BET Reveals Top 25 Things That Has Brought Destruction to African Americans

Blogger seems to have a problem with me. For the past couple of weeks, I have tried to log on to Blogger and make a post but the screen kept freezing up. Thank God I was finally able to put one in now.

Have you seen that BET special "Top 25 Events That (Mis)Shaped Black America"? Well here's the list below (it comes straight from BET.com):

25. Jheri Curls
On behalf of furniture everywhere, lay off the activator. Michael hair's caught on fire, there is a lesson there. Was the Jheri curl ever cool?

24. Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. Katrina formed in late August during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and caused devastation along much of the north-central Gulf Coast of the United States. Most notable in media coverage were the catastrophic effects on the city of New Orleans, La., and coastal Mississippi. Criticism of the federal, state and local governments' reaction to the storm was widespread. Kanye West will long be remembered for his comment about George W Bush. Where were our leaders and WHERE was the help!

23. The ‘N-Word’
Is this a term of endearment in the Black community? Is it ever acceptable to use the “N-word?”

22. The Counter Intelligence Program
Nicknamed “COINTELPRO,” it is that the vehicle by which the FBI and police investigated and disrupted the activities of Black political leaders and organizations in the United States. Among the subjects were Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers. The founding document of COINTELPRO directed FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders

21. Elvis
Sure, there were others – including Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Pablo Picasso and Pat Boone – but Elvis was perhaps the biggest and most impactive of the Black-culture pimps.

20. Negative Images in Hip Hop
The defamation of women in lyrics, deaths related to gangster rap and how they reinforce the notion that it’s cool to be a thug, sell drugs and exploit women.

19. The ‘Bling’ Phenomenon
The “bling” phenomenon has converted old-fashioned ideas into new-fangled fads. “Bling” has been tied to blood diamonds in African, fueling the suggestion that African Americans are more interested in petty materialism than in community investment and growth.

18. Welfare
Government financial aid doled out to certain individuals, groups or entities that are unable to support themselves, Welfare has become like quicksand for far too many African Americans, in the eyes of a growing number of Americans. Is the Black community guilty of taking advantage of Welfare? Stereotypes about Welfare.

17. Justice System / Prison
Why are all our men locked up? Are we given a fair shake in the court system? Is legislation, like the Rockefeller Drug Laws, created specifically to target Black men?

16. Color struck
With “paper bag” tests and all the other nonsense that comes along with self-hate, the Black community has been plagued by a psychological disease known as “slave mentality.” And don’t forget the subsets of self-hate like the adoration of “good hair” and disdain for broad noses, thick lips and anything remotely reminiscent of our Black African heritage.

15. Ward Connerly
No Black man has worked so hard to maintain the White man’s gargantuan head start.

14. Supreme Court
Known for such landmark injustices as Plessey v. Ferguson, the Dred Scott decision and the 2000 election debacle, the U.S. Supreme Court also provided a few not-so-repulsive surprises, like the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. How does Thurgood Marshall and his successor, Clarence Thomas, fit into the High Court discussion?

13. Ronald Reagan
Perhaps the first sign what Ronald Reagan would mean to Black America was when he decided to kick off his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., with a crowd of Klansmen in attendance. The city was most famous for the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964. His presidency arguably destroyed the hopes of a generation. During his term he attempted to dismantle of public education system and created “Reaganomics,” which hindered prosperity from trickling down to the Black masses.

12. The Bombing of Black Wall Street
The sight of a happy, affluent Black community was too much for angry, jealous Whites in Tulsa, Okla., in 1921, and a false rumor was enough to spark a mass riot that left hundreds of African Americans dead, and a swath of Black homes and businesses burned to the ground. Perhaps the saddest fact associated with this historic atrocity is that the U.S. government and local media were complicit in the death and destruction.

11. Soul Food
Sure it tastes good, but it will kill you. It is fatty, salty, with too much sugar.

10. Gangs
Crips and Bloods who fight for streets they do not own. It is a blatant war on Black unity.

9. Hollywood

8. Murders of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King
The deaths of our two greatest leaders at early ages left a void that has never been properly filled. Their lives were cut short in the midst of their most important work. Are we living up to their dreams?

