Category Archives: racism

No, ‘Django Unchained’ Actress Won’t Apologize To The LAPD: LAist

her boyfriend wrote a post on Facebook earlier this week explaining why she was quick to assume the LAPD was racially profiling her, “What we experienced this past Thursday, September 11 was the THIRD time in the past few months that D and I have had to deal with cops profiling a ‘black and white couple.’ This is the THIRD time, an officer has realized his error and had to let us go because we weren’t breaking any laws.”

He writes that in one incident, neighbors in Loma Linda called police to report that a suspicious black and white couple were loitering in the area and that there may have been a potential robbery. He said it was just he and Daniele trying to go through storage in his father’s garage.

via No, ‘Django Unchained’ Actress Won’t Apologize To The LAPD: LAist.

JBTC – Just because they can – Palestinian teenager shot in head by Israeli forces dies – Autopsy announced for Monday

16 year old Muhammed Sunuqrut died in hospital on Sunday after being critically wounded by Israeli forces in an East Jerusalem protest last week. Relatives state that the teenager was shot in the head at close range with a rubber-coated bullet. 

Muhammed Sunuqrut was declared clinically dead at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, on Thursday before dying on Sunday.

He was wounded in the Wadi Joz neighborhood close to his home on the 31st of August. The teenager’s uncle, Motabi Sunuqrut, said the boy had not even taken part in the demonstrations and that the area was quiet at the time of the incident.

“Ten minutes earlier I returned home and nothing was happening. He left home and was talking to his aunt on the phone, when suddenly he was shot at close range. After he fell the soldiers went on beating him and wouldn’t let anyone come near him to treat him,” he said.

via Palestinian teenager shot in head by Israeli forces dies – Autopsy announced for Monday.

IRIN Asia | Concern over Bangladesh move to repatriate Rohingyas to Myanmar | Bangladesh | Myanmar | Conflict | Governance | Human Rights

How would you feel if no state wanted you to live there in peace and would rather you just disappear? This is between Burma and Bangladesh but could just as easily be Serbia, USA, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria, Lebanon…

However, the 30-year-old said, choking back tears: “Our biggest concern is if we will be safe back in Burma? We don’t have any rights in Burma. We don’t have any dignity as human beings there. We are not entitled to our identity. Our properties and religious institutions are damaged. How we can be assured that we would be safe out there?”

via IRIN Asia | Concern over Bangladesh move to repatriate Rohingyas to Myanmar | Bangladesh | Myanmar | Conflict | Governance | Human Rights.

Israeli settlers continue their raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque

The chairman of the Higher Islamic Authority and preacher for Jerusalem, Ekrema Sabri, told PNN that Israeli settlers and Rabbis, accompanied by the Israeli police, continue raiding Al-Aqsa mosque under the pretext of celebrating the Jewish holidays for three days.

He mentioned that the settlers raid that mosque in groups headed by Rabbis or Israeli political leaders. The Israeli police has been preventing Palestinian women from entering the mosque for three days. He confirmed that he will not give up and rejected the entire Israeli plan of temporarily dividing Al-Aqsa mosque.

Mahmoud abu al-Atta, a media official at  Al-Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage,  said that some of the settlers tried to reach the dome of the rock, a sacred place for Muslims, but Palestinian worshippers confronted them and forced them to leave the mosque.

via Israeli settlers continue their raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Problem with Systemic Racism…

The problem with systemic racism is that it is like a heat source that keeps a pot of water simmering at a constant 211 degrees. Extremely hot, but not quite boiling. Every once in a while the heat gets turned up just a tad. Like when a frightened white police officer in Ferguson MO shoots a young unarmed black man while his hands are in the air. Or a group of ignorant, overzealous college students from Oklahoma State University create a banner for a football game that makes light of an act of genocide committed against Native Americans by the United States government.

And then water starts to boil.

Protests are organized. Twitter goes ablaze. Op-Eds are written. And civil rights leaders are given the microphone.

And the temperature is brought back down to 211 degrees.

Even the dominant culture gets caught up in the frenzy. However, their fight is vastly different from the fight of the Native American, African American, Latino or other minority cultures.

For while the minority culture is angry because of the entire system of racism they are surrounded by, the dominant culture is protesting because a single individual committed one offensive act that caused the equilibrium to be thrown off.

via The Problem with Systemic Racism….

Ebola, Experimental Drugs and Informed Consent: Should Those At Risk Simply Take What The Doctor Orders?

West Africans have nothing to fear from European nations and firms who want to experiment and maybe find a cure, for which they will charge billions? lol White Europeans and White Americans have never taken advantage of or lied to West Africans before have the? rotflol Tests on African-Americans without their informed consent were OK, until people found out what was really going on – giving men VD and seeing how long it took to die, giving massive radiation to dying people saying it might cure them, when they were really testing the amount of radiation soldiers might be able to endure before dying? wtf!

Ebola, Experimental Drugs and Informed Consent: Should Those At Risk Simply Take What The Doctor Orders?.

