'Ivory Queen of Soul,' Teena Marie dies

Teena Marie's last album, "Congo Square," was titled after a historical meeting place for slaves in New Orleans, featured a tribute to Martin Luther King's widow and also song "Black Cool," written for President Barack Obama.No matter that Marie, 54, was white. The R&B legend revered and fully immersed herself in black culture — and in turn was respected and adored by black audiences, not only for her immense soulful talents, but for her inner soul as well.
"Overall my race hasn't been a problem. I'm a Black artist with White skin. At the end of the day you have to sing what's in your own soul," she told Essence.com in an interview last year while promoting "Congo Square." That album would turn out to be her last.
The self-proclaimed "Ivory Queen of Soul," whose many classic hits included "Lovergirl," Square Biz" and the scorching duet "Fire and Desire" with mentor Rick James, was found dead in her Pasadena home on Sunday at the age of 54. Authorities said her death appeared to be of natural causes.
In an interview with The Associated Press last year, Teena Marie said she had successfully battled an addiction to prescription drugs; she had been performing over the last year.
"The enduring influence of Teena's inspirational, trailblazing career, could only have been made possible through her brilliant song-writing, showmanship and high energy passion which laid the ground work for the future generations of R&B, hip-hop, and soul," said Concord Music Group chief label officer, Gene Rumsey; Concord's Stax Records released her last album.
"We feel extremely fortunate to have worked with a visionary who changed music in indelible ways. Our deepest sympathies go out to her family, friends and of course, millions of fans around the world."
Marie certainly wasn't the first white act to sing soul music, but she was arguably among the most gifted and respected, and was thoroughly embraced by black audiences, and beyond.
Even before she started her musical career, she had a strong bond with the black community, which she credited to her godmother. She gravitated to soul music and in her youth decided to make it her career.
Marie made her debut on the legendary Motown label back in 1979, becoming one of the very few white acts to break the race barrier of the groundbreaking black-owned record label that had been a haven for black artists like Stevie Wonder, the Jackson Five, the Supremes and Marvin Gaye.
The cover of her debut album, "Wild and Peaceful," did not feature her image, with Motown apparently fearing black audiences might not buy it if they found out the songstress with the dynamic, gospel-inflected voice was white.
"(Motown founder Berry) Gordy) said that is was so soulful that he wanted to give the music an opportunity to stand on its own merit. Instead of my face, they put a seascape, so by the time my second album came out people were like, Lady T is White?" she told Essence.com.
Marie was the protege of the masterful funk wizard James, with whom she would have long, turbulent but musically magical relationship.
Marie notched her first hit, "I'm A Sucker for Your Love," with the help of James on that album. But the time her second album was released, her face was known — and on the cover of the record. But there was not a backlash — she would only get more popular on her way to becoming one of R&B's most revered queens. During her tenure with Motown, the singer-songwriter and musician produced passionate love songs and funk jam songs like "Need Your Lovin'," "Behind the Groove."
Marie's voice was the main draw of her music: Pitch-perfect, piercing in its clarity and wrought with emotion, whether it was drawing from the highs of romance or the mournful moments of a love lost. But her songs, most of which she had a hand in writing, were the other major component of her success.
Tunes like "Cassanova Brown" "Portuguese Love" and "Deja Vu (I've Been Here Before)" featured more than typical platitudes on love and life, but complex thoughts with rich lyricism. "Deja vu" was a song about reincarnation.
And "Fire and Desire," a duet with James about a former couple musing about their past love, was considered a musical masterpiece and a staple of the romance block on radio stations across the country.
Marie left Motown in 1982 and her split became historic: She sued the label and the legal battle led to a law preventing record labels from holding an artist without releasing any of their music.
She went to Epic in the 1980s and had hits like "Lovergirl" and "Ooo La La La" but her lasting musical legacy would be her Motown years.
Still, she continued to record music and perform. In 2004 and 2006 she put out two well-received albums on the traditional rap label Cash Money Records, "La Dona" and "Sapphire."
James, who had a romantic relationship with Marie but also a long friendship, died in 2004. His death shook her so she said she became addicted to Vicodin, which she had been taking for pain, for about a year.
But Marie said she successfully battled that addiction.In 2008, she talked about her excitement of being honored by the R&B Foundation.
Marie was the mother of a teenage daughter who was budding singer; she would sometimes bring her daughter onstage to sing during her shows.
In 2009, she celebrated 30 years in the recording industry, and planned for many more.
"All in all, it's been a wonderful, wonderful ride," she told The Associated Press in 2008. "I don't

The Dangers Posed by Black Hair Products

by AFRO Staff
Black women with finely primped hair may be jeopardizing their health, according to a recent report by NBC’s TheGrio.com.

Some environmental justice advocates and scientists say the unnatural chemicals found in many hair care products, especially those on the Black hair care market such as relaxers, hair grease and oil sheen, can cause cancer, infertility or early puberty.

Hazardous chemicals including lye can cause visual burns and blindness, while others interfere with natural processes inside the body. Phthalates, for example, commonly described as a ‘fragrance’ on some product ingredient lists, is linked to endometriosis, a painful condition that causes the uterine lining tissue to grow outside the uterus, according to the report.

These additives—labeled hormone disruptors by endocrinologists—don’t only affect Black women or even just beauty products. Over 85 percent of recent man-made chemicals have not been tested by the FDA for their health effects, according to a health report released last year from the Collaborative on Health and the Environment. A large percentage that have been tested do increase health risks and can be found in every day products like plastic containers, baby bottles or electric appliances.

But scientists say some products in the multi-billion dollar Black hair industry may expose Black women to a high risk of ill-health effects. .

“African-American women, compared to their white counterparts, have higher levels of phthalates and they have higher levels of BPA,” Dr. Ami Zota, an environmental health researcher at the University of California San Francisco, told TheGrio.com. Bisphenol A, or BPA, is a plastic chemical often linked to heart disease, diabetes and cancer. "Nobody has really figured out why," Zota added. "But I think the hair care products are part of that story."

In a 1998 study, four Black girls between the ages of 1 and 8 developed breasts and pubic hair after using hair products with estrogen and placenta—a disruptive that mimics hormones—over a two-month span. When the children discontinued use of the products, the premature development stopped.

Almost a quarter of Black girls and 15 percent of Latina girls are developing breasts by age 8, according to a study released this summer, thegrio.com says. Hazardous chemicals, fatty foods and heavy body weight are the likely causes, say scientists.

“Lifetime exposure to estrogen increases your risk of breast cancer,” Zota said. “If you're getting your menstruation earlier, that's increasing the natural estrogen that you're exposed to.”

A bill called the Safe Cosmetics Act, has been passed by both chambers of Congress and would outlaw products with known dangerous chemicals and require evaluations to ensure products are safe before they are sold in stores. The differences between House and Senate versions of the measure are still to be ironed out in a conference committee and observers say the chances of enactment are dim in both the 111th and 112th congresses.

Cherisse Scott of the Chicago-based non-profit Black Women for Reproductive Justice told thegrio.com, “It’s a deep-seeded problem (for Black women). “Environmental justice for us means tackling some of these deep-seeded generational issues

Will Wikileak's Julian Assange be Killed?

What will happen to Julian Assange? He is now in British Government custody. His activist work has put the entire world leadership on edge (and on notice). Some have even said he should be assassinated.

NY Times distorts Wikileaks cables on Iran, Arab States

By Gareth Porter and Jim Lobe
Cables Belie Gulf States' Backing for Strikes on Iran

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (IPS) - The dominant theme that emerged in U.S. media coverage of the first round of Wikileaks diplomatic cables last week was that Arab regimes in the Gulf - led by Saudi Arabia - shared Israel's view that Iran's nuclear programme had to be stopped by military force, if necessary.
The New York Times generated that narrative with a front- page story featuring an alleged quote by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia urging the United States to "cut off the head of the snake", as well as other statements by Gulf Arab leaders suggesting support for military action.

"The cables reveal how Iran's ascent has unified Israel and many longtime Arab adversaries -notably the Saudis - in a common cause," the Times asserted.