7. Proud To Be Dumb
When did it become cool to be dumb? When did it become corny to be smart? Why are some Black kids “too cool for school?”

6. The Ku Klux Klan
Forged during Reconstruction, to beat back the advances of newly freed slaves after the Civil War, the KKK erupted into a fraternity of White supremacists bent on the annihilation and anarchy. It later expanded its web of hate to include, Jews, Catholics, foreigners and gays. The Klan’s usual tools of destruction are terrorism, intimidation and perpetuation of ignorance.

5. Apartheid
South Africa’s brutal system of racial segregation, enforced by the White Afrikaner population for nearly five decades, apartheid finally ended in 1994. But it took a string riots, murders and martyrs – in addition to mounting pressure from the United States and other nations to label South Africa a pariah – to force the racist regime’s hand. In a true reversal of circumstances, Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s most powerful symbol of resistance to apartheid, ascended from longtime political prisoner to president of the troubled nation.

4. Religion
The fact that both Christianity and Islam condoned slavery is an undeniable stain on organized religion. But on the flip side, Quakers and others who believed that slavery was blight on humanity, manned the Underground Railroad and waxed eloquently against its evils. In addition, the Black community’s faith in a better society carried it through the throes of inequality.

3. AIDS
If it is a biological weapon, it’s a brilliant one. What else has the power to begin emptying out the continent of Africa while wiping out the Black inner-cities of America? There are more than 40 million AIDS orphans in Africa; in the United States, Black Americans, who comprise only 13 percent of the U.S. population account for more than 40 percent of all AIDS cases.

2. Drugs
Crack, heroin, cocaine and alcohol are the most efficient ways to undermine the Black family, Black progress and Black ambition. They are far more effective in destroying Black folks than lynchings .

1. Slavery
If this doesn't speak for itself, I don't know what does.

Discuss.

Myanmar Military Killed and Raped Several Women, says KWO

A brief article in the LA Times says that several ethinc minority women of the South Asia country Myanmar (near Thailand) are being raped, tortured, killed and enslaved by Myanmar military. The Karen Women's Organization (KWO) says that there are cases of 959 women and girls from Karen state, located in eastern Myamar, from 1981-2006. (Thousands of other cases of abuse involving women were mentioned as well.)

In a KWO press release, the organzation discusses the situation, which is all explained in the KWO's latest report, State of Terror:

The report documents over 4,000 cases of abuse, including rape, murder, torture and forced labour, mainly over the past few years, in over 190 villages by troops from over 40 Burmese Army battalions.

Repeated incidents of gang-rape in 2006 reveal that the patterns of systematic sexual violence exposed by the KWO in their 2004 report Shattering Silences are still continuing.

Harrowing testimony in the report describes women seeing their children killed before their eyes, women used as human minesweepers, and pregnant women suffering miscarriages while carrying heavy loads for the army.

Many of the abuses took place during the ongoing military offensives by the regime in eastern Burma, which have displaced over 25,000 villagers during 2006.

SignOnSanDiego.com, from the Union Triubue, discussed the story in more detail. Here are some examples of the Myamar women being attacked by local military:

In one case, the report said a 20-year-old was raped by four men inside a hut on her farm. “After raping her, they killed her by shooting into her vagina,” the report said. “No action was taken.”

Another woman was raped by soldiers of the 101st Infantry Battalion, who then killed her and cut off her ears to get her earrings, according to the report.

Large numbers of Karen women – some of them pregnant or carrying newborn babies – also have been forced to work as porters and laborers for the Myanmar army, it said.

“If we were tired and could not continue, the soldiers kicked us in the back,” the report quoted 33-year-old Naw Mu Thoo as saying. She said she suffered three miscarriages after being forced to carry heavy loads.

