Good, Phukkem, Go Play That Degenerate ___________ Some Place Else

theatlantic |  Last week, Larry Moneta, Duke’s vice president of student affairs, stopped into his regular coffee shop in the student center, Joe Van Gogh, for a hot tea and a vegan muffin. The business was streaming music on Spotify, per usual, and as the university administrator stood waiting in line, “Get Paid” by Young Dolph happened to be playing. Its endlessly repeated refrain is “Get paid, young nigga, get paid.”

Durham’s alt-weekly, Indy Week, recounts what happened next:

Britni Brown, who was manning the register, was in charge of the playlist that day... Moneta, a white man, told Brown, an African-American woman, that the song was inappropriate. “The words, ‘I’ll eff you upside down,’ are inappropriate,” Moneta said, according to Brown. (Those exact lyrics are not in the song, though it has plenty of f-bombs.)

“Yes, of course,” Brown said. She says she shut the song off immediately. She grabbed him a vegan muffin and offered it free of charge. “No,” Brown recalls Moneta saying. “Ring me up for it.” Brown says she offered again, apologizing for the offense the song had caused. “You need me to ring me up for it right now,” Moneta insisted.

...Kevin Simmons, the other barista on duty, was busy making drinks. Simmons had worked there for three months and was up for his ninety-day review the next week. While pulling shots of espresso, he noticed a man who was upset with Brown. “Harassing is definitely the word I would use,” Simmons says. “He was verbally harassing her.” Simmons did not hear what Moneta or Brown said specifically, but he noticed Brown hastily turning off the music and apologizing profusely.

If that’s where the matter ended, this would be the sort of story that happens all the time in the United States but is seldom discussed: a patron feels righteously entitled in interaction with low-wage service worker, lashing out in a manner that is needlessly harsh and glaringly uncharitable, while the low-wage service worker is unfailingly polite and doing her level-best to be accommodating.

But that is not where it ended.

Instead, Moneta, a college administrator playing to type, escalated the matter by needlessly injecting it into his institution’s bureaucracy. If you’ve been wondering what Duke’s burgeoning numbers of administrators do all day, here’s a look at a priority two chose: Moneta called Robert Coffey, Duke’s director of dining services, telling him that while at a coffee shop that contracts with the university, he heard an inappropriate song playing.

So the head of dining services called Robbie Roberts, the owner of Joe Van Gogh, who relies on income from Duke University. Now back to the alt-weekly, which somehow got audio of the meeting between the two baristas who were there during the incident and Joe Van Gogh’s human-resources manager:

Creating Racism: Psychiatry's Betrayal

cchr |  Is racism alive today?

In the United States, African-American and Hispanic children in predominantly white school districts are classified as “learning disabled” more often than whites. This leads to millions of minority children being hooked onto prescribed mind-altering drugs—some more potent than cocaine—to “treat” this “mental disorder.” And yet, with early reading instruction, the number of students so classified could be reduced by up to 70 percent.

African-Americans and Hispanics are also significantly over-represented in US prisons.

In Britain, black men are ten times more likely than white men to be diagnosed as “schizophrenic,” and more likely to be prescribed and given higher doses of powerful psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs. They are also more likely to receive electroshock treatment (over 400 volts of electricity sent searing through the brain to control or alter a person’s behavior) and to be subjected to physical and chemical restraints.

Around the world, racial minority groups continue to come under assault. The effects are obvious: poverty, broken families, ruined youth, and even genocide (deliberate destruction of a race or culture). No matter how loud the pleadings or sincere the efforts of our religious leaders, our politicians and our teachers, racism just seems to persist.

Yes, racism persists. But why? Rather than struggle unsuccessfully with the answer to this question, there is a better question to ask. Who?

The truth is we will not fully understand racism until we recognize that two largely unsuspected groups are actively and deceptively fostering racism throughout the world. The legacy of these groups includes such large-scale tragedies as the Nazi Holocaust, South Africa’s apartheid and today, the widespread disabling of millions of schoolchildren with harmful, addictive drugs. These groups are psychiatry and psychology.

In 1983, a World Health Organization report stated, “…in no other medical field in South Africa is the contempt of the person, cultivated by racism, more concisely portrayed than in psychiatry.”

Professor of Community Psychiatry, Dr. S. P. Sashidharan, stated, “Psychiatry comes closest to the police…in pursuing practices and procedures that…discriminate against minority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom.”

Dr. Karen Wren and Professor Paul Boyle of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, concluded that the role of scientific racism in psychiatry throughout Europe is well established historically and continues today.

Since 1969, CCHR has worked in the field of human rights and mental health reform, and has investigated the racist influence of the “mental health” professions on the Nazi Holocaust, apartheid, the cultural assault of the Australian Aboriginal people, New Zealand Maoris and Native American Indians, and the current discrimination against Blacks across the world.

Psychiatry and psychology’s racist ideologies continue to light the fires of racism locally and internationally to this day.

This report is designed to raise awareness among individuals about this harmful influence. Not only can racism be defeated, but it must be, if man is to live in true harmony.

American Attempt to Niggerize Subvert Cuba with RAP was an Epic FAIL!!!

APNews |  For more than two years, a U.S. agency secretly infiltrated Cuba’s underground hip-hop movement, recruiting unwitting rappers to spark a youth movement against the government, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The idea was to use Cuban musicians “to break the information blockade” and build a network of young people seeking “social change,” documents show. But the operation was amateurish and profoundly unsuccessful.

