By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | News Analysis
On July 9, soon after Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman, moved to Texas from Naperville, Illinois, to take a new job as a college outreach officer at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M, she was pulled over by the police for failing to signal while making a lane change. What followed has become all too common and illustrates the ever-increasing rise in domestic terrorism in the United States. She was pulled out of the car by the police for allegedly becoming combative, and was pinned to the ground by two officers. A video obtained by ABC 7 of Bland’s arrest “doesn’t appear to show Bland being combative with officers but does show two officers on top of Bland.”[1]
A witness reported that “he saw the arresting officer pull Bland out of the car, throw her to the ground and put his knee on her neck while he arrested her.”[2] In the video, Bland can be heard questioning the officers’ methods of restraint. She says: “You just slammed my head to the ground. Do you not even care about that that? I can’t even hear.”[3] She was then arrested for assaulting an officer, a third-degree felony, and interned at the Waller County, Texas, jail. On July 13, she was found dead in her cell. Quite unbelievably, the police reported that she took her own life, and the Waller County Jail is trying to rule her death a suicide. Friends and family say that this scenario is inconceivable, given what they know about Sandra: She was a young woman starting a new job, who was eagerly looking forward to her future..
Sandra Bland was an outspoken civil rights activist critical of police brutality. She often posted videos in which she talked about important civil rights issues, and once stated: “I’m here to change history. If we want a change we can really truly make it happen.”[4]
To read more articles by Henry A. Giroux and other authors in the Public Intellectual Project, click here.
Sandra Bland’s family and friends believe that foul play was involved in her death, and rightly so.[5] Their belief is bolstered by the fact that the head sheriff of Waller County, Glenn Smith, who made the first public comments about Bland’s in-custody death, was suspended for documented cases of racism when he was chief of police in Hempstead, Texas, in 2007. After serving his suspension, more complaints of racism came in, and Smith was actually fired as chief of police in Hempstead.”[6]
Bland’s death over a routine traffic stop is beyond monstrous. It is indicative of a country where extreme violence is the norm – a society fed by the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, the incarceration state, the drug wars and the increasing militarization of everything, including the war on Black youth. There is more at stake here than the fact that, as federal statistics indicate, the police are “31 percent more likely to pull over a Black driver than a white driver”[7]: Routine traffic stops for Black drivers contain the real possibility of turning deadly. This regular violence propels a deeply racist and militarized society. It is a violence that turns on young people and adults alike who are considered disposable.[8] This type of harassment is integral to a form of domestic terrorism in which Black people are routinely beaten, arrested, incarcerated and too often killed. This is the new totalitarianism of the boot-in-your-face racism, one in which the punishing state is the central institution for both controlling poor people of color and enforcing the rules of the financial elite. How much longer can this war on youth go on?
The United States has become a country that is proud of what is should be ashamed of. How else to explain the popularity of the racist and bigot, Donald Trump, among the Republican Party’s right-wing base? We celebrate violence in the name of security and violate every precept of human justice through an appeal to fear. This speaks clearly to a form of political repression and a toxic value system. Markets and power are immune to justice, and despise it. All that matters is that control – financial and political – serves soulless markets and the Darwinian culture of cruelty. How many more young people are going to be killed for walking in the street, failing to signal a lane shift, looking a police officer in the eye, or playing with a toy gun? How many more names of Black men, women and young people will join the list of those whose deaths have sparked widespread protests: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Renisha McBride, Aiyana Jones and Sakia Gunn, among many others – and now, Sandra Bland. Is it any wonder that one funeral director in Chicago stated that “young people in the city do not expect to live late into their adult life”?[9] Moreover, police violence in the United States is not only a direct manifestation of state violence, but also serves as a gateway to prison, especially for people of color and the poor.
Yet, the mainstream media is more infatuated with game shows, financial brutishness, celebrities and the idiocy of Donald Trump than they are concerned about the endless violence waged against poor children of color in the United States. This violence speaks clearly to a society that no longer wants to invest in its youth. And if one measure of a democratic society is how it treats young people, the United States has failed miserably.
The form that the “war on terror” has taken at home is a war on poor people of color, especially Black people. Racism and police militarization have created a new kind of terrorism, one in which extreme violence is being used against Black people for the most trivial of infractions. The killing of Black youth by the police – a norm that stretches back, in an unbroken line of terror, to slavery – takes the form of both routine affair and spectacle. Nowadays, acts of domestic terrorism perpetrated by police take place increasingly in full view of the US public, who more and more are witnessing such lawlessness after it is recorded and uploaded onto the internet by bystanders.[10] New technologies now enable individuals to record such violence in real time and make it a matter of public record. While this public display of the deployment domestic terrorism is undeniably crucial, in that it makes visible the depravity of state violence, these images are sometimes co-opted by the mass media, commodified, and disseminated in ways that can exploit – and even attempt to erase – Black lives, as William C. Anderson argues.
In the current environment, racial violence is so commonplace that when it is perpetrated by the police against innocent people, justice is not measured by holding those who commit the violence accountable. The official measure of justice is simply that the presence of violence be noted, by the authorities and the mainstream media. Few of the most powerful people seem distraught by the ongoing shootings, beatings, and killings of African-Americans in a society in which a Black man is killed every 28 hours in the US by police, vigilantes or security guards.[11]
In a country in which militarism is viewed as an ideal and the police and soldiers are treated like heroes, violence becomes the primary modality for solving problems. One consequence is that state violence is either ignored, rendered trivial or shamelessly legitimated in the name of the law, security or self-defense. State violence fueled by the merging of the war on terror, the militarization of all aspects of society, and a deep-seated, ruthless and unapologetic racism is now ubiquitous and should be labeled as a form of domestic terrorism.[12] Terrorism, torture and state violence are no longer simply part of our history; they have become the nervous system of an increasingly authoritarian state. Eric Garner told the police as he was being choked to death that he could not breathe. His words also apply to democracy itself, which is lacking the civic oxygen that gives it life. The United States is a place where democracy cannot breathe.
This authoritarianism fueled by the mainstream press, which seems especially interested in stories in which it can (wrongfully) frame victims as assailants, as in the case of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, but is less interested when the old stereotypes about crime and Black culture cannot be invoked. When dominant forces cannot figure out a way to label victims of police violence “thugs”[13] – consider the case of Tamir Rice, who was only 12 years old when shot to death by a policeman who in his previous police assignment in another city was labeled as “unstable” – such acts of state terrorism often fade out of the mainstream view.
Why was there not a more sustained and mainstream public outcry over the case of Kalief Browder, a young Black man who was arrested for a crime he did not commit and incarcerated at the notorious Rikers Island for than a one thousand days – two years of that time in solitary confinement – waiting for a trial that never happened? Shortly after being released he committed suicide.[14] Would this have happened if he were white, middle class and had access to a lawyer? How is what happened to him parallel to the egregious torture inflicted on innocent children at Abu Ghraib prison?
Not surprisingly, the discourse of “terrorism” once again is only used when someone is engaged in a plot to commit violence against the government – but not when the state commits violence unjustly against its own citizens. What needs to be recognized, as Robin D. G. Kelley has pointed out, is that the killing of unarmed African Americans by the police is not simply a matter that speaks to the need for reforming the police and the culture that shapes it, but also for massive organized resistance against a war on Black youth that is being waged on US soil.[15] The call for police “reform,” echoed throughout the dominant media, is meaningless. We need to change a system steeped in violence, racism, economic corruption and institutional rot. We don’t need revenge, we need justice – and that means structural change.
Ending police misconduct is certainly acceptable as short-term goal to save lives, but if we are going to prevent the United States from becoming a full-fledged police state serving the interests of the rich who ensconce themselves in their gated and guarded communities, the vicious neoliberal financial and police state has to be dismantled. Such resistance has taken shape with the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, along with youth movements such as the Black Youth Project, Million Hoodies, We Charge Genocide and other groups.[16]
A new brutalism haunts America, drenched in the flood of intolerable police and state violence.[17] Millions of people are being locked up, jailed, beaten, harassed and violated by the police and other security forces, simply because they are Black, Brown, young and/or poor, and therefore viewed as disposable. Black youth are safe neither in their own neighborhoods nor on public streets, highways, schools – or any other areas in which the police can be found
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Footnotes:
1. Stephen A. Crockett, Jr. “Sandra Bland Drove to Texas to Start a New Job, so How Did She End Up Dead in Jail?,” The Root (July 16, 2015). Also, see Amy Goodman and Juan González, “Truthout’s Maya Schenwar and Former Prisoner Jason Hernandez Speak Out on Prisons and Policing,” Democracy Now! (July 17, 2015).
2. Aviva Shen, “Woman Dies in Jail after Being Roughed Up During Traffic Stop. Police Say it was Suicide,”
ThinkProgress (June 16, 2015).
3. Ibid. Stephen A. Crockett, Jr. “Sandra Bland Drove to Texas to Start a New Job, so How Did She End Up Dead in Jail?”
4. Jamie Stengle and Jason Keyser, “Family Says Woman found Dead at Texas Jail would not Kill Herself; Authorities investigating,” U.S. News and World Report (July 16, 2015).
5. Ibid., Jamie Stengle and Jason Keyser.
6. Shaun King, “Texas sheriff involved in the death of Sandra Bland fired from previous post for racism,” Daily Kos (July 16, 2015).
7. Ibid., Aviva Shen, “Woman Dies in Jail after Being Roughed Up During Traffic Stop. Police Say it was Suicide.”
8. On the issue of state violence, see Brad Evans and Henry A. Giroux, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2015).
9. Daily Mail Reporter, “‘These Kids Don’t expect to lead a full life.’ Fears for Chicago teens as fatal shootings in city outnumber US troops killed in Afghanistan,” Dailymail.co.UK (June 19, 2012).
10. See Michelle Alexander, “Michelle Alexander on ‘Getting Out of Your Lane’,” War Times, Aug 28, 2013.
11. For instance, according to a recent report produced by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement entitled Operation Ghetto Storm, ‘police officers, security guards, or self-appointed vigilantes extra judicially killed at least 313 African-Americans in 2012…This means a Black person was killed by a security officer every 28 hours.’ See also: Adam Hudson, “1 Black Man Is Killed Every 28 Hours by Police or Vigilantes: America Is Perpetually at War with Its Own People,” AlterNet (May 28, 2013). Also see: Arlene Eisen , “Update on ‘Operation Ghetto Storm’: The Enduring War on Black People in the US, Part 1,” teleSUR (July 13, 2015); Online: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Update-on-Operation-Ghetto-Storm-Part-1-20150713-0007.html. Also see, Arlene Eisen, “Update on ‘Operation Ghetto Storm,’ Part 2,” teleSur (July 18, 2015). Online: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Update-on-Operation-Ghetto-Storm-Part-2–20150715-0033.html.
12. On domestic terrorism, see the important, work of Ruth Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Oakland: University of California Press, 2009).
13. Jason Stanley, “The War on Thugs,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, [June 10, 2015].
14. Jennifer Gonnerman, “Kalief Browder, 1993-2015,” The New Yorker (June 7, 2015).
15. Robin D. G. Kelley, “Why We Won’t Wait,” CounterPunch, November 25, 2014
16. Arianna Skibell “We are fighting for our lives”: The little-known youth movement rising against police brutality,” Salon (February 25, 2015); Danielle Allen and Cathy Cohen, “The New Civil rights Movement Doesn’t Need an MLK,” The Washington Post (April 10, 2015).
17. Amy Goodman, “Michelle Alexander: Ferguson Shows Why Criminal Justice System of ‘Racial Control’ Should be Undone,” Democracy Now!, (March 4, 2015).
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
HENRY A. GIROUX
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and the Paulo Freire Chair in Critical Pedagogy at The McMaster Institute for Innovation & Excellence in Teaching & Learning. He also is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University. His most recent books include Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future (Paradigm 2013),America’s Educational Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013),Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (Haymarket Press, 2014), The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America’s Disimagination Machine (City Lights, 2014), Zombie Politics in the Age of Casino Capitalism, 2nd edition (Peter Lang 2014),Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of the Spectacle, co-authored with Brad Evans, (City Lights Books 2015), Dangerous Thinking in the Age of the New Authoritarianism (Paradigm Publisher 2015). The Toronto Star named Henry Giroux one of the 12 Canadians changing the way we think! Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s Board of Directors. His website is www.henryagiroux.com
OVER ONE HUNDRED LOUISIANA RELIGIOUS LEADERS FILE AMICUS IN LOUISIANA SUPREME COURT OPPOSING THE DEATH PENALTY
by Bill Quigley. Bill teaches law at Loyola University New Orleans.
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| Attorney Bill Quigley |
NEW ORLEANS – Over 100 Louisiana Religious Leaders filed an Amicus (Friend of the Court) Brief in the Louisiana Supreme Court opposing the use of the Bible by a Caddo Parish Prosecutor to advocate for the death penalty.
The religious leaders, listed below, come from all faiths and all parts of Louisiana. They are Louisiana ministers, sisters, priests, deacons, rabbis and other ordained clergy and religious people and organizations who oppose the imposition of the death penalty in this case.
They asked the Louisiana Supreme Court to throw out the conviction of Rodricus Crawford because the prosecutor misquoted and misinterpreted the Bible while advocating for the death penalty.
The prosecutor said Jesus would want the jury to vote for death. “Woe be unto you, who would harm on of these. Now, this is the Jesus Christ of the New Testament. It would be better if though you were never born. You shall have a millstone cast around your neck and you will be thrown into the sea…. the thing about Christ is in both cases, He reached a just verdict which is what the law asks you to reach in this case: a just verdict. Not the mean Christ, not the nice Christ, but the just Christ. And that’s why I think that we should not lightly disregard His words when He talks about what He would do to someone who hurt one of these…what He would do.”
The religious leaders advised the Louisiana Supreme Court that this was a misinterpretation of the Bible in religious terms and a legal problem which forces the court to get into the individual religious beliefs of prosecutors, judges and juries.
The Crawford case has received national attention in part because Caddo Parish leads the entire US in putting people on death row. See Rachel Aviv, “Revenger Killing: Race and the death penalty in a Louisiana Parish,”The New Yorker, July 6, 2015.
The Amicus Brief, which can be viewed online here, points out that 16 major religious bodies oppose the death penalty. While the prosecutor is entitled to his own private religious beliefs he stands in the courtroom as the representative of the government and cannot misquote and misuse his own personal interpretations of the Bible to seek to kill someone.
The Louisiana religious leaders and organizations which filed this brief include:
Churches Supporting Churches, Rev Dwight Webster, Executive Director
The Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops
Reverend Shawn Moses Anglim, Senior Pastor, First Grace United Methodist Church, New Orleans
Reverend Louis Arceneaux, CM, Peace and Justice Chair, Western Province, Congregation of the Mission, New Orleans
Sister Jane Aucoin, Congregation of St. Joseph (CSJ)
Dr. Ansel J. Augustine, D. Min., Director Office of Black Catholic Ministries, Archdiocese of New Orleans
The Most Reverend Gregory M. Aymond, Catholic Archbishop of New Orleans
Reverend William Barnwell, Trinity Episcopal Church
Sister Terri Bednarz, RSM, Religious Sisters of Mercy, Assistant Professor of New Testament Studies, Loyola University New Orleans
Sister Janine Beninger, CSJ, Congregation of St. Joseph
Sister Clarita Bourque, MSC, Marianites of the Holy Cross
Sr. Rose Bowen, O.P., Dominican Sister of Peace
Sr. Suzanne Brauer, OP, Dominican Sister of Peace, New Orleans
Sister Barbara Breaud, Congregation of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Reverend William Brent Jr., Pastor, The First African Baptist Church of New Orleans
Sister Joan Broussard, St. Dominic
Father Douglas Brougher, Good Shepherd Parish, New Orleans
Bishop Thomas Louis Brown, Fourth Episcopal District, CME Church, Louisiana and Mississippi
Reverend Kenneth Buddendorff, SJ, Society of Jesus, Grand Coteau
Sister Carol Burk, RSCJ, Society of the Sacred Heart, New Orleans
Reverend Willie L. Calhoun, Jr., New Israel Baptist Church, New Orleans
Reverend James C. Carter, Society of Jesus (SJ), Loyola University New Orleans
Sister Cecilia Castillo, STJ, Blessed Francis X. Seelos Church, New Orleans
Reverend Thomas Chambers, CSC, Good Shepherd, New Orleans
Sister Maureen J. Chicoine, Religious of the Sacred Heart, New Orleans
Rabbi Edward Cohn, Congregation Temple Sinai
Mary H. Collins, United Methodist Church, President of Church Women United in Louisiana
Very Reverend Thomas Condon, OP, Provincial Southern Dominican Province
Sister Shawn Conrad, OSB, Benedictine Sister, Mary Queen of Peace
Reverend Carol Winn Crawford, Rayne Memorial United Methodist Church
Sister Mary Ann Culotta, OP, Dominican Sisters for Peace, New Orleans
Bishop Jerone J. Dabon, Pastor, Faith Temple Church of God The Holy Ghost Center, New Orleans
Deacon Charles N. DeGravelles, Trinity Episcopal Church, Baton Rouge
Reverend Anita Dinwiddie, St. Mark’s United Methodist Church, New Orleans
Sister Betty Doskey, Dominican Sisters
Right Reverend Bishop Joe Morris Doss, Episcopal Church Louisiana
Most Reverend Michael G. Duca, Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Shreveport
Sister Frances Ducos, CSJ, St. Ignatius Loyola
Reverend Charles Duplessis, Senior Pastor, Mount Nebo Bible Baptist Church, New Orleans
Reverend Tyrone Edwards, Zion Travelers Baptist Church, Phoenix, LA
Sister Judith Elms, OSB, Mary Queen of Peace
Most Reverend Shelton J. Fabre, Catholic Bishop of Houma-Thibodaux
Sister Lillian Flavin, OP, New Orleans
Rabbi Allen I. Freehling
Reverend Willie Gable, Pastor, Progressive Baptist Church New Orleans
Reverend Susan S. Gaumer, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, New Orleans
Pastor George Green Jr. New Orleans
Rabbi Gabriel Greenberg, Congregation Beth Israel, Metairie, LA
Reverend Lonzo Hamilton, St. Matthew Baptist Church, New Orleans
Sister Marjorie Hebert, Marianites of the Holy Cross, St. Martha Church, New Orleans
Sister May Anne Hebert, CSJ, Baton Rouge
Most Reverend Ronald P. Herzog, Catholic Bishop of Alexandria
Sister Barbara Hughes, CSJ, Congregation of St. Joseph
Sister Donna Hyndman, Ursuline Sisters, New Orleans
Reverend Barbara Jarrell, All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, Shreveport, LA
The Most Reverend Rev. Michael Jarrell, Catholic Bishop of Lafayette
Pastor Walsdorf H. Jenneford Sr., Pastor, Rising Sun MBC
Reverend Dr. Ernest L. Johnson Sr., Baton Rouge
Reverend M. Suzanne Johnston, Deacon, Grade Episcopal Church of West Feliciana
Pastor Walter Jones, Christian Baptist Church, New Orleans
Reverend Alfred C. Kammer SJ, Loyola University New Orleans
Father Peter Kang, Ph.D., Associate Rector, Grace Episcopal Church of West Feliciana, St. Francisville
Reverend Dr. Kevin S. Kanouse, Bishop of Northern Texas Northern Louisiana Mission Area, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Reverend Dan Krutz, Louisiana Interchurch Conference, Baton Rouge
Very Reverend Jose I. Lavastida, STD, Pastor, Blessed Francis X. Seelos Church, New Orleans
Rabbi Ethan Linden, Shir Chadash Conservative Congregation, Metairie
Sister Margaret Maggio, Congregation of St. Joseph, New Orleans
Reverend Peter B. Mangum, Rector Cathedral of St. John Berchmans, Shreveport
Sister Ann K. Martinez, MSC, St. Dominic, New Orleans
Dr. Michael Massar, Co-Pastor, University Baptist Church and State Coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Baton Rouge
Rev Andre McGrath, Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church, Shreveport, LA
Reverend Constance McIntosh, First Presbyterian Church, Welsh
Reverend Philip Michiels, Pastor, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church, Shreveport
Sister Miriam Mire, Congregation of St. Joseph, Houma
Reverend Melanie Morel-Ensminger, Unitarian Universalist New Orleans
Most Reverend Robert W. Muench, Catholic Bishop of Baton Rouge
Rev. Leo A. Nicoll, SJ, Society of Jesus, Loyola University New Orleans
Sister Maureen O’Donovan, Sisters of the Holy Faith, St. Gabriel the Archangel, New Orleans
Sister Maria Isabel Ordono, Society of St. Teresa of Jesus, Covington
Right Reverend Jacob W. Ownensby, PhD, DD, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, Alexandria
Reverend Leonard M. Parker Jr., Senior Pastor, New Orleans Bible Fellowship BC
Sister Sue Pablovich, MSC, Marianites of the Holy Cross, New Orleans
Minister Jamilah Peters-Muhammad, Christian Unity Baptist Church
Reverend Ansgar Pham, SSD, Domus Dei Society
Sister Ellen Poche, CSJ, Congregation of St. Joseph, New Orleans
Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, Congregation of St. Joseph, New Orleans
Most Reverend Glen John Provost, Catholic Bishop of Lake Charles
Sister Claire E. Regan, Sisters of Charity
Sister Mary Roseener, CSJ, Congregation of St. Joseph
Reverend Nathan Ryan, Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge
Sister Cynthia Sabathier, St. Joseph Spirituality Center, Baton Rouge
Reverend Torin Sanders, Pastor, The Sixth Baptist Church, New Orleans
Reverend Zach Sasser, First Presbyterian Church, Lafayette
Cantor Neil Schwartz, Agudath Achim Synagogue, Shreveport
Sister Linda Songy, St. Gabriel the Archangel Church, New Orleans
Sister Jane St. Amant, OSB, Benedictine Sister, Mary Queen of Peace
Sister Anne Sturges, Religious of the Sacred heart of Jesus
Sister Ameline Theriot, SFCC
Reverend Richard Thibodeau, C.Ss.R., Pastor, St. Alphonsus Church, New Orleans
Sister Sylvia Thibodeauz, SSF, Sisters of the Holy Family, New Orleans
Reverend William Thiele, Pastor Parker Memorial United Methodist Church
Reverend Pike Thomas, Pastor, St. Jude Catholic Church, Benton
Sister Dorothy Trosclair, OP, Dominican Sisters for Peace
Reverend Deanna Vandiver, Greater New Orleans Unitarian Universalists
Reverend Jim VanderWeele, Community Church Unitarian Universalist, New Orleans
Sister Ceal Warner, OP, Dominican Sisters of Peace
Reverend Mark Watson, Pastor St. Patrick Catholic Church, Lake Providence LA
Reverend Thomas Watson, Watson Memorial Teaching Ministries, New Orleans
Reverend Dwight Webster, PhD, Senior Pastor, Christian Unity Baptist Church, New Orleans
Reverend Dr. Willie William Jr., Pastor, True Love MBC, New Orleans
Sister Juanita Wood, MSC, St. Dominic, New Orleans
Bill Quigley may be reached by email via quigley77@77.com.