Imagine if our military did the same to us. What if U.S. soldiers started invading our homes, kidnapping us and our families and beating us to death (and that's if we're lucky)? Can you see it? Of course you can't. This is America. We Americans definitely have our issues, but it's still (relatively) the safest, richest place ever. That's why people in the U.S. don't pay close enough attention to places like Myanmar: it's not happening to us. The women in Karen aren't ours. The people in Rwanda don't live here. We only care about problems that effect us. Hopefully, that will one day change, and it won't take a bunch of U.S. soldiers stomping the crap out of us to do it.

What to read State of Terror? Go to the KWO website (it's on the upper right side of the home page).

Numbers To Think About

Long time no see.

The number 23 isn't the only number that people should pay attention to this February. Take a peek at these statistics I found at the Chicago Urban League website:

HEALTH AND WELL BEING:

11.3: percentage of whites in the U.S. in 2005 who were not covered by health insurance
19.6: percentage of African-Americans in 2005 who were not covered by health insurance
81.8: percentage of white family households in 2004 that were headed by a married couple
46.5: percentage of black family households in 2004 that were headed by a married couple
38.3: percentage of white high school seniors in 2004 who said that helping people in the community was important to them
54.3: percentage of African-American high school seniors in 2004 who said that helping people in the community was important to them

EDUCATION:

2,165,000: total black enrollment in higher education in 2004
2,755,000: estimated total black enrollment in higher education in 2015
345,000: the number of African-Americans who earned a high school diploma in 2005
114,000: the number of African-Americans who dropped out of high school in the 2004-05 academic year
137: the average per-capita spending on reading materials by white Americans in 2003
52: the average per-capita spending on reading materials by African-Americans in
2003

CRIME:

12: the percentage of black males aged 25 to 29 who were in state or federal prison or local jails
1.7 the percentage of all white males aged 25 to 29 who were in state or federal prison or local jails

ECONOMIC POWER:

688: in billions of dollars, the amount of spending power wielded by African-Americans annually
921: in billions of dollars, the amount of spending power African-Americans will wield by 2008

More stuff is coming.

I'm Only Human, People.

According to an anonymous reader, the CCF (see the "PETA Kills Animals?!! PETA Kills Animals?!!" post below) may not be on the level. In response to my last article, a reader said, "Hey, Johnny, You're a day late and a penny short. The trial ended on Friday. The two PETA employees were convicted of littering. That's it. No cruelty. No misrepresentations." Some of you may have read the comment already. [By the way, reader, it's spelled J-O-N-N-Y. And yes I did that on purpose.]

I went to consumerdeception.com, the website the reader told me about, and was shocked when found this:

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit corporation run by lobbyist Richard Berman through his Washington, D.C.-based for-profit public relations company, Berman & Co. The Center for Consumer Freedom, formerly known as the Guest Choice Network, was set up by Berman with a $600,000 �donation� from tobacco company Philip Morris.

Berman arranges for large sums of corporate money to find its way into nonprofit societies of which he is the executive director. He then hires his own company as a consultant to these nonprofit groups. Of the millions of dollars �donated� by Philip Morris between the years 1995 and 1998, 49 percent to 79 percent went directly to Berman or Berman & Co.

Richard Berman is an influence peddler. He has worked out a scheme to funnel charitable donations from wealthy corporations into his own pocket. In exchange, he provides a flurry of disinformation, flawed studies, op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, and trade-industry articles, as well as access to his high-level government contacts, who are servants of the industries he represents.

It went on to say that he has challenged organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the Center for Disease Control and of course PETA in order protect the profits of his clients. Even media organizations and newspapers (including the Center of Media and Democracy and the Washington Post) have a problem with Berman. This might not necesarily mean that PETA doesn't waste animals (a part of me still doesn't trust them), but this does complicate things quite a bit.

I'll I can say is...I'm very sorry.