On at least six occasions, Cuban authorities detained or interrogated people involved in the program; they also confiscated computer hardware, and in some cases it contained information that jeopardized Cubans who likely had no idea they were caught up in a clandestine U.S. operation. Still, contractors working for the U.S. Agency for International Development kept putting themselves and their targets at risk, the AP investigation found.

They also ended up compromising Cuba’s vibrant hip-hop culture — which has produced some of the hardest-hitting grassroots criticism since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. Artists that USAID contractors tried to promote left the country or stopped performing after pressure from the Cuban government, and one of the island’s most popular independent music festivals was taken over after officials linked it to USAID.

The program is laid out in documents involving Creative Associates International, a Washington, D.C., contractor paid millions of dollars to undermine Cuba’s communist government. The thousands of pages include contracts, emails, preserved chats, budgets, expense reports, power points, photographs and passports.

The work included the creation of a “Cuban Twitter” social network and the dispatch of inexperienced Latin American youth to recruit activists, operations that were the focus of previous AP stories.

“Any assertions that our work is secret or covert are simply false,” USAID said in a statement Wednesday. Its programs were aimed at strengthening civil society “often in places where civic engagement is suppressed and where people are harassed, arrested, subjected to physical harm or worse.”

Creative Associates did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After You Fire McCabe Jeff, GTFOH Y'Dayyum Self!!!

NYMag |  We now live in a world where the attorney general going out to dinner with two top Justice Department officials is not only news, but a sign that he’s rebelling against the president. As a senator, Jeff Sessions was one of Donald Trump’s earliest supporters, and he served as one of his campaign’s top foreign-policy advisers. But the seeds of the attorney general’s rift with the president were planted during his confirmation hearing, when he offered up some thoughts about Russia collusion that turned out to be not entirely accurate. Here’s how the Trump-Sessions relationship devolved to the point that two 71-year-old lawmakers are barely speaking, lobbing insults on Twitter, and sending passive-aggressive messages with their choice of dinner companion.

Sessions’s Russia Contacts Are Revealed

Exactly one year ago, President Trump was basking in the unusually positive reviews from his first address to Congress. The very next day, we learned that Sessions met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak at least twice while working with the Trump campaign — yet during his confirmation hearing he denied, under oath, having any such contacts.

“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” Sessions said of Trump officials’ Russia contacts, “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

Deep State Only Wants Trump to Live According to His Station and His Duties

extranewsfeed |  As the feudal power-structures of Europe broke down beneath a wave of revolutions in the 18th century, governments took a more active role in law enforcement and the first centralized policing organization was created in France by King Louis XIV. The duties of the new police were bluntly described as a mechanism of class-control over workers and peasants:

“ensuring the peace and quiet of the public and of private individuals, purging the city of what may cause disturbances, procuring abundance, and having each and everyone live according to their station and their duties”

While France’s Gendarmes were seen as a symbol of oppression in other parts of Europe, the French policing model spread during the early 1800s as Napoleon Bonaparte conquered much of the continent. By the mid-1800s, modern policing institutions — publicly-funded, centralized police organized in a military hierarchy and under the control of the state — had been transplanted everywhere from Tsarist Russia to England and the United States.

Policing became the exclusive right of governments as other law enforcement groups were absorbed into new and “official” institutions. The new police were not just tasked with serving the public, however — they also protected the political power of their new employers. It was a revolutionary era and the new police were shaped by rulers facing a particularly mutinous population. The use of police as the vanguard of state-power was a major development and it was adapted to repress popular movements all over the world. Early police organizations in the US, for example, pretty much handed blue uniforms to former slave-patrols and anti-union mercenaries who had historically protected the interests of plantation-bosses in the South and industrial capitalists in the North.

( For more on the historical links between slavery, anti-union security, and law enforcement, read “Private Property Is the Police-State” )

What #MeToo Tells Us About The "Liberal" World...,

Counterpunch |  I wrote an Op-Ed for The Washington Post^[1] about the Thomas Hill case in which Thomas was accused of accosting Anita Hill with ugly sexist language. I suggested that it would be a boon for corporate feminists who had co-opted the feminist movement. Instead of exposing the hands-on assaults against them by their employers upon whom they depended  for their prosperity, they could blame Black guys for sexism in the workplace. It was Maureen Dowd who pointed to the hypocrisy of some of Hill’s White feminist supporters. When Bill Clinton’s hands-on sexism came to light, she noted that some of those liberal and progressive feminists who condemned Clarence Thomas defended Clinton’s offenses against women. 

Clarence Thomas has been ridiculed for years for pleading that he was subjected to a “hi-tech lynching.” But now that powerful corporate White men, among them predators, who, for decades, have been shielded by corporate feminists, their defenders are insisting upon due process, which is what Thomas was demanding. To cross examine his accusers. Timesman Bret Stephens complains about hi-tech lynchings now that the shoe is on the other foot and outfits like NPR, The New Republic, MSNBC, The New York Times and other media outlets, which have competed for revenue from what could be called “The Black Boogeyman” racket, have uncovered predators among their personnel.  Now that they’re feeling the heat from feminists they’ve come up with something called “a spectrum of behavior.”

In the Post article, I also pointed out that regardless of Thomas’s right-wing views, in the Anita Hill vs. Thomas case, Blacks supported Thomas. White progressives didn’t pay attention to this fact. For them, Blacks are to be interpreted. Not listened too. Maybe they agree with Jeffrey Toobin, who has made a fortune from a slipshod examination of the Simpson case. Toobin says that Blacks can’t deal with reality and shouldn’t be patted on the head,^[4] like the reward that a dog receives after retrieving a ball for his owner.

