The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, along with other intern
I call on politicians around the world to speak out against discrimination and protect the rights of people living with and affected by HIV, for schools to teach respect, for religious leaders to preach tolerance, and for the media to condemn prejudice in all its forms.
He went on to say discrimination that against men who have sex with men must end, and countries must gear up prevention programs against AIDS in this high-risk group. Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, said health officials in all nations- including the United States- need to acknowledge setbacks in a group that pioneered the earliest response to the disease.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
UN Chief Calls for the End of Bias Against Gays
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
African women risking health by bleaching skin
Consumers of bleaching cosmetics claim that they want to enhance their beauty. One woman who declined to be named, explains, “One has to look good, by having fair, lighter skin.” Read the entire story by clicking the link below:
http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/blacknewsblackviews.html
Iraq wants the U.S. out...
July 30, 2008
Testimony of Dr. Steven Kull
Director, Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA),
University of Maryland
Director, WorldPublicOpinion.org
July 23, 2008 - 2:00 PM
Before House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight
Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Bill Delahunt: And next we have Dr. Steven Kull, the director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes testified during the kickoff in the wrap-up hearing for our hearings -- our inquiry, rather, into how the United States is viewed by the rest of the world.
I don't have the time to list his various expert qualifications as a pollster, because he has just one that counts to most the me: There's nobody that we trust more to interpret polling and focus groups results for us, and today he will address and educate us on Iraqi opinion about the issues surrounding the U.S.-Iraq agreement: timetables, withdrawals, sovereignty and the presence of U.S. forces.
Thank you again, Steve, for joining us.... Dr. Kull, would you please proceed?
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
David Yeagley Is Back With More Twisted Elitism...is he the real face of First Nations Conservatism?
White Woman Down
by David Yeagley
White women are destroying America. “White trash” women are polluting America with interracial sex of every grade, producing children with impossible identities and crippled self-esteem, and these women are doing it all in the name of charity, equality, or survival.
On FrontPageMagazine.com, I published an article on May 18, 2001 entitled “What’s Up with White Women?” It proved to be my most quoted article, beginning with authors like Pat Buchanan, Robert Spencer, and a host of bloggers. That article called attention to the fact that many American white women have lost respect and confidence in the country. I quoted the Cheyenne proverb, “A nation is never conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.”
Luiz Ramirez, criminal trespasser, unmarried baby-maker,
accidently killed by white teen-agers in Shenandoah, PA.
- Dr. David Yeagley:
But I didn’t take it far enough. The proclivity of white women for interracial marriage in this country is worse than most people realize. Never mind the forced images of white women with black men in the media. What’s happening in the street?
Lower income white women are making a mockery of America.
Take the recent case in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, a small coal mining town. Headlines were all about a hate crime where white teenagers accidentally killed a Mexican immigrant. “PA Teens Charged with Fatal Beating of Immigrant,” as ABC put it, July 25, 2008. The “immigrant” was, of course, an illegal Mexican, among many who have invaded the small town. The 25-year-old Mexican was with a teen-aged (white?) girl from the town, and the teen-aged boys who attacked him were white.
Saskatoon police charge man after woman's remains found
Police in Saskatoon have charged a man after finding the remains of a woman who has been missing for four years.Daleen Bosse was attending university in Saskatoon when she disappeared in 2004. Daleen Bosse was attending university in Saskatoon when she disappeared in 2004. (CBC)
The remains belong to Daleen Kay Bosse, a member of the Lloydminster-area Onion Lake First Nation, who was 25 when she went missing in 2004, the Saskatoon Police Service said.
At the time of her disappearance, Bosse had been living in Saskatoon with her husband and three-year-old daughter, and attending university. She was last seen leaving a Saskatoon nightclub on May 18, 2004.
Douglas R. Hales, 30, of White Fox, Sask., has been charged with first-degree murder. He's also charged with interfering with a dead body.
Hales was arrested on Saturday and appeared briefly in Saskatoon provincial court before being remanded into custody. People in the packed courtroom cried out when the Crown prosecutor said it's alleged that Bosse's body had been set on fire.
More than 'Shaft': Hayes was goldmine of influence
Isaac Hayes' theme song for the 1971 movie "Shaft" not only became one of pop music's iconic songs, but also the defining work of Hayes' career. Yet the "Theme from Shaft" was just a snippet of the groundbreaking music for which Hayes - who died Sunday at age 65 - was responsible.
