Prometheus 6

Before HarperCollins pulled the plug on “If I Did It,” Goldman, 66, and his attorneys repeatedly said they wanted to stop Simpson from profiting but also to prevent publication. The Brown family has been adamantly opposed to the book’s publication and apparently will not share in any of the profits.

Why Fred Goldman Wants O.J. Book Published
The family of Ron Goldman now says it wants O.J. Simpson’s book published. What changed their minds?
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Andrew Murr
Newsweek
Updated: 9:37 p.m. ET March 16, 2007

March 16, 2007 - O.J. Simpson’s hypothetical tell-all book “If I Did It” may be published after all—with the help of murder victim Ronald L. Goldman’s family. A California court ruled Tuesday that proceeds from the auction of the book rights would go to the Goldman family, not Simpson. Simpson was found liable in 1997 for the wrongful deaths of Goldman and O.J.’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, which occured on June 12, 1994. Simpson has paid almost nothing of the $33.5 million judgment (now, with interest, grown to $38 million) he owes to the Goldman and Brown families.

Via Upside-Down Adoption I ran across this guy in Atlanta that holds honoring his ancestor separate from hating Blacks.

No, I'm really surprised.

Capt. Elijah Tillman. Army of Northern Virginia, 1862-1863. Wounded at Antietam. Georgia Militia Cavalry, 1863-1865. He was also my great-great-great-great-grandfather.

There. Now that the need to justify my credentials is out of the way, let the hate begin.

How should an ignorant stumpjumper respond to African American leaders calling for the state to apologize for slavery? Propose naming an entire month "Confederate Heritage Month". For those of you who don't dabble in good ol' fashioned southern racial politics, it's also a subtle swipe at February's "Black History Month". Don't believe me? Ask any of these "heritage" pukes what they think about Black History Month and you will get a response along the lines of "why do they get a special month and we git nuthin!"...

Why?

Southern Group Protests a Depiction of the Confederate Flag
By CHRISTINE JORDAN SEXTON

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., March 16 — A Tallahassee museum on Friday rejected a request by the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to remove an exhibit the group considers disrespectful of the Confederate flag.

The group, which has 56 members locally and about 1,500 statewide, asked the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science to remove “The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag” by John Sims. The work depicts a Confederate battle flag being lynched from a 13-foot-high wooden gallows.

Guest Columnist
[TS] Hot Tots, and Moms Hot to Trot
By JUDITH WARNER

...I think it’s fair, even necessary, to wonder: how can we expect our daughters to navigate the cultural rapids of becoming sexual beings when we ourselves are flying blind? How can we teach them to inhabit their bodies with grace and pleasure if we spend our own lives locked in hateful battles of control, mastery and self-improvement?

We all tend to talk a good game now on things like body image and sexual empowerment. We buy the American Girl body book, “The Care and Keeping of You,” promote a “healthy” diet and exercise, and wax rhapsodic about team sports. But do we practice what we preach?

New Library Page
Posted by Malik under Uncategorized

The library page is finally up and running. You’ll find resources on subjects from black history to science & philosophy. Please take a look, and if you have suggestions for resources or references to add to the page, please run them by me. I hope you find it useful.

I wonder if Erin Aubry Kaplan knows she's a leader.

The semantics of the anti-ism coalition are such that members act as though the coalition is the full expression of the relationship between members. Ms. Kaplan has written quite a bit about Black/Latino relations in L.A., simply giving voice to the somatic aspect of the relationship.

Nobody black expects Latinos to solve our problems. But we are tired of implicit calls for us to be "reasonable." Given our crazy-making history, is it surprising that we are a bit paranoid, that we react less than ideally to things like demographic shifts in our communities? Especially when those communities feel like the only currency we have left?

Yes, we've devalued that currency by leaving communities too eagerly over the years. Unlike the Irish or Italians or Jews of another era, we didn't naturally evolve as a group out of our ghettos. Quite the opposite. Some blacks — the relative few who could afford to do so — have fled the ghettos that remain.

That fact, more than anything else, accounts for the anxiety I feel as I watch the trucks and vans pull up, and the lights go on, in that house down the street. "Ghetto" is far too strong a word to describe my neighborhood, by the way — it's much more than livable. Let's just say it has abandonment issues.