MindSmash Pipes Up Into The Digital Catheter...,

endgadget |  The new replay tools offered in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds are so much more than standard video-capture technology. In fact, it isn't video capture at all -- it's data capture. The 3D replay tools allow players to zoom around the map after a match, tracking their own character, following enemies' movements, slowing down time and setting up cinematic shots of their favorite kills, all within a 1-kilometer radius of their avatar. It's filled with statistics, fresh perspectives and infinite data points to dissect. This isn't just a visual replay; it's a slice of the actual game, perfectly preserved, inviting combatants to play God.

PUBG is an ideal test case. It's a massively popular online game where up to 100 players parachute onto a map, scavenge for supplies, upgrade weapons and attempt to be the last person standing. Even though it technically came out in December, PUBG has been available in early access since March and it's picked up a considerable number of accolades -- and players -- in the process. Just last week, SteamDB reported PUBG hit 3 million concurrent players on PC, vastly outstripping its closest competitor, Dota 2, which has a record of 1.29 million simultaneous players.

Part of PUBG's success stems from developers' relentless focus on making the game fun to watch. Live streaming is now a major part of the video-game world, with sites like Twitch and YouTube Gaming growing in prominence and eSports bursting into the mainstream.

Kim says PUBG creator Brendan Greene and CEO Chang Han Kim built the idea of data-capture into the game from the beginning, and Minkonet's tech is a natural evolution of this focus. Minkonet and PUBG developers connected in late 2016 and started working together on the actual software earlier this year.

"One of their first visions was to have PUBG as not just a great game to play, but a great game to watch," Kim says. "So they were already from the very beginning focused on having PUBG as a great live streaming game; esports was also one of their sort of long-term visions."

The FBI Obviously Conspired To Stop Trump

Buchanan |  The original question the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign was to answer was a simple one: Did he do it?

Did Trump, or officials with his knowledge, collude with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to hack the emails of John Podesta and the DNC, and leak the contents to damage Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump?

A year and a half into the investigation, and, still, no “collusion” has been found. Yet the investigation goes on, at the demand of the never-Trump media and Beltway establishment.

Hence, and understandably, suspicions have arisen.

Are the investigators after the truth, or are they after Trump?

Set aside the Trump-Putin conspiracy theory momentarily, and consider a rival explanation for what is going down here:

That, from the outset, Director James Comey and an FBI camarilla were determined to stop Trump and elect Hillary Clinton. Having failed, they conspired to break Trump’s presidency, overturn his mandate and bring him down.

Essential to any such project was first to block any indictment of Hillary for transmitting national security secrets over her private email server.

That first objective was achieved 18 months ago.

Why Trust Anything Privileged, Cozy And Personally Dependent On The Status Quo?

NewYorker |  Even in a stable constitutional republic, a cynical or unmoored citizenry presents an opportunity for demagogues and populists. As much as stagnant wages in former manufacturing regions, glaring economic inequality, or white backlash after the Obama Presidency, the country’s disillusionment with institutions enabled Donald Trump’s election. Trump had a sound instinct as he took office that public disgust with élites, including those running the Republican Party, ran so deep that he—even as a New York billionaire—could get away with outrageous attacks on people or agencies previously believed to be off limits for a President, because of the political backlash that the attacks would generate. After his Inauguration, for example, Trump did not hesitate to denigrate the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies for promoting their independent judgment that Russia had sought to aid his campaign. And the President’s opportunistic assaults on less popular institutions—such as the news media and Congress—have riled his base.

It is tempting to think that an institution like the F.B.I. enjoys such credibility and public support that its agents and officials—and Mueller himself—can rely on cross-party backing in a crisis, even if Republicans remain silent now. Perhaps. But this was a party that refused to challenge Trump’s backing of Roy Moore in Alabama’s Senate race. And an understanding of what core Trump supporters believe about the F.B.I. and Mueller has to take into account Gallup’s trend lines. While celebrating this new year, it will require a certain degree of evidence-light optimism to be convinced that the center will hold.

Just Like Ballers - Peasant Rustlers Immune To Pound Me Too...,

Like I said a month ago, it'll never reach up to snatch down a real baller - and by that exact same token - it'll never bend down to ease the working and living conditions of peasant women, either.

theatlantic |  The man who Sandra Pezqueda says sexually harassed her and ultimately got her fired has never been disciplined for his actions. That’s even though the man, who was her boss when she worked as a dishwasher and chef’s assistant at the luxurious Terrenea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, beginning in 2015, persistently switched her schedule so she’d be working alone near him, repeatedly offered to give her more hours if she’d go out with him, and twice tried to kiss her in a storeroom at work, according to Pezqueda. That’s even though, when she complained about his behavior to the staffing agency that employed them both, Pezqueda says supervisors began seeking reasons to fire her, eventually letting her go in February 2016. “I knew if I spoke up there would be retaliation,” Pezqueda, now 37, told me. “That’s why other women never speak up about what happened to them.”

For all the Harvey Weinsteins, Al Frankens, and Russell Simmonses who have lost their jobs after allegations surfaced of sexual harassment, there is a sobering truth often lost in the #MeToo movement—the push for accountability has class dimensions. Many other less famous men, who have harassed women in less high-profile fields, have not been held accountable. Virtually all of the men who have been publicly excoriated for their conduct have worked in industries like Hollywood, or politics, or law, that the public tends to study with laser-like focus. “If an employer isn’t worried that there’s going to be some huge public-relations issue stemming from harassment, then that is one less reason for the employer to take it seriously,” Emily Martin, the general counsel and vice president for workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center, told me.