The notion that these leaders, like Israel, favour a military solution to Iran's nuclear programme has become widely accepted by the news media in the past week. In a curtain-raiser to this week's talks in Geneva between Iran and the world's most powerful nations, for example, the Washington Post Monday asserted that the Wikileaks disclosure "show[ed] that Persian Gulf leaders have pressed for a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities…"

But a careful reading of all the diplomatic cables reporting the views of Saudi and other Gulf Arab regimes on Iran shows that the Times' account seriously distorted the content - and in the case of the Saudis, ignored the context - of the cables released by Wikileaks.

The original Times story, headlined "From Arabs and Israelis, Sharp Distress Over a Nuclear Iran", referred to "a largely silent front of Arab states whose position on sanctions and force looked much like the Israelis".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his U.S. neo- conservative backers immediately seized on the story as confirmation of what Israel has been saying all along.

In fact, the cables show that most Gulf Arab regimes - including Saudi Arabia itself - have been seriously concerned about the consequences of a strike against Iran for their own security, in sharp contrast to Israel's open advocacy of such a strike. They also show the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait expressing that concern with greater urgency in the past two years than previously.

Those facts were completely ignored, however, in the Times' account.

The Abdullah Quote

The most widely cited quote in support of the Times' thesis since the story's publication one week ago has been Abdullah's appeals to "cut off the head of the snake", referring to Iran. The story asserted that the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, had recalled the king's "frequent exhortations to the U.S. to attack Iran" during an April 2008 meeting with Gen. David Petraeus, the incoming chief of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

The implication was that al-Jubeir had made that statement during the Petraeus-Abdullah meeting. But the reporting cable makes clear that the Saudi ambassador made the remark two days later, in a conversation with the U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission in Riyadh, Michael Gfoeller.

In his meeting with Petraeus, in fact, Abdullah had not spoken about Iran's nuclear programme but focused instead on the importance of "resisting and rolling back Iranian influence and subversion in Iraq", according to the cable.

The cable actually draws a contrast between al-Jubeir's remarks and those made by Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and director general of intelligence Prince Muqrin during Petraeus's visit. "On the other hand," it states after citing al-Jubeir's position, the foreign minister "called instead for much more severe U.S. and international sanctions on Iran, including a travel ban and further restrictions on bank lending." Prince Muqrin "echoed these views", according to the cable.

The foreign minister would only say that "the use of military pressure against Iran should not be ruled out," the cable said.

That statement mirrored precisely the official position of the George W. Bush administration at the time.

Even if Abdullah had in fact offered explicit support for a military attack against Iran in the meeting with Petraeus, however, that would not be a reliable indicator of Saudi policy toward the issue, according to Chas Freeman, a veteran diplomat who served as Washington's ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992 and maintains contact with top Saudi officials.

Freeman told IPS that such a statement would "fit a pattern of communication with the United States of ingratiating themselves with their protector".

Significantly, in that respect, the Abdullah-Petraeus meeting came three months after President Bush had visited Riyadh seeking support for a more confrontational stance against Iran; five weeks after Petraeus's predecessor at CENTCOM, Adm. William Fallon, had been fired in part for public statements that there would be no war against Iran; and less than a month after Vice President Dick Cheney had reportedly sought support for military action during his own visit to the kingdom.

Thomas Lippman, former Washington Post Middle East bureau chief and an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, who has written a book on Saudi-U.S. relations, also said that the Abdullah quote would have been in line with the usual Saudi pattern of "telling the Americans what they wanted to hear".

"They wanted to be assured that they would be under the protection of the U.S.," Lippman told IPS.

In fact, the cables covering the period since President Barack Obama took office suggest that Saudi views have given even greater emphasis to political and economic strategies in dealing with Iran than was the case in 2008.

A Feb. 10, 2010 cable from Riyadh, for example, reported that Abdullah, disillusioned with U.S. blunders in Iraq that have given Iran the upper hand there, "had concluded that he needs to proceed with his strategy to counter Iranian influence in the region".

The new Saudi strategy, according to the cable, features promoting reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority combined with expanding relations with Russia, China and India to create "diplomatic and economic pressure[s] on Iran that do not directly depend on U.S. help".

UAE Worries About a "Preemptive Strike"

As for the UAE, the Times' account of the cables suggested an evolution in its thinking from earlier warnings that a U.S. or Israeli military strike would be "catastrophic" to a far more hawkish position. In February 2007, a cable quotes Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, as saying that the Iranian nuclear programme "must be stopped by all means available".

That exhortation, however, was put in a different context by the diplomat who reported on his conversation with bin Zayed, who also serves as deputy supreme commander of the UAE armed forces.

The diplomat noted that such "tough talk on Iran" should be "taken in the context of strong UAE interest in acquiring advanced military technology". Indeed, the UAE at the time was negotiating agreements to buy a record $17 billion in U.S. arms over the next several years.

Despite bin Zayed's bluster, the U.S. diplomat wrote in the Feb. 7, 2007 cable, the UAE "is clearly nervous about any U.S. actions that could upset their much larger and militarily superior neighbor".

Indeed, two years later, the crown prince told visiting U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke that a "military solution would only delay [Iran's nuclear] program, not derail it" and that "war with Iran would only harm the UAE". He also said he was "deeply concerned" over a possible Israeli military strike which, he added, "would have little impact on Iran's capabilities," according to an Apr. 5, 2009 cable.

He repeated his concerns about an Israeli attack to other high-ranking U.S. visitors three months later. After a Jul. 15 meeting between bin Zayed and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the embassy reported, "Without timely and decisive action by the United States, MbZ believes Israel will strike Iran, causing Iran to launch missile attacks - including hits on the UAE - and to unleash terror attacks worldwide." He then suggested that "the key to containing Iran revolves around progress in the Israel/Palestine issue."

According to a Jul. 23, 2009 cable, the prince subsequently declared to visiting senior State Department officials that "[Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is Hitler" – a remark highlighted in the Times' account that has also gained widespread media attention.

But the cable reported further expressions of alarm over the prospect and possible consequences of an Israeli pre-emptive strike. The prince called for Washington to immediately begin "joint planning" with the UAE to address such a "worst-case scenario".

Most recently, a Feb. 22, 2010 cable has the UAE's foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nayan, warning a visiting delegation headed by Rep. Nita Lowey, a strong supporter of Israel in Congress, that any "crisis or confrontation in the region [over Iran's nuclear programme] would create oil supply problems world wide."

According to the cable, the minister ended the meeting with a "soliloquy on the importance of a successful peace process between Israel and its neighbors as perhaps the best way of reducing Iran's regional influence."

"Iran Has Not Bothered Us"

While confirming growing Arab fears about Iran's regional clout and nuclear ambitions, the cables suggest that other Gulf Arab leaders - with the possible exception of Bahrain's King Hamad, the only regional leader with a majority Shi'a population - have little or no appetite for military action against Iran.

"A year or two ago, many in Kuwait hoped a silent, targeted strike would take out the troublesome reactor and leave the region more relaxed," a cable quotes a senior foreign ministry official who also happens to be the son of Kuwait's prime minister as recalling to his U.S. interlocutor last February.

"Now, however, they feared that any effort to disrupt the nuclear program, either military or through tough sanctions 'would go badly for the West,'" according to the cable, which quotes another official as saying that, while the emirate was worried about Iran's nuclear programme, it was "equally concerned about military preemption" and the retaliation that was likely to follow.

Qatar, meanwhile, is unwilling to "provoke a fight" with Iran, according to the emir of Qatar, as reported in a February 2010 cable on a meeting between the emir and Senator John Kerry. The emir explained that Doha would not "provoke a fight" with Iran, because its primary interest was a natural-gas field it shared with Tehran. He added that Iran "has not bothered us" during the history of relations between the two states.

A Feb. 2, 2010 cable makes it clear that the sultan of Oman, who has given the U.S. access to three military bases on its territory, is determined to maintain balance between Washington and Tehran. The cable reported that Muscat had twice rejected official U.S. offers to include it in a collective missile defence system aimed at Iran in 2009.

As for Bahrain, the Gulf's only Shi'a-majority sheikhdom and host of the U.S. 5th Fleet, the Times quoted a November 2009 cable in which King Hamad al-Khalifa declares that Iran's nuclear "programme must be stopped" and warns that "[t]he danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it."

No other cable from Manama elaborates, however, on what means the U.S. or other countries should use to halt the programme.