Two Latinos guilty in hate crime assault
POMONA - Two reputed gang members are facing multiple life sentences for the attempted murders of two black victims based on their race, officials said Friday.
Bobby Perez, 22, of Hacienda Heights, and Jonathan Carrion, 21, of Baldwin Park, were convicted by a Pomona Superior Court jury on Friday of two counts each of attempted premeditated murder with special gang and hate crime allegations, El Monte police Detective Ralph Batres said.
The verdicts stem from a June 16, 2007, incident in which Perez and Carrion - members of the El Monte Flores gang - joined six to seven other fellow gang members and assaulted four mentally handicapped clients of the Bridges facility on Elliott Avenue in El Monte, Batres said.
The clients were coming back from a nearby Pizza Hut when they were attacked. Two of the unidentified victims, who were black, were stabbed in the back. A third Hispanic victim was kicked and a fourth Caucasian victim was also beat, Batres said.
Witnesses told police the group of men were yelling out the El Monte Flores gang name and racial slurs during the attack.
The victims identified Perez and Carrion as the suspects who stabbed the two black victims, Batres said.
All of the victims eventually recovered from their injuries, he said.
In addition to the attempted murder verdicts, Carrion and Perez were also convicted on one count each of assault with a deadly weapon with special gang and hate crime allegations, and one count each of
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felony battery also with special gang and hate crime allegations, Batres said.
They face multiple life terms when they are sentenced on Aug. 21.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Broken Justice in Indian Country
ONE in three American Indian women will be raped in their lifetimes, statistics gathered by the United States Department of Justice show. But the odds of the crimes against them ever being prosecuted are low, largely because of the complex jurisdictional rules that operate on Indian lands. Approximately 275 Indian tribes have their own court systems, but federal law forbids them to prosecute non-Indians. Cases involving non-Indian offenders must be referred to federal or state prosecutors, who often lack the time and resources to pursue them.
The situation is unfair to Indian victims of all crimes — burglary, arson, assault, etc. But the problem is greatest in the realm of sexual violence because rapes and other sexual assaults on American Indian women are overwhelmingly interracial. More than 80 percent of Indian victims identify their attacker as non-Indian. (Sexual violence against white and African-American women, in contrast, is primarily intraracial.) And American Indian women who live on tribal lands are more than twice as likely to be raped or sexually assaulted as other women in the United States, Justice Department statistics show.
May I Be Offended on Your Behalf?
All of us who suffer inequalities related to race hope that one day the mainstream will “get it.” We want them to get institutional bias. We want them to get the nuances between funny and offensive. We want them to get their own privilege. We want them to get our cultural differences, while also getting that we are individuals apart from cultural markers.We want them to understand these things, but there is a fine line between developing an awareness of bias and arrogantly believing that you are so enlightened that you “get” all there is to know about being a person of color. If I am honest, I want white people to “get it,” but I don’t want them thinking they “get it” better than me–a black woman who actually lives with race bias.
what would ella baker do
After reading I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition & The Mississippi Freedom Struggle and getting to know Ella Baker substantially for the first time, I decided to read the most recent and promising biography on her, Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. I wanted to find out as much as I could about the process of her life, how she got involved, and the ways in which she worked. 100 pages in, it's a great biography so far.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Issac Hayes, RIP
Rest in Peace, Issac Hayes___________________________________________________________________
Isaac Hayes, the pioneering singer, songwriter and musician whose relentless "Theme From Shaft" won Academy and Grammy awards, died Sunday afternoon, the Shelby County Sheriff's Office said. He was 65.
A family member found him unresponsive near a treadmill and he was pronounced dead an hour later at Baptist East Hospital in Memphis, according to the sheriff's office. The cause of death was not immediately known.
In the early 1970s, Hayes laid the groundwork for disco, for what became known as urban-contemporary music and for romantic crooners like Barry White. And he was rapping before there was rap.
His career hit another high in 1997 when he became the voice of Chef, the sensible school cook and devoted ladies man on the animated TV show "South Park."
Steve Shular, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, said authorities received a 911 call after Hayes' wife and young son and his wife's cousin returned home from the grocery store and found him collapsed in a downstairs bedroom. A sheriff's deputy administered CPR until paramedics arrived.
"The treadmill was running but he was unresponsive lying on the floor," Shular said.
