Thursday, July 29, 2010

And So::Conversation--ON POINT

When operatives of the conservative/republican ideology, entered Mary Landrieu's office, attempting to cast a specific view of her office's work on a particular issue; the Eastern District of Louisiana's US Attorney's office allowed the operatives to plea to lesser-than charges. One of the operatives was the son of then acting-US Attorney for the Western District.

And so, when the master-operative, tweeked a video, deployed it on a blog; got busted and caused apologies ad infinitum-- has to my knowledge, as of yet not been held accountable. Andrew Breitbart, vehemently defended the actions of the NOLA trio. Today, as the President spoke to the Centennial convention of the National Urban League; the incident of late was mentioned. The Speech in Washington, DC was full of signals for all to grasp.

It is indeed a sad commentary in our society, that the various issues continue to evolve in to the race issue; which no one wants to address, fully.



Watch live streaming video from theuptake at livestream.com

Is it because we do not want to exist without demeaning another, and so we leave the race issue intact, so we can always revert back to it?

Strange twist in race and Politics, as Suit to be filed in Breitbart Defamation and further Federal Internet intervention is on the horizon as a result of recent occurences. It should be further noted, when we stop to look at the "oil clean-up" in the Louisiana Gulf, residents are complaining of the "outsiders", who the NAACP Legal Defense Fund have cited a state collaboration with the petroleum giant, utilizing inmate labor. Prison Industrial Complex? Yes!

But, what we 'gon do about it? And Black on black crime? And violence precipitated by the police!
On the southside of Monroe, Louisiana, where Richwood Police Patrol & the sheriff department patrols. A 20 year old was arrested for burglary. 'The story goes, that this youngsters, name was posted on the S.O.'s website. The affidavit was said to have listed the youngster as telling on all of his accomplices. [of course the affidavit is no longer there] And so, all of this boys accomplices, and gangers have been randomly threatening the young'en and his extended family. This boy's jaw was broken --from the eye socket to the jaw bone-- he is scheduled to be at the doctor's office in a day or so. On this early A.M., an incident occurred at the boy's mothers home.'

They were sent back & forth from the S.O. to the Richwood PD. This is a case of you won't help us, we'll help our selves.

Finally, out of exasperation, they called some one, who knew some one! Hopefully, this doesn't escalate into a full scale gang war. Or, is this the intent, of the powers-at-be!!?
And So!!! This is really the first time, anyone has come with something to this magnitude in this, the 21st century. Maybe, since Jena. Or, possibly up to Oscar Grant and Baron Pikes. And So. The stage is set for the beginning of the millenium breakdown. Will the Millenials stand for this un-americanism. They believe the Constitution.



July 29, 2010 Arpaio's Arizona Protesters Arrested

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Change-ing: the Conversation

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1.)


Change-ing the Conversation in Amerika!! | C-SPAN Black Agenda coverage.

So much is occurring all at once. At last, the conversation has been forced to the forefront. Who can stop it. It is surprising, however; that everyone thinks you can discuss, openly our agenda. The strategy developed in the former-days, by the former-right's leaders were not put in place in the "wide-open" for all too "circumvent". We need to converse seriously in secret to control-the-change.

23March2010 |
Attorneys general from Florida, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Michigan, Utah, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota, Louisiana, Idaho, Washington and Colorado are joining in. Other GOP attorneys general may join the lawsuit later or sue separately.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Pensacola.

One issue at the heart of the suit is the constitutionality of the the so-called "individual mandate," which requires most Americans to have an insurance plan or else pay a federal penalty.

The Constitution gives Congress the authority "to regulate commerce." In other words, once someone engages in commerce, the government has the power to regulate that activity.

But opponents say that the "commerce clause" does not give the government power to require an individual to buy something — especially insurance for the health of one's own body.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is taking the lead in the lawsuit.
13 GOP States file suit against healthcare


21 March 2010
| Obstacles & Ill Feelings
The Current Injusticide.

It remained nasty this weekend. Several thousand “tea-partiers” gathered on Capitol Hill on Saturday, as lawmakers met to lay down the rules for yesterday’s vote. “Born in the USA not the USSR” and “Buck Ofamacare” said their placards. A protester called representative Barney Frank, who is gay, a “faggot”. Another spat on representative Emanuel Cleaver, who is black. Two other African-American congressmen, John Lewis and André Carson, were jeered as “niggers”. “It was like a page out of a time machine,” said Carson.

Protestors fade | "Tea Party" Protestors | Daily Mail -"Congressman Jeered" | The Two Way | H.R. 4872 | Text of Healthcare Legislation | HR 3590 passed 2145-hours. Reconciliation in progress 2158-hours

What about Justice?!