Sexual harassment happens just as frequently—if not more frequently—in industries dominated by low-wage workers, according to analysis of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data by the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Half of women working in the restaurant industry experienced “scary” or “unwanted” sexual behavior, according to a 2014 report from the Restaurant Opportunities Center, a nonprofit that advocates for workers in the food-services industry. Around 40 percent of women in the fast-food industry have experienced unwanted sexual behaviors on the job, according to a 2016 study by Hart Research Associates, and 42 percent of those women felt that they needed to accept it because they couldn’t afford to lose their jobs. Harassment is frequent in these industries because of the wage and power differences between the women and the men who supervise them, according to ‎Sarah Fleisch Fink, the senior counsel for the National Partnership for Women & Families, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit. “An imbalance of power in people in two different positions is a big part of sexual harassment occurring, and I think that there’s probably nowhere that occurs more than in lower-wage jobs,” she said. According to the Center for American Progress, the most sexual-harassment charges filed by workers from any one industry between 2005 and 2015 were in one sector: accommodation and food services.   

Space Is White

opendemocracy |  Fundamental to this process is the recognition that space is a potential destination for everyone. Contemporary Afro-futurist Denenge Akpem has attempted to spark this discussion through, “The MARS Project – Teaching Afro-futurism as Methodology of Liberation.” Akpem, a performance artist and sculptor who has taught at both the School of the Art Institute Chicago and Columbia College Chicago, invites her students to imagine the first mission to, and settlement of Mars through the lens of Afro-futurism and diversity.

In contrast, Mars One, a private Dutch initiative to settle Mars by 2026, has raised eyebrows for seeming to select its astronauts using a format akin to reality TV. And while National Geographic’s upcoming docu-drama miniseries MARS features an internationally, racially and gender diverse crew in 2033 aboard the Daedalus, it’s noticeable that they are led by an all-American white male mission commander who will “be the first to walk on Mars”.

In addition, if we are to colonize Mars or any other planet or space station for that matter, then genetics and population dynamics call for the largest and broadest sample of who we are to be included among the settlers. As Sun Ra highlights, the worlds of art, music, philosophy, science and literature are created by all of us. In space as on Earth, there is a deep value to embracing and maintaining the plurality of our existence: it celebrates our empathy and love for one another.

As Ra presaged, Space Is The Place for us to take this love—the best of Earth’s legacy—to Mars and beyond.

The Rape of RAP - Don't Say ISHT To Me About Harvey Weinstein...,

yournewswire |  John Homeston, a retired CIA agent, has admitted this week on National Russian Television (NTV) that the CIA was behind the creation of the 1980s hip hop scene and financed major hip hop acts including NWA, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five.

The government at the time spent “big money, serious money” on this covert operation destined to “further division” and “corrupt the American youth to nihilist, anti-establishment and anti-American ideologies”, he explained in a half hour interview broadcast on national television.

Famous hip hop songs of the legendary hip hop outfit NWA were even scripted by a team of psychologists and war propagandists of the CIA. “F#ck the police,” and “When I’m called off, I got a sawed off / Squeeze the trigger, and bodies are hauled off,” and other nihilist and anti-establishment lyrics were intended to unleash a wave of cynicism towards authorities, promote the use of heavy drugs, and entice the youth with revolutionary, counter-establishment ideas.

The retired CIA agent claims the social engineering maneuver was “extremely successful.“

“We understood at the time that music was a powerful means of propaganda to reach the youth,” explained the 77-year-old man.

“Our mission was to use teenage angst to our advantage and turn Generation X into a decadent, pro-drug and anti-establishment culture that would create uprisings and further division within society. We even infiltrated mainstream radio to promote their music and reach millions of people everyday,” he admitted, visibly proud of the accomplishment.

“For many of us in the CIA, infiltrating the 1980s hip hop scene was one of the CIA’s most successful experiments of propaganda to date,” he acknowledged during the interview.

“You could say Frankenstein’s monster got up off the table and started goose-stepping.”

Rank, Dank, and Stank Swamp Gasses Billowing Out The DOJ...,

conservativetreehouse |   However, the ongoing Dossier story gets far more intriguing as it is now discovered that Bruce G Ohr’s wife, Nellie H. Ohr, actually worked for Fusion GPS and likely helped guide/script the Russian Dossier. (Link)

Contacted by Fox News, investigators for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) confirmed that Nellie H. Ohr, wife of the demoted official, Bruce G. Ohr, worked for the opposition research firm last year. The precise nature of Mrs. Ohr’s duties – including whether she worked on the dossier – remains unclear but a review of her published works available online reveals Mrs. Ohr has written extensively on Russia-related subjects. HPSCI staff confirmed to Fox News that she was paid by Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.

But wait, it doesn’t stop there… Mrs. Nellie Ohr was not only a Fusion GPS contracted employee, but she was also part of the CIA’s Open Source Works, in Washington DC (link)

Both Mr. and Mrs Ohr worked on a collaborative group project surrounding International Organized Crime. (pdf here) Page #30 Screen Shot Below

But wait, it gets even better.

 

Deplorables Whining About the FBI Perfectly Mirrors Black Folks Complaints About the FBI

thehill |  Politifact asserts that “just because the FBI sometimes operates in secret does not mean that it’s a ‘secret police.’" But the FBI’s secrecy is profoundly skewing American politics. More than a year after the 2016 election, Americans still have no idea the true extent of the FBI's manipulation of the presidential campaign. Did the FBI wrongfully absolve Hillary Clinton on the email server issue? What role did the FBI have in financing or exploiting the Steele dossier? Will we ever learn the full truth?

