogspot.com/index.html

Mongolian Hip-Hop Comes To America

A New Blog Called World Hip-Hop has a post introducing the world to Mongolian hip-hop including some You Tube clips of Mongolian rap.

YouTube's "Condilicous" Video

yeah, i get it. all black women look the same...



I am often amazed out how the left can use racist stereotypes ablout black females and get away with all in the name of comedy.This Youtube video is nothing more than a long string of comedic political stunt jobs the left thrives on. Knowing that they can not win in a head to head debate they smear often with comedy. A perfect example of this is John Stweart. There only was to dominate news was to smear Fox News and they this by creating Comdey News. Basicaly it was the left's t way of holding on to media domination and content, while bashing one channel.What is so trubling about this video is how easy when comedy is the defence for white liberals to get away with being racist. In some way it is telling that libertarians and Republicans have yet to produce any comedic talent that and will be the butt of jokes until they do.

Where the hell are the Republican John Stewarts?

Bringing Hell to African Girls

Dean

T-Steels notes abominable behavior by U.N. forces in Africa.
Honestly, I can't help but point to this as yet another example of why people need to stop placing their faith in the United Nations. It is not a world government. It is not a place where free people come together in harmony and understanding to resolve their differences democratically. It's a den of corrupt tyrants and thieves, rapists and murderers, where fascists, communists, and theocrats are given equal standing with leaders freely elected in free nations.

And Africa's problem is not poverty, nor lack of international interest. Nor is it imperialism, for, with the exception of a few remaining French holdings, almost all of Africa's nations have been free of colonialism for decades.

Africa's problems are lack of true free governments: universal free speech, universal free press, and true free elections. Some nations have them, some don't. Those who do are gradually improving with time. Those that don't are deteriorating and increasingly dependent on aid and on organizations like the U.N. that serve them very poorly.

Related Posts (on one page):

Free Africa

http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1147333647.shtml

Help me understand.....B.E.T.

Ok please help me out people.

Notwithstanding all the outside effects of the history of this country I look at my people and sometimes wonder: what in blazes is going on with us?


Just looking at BET alone brings these questions to mind........



1. "Nigga", Nigger, and any other variation of the word. Do we really have a justification of the word in 2006? I know how it is spun into a term of endearment but geez, is there ANYTHING poistive about the word at all and when does it NOT lead into some ignorant crap down the line? And yeah, I know: It rolls off the lips so easy. I get it. Just help me understand how it is anything more than what it is.

2. The music: All style and no substance. Catchy yes, but almost instantly forgettable. Lyrics of mainstream hip hop are of a grade level variety mixed in with a rudimantary knowledge of the drug trade. Boasting, money, and sex have always been a part of rap but in the mainstream that is ALL it's about now. Somebody give me a mainstream rapper worth 2 cents let alone 50. Somebody who get's more than a week of airtime on the radio and BET.

3. Is showing The Wayans Bros, The Parkers, and The Jamie Foxx show five times a day really the best this network can do? What about the poorly acted "gangsta" movies that get shown ad nauseum every month?

4. No news? You would have thought that at LEAST the State of The Black Union conference woud have been covered but no, it couldn't rate against 106 and Park. Like Blacks have no interest in anything that does not have to do with comedy, music, sex, or........

5. American Gangster? Beef? The only original programming has to do with corruption and conflict within the black community? Oh wait, I forgot, the shows that follow the r&b or hip hop star of the moment. Esp. the one that leads up to that star being locked up in prison. And this is what passes for entertainment.

This is what we expose ourselves and our children too and then have the nerve when outside groups assume negative things about us or surprised when our youth take to this stuff or even more: when the majority culture does what it always does and co-opts it and then uses it. N-word anybody?

I'm not saying we are all mindless zombies and that BET is the only offender but I am looking at us as blacks and that we accept less when it comes to how we are portrayed. It is an age long problem and yet a lot of us resist the call for better. I wouldn't mind so much if there was any balance but there isn't.

Is it really a reflection of us? Really? Is it really all we want to see? And I can't believe many whites actually complain about BET. They don't complain about the content, no. They complain about the fact that they can't have a WET. And how would that look any different from any other station outside of BET, TVone, BFC, or the Word channel? I have no idea.