I should've done more research on the CCF. But a part of me is glad that I made this mistake because it taught me to be more careful. Of course I'm not the first person on Earth to make this mistake. Hell, even the New York Times messes up every now and then. And the same can (and probably has) happened to you. There's a lot of information out there that looks good and sounds good but may not be true. That's why it's always good not to be so quick to believe everything you read. You never know who is lying (Even consumerdeception.com might not be telling the whole story. You never know.). It's like I said in the last post: "It's hard to know who to trust these days."

By the way, the CCF also knows about the end of the trial. They said:

PETA Trial Final Scoreboard:
Holier-Than-Thou Animal Killers: 1
Justice: 0
Americans: Smarter

It's over, folks. A North Carolina jury has acquitted two PETA employees of Animal Cruelty and Obtaining Property By False Pretenses. Guilty verdicts were handed down for Littering, in connection with PETA employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook's improper disposal of their furry victims' bodies. Hinkle and Cook were each given suspended 10-day jail sentences, 12 months' probation, 50 hours of community service, a $1,000 fine, and nearly $3,000 in restitution. And PETA's "death van" has been confiscated by the town of Ahoskie, NC.
While we certainly didn't see these "Not Guilty" verdicts coming, we'll give PETA's highly paid lawyers credit for blowing enough smoke and sowing enough confusion to confuse a jury. (That's their job, after all.) But it has now been established in court that PETA, in fact, kills animals. Inevitably, more and more of PETA's naive supporters will get a clue.

It also compares Hinkle and Cook to O.J. Simpson. Do with this information what you will.

And keep the honest criticism coming. It's the only way I'll learn.

PETA Kills Animals? PETA Kills Animals?

The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) says that two employees from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ( a.k.a PETA) are facing felony charges in the Hertford County Superior Court for allegedly killing 31 animals. The CCF's website, consumerfreedom.com, says that Andrew Cook and Adria Hinkle each face 21 counts of Cruelty to Animals and 3 counts of Obtaining Property By False Pretenses after going to shelters like the Ahoskie Animal Hospital to gather animals like puppies and kittens, promising them that they will give the furry little guys good homes.

The CCF, who is not a big fan of PETA, judging from articles like this, has vowed to place a full-page ad about the story in the New York Times. [Here's the New York Times article, entitled "Why We Criticize PETA" that explains everything (you might have to buy it though) .]

There's also a moblie billboard and a website, PetaKillsAnimals.com, about the incident.

After a bit more searching, I found the same story in the Charlotte Observer. Here's PETA's side of the story, according to the Observer:

Phil Hirschkop, a lawyer for PETA, said the group got complaints about horrible conditions in animal shelters. Emaciated dogs unable to move, lying in their own filth. Animals suffering through long, terrifying deaths in gas chambers. Animals being killed with a drug that caused their internal organs to seize up while they were still conscious.

PETA, a well-funded organization that raises more than $25 million a year from 1.6 million members and supporters, started sending workers to Bertie, Northampton and Hertford counties.

PETA employees would clean and renovate shelters, hand out free doghouses to the poor, and take sick animals to the vet. They set up programs that allowed residents to get their animals spayed or neutered at no cost. And they began handling euthanizations at the shelters, Hirschkop said.

They used the same method that veterinarians use: an injection of sodium pentobarbitol that kills the animal almost instantly.

"PETA's choice is to allow those animals to be shot or gassed in a very cruel manner, or to euthanize them themselves and at least do it humanely," Hirschkop said.

By 2005, the PETA people were picking up so many animals that they didn't have room in their small van to carry them back to Norfolk alive. So Hinkle took them from the shelters one by one and euthanized them in the van, Hirschkop said.

He says the only crime Hinkle and Cook committed was throwing the animals in a trash bin, an act for which PETA President Ingrid Newkirk has apologized and offered to pay.

Hirschkop said the pair dumped the animals because they had other stops to make and the animals often started to smell before they got back to Norfolk, where PETA has facilities for cremating animals.