The so-called fact checkers insists that any comparison of the FBI and KGB is “ridiculous” because the FBI is “subject to the rule of law and is democratically accountable.” But there is little or no accountability when few members of Congress have the courage to openly criticize or vigorously cross-examine FBI officials. House Majority Leader Hale Boggs admitted in 1971 that Congress was afraid of the FBI: “Our very fear of speaking out (against the FBI) ... has watered the roots and hastened the growth of a vine of tyranny ... which is ensnaring that Constitution and Bill of Rights which we are each sworn to uphold.” The FBI is currently scorning almost every congressional attempt at oversight. Thus far, members of Congress have responded with nothing except press releases and talk show bluster. 

Politifact repeatedly scoffs at the notion that the FBI is “a secret police agency such as the old KGB.” And since the FBI is not as bad as the KGB, let’s mosey along and pretend no good citizen has a right to complain. A similar standard could exonerate any American president who was not as bad as Stalin. 

In the 1960s, some conservatives adorned their cars with “Support Your Local Sheriff” bumper stickers. How long until we see Priuses with “Support Your Secretive All-Powerful Federal Agents” bumper stickers? But those who forget or deny past oppression help forge new shackles for the American people.

I Once Believed Smart Meters Were For More Than Remotely Shutting Off Your Power...,

Time |  There was a fascinating story on the front page of the Kansas City Star earlier this week. Reporter Rick Montgomery took a long look at one of the fruits of the 2009 economic stimulus package, the Green Impact Zone of Missouri.

A lot has been written lately about the success or failure of the stimulus five years after it passed into law. For example, my friend and colleague Michael Grunwald, an eloquent advocate for the stimulus, credits the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) with jump-starting an alternative energy revolution and getting the ball rolling on electronic medical records, among other laudable achievements. James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, blames the $800 billion-plus package for driving up debt and muffling economic growth.

Montgomery’s article avoids such broad brushstrokes, instead documenting the observable results of one distinctive ARRA project. At the urging of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), stimulus money destined for Kansas City was concentrated in one section of town. The goal was to transform the area into an environmental showcase while catalyzing a burst of green jobs. Covering five neighborhoods and 150 square blocks, the zone encompasses a troubled section of town where abandoned buildings share streetscapes with the well-tended homes of obviously loving owners. In other words, it is typical of struggling sections found in every great American city—sliding in the wrong direction, but not too far gone to imagine a renaissance.

I’ve seen similar neighborhoods turn around in places as diverse as South Beach, Harlem, and Washington’s Logan Circle. In Denver, marginal neighborhoods around the old Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center are steadily gaining momentum from the new medical complex plopped into their midst. So I was intrigued to see what could be done with a projected $200 million infusion in what was—once upon a time—a thriving section of KC.

The answer: less than folks had hoped.

ARRA has equipped the Green Zone with charging stations for electric cars that residents don’t own. Of the 1,000 or more homes targeted for energy efficiency upgrades, fewer than 200—20 percent—received new windows, insulation and weather-stripping (at an average cost of more than $13,000 per home).  The local utility launched a pilot project in the zone to install “smart” meters that allow homeowners to better regulate their electricity use. An unused school building was given new life, and 11 miles of new sidewalks were built.

But as Montgomery reports, the project has, so far, failed to generate its own momentum. Congressman Cleaver, a former Kansas City mayor, sounded sheepish when he acknowledged that he and other zone backers failed to execute their ideas efficiently enough to get all the money spent. “We left tens of millions of federal dollars on the table,” he told the Star. When funding for the Impact Zone staff ran out, no agency stepped in to keep the office open.

AFRICOM: The Forced Recolonization of Africa Began With Libya

RT |  Exactly six years ago, on October 20th, 2011, Muammar Gaddafi was murdered, joining a long list of African revolutionaries martyred by the West for daring to dream of continental independence.

Earlier that day, Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte had been occupied by Western-backed militias, following a month-long battle during which NATO and its ‘rebel’ allies pounded the city’s hospitals and homes with artillery, cut off its water and electricity, and publicly proclaimed their desire to ‘starve [the city] into submission’. The last defenders of the city, including Gaddafi, fled Sirte that morning, but their convoy was tracked and strafed by NATO jets, killing 95 people. Gaddafi escaped the wreckage but was captured shortly afterward. I will spare you the gruesome details, which the Western media gloatingly broadcast across the world as a triumphant snuff movie, suffice to say that he was tortured and eventually shot dead.

We now know, if testimony from NATO’s key Libyan ally Mahmoud Jibril is to be believed, it was a foreign agent, likely French, who delivered the fatal bullet. His death was the culmination of not only seven months of NATO aggression, but of a campaign against Gaddafi and his movement, the West had been waging for over three decades.

Yet it was also the opening salvo in a new war - a war for the militarily recolonization of Africa.

The year 2009, two years before Gaddafi’s murder, was a pivotal one for US-African relations. First, because China overtook the US as the continent’s largest trading partner; and second because Gaddafi was elected president of the African Union.

The significance of both for the decline of US influence on the continent could not be clearer. While Gaddafi was spearheading attempts to unite Africa politically, committing serious amounts of Libyan oil wealth to make this dream a reality, China was quietly smashing the West’s monopoly over export markets and investment finance. Africa no longer had to go cap-in-hand to the IMF for loans, agreeing to whatever self-defeating terms were on offer, but could turn to China - or indeed Libya - for investment. And if the US threatened to cut them off from their markets, China would happily buy up whatever was on offer. Western economic domination of Africa was under threat as never before.