Scientist has Cancer Cure Breakthrough

A local scientist, intent on finding a cure for cancer, believes he's on the brink of a breakthrough as he and his counterparts in Germany have been able to produce the anti-cancer compound, dibenzyl trisulphide (DTS), from guinea hen weed (petivera alliacea), which grows wild across Jamaica.

According to zoologist Dr Lawrence Williams, a research consultant with the Scientific Research Council, he is now ready to take his research to the next level - the use of the compound on mice induced with cancer and an investigation into the side effects, including DTS's impact on the kidneys and the liver. The work is to cost an estimated US$150,000.

Dr Lawrence Williams examines a guinea hen weed plant on the compound of the Scientific Research Council in Kingston.

And while human testing may be between three and five years away, Dr Williams said he was confident that he would have no problems getting volunteers.

In the last few months, he said, he has been receiving inquiries from people who have heard of the healing properties of the guinea hen weed and who have indicated an interest in participating in any clinical trial that may be set up.

At least five of them have been taking the DTS compound, which Williams said was also synthetically produced by the German firm Aldrich Chemical. The reports filtering in from those people, he added, have been positive.

There is one man with skin cancer, he said, who has been using the plant leaves to make tea and the extract as a salve for his lesions with encouraging results.


"The lesions are gone and he is feeling much better," an enthusiastic and smiling Williams said of the man, who could not be reached for comment on Friday.

The DTS compound, produced through three years of work at the University of Hohenheim in Germany, has, when applied to cancer cells in vitro (outside a living organism), been found effective in the cure of various types of cancer. Among them:


. brain (neuro blastoma),
. bladder (primary bladder carcinoma),
. breast (mammary carcinoma),
. fibrous (sarcoma),
. skin (melanoma), and
. small cell lung cancer.

"Despite the fact that people are using it, we still need to do the toxicological work on the pure compound to validate safety," said Dr Williams. "Also, in terms of patenting the data, we would need to have that data too.

Dr Williams's counterparts in Germany are professors Harold Rosner and Wolfgang Kraus. They intend, Williams said, to create DTS tablets for the human testing phase of the research.


"It is a promising project," said Williams. "I am very positive about the work and I think also that one day it will come off as a curative agent for cancer. It may be that we should look at the effects of DTS in combination with radiation therapy and see if they can enhance each other."

Williams's positive outlook is based in large part, he said, on the fact that the compound was drawn from a plant and that there was need for a cancer drug with limited side effects, if any.


"Cancer is one of the most challenging diseases to mankind, and anything that can work against cancer with minimum side effects is worth the while developing," he said. "Most of the drugs they use to treat cancer now have too many side effects. We are hoping that because the compound is natural, it will have less side effects. That is one of the beliefs."

Cancer is among the leading causes of death in Jamaica and the Caribbean. According to data received from the Cancer Registry at the University of the West Indies, in 1999 there were 2,697 cancer deaths in Jamaica, representing 17.7 per cent of deaths in that year. Of that number, 1,466 were males and 1,231 were females.

Dr Williams told the Sunday Observer that his preliminary work has shown that the DTS compound does not affect healthy cells, which, he said, is a bonus.

"The anti-cancer action of dibenzyl trisulphide is linked to the molecule ability to disrupt the skeletal framework of cells, of which there are two - actin and microtubules," he explained. "Microtubles is the one responsible for cell division and that is the one that the dibenzyl trisulphide acts on. So we have found that with a normal cell, the dibenzyl trisulphide has no effect on it."

This is not the case with chemotherapy, for example, which does affect healthy cells that multiply quickly because the treatment is designed to kill faster growing cancer cells. Among those healthy cells likely to be affected are blood cells forming in the bone marrow and cells in the digestive tract, reproductive system, and hair follicles. Chemotherapy may also damage cells of the heart, kidney and lungs.

Williams' revelation of his work comes on the heels of an announcement by the pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline, of their intention to introduce to the local market next year a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer.

The vaccine, called Cervarix, was developed over the last five to 10 years at a cost of approximately £1.8-billion and has been proven to prevent the strains of the human papilloma virus (HPV), which is known to cause cervical cancer.

The vaccine is to be administered to people before they become sexually active.

The Manchester-based Northern Caribbean University is also enaged in cancer research, focussing on sorrel and garlic and their effects on cancer cells, as well as on over-the-counter substances that contain dismuth and their effects on cancer cells.


Dr Devon Gardener, a professor of physical chemistry at the institution, said last October that should funding become available, the expectation was that the scientists would make significant progress in a few years.

Last week, Dr Williams said he was not worried about the possibility of his research being stolen, as he has published works on his progress to date, even as he moves to secure a patent internationally for the biological activity of the DTS compound.

Among the journals in which his works have been published are Phytotherapy Research Journal in England, the Biochemica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) Journal and the Jamaica Journal of Science and Technology.

"The Germans and myself are trying to get a patent for the biological activity," Williams said. "The papers that have been published are copyright to the journals and as leading researcher I can write to the journal to get the patent for the biological activity."

Jamaican scientist lands blow in cancer fight

Dr Lawrence Williams, a research scientist at the Scientific Research Council (SRC), has been awarded an international patent on a compound isolated from the Guinea Hen Weed as a protein complex of dibenzyl trisulphide.

The SRC said the protein complex has the ability to kill a wide range of cancers.

The Jamaican's discovery has the potential to fight various kinds of cancers, a few of which are: melanoma, lung cancer and breast cancer. The molecule also has implications for the treatment of ageing diseases.

The SRC noted that, with more than 13 years dedicated to this research, Williams has revealed that the complex is superior in killing cancer cells relative to the pure compound found in the Guinea Hen Weed-dibenzyl trisulphide.

"This remarkable breakthrough comes at a time when the world is crippled by the effects of cancer, as it is one of the leading killers globally," the SRC asserted.

The SRC said it joined the remainder of the international medical fraternity in celebrating the scientific breakthrough.

"This is good news for Jamaica, given its ability to contribute to health, longevity and as a major foreign exchange earner. Williams' discovery could change the face of medicine as we now know it," the SRC declared.

Williams said that the next stage is conducting clinical trials of the compound and the development of a pharmaceutical agent.

The SRC, one of Jamaica's chief proponents of scientific research and development, commended its team member on his "outstanding contribution to science".

Rights to the patent are shared with Dr George Levy, a Jamaica-born medical doctor living in the United States.

Aretha Franklin is fighting pancreatic cancer

An outpouring of prayers continues for Detroit's legendary Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin as she battles cancer.

It has been confirmed that Franklin is suffering from pancreatic cancer.

According to a family member, the award-winning singer is recovering at Detroit's Sinai Grace Hospital, where she underwent surgery in late November.

The family member also said the surgery was successful and that Franklin was walking, talking, laughing and showing a sense of humor.

WATCH VIDEO: Aretha Franklin Has Pancreatic Cancer


“The surgery was highly successful," the family member said. "God is still in control. I had superb doctors and nurses whom were blessed by all the prayers of the city and the country. God bless you all for your prayers."

Those who know Franklin have shared stories about working and spending time with the singer.

Brian and Mark Pastoria run Harmonie Park Studios in Detroit and have recorded music with Franklin.

Inside the studio is the microphone she used to record her most recent albums.

Mark Pastoria was there during her recording sessions and won a couple of Grammys for his efforts.

"Sometimes you can't believe you're there, but then you have to realize you have a job to do so you get out of that mode," said Mark Pastoria.

He showed off a picture he took with Franklin and Burt Bacharach inside Franklin's home. The picture was taken in her foyer where they recorded a track for her "So Damn Happy" album.

Pastoria recalled what it was like to hear Franklin sing.

"After she did a take, we just turned and looked at each other and he looked and me and I think he was more in awe than I was," said Pastoria.

Pastoria made a music video out of Franklin’s song "Good News" using images of Detroit.

Brian Pastoria also worked with Franklin and said doing so was like an out-of-body experience.

"To know her as a person, just lifts you up. It really does. She's a very special lady," said Brian Pastoria.

"I hope Aretha feels well and my thoughts go out to here and her family," said Mark Pastoria.

"I feel good knowing that when that people I do talk to that know her, that everybody's being positive. And you know, I know that that's Aretha's nature, and that's her spirit," said Brian Pastoria.