The album "Hot Buttered Soul" made Hayes a star in 1969. His shaven head, gold chains and sunglasses gave him a compelling visual image.
"Hot Buttered Soul" was groundbreaking in several ways: He sang in a "cool" style unlike the usual histrionics of big-time soul singers. He prefaced the song with "raps," and the numbers ran longer than three minutes with lush arrangements.
"Jocks would play it at night," Hayes recalled in a 1999 Associated Press interview. "They could go to the bathroom, they could get a sandwich, or whatever."
Next came "Theme From Shaft," a No. 1 hit in 1971 from the film "Shaft" starring Richard Roundtree.
"That was like the shot heard round the world," Hayes said in the 1999 interview.
At the Oscar ceremony in 1972, Hayes performed the song wearing an eye-popping amount of gold and received a standing ovation. TV Guide later chose it as No. 18 in its list of television's 25 most memorable moments. He won an Academy Award for the song and was nominated for another one for the score. The song and score also won him two Grammys.
"The rappers have gone in and created a lot of hit music based upon my influence," he said. "And they'll tell you if you ask."
Hayes was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
"I knew nothing about the business, or trends and things like that," he said. "I think it was a matter of timing. I didn't know what was unfolding."
A self-taught musician, he was hired in 1964 by Stax Records of Memphis as a backup pianist, working as a session musician for Otis Redding and others. He also played saxophone.
He began writing songs, establishing a songwriting partnership with David Porter, and in the 1960s they wrote such hits for Sam and Dave as "Hold On, I'm Coming" and "Soul Man."
All this led to his recording contract.
In 1972, he won another Grammy for his album "Black Moses" and earned a nickname he reluctantly embraced. Hayes composed film scores for "Tough Guys" and "Truck Turner" besides "Shaft." He also did the song "Two Cool Guys" on the "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" movie soundtrack in 1996.
Additionally, he was the voice of Nickelodeon's "Nick at Nite" and had radio shows in New York City (1996 to 2002) and then in Memphis.
He was in several movies, including "It Could Happen to You" with Nicolas Cage, "Ninth Street" with Martin Sheen, "Reindeer Games" starring Ben Affleck and the blaxploitation parody "I'm Gonna Git You, Sucka."
In the 1999 interview, Hayes described the South Park cook as "a person that speaks his mind; he's sensitive enough to care for children; he's wise enough to not be put into the 'whack' category like everybody else in town — and he l-o-o-o-o-ves the ladies."
But Hayes angrily quit the show in 2006 after an episode mocked his Scientology religion. "There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins," he said.
Co-creator creators Matt Stone responded that Hayes "has no problem — and he's cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians." A subsequent episode of the show seemingly killed off the Chef character.
Hayes was born in 1942 in a tin shack in Covington, Tenn., about 40 miles north of Memphis. He was raised by his maternal grandparents after his mother died and his father took off when he was 1 1/2. The family moved to Memphis when he was 6.
Hayes wanted to be a doctor, but got redirected when he won a talent contest in ninth grade by singing Nat King Cole's "Looking Back."
He held down various low-paying jobs, including shining shoes on the legendary Beale Street in Memphis. He also played gigs in rural Southern juke joints where at times he had to hit the floor because someone began shooting.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
600 gather for funeral of First Nations bus slaying victim
Family and friends gathered Saturday afternoon to bid farewell to Tim McLean, 22, who was brutally killed aboard a Greyhound bus just over a week ago near Portage la Prairie, Man.
About 600 mourners packed a church in Winnipeg for the funeral service.
His uncle, Alex McLean, told them that his nephew was "friendly, kind, sweet and caring."
The young man, a travelling carnival worker, loved making new friends on his many journeys, his uncle said.
But "he never left behind the ones he made in high school," McLean said. "His love of his friends was easy to see."
McLean also remembered his nephew's tremendous sense of humour, recalling that the last time he saw him, he was shirtless and flexing his muscles.
"That was your trademark," McLean said.
Before the service began, John Jorgensen, 19, who lived in the same Winnipeg neighbourhood as Tim McLean, remembered him as an "uplifting, positive guy."
"If you were in a bad mood, he would make you in a great mood," Jorgensen said.
McLean grew up in Winnipeg and Elie, Man., with what his obituary describes as "more family than he could shake a stick at."
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