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Join the New Orleans Regional Black Chamber of Commerce for our Third Annual Crescent City Fall Classic Golf Tournament!
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Essence Festival expands to South Africa: New Edition to Launch in 2016
NEW YORK (10/16/15) – A three-year partnership has been formed with eThekwini Municipality to host the Essence Festival in Durban, South Africa in 2016 and 2017, announced Essence President Michelle Ebanks and eThekwini Mayor James Nxumalo at Durban City Hall today.
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| Essence President Michelle Ebanks |
Each year, the Essence Festival in New Orleans draws more than 450,000 attendees from across the globe to its multi-day entertainment, empowerment and cultural event, which generates an economic impact of more than $200 million to the local economy.
The Essence Festival Durban will follow the format of the annual New Orleans event; presenting international performers and speakers to entertain and inspire, as well as a host of local artists and experts. The event will bring exciting and informative ideas to equip small businesses through empowerment seminars across various sectors including career guidance workshops and other empowerment initiatives aimed at the youth.
“We are delighted to partner with the vibrant city of Durban to launch the Essence Festival globally in South Africa,” said Ebanks. “Hosting our first international Essence Festival in Durban purposefully extends our mission to convene the diaspora around shared aspirations.”
Mayor Nxumalo said the city of Durban had made waves internationally in the past two years by hosting a number of high profile events, which will now include the Essence Festival to further cement Durban as a choice international destination. Nxumalo said the Essence partnership would continue to focus on the development of women and youth in business. A number of women-owned businesses will be selected to trade at the Festival which will boost their profile and drive sales for the company.
“This partnership will have a host of benefits for residents starting with the Durban Business Fair (DBF) program which strives to connect local businesses globally. The Fair is taking place simultaneously with the Essence Festival launch announcement,” he said.
“For more than 20 years, the Essence Festival has brought thousands of people together in New Orleans from near and far to celebrate a world-class event,” said Mayor Mitch Landrieu, City of New Orleans. “I am thrilled that this festival is now expanding internationally to Durban, South Africa. The people of New Orleans know first-hand that the Essence Festival has not only enhanced our cultural economy, but it has also made a meaningful impact across the community through service and personal empowerment.”
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Robots: When machines kill
When an assembly – line robot killed a German factory worker last week, it sent “a wave of panic about a robot-controlled future across social media,” said Tina Nguyen in VanityFaircom. The 22 year old technician was assembling the machine at a Volkswagen plant near Kassel, Germany, when it suddenly grabbed and crushed him against a metal plate. Volkswagen said the robot was not suffering from any obvious defects, and that the worker was probably within and unsafe range. That didn’t stop Twitter users the world over from worrying about a future “in which humans are unable to fully control the machines they create.”
Can we grow up a little? said Jason Torchinsky in Jalopmik.com. Many people likened this “horrible industrial accident” to a Terminator style execution, which only shown how unprepared we still are for a machine-filled future. The sophisticated assembly robot in question is designed to react to its environment, but “it had no idea it was grabbing a human being when it killed the worker.” From the news coverage, you’d think it was “C-3PO covered in gang tattoos shivving a guy in the gut.” Our interations with robots are only going to become “more common and more complex,”. How are going to react “when an autonomous car makes the choice to kill one kid to save five adults?”
Despite the “social media storm,” robot related deaths are extremely rare, said Clive Cookson in the Financial Times. Since the first robot killing was recorded, in a U.S. Ford factory in 1979, they’ve occurred at a rate of fewer than one a year. In fact, robots have likely reduced deaths from industrial accidents by taking on the most dangerous jobs. The industrial robot that killed the Volkswagen worker was designed to work in a cage, well away from humans. The next wave of “collaborative robots” are being built to work alongside humans, with scanners and sensorsto make them aware of the people around them. This was an accident, not a “warning about future threats.”
“Toilets, zippers, and pants all cause more deaths than robots,” said Chris Taylor in Mashable.com. So why are we so obsessed with a coming “robopocalypse”? I suppose it’s because “we fear replacement. We fear becoming obsolute, itself a kind of death.” Software and algorithms are “squeezing humans out of jobs wvery day,” and we’re not remotely prepared to retrain our work-force in response. It’s far easier to joke that robots are going to take over the world than it is to have a tough conversation about their impact on workers. Perhaps it’s time we stop fretting about robots self awareness and work a little more on our own.
JEAN-MICHEL LETENNIER | LinkedIn
U.S. SUPREME COURT AND OTHER HIGH COURT CITATIONS PROVING THAT NO LICENSE IS NECESSARY FOR NORMAL USE OF AN AUTOMOBILE ON COMMON WAYS
“The right of a citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, by horsedrawn carriage, wagon, or automobile, is not a mere privilege which may be permitted or prohibited at will, but a common right which he has under his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Under this constitutional guaranty one may, therefore, under normal conditions, travel at his inclination along the public highways or in public places, and while conducting himself in an orderly and decent manner, neither interfering with nor disturbing another’s rights, he will be protected, not only in his person, but in his safe conduct.”
Thompson v.Smith, 154 SE 579, 11 American Jurisprudence, Constitutional Law, section 329, page 1135 “The right of the Citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, in the ordinary course of life and business, is a common right which he has under the right to enjoy life and liberty, to acquire and possess property, and to pursue happiness and safety. It includes the right, in so doing, to use the ordinary and usual conveyances of the day, and under the existing modes of travel, includes the right to drive a horse drawn carriage or wagon thereon or to operate an automobile thereon, for the usual and ordinary purpose of life and business.” –
Thompson vs. Smith, supra.; Teche Lines vs. Danforth, Miss., 12 S.2d 784 “… the right of the citizen to drive on a public street with freedom from police interference… is a fundamental constitutional right” -White, 97 Cal.App.3d.141, 158 Cal.Rptr. 562, 566-67 (1979) “citizens have a right to drive upon the public streets of the District of Columbia or any other city absent a constitutionally sound reason for limiting their access.”
Caneisha Mills v. D.C. 2009 “The use of the automobile as a necessary adjunct to the earning of a livelihood in modern life requires us in the interest of realism to conclude that the RIGHT to use an automobile on the public highways partakes of the nature of a liberty within the meaning of the Constitutional guarantees. . .”
Berberian v. Lussier (1958) 139 A2d 869, 872, See also: Schecter v. Killingsworth, 380 P.2d 136, 140; 93 Ariz. 273 (1963). “The right to operate a motor vehicle [an automobile] upon the public streets and highways is not a mere privilege. It is a right of liberty, the enjoyment of which is protected by the guarantees of the federal and state constitutions.”
Adams v. City of Pocatello, 416 P.2d 46, 48; 91 Idaho 99 (1966). “A traveler has an equal right to employ an automobile as a means of transportation and to occupy the public highways with other vehicles in common use.”
Campbell v. Walker, 78 Atl. 601, 603, 2 Boyce (Del.) 41. “The owner of an automobile has the same right as the owner of other vehicles to use the highway,* * * A traveler on foot has the same right to the use of the public highways as an automobile or any other vehicle.”
Simeone v. Lindsay, 65 Atl. 778, 779; Hannigan v. Wright, 63 Atl. 234, 236. “The RIGHT of the citizen to DRIVE on the public street with freedom from police interference, unless he is engaged in suspicious conduct associated in some manner with criminality is a FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT which must be protected by the courts.” People v. Horton 14 Cal. App. 3rd 667 (1971) “The right to make use of an automobile as a vehicle of travel long the highways of the state, is no longer an open question. The owners thereof have the same rights in the roads and streets as the drivers of horses or those riding a bicycle or traveling in some other vehicle.”
House v. Cramer, 112 N.W. 3; 134 Iowa 374; Farnsworth v. Tampa Electric Co. 57 So. 233, 237, 62 Fla. 166. “The automobile may be used with safety to others users of the highway, and in its proper use upon the highways there is an equal right with the users of other vehicles properly upon the highways. The law recognizes such right of use upon general principles.
Brinkman v Pacholike, 84 N.E. 762, 764, 41 Ind. App. 662, 666. “The law does not denounce motor carriages, as such, on public ways. They have an equal right with other vehicles in common use to occupy the streets and roads. It is improper to say that the driver of the horse has rights in the roads superior to the driver of the automobile. Both have the right to use the easement.”
Indiana Springs Co. v. Brown, 165 Ind. 465, 468. U.S. Supreme Court says No License Necessary To Drive Automobile On Public Highways/Streets No License Is Necessary Copy and Share Freely YHVH.name 2 2 “A highway is a public way open and free to any one who has occasion to pass along it on foot or with any kind of vehicle.” Schlesinger v. City of Atlanta, 129 S.E. 861, 867, 161 Ga. 148, 159;
Holland v. Shackelford, 137 S.E. 2d 298, 304, 220 Ga. 104; Stavola v. Palmer, 73 A.2d 831, 838, 136 Conn. 670 “There can be no question of the right of automobile owners to occupy and use the public streets of cities, or highways in the rural districts.” Liebrecht v. Crandall, 126 N.W. 69, 110 Minn. 454, 456 “The word ‘automobile’ connotes a pleasure vehicle designed for the transportation of persons on highways.”
-American Mutual Liability Ins. Co., vs. Chaput, 60 A.2d 118, 120; 95 NH 200 Motor Vehicle: 18 USC Part 1 Chapter 2 section 31 definitions: “(6) Motor vehicle. – The term “motor vehicle” means every description of carriage or other contrivance propelled or drawn by mechanical power and used for commercial purposes on the highways…” 10) The term “used for commercial purposes” means the carriage of persons or property for any fare, fee, rate, charge or other consideration, or directly or indirectly in connection with any business, or other undertaking intended for profit. “A motor vehicle or automobile for hire is a motor vehicle, other than an automobile stage, used for the transportation of persons for which remuneration is received.”
-International Motor Transit Co. vs. Seattle, 251 P. 120 The term ‘motor vehicle’ is different and broader than the word ‘automobile.’”
-City of Dayton vs. DeBrosse, 23 NE.2d 647, 650; 62 Ohio App. 232 “Thus self-driven vehicles are classified according to the use to which they are put rather than according to the means by which they are propelled” – Ex Parte Hoffert, 148 NW 20 “
The Supreme Court, in Arthur v. Morgan, 112 U.S. 495, 5 S.Ct. 241, 28 L.Ed. 825, held that carriages were properly classified as household effects, and we see no reason that automobiles should not be similarly disposed of.”
Hillhouse v United States, 152 F. 163, 164 (2nd Cir. 1907). “…a citizen has the right to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon…” State vs. Johnson, 243 P. 1073; Cummins vs. Homes, 155 P. 171; Packard vs. Banton, 44 S.Ct. 256; Hadfield vs. Lundin, 98 Wash 516, Willis vs. Buck, 263 P. l 982;
Barney vs. Board of Railroad Commissioners, 17 P.2d 82 “The use of the highways for the purpose of travel and transportation is not a mere privilege, but a common and fundamental Right of which the public and the individual cannot be rightfully deprived.”
Chicago Motor Coach vs. Chicago, 169 NE 22; Ligare vs. Chicago, 28 NE 934; Boon vs. Clark, 214 SSW 607; 25 Am.Jur. (1st) Highways Sect.163 “the right of the Citizen to travel upon the highway and to transport his property thereon in the ordinary course of life and business… is the usual and ordinary right of the Citizen, a right common to all.” –
Ex Parte Dickey, (Dickey vs. Davis), 85 SE 781 “Every Citizen has an unalienable RIGHT to make use of the public highways of the state; every Citizen has full freedom to travel from place to place in the enjoyment of life and liberty.” People v. Nothaus, 147 Colo. 210. “No State government entity has the power to allow or deny passage on the highways, byways, nor waterways… transporting his vehicles and personal property for either recreation or business, but by being subject only to local regulation i.e., safety, caution, traffic lights, speed limits, etc. Travel is not a privilege requiring licensing, vehicle registration, or forced insurances.”
Chicago Coach Co. v. City of Chicago, 337 Ill. 200, 169 N.E. 22. “Traffic infractions are not a crime.” People v. Battle “Persons faced with an unconstitutional licensing law which purports to require a license as a prerequisite to exercise of right… may ignore the law and engage with impunity in exercise of such right.”
Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham 394 U.S. 147 (1969). U.S. Supreme Court says No License Necessary To Drive Automobile On Public Highways/Streets No License Is Necessary Copy and Share Freely YHVH.name 3 “The word ‘operator’ shall not include any person who solely transports his own property and who transports no persons or property for hire or compensation.”
Statutes at Large California Chapter 412 p.83 “Highways are for the use of the traveling public, and all have the right to use them in a reasonable and proper manner; the use thereof is an inalienable right of every citizen.” Escobedo v. State 35 C2d 870 in 8 Cal Jur 3d p.27 “RIGHT — A legal RIGHT, a constitutional RIGHT means a RIGHT protected by the law, by the constitution, but government does not create the idea of RIGHT or original RIGHTS; it acknowledges them. . . “ Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, 1914, p. 2961. “Those who have the right to do something cannot be licensed for what they already have right to do as such license would be meaningless.”
City of Chicago v Collins 51 NE 907, 910. “A license means leave to do a thing which the licensor could prevent.” Blatz Brewing Co. v. Collins, 160 P.2d 37, 39; 69 Cal. A. 2d 639. “The object of a license is to confer a right or power, which does not exist without it.”
Payne v. Massey (19__) 196 SW 2nd 493, 145 Tex 273. “The court makes it clear that a license relates to qualifications to engage in profession, business, trade or calling; thus, when merely traveling without compensation or profit, outside of business enterprise or adventure with the corporate state, no license is required of the natural individual traveling for personal business, pleasure and transportation.”
Wingfield v. Fielder 2d Ca. 3d 213 (1972). “If [state] officials construe a vague statute unconstitutionally, the citizen may take them at their word, and act on the assumption that the statute is void.” –
Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham 394 U.S. 147 (1969). “With regard particularly to the U.S. Constitution, it is elementary that a Right secured or protected by that document cannot be overthrown or impaired by any state police authority.” Donnolly vs. Union Sewer Pipe Co., 184 US 540; Lafarier vs. Grand Trunk R.R. Co., 24 A. 848; O’Neil vs. Providence Amusement Co., 108 A. 887. “The right to travel (called the right of free ingress to other states, and egress from them) is so fundamental that it appears in the Articles of Confederation, which governed our society before the Constitution.”
(Paul v. Virginia). “[T]he right to travel freely from State to State … is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association, it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all.” (U.S. Supreme Court,
Shapiro v. Thompson). EDGERTON, Chief Judge: “Iron curtains have no place in a free world. …’Undoubtedly the right of locomotion, the right to remove from one place to another according to inclination, is an attribute of personal liberty, and the right, ordinarily, of free transit from or through the territory of any State is a right secured by the Constitution.’
Williams v. Fears, 179 U.S. 270, 274, 21 S.Ct. 128, 45 L.Ed. 186. “Our nation has thrived on the principle that, outside areas of plainly harmful conduct, every American is left to shape his own life as he thinks best, do what he pleases, go where he pleases.” Id., at 197.
Kent vs. Dulles see Vestal, Freedom of Movement, 41 Iowa L.Rev. 6, 13—14. “The validity of restrictions on the freedom of movement of particular individuals, both substantively and procedurally, is precisely the sort of matter that is the peculiar domain of the courts.” Comment, 61 Yale L.J. at page 187. “a person detained for an investigatory stop can be questioned but is “not obliged to answer, answers may not be compelled, and refusal to answer furnishes no basis for an arrest.”Justice White, Hiibel “Automobiles have the right to use the highways of the State on an equal footing with other vehicles.”
Cumberland Telephone. & Telegraph Co. v Yeiser 141 Kentucy 15. “Each citizen has the absolute right to choose for himself the mode of conveyance he desires, whether it be by wagon or carriage, by horse, motor or electric car, or by bicycle, or astride of a horse, subject to the sole condition that he will observe all those requirements that are known as the law of the road.”
Swift v City of Topeka, 43 U.S. Supreme Court says No License Necessary To Drive Automobile On Public Highways/Streets No License Is Necessary Copy and Share Freely YHVH.name 4 Kansas 671, 674. The Supreme Court said in U.S. v Mersky (1960) 361 U.S. 431: An administrative regulation, of course, is not a “statute.” A traveler on foot has the same right to use of the public highway as an automobile or any other vehicle.
Cecchi v. Lindsay, 75 Atl. 376, 377, 1 Boyce (Del.) 185. Automotive vehicles are lawful means of conveyance and have equal rights upon the streets with horses and carriages.
Chicago Coach Co. v. City of Chicago, 337 Ill. 200, 205; See also: Christy v. Elliot, 216 Ill. 31; Ward v. Meredith, 202 Ill. 66; Shinkle v. McCullough, 116 Ky. 960; Butler v. Cabe, 116 Ark. 26, 28-29. …automobiles are lawful vehicles and have equal rights on the highways with horses and carriages. Daily v. Maxwell, 133 S.W. 351, 354.
Matson v. Dawson, 178 N.W. 2d 588, 591. A farmer has the same right to the use of the highways of the state, whether on foot or in a motor vehicle, as any other citizen.
Draffin v. Massey, 92 S.E.2d 38, 42. Persons may lawfully ride in automobiles, as they may lawfully ride on bicycles. Doherty v. Ayer, 83 N.E. 677, 197 Mass. 241, 246;
Molway v. City of Chicago, 88 N.E. 485, 486, 239 Ill. 486; Smiley v. East St. Louis Ry. Co., 100 N.E. 157, 158. “A soldier’s personal automobile is part of his ‘household goods[.]’
U.S. v Bomar, C.A.5(Tex.), 8 F.3d 226, 235″ 19A Words and Phrases – Permanent Edition (West) pocket part 94. “[I]t is a jury question whether … an automobile … is a motor vehicle[.]”
United States v Johnson, 718 F.2d 1317, 1324 (5th Cir. 1983). Other right to use an automobile cases: –
EDWARDS VS. CALIFORNIA, 314 U.S. 160 –
TWINING VS NEW JERSEY, 211 U.S. 78 – WILLIAMS VS. FEARS, 179 U.S. 270, AT 274 – CRANDALL VS. NEVADA, 6 WALL. 35, AT 43-44 – THE PASSENGER CASES, 7 HOWARD 287, AT 492 – U.S. VS. GUEST, 383 U.S. 745, AT 757-758 (1966) –
GRIFFIN VS. BRECKENRIDGE, 403 U.S. 88, AT 105-106 (1971) – CALIFANO VS. TORRES, 435 U.S. 1, AT 4, note 6 –
SHAPIRO VS. THOMPSON, 394 U.S. 618 (1969) – CALIFANO VS. AZNAVORIAN, 439 U.S. 170, AT 176 (1978) Look the above citations up in American Jurisprudence. Some citations may be paraphrased.