Israeli leader lobbies America for war with Iran

WASHINGTON (IPS/GIN) - Less than a week after Republicans made major gains in the U.S. midterm elections, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called on President Barack Obama to “create a credible threat of military action” against Iran.

Initial official reaction was negative, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates insisting that Obama's preferred strategy of enhanced multilateral sanctions and negotiations, which may resume after a year's hiatus later this month, was working better than expected.

“I disagree that only a credible military threat can get Iran to take the actions that it needs, to end its nuclear weapons program,” Mr. Gates said when asked about Netanyahu's remarks during a visit in Australia.

According to diplomatic sources quoted in the Israeli and U.S. press, Mr. Netanyahu's appeal came during a Nov. 7 meeting with Vice President Joseph Biden in New Orleans. It suggests that his right-wing government and its allies here, including hawkish Republicans who will take control of the House of Representatives in January, are preparing to escalate pressure on Mr. Obama to adopt a more confrontational stance with Tehran.

Indeed, even as Mr. Netanyahu was telling Mr. Biden, according to the anonymous sources, that “only a real military threat against Iran can prevent the need to activate a real military force,” Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, a leading national-security spokesman for his party, told an international conference in Halifax, Canada, that Mr. Obama would help his own re-election chances in 2012 if he made “abundantly clear that all options (to Iran) are on the table”—a phrase that is associated with taking military action.

And if Tehran actually developed a nuclear weapon, he said, Mr. Obama should act “not to just neutralize their nuclear program, …but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard. In other words, neuter that regime. Destroy their ability to fight back.”

The rhetorical escalation by both Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters here comes amid diplomatic jockeying between Iran and the so-called P5+1—the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany—over the site and agenda of a meeting that both sides have said they hope will take place later this month.

Along with Brazil, Turkey had secured Iran's agreement last spring to a proposal, originally put forward as a confidence-building measure by the P5+1 a year ago, to ship a substantial amount of its growing stockpile of low-enriched uranium outside the country for enrichment to the 20 percent level needed to fuel a nuclear plant in Tehran that produces medical isotopes.

The Turkey-Brazil deal, however, was summarily rejected by the Obama administration and its European allies on the grounds that Tehran had added significantly to its stockpile in the previous six months.

While Netanyahu and his supporters here are dismissing as insufficient Obama's strategy of sanctions and talks, two centrist think tanks urged the administration to place more emphasis on engaging the Islamic Republic.

In addition, a new paper released by the bipartisan Iran Task Force convened by the Atlantic Council on the evolution of internal Iranian politics, particularly since last year's disputed elections, called for Washington to pursue “strategic patience” with Tehran “and avoid overreactions that could set back Iran's political development.”

With sympathetic Republicans taking over the House of Representatives, the Israeli government appears confident it can press for more.

But war talk was denounced as “dangerous” Nov. 8 by the Atlantic Council's chairman, former Sen. Chuck Hagel, who also co-chairs Mr. Obama's Intelligence Advisory Board, as well as the Council's Iran task force. “If you're going to threaten war on any kind of consistent basis, then you'd better be prepared to follow through on that (threat),” he said.

“The United States of America is currently in two of the longest wars we've ever been in … at a very significant cost to this country. … I'm not sure the people of the United States want to do a third war,” he said.

A Must See Film "Night Catches Us"

In 1976, after years of mysterious absence, Marcus (Anthony Mackie, “The Hurt Locker”) returns to the Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age in the midst of the Black Power movement. While his arrival raises suspicion among his family and former neighbors, he finds acceptance from his old friend Patricia (Kerry Washington, “Ray,” “Lift”) and her daughter. However, Marcus quickly finds himself at odds with the organization he once embraced, whose members suspect he orchestrated the slaying of their former comrade-in-arms. In a startling sequence of events, Marcus must protect a secret that could shatter everyone's beliefs as he rediscovers his forbidden passion for Patricia.


History
1960s was a time of social and political change around the world. Many colonial nations established their independence during the 60s, finding new political footing. Other nations experienced significant political strife. In the US, a battle raged between the government and bourgeoning political groups advocating mostly for under-represented citizens. Among these groups the Black Panther Party (BPP), a political organization grounded in Black Nationalism and advocating for social change for African-Americans. Considered to be one of the most significant social, political and cultural movements in US history, the Black Panther Party was established in 1966 but was all but disbanded by the early 1970s. Today, many continue to wonder how such a strong political organization could have experienced such a rapid demise. While debate lingers today about what factors led to that demise, many former Panthers and others contend that it was solely the result of a government conspiracy.
From the mid-1950s throughout the 1960s accusations abounded about a covert FBI program bent on disrupting political organizations in the US. The disruptions ranged from the trivial (reprints of articles forwarded to college administrators) to the degrading (coloring books distributed by the FBI in the name of BPP, advocating children to celebrate violence). Later, graver assertions arose: the FBI was feeding information to police departments which—knowingly and unknowingly—carried out assassination plots at its behest.

To many, these stories appeared circumspect and baseless, and the controversy went unnoticed. But the disturbances—aimed primarily at Black political organizations, most notably the Black Panther Party—continued and affected liberal and conservative organizations alike, from the Communist Party to the Ku Klux Klan. Only when activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania in 1971 was the truth confirmed about a secret program run by the FBI called COINTELPRO. Among the documents later discovered was a memo by the notoriously overzealous FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, which said, “the purpose of the counterintelligence action is to disrupt the BPP and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge.”

The documents were damning and COINTELPRO was abandoned the same year. An investigation launched in 1976 by a subcommittee of the United States Senate, known as the Church Committee, concluded that, “the techniques [used by the FBI] would be intolerable in a democratic society, even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that…” Later, the committee deemed many of COINTELPRO’s actions to be illegal.

Today, opinions vary widely about how significantly the actions of COINTELPRO were in the demise of the BPP. Many blame COINTELPRO solely for creating distress and fomenting irreparable damage between community members and police. Others attribute the demise of the Panthers more to the strife within its ranks.

The fact remains that the assassination of BPP members like Bobby Hutton and Fred Hampton live on as examples of this tragic chapter in American history. Many believe today that as many as twenty BPP members were assassinated as part of the program, for which the FBI claims no part. The fact that Hoover and the FBI kept COINTELPRO hidden for so long only serves to foster plausibility in the conspiracy.

NIGHT CATCHES US endeavors to portray characters drawn into the violence and betrayal of this time and living in its aftermath.

Final Call News Editor Richard Muhammad speaks on trip to Haiti

In Denver Colorado On 11/27/10 Editor of the Final Call Newspaper Richard B. Muhammad speaks on his recent trips to Haiti and the truth concerning the Haitian people..

Jews and Money: But Foxman Forgot the Blacks!

CLICK BELOW TO READ ARTICLE....
Jews and Money: But Foxman Forgot the Blacks!

Katrina witness: Officer laughed after burning body

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A New Orleans police officer was laughing after he burned the body of a man who had been gunned down by police in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, a fellow officer testified Thursday.

The testimony came during the trial of officer Greg McRae and Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann, who are charged with burning the body of 31-year-old Henry Glover in a car after he was shot and killed by a different officer outside a strip mall on Sept. 2, 2005. Three other current and former officers also are charged in Glover's death.

Lt. Joseph Meisch testified Thursday that he was standing outside a police station near the Mississippi River when he saw a car followed by a pickup truck driving on a levee. McRae was driving the car and Scheuermann was driving the truck, according to prosecutors.

Moments after the car drove off the levee, Meisch saw a plume of thick, black smoke.

Meisch didn't know who was driving the vehicles until McRae and Scheuermann ran toward him. Scheuermann had a blank look on his face, but McRae was laughing, Meisch said.

"Laughing like somebody had just played a joke?" Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracey Knight asked.

"It could have been humorous or nervous laughter," he said.

Meisch said he asked what had happened, and McRae told him not to worry about it.

"I got it," Scheuermann added, according to Meisch.

McRae's lawyer, Frank DeSalvo, has conceded that his client burned the body. DeSalvo said in his opening statement that McRae was under stress from Katrina's harsh conditions when he made a "very bad decision" to toss a flare in the car. Jeffrey Kearney, one of Scheuermann's attorneys, has said his client didn't know McRae was going to set the car on fire.

Meisch said he didn't check on the car until four or five days later. When he looked into the back seat, he saw what appeared to be a ribcage.