It seems that if we’re fortunate enough to find a drug that works, soon, treating Ebola will require trust that approximates a leap of faith (in medicine), and beneficence – that doctors will order and give these drugs because they think they’re more likely to help than harm those affected. Without that trust, we’ll be stuck, unable to give therapy to most people infected or at risk. Is it possible that meaningful consent can be a barrier to care?

Racist Newsweek’s Dehumanization of Africans and Monkey Meat Ebola Fearmongering | Global Research

The most definitive takedown of the Newsweek piece appeared at the Washington Post  website (8/25/14), where Laura Seay and Kim Yi Dionne place the article in a historical context:

Far from presenting a legitimate public health concern, the authors of the piece and the editorial decision to use chimpanzee imagery on the cover have placed Newsweek squarely in the center of a long and ugly tradition of treating Africans as savage animals and the African continent as a dirty, diseased place to be feared.

While Newsweek zeroed in on the wild game risk as being “all but but ignored by the popular press and public,” Seay and Dionne write: “The reason this ‘risk’ is ignored is because it is infinitesimally close to zero.”

During a BBC discussion of the story (8/26/14), host Nkem Ifejika noted that Ebola experts stress that the risks of Ebola exposure come from hunting and dissection–which would seem to undermine the point of  Newsweek‘s cover story. The magazine’s senior editor Elijah Wolfson responded by appearing to back away from the article’s premise:

I would say that the risk for contracting Ebola by eating or handling bushmeat that arrives in the U.S. through illegal importation is minimal. But that doesn’t mean it is a zero risk.

That’s a far cry from the message the magazine is telling us–unless they plan on rewriting that headline to say, “Not a Back Door for Ebola: Smuggled Bushmeat Is Unlikely to Spark a US Epidemic.” And replacing the chimp with a photo of a bat. As Seay and Dionne put it:

Newsweek’s piece is in the worst tradition of what journalist Howard French calls “Ooga-Booga” journalism: the practice of writing in exoticizing and dehumanizing ways about Africa.

via Newsweek’s Dehumanization of Africans and Monkey Meat Ebola Fearmongering | Global Research.

In 2014 UK – Shame on Cameron! Rickets returns as poor families find healthy diets unaffordable | Society | The Guardian

Dr John Middleton, from the FPH, said the calls would come in the faculty’s manifesto to be published next month and warned that ill-health arising from poor diets was worsening throughout Britain “through extreme poverty and the use of food banks”.

He saidthat obesity remained the biggest problem of food poverty as families are forced into choosing cheap, processed high fat foods just to survive. “It’s getting worse because people can’t afford good quality food,” he said. “Malnutrition, rickets and other manifestations of extreme poor diet are becoming apparent. GPs are reporting rickets anecdotally in Manchester, the East End of London, Birmingham and the West Midlands. It is a condition we believed should have died out.

“The vitamin deficiency states of gout, malnutrition being seen in hospital admission statistics are extreme manifestations of specific dietary deficiencies or excesses, but they are markers of a national diet which is poor. Food prices up 12%, fuel prices up double-figure percentages and wages down is a toxic combination, forcing more people to eat unhealthily.”

via Rickets returns as poor families find healthy diets unaffordable | Society | The Guardian.

Yellow Cake Spin times 10! Bubonic plague data found on Islamic state computer – UPI.com

Neo-Cons in heaven with nasty IS computer to claim planning of a bubonic plague bomb! Oh my!

 

An Islamic State laptop computer found in Syria allegedly contains plans to build chemical weapons for spreading bubonic plague.

The computer, now in Antakya, Turkey, belonged to a Tunisian militant named Muhammad S., who studied university-level chemistry and physics. It was found at an abandoned IS base in Idlib, Syria, by moderate rebel forces, and contains detailed instructions on explosives construction, the use of disguises while travelling, and chemical weapons plans, according to the magazine Foreign Policy, whose reporters were shown the laptop.

via Bubonic plague data found on Islamic state computer – UPI.com.

TV Producer In Beverly Hills For Pre-Emmys Event Arrested For Being Tall, Bald And Black: LAist

Who is Charles Belk? He’s a college educated business man, who received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of South Carolina, then an MBA from Indiana University. He was a consultant for the NAACP, he worked on the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, has worked at IBM and has been on the board of numerous film festivals. Here’s his IMDB. Among the long list of credentials he rattled off in his Facebook post, not one of them was “bank robber.”

What Belk says confuses him the most is why the footage from the bank was not reviewed until after multiple requests by Belk, six hours after he was detained and forced to sit on the curb. The footage showed that it was a different tall, bald, black man, and Belk was free to go.

“If it can happen to me,” Belk wrote, “it can happen to anyone. Time has come for a change in the way our law enforcement officers ‘serve and protect’ us. We all do not fit the description.”

via TV Producer In Beverly Hills For Pre-Emmys Event Arrested For Being Tall, Bald And Black: LAist.