Courtesy of BioSpectrum Bureau
Health officials have announced that heavy penalties will be charged for people who hide MERS symptoms.
Singapore: In a bid to prevent the deadly MERS virus from entering its borders, the Taipei Public Health Department (TPHD) has issued guidance to the management of 488 hotel and concert venues on how to best meet the needs and health requirements of recently arriving South Korean tourists.
Taiwan health officials had recently organized a drill for healthcare workers to ensure timely admittance and treatment of cases
Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said that it is keeping close tabs on the MERS scare in South Korea and will adjust its contingency measures as necessary. Taiwan health officials had recently organized a drill for healthcare workers to ensure timely admittance and treatment of cases.
Health Minister Mr Chiang Been-huang said Taiwan remains on guard against MERS and has stepped up border controls and increased inventories of surgical masks and other necessary items.
Authorities further stated that according to disease prevention legislation, if a traveler appears to demonstrate symptoms yet fails to inform authorities they can incur a fine of between NT$60,000 to NT$300,000, even if upon testing they are cleared of actually having MERS.
Courtesy of REUTERS
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan’s two biggest airlines are temporarily cutting their total flights to South Korea by nearly half, the carriers said, citing falling travel demand to the nation where nine people have died from the outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
China Airlines <2610.TW> will cut the number of flights to South Korea to 27 a week from 42 now, while EVA Airways <2618.TW> will cut its weekly flights to seven from 20, according to statements from the companies on Wednesday. The cut will run from mid-June to end of July.
Earlier this month, about 15 percent of its reservations to the country were canceled, China Airlines added.
Taiwanese health authorities widened on Tuesday their travel alert to cover all of South Korea, from just Seoul earlier, as the MERS outbreak spread.
South Korea reported on Wednesday two more deaths and 13 new cases linked to MERS, raising the death toll to nine and bringing the total number of infections from the coronavirus to 108.
Courtesy of The Seattle Times.com
Overdue legal recognition for African-American artists in ‘Blurred Lines’ copyright case
Gabriel Campanario / The Seattle Times
In creating “Blurred Lines,” Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams admitted to capturing the feel of the Marvin Gaye song “Got To Give It Up.”
DID Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke get a fair trial in their litigation with Marvin Gaye’s estate over their song “Blurred Lines” and Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up”? Some copyright scholars don’t think so, and Williams and Thicke are now requesting a retrial. They claim that jurors were misled about copyright law and by the evidence about Gaye’s copyright.
We disagree. Not only is the decision consistent with copyright law and Gaye’s composition, it may also be the most important legal victory for artists of color in decades.
In the 1970s, Gaye created a new style of R&B typified as much by his innovative orchestration of voices and instruments as by any particular melodic elements. “Got To Give It Up” is a great example.
In creating “Blurred Lines,” Thicke and Williams admitted trying to capture the feel of “Got To Give It Up.” Music critics remarked on the similarities to Gaye’s song while DJs around the world made “mash-ups” of the two songs. When the Gaye estate contacted Thicke and Williams about possible infringement claims, the latter pre-emptively sued the estate, seeking a court declaration clearing them of liability. The Gaye estate countersued.
Thicke’s and Williams’ musicologist argued against infringement because no two consecutive notes in the songs have the same pitch and duration. However, this was based on a narrow reading of the “lead sheet” submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office for registration of Gaye’s copyright. The musicologist asserted that any perceived similarities between the two songs were solely from elements in the recording that were not in the lead sheet.
But the musicologists for Gaye’s estate argued that the songs shared “a constellation of eight substantially similar features” that “surpass the realm of generic coincidence, reaching to the very essence of each work.” Essentially, they claimed that comparison should not be limited to the traditional European focus on a “lead” melody.
Instead, they argued, rhythmic, harmonic and orchestration elements are important in musical compositions. The arrangement of these elements creates a “total concept and feel” that can be protectable as well. The musicologists testified that some of these elements and the overall feel could be inferred from the limited lead sheets, and that “Blurred Lines” improperly copied much of this. The jury ruled for Gaye’s estate.
So what’s all the fuss about?
Critics argue that this approach is inconsistent with customary music copyright infringement analysis. According to them, elements other than direct melodic similarities are unprotectable as “genre” or “style.” Likewise, “total concept and feel” should not be recognized. Finally, they argue the jury was misled by a new performance of Gaye’s song played from the lead sheet created for the trial.
However, none of this is precluded by copyright law. While music copyright cases up to the mid-20th century often focused on catchy melodies, contemporary cases consider harmonic and rhythmic elements as well. The older view derived from a white, European — often “high brow” — approach to music. This marginalized the influential harmonic and rhythmic innovations of artists of color from jazz on through rock and hip-hop. While black artists complained about these issues for decades, it is only when the tradition of white misappropriation of black musical innovation is threatened that the system comes under thunderous scrutiny.
Further, a narrow interpretation of lead sheets is inappropriate. Like many composers in modern pop music genres, Gaye did not read or write European music notation. Instead, he composed the song in the studio, directing performances and the recording. Afterward, as frequently happened in these cases, someone from the record label or music publisher fluent in music notation created the lead sheet, writing down only the lead melody, lyrics, names of chords and, thankfully, at least the key bass riff.
Thus, allowing the jury to hear the interpretation of “Got To Give It Up” from the lead sheet was entirely appropriate. As the judge pointed out, “The ordinary person presumably cannot sight-read [sheet] music and determine its sound.” Further, this ruling benefited Thicke and Williams more than Gaye’s estate. The travesty of the old lead-sheet system means that distinctive parts of Gaye’s composition, especially percussion and backing vocal parts, were not before the jury.
The older focus on literal melodic copying systematically disfavored artists of color. Relying on this presumed exclusion of harmonic and rhythmic elements, record companies perennially promoted white artists from Elvis Presley to Iggy Azalea who could perform songs imitating artistic innovations of black artists. Many copyright experts have been content to live with this system, so long as marginalized artists of color were the ones to suffer the inequity.
With its victory, the Gaye estate may have finally found a way to legal recognition and respect for the valuable musical contributions of artists of color. This shift in who benefits from copyright may be what the fuss is really all about.
Sean O’Connor is the Boeing International Professor at the University of Washington’s School of Law. Lateef Mtima is a law professor at Howard University School of Law. Lita Rosario is principal of WYZ Girl Entertainment Consulting.
This simulation of the supervolcano eruption in Yellowstone National Park is just a digital snap shot of its potential impact. (Photo: CBC)
Deep in America’s northwest, there lies a supervolcano that, if erupted, has the potential to wipe out the majority of the United States.
What is a supervolcano exactly?
I think the name says it all, but officially, scientists define it as a volcano capable of an eruption thousands of times greater than any ordinary volcanic explosion.
These supervolcanoes burst when a growing pressure of molten rock, or magma, rises up from the Earth’s mantle.
When the crust can’t contain the buildup anymore — boom.
In historic times, we luckily haven’t experienced a supervolcano explosion. The most recent eruption occurred 27,000 years ago in New Zealand.
But, mankind isn’t out of the woods yet. Deep below Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming lies a supervolcano that is very much alive.
A Volcanic Winter
A massive underground chamber filled with magma sits miles below the surface in America’s oldest national park.
Though scientists are mixed as to whether the place could blow anytime soon, there is one thing they do agree on — if it did, it would push much of Earth to the verge of extinction.
It’s immediate effects would be deadly enough, with some estimates saying that 87,000 people would be killed instantly.
A 10-foot layer of ash would spread up to 1,000 miles away, leaving two-thirds of the country completely uninhabitable.
This simulation from First Science shows the immediate effects of an explosion at Yellowstone National Park. (Youtube/ FirstScience.tv)
Once the plume rises high into the stratosphere, the released sulfuric gases would mix with the Earth’s water vapor, which National Geographic reports could launch the country and other parts of the globe into a “volcanic winter.”
A Discovery Channel simulation of a Yellowstone supervolcano explosion. ( Youtube/Discovery)
Essentially, the United States and much of the world would be brought to its knees.
But the carnage doesn’t stop there. The spread of volcanic ash, rocks and gas would immediately cease any sort of air transportation in much of the world.
Just take into account the traffic shutdown following the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland. The relatively small explosion caused the closure of large swaths of European airspace, as well as a six-day travel ban in the impacted area.
The ash cloud resulting from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in Iceland. (Photo: Wikimedia)
Those who do survive would be left with a big bill too. Doug Bausch, a senior scientist at FEMA, told WND that such a scenario would cause an estimated $3 trillion in damage for North America.
Could it Happen In Your Lifetime?
The last time Yellowstone erupted — roughly 640,000 years ago — the American continent was devastated, with volcanic materials reaching as far as Louisiana, over 1,500 miles away.
In the past decade, there has been some increased activity at the site. Since 2004, the supervolcano has been rising and just this month, roads were closed in Yellowstone after extreme heat from below was melting the asphalt on roads up above.
An explosion of “volcanic winter” magnitude, however doesn’t seem likely according the U.S. Geological Survey. They say that the chances of a large-scale eruption at Yellowstone “are exceedingly small in the next few thousand years.”
Of course, other scientists (and the conspiracy theorist inside all of us) are a bit more skeptical. See the thing is, these explosions are highly unpredictable. I think the Huffington Post said it most accurately.
“The bulging pocket of magma swishing around beneath Old Faithful might never blow its lid again. Or, it might put on a surprise fireworks show next Independence Day. Scientists just don’t know.”
I guess it just depends who you want to believe. Personally, I’d like to go on living without worrying about choking to death on toxic ash.
courtesy of The Final Call Newspaper
For quite some time we have observed the recent discussions surrounding the efforts to construct “Black-Brown”; “Black-Latino”; or “Black and Hispanic” political coalitions. We have been struck by the manner in which many intellectuals, political scientists and elected officials in their efforts to justify or cobble together Black and Latino Unity, are taking their point of departure from the results of the 2000 Census. We disagree with their approach on a couple of levels. A few months ago, in an e-mail discussion on an outstanding list serve that I am part of, I wrote the following in reference to the issue of Black and Latino unity:
I am of the opinion that Black and Latino unity can never be generated in the political realm. The root of unity will be found in a discovery and recognition of the common root in history, of which a majority of Blacks and Latinos are still ignorant. This is one area where the power of culture will be the genesis and base of political action. At present, both groups are neither “Black” or “Latino” in their political activity. Partisan politics and local political machinery is dictating the terms of the relationship as well as the mode of politics being used by both electorates and their most visible leadership. In addition, it is important to recognize that the power to define is a basic and an instrumental source of the disunity and the eventual unity that is to be formed. One of the most striking aspects of this recent debate is that the impact of slavery in the Western Hemisphere is never discussed in terms of the classifications, language and cultural barriers that currently exist today. When the debate stops taking its point of departure from the recent census categories and (moves) into the true origins of our divisions we would have found a basis or springboard for constructive unity and political mobilization.
In essence, our argument is not a difficult one to understand, at its root. We are stating that mayoral elections, like that which recently occurred in Los Angeles and that which is upcoming in New York, are not well-suited to generate the long-talked about Black-Latino unity. We believe that the political establishment, through the two-party system, can not generate or even tolerate Black-Latino unity because such unity would produce a political agenda, created by the self-enlightened interest of the Black and Latino communities that would elevate issues in the political arena that the two-party system is designed to avoid. Neither the Democratic or Republican parties can handle a true Black-Latino united front. The combined power of the vote and the issues that it would champion would present the ultimate challenge to White supremacy in American politics and society.
But the greatest impediment or enemy to the production of Black and Latino unity is not White establishment politicians but rather the gross ignorance, prevalent in both communities, of their shared history and “ethnic” origin. In essence, both groups lack the true knowledge of themselves, and as a result don’t understand that the strongest basis of their unity lies in the spiritual and cultural spheres and not in the political or electoral realm.
And it is in this area where the recent discussions that take their springboard from the recent Census results are so destructive. We discussed all of this over the weekend with The Nation Of Islam’s Latino Representative Minister Muhammad Abdullah Muhammad, who is based in New York City. Minister Muhammad talked about how deceptive the recent census was and how the unsuspecting public bought into the Census’ misrepresentation and misclassification of the population growth of Blacks and Latinos.
“The census has carved up a classification for Hispanics that excludes race and other characteristics of Latino people. This is inappropriate because the Latino people are not monolithic. But not according to the U.S. Census. So a Black Latino and a White Latino are both counted as ‘Hispanic’. On the surface, with the rise in the ‘Hispanic’ population it looks like the Black population is dwindling when it is not. We have to be very careful because when you say that there are approximately 35 million Black people and 35 million Hispanics what are you really saying? Of that 35 million classified as ‘Hispanic’, you have lets say, 5 to 7 million Afro-Latinos and 23 million that are heavily of the Indigenous population. Most Latin Americans are mestizos which means of mixed race – a combination of Indigenous, African or European.”
Minister Muhammad then described how the classifications of the Census are even more divisive, as in Directive No. 15, with which the Census, without equivocation, classifies Hispanics, under all circumstances, as White. He mentioned instances where law enforcement agencies and correctional facilities are mandated by provisions to count Hispanics or Latinos who are arrested or imprisoned as “White”.
Minister Muhammad Abdullah Muhammad told us that there are a confluence of forces at work here but that two of the major aspects to what is taking place that thus far has prevented Black and Latino unity from forming is the lack of knowledge of self, of both communities, combined with a strong incentive, in society and from the United States government for Latin Americans to identify with Whites before they identify with Blacks. He highlighted the fact that in the last census 80% of Puerto Ricans classified themselves as White. But anybody familiar with Puerto Rico or who has traveled there knows that the commonwealth is heavily populated with Blacks. The same is true of Cuba. Minister Muhammad said that it is an ignorance of the history of many Latin American countries coupled with denial and the seeking of access to resources, power and social equality that contributes to many Latinos rejecting Black and Indigenous roots in favor of an association with a White lineage. Of course, we recognize the same phenomenon among Blacks in this country.
Minister Muhammad Abdullah told us,
” If you look at the history you know immediately that Puerto Rico is not filled with Whites. In 1530 Governor Francisco Manuel De Lando made the first census of Puerto Rico. At the time it showed that Puerto Rico was made up of 416 Spaniards, 1148 Indians (free and enslaved) and 2077 Blacks (enslaved). During the subsequent centuries hundreds of thousand African slaves and Europeans migrated to the Island. The Indigenous population did not increase. According to Sociologist Martin Sagrera, in 1802 there were 78,231 whites and 71,510 blacks in Puerto Rico; by 1860, there were 300,406 whites and 241,037 blacks; in 1899, 1930 the black population had dwindled to 20 %; and by 1965 it had dwindled down to 7 %. What happened to all the Blacks? Sagrera attributes this phenomenon to racial prejudice, which has prompted a rejection to a self classification as black among Puerto Ricans Today, many Puerto Ricans reject the classification as Black. They take the opposite approach to identity Blacks have been culturally and legally conditioned to take in America. The Anglo-Saxon set a precedent that in many ways was beneficial to Blacks when he said that if you have 1 drop of Black blood in you then you are Black. In Latin America, according to the system of ‘castas’, one drop of White blood makes one other than Black. Many, therefore reject being classified as Black on those grounds.”
In addition, Minister Muhammad stressed that it is important to never underestimate the impact that the Indigenous or Indians have in the discussion. He discussed at length with us how many Blacks and Latinos in America are in denial about their shared ancestry from the Indian populations throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean. He even spoke of how few people are aware of how the fact that many people in the Western hemisphere are of a dark-complexion not just because Black blood is mixed in them, but also because of the mixing that has taken place with Indians. Often Indians are described as “red” but that distinction has been oversimplified by many who use it. He wrote to us, “That color red was very dominant in North America. But in Mexico, you find a browner, sometimes almost Black Indian. In The Andes, you will also find a very dark Indian – ranging from red to dark brown. However, due to 500 years of race mixing, you will also find very light skinned mestizos.”
The problem of what to do with the Indigenous people or Indian is prevalent throughout the Western Hemisphere.
One of our technical consultants at BlackElectorate.com is from Peru and informed us that although there is a significant Black population in Peru, one of their major problems is that while there exists in Peru a reverence for the culture of their indigenous population, there exists, parallel to that reverence, discriminatory practices against the indigenous people of Peru and the elevation of the light-skinned Peruvian on broadcast media and in politics. It is that way in many countries in Central, South America and in the Caribbean. It is that way in the United States and Canada.
The challenge of getting Blacks in the United States of America and Latinos in the U.S. and the Western Hemisphere to forge a union is typified when one considers the history of Mexico. Minister Muhammad spoke to us of the fact that many Blacks in this country don’t identify with Mexicans but that such an attitude is the byproduct of cultural conditioning and the lack of knowledge of Mexican history. He points out that over 1 million Mexicans died during the Mexican war of independence, the majority of them being Afro-Mexican. Most of the soldiers of General Morelos and General Guerrero, both Afro-Mexicans themselves, had African blood in their veins. Moreover, the African influence is vivid in Mexican culture. “La Bamba” is an Afro-Mexican rhythm, and its name is African. And the foremost Afro-Mexican musician is the expressive Santana, who never fails to praise Africa, Minister Muhammad tells us.
In addition, we have noted the inability of the reparations movement in America to connect with those who make similar claims throughout the Diaspora. In addition, it is peculiar that Blacks in this country who connect with struggles in Africa are unable to do the same with the struggles of the Indigenous populations in the Western hemisphere.
We have always been amazed that Blacks in the U.S. have bought into the deception that the Jewish community for example, are their natural allies, as opposed to the Native American population.
Minister Muhammad Abdullah stressed the importance of the Black and Latino communities educating one another of their shared history. He said that many Latino immigrants, as an example, are unaware of how devastating slavery was for Blacks in this country. He also mentioned that Blacks are woefully unaware of the struggles of the indigenous and Black populations in Central, South America and the Caribbean. He said that both communities have to learn about one another if any unity is to be lasting.
He placed emphasis on the fact that it is important that the current cadre of Latino leaders in the U.S. not make the same mistakes that Black leaders made in the 1960s, and still make in the present, in some of their efforts at integration. He told us:
“Much of the Latino community itself, is a newly arrived community except for the older Mexican communities from the 19th century. And some of its leadership is fighting for crumbs from White America. Many have to realize that when they come from Latin America and try to be White, the White Americans and those in government will try to make them feel White but they won’t ever receive the benefits of being White like the Italian, for example. The Latino is behind the Eastern European and the White Anglo-Saxon in that regard. America doesn’t really want Latinos as White, they just don’t want them to identify with Blacks…the greatest fear in America is of the Black ex-slave and they want to divide the Black ex-slave from the new Latino immigrant.”
While it may be chic and the “in” thing to talk of Black and Latino political coalitions, the truth of the matter is that such coalitions will not work if Blacks and Latinos see themselves first and foremost, in the political system, as Democrats and Republicans. Secondly, while there are major points of agreement among Blacks and Latinos on matters of social justice and political advancement, the playing field constructed by the American political establishment will leave both communities fighting for crumbs that fall from the table of “benevolent” White Democrats and White Republicans – not enough for a meal, and certainly not enough to sustain a lasting unity among over 70 million people.
Already, we are learning of the intention of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee to pursue the “Hispanic” community as never before. The efforts, as they are being formulated, are already pitting Blacks against Latinos, especially in the Democratic Party, as both groups recognize that minority politics in America is a zero-sum game where the gain of one minority group is the loss of another. Sadly, instead of opting out of the system, or exploring independent alternatives, Black and Latino leaders are poised to alternate with one another for the affections of political party bosses. Again, it is a classic example of how Black and Latino leaders devalue their electorates and their votes by making acceptance from the White establishment more important than true political empowerment and a responsiveness to issues.
It is only through a cultural and spiritual agreement fostered in large part by the education of Blacks and Latinos of the true history of Blacks, the Indigenous and Whites in the Western Hemisphere, that both communities can become one and form a coalition in the political realm.
Anything short of that exercise will result in dashed hopes and expectations and increased tensions among the two groups currently being pitted against one another by the political establishment.
Cedric Muhammad
Tuesday, July 24, 2001
A mysterious ancient relative of humanity known as Little Foot apparently roamed the Earth at about the same time as the famed Lucy, suggesting the ancestors of humans may have existed with significant diversity across a good part of Africa, researchers say.
This finding comes from evidence suggesting the mysterious human relative was buried some 3.7 billion years ago, more recently than thought. This new date may one day help shed light on which region and which species gave rise to humanity, scientists added.
Among the earliest known relatives of the human lineage definitely known to walk upright was Australopithecus afarensis, the species that included the famed 3.2-million-year-old Lucy. Australopithecines are the leading candidates for direct ancestors of humans, living about 2.9 million to 4.1 million years ago. (The human lineage, Homo, is thought to have originated about 2 million years ago.)