The response from the West, of course, was a military one. Economic dependence on the West - rapidly being shattered by Libya and China - would be replaced by a new military dependence. If African countries would no longer come begging for Western loans, export markets, and investment finance, they would have to be put in a position where they would come begging for Western military aid.

To this end, AFRICOM - the US army’s new ‘African command’ - had been launched the previous year, but humiliatingly for George W. Bush, not a single African country would agree to host its HQ; instead, it was forced to open shop in Stuttgart, Germany. Gaddafi had led African opposition to AFRICOM, as exasperated US diplomatic memos later revealed by WikiLeaks made clear. And US pleas to African leaders to embrace AFRICOM in the ‘fight against terrorism’ fell on deaf ears.

After all, as Mutassim Gaddafi, head of Libyan security, had explained to Hillary Clinton in 2009, North Africa already had an effective security system in place, through the African Union’s ‘standby forces,' on the one hand, and CEN-SAD on the other. CEN-SAD was a regional security organization of Sahel and Saharan states, with a well-functioning security system, with Libya as the lynchpin. The sophisticated Libyan-led counter-terror structure meant there was simply no need for a US military presence. The job of Western planners, then, was to create such a need.

Is Hip-Hop Good For Anyone? (REDUX Originally Posted 6/29/17)

theoccidentalobserver |   It is unfortunate, to say the least, that Black hip-hop scholarship never mentions the elephant in the room: Jewish control of the music industry. If hip-hop is, indeed, ethno-politics set to music, if hip-hop has taken the place of the civil rights movement in the hearts and minds of Black youth, it is impossible to ignore the historic Black-Jewish alliance against WASPs. For much of the twentieth century, that alliance was a constituent element in what Black nationalist Harold Cruse called the “fateful triangular tension among national groups…coming to the fore” in the 60s.[28] It is a truism of American political history that, from the Leo Frank trial and the founding of the NAACP in the early twentieth century down to the Black Lives Matter movement, Jewish intellectual-activists have worked tirelessly to imbue disaffected American Negroes with their own revolutionary spirit.[29]

Cruse was himself a Negro member of the American Communist Party. By that time, Jews had displaced Anglo-Saxons as the vanguard of American Communism. Unlike WASP Communists, the Jews shaped radical politics in accordance with “their own national group social ambitions or individual self-elevation.” Negroes were relegated to the status of a national minority in the party while Jews were free to pick up or drop their Jewish identity as it suited them.[30] This arrangement enabled Jews to become experts on “the Negro problem.” Not surprisingly, Jewish artists, musicians, and radicals then became highly visible players in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. “As a result,” Cruse observes, “the great brainwashing of Negro radical intellectuals was not achieved by capitalism, or the capitalistic bourgeoisie, but by Jewish intellectuals in the American Communist Party.”[31]

In the contemporary hip-hop community, Jewish leadership has been hidden behind the corporate veil. Tricia Rose vehemently denounces the corrupting influence of corporate control on the hip-hop community but her treatment of the subject obscures the identity of the corporate high command.[32] The music industry is absorbed into a vast impersonal system of “White power,” a matrix whose denizens all routinely swallow the blue pill. The closest we come to identifying those in charge is when Dyson criticizes the “White corporate interests” exploiting Black talent.[33]

Jews are never mentioned in Dyson’s work on hip-hop. Not surprisingly, Dyson has unimpeachable philo-Semitic credentials. Blacks and Jews, he believes, are united in common struggles against oppression in White America. Far be it from him ever to cast Jews as an enemy of Black folk. On his account, Blacks love Jews and Jews love Blacks.[34] Professor Rose also tip-toes around the issue of Jewish influence in the hip-hop community; The Hip Hop Wars has no index entry for Jews. Only in passing does Rose name names. But, when she does identify a few of the corporate heavyweights involved in the hip-hop community, the elephant moves onto center stage.

In a chapter on hip-hop’s responsibility for sexist and misogynist lyrics and imagery, Rose mentions a rare public appearance by leading figures in the corporate record industry. In their statements “corporate executives such as Universal chairman Doug Morris, Warner chairman and chief executive Edgar Bronfman, Sony chairman Andrew Lack, and Viacom president and CEO Phillipe P. Dauman have defended their role as distributors of intensely sexist content by subsuming sexism under artists’ rights to express themselves freely.” Interestingly, in the same paragraph, Rose urges us to “pull back the veil on the corporate media’s manipulation of Black male and female artists and the impact this has on fans and the direction of Black cultural expression.”[35] Why does she not see fit to mention that the four corporate kingpins she names are all Jews? The ethno-political fact is that Rose leaves the corporate veil intact by ascribing blame for the corruption of the hip-hop community to an abstraction called corporate greed. Rose heads the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University.[36] How can she not be aware of the stunning success Jews have had in mixing business with ethno-politics?

After all, a simple Google search on “Jews run hip hop” turns up a wealth of investigative leads for a researcher eager to see how the “triangular tension” between Jews, Negroes, and Anglo-Saxons” has accommodated itself to the new players in American ethno-politics. Black scholars typically ignore the criticisms of Jewish control commonly made by rappers and fans.[37] Traditional Catholics such as E. Michael Jones are also critical of rap music as “one more manifestation of the behavior which goes along with the Jewish revolutionary spirit that took over the Black mind during the course of the 20^thcentury.”[38] The Jewish revolutionary spirit has pioneered the techniques of using sex as an instrument of political control.[39] The hip-hop brand of sexuality is no exception.