Anyway. I'm not trying to be completley negative. I don't mean to be. Just somebody help a brother out. Show me something of substance on BET. And convince me that a good part of an entire generation of blacks are not being indoctrinated by all this foolishness.

We all have likes that may not be entirely positive and that is fine. But without balance things go out of whack.

I love my people and we have enough to deal with without shooting ourselves in the head like this.

So my people, please help a brother out.

Roz
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=72221620&blogID=206820291&MyToken=007b4100-177a-429c-a40b-b387ce62d5cb

The Super Bowl

By Roz

Where there it goes. The team with no defense won. I had a feeling it was their year.
Congratulations to Tony Dungy. The first to win the Super Bowl. Just by definition of the win it IS progress. I understand the end sentiment of some here but it is not as if this has happened before. Bravo to Tony Dungy for representing(and being pround to doing so) with class and faith. Hopefully this is only the first and not the only one for him. What a way to put your mark in Black History Month.

BTW: The Colts Defense came up BIG. In bad weather conditions in comes down to Defense and the run game and turnovers. The Colts defense really had a great run in the post season and that credit goes to Dungy and coaching staff of the Colts.

What I Did For Love

By Lashawn Barber http://www.lashawnbarber.com/

Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Astronaut (what a cool sounding job) Lisa Marie Nowak has been charged with attempting to murder a “romantic rival.” When I read the story this morning, I dismissed it. Crazy fool, I said to myself. Then I thought about some of the things I’ve done in the name of “love.”

As I believe sexual relations belong within the bonds of matrimony and that women who “put out” diminish themselves in untold number of ways, I’m not too sympathetic toward heartbroken adulteresses or shack up girlfriends or other paramours. (Does anyone use that word?)

Former astronaut Mrs. Lisa Marie Nowak apparently was laying up with one Bill Oefelein, astronaut, and went to the Orlando Airport allegedly to kidnap and/or kill a woman named Colleen Shipman, who Nowak suspected of also laying up with Oefelein. Nowak walked up to Shipman’s car in disguise, asked for a ride, started crying when rebuffed, and sprayed pepper spray in the car when Shipman rolled down the window.

Nowak had gloves, a BB gun, steel mallet, a four-inch knife, rubber tubing, and trash bags in her car. The former astronaut said she just wanted to “talk” to Shipman. Norwak faces first-degree attempted murder charges. Good grief. She’s in serious trouble.

Pictured above is Nowak pre-dumb crime, Nowak post-dumb crime, and Susan Smith, the nitwit who drowned her precious sons (the baby was still strapped in his car seat) because the guy she was in “love” with didn’t want kids. This woman still breathes, although she should be buried six feet in the ground, having succumbed to a lethal combination of poisons flowing through her veins. But her jury didn’t want her dead. Oh, well.

But enough of that! May I assume most of my readers have never killed or attempted to kill anyone for “love?” Sure, we’ve all done a few stupid things for similar reasons. What these women did had nothing to do with love, and most likely, neither did our strange/dumb/embarrassing episodes. It’s all about selfishness, too little self-respect, and a whole lot of stupidity.

What was the strangest/dumbest/most embarrassing thing you ever did for “love?” If it was something illegal or unsuitable to mention in mixed company, tell us about the second (or third) most strangest/dumbest/most embarrassing thing you ever did for “love.”

OK, I’ll go first. Many moons ago, while visiting my family, I was so lovesick over this guy I couldn’t eat, sleep, or think straight while separated from him for two weeks one week (even worse). And we’d met only a few weeks before that (!). I was living in a different state and hadn’t seen my family in close to a year, but my mind was preoccupied with him. What was he doing? Who was he doing it with? He called me only once today. Why hasn’t he called again?

My behavior definitely was dumb. The quality time I could have spent with my loved ones was wasted thinking about some guy. A few weeks after I returned to where he was, the “romance” was over.

Now, that was for “love.” I’ve done much dumber and downright dangerous things for reasons other than love. Drunkeness played its part in my life’s most dramatic moments, but that’s a topic for a different post.

Your turn!
http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2007/02/06/what-i-did-for-love/

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been active in northern Uganda for 18 years. The group’s survival is due mainly to a highly centralized command structure, external aid, and the use of brutal tactics against civilians. Despite the intense efforts of the Ugandan government, the LRA has continued to wreak havoc in the north of the country. This campaign has prevented any resolution of the deep-rooted issues that have plagued the African country since it achieved independence in 1956.