While Australopithecus afarensis dwelled in eastern Africa, another australopithecine nicknamed Little Foot, due to the diminutive nature of the bones, lived in southern Africa. Discovered about 20 years ago by paleoanthropologist Ronald Clarke from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, Little Foot apparently fell down a narrow shaft in the Sterkfontein Caves. This left behind a nearly complete skeleton that could yield key insights on human evolution. [See Images of Little Foot and Other Australopithecines]
Lucy’s friends
It remains debated what kind of australopithecine Little Foot was. Many scientists think Little Foot was a member of Australopithecus africanus, which had a rounder skull housing a larger brain and smaller teeth than did Lucy and the rest of Australopithecus afarensis. However, Clarke and others suggest Little Foot belonged to another australopithecine known as Australopithecus prometheus, which had a longer, flatter face and larger cheek teeth than Australopithecus africanus.
It was impossible to fit Little Foot into the human family tree with any certainty because “ever since its discovery, the age of Little Foot has been debated,” said lead study author Darryl Granger, a geochronologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. If researchers can figure out when Little Foot arose, they might be able to better pinpoint which Australopithecus species and which part of Africa ultimately gave rise to Homo.
Now, Granger and his colleagues have found evidence that Little Foot lived at about the same time as Lucy. Even so, the fossil doesn’t give a definitive answer on Little Foot’s species.
“The most important implication from dating Little Foot is that we now know that australopithecines were in South Africa early in their evolution,” Granger told Live Science. “This implies an evolutionary connection between South Africa and East Africa prior to the age of Little Foot, and with enough time for the australopithecine species to diverge.”
This in turn suggests that other australopithecines — and, later, humans — “did not all have to have derived from Australopithecus afarensis,” Clarke told Live Science. “There could well have been many species of Australopithecus extending over a much wider area of Africa.”
Dating Little Foot
The researchers first tried dating the age of Little Foot more than a decade ago “and got an age of around 4 million years, which would place Little Foot among the oldest of the australopithecines,” Granger said.
However, dating the age of fossils in caves is extraordinarily complicated because material can wash into a cave from the outside and easily confound analysis. When others dated the age of minerals known as flowstones near Little Foot, they found those cave formations originated about 2.2 million years ago. “I was disappointed, but I could see nothing wrong with their ages,” Granger said.
But a recent study found these nearby flowstones did not reflect Little Foot’s age because they were not part of the same layer of rock that held the fossils and therefore did not form at the same time. In the new analysis, Granger and his colleagues pinpointed the fossil’s age by measuring levels of aluminum and beryllium isotopes in quartz in the same rock layer as the skeleton.
The researchers also found that the earliest stone tools in the same cave date back to about 2.2 million years ago. This is a similar age to early stone tools found elsewhere in eastern and southern Africa. “This implies a connection between South African and East African hominids that occurred soon after the appearance of stone tools,” Granger said.
The researchers said they hope that other sites around the world will now be dated using their method. “There should be a thorough study to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the method,” Granger said.
Granger, Clarke and their colleagues detailed their findings in the April 2 issue of the journal Nature.
Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
By: Collective Evolution. Update: Further investigations are beginning to point to the possibility of an underwater volcanic hill based on more recent scans.[3] More information should come to the surface. Some believe this new explanation may be a cover up but that position is currently based on a belief only.
“The pyramid is perfectly shaped and apparently oriented by the cardinal points,” Silva told Diário Insular,
the local newspaper.
The pyramid was found in an area of the mid-Atlantic that has been underwater for about 20,000 years. Considering this is around the time of the last ice age where glaciation was melting from its peak 2000 years prior, whatever civilization, human or not, that was around before the ice age, could be responsible for building the pyramid. While the Portuguese Navy still hasn’t determined the origins, many might question why this hasn’t been first reported on sooner than late 2012. Certainly the NOAA who studies volcanic activity in the area of the pyramid would have discovered the pyramid through sonar imaging and so forth since the area is heavily studied due to volcanic activity. Either the NOAA hasn’t yet come across it, they are hiding what they have found, or the pyramid doesn’t exist. The last theory does not seem to be likely given the authenticity of the find.
To further support the idea that this pyramid could have been built by different civilizations, archeologists from the Portuguese Association of Archaeological Research have recently discovered evidence on Pico island that suggests their belief that humans existed in the Azores region before the arrival of the Portuguese thousands of years ago. As of today, there is still no explanation for who created the rock art found on the islands. Was the pyramid built by whatever civilization existed prior to the Portuguese? Is it possibly not even man-made?
Here is the Portuguese news report with English subtitles for those who wish to look into the authenticity of the claims.
The Azores are an interesting region as they are a chain of nine volcanic islands in three main groups that are roughly 930 miles west of Lisbon. They are all situated around the fault lines between the North American, Eurasian and African tectonic plates. An interesting place to have a pyramid given the energetic qualities often associated with pyramids.
This video discusses some interesting bits of information that explore the authenticity of the story and the possible location visually using some maps. It is important to note that exact coordinates of the pyramid have not been released. He believes that there may be a discovery of 2 more pyramids in the area as images suggest there could be a design link to that of the pyramids built in Egypt.
Sources:
http://portuguese-american-journal.com/terceira-subaquatic-pyramidal-shaped-structure-found-azores/http://portuguese-american-journal.com/archeology-prehistoric-rock-art-found-in-caves-on-terceira-island-azores/http://www.azores-pyramid.org/
Someone recently asked me what I think the worst ingredients are at McDonald’s and my first thought was… “Um, where do I start?!” The 37-page ingredient list for McDonald’s reads like an encyclopedia of nutrition-less, additive-filled, processed food. It should be pretty obvious that I don’t eat at McDonald’s (and many of you may not either) but I still have family members and friends that eat there on a regular basis (and I can guess you probably do too!).
According to a recent Morgan Stanley report, young adults eat at McDonald’s more than any other restaurant. What I found funny about their report is that while they eat there, they won’t admit it to their friends because they consider the food there so low quality.
Although most of us realize their food isn’t healthy and McDonald’s reports that their sales are struggling – they continue to feed thousands of Americans, day in and day out and that’s why it’s so important for you to share this information with all your friends and family members.
Do the people that eat at McDonald’s realize how many questionable chemicals they are eating in one meal?
McDonald’s announced recently that they are going through some major menu changes, and will be nixing some unnecessary ingredients. They also are finally listening to us, and will stop using chickens that are injected with growth-promoting antibiotics, along with dairy products raised with the growth hormone rbST but they still are using a lot of factory farmed meat and the beef is still raised with antibiotics.
McDonald’s even said they might add kale to their menu, by putting it in salads or in a smoothie. I LOVE kale, and I hope they don’t find a way to ruin it. You know the saying, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig”. So, they need to do a lot more than just add kale to their menu before I’d ever eat there. The problem is that millions are still eating there and consuming several questionable food additives that McDonald’s could remove entirely if they really wanted to.
I know this because McDonald’s is already doing it for our friends overseas.
If you compare their ingredients with what they serve in London, you’ll see that many of the food additives used in the U.S. aren’t used over there at all, such as TBHQ, BHA, propyl gallate, azodicarbonamide, sodium phosphate and artificial colors. Instead of frying their food in partially hydrogenated oils laced with dimethylpolysiloxane like they do in the U.S., they use a non-hydrogenated vegetable oil blend instead. They also serve organic milk and don’t use GMO ingredients overseas – all while serving us GMOs here in the States. What they’re serving in other countries isn’t perfect, but it’s better.
When you eat just ONE single menu item at McDonald’s, even a “healthy” item like their Premium Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad, you’re really eating ingredients like powdered cellulose, soybean oil, autolyzed yeast extract, and high fructose corn syrup – and that doesn’t even include the dressing that’s loaded with more soybean oil and refined sugars. It’s no wonder that America is struggling as a nation with obesity, diabetes and heart disease. What would happen if McDonald’s took the lead here and finally ditched the worst ingredients on their menu? How much would the health of our nation improve?
My “Hit List” of the WORST 12 ingredients at McDonald’s No One Should Be Eating (8 of them aren’t even used in the UK at all)!
I compiled a little hit list of the biggest offenders on McDonald’s menu. If they got rid of these ingredients, dozens of menu items would be transformed for the better. Inform your friends!
1. Partially Hydrogenated Oils (19 menu items): These oils have no place in our food, as the main source of trans fats in our diet that has been unequivocally linked to heart disease and death. Until the FDA finally bans it, this ingredient should be voluntarily removed. Why should they wait for the FDA to force them to take it out when they already don’t use it in other countries? McDonald’s uses partially hydrogenated oil in their “liquid margarine” that’s used to cook their eggs – and even their “egg whites” that are advertised as a healthier option. You’ll find it in virtually all of their breakfast items with either an egg or biscuit, like Egg McMuffins, Bacon, Egg & Cheese Bagel, and even in their low-calorie “Egg White Delight”.
2. Artificial Colors or Caramel Color (31 menu items): Artificial colors are an easy ingredient to ditch, since they don’t serve a purpose other than making “food” look better. These ingredients are on EWG’s Dirty Dozen Food Additives list, because caramel coloring is associated with cancer and there’s ongoing debate about the effects of artificial colors on children’s behavior. I’m a sucker for good ice cream, but McDonald’s doesn’t have it. McDonald’s chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry shakes are all artificially colored with either Red 40 or Yellow 5. Their “McCafe” mochas and chocolate chip frappes are tainted with artificial color Red 40 and caramel coloring. They also add caramel color to their “healthy” items like oatmeal and 8-Grain English Muffin (that’s used in the Egg White Delight), probably to make them look darker and more healthful.
3. Azodicarbonamide (aka The Yoga Mat Chemical) (30 menu items): This ingredient has been dropping like flies ever since I petitioned Subway to remove it from their bread. Pizza Hut, Bimbo Bakeries, Martin’s Potato Bread, Nature’s Own, Olive Garden, Starbucks, and Publix Grocery Store have announced they also have plans to remove the chemical from their products – and I think McDonald’s should be next. The EWG supported my petition because, “It is an industrial chemical added to bread for the convenience of industrial bakers,” and “EWG recommends that consumers take steps to avoid the industrial additive ADA in their food. It is an unnecessary ingredient, its use has raised concerns about occupational exposure, and questions remain about its potential risk to consumers. EWG also calls on all manufacturers to immediately end its use in food”. Nearly every sandwich at McDonald’s is still made with a bun that contains azodicarbonamide, from their most basic hamburger to the classic Big Mac.
4. Carrageenan (44 menu items): The Cornucopia Institute, has completed an in-depth analysis regarding the safety of this ingredient and subsequently petitioned the FDA to remove carrageenan from the “Generally Regarded As Safe” or GRAS determination. According to Cornucopia, animal studies show that “food-grade carrageenan causes gastrointestinal inflammation and higher rates of intestinal lesions, ulcerations, and even malignant tumors”. McDonald’s adds carrageenan to “crispy chicken” items like the Crispy Chicken Classic Sandwich and the Crispy Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap. You’ll also find carrageenan in their vanilla ice cream, McFlurries, Shakes, and in some breakfast sandwiches like the Sausage, Egg & Cheese McGriddles.
5. High Fructose Corn Syrup (30 menu items): This type of sweetener has been shown to contribute more to obesity and diabetes than regular cane sugar (sucrose). Even if you don’t drink a Coke at McDonald’s, you’ll likely eat something with High Fructose Corn Syrup. It’s in most of the sauces that are slathered on their burgers, the Southwest Chicken wrap, and it’s mixed into their shakes and frappes. Not included in my count, but it’s also found in some of the dipping sauces that come with Chicken McNuggets such as the Sweet n’ Sour, BBQ, and ketchup.
6. Soybean Oil (65 menu items): Soybean oil is processed to death (usually with toxic hexane) and is very high in omega-6 fatty acids that are associated with an increased the risk of inflammation, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and autoimmune diseases. I was downright shocked at the number of items that contain soybean oil at McDonald’s, and it would be a shorter list if I just summarized where you won’t find it! That’s because soybean oil is used in their fried items, buns, eggs, tortillas, and sauces – it’s pretty much impossible to avoid at McDonald’s.
7. TBHQ & Dimethylpolysiloxane (27 menu items): They use both of these ingredients in the oil in their fryers – but only in North America! TBHQ is a synthetic preservative that McDonald’s competitor Chick-fil-A is finally dumping, as it’s truly unnecessary. TBHQ is derived from petroleum and eating only 1 gram has been shown to cause all sorts of issues, from asthma to allergies, dermatitis, dizziness and it has even been linked to cancer. Dimethylpolysiloxane, the “silly putty” ingredient, simply doesn’t belong in food, and McDonald’s doesn’t use it in their fryers in other countries. So, why use it here? You’ve probably heard about its use in McDonald’s french fries and McNuggets, but you may not realize that it’s in other fried items like the Filet-O-Fish, Crispy Chicken Salads and Crispy Chicken McWraps.
8. BHA & Propyl Gallate (10 menu items): You’re not starting your day off right with these risky preservatives found in many breakfast items at McDonald’s. These preservatives are used together by McDonald’s and are both on the EWG’s Dirty Dozen List of Food Additives to avoid. BHA has been shown to be an endocrine disruptor and is believed to be a carcinogen, as BHA has caused tumors in animal studies. Propyl gallate has also been associated with tumors and endocrine disruption. You’ll find both of these ingredients in their Sausage Egg McMuffins, Sausage McGriddles, and Big Breakfasts.
9. Hidden MSG, Yeast Extract, Hydrolyzed Protein (23 menu items): Instead of adding straight-up monosodium glutamate (MSG) to their food, they sneak in other additives (yeast extract and hydrolyzed proteins) that contain free glutamic acid, the main component of MSG. These ingredients are purely used to make you crave their food and eat more than you should, and are excitotoxins that are associated with neurodegenerative diseases. McDonald’s adds these to Chicken McNuggets and Chicken Selects chicken strips, along with some burger sauces like the Big Mac sauce and Buttermilk Ranch sauce. You’ll even find it in salads with crispy chicken.
10. Sodium Phosphate (56 menu items): This preservative is so commonly used that if you eat processed food, you likely eat it daily. That doesn’t mean it’s safe. When you eat phosphate additives often, it can lead to excessive levels of phosphate in the blood and puts you at risk of chronic kidney disease, increased mortality, heart disease, and accelerated aging. The EWG also warns that sodium phosphate is an additive to avoid. This preservative is used in all of their cheese slices and in their ice cream, so all burgers with cheese and shakes contain it. It also preserves the crispy chicken used in McWraps and salads.
11. Cellulose (30 menu items): Ground breaking research links this additive to weight gain, inflammation and digestive problems. As reported by CBS News, “A new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, finds evidence that these chemicals in food can alter the gut bacteria, or microbiome, potentially causing intestinal inflammation which makes a person more likely to develop inflammatory bowel disease, metabolic syndrome and significant weight gain”. McDonald’s adds cellulose to the shredded cheese in their McWraps, their Sausage Breakfast Burrito, biscuits, shakes, smoothies and ice cream.
12: DATEM (30 menu items): The acronym “DATEM” stands for “Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Monoglycerides”, and it’s a dough conditioner that is usually derived from soybean or canola oil (GMO crops). This ingredient can be a hidden form of deadly trans fat in our food that most people don’t know about. Just like partially hydrogenated oils, these artificial trans fats have been linked to heart disease and the CDC attributes them to up to “7,000 coronary heart disease deaths each year in the U.S”! This chemical invention is clearly not a necessary ingredient in bread, but you’ll find it in most of McDonald’s buns and in their english muffins.
If you’re like me and still have loved ones eating at McDonald’s, please share this post with them!
The more awareness we can bring to these chemicals that are being served up to thousands of Americans everyday as “food”, the faster these companies will change! I have something new and really exciting coming out next week that can transform your lunchtime eating habits. Make sure you’re subscribed to email updates so that you don’t miss out!
Xo,
Vani
P.S. Maybe this is why McDonald’s is advertising their bathrooms instead of their food now?
***Start the 21 day plan to break free from the toxins in your food, lose weight, look years younger and get healthy today – it’s all in my #1 bestselling book The Food Babe Way. ***
Developers of artificial micro-humans, or ‘mini GM humans,’ are hoping to release their technology on the market by 2017. No this isn’t a sci-fi joke. Scientists are developing artificial humans in the same vein as GM plants with the hope that these creations will replace the need for using animals in laboratory testing.
Artificial humans will be ‘farmed’ with interacting organs that can be used in drug tests, speeding up the process of FDA and other government regulatory approvals, and supposedly without damaging rats or other animals currently used in laboratories. The GM humans will contain smartphone-sized microchips that will be programmed to replicate up to 10 major human organs.
Each GM human will be tiny – roughly the size of a microchip itself, simulating the response of humans to substances inhaled, absorbed in the blood, or exposed to in the intestinal tract.
Early versions comprising an artificial kidney, heart, lung or gut are already being used by the cosmetic industry and to observe the use of chemical drugs on non-GMO humans.
The Times of India reported that researchers said this could replace up to 90 million animals each year in labs. Uwe Marx, a tissue engineer from Technische Universitat Berlin and founder of TissUse, a firm developing the technology said:
“If our system is approved by the regulators, then it will close down most of the animal-testing laboratories worldwide.” said.
Currently, this type of technology is already used on artificial organs like hearts and livers, but the results must be verified on a ‘live’ being – animals in a lab, for instance, to prove that substances are safe when interacting with a living being with real organs.
The problem with current testing, and obviously this proposed ‘solution,’ is that artificial organs, like animals, won’t respond the same way as a human body. We have already observed unforeseen side effects during human trials after animal trials that are far from ‘safe’ – GM crops are a perfect example of this phenomenon.
Organs cannot be divided into ‘fake’ computerized components. They interact with one another, the endocrine system, the brain, the nervous system, environmental cues, emotions, and according to advanced research, even our energetic bodies.
This reminds me of how genetically modified humans are planned to be the next venture for biotechnology companies working with the United States military, with the admitted goal of producing a ‘super soldier’ that does not require food or sleep to perform Olympic-style physical feats. The genetically modified humans, or ‘super soldiers’, will even be able to regrow limbs that were destroyed by enemy fire and live off of their fat stores for extreme lengths of time. You can read more on GMO super-humans here.
While the new GM human farms seem great on paper, since eliminating animal testing is indeed noble, they do not address possible far-reaching, negative ramifications for trying to re-create the complexities of Mother Nature’s form. It seems the pharmaceutical industry and biotech don’t learn from their mistakes at all.
source
Founder of WorldTruth.Tv and WomansVibe.com Eddie (4314 Posts)
Eddie L. is the founder and owner of WorldTruth.TV. This website is dedicated to educating and informing people with articles on powerful and concealed information from around the world. I have spent the last 30+ years researching Bible, History, Secret Societies, Symbolism
Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies
Sunrise: December 31, 1918, Gondar, Ethiopia
Sunset: March 19, 2015, Harlem-Bronx, New York
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The “Official” Universal Zulu Nation Statement on The Transcendence of
Dr. Antonio Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies
In The Name of Almighty Allah (Amen Ra)
We The Universal Zulu Nation give honor to Our Honorable Elder Yosef Ben Jochannan for his hard work,time,efforts,travels,opening of the Third Eye,keeper and finder of Ancient Knowledge of Afrika,(Alkebu Lan) for generations to come and for Humans who are here in the now. May Allah be please with our brother and Anpu (Anubus) guide him swiftly back to our Ancestors.
Dr. Ben is a Giant in waking up so many who might still be in the land of Nod Sleep state of Mind. we honor him,respect,him and even if you didn’t agree with what he said in Our story,he is still Our Royality. Love,Peace,Freedom and Thought in Honor of the Great Dr. Ben and all his Legacy of Books forever he All in the All of All.
Amen Ra Be Pleased.
Brother Minister Afrika Bambaataa
Former Student Zulu King Sadiki “Bro.Shep” Olugbala & Zulu Nation Founder Bro. Minister Afrika Bambaataa
Delivering A Tribute To Dr. Ben On The Event Of His 95th B-Earthday in Da Boogie Down Bronx
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Iconic Black History Activist Dr. Ben Dies at 96
Legendary African Scholar and Egyptologist,
Dr. Yosef A.A. ben-Jochannan, a.k.a. Dr. Ben who’s accomplishments have established him as a legendary figure in the eternal annals of Black history passed away on, Thursday March 18 at approximately 3:30 a.m.
Dr. Ben was also noted for many accomplishments such as advancing scholarship which further establishes that Black people are the indigenous inhabitants of Egypt, and dispelling the myth of a fictitious place named the middle east ever existing. His cultural journey had it’s start from being a student of Arthur Schomburg in Puerto Rico as a teenager, to studying with Edward Wilmot Blyden in St. Croix. He also participated with Pedro Albizu Campos during Puerto Ricos independence quest in the 1950s and suggesting African-centered reading material to Malcolm X in the early 1960s. After that, Dr. Ben went on to educating young teenaged Five Percenters at Harlem Prep during the late 1960s and conducting his annual fact-finding tours to Egypt for over 4 decades. He also worked at Cornell University for over 15 years.