"They never should have done it," he said. "But this is not the crime of the century."
Hirschkop says that in a region where county officials neglect animal shelters and private landowners routinely shoot or poison stray animals, the sudden concern about animal welfare is disingenuous. He says he believes law enforcement officials have pursued the case because they don't like what PETA stands for, and he says the prosecution has become a matter of politics rather than justice.

But veterinarians and county officials say that PETA is full of it:

Hertford County veterinarian Patrick Proctor told reporters at the time of the arrests that three of the cats in the Dumpster were a healthy mother and kittens that he turned over to PETA on the promise that they would be adopted. His allegations resulted in three charges of obtaining property by false pretenses. Proctor did not return calls from The News & Observer.

Officials in the three counties also say they believed the animals PETA took had at least a chance at finding homes.

"The verbal agreement was, if they felt like the animals could possibly be adopted, they would," said Sue Gay, the head of Northampton County animal control. "We thought at least some of them were being adopted."

What's this world coming to? PETA is killing animals? Is this one of the signs of the apocalypse? I admit that part of me was waiting for a moment like this. The way PETA kept going on and on and on about how fur is murder and how evil it is to use little rats for cancer research that could help save millions of lives someday kind of bothered me. Don't get me wrong, I like animals, but I also like a good hamburger every now and then.

It kind of makes you wonder what other organizations are up to no good. Does the National Organization for Women own female strip clubs? It's hard to know who to trust these days. Newspapers, TV news, prestigious organizations like PETA, Democrats, Republicans and many others have their own agenda, which makes it hard for us to figure out who's telling the truth. What can we do? Any Suggestions?

To get day-by-day coverage of the PETA trial, which is now in motion, go PetaKillsAnimals.com. And while your at it, look at this CCF TV ad.

Something To Tie You Over

The past couple of days has been hectic, but I haven't forgotten you.

For now, just enjoy this cartoon from consumerfreedom.com...





Oh, and did you know that, according to the website, PETA kills animals!!!

More on that later.

Have You Seen This Yet?

I remember seeing this documentary at my Alternative Media course at Roosevelt University and I still enjoy it. "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" is a 2004 documentary that says, in a nutshell, that if you want an extremely bias, one-sided source of news, then the Fox News Channel is the one for you. Some of you probably already know how shady Fox News is, but it's still interesting. Here's a piece of the documentary:





If you want more, try this (Everyone does "click here." I'm trying to do something different.)

Mechanics are Doing It For Themselves

Unfortunately, sexism still exists. I remember when, during a journalism course at Roosevelt University, some of the female classmates who have worked at professional newspapers talked about how women are still victims of discrimination in the news industry. One woman, for instance, ranted about her bosses who always handed them the "safe" stories or called her stuff like "honey." And it gets worse around the world. Several cultures require women to be servants who are programed to cater to their husbands, fathers and men in general.

I wish the world didn't need organizations like NOW or the Lady Mechanic Initiative. What's the Lady Mechanic Initiative? It's an organization that was created by Sandra Aguebor to let the men of Africa know that women have the right and the ability to fix a carburetor just like guys. An article in Yahoo! News says that being a mechanic is usually only an option for men in Nigeria. This is especially bad for disadvantaged, less-educated women who are forced to only accept jobs like hairdressing or domestic work, which offers little pay and a small social status. (Nigeria, however, has several educated women that excel in business and, most recently, politics.) Some women, due to a lack of money or opportunity, had to drop out of school and become prostitutes.

The Lady Mechanic Initiative wants all of that to change. The organization provides women with training and even insurance for their students (70 in all, so far) and their families. Here's how she got started:

A devout Christian, Aguebor says that God spoke to her through a series of childhood dreams and told her that she should become a mechanic. With no other mechanics in the family, her father initially scoffed at the idea, until he traveled to the US in the 1980s and saw women working in positions considered "men only" in Nigeria.

Her first "garage" was a patch of land covered with cardboard for shade, but she has always aimed high. An avid reader of self-help books, Aguebor encourages her girls to think big - and they do.

Aguebor hopes to one day expand the Initiative and spread her message beyond Nigeria. Good Luck.