Breaking: Malcolm X's Killer Paroled, is a Free Man Next Month

Hagan was convicted of shooting the civil rights leader, along with Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. Both Johnson and Butler consistently maintained their innocence and provided alibis for the afternoon Malcolm was killed on the stage of the Audubon Ballroom, on Broadway and 165th Street, on February 21, 1965.

Protest of FOP party for reinstated officers

Carrying signs that read "So This Is Something to Celebrate?" and "Justice Really Is Blind in Philadelphia," about a dozen people demonstrated yesterday in front of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police headquarters on Spring Garden Street.

The FOP had announced that it would hold a party last night to celebrate the return to the force of eight police officers who had been fired or disciplined after a television news helicopter filmed them beating three shooting suspects in 2008.

Last week, an arbitrator ruled that the officers, who had been cleared by a grand jury, should get their jobs back or have their punishments greatly reduced.

"Our Guys Are Back!" read a flier posted on the FOP's Web site that promised an open bar, food, and music at the party. "Come out and show your support."

On a concrete island in the middle of Spring Garden, members of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Action Network, a civil-rights group led by the Rev. Al Sharpton, gathered yesterday afternoon to express outrage.

Michelle Wood waved a cardboard sign at passing rush-hour traffic.

"There's no reason to celebrate," said Wood, whose son Pete Hopkins was one of the three men kicked and punched by police. "My son was beaten almost to death."

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey has described the events of May 5, 2008, as a black eye on the department. At the time, police were conducting a citywide manhunt for the killer of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski.

Police chased Dwayne Dyches, then 24; Brian Hall, then 23; and Hopkins, then 19, from the vicinity of a Feltonville shootout that left three people injured. After a 21/2-mile pursuit, officers dragged the three men from their car. Fox29 footage of the beating made international news. Ramsey fired four officers, demoted one, and suspended three others.

At 4 p.m. yesterday, as protester Pam Africa yelled an obscenity-laden harangue into a megaphone, off-duty officers on Harley-Davidsons began to arrive for the party.

"Welcome to the nonevent of the year," said FOP president John McNesby, who described the party as nothing more than a weekly happy hour.

"We do this every Friday," McNesby said. "Just because this week we issued a flier about our members' being reinstated doesn't make this a big deal."


Chicago News Cooperative | News Analysis

A Delicate Balancing Act for the Black Agenda

What a difference hard times make.

Until recently, most black discontent with the Obama administration — especially in Barack Obama’s hometown, Chicago — was largely kept in the family and out of the mainstream press, even as black business, civil rights and political leaders quietly grappled with and debated how best to support and challenge the nation’s first black president without hurting the causes of racial and economic justice.

But as the economic crisis continues to slam black America disproportionately hard, while bonuses rain down on Wall Street, the debate has spilled into the open and will get its loudest and most public hearing yet on Saturday, in a forum held just a few miles from Mr. Obama’s house in Kenwood, at Chicago State University.

Tavis Smiley, an author and talk show host and a frequent — and until recently rare — black critic of the president, is scheduled to convene a panel of civil rights leaders and scholars called “We Count: The Black Agenda Is the American Agenda.”

The discussion will be nationally televised on C-Span, and the invited panelists include Cornel West, a Princeton University professor; Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader; and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

“A black agenda is jobs, jobs, jobs, quality education, investment in infrastructure and strong democratic regulation of corporations,” Dr. West said. “The black agenda, at its best, looks at America from the vantage point of the least of thee and asks what’s best for all.”

During his run to the White House, voters, black and white, projected all sorts of hopes and dreams onto Mr. Obama, no matter what he said or did. When it comes to race, for example, Mr. Obama has forcefully tried to avoid the subject. The one notable exception was his now-famous speech in Philadelphia in 2008, and only then when his campaign was in peril from the fiery words of his former Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright.

Mr. Obama’s black supporters were willing to give him a pass, to give him “time to learn his way around the White House.” But too many homes have been lost to foreclosure, too many fathers have lost jobs, too many mothers are losing hope for his most loyal bloc to be happy with what many are now saying is more symbolism than substance coming from Mr. Obama’s administration in regard to black America.

“The question I hear a lot on the street is, ‘Would we have been better off with Hillary Clinton?’ ” said Hermene D. Hartman, publisher of the weekly N’Digo newspaper in Chicago.

Others, though, like Jacky Grimshaw, a senior adviser to former Mayor Harold Washington, are reading more into the timing and location of the black agenda meeting 14 months into Mr. Obama’s presidency.

“If the idea is to embarrass the president,” Ms. Grimshaw said, “this is a good way of doing it.”