Many people picture Dr. Ben as one of the last dying breeds of ambitious individuals in support of the African-American culture. Prominent attorney and The Sources owner and publisher, L. Londell McMillan speaks on his encounter with the iconic activist.
Dr. Ben was a great man and master teacher for many years. I was grateful to have him as professor at Cornell University. He also had a charming sense of humor that we all adored. Our community owes him a great amount of debt for his commitment and his scholarship. May he now rest in peace.
On behalf of many who knew and/or respected Dr. Ben, we send our condolences to his family. We also celebrate his life! -Bri Christian (@brirezy)
We just spoke, directly, with Dr James Small who is in the room with DR. BEN and Dr. Jeffries at the time of this posting ( March 11, 2015 2:45 PM EST).
He just reported that Dr. Ben is doing well. He is weak but his breathing and vital signs are all good..
Dr. Small said Dr. Ben is alert and that it does not seem that he will be leaving us, prayfully, any time soon:)
Dr. Ben cannot have visitors at this time but please feel free to send cards and good wishes to him at
Dr. Ben
Bay Park Nursing Home,
801 Co-Op City Blvd.
Bronx, New York 10475
New Zealand researchers have traced every human language — from English to Mandarin — back to an ancestral language spoken in Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago.
Scientists say they have traced the world’s 6,000 modern languages — from English to Mandarin — back to a single “mother tongue,” an ancestral language spoken in Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago.
New research, published in the journal Science, suggests this single ancient language resulted in human civilization — a Diaspora — as well as advances in art and hunting tool technology, and laid the groundwork for all the world’s cultures.
The research, by Quentin Atkinson from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, also found that speech evolved far earlier than previously thought. And the findings implied, though did not prove, that modern language originated only once, an issue of controversy among linguists, according to the New York Times.
Before Atkinson came up with the evidence for a single African origin of language, some scientists had argued that language evolved independently in different parts of the world.
Atkinson found that the first populations migrating from Africa laid the groundwork for all the world’s cultures by taking their single language with them. “It was the catalyst that spurred the human expansion that we all are a product of,” Atkinson said, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Atkinson traced the number distinct sounds, or phonemes — consonants, vowels and tones — in 504 world languages, finding compelling evidence that they can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age ancestors, according to the Daily Mail.
Atkinson also hypothesized that languages with the most sounds would be the oldest, while those spoken by smaller breakaway groups would utilize fewer sounds as variation and complexity diminished.
The study found that some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100 phonemes, or sounds, whereas Hawaiian, toward the far end of the human migration route out of Africa, has only 13, the Times reported. English has about 45 phonemes.
The phoneme pattern mirrors the pattern of human genetic diversity as humans spread across the globe from sub-Saharan Africa around 70,000 years ago.
Stop the Robots wants AI to help, not replace, humans
Attempting to warn humanity of the dangers foretold by fiction like Blade Runner, The Matrix, and Flight of the Conchords, an organization called Stop the Robots came out to South by Southwest over the weekend to protest the unchecked demand for the emergence of AI and intelligent robots. “We have to be careful that we don’t let AI, or technology, take over human roles in a way that is counterproductive to humanity,” Adam Mason, a group spokesperson, tells Yahoo Tech. “And we have to figure out a way to use technology at a grand scale to actually create jobs.”
The group’s goal isn’t to stop all robots and AI. Rather, the group is trying to further the message that some leading technology figures, like Elon Musk, have been discussing recently: that AI could eventually be really dangerous. Musk has even helped to fund an organization that promotes research that aims to help AI cater to the good of mankind. Stop the Robots’ goal is quite similar. It wants to make sure that AI and robots “empower humans, rather than replace them.”
The group claims to be composed of students from The University of Texas at Austin who appear be in fairly tech savvy fields. They showed up to SXSW holding posters with sayings like “humans are the future” and chanting “I say robot, you say no-bot,” according to USA Today. Altogether, it appears to have been a simple gathering, but its message is clearly striking a chord at the tech-friendly festival. “We’re technologists that love technology,” Mason tells Yahoo Tech, “and we foresee a future where technology is necessary for mankind.” The group just wants to make sure technology doesn’t obsolete mankind in the process.
Update March 16th, 9:20PM ET: Unfortunately, like so many things at South by Southwest, Stop the Robots turns out to be a marketing campaign for something totally unrelated: a dating app. On the Stop the Robots website, the startup behind it says that Adam Mason is a pseudonym. Its app does not involve robots or AI. Looks like it’s still up to Elon Musk to save us.
This past Black History Month, millions of students were told the story of how America abolished slavery 150 years ago with ratification of the 13th Amendment. The story draws an upward trajectory of racial equality in America from the abolition of slavery to Brown v. Board of Education to the Civil Rights Act to the election of President Obama.
The problem is the story isn’t true. We never actually abolished slavery. The 13th Amendment states:
The problem is the story isn’t true. We never actually abolished slavery. The 13th Amendment states:
“…except as a punishment for crime…” This phrase gets ignored in America’s telling of its slavery story. The 13th Amendment did not abolish slavery but rather moved it from the plantation to the prison. In 2015, the 2 million (largely Black) people incarcerated in America are legally considered slaves under the Constitution. As a result, they can and are forced to work for pennies an hour with the profits going to counties, states and private corporations including Target, Revlon and Whole Foods. In fact, there are more Black people enslaved today than in 1800.
This is no accident. In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander lays out how a system of Jim Crow replaced slavery and later how a system of mass incarceration rose to replace Jim Crow. During Reconstruction, Southern states quickly took advantage of the 13th Amendment’s slavery loophole by arresting Black people for minor crimes such as unemployment, loitering or gambling, and selling them to private employers through the convict lease system. Today, the majority of Black people enslaved in prisons were arrested for drug crimes. Even though Black people use drugs at the same rate as White people, they are incarcerated for drug crimes at 20 to 50 times the rate of White people in some states.
This is not to say that we have not made progress since 1865. Through acts of courage and solidarity, African-Americans have fought back against white supremacy for the past 150 years. Incarcerated people have not been hapless victims but rather have organized and actively resisted for decades. Last week, immigrants at a private prison in Raymondville, Texas engaged in direct actions over a two-day period protesting inhumane conditions, forcing a shutdown of part of the prison. The protests build on a tradition of prison activism from the Angola Three in Louisiana to the tragic Attica Prison takeover in 1971.
It is critical that immigrants have joined in resistance to the prison industrial complex. Detention of immigrants facing deportation in jails and private prisons and immigrants prosecuted for attempting to enter the United States are the fastest growing segment of the prison system. Every year, over 400,000 immigrants are detained in an immigration detention system where many work long days sometimes being paid nothing or if they are lucky, 12 cents per hour. Other immigrants work for basic necessities like food, blankets or a few minutes of extra sunlight. This is true even though the 13th Amendment does not permit slavery for people being held for immigration violations, which are considered civil not criminal offenses. In two states, immigrants have sued demanding fair pay and safe working conditions.
Although the prison industrial complex was seemingly designed for the wholesale incarceration of Black communities, Asian Pacific Islanders and other non-Black people of color are trapped in the same system. Southeast Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Latino/s are all incarcerated at disproportionate rates. However, we cannot achieve liberation until we address anti-black racism in our own communities and build connections between our struggles, those of African-Americans, and slavery.
This year, the 150th anniversary of the 13th Amendment, it is time to truly abolish slavery in America.
This post was co-authored with Anoop Prasad and and Winnie Kao.
Follow Angela F. Chan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/angelafchan
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-f-chan/america-never-abolished-slavery_b_6777420.html
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JAN 15 Jailed presidential candidate and anti-slavery activists must be released
Mauritanian Anti-Slavery Activist Brahim Bilal
The Mauritanian authorities must release three activists – including a prominent opposition politician – jailed today for holding anti-slavery rallies, Amnesty International said.
Police used tear gas and batons to disperse the protestors in front of the court who were demonstrating against the judgment.
The court in the southern town of Rosso handed down two-year sentences to three anti-slavery activists and human rights defenders, Brahim Bilal, Djiby Sow and Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, a former presidential candidate. They have been convicted of membership of an unrecognized organization and of taking part in an unauthorized assembly. Seven other activists were acquitted.
The conviction of these activists for taking part in peaceful protests on charges which are vague and open to abuse violates their human rights to free expression and freedom of peaceful assembly, said Gaetan Mootoo, Amnesty International West Africa Researcher.
The failure to obtain a permit for a peaceful assembly should never be the basis for imprisonment. Their conviction appears to be politically motivated with members of the group targeted on account of their peaceful activism. The authorities should take immediate steps to release them while their appeal is pending.
Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid is the President of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA) and was the runner-up in Junes presidential elections. He also won the UN Human Rights Prize in 2013.
He was arrested in Rosso on 11 November, along with 10 other IRA members during their peaceful campaign to raise awareness about land rights for people of slave descent (land slavery). In Mauritania, slave descendants who work on land without any rights are forced to give a portion of crops to their traditional masters.
Police stopped the meeting citing the absence of any authorization documents, despite the IRA having requested them.
The group were charged on 15 November and detained in Rosso without being allowed family visits.
The intensifying crackdown on anti-slavery activists in Mauritania has no legal justification and is symptomatic of the governments lack of respect for human rights, said Gaetan Mootoo, Amnesty Internationals West Africa Researcher.
The authorities must respect the right of all citizens to demonstrate peacefully.
The West Bronx born and bred culture known as hip-hop commemorates its 40th anniversary this weekend, and the organization that established it.
In a Law Suit brought by pro se litigant and Civil Rights Activist El Aemer El Mujaddid (formerly known as Aemer K. C. El) in the Superior Court of New Jersey against the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office, the City of Vineland, the State of New Jersey and several employees working for each of those entities and acting under Color of New Jersey law has revealed that both the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office and the City of Vineland Municipal Prosecutors prosecuted El Mujaddid without Probable Cause. El Mujaddid contends that it is highly likely that others have been prosecuted without probable cause as well, especially persons of African descent or perceived to be “Black”
Vineland Judge Kasper swears in first Hispanic Corrupt prosecutor, local Inez Acosta
Inez Acosta prosecuted El Mujaddid without probable cause in violation of the Federal and State Constitutions and the Rules of Professional Conduct. See RPC 3.8 SPECIAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF A PROSECUTOR The prosecutor in a criminal case shall: (a) refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause; (c) not seek to obtain from an unrepresented accused a waiver of important post-indictment pretrial rights; and (d) make timely disclosure to the defense of all evidence known to the prosecutor that supports innocence or mitigates the offense, and, in connection with sentencing, disclose to the defense and to the tribunal all unprivileged mitigating information known to the prosecutor, except when the prosecutor is relieved of this responsibility by a protective order of the tribunal. She is currently still allowed to act as a prosecutor. Acosta is 1982 Vineland High School graduate who was sworn in during the year 2012 as the first Hispanic prosecutor in the city’s history. Acosta said what means more to her is that she can serve as prosecutor in the city where she grew up and attended school. She graduated high school one year before El Mujaddid was born. Interesting how life works out and that her destiny would include prosecuting El Mujaddid without Probable Cause. Local officials said Acosta’s previous jobs included a stint as associate city solicitor and an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia. She also worked with several law firms, along with South Jersey Legal Services here. Acosta holds a law degree from Rutgers University and a bachelor’s degree in business management from St. Joseph’s University.
Vineland prosecutor whom Prosecuted El Mujaddid without Probable Cause sues city to keep job
On May 20, attorney John P. Morris filed a civil complaint in Cumberland County Superior Court on behalf of Acosta. The first legal round went to the city when a judge rejected a request to block the city from moving to replace Acosta. El Mujaddid requested for Discovery from Acosta during her malicous prosecution against him and she lied to him about the Criminal Complaints completed by Lynn A. Wehling, falsely purporting to him that they were not part of Discovery and refused to provide him with a copy, at that time she was well aware that those documents had not been signed by a Judicial Officer. See RPC 3.8 SPECIAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF A PROSECUTOR The prosecutor in a criminal case shall: (d) make timely disclosure to the defense of all evidence known to the prosecutor that supports innocence or mitigates the offense, and, in connection with sentencing, disclose to the defense and to the tribunal all unprivileged mitigating information known to the prosecutor, except when the prosecutor is relieved of this responsibility by a protective order of the tribunal.
An interesting dilimena in the matter is that the Superior Court of New Jersey under Imbler v. Pachtman 424 U.S. 409 (1976) standard granted prosecutor’s immunity to the Tort or Claim of “Malicious Prosecution” which is contrary to other Rulings where it is stated that a Prosecutor who acts without Probable Cause does not act as an advocate for the State. See Briscoe v. LaHue, 460 U.S. 325, 326 n.1 (1983); Pyle v. Kansas, 317 U.S. 213, 216 (1942). In Buckley I, 81 the Court drew a temporal line, holding that prosecutorial acts undertaken before the establishment of probable cause to arrest will not be considered advocatory. Id. at 274 (“A prosecutor neither is, nor should consider himself to be, an advocate before he has probable cause to have anyone arrested.”). Id. at 275 (observing further that there was no evidence that a common law immunity existed for fabricating evidence during a preliminary investigation. Buckley I suggests that while the probable cause line is not dispositive of the immunity issue, the Court will closely scrutinize absolute immunity claims when the challenged prosecutorial act occurs prior to a judicial finding of probable cause. A prosecutor is absolutely immune from suits for damages arising from the performance of the traditional functions of an advocate. When a prosecutor steps outside of the advocate‘s role, however, his or her conduct is protected by immunity only to the extent that any other individual would be protected in performing the same function. Immunity determinations thus rest on the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who performed it. adv John Franklin Good, Plaintiff, Vs. Board Of County Commissioners Of Shawnee County, Et Al., Defendants. Case No. 01-4067-Rdr United States District Court For The District Of Kansas 2002 U.S. Dist. Lexis 10797 April 22, 2002, Decided. Because certain of the prosecutors’ acts were not done in their role as advocates, they are not shielded by absolute immunity. Leonard R. Milstein, Plaintiff-appellant, v. Stephen L. Cooley; Robert B. Foltz; Countyof Los Angeles, Opinion Defendants-appellees, 257 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001). Kalina, 522 U.S. at 126 (quoting Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273). As the Court explained in Burns: 15 [T]he concern with litigation in our immunity cases is not merely a generalized concern with interference with an official’s duties, but rather is a concern with interference with the conduct closely related to the judicial process . . . . That concern therefore justifies absolute prosecutorial immunity only for actions that are connected with the prosecutor’s role in the judicial proceedings, not for every litigation-inducing conduct. A prosecutor neither is, nor should consider himself to be, an advocate before he has probable cause to have anyone arrested.” Buckley, 509 U.S. at 274. Accordingly, the Court noted that the alleged fabrication occurred well before the grand jury was empaneled. Id. at 275. see Williams, 504 U.S. at 48, such a proposition seemingly runs afoul of Buckley’s rule that a prosecutor cannot function as an advocate before probable cause exists. “a determination of probable cause does not guarantee a prosecutor absolute immunity from liability for all actions taken afterwards. Buckley, 509 U.S. at 275 n.5. In fact, before there is probable cause to arrest or to initiate judicial proceedings, a prosecutor’s “mission . . . [is] entirely investigative in character.” IN THE COURT OF APPEALS STATE OF ARIZONA DIVISION ONE BELLE WHITNEY and JOHN DOE ) 1 CA-SA 12-0171 WHITNEY; ANDREW THOMAS and ) ANN THOMAS, ) ) DEPARTMENT D Petitioners, ) ) MEMORANDUM DECISION v. ) FILED 9/27/2012 of MARICOPA, ) ) LISA RANDALL, individually; ) BRENNA RANDALL, individually; ) TRACY ALLEN individually, ) ) Real Parties in Interest. He may also be without immunity when investigating a crime before there is probable cause to arrest or charge a suspect (see Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, supra, 509 U.S. 259 in which the Supreme Court split five to four on the issue).
El Mujaddid brought several claims pursuant to Common Law, Civil Rights Acts, Human Trafficking Acts and treaties of the United States against the Defendants in the case. The Law Division Trial Court only addressed a handful of his claims ignoring the ones to which no immunity can reside. El Mujaddid argues the Courts findings were in error on several grounds and the case is now before the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey. See Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273-74 (stating that a prosecutor who “plans and executes a [police investigation] . . . has no greater claim to complete immunity than activities of police officers allegedly acting under his direction”) (internal quotation marks omitted), as opposed to actions a prosecutor might “perform[] as part of the preparation of the case, even if they can be characterized as ‘investigative’ or ‘administrative.’” Demery v. Kupperman, 735 F.2d 1139, 1143 (9th Cir. 1984). See Bradley v. Medical Board (1997) While reiterating that prosecutorial immunity extends to acts preparatory to the commencement of a prosecution, even outside the courtroom [citation], the court held that by working ‘hand in hand’ with sheriff’s detectives to fabricate inculpatory evidence, the prosecutors acted not as advocates but as investigators, functionally no different than that of the sheriff or police department. [Citation.] Thus, the conduct was entitled to only qualified immunity.” (Gensburg v. Miller, supra, 31 Cal. App. 4th at pp. 519-520.)
El Mujaddid first filed his action in the United States District Court of New Jersey but the Complaint has yet to be served and is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit because Judge Joseph Ireanas denied El Mujaddid’s motion for service by U.S. Marshall and El Mujaddid has since then taken an Appeal on that specific issue. Several other issues remain relative such as the Probabel Cause Findings against Cumberland County Detective Lynn A. Wehling for violations of the United States Code and the New Jersey Criminal Codes.
After obtaining certain discovery materials constituting evidence of crime El Mujaddid filed Criminal Complaints the City of Vineland Municipal Court. A Deputy Court Administrator of the City of Vineland Municipal Court in accords with the Rules Governing the Courts of New Jersey found probable cause against Lynn A. Wehling on May 1st, 2013 for a violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:13-3 (False Imprisonment), the Municipal Judge pictured below John A. Kasper reviewing and verifying the Court Administrators findings found probable cause himself against the criminal conduct of Lynn A. Wehling violations of 18 U.S. Code § 1581 – Peonage; obstructing enforcement, and he also found probable cause against Lynn A. Wehling for violations of N.J.S.A. 2C:13-8 ( Human Trafficking), N.J.S.A. 2C:30-6 (Crime of Official Deprivation of Civil Rights) aka the Racial Profiling Code See Eradicating Racial Profiling Companion Guide , N.J.S.A. 2C:28-2 (False Swearing) and N.J.S.A. (2C:28-4) False reports to law enforcement authorities.
Municipal Court Judge John A. Kaspar retire Photo, three weeks after finding probable cause against Lynn A. Wehling ending a career that saw five different mayors appoint him to the post over the past 25 years.
Prior to the Probable Cause findings made by Judge Kasper at least two Vineland Police Officers have blown the Whistle speaking from the inside. An investigation by the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office into a local law-enforcement officer’s allegations of corruption within the city’s Police Department ended with a finding of no wrongdoing. Several Months later would prove those claims of finding of no wrongdoing were false.
Officer Ronald Farabella, in a civil suit filed in Cumberland County Superior Court on Jan. 21, alleges his superiors on the force, including Police Chief Timothy Codispoti and current Mayor Robert Romano — who at the time of the events described in the suit was a lieutenant in charge of internal affairs — repeatedly ignored his reports, both written and verbal, of drug-related crimes committed by specific officers.
According to the 10-page suit, Farabella learned about the allegedly illegal police activity through confidential informants, with whom he had worked on cases for the department’s narcotics unit. Farabella considers the sources credible, as their information has lead to arrests and prosecutions in the past, according to the suit.“(Farabella) received on multiple occasions and through multiple sources of information, consistent and disturbing facts with regard to fellow police officers committing crimes within the city, most often focusing on illegal controlled substance use, distribution and participation with known and convicted felons,” reads the suit.
Farabella was ultimately awarded $726,266 by a jury Tuesday afternoon for a whistleblower case involving alleged drug-related activities by officers. Following a trial during the summer of 2014, the jury awarded Farabella $726,266 for economic and emotional damages in his favor, according to the court’s Civil Division Manager Frank Bosco.
Kristian Kirchner, of the Vineland Police Department, filed a complaint against Vineland on June 6 at Cumberland County Superior Court alleging he was the target of retaliation after reporting alleged misconduct by the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office. According to the lawsuit, Kirchner was working on a special assignment with the prosecutor’s office when he was instructed by a supervisor to fulfill a traffic ticket quota.”Plaintiff objected to his supervisor’s instructions and directives for making a quota for traffic stops as he perceived it to be unlawful and/or against a clear mandate of public policy,” the complaint states.