"It kind of actually scared me," he said.

But he didn't tell anybody about his discovery, assuming Scheuermann was handling it, Meisch said.

"It did raise some suspicion in my mind," he said. "But, again, Lt. Scheuermann said he's got it."

Meisch said he didn't discuss the matter with Scheuermann again until 2009, after federal authorities started investigating Glover's death. Meisch said Scheuermann told him that they wouldn't deny what happened and that McRae had made a "stupid mistake."

A former officer, David Warren, is charged with shooting Glover. Prosecutors say Glover wasn't armed and didn't pose a threat to Warren.

Scheuermann and McRae are accused of beating people who drove Glover to a makeshift police headquarters in search of help. The three men were handcuffed when the officers drove off with the car containing Glover's body.

Former Lt. Robert Italiano and Lt. Travis McCabe are accused of falsifying a report to make it appear Glover's shooting was justified.

In other testimony Thursday, a federal agent deployed in New Orleans after Katrina said he interviewed William Tanner, the owner of the burned car, about a month after the shooting. Tanner had driven Glover, Glover's brother and a friend to the school, where he claims they were beaten before the officers drove off with his car.

John Schmidt, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, said he recounted Tanner's story to Italiano because he supervised the investigative unit for the police district where the shooting and alleged beatings occurred.

"He said he was going to take care of it," Schmidt recalled Italiano saying.

But prosecutors say Italiano helped cover up the incident and lied to the FBI about his knowledge of the shooting and burned car.

Farrakhan Headed to Rockford

ROCKFORD (WIFR) -- Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan will speak at the Coronado theatre in Rockford Saturday. He was last here in September when he spoke at Kingdom Authority church and even donated money to the Brown family, who are in charge of the church. An aide to Farrakhan says the minister will talk about justice in the Forest city and the many problems the city and the entire country now faces.

"Unemployment, we look at the gang and youth violence, the problems that Rockford is experiencing, is not unique and isolated from what is happening throughout our whole nation and so Minister Farrakhan brings a message that is good for Rockford, good for America."

Farrakhan will speak at 6p.m. in the Coronado Theatre. Everyone is welcome to attend the free event.

Rappers in jail? It's all your fault, Simmons says

Lil Wayne was just released from his stay at Riker's Island. T.I. is on his way back to jail for violating his probation. Wiz Khalifa might be on his way to the slammer too. And it's all your fault, says Russell Simmons.

Simmons, co-founder of Def Jam Records, says it's his fault and society's fault that our favorite rappers are making poor decisions. In a recent interview with Atlanta's V-103 radio station, Simmons said that the glorification of crime in hip-hop has made bad behavior "more acceptable."

He bases his claims on the idea that society consists of consumers who have control over the market, and that the albums we buy speak to not only what we want to hear but also what we expect and accept in our community. If consumers stopped purchasing hip-hop filled with lyrics about domestic abuse and gun violence, a shift would occur. The market would be reassessed and when rappers look at album sales and see that the public is no longer buying into the gangster rap and paying their super hefty paychecks, the music will change. It's pure economics. Stop demanding the supply, and they'll stop supplying the demand.

"We got these images out of the streets," Russell said to V-103. "The violence, the things they talk about are topics we chose."

Not all the rappers are bad people, Simmons said. They have the ability to inact positive decisions in members of our community as well. Rapper T.I., who recently received an 11-month prison sentence for drug possession, recently talked down a man from jumping off a building in Atlanta. He also hosted a show on MTV in February of 2009, "Road to Redemption," in which he helped mentor seven teenagers away from a life of crime and violence before his first sentencing.

"T.I is very insightful. He's a good person," Simmons said. "These guys are learning their lesson in front of the world. And it's a good thing they're growing up before us. Otherwise, they might not have grown up at all.
CHECK OUT SIMMONS IN INTERVIEW...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Private prisons profit off race prejudice

Arizona's controversial immigration law is actually a business model carefully crafted by private prisons rather than a law aiming to fix anything about America's broken immigration system. The seeds of this law -- SB 1070 -- were planted last year when two men from a private prison company showed up in Benson, AZ to sell the idea of a prison made specifically for illegal immigrants.

When NPR broke a story revealing the link between the private prison companies and SB 1070, many expressed outrage at how the prison industry is working to profit off of immigrant communities. What was not much discussed is the historical roots of private prisons and the reality that this industry has in fact been acquiring massive wealth off of communities of color at least since the 1860s Reconstruction Era.

The privatization of prisons in modern American history is directly linked to society's desire -- specifically in the South -- to find cheap labor to replace the workforce lost to slave owners after emancipation. After the Civil War, prison populations in the south skyrocketed -- mostly by the flow of newly freed slaves into correctional facilities as a result of the Black Codes, vagrancy laws, and other policies specifically targeting them. The convict lease system was quickly set up to return the newly freed slaves who were being funneled into prison back to their employers who had just lost their slave labor.

Private companies paid the state a fee in return for the ability to lease out convicts (who did not receive wages at that time). Many southern businessmen acquired massive amounts of wealth by doing this -- including Nathan Bedford Forrest, the cofounder and first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who made a portion of his millions trading slaves and running a prison farm camp on President's Island in the late 1800's. Although the convict lease system was phased out across the country through the 20th century, its legacy lives on not only in the continued disproportion of minorities in America's prisons -- which house over 2.3 million people, over 2/3 of them people of color -- but also through the private prison industry.

Today's private prison are for-profit contractors who enter into agreements with local, state, or federal government to run correctional facilities and receive per diem funding based on the number of people they confine. America's "war on drugs" has led to mass incarceration and overpopulation of our prisons and jails, becoming too large a burden for governments to manage. The situation created a most ideal opportunity for private sector involvement in the prison system. The trend quickly evolved to complete private building, ownership, and management of facilities -- beginning with the Corrections Corporations of America (CCA -- the largest private prison corporation in the U.S.) being awarded a full contract for a prison in Tennessee in 1984. Today, over 264 private correctional facilities exist in the U.S, housing roughly 100,000 inmates.

Although private prison companies claim they provide more cost efficient ways to manage an overflowing prison population, studies cast serious doubt on whether they have provided actual cost savings. Much of the research has produced inconclusive findings, and many studies have actually been tied to financial backing, http://www.justicestrategies.org/node/61 by the private prison industry itself.

Even the Bureau of Justice Statistics has admitted that savings promised by private prisons "have simply not materialized." But what is abundantly clear is a host of other private businesses -- from food services, to medical care, to communications and transportation services -- also profit off of inmates and their families. Private phone companies, for example, charge notoriously high prices for collect calls that inmates make to their friends and families.

One analysis shows that prisoners in at least 10 states pay over $1/minute for out of state calls. And according to reports, feeding prisoners is an industry totaling $1 billion a year, and growing between 10-15 percent annually. In fact in the late 1980's, Campbell Soup Company who has contracted with private prisons, recognized America's prison system as "the fastest growing food service market."

And the latest example of how private prisons accrue wealth and stay in business by targeting communities of color is Arizona's controversial SB 1070. This past Spring, SB 1070, which forces local law enforcement to act as pseudo immigration officers by asking for immigration papers from people they stop, generated much emotionally charged debate around the nation. But few looked into the source of this controversial bill, until NPR revealed the result of their investigation last week: SB 1070 was the brainchild of representatives of the private prison industry and Arizona sate politicians. Together, they devised a perfect and profitable plan to operate new private facilities, filled with "illegal" immigrants that would be funneled in via SB 1070 - and eventually other copycat laws that began to pop up across the country.

Once again, private prisons succeeded in targeting communities with no political power. And through political campaign contributions -- for example, the donation of $100K by CCA and $50K by Correctional Medical Services to a political action committee during two key election cycles -- the private prison industry and other corporations who stand to gain from continued incarceration ensure that politicians who are friendly to their cause remain in power and that profit flows to their pockets at the expense of communities who have no similar influence to wield. And so, the story of the private prison industry's role in Arizona's immigration law is nothing but business as usual.

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOOD

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOOD


FACTOR THIS!!
95 PERCENT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS ARE LACTOSE INTOLERANT!!
Each sip of milk provides you with the following:
Growth hormones, fat, cholesterol, allergenic proteins, blood, pus, antibiotics, bacteria, virus and more!