The origins of the LRA stem from the aftermath of a 1986 coup orchestrated by current Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, an ethnic Munyankole from western Uganda, against then-President Tito Okello Lutwa, an ethnic Acholi from the north of the country. Fearing retribution for massacres they committed during their time in power, the remnants of the Acholi forces fled to northern Uganda and Sudan, where they coalesced under the leadership of Alice Auma “Lakwena” to form the Holy Spirit Movement (HSM). The HSM had broad popular support among the Acholis because it addressed their grievances. These grievances revolve largely around fear of marginalization in a government dominated by western Ugandans as well as resentment against perceived government-sponsored atrocities and cattle raids. After the defeat of the HSM in 1987, a power vacuum formed in northern Uganda, which Joseph Kony founded the LRA a year later to fill.



Initially, the LRA targeted only government troops, but it began to engage civilians in 1991-1992 when civilian militias were mobilized against it. In 1994, peace talks between the LRA and the government broke down, and Sudan started to supply the LRA with weapons, ammunition, fuel and other essentials. This allowed the group to endure even in a region where resources are scarce. A group of exiled Ugandan businessmen in Rome tried to achieve a truce in 1997, but the effort came to naught when Kony tried to kill one of them in the bush later that year. Acholi religious leaders have pushed for a peace initiative, and urged the government to pass the Amnesty Act in 2000, hoping to convince rebels to lay down their arms. So far, however, the core group of LRA commanders remains at large.

The LRA remains centered on its founder Joseph Kony. A ruthless leader and self-proclaimed messenger of God, Kony uses a combination of fear and mysticism to maintain control over the LRA and sustain the conflict in northern Uganda. Kony’s goals are not immediately clear, even to his own followers. Though the conventional wisdom is that Kony’s main objective is to establish a state based upon the Biblical Ten Commandments, events, other analysts and former combatants suggest other goals. One former LRA commander claims that Kony wants to “cleanse” Uganda of those who wish to sustain war, and that the struggle would continue until no one had the will to fight any longer. Kony meanwhile has hinted that he is fighting on behalf of the Acholi people of northern Uganda against a government that discriminates against them.


Due to their grisly tactics, the LRA has failed to gain any widespread support among the Acholis. The LRA is mostly made up of children between the ages of 11 and 15. Half of these are porters and sex slaves who would leave if they could, but do not for fear of being captured by the LRA and killed, or because they simply have nowhere to go. When the LRA raids a village or town, it rounds up several of the children and forces them to murder their siblings, parents or neighbors. This cruel initiation is intended to provide a “clean break with the past” since children who have killed in front of their communities are less likely to want to return. Other children are forced to carry looted items from the raids into the bush. Girls that are captured are used as sex slaves or are forced to marry LRA commanders, some of whom have more than 30 wives.

These raids and brutal tactics have frightened more than 1.6 million people into fleeing their homes, making it easier for rebels to take what is left behind. Thousands more flee rural villages at night for the relatively better security of large towns. The looting and the stress on the labor force have had a devastating effect on agriculture in northern Uganda, which is the economic base of the region.

For a time, there was amazement at the LRA’s ability to sustain itself for such a long time with no popular support and no resources such as diamonds or drugs to trade in exchange for weapons and supplies. However there are three main factors that allow the organization to endure. Some regional experts and Ugandan officials view Sudanese support as the LRA’s lifeline: without it, some say, the LRA could be defeated in two months. Although the children, which the LRA regards as expendable, are armed mainly with machetes and axes, LRA commanders have been photographed with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers and other sophisticated weaponry. This has led some observers to speculate that the group is better equipped than most African armies.


The tactics that the LRA employs are also effective in sustaining the group. By manipulating and coercing adolescents, the few commanders at the top remain protected. When the Ugandan army attacks with helicopters, commanders force the children to don their uniforms so that the children are killed instead in their place. Kony also reputedly instills an apocalyptic spiritualism in his followers, making them unafraid to die.