According to the complaint, Kirchner also objected to an alleged order from a supervisor to alter an official police report at the behest of the prosecutor’s office. “Plaintiff objected to the order and refused to alter his official report, believing it to be unlawful,” the complaint states. The complaint further states that Kirchner requested that his supervisors in Vineland report the conduct of the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office to the state Attorney General’s Office, but was told by the supervisor that nothing would happen because Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae is “a black female.”
Prior to all these events and most closely related to the time period of events where El Mujaddid’s property was stolen and unlawfully seized by Corrupt and Disgraced Vineland Police Officer Gamaliel “Gami” Cruz who filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement as a Police Officer. El Mujaddid filed criminal complaints against Cruz in relation to the theft of his property and his illegal conduct in conspiring with Lynn A. Wehling but probable cause was falsely alleged to have not been found by the Judges Heim, Judge Montanez and Judge Thomas North, all whom replaced Judge Kasper and presided over the administration of complaints submitted by El Mujaddid in relation to his property and the crimes committed against him.
Cruz was fired upon being exposed for violating the New Jersey Criminal Code for “False Swearing”, intersting enough false swearing was a charge Kasper found to have existed against Lynn A. Wehling. Both of the Crimes committed by Wehling and Cruz took place in the year 2010. The Prosecutors Office and the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office took steps to decline prosecuting Both Cruz and Wehling with the existence of probable cause for violations of first, second and third degree charges. Wehling is a Anglo American or White Lesbian and Cruz is Haspanic or Latino American. The City of Vineland Council wants a court order declaring void any past actions by its Mayor Bermudez that benefits Cruz the fired officer, attempting to get his job back, but none of the reporters that follow this corruption have yet to reveal the probable cause findings made against Cruz in May 2014.
When Cruz served as a detective in the police department, the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office alleged that he gave false testimony to a judge on Aug. 3, 2010 while seeking a search warrant through the telephone. Because of these charges, approximately 40 cases were thrown out at the time by the prosecutor’s office because of Cruz losing his credibility as a witness in any past, present or future cases. The police department suspended Cruz on March 14, 2011, according to the lawsuit, and hearings were held to decide whether the detective was still able to perform his duties as a law enforcement officer. Cruz was ultimately terminated on May 22, 2012 and he filed an appeal against the decision shortly afterward.
Additionally Both Cruz and Wehling were not subjected to arrest or bail. It is reported that Wehling like Cruz is also no longer formerly employed. Wehling and Cruz have Both brought suits against Cumberland County like El Mujaddid alleging Bias and Discrimination. Wehling at the time of these incidents was a resident of Klanville aka Millville, New Jersey.
In 1990 Millville has approved a permit allowing a small, dissident faction of the Ku Klux Klan to hold a rally Feb. 23 at the site where two dozen robed and hooded Klan members exchanged mud, spit and insults with 300 counter- demonstrators in April. In turns out that on May 1st 2013 Wehling filed a tort claim against the county, alleging that her supervisor sexually harassed her with inappropriate comments dealing with gender and sexual orientation. May 1st, 2013 is the same day El Mujaddid submitted criminal complaints and the same Vineland Court Administrator found probable cause against Wehling in relation to her actions against El Mujaddid, Wehling.
According to the legal document, since about February 2004, Wehling has worked in the county’s Organized Crime Bureau located in Rosenhayn. In 2009, George Chopek another subject of El Mujaddid’s lawsuit, became Wehling’s immediate supervisor as deputy commander of the Narcotics Unit, according to the complaint, and then allegedly began harassing her, Chopek is also her next-door neighbor, according to the claim. “Sergeant Chopek openly called [Wehling] ‘gay’ and referred to her as ‘a guy,’ ‘sir,’ and ‘dude’ in public and in front of other members of the Narcotics Unit,” the claim states. The tort also alleges that Chopek routinely made comments about her sex life. This is very interesting because El Mujaddid claims that Wehling, the County and City discriminated against him, Wehling claims that the County and Chopek discriminated against her and Cruz unsucessfully claimed the County and City discrimianted against him..
Cruz has alleged Discrimination due to his ethnic or national origin and Wehling claiming discrimination due to her gender and sexual preference. All amount to sess pool of claims being swung in Dirty Jersey. Cruz’s lawsuit was unsucessful on the federal level and on the State Level. There has been no reports yet of the disposition of Wehling’s law suit but she is suing for 2.5. Million.
El Mujaddid contends that Wehling owes him at least 2.5. Million for enslaving him, that there is a Peonage charge against her in Limbo because it has been ignored by the Federal Government and that Probable Cause was also found against Cruz for violating the State Human Trafficking and Theft Acts in relation to the incident which cause injury to El Mujaddid but specially upon submission of Criminal Complaints against about his April 21, 2010 conduct as detailed by Abul F. Bey a native of Vineland, New Jersey who appears to have the actual target of Wehling, Chopek and Cruz’s crimes that led to wounding El Mujaddid. No Investigation or Prosecution commenced upon these findings which were made a year after Judge Kasper’s findings all amounting to and demonstrating that in New Jersey Jim Crow is Alive and Welland their is no integrity when it comes to Equal Justice, Equal Benefits of All Laws and Proceedings and Equal Protection under the Law and the Prohibitions against Badges and Incidents of Slavery.
A state court said no to a pair of New Jersey public defenders seeking broad access to confidential civil court documents and police records they contend could shed light on claims of serious corruption inside the Vineland Police Department. The consolidated decision, issued in 2012, largely upholds arguments the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office made opposing the release of the information.Vineland is seeking to fire Cruz for allegedly lying to a state judge while seeking a search warrant. He has retained attorney Stuart Alterman to handle the administrative hearing. That accusation of lying, made both by his own department and the county Prosecutor’s Office, last year forced county Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae to dismiss 39 criminal cases in which he was a prime witness. The office also has had to exclude Cruz as a witness from other cases it continues to prosecute. The removal of Cruz as a potential witness was a major factor in Fineman’s reasoning in denying access to court and police records. Fineman’s decision specifically denied the following five discovery requests: Material from the Farabella lawsuit, which still is in pretrial phase. Documents on the creation of the Vineland Street Crimes Unit. Search warrants, affidavits and police reports. Cruz’s personnel file and Internal Affairs reports about him. Information about attempts by Prosecutor’s Office attorneys to disclose information as required by professional responsibility.
In El Mujaddid’s case Wehling created False Reports which she did not sign in order to avoid Perjury charges and She also prepared bogus criminal complaints to which the language availed against El Mujaddid did not trigger breach of the Statute under the standard set for determining probable cause and to top it off it took El Mujaddid from April 2010 to April 2013 to obtain copies of those Documents all to find that they had never been verified by a Judicial Officer, they had never been signed by a Judicial Officer, they had not even been filed with the Criminal Division all summing up to Malicious Prosecution.
The State level Civil Court extended prosecutorial immunity to Wehling solely on the basis that she is an employee of the prosecutors Office, but El Mujaddid argues that immunity cannot stand as he is raising violations of treaty rights, Federal and State statutory rights some being crime with civil liabilities and private rights of action and that the Defendant’s were acting without color of legal authority and without jurisdiction. El Mujaddid also contends that Wehling provided False Information to the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office, where the criminal case State of New Jersey v. Lynn A. Wehling was forwarded. That the Office of Attorney General was involved with the decision to have the case sent to a county directly next to Wehling’s County in violation of Crime Victims Rights. That Wehling’s background shows training with Cape May County Law Enforcement.
That the Internal Affairs Investigator David Hogan created a False Report based on False Information provided to him by Wehling for purposes of sabotaging the investigation, that he knew Wehling was lying to him when he questioned her about the Criminal Complaints she made against El Mujaddid because he had been provided with copies. Other details show that Hogan sent a letter to El Mujaddid dated on or about August 5th 2013 alleging that his agency did not find any misconduct nor violations of Department Policies. Open public records request revealed that Hogan sent this August 5th dated letter to El Mujaddid two days before he actually interviewed Wehling. El Mujaddid has brought claims in the Criminal Division of the Superior Court through a Notice of Appeal to the decision to dismiss the case by Dara Paley who falsely claimed that there was insufficent evidence to prosecute Wehling and that there was no probable cause and that it would unethical for her to prosecute Wehling. Dara Paley also knew that Wehling had lied to her during the Internal Affairs Investigation. El Mujaddid submitted complaints to the NJ OAG in regards to Paley and Hogan and the NJ OAG reported that hey did not find and misconduct on the part of Hogan and Paley.
William Johnson, former chief of investigators at the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s office.Bryan Littel/The News of Cumberland Count The former chief of detectives for the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office has filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the county, alleging objections to the way investigations and internal affairs procedures were conducted. William T. Johnson, who served as chief of detectives for three years until his termination in September 2013, filed a New Jersey Conscientious Employee Protection Act lawsuit in Gloucester County Superior Court naming Cumberland County, the prosecutor’s office and Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae all as defendants.
When it came to Cruz Webb McRae said to the Associated Press that: “Although it is understandable to desire to protect an informant that you believe may be in danger, there is never a valid reason to lie under oath,”. “The public’s trust that those involved in law enforcement will tell the uncontroverted truth at all time, no matter the consequences, is a cornerstone of the American criminal justice system that must at all costs be safeguarded.” Most of the dismissed cases involve arrests made for various weapon offenses and drug-related charges. Webb-McRae will not prosecute Cruz criminally and the matter is being handled administratively within the police department. Termination proceedings for Cruz are pending, she said.
Later as it relates to El Mujaddid’s case Webb-McRae would send paper work to the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office which is dated precisely one day before the case State v. Wehling is dismissed by Dara Paley acting as Special Deputy Attorney General for the New Jersey Office of Attorney General and Cape May County.
Johnson says in the lawsuit, filed Sept. 9, that various investigations conducted by the prosecutor’s office violated the New Jersey Attorney General’s rules, regulations and guidelines and that internal affairs policies and procedures involved conflicts of interest. In addition, Johnson alleges that the prosecutor’s office violated the civil rights of a member of the community who was incarcerated allegedly without sufficient evidence. The suit provides no additional information on this allegation.
The Following are Excerpts from El Aemer El Mujaddid v. City of Vineland et. al., Opinion issued August 1st , 2014 CAM-L-004550-13 Law Division- Superior Court of New Jersey-Camden Vicinage presided over by Judge Robert G. Millenky the court determined from the Action in Lieu of Prerogative Writs filed by El Mujaddid that:
The plaintiff’s pleading does allege that the defendants violated his constitutional rights pursuant to a policy of Jim Crow racial discrimination against individuals of African descent. Therefore, the court assumes that the individuals are named in their official, as well as their personal capacities, Plaintiff appears to allege his arrest on April 21 2010 was illegal because the warrant that was the basis for the search of the premises was improper and because he subjected to excessive force during the arrest and search of his person. The pleadings also suggest that the subsequent incarceration until May 7, 2010 was discriminatory and caused injury to his health. These facts may state a cause of action for false arrest and unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amendment with respect to his arrest, as well as false imprisonment and cruel treatment in violation of the Eight Amendments. Pages 17-18 “
Plaintiff also appears to claim that officers who prepared inventories of items that were seized during his arrest omitted from those inventories plaintiff’s Moorish identification documents. The pleadings indicate that these inventories were prepared in 2010, after plaintiff’s arrest. The pleadings are unclear as to whether these documents were ever returned to plaintiff and what, if any, constitutional cause of action plaintiff specifically alleges arises out of the alleged incompleteness of these inventories. The court assumes, for the purposes of this motion that the plaintiff alleges his property was illegally confiscated in violation of the Fourth Amendment right and N.J. Const. art. I par. 7 against unreasonable search and seizure and perhaps, in violation of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech and religion. Page 18
Pursuing the prosecution of an individual without probable cause certainly offends procedural due process. Such a circumstance is what plaintiff alleges tok place. Page 26
“Prongs one and four of this analysis are not in dispute in this case because all parties concede there was a criminal proceeding against the plaintiff and that was ultimately dismissed. The question at this juncture is whether the pleadings suggest that there was a lack of probable cause for the proceedings and that the prosecution of plaintiff was actuated by malice. The court finds that Mr. El Mujaddid has alleged a lack of probable cause for first, the criminal action against him, and later, the disorderly person charges against him in municipal court. In addition, Mr. El Mujaddid has raised the prosecution of malice, by alleging that the actions of Lynne Wehling, who was allegedly instrumental in charging him after his arrest, were later subject to criminal investigation. In addition, plaintiff has alleged a scheme of discriminatory conduct by law enforcement and the prosecutors which may also support a finding of malice. Given that a malicious prosecution claim may go forward on the basis of the facts alleged, the court must address the defenses raised by the defendants. Pages 26-27
Procedural due process rules are meant to protect persons not from the deprivation, but from the mistaken or unjustified deprivation of life, liberty, or property. Thus, in deciding what process constitutionally is due in various contexts, the Court repeatedly has emphasized that “procedural due process rules are shaped by the risk of error inherent in the truth-finding process . . . .” Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 344, 96 S.Ct. 893, 907, 47 L.Ed.2d 18 (1976).14 Such rules “minimize substantively unfair or mistaken deprivations of” life, liberty, or property by enabling persons to contest the basis upon which a State proposes to deprive them of protected interests. Fuentes v. Shevin, supra, 407 U.S., at 81, 92 S.Ct., at 1994.
Issues like these are not limited to Vineland and Cumberland County. The Camden County Prosecutor’s Office has dismissed nearly 200 cases since 2009 because of illegalities — proven and suspected — within a special Camden police unit. Three members of the five-officer unit pleaded guilty, one was convicted and the fifth was found not guilty.STAY TUNED TO BE CONTINUED!
The Sabir Bey Show is ‘Pure EDU-TAINMENT’ tackling issues within the community and on the topics of Law, History, Culture, Politics, Religion, Society, and Health by incorporating TRUE Hip Hop and Urban Music in bringing together a full circle of understanding with current culture and society conflicts. The Sabir Bey Show includes guest appearances by award-winning celebrities and respected elders of the Moorish Nation and Pan Africanism.”
The Sabir Bey Show has the mission of bringing “Pure Edu-tainment” to the lives of many by introducing truths, new concepts, current events and History through Entertainment.
Thousands of off-duty police officers thronged around City Hall yesterday, swarming through police barricades to rally on the steps of the hall and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for nearly an hour in the most unruly and angry police demonstration in recent memory.
The 300 uniformed officers who were supposed to control the crowd did little or nothing to stop the protesters from jumping barricades, tramping on automobiles, mobbing the steps of City Hall or taking over the bridge. In some cases, the on-duty officers encouraged the protesters.
While the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association had called the rally to protest Mayor David N. Dinkins’s proposal to create an independent civilian agency that would look into police misconduct, the huge turnout — estimated by the Police Department at 10,000 protesters — and the harsh emotional pitch reflected widespread anger among rank-and-file officers toward the Mayor for his handling of riots against the police in Washington Heights last July, his refusal to give them semiautomatic weapons and his appointment of an outside panel to investigate corruption.
“He never supports us on anything,” said Officer Tara Fanning of the Midtown South Precinct, echoing the view of many in the crowd. “A cop shoots someone with a gun who’s a drug dealer, and he goes and visits the family.” Dinkins Denounces Protest
Mayor Dinkins, who was not at City Hall during the demonstration, denounced the protest as “bordering on hooliganism” and said he held the P.B.A. president, Phil Caruso, responsible for what happened. He accused Mr. Caruso of inciting his members’ passions and suggested the union leader was motivated in part by contract negotiations.
The Mayor also assailed Rudolph W. Giuliani, the probable Republican mayoral candidate, who spoke out against the Mayor at the union rally. Mr. Dinkins said Mr. Giuliani had egged on the protest irresponsibly for political reasons. “He’s clearly, clearly an opportunist,” Mr. Dinkins said. “He’s seizing upon a fragile circumstance in our city for his own political gain.”
Mr. Caruso conceded that the protesters who stormed the bridge had got out of hand. He said he did not sanction their actions, but he added that their anger was understandable and warned that the “administration better wake up to what’s happening.”
“The emotional level did get a little out of control, but sometimes if emotionalism is not evoked publicly, the responsible elements of the community do not listen,” he said.
Mr. Giuliani called the Mayor’s remarks “desperate and offensive.” He denied he had harangued the crowd and said he did not condone demonstrators breaking the law. “The Mayor is dead wrong,” he said. “What I attempted to do was to move them away from City Hall.”
While about 6,000 officers participated in a peaceful rally on Murray Street, more than 4,000 swarmed over police barricades, blocked the entry to City Hall and later marched onto the Brooklyn Bridge, where they tied up traffic for nearly an hour. Neither the leadership of the P.B.A. nor senior officers of the department were able to control them.
In a telling moment, Chief David W. Scott, the highest ranking uniformed officer in the department, was booed down by the crowd when he implored the officers to move off the steps of City Hall. “I’m disappointed in the fact that police officers would violate the law,” Chief Scott said later.
Mr. Caruso and his aides also failed to persuade the splinter group to join the main rally. “Fellas, come on this way,” Mr. Caruso said through a bull horn, his words lost in the cacophony.
The protest began shortly after 10 A.M. as officers who had been bused in from all over the city by the union started to march around City Hall Park. From the onset, the demonstrators’ rhetoric was vicious. Bristling with banners and signs, the column stretched around the entire park and spilled past the blue sawhorse barricades onto Broadway and Park Row. The officers alternated chants of “No justice! No police!” with slogans like “The Mayor’s on Crack.”
Many officers wore T-shirts saying “Dinkins Must Go!” Hundreds carried hand-painted signs with sayings like “Dear Mayor, have you hugged a drug dealer today,” “Dinkins, We Know Your True Color — Yellow Bellied.”
At 10:50 A.M., a few demonstrators chanting “Take the hall! Take the hall!” flooded over the barriers and into the parking lot in front of City Hall, meeting no resistance from the police on guard. Cheering and screaming, thousands of others poured through from every side of the park and seethed up the hall steps. Some mounted automobiles and began a raucous demonstration, denting the cars.
While the rowdier demonstrators refused to leave the City Hall area, most of the group crowded onto Murray Street between Church Street and Broadway, where they listened to sharply worded speeches from Mr. Caruso, Mr. Giuliani and, finally, Michael O’Keefe, the officer who was cleared by a grand jury recently in the shooting death of a Dominican man in Washington Heights. Many officers flooded the bars along Murray Street and drank openly on the street during the speeches. Bridge Blocked
At 11:40 A.M., several thousand of the officers in front of City Hall marched onto the Brooklyn Bridge, again meeting no resistance, while others joined the rally on Murray Street. Ten minutes later, the bridge was blocked in both directions with more than 2,000 officers milling on both roadways. They blocked traffic until about 12:20, when the crowd began to dissipate.
During most of that time, there were no uniformed officers on the bridge, though four officers on scooters arrived shortly after noon. They did virtually nothing to control the crowd. At one point, a New York Times photographer who was taking pictures was surrounded by demonstrators, punched in the back and shoved. A police lieutenant told the photographer, Keith Meyers, that he should leave the bridge. “I can’t protect you up here,” the officer said. A New York Times reporter, Alan Finder, was also kicked in the stomach.
At 12:30 P.M., 40 minutes after the bridge was first blocked, a handful of senior police commanders arrived to talk to the remaining protesters, who had dwindled to about 200. By 12:40, the bridge was reopened.
Asked why the department did not take stronger action to control the protesters, Raymond W. Kelly, the Acting Police Commissioner, said the size and vehemence of the protest had caught police commanders by surprise. He promised a full investigation to determine if any protesters had broken the law and whether on-duty officers were too lenient.
Photos: The level of police anger at Mayor David N. Dinkins for his support of an independent civilian agency that would look into police misconduct brought thousands of off-duty officers to City Hall yesterday. Undeterred by on-duty officers who were supposed to control the crowd, demonstrators jumped barricades and blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. (Keith Meyers/The New York Times) (pg. B1); Rudolph W. Giuliani, left, spoke yesterday at a rally that drew thousands of police officers. The officers were protesting several policies of Mayor David N. Dinkins. (John Sotomayor/The New York Times); Mr. Dinkins denounced the appearance, calling Mr. Giuliani, the probable Republican mayoral candidate, “an opportunist.” (Ruby Washington/The New York Times) (pg. B8)
The Notorious BIG, Tupac and Grandmaster Flash don’t sound like your everyday psychiatrists. But, according to experts at a leading university, songs from these hip-hop artists can help alleviate depression.
Juicy, by The Notorious BIG, and The Message, by Grand Master Flash & The Furious Five, are just two of the songs used by researchers at Cambridge University to help tackle issues surrounding mental health.
Hip-Hop Psych is a new initiative which hopes to use hip-hop to to address issues including stigma towards mental illness and the lack of diversity within the psychiatric profession.