* Pituitary hormones (PRL, GH, TSH, FSH, LH ACTH Oxytocin)
* Steroid hormones (Estradiol, Estriol, Progesterone, Testosterone, 17-Ketosteroids, Corticosterone, Vitamine D)
* Hypothalamic hormones (TRH, LHRH, Somatostatin, PRL-inhibiting factor, PRL-releasing factor, GnRH, GRH)
* Thyroid and Parathyroid hormones (T3, T4, rT3, Calcitonin, Parathormone, PTH peptide)
* Gastrointestinal peptides (Vasoactive intestinal peptide, Bombesin, Cholecystokinin, Gastrin, Gastrin inhibitory peptide, Pancreatic peptide, Y peptide, Substance P and Neurotensin)
* Growth Factors (IGF's (I and II), IGF binding proteins, Nerve growth factor, Epidermal growth factor and TGF alpha, TGF beta, Growth Inhibitors MDGI and MAF, and Platelet derived growth factor
* Others... (PGE, PGF2 alpha, cAMP, cGMP, Delta sleep inducing peptide, Transferrin, Lactoferrin, Casomorphin and Erythropoietin

HOW TO SHOP TO AVOID GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS:

FOODS TO AVOID:

SPECIFIC BRAND NAME PRODUCTS TO BOYCOTT:

THE FOLLOWING COMPANIES USE GENETICALLY ENGINEERED INGREDIENTS IN SOME OR ALL OF THEIR PRODUCTS:

* Coca Cola (corn syrup and/or Aspartame)
* Fritos (corn)
* Green Giant Harvest Burgers (soy)
* McDonald's French Fries (potatoes)
* Nestle's chocolates (soy)
* Karo Corn Syrup (corn)
* NutraSweet (Aspartame)
* Kraft Salad Dressings (canola oil)
* Fleishmann's margarine (soy)
* Similac Infant Formula (soy)
* Land o Lakes butter (rBGH)
* Cabot Creamery Butter (rBGH)

AVOID ALL OTHER CONVENTIONAL (NOT CERTIFIED-ORGANIC) TOMATOES, POTATOES, CORN, SOY, CANOLA OIL, COTTON SEED OIL, AND YELLOW CROOK-NECK SQUASH:

TOMATOES: Genetically engineered with bacteria-derived kanamycin resistance genes, Antisense backwards DNA, antibiotic marker genes, viruses, and DNA of flounder and North Atlantic shellfish. This and the following genetically engineered foods have antibiotic marker genes used to facilitate the genetic engineering process. They can cause allergies and autoimmune disease.

POTATOES: Genetically engineered with wax moth insect DNA; genetically engineered to produce its own pesticide internally with the DNA of bacillus thuringiensis bacteria.

CORN: Genetically engineered to tolerate high quantities of the chemical pesticide glufosinate, and genetically engineered with a virus and the DNA of the bacteria bacillus thuringiensis.

SOY: Genetically engineered and DNA-altered by Monsanto with bacteria; capable of tolerating heavy doses of Monsanto's Roundup brand chemical pesticide (glyphosate).

YELLOW CROOK NECK SQUASH: Gene-spliced with two experimental viruses and arbitrary marker genes, capable of causing unpredictable and unexpected effects.

CANOLA OIL: Genetically engineered and DNA-altered with California bay turnip and various viruses and bacterium in order to produce high quantities of lauric acid.

COTTON SEED OIL: Genetically engineered and DNA-altered with Arabidopsis bacterium, and viruses to be able to withstand large applications of the chemical pesticide bromoxynil. Bromoxynil causes birth defects in human beings.

AVOID ALL PRODUCTS DERIVED FROM THE ABOVE NON-ORGANIC ITEMS

As of the beginning of 1997, these products will have been genetically engineered and on the market as a percentage of the total conventional food supply. Since they are sold unlabeled in the conventional market, there is no way to tell specifically which tomatoes, potatoes, corn, soy, etc. have been actually genetically engineered. If you live in a nation which may receive imports from the U.S. and Canada, you should also avoid these non-organic foods as a safety precaution. Your own nation or another exporting to yours may be doing genetic engineering. Eat only organic food if possible. Even if you buy seeds to grow your own food, buy only organic seeds.

AVOID EATING IN NON-ORGANIC RESTAURANTS

Unless the restaurant management makes it clear in writing that they are committed to using only non-genetically engineered foods and products, avoid eating out as much as possible. Since genetically engineered foods are not labeled, they also have no idea which of their tomato, potato, corn, soy, canola, yellow-crook-neck squash products may be genetically engineered.

READ LABELS CAREFULLY:

BE CAREFUL WITH ALL PROCESSED FOODS

WATCH OUT FOR CONVENTIONAL, NON-ORGANIC CORN AND SOY, BECAUSE THEY ARE IN SO MANY PRODUCTS:

Avoid corn syrup, fructose, and fructose corn syrup in almost all beverages and sodas (even health food brands), and in almost all sweet products, yogurt, and aspirin. Avoid corn oil, corn starch, corn meal, baking soda, baking powder, glycose syrup; Avoid soy; soy flour in baked goods; pizza, cookies, cakes, pasta; fillers in meat products, (for example Big Macs) vegetarian meat substitutes, (for example tofu, tofu burgers, tofu hot dogs) soy milk, infant formula, baby foods; diet and protein shakes, protein bars; chocolate and candy bars; margarine; ice cream; pet food; soy oil in salad dressings & snack chips; soy sauce; lecithin and soy lecithin. In all, well over 30,000 products!

AVOID rBGH MILK & DAIRY PRODUCTS:

Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH), marketed through veterinarians and injected into dairy cows, causes increased milk production and horrible mastitis. These cows then require constant medical supervision and continuous high doses of antibiotics. Their milk contains high levels of pus. The cow's milk and dairy products made from this milk also contain rBGH, bovine growth hormone. This hormone increases cancer risk in human beings.

EAT ONLY ORGANIC RENNETLESS CHEESE:

Most non-organic cheeses are made with a genetically engineered rennet called chymosin.

AVOID DOUGH CONDITIONER:

This is a code word for a combination of genetically engineered enzymes and other components, found in cheaper breads and baked goods.

OTHER GENETICALLY ENGINEERED ADDITIVES AND ENZYMES:

Avoid Amylase (used in making bread, flour, whole wheat flour, cereals, starch), Catalase (used in making soft drinks, egg whites, liquid whey) and Lactase.

Relevant Websites About Genetic Engineering:

* http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/shag/
* http://www.bio-integrity.org
* http://www.netlink.de/gen/

FOODS TO FAVOR:

BUY AND EAT ONLY CERTIFIED ORGANIC FOODS:

Certified organic tomatoes, potatoes, corn, soy, canola oil, cotton oil, and yellow-crook-neck squash are safe. Many other genetically engineered products will be coming to market in 1998 and 1999 if the bio-tech industry has its way. By buying only organic foods of every type, you will protect yourself and your family from Frankenfoods. Almost everything that can be found in your conventional food market is also produced by the organic food industry. If you buy a few carefully chosen conventional foods, keep up-to-date on which few conventional foods are safe through the websites and mailing lists.

MEAT AND POULTRY (apologies to vegetarians)

Most livestock are being fed genetically altered feed, as well as a disgusting mix of ground-up and often diseased and discarded animal carcasses. The only safe beef and poultry will be those fed only organically grown grain. Avoid commercially produced seafood. Commercial pork has been genetically altered with DNA from human beings. Great time to decide to be vegetarian.

FAVOR DAIRY PRODUCTS FROM COMPANIES THAT DO NOT USE (rBGH) BOVINE GROWTH HORMONE (apologies to strict vegans)

Research and buy only from suppliers that promise on the package or in other writing that their products are rBGH-free. Be especially careful with butter. Buy only organic butter, because even otherwise good companies buy cheap rBGH milk to make butter, or else they buy their butter (rBGH) from other companies.

AVOID DOUGH CONDITIONER:

This is a code word for a combination of genetically engineered enzymes and other components, found in cheaper breads and baked goods.

Motivation is Everything

Its All about you staying Motivated

THE MYCOMEUP.COM VIDEO from mycomeup on Vimeo.