That's all I want the new arrivals to know. I'll get over my anxiety; I have no choice. I will almost certainly like my neighbors, unless they run roughshod on my lawn or play music too late at night. But it'll be fine because community is something I'm good at, something I know — or knew once — very, very well.

This is where Shaquanda Cotton was sent.

Meanwhile, Shaquanda, a first-time offender, remains something of an anomaly inside the Texas Youth Commission prison system, where officials say 95 percent of the 2,500 juveniles in their custody are chronic, serious offenders who already have exhausted county-level programs such as probation and local treatment or detention.

"The Texas Youth Commission is reserved for those youth who are most violent or most habitual," said commission spokesman Tim Savoy. "The whole concept of commitment until your 21st birthday should be recognized as a severe penalty, and that's why it's typically the last resort of the juvenile system in Texas."

Inside the youth prison in Brownwood where she has been incarcerated for the past 10 months--a prison currently at the center of a state scandal involving a guard who allegedly sexually abused teenage inmates--Shaquanda, who is now 15, says she has not been doing well.

Three times she has tried to injure herself, first by scratching her face, then by cutting her arm. The last time, she said, she copied a method she saw another young inmate try, knotting a sweater around her neck and yanking it tight so she couldn't breathe. The guards noticed her sprawled inside her cell before it was too late.

She tried to harm herself, Shaquanda said, out of depression, desperation and fear of the hardened young thieves, robbers, sex offenders and parole violators all around her whom she must try to avoid each day.

"I get paranoid when I get around some of these girls," Shaquanda said. "Sometimes I feel like I just can't do this no more--that I can't survive this."

Texas youth prison board ousted amid sex abuse scandal
All six members step down after reports that officials covered up molestation allegations.
By Miguel Bustillo
Times Staff Writer
March 17, 2007

HOUSTON — The entire governing board of the Texas Youth Commission resigned Friday, the latest fallout from reports that officials covered up claims of sexual abuse in state detention centers.

Last month, the Dallas Morning News and the Texas Observer website reported that a Texas Rangers investigation had concluded top officials at a juvenile center had molested youths in their custody. The administrators under suspicion were allowed to resign quietly, and prosecutors did not charge anyone.

Lawmakers since have learned that a convicted sex offender was working as a guard at another center, and that an official suspected of molesting juvenile inmates was living with a 16-year-old boy. (The official resigned.) There also have been allegations that detention officials tampered with reports and concealed evidence of violence and sex abuse.

S.C. will consider new abortion bill

Might require patient to view an ultrasound
By Seanna Adcox, Associated Press  |  March 17, 2007

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Women seeking abortions in South Carolina would be required to view an ultrasound image of their fetus before the procedure under a proposal gaining support from lawmakers. If enacted, it would be the first law of its kind in the nation.

Some states make ultrasound images available to women before an abortion, but South Carolina would be alone in mandating that women see the pictures.

Proponents say women would change their minds after seeing an ultrasound and choose to keep the child or adoption.

Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another? Sharpton Puts Obama Through a Political Hazing Ritual

Listening to Al Sharpton rip into Barack Obama this week made me wonder: why is it that African American leaders so often feel compelled to give the back of their hand (to say nothing of the serrated edge of their tongue) to emerging black leaders? Is it jealousy? Ego? An unwillingness to give up power?

WTF?

It's not that Sharpton didn't make some valid points: no one is suggesting that blacks should automatically support Obama just because he is black; and asking Obama why he backed Joe Lieberman over Ned Lamont or voted for tort reform are legitimate questions. But Sharpton's tone was so aggressively dismissive, you could almost picture him drilling holes in his paddle as he spoke.

3 Detectives to Be Indicted by Grand Jury in Bell Case
By AL BAKER and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

A Queens grand jury voted today to indict three city police detectives — two black men and a white man — in the killing of Sean Bell, an unarmed 23-year-old black man who died in a hail of 50 bullets in November, a defense lawyer in the case said.

The detectives who will face charges, Michael Oliver, Gescard F. Isnora and Marc Cooper, were three of five officers who fired bullets into Mr. Bell’s car on Nov. 25 outside a strip club in Jamaica, Queens, hours before Mr. Bell was to be married.