“Much of hip-hop comes from areas of great socioeconomic deprivation, so it’s inevitable that its lyrics will reflect the issues faced by people brought up in these areas, including poverty, marginalisation, crime and drugs,” initiative co-founder Dr Akeem Sule wrote in The Lancet Psychiatry.
“In fact, we can see in the lyrics many of the key risk factors for mental illness, from which it can be difficult to escape. Hip-hop artists use their skills and talents not only to describe the world they see, but also as a means of breaking free.
“There’s often a message of hope in amongst the lyrics, describing the place where they want to be – the cars they want to own, the models they want to date.”
Sule and his fellow co-founder Dr Becky Inkster hope the project will be rolled out into prisons, schools and hostels to promote positive self-esteem.
We’ve had an enormous response from the global community, from patients, prisoners, and parents to artists and fans alike,” says Inkster. “We are overwhelmed and excited by requests from people around the world reaching out to us who want to help. It has been moving to see how honest and open people have been with us.
“It’s been about forty years since hip-hop first began in the ghettos of New York City and it has come a long way since then, influencing areas as diverse as politics and technology. Now we hope to add medicine to the list.”
The West Bronx born and bred culture known as hip-hop commemorates its 40th anniversary this weekend, and the organization that established it—the Universal Zulu Nation—will observe its 41st anniversary. Their theme of “peace, unity, love and havin’ fun” is expected to be displayed throughout four days of events in Brooklyn and Harlem this weekend.
At previous anniversaries, pioneers from the True Skool and Golden Era generations have taken hip-hop aficionados down memory lane to an earlier time, before the fame and celebrity status. Artists usually expressed their art forms, which vividly describe the dilapidated and oppressive social conditions of their environments.
“It wasn’t a fun thing when we said, ‘I am hip-hop!’ The cops were like, ‘No you’re not. Put your hands behind your back,’” reflected hip-hop legend KRS, in his documentary “40 Years of Hip-Hop.” “So people went to jail just ‘cuz that attitude that there was a time when hip-hop was not popular, and they were reppin’ it to the fullest, before it was popular.”
Each year, a global audience from far-off places, such as Africa, Asia, Australia, South America and Europe, congregates in New York City during the second weekend of November, aka Hip-Hop History Month, to experience firsthand all five of hip-hop’s “elements”: DJ-ing, MC-ing, B-boying, graffiti and the knowledge, culture and overstanding. They also indulge in some cultural socializing in a grand display of harmony from throughout the Diaspora.
“Every urban area on the planet Earth is governed by hip-hop,” claims KRS. “What the people are listening to, what the people are trusting each other with, is hip-hop. Doesn’t matter what race, ethnicity or class.”
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the Cold Crush Brothers, Crash Crew, the Force M.D.’s and the Treacherous Three are just some of the legendary acts that have previously provided their presence. Their creative forces were developed during a time when it was done primarily for the love, when individuality and skills garnered attention and respect.
KRS adds, “Everybody else was in designer jeans. We took the cheap jeans, ripped ’em up, wore ’em baggy and was representing hip-hop before it was popular to do it!”
Hip-hop’s founding father, Kool DJ Herc, concludes by explaining how it all got started back in 1973: “I was doing it for fun, for the love of it. We started it, but we never named it. We never looked at it like we were going to make money off of it. We were just enjoying ourselves, and that’s the same feeling I have right now—for the love of it.”
For more information, visit zulunation.com. Watch KRS’ documentary on www.youtube.com
Part – 1
World scientists gather in Durban today to discuss the epidemic sweeping the continent. But still we don’t know how it began. Edward Hooper returns to Uganda where 14 years ago he first charted the scale of that calamity. His fears have been confirmed, he argues: we unwittingly sparked the horror with a contaminated polio vaccine
Sunday July 9, 2000
The catch of fish was good this morning, and because the coffee season is beginning, swollen sacks of beans lie scattered in the dirt like great brown maggots. A few yards away, beside the boats drawn up along the shores of Lake Victoria, the marabou storks skip and glide from one fish head to another. Kasensero looks as dirty and dissolute as it ever did, as the sun burns down on its tumbledown shacks of wood and corrugated iron. Now is the season for making money and the village is full of young fishermen and smugglers, and young women with dyed hair. There is a constant hubbub of shouting and laughter, flirting and argument, intertwined with the Lingala music that booms from the tiny bars and cafes. Although it is not yet noon, many are already drunk.
One mile away, in the relative calm of the landing site at the mouth of the Kagera river, the man in charge tells us that Kasensero never changes – that the young still make money, have sex, and forget to use condoms. This, for me, is a journey back in time. For this small smuggling village is the place that I and a fellow-journalist first visited in 1986, after tales of the cataclysm along Uganda’s southern border began filtering up to Kampala.
The people told us, almost casually, how ‘Slim disease’ had arrived in their midst four or five years earlier, and how more than 100 of Kasensero’s itinerant population of 500 had died since then. Then they called a meeting beneath the big tree, and asked us what to do about it. Acutely aware of our amateur status, we did our best. Use condoms, we said. If you have an injection, make sure the needle is first boiled. By good fortune, the advice was sound, and nowadays it is echoed by posters on display in the village – posters that are all too often ignored. The only thing that has changed in 14 years is the name. These days, everyone calls it Aids.
Happily, the stubborn, hedonistic fatalism of Kasensero is not typical of Uganda as a whole, where the norm nowadays is to ‘love carefully’, to use condoms. Elsewhere in Africa, however, there are still many such venues, and wherever they exist, they fuel infection rates in surrounding areas. So it is that over two-thirds of the estimated 53 million people who have become infected with human immunodeficiency virus type one (HIV-1) since the start of the pandemic have been from Africa.
Back in 1986, we spent four days travelling around Kasensero and its neighboring villages, until we realized that we were witnessing something momentous and strange. Aids had been seen before in specific groups such as gays, drug users and hemophiliacs and in hospital beds across central Africa, but what we were witnessing was the first community-wide Aids epidemic in the world. Men, women and children were all affected, and we rushed back to Europe and America to tell the story.
In 1995 my friend, the late great evolutionary biologist Bill Hamilton, visited to get an update on the situation and brought back sad news about the men who had escorted us through the villages in 1986 – the tall, dignified district chairman, Joseph Ssebyoto-Lutaya, and the ever-smiling medical assistant, Jimmy Ssemambo. Both had died of Aids.
Now, 14 years after that initial visit, I call at Joseph’s house, in the village of Kyebe, near Kasensero, to offer my respects. His wife, it turns out, died a few months after him, but their 10 children all survive, and thankfully all look healthy. The younger ones are still cared for by their grandparents, who live in the house next door to Joseph’s, beside the concrete graves among the banana trees. These children are lucky. So many houses around here now lie deserted, abandoned – their former occupants either dead, or scattered to the winds.
I am here in Uganda with a Channel 4-news team, to help them prepare a front-line report ahead of the thirteenth International Conference on Aids, which opens in Durban today. There has been a belated acceleration of interest in Aids and Africa over the past few months. Partly this has been because of the conference, but partly because of other events including the ill-judged comments of South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, questioning whether HIV actually causes Aids, which have provided unmerited oxygen for the moribund hypothesis of Professor Peter Duesberg. And at long last, international donors such as the US and Britain have made significant contributions.
In addition, my book The River seems to have ignited a major scientific debate about how Aids started in Africa. This pleases me, for the book was an obsession and a labour of love. It took more than nine years to research and write and included more than 600 interviews with scientists. What I was stunned to discover was that a perfectly sound and scientific explanation for the origin of Aids had been casually – and irresponsibly – dismissed by the scientific establishment. Now, as a result of the controversy, a two-day conference on ‘The Origins of HIV and Aids’ will be held at the Royal Society in London in September.
My central hypothesis was that the Aids pandemic was sparked by an experimental oral polio vaccine (OPV) called CHAT, which was fed to more than a million infants, children and adults in the former Belgian colonies of central Africa between 1957 and 1960. It is now accepted that the immediate ancestor of HIV-1 is the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) of the common chimpanzee. In the late Fifties, polio vaccines were grown in cells from monkey kidneys, but evidence suggests that some batches of the CHAT vaccine fed in Africa were, uniquely, produced in chimp cells.
By contrast, the hypothesis to which most Aids researchers still subscribe is that a hunter or market-woman originally acquired the virus, perhaps with cut hands, who butchered a chimp for bushmeat. When asked ‘Why now?’ (For chimps have been hunted and eaten since time immemorial), the reply of ‘cut hunter’ proponents is that it was probably decolonisation, leading to urbanization and new sexual interactions, that allowed the newly acquired chimp virus to break free from its rural hearth. Then to proliferate an urban environment, and then to spread across Africa.
On the face of it, the cut-hunter theory seems plausible. On the other hand, the CHAT hypothesis fits the known facts considerably better. For example, it is now known that the CHAT researchers had a chimpanzee camp at Lindi, just outside Stanleyville (now Kisangani) in the then Belgian Congo, and that between 1956 and 1958, some 400 chimpanzees were held there, of which nearly 300 were first used to test the polio vaccine, and then sacrificed. According to a growing number of witnesses, both kidneys and blood were extracted shortly before sacrifice, and were then dispatched in flasks to Philadelphia and to Belgium, the two places where the CHAT vaccine used in Africa was made.
Then there are the astounding correlations between CHAT vaccination sites and early Aids. Fully 64 per cent of the first Aids cases seen in Africa (up to and including 1980) come from the same towns and villages (all in the former Belgian colonies of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi) where CHAT was fed in the Fifties. Furthermore, every single one of the 46 earliest HIV-positive blood samples from Africa comes from within 140 miles of a CHAT vaccination site.
Reviews of the River have generally acknowledged that the CHAT theory is plausible, albeit unproven. However, earlier this year, researchers led by Bette Korber placed the last common ancestor of all the HIV-1 variants seen today (which she called ‘the Eve virus’) in 1931, plus or minus 10 to 20 years. Since this was before the CHAT trials began, Korber pronounced the polio vaccine theory ‘highly unlikely’.
Many US journalists assumed that this theoretical data settled the issue, which it most certainly did not. Korber’s mentor and former boss, Gerry Myers, will oppose her position at the Royal Society conference pointing out that Korber’s dating says nothing about when chimpanzee SIVs transferred to humans and that the new data supports the CHAT theory better than the cut-hunter position.
This and other counter-arguments to CHAT will all be addressed at the London meeting. It is worth noting, however, that none of the opposing scientists has thus far come up with data or arguments to refute the theory.
Hamilton, who was a leading scientific supporter of the CHAT theory for many years, initially proposed the conference. In January, he traveled to Kisangani (by then in the midst of civil war) to collect shit samples from chimpanzees to see whether any were SIV-infected. Tragically, he contracted malaria and, shortly after his return to England, died. Since then, there has been a concerted attempts by some of those who made the vaccine, or who support the cut-hunter theory, to scupper the conference. First, several ‘cut-hunters’ who had previously agreed to speak, withdrew. They later relented, but only after the meeting was postponed from May to September, and they had been allotted extra speakers.
Meanwhile, a series of extraordinary public and private attacks have been mounted against Hamilton, myself and others who believe that the CHAT theory deserves a fair hearing, accusing all involved with organizing the London meeting of being enemies of science.
In fact, there are sound reasons for having the debate that so many wish to stifle. One is that knowledge of how a disease began often leads to a better understanding of how to cure, prevent or alleviate it. Another is that the CHAT story has important implications for future medical and scientific practice, at a time when we may be about to embark on other well-meaning, and potentially even more dangerous, biomedical interventions. These include xenotransplantation (placing animal organs in humans, together with whichever undiscovered viruses may be lurking within), and trials of live Aids vaccines (which have the potential to recombine with existing HIV variants, to devastating effect).
In June 1981, a German missionary doctor, Margerete Bundschuh, saw five women from the Ugandan border regions with unusual bacterial infections of the groin and anus, together with a man whose penis was ‘half rotted off’. Much later, she wrote to me to explain her sense that these conditions were complicated by serious immune-deficiency: ‘We had the impressions – sex infection, three to six months of slow deterioration, then acute disease and death. At that time, there was no long stage of undetectable Aids.’ Bundschuh worked at Mugana hospital, in northern Tanzania, on the smugglers’ road leading to Lake Victoria and Kasensero, which would witness its first cases a few months later.
In Tanzania, the new condition was christened ‘Juliana’ by local people; in Uganda, ‘Slim’. This detail alone – that non-specialists realized a new disease had arrived – destroys the claims by Peter Duesberg that the Aids epidemic in Africa is merely a collection of ancient diseases, to which Western doctors have ascribed a new name.
So how did HIV-1 arrive along the Uganda/Tanzania borders? This coffee-growing region receives many Hutu migrant workers from Burundi and Rwanda, so it is possible that one of these was the carrier. However, there is an alternative explanation.
In the early Sixties, hundreds of thousands of Tutsi refugees fled ethnic violence in Rwanda. In 1962, 3,000 of them were transferred to this region, and encouraged to settle. They came from Butare and Nyanza, two of the four ‘territories’ where CHAT vaccine was administered in Rwanda. Shortly afterwards, a two-year-old child from one of the settlement villages died of aggressive Kaposi’s sarcoma – a possible early case of Aids.
This same region later experienced a series of upheavals. In 1978, Idi Amin’s army invaded the Kagera salient of northern Tanzania, and Julius Nyerere summoned 45,000 troops to oppose him. For three months they trained intensively for the counter-invasion.
Seven thousand men from the 207th brigade camped out on an open, grassy plain beside the village of Bugandika. Local men told us that there were many instances of rape and that: ‘Soldiers came and went from village houses. There were many divorces. Girls and mothers came here from far away for meat and beer.’ Bugandika lies just nine miles from Mugana hospital, at the foot of the smugglers’ road.
It seems likely that someone who spent time at that camp, a soldier or a female visitor, was already infected with HIV and that – just as with the gay bath-houses in America at around the same time – a seed was planted in a fertile environment. From Bugandika, the 207th took a route north which was different to those of other Tanzanian brigades. It crossed into Uganda at Joseph Ssebyoto-Lutaya’s village, Kyebe, and then moved north through Kyotera and Masaka to Kampala, which it occupied until the Tanzanian withdrawal in 1981. By 1987, a quarter of the women in Masaka and Kampala were HIV-positive, while Kyebe and Kyotera were famous as epicenters of Aids.
In 1987 Uganda initiated the first Aids Control Programme in Africa, and began a campaign of health education that continues to this day, with posters, TV ads, lessons in schools and villages, and the popular radio show Straight Talk. The rewards are there to be seen. A few days ago, President Yoweri Museveni announced that national (adult) HIV-prevalence had fallen from 30 per cent in 1992 to fewer than 10 per cent today.
www.informationclearinghouse.info
Death of Free Internet is Imminent Canada Will Become Test Case By Kevin Parkinson
21/07/08 “Global Research www.globalresearch.ca/?p=9627 ” — – In the last 15 years or so, as a society we have had access to more information than ever before in modern history because of the Internet. There are approximately 1 billion Internet users in the world B and any one of these users can theoretically communicate in real time with any other on the planet. The Internet has been the greatest technological achievement of the 20th century by far, and has been recognized as such by the global community.
The free transfer of information, uncensored, unlimited and untainted, still seems to be a dream when you think about it. Whatever field that is mentioned- education, commerce, government, news, entertainment, politics and countless other areas- have been radically affected by the introduction of the Internet. And mostly, it’s good news, except when poor judgements are made and people are taken advantage of. Scrutiny and oversight are needed, especially where children are involved.
However, when there are potential profits open to a corporation, the needs of society don’t count. Take the recent case in Canada with the behemoths, Telus and Rogers rolling out a charge for text messaging without any warning to the public. It was an arrogant and risky move for the telecommunications giants because it backfired. People actually used Internet technology to deliver a loud and clear message to these companies and that was to scrap the extra charge. The people used the power of the Internet against the big boys and the little guys won.
However, the issue of text messaging is just a tiny blip on the radar screens of Telus and another company, Bell Canada, the two largest Internet Service Providers (ISP’S) in Canada. Our country is being used as a test case to drastically change the delivery of Internet service forever. The change will be so radical that it has the potential to send us back to the horse and buggy days of information sharing and access.
In the upcoming weeks watch for a report in Time Magazine that will attempt to smooth over the rough edges of a diabolical plot by Bell Canada and Telus, to begin charging per site fees on most Internet sites. The plan is to convert the Internet into a cable-like system, where customers sign up for specific web sites, and then pay to visit sites beyond a cutoff point.
From my browsing (on the currently free Internet) I have discovered that the ‘demise’ of the free Internet is slated for 2010 in Canada, and two years later around the world. Canada is seen a good choice to implement such shameful and sinister changes, since Canadians are viewed as being laissez fair, politically uninformed and an easy target. The corporate marauders will iron out the wrinkles in Canada and then spring the new, castrated version of the Internet on the rest of the world, probably with little fanfare, except for some dire warnings about the ‘evil’ of the Internet (free) and the CEO’s spouting about ‘safety and security’. These buzzwords usually work pretty well.
What will the Internet look like in Canada in 2010? I suspect that the ISP’s will provide a “package” program as companies like Cogeco currently do. Customers will pay for a series of websites as they do now for their television stations. Television stations will be available on-line as part of these packages, which will make the networks happy since they have lost much of the younger market which are surfing and chatting on their computers in the evening. However, as is the case with cable television now, if you choose something that is not part of the package, you know what happens. You pay extra.
And this is where the Internet (free) as we know it will suffer almost immediate, economic strangulation. Thousands and thousands of Internet sites will not be part of the package so users will have to pay extra to visit those sites! In just an hour or two it is possible to easily visit 20-30 sites or more while looking for information. Just imagine how high these costs will be.
At present, the world condemns China because that country restricts certain websites. “They are undemocratic; they are removing people’s freedom; they don’t respect individual rights; they are censoring information,” are some of the comments we hear. But what Bell Canada and Telus have planned for Canadians is much worse than that. They are planning the death of the Internet (free) as we know it, and I expect they’ll be hardly a whimper from Canadians. It’s all part of the corporate plan for a New World Order and virtually a masterstroke that will lead to the creation of billions and billions of dollars of corporate profit at the expense of the working and middle classes.
There are so many other implications as a result of these changes, far too many to elaborate on here. Be aware that we will all lose our privacy because all websites will be tracked as part of the billing procedure, and we will be literally cut off from 90% of the information that we can access today. The little guys on the Net will fall likes flies; Bloggers and small website operators will die a quick death because people will not pay to go to their sites and read their pages.
Ironically, the only medium that can save us is the one we are trying to save- the Internet (free). This article will be posted on my Blog, www.realitycheck.typepad.com
I would welcome a letter to the editor of the Standard Freeholder from a spokesperson from Bell Canada or Telus telling me that I am absolutely wrong in what I have written, and that no such changes to the Internet are being planned, and that access to Internet sites will remain FREE in the years to come. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to write to the media, ask questions, phone the radio station, phone a friend, or think of something else to prevent what appears to me to be inevitable.
Maintaining Internet (free) access is the only way we have a chance at combatting the global corporate takeover, the North American Union, and a long list of other deadly deeds that the elite in society have planned for us. Yesterday was too late in trying to protect our rights and freedoms. We must now redouble our efforts in order to give our children and grandchildren a fighting chance in the future.
Author’s website: http://realitycheck.typepad.com/ www.constantcontact.com/safesubscribe.jspwww.informationclearinghouse.info/fair_use.htm
YouTube, a popular Web site for free sharing of online videos, is increasingly being used by communities, youths, progressive movements and radicals worldwide to expose injustice, protest the horrors of imperialist war, and promote revolutionary ideas to a global audience.
At the same time, U.S. corporate monopolies–including YouTube’s owner,Google, and rivals like Viacom and NBC Universal–are battling to exercise control over the site’s contents and censor those voices that interfere with their goal of turning it into a profit-making machine.
Created by three former PayPal employees in 2005, YouTube now streams more than 200 million videos and adds 200,000 new videos to its library daily. It is a truly global phenomenon, with viewers outside the U.S. watching 70 percent of all videos streamed.
(Associated Press, May 20)
According to the Toronto Star, the site has 40 million visitors monthly, and the number is climbing.
YouTube’s creators sold the site last year for $1.65 billion in Google stock. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, two of the creators who remain spokespeople for YouTube, seem content to accommodate Google’s moves to introduce aggressive advertising on the site, develop software capable of censoring material objectionable to advertisers and the state, and clamp down on posting of so-called copyright-protected materials, like clips from TV shows and Hollywood films. But the site, with its millions of users worldwide, has far outgrown the proprietary claims of any individuals or corporation. It has become a truly mass, participatory forum and should be the common property of all.
Police terror exposed
In the U.S., the most dramatic effect of mass YouTube use has been to expose cases of police brutality—incidents that otherwise would have been completely covered up by the cops or quickly silenced by the mainstream media. And thanks to features allowing users to easily share videos, these exposures can spread like wildfire. In November 2006, no fewer than three cases of brutality by the Los Angeles Police Department were exposed via YouTube videos.