With less money for prisons, states ease rules against ex-convicts

States across the country are passing laws intended to make ex-offenders more likely to find jobs and, as a result, less prone to commit crime again. Behind the legislative trend is an unusual combination of budget-conscious officials seeking to trim prison populations and activists opposing “structural discrimination” against applicants with criminal records.

Within the last four years, one-third of the states have approved legislation to improve employment prospects of residents with records, according to surveys by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Generally, the laws either allow otherwise qualified ex-offenders to progress further in the hiring process or shield official records of some offenses from employers conducting background checks.

Four states have passed laws that prohibit employers from inquiring about criminal history on initial job applications. Activists based in California are waging a national campaign to “ban the box,” a reference to a standard question many employers ask about whether an applicant has convictions or arrests.

The ban applies to public and private employers in Massachusetts but only to public agencies in Connecticut, Minnesota and New Mexico. The laws exempt employers such as day care centers and schools that have other legal mandates to check criminal records.

Before last year, Hawaii was the only state with a similar law.

“It's getting to be more and more an accepted idea,” said Madeline Neighly, an attorney with the National Employment Law Project, which provides technical assistance to state and local governments. “It creates a bigger, better applicant pool.”

About a dozen states have begun permitting people convicted of drug offenses, minor crimes or violations as juveniles to have their records sealed sooner or more easily. Nevada, for instance, requires special drug courts to seal the records of offenders after they complete drug or alcohol rehabilitation programs, eliminating a three-year waiting period. Washington automatically destroys some juvenile records three months after a youthful offender turns 18.

The trend of giving ex-offenders a better shot at a fresh start is strongest in the West, where seven of the 17 states with new laws are located. It extends into the South, a region historically tough on crime.

In South Carolina, a prison sentencing overhaul enacted in June includes a provision making first-time drug offenders eligible to have their sentences dismissed and records expunged. Gov. Mark Sanford, a conservative Republican, has predicted that the overall legislation will “both discourage recidivism and save taxpayer resources” because it would “limit unnecessary prison population increases.”

For the first time, Mississippi allows purging some felonies from public records. The law approved earlier this year applies to a single conviction for bouncing checks, possessing illegal drugs, shoplifting, stealing or engaging in malicious mischief. Such offenders can seek a court order five years after completing their sentences.

Taken together, the new state laws chip away at what All of Us Or None, the group in Oakland, Calif., that launched the “ban the box” campaign earlier this decade, calls “structural discrimination against formerly-incarcerated people.”

Nearly 40 percent of the country's 2.3 million inmates are Black, according to the U.S. Justice Department. In recent years, more than 700,000 offenders have been released annually. Most eventually return. Nationally, the recidivism rate approaches 70 percent.

Studies have shown consistently that ex-offenders are less likely to be incarcerated again if they are working. But their chances of landing a job are not good, despite federal and state laws banning blanket discrimination against applicants with criminal records. Young Black men with records, in particular, have a tough time in the job market.

Early this decade, Devah Pager, now a Princeton University sociologist, sent college-age White and Black men with similar qualifications to apply for entry-level jobs in Milwaukee, rotating which ones posed as former offenders. When the Black applicants faked having a criminal record, they received fewer than one-third as many callbacks from potential employers as White applicants playing the same role.

Other studies have shown, however, that ex-offenders stand a much better chance of being hired if they pass initial screenings and participate in an interview, during which they can explain in person past problems with the law.

Hawaii's pioneering law to ban initial inquiries about conviction records, adopted in 1998, also forbids employers from considering convictions until after a conditional offer of employment. The Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii balked initially but relented when the legislation was amended to allow withdrawal of offers if a potential hire's convictions have a “rational relationship” to a job's duties.

In Massachusetts, where Gov. Deval Patrick, a liberal Democrat, signed a less elaborate ban in August, a major business lobby dropped its opposition after employers were promised better access to official criminal records and protection from lawsuits if they reject applicants based on incorrect, state-supplied information. But applicants must approve employer requests for their state records and be given a copy if they are rejected for that reason.

“We just need to have the information to make the assessment based on risk and have that open and honest conversation” about an applicant's record, says Bradley MacDougall, associate vice president of Associated Industries of Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts law also reduces the number of years that criminal records are available to employers and the public—to 10 years for felonies, down from 15; and five years for misdemeanors, down from 10. “The best way to break the cycle of recidivism is to make it possible for people to get a job,” Mr. Patrick said.

States that have eased barriers to employment for former offenders since 2006 include, at least, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and Washington.

(Distributed by New America Media.)

Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura Season 2 Episode 3

The age of the dollar is drawing to a close

Right from the start of the financial crisis, it was apparent that one of its biggest long-term casualties would be the mighty dollar, and with it, very possibly, American economic hegemony. The process would take time – possibly a decade or more – but the starting gun had been fired.

At next week's meeting in Seoul of the G20's leaders, there will be no last rites – this hopelessly unwieldy exercise in global government wouldn't recognise a corpse if stood before it in a coffin – but it seems clear that this tragedy is already approaching its denouement.
To understand why, you have to go back to the origins of the credit crunch, which lay in the giant trade and capital imbalances that have long ruled the world economy. Over the past 20 years, the globe has become divided in highly dangerous ways into surplus and deficit nations: those that produced a surplus of goods and savings, and those that borrowed the savings to buy the goods.

It's a strange, Alice in Wonderland world that sees one of the planet's richest economies borrowing from one of the poorest to pay for goods way beyond the reach of the people actually producing them. But that process, in effect, came to define the relationship between America and China. The resulting credit-fuelled glut in productive capacity was almost bound to end in a corrective global recession, even without the unsustainable real-estate bubble that the excess of savings also produced. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened.

When politicians see a problem, especially one on this scale, they feel obliged to regulate it. But so far, they've been unable to make headway. This is mainly because the surplus nations are jealous defenders of their essentially mercantilist economic models. Exporting to the deficit nations has served them well, and they are reluctant to change.

Ironically, one effect of the policies adopted to fight the downturn has been to reinforce the imbalances. Fiscal and monetary stimulus in the US is sucking in imports at near-record levels. The fresh dose of quantitative easing announced this week by the Federal Reserve will only turn up the heat further.

What can be done? China won't accept the currency appreciation that might, in time, reduce the imbalances, for that would undermine the competitiveness of its export industries. In any case, it probably wouldn't do the trick: surplus nations have a habit of maintaining competitiveness even in the face of an appreciating currency.

Unable to tackle the problem through currency reform, the US has turned instead to the idea of measures to limit the imbalances directly, through monitoring nations' current accounts. This has already gained some traction with the G20, which has agreed to assess the proposal ahead of the meeting in Seoul. As a way of defusing hot-headed calls in the US for the imposition of import tariffs, the idea is very much to be welcomed, as a trade war would be a disaster for all concerned. China, for one, has embraced the concept with evident relief.

Unfortunately, the limits as proposed would be highly unlikely to solve the underlying problem. Similar rules have failed hopelessly to maintain fiscal discipline in the eurozone. What chance for a global equivalent on trade? With or without sanctions, the limits would be manipulated to death. And even if they weren't, the proposed 4 per cent cap on surpluses and deficits would only marginally affect the worst offenders: for a big economy, a trade gap of 4 per cent of GDP is still a massive number, easily capable of creating unsafe flows of surplus savings.

No, globally imposed regulation, even if it could rise above lowest-common-denominator impotence, is unlikely to solve the problem, although it might possibly stop it getting significantly worse. But what would certainly fix things would be the dollar's demise as the global reserve currency of choice.

As we now know, dollar hegemony was itself a major cause of both the imbalances and the crisis, for it allowed more or less unbounded borrowing by the US from the rest of the world, at very favourable rates. As long as the US remained far and away the world's dominant economy, a global system based on the dollar still made some sense. But America has squandered this advantage on credit-fuelled spending; with the developing world expected to represent more than half of the global economy within five years, dollar hegemony no longer makes any sense.

The rest of the world is now openly questioning the merits of a global currency whose value is governed by America's perceived domestic needs, while the growth that once underpinned confidence in its ability to repay its debts has never looked more fragile.

Already, there are calls for alternatives. Unwilling to wait for one, the world's central banks are beginning to diversify their currency reserves. This, in turn, will eventually exert its own form of market discipline on the US, whose ability to soak the rest of the world by issuing ever more greenbacks will be correspondingly harmed.