Bearing that in mind, it comes as no surprise to learn that hip-hop is deeply involved “with the multibillion dollar pornographic industry. The strip club has long been an integral part of both the music video and business end, but since the start of the new century, there has been a complete cross-over into pornography.” Orlando Patterson describes scenes from these productions as “the most degrading and abusive depictions of women imaginable.”[40] Small wonder, then, that a Google search for “Jews run pornography” yields another treasure trove of investigative leads sure to be left unexplored (for fear of the Jews?) by both Black and White scholars.

Actresses and Millions of Other Independent Contractors....,

thenation |  there’s another reason actresses harassed by Weinstein may have been discouraged from reporting sexual harassment. Any who were working on a Weinstein film were almost certainly classified as independent contractors, not regular employees. And that means that the anti-discrimination and sexual-harassment protections of federal law didn’t apply to them. 

It’s a problem not just in Hollywood but throughout the economy, in industries as diverse as real estate, trucking, technology, and home health care. And the problem is growing. As more companies classify their workers as independent contractors or push workers into nontraditional employment arrangements, an increasing number of people are at risk of having virtually no recourse for on-the-job harassment. 

Workplace discrimination and harassment based on sex are prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which outlaws “employment practice[s] [that] discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” If an employee feels she is being harassed at work, she can file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the first step in taking legal action. But the catch is that she has to be an employee for Title VII protections to apply. Independent contractors, temp workers, and those employed by contracting companies are not covered under the law. “Title VII has to be related to employment,” explained Catherine Ruckelshaus, program director at the National Employment Law Project. Anyone who’s not a traditional employee can’t easily bring claims under it. “The more attenuated you get from an employment relationship, the harder it is under Title VII.”

When a film gets made, the employer is typically a holding company, often an LLC, and the people who work on the show are rarely traditional W2 employees. “Almost everybody across the board in this industry works as an independent contractor when there’s an individual production getting made, when you work on a feature film,” explained Maria Giese, a film director who has pushed for greater gender equality in the industry. The same is typically true for those who work on theater productions or commercials. An individual actress who has been sexually harassed could try to bring a case under Title VII—but that would require her first to prove that she was illegally classified as an independent contractor and should have been an employee. She may be successful. “I don’t think that there has been an answer legislated or adjudicated” as to whether film employees should be treated like employees, said Melissa Silverstein, founder of Women and Hollywood. For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is charged with enforcing Title VII and would only have jurisdiction if Title VII applied, is currently investigating gender discrimination against directors at the major movie studios, with its efforts still pending. 

Still, it’s a major hurdle. And if the actress can’t prove that she was misclassified as a contractor, the only option left would be to bring a contract claim between two business entities—the employer and the contractor. “Then they’re in a private contract realm where they would have to argue that the person violated their rights to operate their business in an ethical manner,” Ruckelshaus explained. “Those are really hard to bring because typically they’re very fact-based.… If you get into the he said/she said side of things, if you can’t prove the allegations of tort or contract breach, you’re out of luck.” Whereas Title VII claims just have to prove the employer allowed harassment based on sex, contract claims have to prove an employer’s intent to discriminate. “It’s very specific,” Ruckelshaus said. “Filing a lawsuit would be more difficult based on independent contractor status,” Giese agreed.

With Intersectional "Allies" Like Ed Buck, Who Needs Nazi's for Enemies?

On our post a month ago about elite ritualistic sex and drug crime magick My Eyes Shut to Your Misdeeds Brother, friend of the blog Rohan dropped a dime on some sordid, degenerate intersectional skullduggery emanating from a prominent homosexual democratic party activist in west Hollywood. We pick up here where he left off...,

SacObserver |  The silence from L.A.’s Democratic community on the recent death of a 26-year-old Black gay male sex worker in the West Hollywood apartment of 63-year-old prominent Democratic political donor Ed Buck has been astounding.

Gemmel Moore’s July 27 death, was immediately classified as an accidental methamphetamine overdose by the coroner, but now the Sheriff’s Department is taking a closer look after his personal journal was published. Numerous young Black gay men have stepped forward making allegations against Buck recounting similar stories about a man who they say has a Tuskegee Experiment like fetish which includes shooting drugs into young Black men that he picks up off the street or via dating hookup websites.

In his journal, Gemmel Moore wrote, “I honestly don’t know what to do. I’ve become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that,” a December entry reads. “Ed Buck is the one to thank. He gave me my first injection of crystal meth it was very painful, but after all the troubles, I became addicted to the pain and fetish/fantasy.”

His last entry, dated Dec. 3, 2016, reads: “If it didn’t hurt so bad, I’d kill myself, but I’ll let Ed Buck do it for now.

Buck has given hundreds of thousands of dollars of Democratic causes and candidates over the years. His Facebook page boasts dozens of photos of him with everyone from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to Governor Jerry Brown, Los Angeles County Democratic Party and California Democratic Party chairman Eric Bauman and even Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

In online ads soliciting young Black gay men, Buck has referred to them as being a “6-foot” n-word. On his Facebook page, he joked with friends using the n-word.

Typically in politics, we try to distance ourselves from white people who call Black people the n-word or use the n-word–not protect them with our silence.