William Cardenas was punched in the face repeatedly by cops, who accused him of being a “gang member.” The FBI was forced to open an investigation into violations of Cardenas’ civil rights after the video was widely seen. A second video showed cops beating a restrained prisoner in a police cruiser.
The third—shot on a camera phone in the University of California-Los Angeles Library—showed police shooting with taser guns Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a 23-year-old Iranian-born student, because he had forgotten his ID. The video also shows angry students demanding the cops’ names and protesting the violation of Tabatabainejad’s civil rights. A cop then threatened to attack these students, too. (MoJo
Blog, Nov. 16, 2006)
Based on this video evidence, Tabatabainejad has now brought a lawsuit against the LAPD.
These exposures have sown fear among cops and concern throughout the capitalist state. In today’s world of high technology combined with growing repression, every worker is a potential George Holliday—the amateur videographer who captured the brutal LAPD beating of Rodney King in 1991.
The phenomenon isn’t limited to Los Angeles. From Pennsylvania to Florida, from Middleport, N.Y., to Denver, YouTube has been used as a
platform to expose cop terror.
After Michigan State University students were arrested protesting a Minuteman bigot in East Lansing on April 19, organizers posted videos showing the police use of excessive force, witness statements, and interviews with university administrators exposing their collaboration with the racists.
And when police attacked immigrant rights demonstrators in both Los Angeles and New York on May Day, YouTube was used to rapidly spread the word.
Outside the U.S., forces fighting back against imperialism have adopted the medium as well. You can watch videos explaining the views, methods and aims of the revolutionary movement in Nepal, witness May Day marches in India and Turkey, or watch subtitled films from Cultural Revolution-era China that are unlikely to ever see commercial release on DVD.
Corporate media in the U.S. and Israel reacted with outrage in May when clips of “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” appeared on YouTube. This children’s show, produced by the Palestinian Hamas movement, promotes resistance to U.S. imperialism and Israeli occupation and ishosted by a Mickey Mouse-like character called Farfur. Pentagon hypocrisy Of course, it’s not only anti-imperialists who are using this technology. The Minutemen and other Klan types use it. And now the Pentagon has joined in, hoping to exploit YouTube as a recruiting device by showing clips of U.S. troops triumphant in battles with “the enemy” in Iraq.
The Pentagon launched the “Multi-National Forces Iraq” channel in March. The Los Angeles Times reported that the channel was viewed more than 120,000 times in its first month.
Now–not coincidentally—the Defense Department has put a blanket ban on the use of YouTube and 12 other popular information-sharing sites by U.S. military personnel.
CNN reported May 14: “Iraqi insurgents and their supporters have been posting videos on YouTube at least since last fall. The Army recently began posting videos on YouTube showing soldiers defeating insurgents and befriending Iraqis.
“But the new rules mean many military personnel won’t be able to watch those achievements–at least not on military computers. … Defense Department computers and networks are the only ones available to many
soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Nobody’s buying the government’s claim that the ban is needed to save Defense Department bandwidth. It’s an obvious ploy to keep angry and demoralized U.S. troops from exposing the dire quagmire they find themselves in or posting videos of Pentagon abuses.
Many military families have expressed outrage, since these sites were one of the few ways soldiers could keep in touch with their loved ones at home. Next up is the 2008 presidential election–already dubbed the “YouTube Election” by some mainstream pundits. Democratic Party candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are making extensive use of the site. YouTube and MySpace, the social networking Web site owned by Rupert Murdoch, are both co-sponsoring primary debates of the Democratic and Republican candidates.(Los Angeles Times, May 20) Battle for control
The corporate struggle to dominate YouTube and profit from its popularity has many similarities to the battle over file-sharing programs like Napster, which peaked a few years ago with music-industry lawsuits against students (in some cases, minors) for
swapping music files. While free file sharing still exists, much of it has been co-opted by pay-per-song sites and file-protected CDs.
However, in the case of YouTube, there is a basis for a much broader struggle based on the mass, participatory character of video file sharing—of which the exposures of police brutality are powerful examples.
Again, the public battle lines are being drawn over the issue of “copyright protection” and “intellectual property” by mammoth media companies.
But this is really just a smokescreen. It amounts to positioning by the media monopolies for a bigger cut of the profits once a way is eventually found to turn free video sharing into a controllable, profitable business model.
The real action is going on behind the scenes–the moves to introduce a video advertising component to YouTube and to develop software to curtail the site’s free-for-all contents and make it more “advertiser friendly.”
The posture of the U.S. capitalist political establishment at this juncture seems to be to let this process of “free market censorship” play itself out rather than mount a frontal assault on those who use the site for progressive and revolutionary ends. Of course, there is no guarantee that this will remain the case.
Who will control new technology?
Workers World wrote about file-sharing: “The controversy over Napster raises important issues for the international workers’ movement. Chief among them is: Who will control the revolutionary new technology that allows the free exchange of music, art and all kinds of information? “Will it be dominated by capitalists seeking profit? Or will workers and oppressed people control it?” (“Napster and the right to free music,” WW, Aug. 10, 2000)
YouTube is another example of how technology has outgrown the constraints of private property and capitalism. What could be more natural than for people to freely share videos with their community, family or comrades, down the block or across the ocean?
Yet capitalism must find a way to constrain, control and censor so that the profit system isn’t compromised. The genie must be shoved back into the bottle by any means necessary.
What is needed is an international struggle for control by YouTube users, along with communities,
DOWNLOAD US SVCP Flow Chart: http://www.boydgraves.com/flowchart
Click Here: AIDS is caused by a tool of the viral cancer re…
http://www.winstonsmith.net/How%20aids%20was%20invented_intro.htm
Click Here: What You Should Know About Small Pox & Antrax
http://www.winstonsmith.net/initialpage.htm
Click Here: The History of the Development of AIDS
http://www.boydgraves.com/timeline
Click Here: LEADING AIDS ORIGIN AUTHOR ENDORSES DR.GRAVES, …
http://www.boydgraves.com/letters/040602.html
Click Here: HIV/AIDS Made In America? – Graves Gets His Day…
http://www.rense.com/general38/made.htm
Click Here: HIV/AIDS Made In America? – Global Black News (…
http://www.globalblacknews.com/AIDS.html
Click Here: Boyd E. Graves, J.D. The Man Who Solved AIDS
http://www.boydgraves.com/graves/
Click Here: NEWS: Dr. Boyd E. Graves / U.S. Special Virus R…
http://www.boydgraves.com/
Click Here: 1. Why We Will Never Win the War on AIDS
http://fusmail.franciscan.edu/ratnerfiles.nsf/0/178c13338e89d2e585256a01005735c3?OpenDocument
Click Here: 2. Why We Will Never Win the War on AIDS
http://www.oralchelation.com/viewpoint/karl_loren/virus3.htm
Click Here: AIDS: The Untold Story
http://www.radioliberty.com/aiduntld.htm
Click Here: Horowitz on the US Special Virus, Boyd Graves, …
http://www.boydgraves.com/news/101502.html
Click Here: The Invention of AIDS by Boyd E. Graves, J.D.
http://www.boydgraves.com/class/invention.html
Click Here: The Invention of AIDS by Boyd E. Graves, J.D.
http://www.boydgraves.com/class/invention.html
“AIDS WAS CREATED BY U.S”
Dr. Boyd E. Graves pictured in the Buckeye Review July 11, 2001. Dr. Graves’ activism for the immediate review of the mostly secret U.S. Special Virus program prompted Ohio Congressman James Trafficant to call for an immediate investigation into the US SVCP budget which spent over $550 million tax payer dollars to make HIV/AIDS. Congressman Trafficant’s request for immediate review was sent to the U.S. Comptroller General July 19, 2001.
THE INVENTION OF AIDS
by Boyd E. Graves, J.D. boyded2001@yahoo.com
Do people with HIV/AIDS owe royalties to the patent holder of the AIDS virus? In April 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo filed a United States patent application for his invention, the HIV/AIDS Virus. Normally when a patent is filed and approved, as Dr. Gallo’s was, anyone who uses the product or invention owes a royalty payment to the inventor. Thus, holding the intellectual property laws to their fullest interpretations, one must only wonder why Dr. Gallo has yet to file a lawsuit seeking to recover damages from the usage of his invention?
As odd as this scenario may sound, it bears need for additional scrutiny. The scientific evidence is complete and compelling, the AIDS Virus is a designer bi-product of the U.S. Special Virus program. The Special Virus program was a federal virus development program that persisted in the United States from 1962 until 1978. The U.S. Special Virus was then added as ‘compliment’ to vaccine inoculations in Africa and Manhattan. Shortly thereafter the world was overwhelmed with mass infections of a human retrovirus that differed from any known human disease, it was highly contagious and more importantly, it could kill.
A review of the Special Virus Flow Chart (“research logic”) reveals the United States was seeking a ‘virus particle’ that would negatively impact the defense mechanisms of the immune system. The program sought to modify the genome of the virus particle in which to splice in an animal “wasting disease” called “Visna”. According to the Proceedings of the United States of America, AIDS is an evolutionary, laboratory development of the peculiar Visna Virus, first detected in Icelandic sheep.
Recently, American and world scientists confirm with 100% certainty the laboratory genesis of AIDS. This fact is further underscored when one reviews the ‘multiply-spliced’ nature of the HIV ‘tat’ gene and Dr. Gallo’s 1971 Special Virus paper, “Reverse Transcriptase of Type-C virus Particles of Human Origin”.
Dr. Gallo’s 1971 Special Virus paper is identical to his 1984 announcement of AIDS. Upon further review the record reveals that he filed his patent on AIDS, before he made the announcement with Secretary Heckler. Earlier this year, Dr. Gallo conceded his role as a ‘Project Officer’ for the federal virus development program, the Special Virus.
The Flow Chart of the program and the 15 progress reports are irrefutable evidence of the United States’ secret plan to cull world populations via the unleashing of a stealth biological microorganism that would ‘waste’ humanity. In light of this true genesis of the world’s most divesting biological scourge, it is the United States that owes ‘royal’ payments to the innocent victims. Each and every victim of AIDS is deserving of a formal apology and a sense of economic closure for an invention of death and despair, perpetrated by the United States.
The eyes of the world are upon the General Accounting Office’s Health Care Team, under the direction of William J. Scanlon. Between 1964 and 1978, the secret federal virus program spent $550 million dollars of taxpayer money to invent AIDS. It is now necessary to spend whatever it takes to dismantle an invention that has led to the greatest crime against humanity in the history of the world.
~~~Additional Resources~~~
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DONATE On-line: http://www.boydgraves.com/donate
CONTACT Us: http://www.boydgraves.com/contact
WRITE to US Congress: http://www.congress.org
RESEARCH Archives: : http://www.boydgraves.com/order/order.html
FORWARD to Friends:
————————————————————————
“We must let nature determine the finish line, not man.
We are greater than any federal virus program, we are the human race.”
Dr. Boyd E. Graves, U.S. Supreme Court Case No. 00-9587
World War AIDS
Click Here: The Invention of AIDS by Boyd E. Graves, J.D.
http://www.boydgraves.com/class/invention.html
DOWNLOAD US SVCP Flow Chart: http://www.boydgraves.com/flowchart
Click Here: AIDS is caused by a tool of the viral cancer re…
http://www.winstonsmith.net/How%20aids%20was%20invented_intro.htm
Click Here: What You Should Know About Small Pox & Antrax
http://www.winstonsmith.net/initialpage.htm
Click Here: The History of the Development of AIDS
http://www.boydgraves.com/timeline
Click Here: LEADING AIDS ORIGIN AUTHOR ENDORSES DR.GRAVES, …
http://www.boydgraves.com/letters/040602.html
Click Here: HIV/AIDS Made In America? – Graves Gets His Day…
http://www.rense.com/general38/made.htm
Click Here: HIV/AIDS Made In America? – Global Black News (…
http://www.globalblacknews.com/AIDS.html
Click Here: Boyd E. Graves, J.D. The Man Who Solved AIDS
http://www.boydgraves.com/graves/
Click Here: NEWS: Dr. Boyd E. Graves / U.S. Special Virus R…
http://www.boydgraves.com/
Click Here: 1. Why We Will Never Win the War on AIDS
http://fusmail.franciscan.edu/ratnerfiles.nsf/0/178c13338e89d2e585256a01005735c3?OpenDocument
Click Here: 2. Why We Will Never Win the War on AIDS
http://www.oralchelation.com/viewpoint/karl_loren/virus3.htm
Click Here: AIDS: The Untold Story
http://www.radioliberty.com/aiduntld.htm
Click Here: Horowitz on the US Special Virus, Boyd Graves, …
http://www.boydgraves.com/news/101502.html
Click Here: The Invention of AIDS by Boyd E. Graves, J.D.
http://www.boydgraves.com/class/invention.html
Click Here: The Invention of AIDS by Boyd E. Graves, J.D.
http://www.boydgraves.com/class/invention.html
Copyright Zygote Media 1998-2001
Prisons ban books over fear of radicals
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press WriterSun Jun 10, 2:01 PM ET
Inmates at the federal prison camp in Otisville, N.Y., were stunned by what they saw at the chapel library on Memorial Day — hundreds of books had disappeared from the shelves.
The removal of the books is occurring nationwide, part of a long-delayed, post-Sept. 11 federal directive intended to prevent radical religious texts, specifically Islamic ones, from falling into the hands of violent inmates.
Three inmates at Otisville filed a lawsuit over the policy, saying their Constitutional rights were violated. They say all religions were affected.
“The set of books that have been taken out have been ones that we used to minister to new converts when they come in here,” inmate John Okon, speaking on behalf of the prison’s Christian population, told a judge last week.
Okon said it was unfortunate because “I have really seen religion turn around the life of some of these men, especially in the Christian community.”
The government maintained that that the new rules don’t entirely clear the shelves of prison chapel libraries.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Feldman told U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain that prison libraries limited the number of books for each religion to between 100 and 150 under the new rules. He said officials would expand the number after choosing a new list of permitted books.
Feldman said the removal order stemmed from an April 2004 Department of Justice review of the way prisons choose Muslim religious services providers. It is not exactly clear why it took so long for the order to be put into effect, but prison officials said they needed time to examine a long list of books.
Feldman said the study was made out of a concern that prisons “had been radicalized by inmates who were practicing or espousing various extreme forms of religion, specifically Islam, which exposed security risks to the prisons and beyond the prisons to the public at large.”
Feldman said the review by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons concluded that prison chapel libraries were not adequately supervised.
“The presence of extremist chaplains, contractors or volunteers in the BOP’s correctional facilities can pose a threat to institutional security and could implicate national security if inmates are encouraged to commit terrorist acts against the United States,” the bureau’s report said.
The review suggested audio and video monitoring of worship areas and chapel classrooms and screening of religious service providers. It also recommended that prisons reduce inmate-led religious services and consider constant staff monitoring of inmate-led services.
A Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman in Washington did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Feldman said inmates are permitted to order books on their own and bypass the chapel libraries. “So fundamentally this is not a case about what books the inmates have the ability to read,” he said.
However, inmates say the rules have had a chilling effect.
Inmate Moshe Milstein told the judge by telephone that the chaplain at Otisville removed about 600 books from the chapel library on Memorial Day, including Harold S. Kushner’s best-seller “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” a book that Norman Vincent Peale said was “a book that all humanity needs.”
“There is definitely irreparable harm done to us already, and we would like the court to issue the injunction to get the books back as soon as possible,” he said.
Inmate Douglas Kelly, who described himself as a representative of the prison’s Muslim community, complained of “a denial of our First Amendment rights.”
He said books on Islam already were the least represented in the library’s collections and were reduced by half in the Memorial Day removal.
“A lot of what we are missing were definitely prayer books or prayer guides and religious laws on the part of the Muslim faith,” he said.
The judge said the lawsuit might be premature because the inmates had not yet followed prison administrative complaint procedures. She declined to block the book removals, the remedy sought by the lawsuit.
Ron Kuby, a civil rights lawyer who has represented a former head Islamic chaplain banned from the state prison system after he was accused of making extremist statements, called the prison book removal “a mass Memorial Day book burning.”
But he also said there might be limits to relief the prisoners can seek because prisoners’ First Amendment rights are severely limited.
“When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it–at that moment you begin to die; and I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about justice.”
– Mumia Abu-Jamal
organizations of workers and oppressed people, and unions, to ensure the right of the people to use the service, end corporate domination and rout the apologists for imperialism and racism.
It’s a fight that can’t be confined to the computer keyboard. It must come out into the streets, as exemplified by those who are using the technology today to expose police brutality. Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and
distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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THE CHEROKEE NATION, ET AL. v. THE UNITED STATES
Appeal No. 5-66, Ind. Cl. Comm. Docket No. 190, 12 Ind. Cl.
Comm. 570
UNITED STATES COURT OF CLAIMS
180 Ct. Cl. 181; 1967 U.S. Ct. Cl. LEXIS 80
May 12, 1967, Decided
DISPOSITION: [**1]
Affirmed.
SYLLABUS:
ON APPEAL FROM THE INDIAN CLAIMS COMMISSION
Indian claims; appeal from Indian Claims Commission. — The Indian petitioners appeal from a decision of the Indian Claims Commission (12 Ind.
Cl.
Comm. 570 (1963)) dismissing their suit under the Indian Claims Commission Act, 25 U.S.C. § 70a, in which appellants had claimed that their Treaty of July 19, 1866, 14 Stat. 799, guaranteeing former Cherokee slaves the rights of native Cherokees, was procuredby duress exerted by agents of the United States, that the tribe acted under a unilateral mistake of fact as to the true meaning of the treaty, that their concessions to the freedmen were made without consideration, and that the United States dealt with them in a manner less than fair and honorable. It is held that on the basis of the record on appeal the court concludes that the Commission’s decision is supported by substantial evidence
and that the Commission correctly applied the law to the facts of the case. The decision of the Commission is affirmed.
COUNSEL:
Paul M. Niebell, attorney of record, for appellants. Earl Boyd Pierce, George E. Norvell, Robert D. Hudson, and Oscar C. Essman, of counsel. [**2] Frederick C. Ward, Jr., with whom was Assistant Attorney General Edwin L. Weisl, Jr., for appellee. Wilma C. Martin, of counsel.
JUDGES:
Cowen, Chief Judge, Laramore, Durfee, Davis, Collins, Skelton, and Nichols, Judges.
OPINIONBY: PER CURIAM OPINION:
[*182] This is an appeal from a decision of the Indian Claims Commission (12 Ind. Cl. Comm. 570 (1963)) dismissing appellant’s suit under Section 2
(3)
and (5) of the Indian Claims Commission Act, 25 U.S.C. § 70a, for revision of that part of the Treaty of July 19, 1866, 14 Stat. 799, which provided that former Cherokee slaves (the so-called Cherokee freedmen) should have all the rights of native Cherokees.The claim was that (a) the Cherokee Nation agreed to this portion of the treaty as a result of duress exerted by the agents of
the Federal Government; (b) the Nation acted under a unilateral mistake of fact as to the meaning and reach of the treaty; (c) no proper consideration was provided by the United States for the tribal property which flowed to the freedmen as a result of the treaty; and (d) the dealings of the United States with the Cherokee Nation with respect to this matter were not fair and honorable. Recovery [**3] was sought of the value of that portion of the tribal funds and lands which had been distributed to the freedmen(as members of the Cherokee Nation).
A trial was had. In a detailed and exhaustive opinion the Commission concluded that the appellant had failed to prove a case upon which relief could be granted. More specifically, [*183] the Commission determined that “the plaintiff [appellant] has failed to prove the 1866 treaty or its antecedent 1865 and 1866 negotiations were attended by duress, fraud, intimidation, falsehood, or mistake. The plaintiff has failed to prove that consideration was relevant to the pertinent portions of that treaty. The plaintiff has failed to prove that the 1866 treaty or its antecedent 1865 and 1866 negotiations were tainted by unfair or dishonorable dealings on the part of the defendant. The plaintiff has failed to prove that in the allotment of tribal funds and lands there was any
taking by the defendant which would raise the issue of unconscionable consideration.” [12 Ind. Cl. Comm. at 643.] Some two years ago when the Seminole Nation appealed a companion ruling by the Commission involving a comparable treaty with that Nation (12 Ind.[**4] Cl. Comm. 798 (1963)), we found that the Commission’s decision was “supported by substantial evidence and that the Commission correctly applied the law to the facts.” Seminole Nation v. United States, 171 Ct. Cl. 477 (1965). We are of the same view here. The Commission’s findings of fact in this case are sustained by substantial evidence in the record as a whole, and its material legal rulings were correct. There is no need to go over again the ground which the
Commission
has so thoroughly covered in its findings and opinion. We affirm its decision substantially for the reasons it gave.
Affirmed.
**************************************
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