Meanwhile, the Ugandan government has yet to find an effective way to counter the LRA. It has declared imminent victory against the organization numerous times and used overwhelming force against it, but it seems that the more the government attacks and boasts of its successes, the more the LRA attacks civilians. President Yoweri K. Museveni has repeatedly vowed to wipe out the group, but has complained that restrictions on aid packages prevent him from investing in the military capabilities necessary to defeat it. Donor nations have said that they want the government to arrive at a negotiated peace with the LRA. Some members of Uganda’s parliament from the northern regions where the LRA operates have accused the Army of doing little to defeat the organization because it provides Army officers with a source of income.

Operation Iron Fist was launched in 2002, during which Sudan allowed Ugandan forces to come into certain parts of its territory to attack LRA bases. For the most part, however, the LRA simply moved its supply lines north of the area of operations and increased attacks against Ugandan and Sudanese civilians. Most civilians in northern Uganda do not see the military solution as a viable alternative now, nor do other members of the international community. Although Sudan has scaled back its support of the LRA, the group is believed to retain large caches of buried weapons and the ability to endure for years even if such support were withdrawn completely. The International Criminal Court began investigating the LRA for war crimes in July 2004.

Lord's Resistance Army in Sights of UN Security Council President, for Action on War Crimes

http://www.innercitypress.com/uganda020207.html

Cicero's Warning

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.

For the traitor appears not a traitor he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear."

-Marcus Tullius Cicero 42 B.C

The left today would have shouted back with "Don’t mistake protest for being unpatriotic"

Affirmative action is a Side Issue

By Abigail Thernstrom

Perhaps you're tired of the topic of affirmative action. If so, you have lots of company, me included. It's the hot constitutional issue of the moment. Before the Supreme Court goes into recess for the summer, it will decide two cases involving racially preferential admissions to the University of Michigan. And yet, as I sat in the audience on April 1, listening to the attorneys argue the cases before the nine justices, I felt battle weary. Too many decades hearing (and making) the same arguments with neither side budging an inch.

Don't get me wrong. I still have strong views. I don't believe universities should be judging prospective students by the color of their skin. I don't think it's smart to adopt policies that heighten race consciousness in our already too race-obsessed society. I abhor the trafficking in racial stereotypes that occurs when institutions seem to believe all blacks think alike, and that a black student thus brings a "black" voice to a classroom. And I think it's demeaning and patronizing to assume that a Hispanic can't keep up with her Asian classmate and shouldn't be held to the same academic standards.

I have held those beliefs for 30 years. They aren't the convictions, however, of a single president of a major college or university. In their view, the need for racial and ethnic diversity on campus outweighs any and all opposing arguments to the 20 extra points, for instance, that U-M has been giving all black applicants to the college - just for being black. And the college and the law school (the two defendants in the cases) both know how few African-American and Latino students can meet the criteria for admissions set for whites and Asians. Thus they see the use of racial double standards as inescapable. The alternative: more whites and Asians admitted, significantly fewer blacks and Hispanics.

They are right about the problem, but wrong about the solution. It's true that the number of academically highly qualified non-Asian minority students - students eligible for U-M admissions - is appalling and unacceptably small. Racial preferences in admission to colleges and professional schools are being driven by that simple fact. But they're a feel-good distraction. They make university administrators feel OK about a dismal situation. They can say to themselves, we've fixed the problem of inadequate skills and knowledge acquired in the K-12 years and beyond. Yes by ignoring it and pretending it will go away.

In fact, the problem does not disappear. The typical black or Latino student is graduating from high school too far behind to catch up. On average, by 12th grade black students are four years behind the typical white or Asian. On average, that means - of course - half the group is even more than four years behind. Hispanics don't do much better, although how they do in school depends in part on how long their families have been in this country.

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 black students by 12th grade do not have even a "partial mastery" of the skills and knowledge that the authoritative National Assessment of Educational Progress (called NAEP) says are "fundamental for proficient work" at their grade. They fall into the category called Below Basic.

In reporting the scores of American students, NAEP (often called the nation's educational report card) uses four different "achievement levels," the top two of which are proficient and advanced. In math, only 0.2 percent of blacks score at the advanced level; the figure for whites is 11 times higher, and for Asians 37 times higher. Again, Hispanic scores are not significantly different. Blacks have made tremendous gains since the days when most sat in classrooms in legally segregated schools. But they have made no further progress in the past 15 years and have fallen back in some subjects.