These are seismic changes, of a type not seen for a generation or more. I hate to end with a cliché, but we do indeed live in interesting times.

Kwame Ture on the History of Haiti

Gary, Indiana: Unbroken spirit amid the ruins of the 20th Century

By Paul Mason
I've been to Gary,Indiana before.In April 2009, when the Obama fiscal stimulus had just begun, the city's mayor had told me that all the city needed was $400m of stimulus money in order to "fly like an eagle and make our country proud".

To put this in context you have to know that Gary, home to what is still US Steel Corp's biggest plant, is suffering from one of the most advanced cases of urban blight in the developed world. Its city centre is near-deserted by day.The texture of the urban landscape is cracked stone,grass,crumbled brick and buddleia.

Gary is one third poor, 84% African American, and has seen its population halve over the past three decades. If crime, as the official figures suggest, has recently dropped off then - say the critics - that is because population flight from the city is bigger than the census figures show.

Gary in the end got $266m of stimulus money and has, according to the federal "recipient reported data" created a grand total of 327 jobs. That's $800,000 per job.I went back determined to find out how the stimulus dollars had been spent; to get beyond the ideology and recriminations and see why President Barack Obama's stimulus has failed to turn the country around.

Because - if anywhere needs a stimulus it is Gary. If there were ever an easy win to be gained from state spending you would think it might be here.

David Tribby, professional photographer and son of a local steelworker, specialises in exploring urban decay. I persuaded Mr Tribby to take me into some of Gary's wrecked architectural masterpieces.

The striking thing is that they are all structurally dangerous and yet totally accessible. I did not have to cross a single piece of wire, tape or fencing to get in, nor did I encounter a security guard or dog patrol. The city seems to have given up even securing these ruins.

Urban dereliction

We toured the City Methodist Church - built in the 1920s with local stone. We stood on the once-sprung floor of the ballet studio in the Methodist School. We tramped through the remains of the post office, opened by Henry Morgenthau in 1936 as a New Deal reconstruction project, its wood-block floor coming apart; the peep-holes in the overhead walkway showing where Depression-era managers would check on the work-rate of the postal workers below.

I sat on the back row of the Seaman Hall, its seats creaking dustily, and imagined the young steelworkers and their girlfriends in the 1950s, playing Big Daddy and Maggie the Cat in an am-dram production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, whose playbill is still peeling off the stage door amid the crumbling stonework of the proscenium arch.

I stood where Frank Sinatra stood on the day he came to Gary in 1945.

It was a feisty occasion because hundreds of white Gary school kids had gone on strike against the right of black kids to swim one day a week in the same swimming pool, and share the instruments in the band room.

Ol' Blue Eyes cancelled a $10,000 gig, rushed to the Gary Memorial Auditorium, told the audience this was the most shameful event in the history of education, warned them he could "lick any S.O.B in the room" and then sang.

He did not, as in this 1945 propaganda film accuse them of being no better than a bunch of Nazis, but he did sing the song from that film - "The House I Live In" - a schmaltzy paean to what were then seen as core American values: religious tolerance and anti-racism. It was a film that would win Sinatra an Oscar, shortly followed, as the political climate changed, by a hounding from Senator Joe McCarthy.

What Sinatra fought against, three decades of industrial decline managed to complete. There has been "white flight" from Gary. More precisely there has been "middle class flight" - ie the salariat, including many of the steelworkers, has moved out, or moved into landscaped and patrolled communities on the edge of town.

Brink of bankruptcy?

So what's the story with Gary and the stimulus? The mayor believes the city is "last in line" when it comes to federal money - because the money is dispensed via the state of Indiana, which is Republican controlled. Mayor Rudy Clay tells me:

"I guess they thought, well, Gary voted in large numbers for the president, enabling him to take the state of Indiana, so he will look after them."

But it is more complex - Gary's public finances are a mess. It owes tens of millions of dollars to other entities. Its great get-out-of-jail card - tax revenue from casinos - turned out to be a busted flush. Its convention centre is dark most of the time. The one-time Sheraton Hotel, right next to the City Hall, is derelict.

With no ability to raise a local income tax it is reliant on property tax. But the State of Indiana passed laws capping tax raising powers, so by 2012 Gary's tax income from property will halve.

At that point, according to the fiscal monitor appointed by the city, it will lack the revenue to fund even its police, fire and ambulance services. The monitor calls for much of the rest of Gary's services to be privatised - but as city officials point out, once privatised they cannot enforce job guarantees that allow the city to employ local people. Says the monitor, bluntly:

"The city will simply have to give up some long-standing - and often important - services that are the responsibility of other governments, even when it is likely that those governments will not provide the same level of service."

In summary, Gary is about two years away from bankruptcy and is being forced to cut taxes and cut spending even as the federal government tries to pump money through.

In this context, with the stimulus money not available to fix the core financial problem, the results were always going to be patchy.

In the event the stimulus dollars have mainly gone to a one-off schools re-organisation project - you can see some of the results of that in my report tonight - and to street renovation, and beefing up the arsenal of the local police. Gary's police have to combine The Wire style policing with a kind of armed social work amid a Gary's night-time chaos of "recreational shooting" and domestic disputes.

Philosophical divide

When I speak to the Republican governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, about Gary's plight, he is blunt. He blames Congress for micromanagement of where the stimulus could be spent. Could nothing more have been done?

"If there been more flexibility about the funds [from the US Congress], it could have, but I think it's important to be charitable here - Gary has been a disaster for many, many years. It is a tragedy what has occurred there and in some other cities here in the US. There wasn't going to be an immediate turn around, no matter how many borrowed dollars you showered on the place. "

But, how can you enforce fiscal austerity on a place like Gary, at the same time as the official policy of the federal government is to reflate the economy? Surely, I ask Mr Daniels, something has to give? He says:

"Gary's the most extreme case that you could find in our state, but there are many others that are a lesser version of that same story, and as I say to those communities - their leaders - all the time: people aren't leaving here because you didn't tax them enough, because you didn't spend enough money on this or that public service - they left because you taxed them too much or you simply did not create the conditions for a private sector to flourish."

And that brings you right back up against the philosophical divide in American politics.

Large parts of the Indiana population believe all taxpayer dollars spent on Gary are wasted. Some Republican candidates in the 2 November election are standing on the explicit message that there has been no positive impact at all from the stimulus.

Whereas in Europe, and even parts of Asia, the national government would have taken charge of vectoring regeneration money to a place like Gary, the US does not seem in a mood to do public regeneration.

Uncertain future

Gary's city officials are well aware that there are templates for resurrecting their city, and they've got the basic first steps defined - demolishing 3,000 derelict homes, installing new street lights. The stimulus money applied for in each case has been slow in coming and less than asked for. Beyond the ideology, the American public sector seems very poorly geared to spending money, full stop, despite being in charge of quite a lot of it.

Gary's uncertain future fascinates economists and urban planning experts - along with cities like Detroit and Flint in Michigan it is in danger of just being reclaimed by nature. One of the black community leaders I met in Gary was passionately advocating that they simply raze whole blocks to the ground and set up urban farms.

When you go into the wreck of the Palace Theatre on Gary's Broadway - just across from the wreck of VJ Records, which released the Beatles' first ever single in the US - you get a sense of the splendour of an industrial community at its height.

When it opened, the theatre - like so much of Gary's architecture, built in the "Mission Revival" style - contained blue fountains and crushed velvet, each seat arm moulded into a Moroccan-style arch.

In the orchestra pit there is a squashed grand piano, made in Chicago by Adam Schaff, surely the original one installed there in 1927. I banged its grime encrusted keys and discovered to my astonishment that, amid the clunks and groans, a clear D-sharp three octaves above Middle C.

It took just a single century for Gary to rise and fall. Its people still carry that relaxed pride you find in black communities across the industrial mid-West. It's a developed and quite mature urban culture - where everybody seems to know each other, an edgy community but not really a broken one, despite the night-time drug and gun antics of some young men. Go into the schools and you can feel that its spirit is not broken. What is broken is the landscape.

If it is ever one day fixed we will know that America has found a way to cope with the urban collapse that comes with industrial decline. Conversely Gary may be just the first leafy oasis of a post-industrial dystopia that awaits, maybe a century down the line.