Given Mr. Smiley’s vocal criticism of Mr. Obama — raising questions about the president’s effectiveness in pursuing the agenda many black voters favor — some see the meeting as a sign of a division among blacks here and across the country. On one side are those who believe Mr. Obama is doing his best under tough circumstances. On the other are those who feel let down by a perceived lack of action by Mr. Obama on behalf of black Americans. By hosting the forum in Chicago, Mr. Smiley seems to be spotlighting the discussion in a place most likely to draw national attention.

Mr. Smiley said the goal of the event was not to attack or embarrass Mr. Obama in his Chicago backyard, but to pressure other black leaders to develop and press for a black agenda, an action plan for tackling poverty, poor schools, infant mortality and an unemployment rate among blacks that is at least twice the national average.

“Black people are getting crushed,” Mr. Smiley said.

No one argues that point. But since announcing the event last month, Mr. Smiley and the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of Mr. Obama’s most vocal supporters — “Barack’s pet preacher,” as one Chicago activist put it — have conducted a sometimes heated debate on black radio about the wisdom of convening the “We Count” panel discussion.

Mr. Sharpton seems to have the numbers on his side. Support for Mr. Obama among black Americans is hovering around 90 percent in polls.

Mr. Sharpton said he would not attend the Chicago gathering. “Yes, we need a black agenda,” he said. “But the president shouldn’t be leading it. Black leaders should be.”

Herman Brewer, the acting president and chief executive of the Chicago Urban League, expects to attend, although with some trepidation.

“I think it’s O.K. if folks are critical of the president,” Mr. Brewer said. “But I wouldn’t want it to be viewed as a condemnation, a smackdown of the president. Hopefully, it can be viewed as constructive.”

Mark Allen, a longtime civil rights advocate on the South Side, said that just a couple of months ago if he had made even a mild public criticism about Mr. Obama’s not doing enough for the poor or for small businesses in the inner city, “black middle class folks would curse me out.”

The message was clear: If you are black, you just didn’t air complaints about “our homeboy,” Mr. Allen said, certainly not in public where the news media could see and hear. Doing so was seen as undermining the first black president, of giving comfort to the enemy, of betraying the race.

But these days, even in Chicago, Mr. Allen said: “It’s not as taboo anymore. You get cursed out a lot less.”

Some blacks in Chicago seem to be having a case of unrequited love.

“Barack is ignoring the black community,” said Ms. Hartman, the publisher. “There’s no communication, no reaching out, no speaking out. Every black business I know is hurting. Trickle down is not trickling down.”

Mr. Obama worked 20 years ago as a community organizer in the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on Chicago’s South Side. There, Bamani Obadele, who runs a youth program in Roseland, and Cheryl Johnson, who runs an environmental justice organization at the sprawling development, recently discussed Mr. Obama and the We Count event.

Mr. Obadele said Mr. Obama attended several antiviolence rallies that Mr. Obadele organized in the Robert Taylor Homes public housing development in the 1990s.

“He helped me carry a casket through the streets,” Mr. Obadele said, referring to an antiviolence mock funeral. “He absolutely understands the struggle of black folks. But he’s not the same Barack I knew. The Barack I knew wouldn’t bail out the banks and let the people go hungry. I think his advisers are giving him bad advice.”

Ms. Johnson said: “It’s complicated. He’s inherited a mess we haven’t experienced since the Great Depression. Let’s give him some time.”

Mr. Obadele added: “I hope we don’t end up being a national embarrassment on Saturday, fighting about the black president. I hope something positive comes out of it. But we have to do something. There’s just too much suffering out here.”


Friday, January 8, 2010

Global Culture Clash: World on war course!!-2010


Khost Province. Detroit, Michigan. And Beyond.

WASHINGTON — Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.

The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.

Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.

In the spring of 2002, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, offered to help the spy agency guard its makeshift Afghan station in the Ariana Hotel in Kabul. Not long after Mr. Prince signed the security contract with Alvin B. Krongard, then the C.I.A.’s third-ranking official, dozens of Blackwater personnel — many of them former members of units of the Navy Seals or Army Delta Force — were sent to provide perimeter security for the C.I.A. station.

But the company’s role soon changed as Blackwater operatives began accompanying C.I.A. case officers on missions, according to former employees and intelligence officials.
Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret C.I.A. Raids -By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: December 10, 2009
NY Times

Xe-[Blackwater]operatives killed in Khost Province attack
An obituary released Wednesday identified another slain Xe contractor as Jeremy Wise, 35, a former Navy SEAL from Virginia Beach, Va., according to The Associated Press. Other victims who have been identified include CIA security officer Scott Roberson, who had worked undercover as a narcotics detective in the Atlanta Police Department; Harold Brown Jr., a former Army reservist and father of three; and Elizabeth Hanson, a specialist in al-Qaida.

Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi
Al-Balawi was thrown into jail by Jordanian intelligence in March to force him to track down Ayman al-Zawahri, a fellow doctor from Egypt who is Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man. But his allegiance was to al-Qaeda from the start and not to his Jordanian recruiters or their CIA friends, and it never wavered

Jordanian intelligence arrested al-Balawi, the father of two girls, after he signed up for a humanitarian mission in the Gaza Strip with a Jordanian field hospital in the wake of Israel’s offensive there, the counterterrorism officials said. Al-Balawi was jailed for three days and shortly after that he secretly left his native Jordan for Afghanistan, they said, suggesting he had agreed to take on the mission against al-Qaeda.

Once in Afghanistan, al-Balawi provided valuable intelligence that helped foil al-Qaeda terror plots in Jordan, officials said. His Jordanian recruiters then offered al-Balawi to their CIA allies as someone who would help them capture or kill al-Zawahri. A former senior US intelligence official said al-Balawi had provided high-quality intelligence that established his credibility with Jordanian and US intelligence.

Al-Balawi came from a nomadic Bedouin clan from Tabuk, in western Saudi Arabia, which has branches in Jordan and the West Bank. He was born in Kuwait in 1977 to a middle-class family of nine other children, including an identical twin brother. He lived there until Iraq’s 1990 invasion of the rich Gulf nation when the family moved to Jordan.
07 January 2010, Thursday
TODAY’S ZAMAN WITH AP İSTANBUL

Courthouse News
(CN) - Blackwater, now called Xe, has settled a series of federal lawsuits accusing the U.S. securities contractor of allowing the murder of innocent civilians and rewarding mercenaries who "killed Iraqis as sport."
One lawsuit claimed that Blackwater founder Erik Prince "personally intended that his private army of men kill and wound innocent Iraqis."
In another, an ex-employee said it appeared that Prince "and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who had provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct."
The State Department canceled Blackwater's contract after determining that contractors had opened fire in a Baghdad traffic square in September 2007, killing 17 Iraqi civilians.
The incident led to multiple grand-jury proceedings.
Prince has since resigned from the company, which now operates as Xe Services LLC in North Carolina.
Xe released a statement saying the company was "pleased" that a settlement had been reached.
"This enables Xe's new management to move the company forward free of the costs and distraction of ongoing litigation, and provides some compensation to Iraqi families," the company said.
Susan Burke, an attorney for alleged victims and their families, filed a motion to have seven cases dismissed in federal court in North Carolina.
The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

al-Balawi & Gaza
Friends and relatives said Balawi's radicalization was molded by outrage over the image of Islam under attack and what he saw as Israeli brutality against the Palestinians.

"I never wanted to be in Gaza more than now or to become a suicide bomber who would drive a taxi that would take as many Jews to hell as I can," Balawi said in a recent web message.


Jordan Times
Defne Bayrak, the Turkish wife of Humam Khalil Mohammad Al Balawi, said she doubted he was working for the CIA.

"I am proud of my husband. He has carried out a very important mission in such a war," Bayrak, who now lives in Istanbul, told reporters.

"I think it's impossible that he was an American agent. He was too adversary to work for America. He only could have used America and Jordan to reach his goals."

Bayrak, a journalist who has written books including one entitled "Osama Ben Laden: Che Guevara of the East", earlier told the newspaper Sabah she believed her husband was in Afghanistan to pursue his medical studies and she was shocked at news of his death. Defne Bayrak

Wearing a black chador, she said she learned in a phone call from one of her Jordanian husband's friends in Pakistan that he had blown himself up at a US base in Afghanistan on December 30.

2010 & Beyond.
Egyptians riot after 7 killed in church attack

Coptic Christians protest

BART officer in Los Angeles Court for Oscar Grant death

US Atty Western District of Louisiana Resigns


Panetta
The bodies of seven CIA employees arrived Monday at Dover Air Force Base in a small private ceremony attended by CIA Director Leon Panetta, other agency and national security officials, and friends and family, said CIA spokesman George Little.

"These patriots courageously served their nation. The agency extends its gratitude to the United States military for their unwavering support since the attack, including their assistance at Dover," Little said in a statement issued Monday.

The former senior intelligence official said one of the big unanswered questions is why so many people were present for the debriefing - the interview of the source - when the explosive was detonated.

A half-dozen former CIA officers told The Associated Press that in most cases, only one or two agency officers would typically meet with a possible informant along with an interpreter. Such small meetings would normally be used to limit the danger and the possible exposure of the identities of both officers and informants.