Now, there's a picture worth spending sleepless nights contemplating. Who goes to the University of Michigan and other elite colleges and universities, anyway? A handful of mostly privileged youngsters. There are 8 million black schoolchildren in America, three-quarters of whom go on to college - a figure no different than that for whites. The doors to college are open, in other words, even to those with extremely weak academic records. But while three out of four African-Americans enter college, a high percentage end up taking remedial classes, and only one in six actually finishes - compared to about one in three whites. No surprise, when so many black students leave high school with eighth- or ninth-grade skills.

In a society committed to 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.

Racial preferences - affirmative action policies - are really a side issue. With respect to college admissions, they affect perhaps 5 percent of all black applicants. Conservatives and liberals, both, are too obsessed with them.

The typically low academic performance of black and Hispanic youngsters is the most important source of ongoing racial inequality in this country. The racial attitudes of Americans have dramatically changed in recent decades. The commitment of most Americans to racial equality is deep and irrevocable. But there is only one way to realize that equality: Close the racial gap in skills and knowledge starting in the early grades.

When students leave high school barely knowing how to read, their future - and that of the nation - is in jeopardy. Our sense of danger and moral outrage should be particularly great when those students are non-Asian minorities. A decent society does not turn a blind eye to such racial and ethnic inequality.

Abigail Thernstrom is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, New York, and the co-author of "America in Black and White: One Nation Indivisible."

Cinema Verité

Does time heal all wounds?

If this article in The Brunei Times is to be believed, the answer is yes.The movie The Last King of Scotland (a fictionalized semi-biography of the late Idi Amin Dada) is finally coming to a theater near you in Kampala, Uganda. So how are Ugandans reacting to the prospect of seeing their infamous dictator portrayed on film? If the Brunei Times article is to be believed, Ugandans are eager to see the movie.

Even though many are too young to remember a reign of terror which left a body count of an estimated 300,000 of their countrymen, it seems many people are entranced by the depth of Forest Whitaker's preparation for the role, especially his adoption of a Ugandan accent and mannerisms.Older Ugandans are quoted as remembering Amin's tenure as chaotic and frightening, saying that the constant domestic political conflicts and low-to-medium intensity civil war was "terrifying". One man grudgingly gave the devil his due, however, noting that Amin "did a lot for sport in Uganda ... we did well in the Olympics".

Should Forest Whitaker win the Oscar for best actor, I believe it will be the first portrayal of a dictator to win this award (if I'm wrong, please let me know), and having seen the movie, I can agree that Whitaker's performance as Amin does eerily match Idi Amin's own performance in the infinitely creepy documentary General Idi Amin Dada. So maybe method acting doesn't always suck after all.

http://authoritarianism.blogspot.com/index.html

More Cartoons by Ken Catalino

Racism, part 1 - Down with Whitey

http://www.afronerd.blogspot.com/

I wanted to allow a few days to appropriately digest Burt Prelutsky's (of Townhall.com) Black Racism piece. Essentially, Prelutsky posits that it's high time for Whites to dispel fear of reprisal (a.k.a. being labeled a racist) and address Black underclass pathology. He further states that in general Whites are not racist but they are caught in the Niggas vs Black people paradox that Chris Rock referred to in his infamous Bring The Pain standup routine. I suspect that Prelutsky wants the ability to speak as candidly about the Black condition as Bill Cosby or Juan Williams has done in the last few years. My problem with his article (and of course the accompanying Townhall comments) is the generalities relating to people of color that often arise out of such a diatribe.

In all fairness, I agree with some of the points that Prelutsky made, however specificity pertaining to which Blacks appears to be obfuscated. Black culture is the culprit, according Prelutsky and his readers. Last time I checked, Black culture was not a finite one-dimensional entity. Black Racism in some respects, acts as an artifice for Prelutsky to abdicate America's social and corporate complicity in defining Black culture as being synonymous with ghetto culture. No one confuses Southern "cracker" culture as being the essence of White culture-so why should Blacks carry a similar burden? Check out this excerpt from Black Racism:


There is such a thing as white prejudice. No doubt about it. But it has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with character, culture and values. What blacks refuse to acknowledge is that whites are intolerant of crime and the creeps who commit it, be they black thugs or white trash. The latter are those lowlifes who form Aryan gangs; tattoo themselves with skulls and swastikas; and produce, distribute and use methamphetamines. I don’t know a single white person who isn’t ashamed to be of the same race as these vicious cretins.

http://afronerd.blogspot.com/2007/01/analyzing-mr-prelutskys-article.html

Is It Time To Flip The Script?