Most of Los Angeles’ Democratic and LGBT community–which are often one in same–has had nothing to say publicly about Moore’s death. Politicians who have received thousands of dollars from Buck over the years have been curiously silent. I can count on one hand the number of people from the political party of allies, coalition building and we’re stronger together who have made a public call for a thorough investigation into Gemmel Moore’s death in light of the numerous allegations that have been made.

And while there was no shortage of politicians in Los Angeles falling over themselves to issue statements and be seen in the media condemning the events of Charlottesville and President Trump’s response to them–locally they have seemingly looked the other way and conveniently ignored that one of their top donors might be a serial predator who gets his kicks by drugging vulnerable young Black gay men.

Nancy Pelosi's Daddy Built This...,

stockboardasset |  Earlier this month, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions unveiled a plan to go after doctors and pharmacies suspected of healthcare fraud by oversubscribing opioids. America’s opioid epidemic killed 33,000 people in 2015 making it the worst drug crisis in our history. Last week, President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a national emergency allowing the executive branch to direct funds towards treatment facilities and supplying police officers with naloxone.

As a socio-economist on the front lines of the opioid crisis in Baltimore, Maryland. I am about to take you through an opioid experience like you’ve never seen before. We’re going to travel into the inner city of Baltimore and interview current and former addicts of opioids and heroin. Some of these individuals used heroin 15-minutes before the cameras started rolling.

These individuals have never been given the chance to tell their story until now. Baltimore’s mainstream news is not allowed to share this because it breaks the narrative that everything is awesome. It turns out that Baltimore could have the largest methadone clinic in the United States called Turning Point Clinic. Each of the interviewees are current and past patients of the clinic and speak very negatively about it. A similar description of Baltimore is heard  from each of the interviewees of a hellacious city with decades of deindustrialization, drug abuse, and violent crime. 

bitterqueen |  Nancy Pelosi's father Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. allegedly was a "constant companion" of notorious mobster Benjamin "Benny Trotta" Magliano and other underworld figures during his political years in Baltimore, MD.  D'Alesandro was a Congressman for five terms from 1938 to 1947, and Baltimore mayor for three terms from 1947 to 1959.   Magliano was identified by the FBI as one of Baltimore's "top hoodlums," and he widely was acknowledged as the representative for New York's Frankie Carbo who made his bones with Murder, Inc. and later became a made guy in the Lucchese family.  The allegations are included in D'Alesandro's recently-released FBI files which Friends of Ours has obtained pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.

In 1947 the FBI investigated Magliano for securing a draft exemption from Selective Service for himself and prize fighters he controlled by falsely representing they had essential employment at American Ship Cleaning Company which was operated by John Cataneo.   In fact, Magliano and his boxers had no such employment, and they were convicted with Cataneo in federal court for their unpatriotic draft-dodging scam.  Peter Galiano, one of the convicted boxers, told the FBI in January 1947 that "Thomas D'Alesandro was a constant companion of John Cataneo; Benjamin Magliano . . . and [redacted]":

It was reported that these individuals had worked hard for Thomas D'Alesandro's reelection to Congress and on his campaign at that time to become Mayor of Baltimore.  It was stated that John Cataneo and Magliano during the time of this campaign were under Federal indictments for violation of the Selective Service Act and for fraud against the Government and were subsequently convicted in Federal court.  Cataneo allegedly admitted giving large sums of money toward the Democratic campaign and stated that he would receive the sanitation contracts for Baltimore if Mr. D'Alesandro was elected mayor.

At that time the FBI never investigated D'Alesandro concerning this or numerous other allegations involving hoodlum associations and public corruption.  Of course, while in Congress D'Alesandro sat on the appropriations committee and was a friend of Director J. Edgar Hoover.  For example, an FBI memo dated March 27, 1946 from E. G. Fitch to D. M. Ladd provides:

Supervisor Orrin H. Bartlett advised me that while talking to Congressman Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr. (D., Md.) on March 26, 1946, the Congressman advised Agent Bartlett he was running for Congress again in the fall 1946 election and that in 1947 he was running for the office of Mayor of Baltimore.  Congressman D'Alesandro advised Agent Bartlett that since he had been on the Appropriations Committee, he has been back of the Director and the Bureau one hundred percent, and further, that he was vitally interested in and completely satisfied with the results of the Bureau's work.

Hoover sent warm congratulations to D'Alesandro upon his November 1946 re-election to the House and then his May 1947 election as Baltimore Mayor, and after leaving Congress for City Hall D'Alesandro wrote Hoover by letter dated May 14, 1947:

Thank you very much for message congratulating me on my election as Mayor of the City of Baltimore.  I was most pleased to receive your good wishes and assure you that I will do my utmost to give the people of Baltimore an efficient and outstanding administration.  I, too, will miss you and many other friends in Washington but I am grateful for the proximity of our two cities which will afford the opportunity for frequent visits when and if time permits.  Whenever you are in Baltimore, please make it a point to visit me at City Hall. 

Meanwhile, the allegations against D'Alesandro continued to pile up.  Finally, in January 1961 President John F. Kennedy requested the G-men to address "allegations of D'Alesando's involvement with Baltimore hoodlums; with favoritism in awarding city contracts; [and] protection for political contributors and the prosecution of local cases."  President Kennedy wanted to appoint D'Alesandro to the United States Renegotiation Board which was a government watchdog against profit gouging by defense contractors.  A February 6, 1961 memo from Hoover to the Baltimore and Washington Field Offices cautiously advises:  "The White House has requested that we proceed with a special inquiry investigation but that if substantial derogatory information were developed, we should report this and discontinue any further inquiries because substantiation of any of the allegations would eliminate D'Alesandro."