By Terrence

The Smoking Gun has released picture albums of students at the University of Connecticut Law School and Tarleton State University who decided to honor this year's Martin Luther King Holiday by celebrating with stereotypical images of Black Americans.Author and commentator Juan Williams, who was on Fox News Network's Hannity and Colmes yesterday, discussed the issue with Sean Hannity, who condemned the parties and the participants. Williams suggested that for the students to have held such parties on an important national holiday, they must not have been taught about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who fought hard for equality in this country.

Williams also speculated some of the students might feel the MLK, Jr. Holiday is a day that was created to appease Blacks. Williams said that his course of action would be for the party participants to read Black History books and he would encourage more interaction with Blacks. Over at plezWorld he wrote,

"What does surprise me are the Black people who get all upset when they see white people mimic the very stereotypical behavior that many of us deplore. I'm more upset with the pants sagging teenagers, gold-teeth wearing athletes and rappers, shuckin-and-jivin' pimps and hustlers, and scantily clad video ho's who provide the fodder for these events.

"While I agree with most of plez’s original commentary, conversely, I believe that white people, like every other ethnic/racial group in this country, do manage to provide society with stereotypes of themselves; however, I do not see Blacks and other minorities having "KKK", "Hillbilly" or "Redneck" parties on college and university campuses around the country.Something is seriously wrong with this picture. What makes these students so ignorant of their actions? Are whites truly this disconnected from minorities - particularly Blacks? Question: Is it time for activist Black students at TWI's (Traditionally White Institutions) to redress this ubiquitous problem by holding KKK, Hillbilly and "Redneck" parties of their own?

I think so. Now, before you stop reading this, hold on a minute. Black students would hold such parties on President's Day, Columbus Day, Jefferson Davis's Birthday and Confederate Heroes Day, which is an actual holiday in Texas.Participants at such parties would wear KKK garb complete with the silly coneheads, hunters and fisherman clothing, full-bodied long johns and truckers caps with plaid shirts. The sistahs attending the parties would wear Daisy Duke shorts with midriffs, and other stereotypical redneck attire for women. For special effects, party-goers would burn a cross and hang a Confederate flag outside of the structures where the parties are held. You'd hear exclamations such as "Yee Haw" and other so-called "redneck" vernacular.

And don't forget the rotten teeth. They are a must. Music from Hank Williams, Jr., Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Gretchen Wilson and Conway Twitty would blare loudly from stereo speakers. Big kegs of Busch and Miller beer would be on hand along with big bongs complete with marijuana. A chili cook-off could take place between party-goers. I propose having a 'Redneck, KKK, Hillbilly' party at every college and university where "Pimp and Ho" and "Ghetto" parties are held. Let's give them a dose of their own medicine.Let's see how the administrations of these colleges and universities would then address the issue.

Let's see how campus denizens participating in such foolish parties would respond to the Black activist students on campus. Of course I am not being serious about this, because I truly feel that Black students certainly do need to continue to show they have more class, but it's just a thought.

~Terrence is a gay moderate democrat who describes himself as a Professional. Moderate Democrat he blogs at http://terrencesays.blogspot.com/

I must aslo add if these guys did not think this was racist why not invite some brothas to the party case closed. They knew what the hell they were doing and they just got caught. I do not think they all should suspended but maybe they should all be forced to go 4 years with black dorm roomates.

Ethiopian Paraded Wounded Senior Cleric

KISMAYU, Somalia (Reuters) - Ethiopian soldiers paraded on Tuesday a wounded senior cleric captured in south Somalia during the pursuit of remnants of an Islamist movement ousted from Mogadishu in a war over the New Year.

Bearded cleric Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed Madobe -- former Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) chairman for the southern town of Kismayu -- told reporters he suffered more than a dozen bullet wounds after U.S. planes fired on his forest hideout.

Looking shaken and showing a bullet wound on his face, Madobe said the aerial attack killed eight Islamist colleagues. He was caught and given medical treatment by Ethiopian troops.

"All the others were killed. I sustained 13 injuries to my body," he said, appealing to go to hospital.

Washington has acknowledged conducting two air strikes aimed at al Qaeda suspects thought to be hiding among the Islamists.

Guarded by soldiers at a dilapidated former government building, Madobe was allowed to shake hands with elders, friends and relatives, and speak briefly to media.

Madobe said he was treated well by his Ethiopian captors, and called on Somalis to work with the government.

But those comments drew suspicion from a former colleague, who suggested he was being used for propaganda purposes.

"They want to use him to soften us and woo support," the former Islamist militiaman said by telephone from Kismayu.

"It will never work, even if he joins their ranks."

MORE ATTACKS IN MOGADISHU

Somali government forces and their Ethiopian allies ousted the Islamists from their southern strongholds in a two-week offensive that began in late December. They have been pursuing the Islamists in remote parts of south Somalia since.

The government blames Islamist remnants for a wave of guerrilla-style attacks in Mogadishu on both government and Ethiopian positions.

In the latest such strikes on Tuesday, a mortar flew into an open space near the presidential palace, while assailants targeted a Mogadishu hotel with rocket-propelled grenades.

A witness inside Villa Somalia presidential palace during the first attack said it appeared aimed at the white-washed, hilltop compound that houses President Abdullahi Yusuf.

"The mortar hit an open space outside," he said.

In a later attack after dark, two rocket-propelled grenades hit a house close to the Ambassador Hotel where senior government officials stay, Mogadishu police chief Ali Said said.

Police guarding the hotel opened fire, forcing the attackers to flee. "No one was hurt," he said.

While suspicion has fallen squarely on the Islamists, many Mogadishu residents fear the daily violence in the coastal capital may also be due to rivalry between warlords who have returned since the ouster of the SICC.

It ruled most of south Somalia for about six months from June, 2006. Somalia has been without central rule since the 1991 ouster of military dictator.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070206/wl_nm/somalia_conflict_dc

Find Your Ancestors For Free

In honor of Black History Month it is offering black folks a chance to try out its "Your Legacy Isn't Lost" service for free for three days.

Do a general search of U.S. Census Bureau records, search slave narratives, U.S. Colored Troops records, Freedman's Bureau records, Freedman's Bank records, World War I draft registration cards (the cards of black men were torn on one of the bottom corners to differentiate them from other troops), and an African American Photo Collection. Coming soon are: (1) Southern Claims Commission Records, which contain roughly 220,000 claims filed by former slaves and former slave owners who sought compensation for property seized by the Union Army; and (2) Freedmen's Bureau Marriage Records, which record marriages for thousands of former slaves from 17 Southern states.

Quote Of The Day

“In connection with our future here in the [S]outh I do not share the fear that immigration will retard or prevent our progress.....A few thousand strong, sturdy, thrifty foreigners in each county will go far toward quickening our energy and sharpening our wits, by bringing their healthy competition, which is very much needed in many sections of the [S]outh.
Our salvation is to be found not in our ability to keep another race out of our territory, but in our learning to get as much out of the soil, out of the occupation, or business, as any other race can get out of theirs."

— Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), conservative Republican educator and free enterprise advocate, discussing immigration in August 1906

http://bookerrising.blogspot.com/

"Ali G talks to Pat Buchanan"

"Dr. John McWhorter Lecture on Race and Language"

Dr.John McWhorter, acclaimed linguist, commentator on racial issues and author of Doing Our Own Thing on C-SPAN



The Lavin Agency presents John McWhorter, acclaimed linguist, commentator on racial issues and author of Doing Our Own Thing

A Discussion on the Roots of Poverty

Independent Women's Forum, www.iwf.org, hosted a panel discussion on the roots of poverty with Charles Murray, Star Parker, John McWhorter, and Nicole Gelinas. This is a clip of John McWhorter's remarks

"Stand Up To Ahmadinejad"...Join the Movement!!

We, the undersigned, call on the international community to indict Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to commit genocide, as per the UN Genocide Convention which classifies "incitement to commit genocide" as a crime against humanity.

http://www.aish.com/Iran/DP/

Video: “Barack Obama” picks his campaign slogan

Terrible at the beginning but it improves steadily until, at last, you’re downright amused. Reached for comment, Joe Biden congratulated the producers on their attentiveness to detail in casting a black man who washes himself.