"There is a problem in the way the administration reported the surge numbers to begin with," said Frederick W. Kagan , a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "When they initially reported the numbers they only reported the combat strength of the brigades, and they did not count support troops" and other personnel that the operation would need.

This is YOUR plan Bush is executing. The American Enterprise Institute came up with this shit and lobbied hard for it. Remember this?

General seeks another brigade in Iraq
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | March 16, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The top US commander in Iraq has requested another Army brigade, in addition to five already on the way, as part of the controversial "surge" of American troops designed to clamp down on sectarian violence and insurgent groups, senior Pentagon officials said yesterday.

The appeal -- not yet made public -- by General David Petraeus for a combat aviation unit would involve between 2,500 and 3,000 more soldiers and dozens of transport helicopters and powerful gunships, said the Pentagon sources. That would bring the planned expansion of US forces to close to 30,000 troops.

News of the additional deployment comes about a week after President Bush announced that about 4,700 support troops will join the initial 21,500 he ordered in January. They are in addition to the estimated 130,000 troops already in Iraq.

I have my own understanding of the motivation behind NCLB. But what's in it now that wasn't in it when you voted for it last time? 

GOP Bills Would Relax Test Requirements of 'No Child' Law
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 16, 2007; A06

Republican critics of the No Child Left Behind law flexed their growing muscle yesterday as 57 GOP lawmakers, including the national party chairman, endorsed legislation that would undermine President Bush's signature education initiative.

NATION IN BRIEF
Friday, March 16, 2007; A09
Ga. Senate Panel Backs Confederacy Month

ATLANTA -- A panel of Georgia lawmakers signed off on a plan to create a Confederate heritage month, even as legislative leaders reacted coolly to a push to apologize for the state's role in slavery.

State Sen. Jeff Mullis's bill would dub April as Confederate History and Heritage Month to honor the memory of the Confederacy and "all those millions of its citizens of various races and ethnic groups and religions who contributed in sundry and myriad ways to the cause of Southern Independence."

The unanimous vote by the Senate Rules Committee -- which sent the plan on to the full Senate for consideration -- comes days after black lawmakers announced plans to ask the state to officially apologize for its role in slavery and segregation-era laws.

One day when I was nine or ten, my friend Keith said, "Let's go see the crazy lady."

Crazy lady? CRAZY lady? I know of no such thing in this neighborhood. But Keith led the way and yes, there was indeed an honest-ta-Gawd crazy lady squatting in the upper floor of an abandoned building. Sweetheart, but batshit crazy as far as I could tell.

Around 3 pm, toward the end of our visit...in fact it precipitated that end...she went to the store. Came back with a loaf of Wonder Bread. She took that loaf to a rear window. We followed her. She opened the window. We looked out.

There, behind the building, was this seething mass of rats. The Crazy Lady was all, "here you are babies" as she tossed slices into an ocean of fur. I had never seen so many rats in one place. Seems she fed them a loaf of Wonder Bread every day at 3:00. I was like, "Why?" and she said "Rats are God's creatures too. They need love too."

For me, Hell will consist of a room full of rats. I never saw the original "Willard" movie. And I'm sure I've told this story before, but it's why I find Steven Shaw's Take a Rat to Dinner singularly unconvincing.

Lives Intersect Violently on a Busy City Street
By MICHAEL WILSON

They weren’t cops’ cops. They weren’t sons of police officers, born with blue in their blood, like many in the New York City Police Department. They didn’t even tell some people about their jobs. Bookish, even naïve young men, each brought an eccentric back story to his role as an auxiliary police officer, and to their partnership on the street.

The younger officer, Yevgeniy Marshalik, 19, whose Russian family fled the war in Chechnya when he was a young boy, was a star member of his high school debating team who would go back to his New York University dorm to tell his classmates tales of the streets.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Garvin had no psychiatric history, but a family member indicated he exhibited increasing paranoia in recent years.

"He was heavily armed and prepared to kill at will," Kelly said.

Motive sought in NY rampage
Gunman killed officers, bartender
By Samantha Gross and Nahal Toosi, Associated Press  |  March 16, 2007

NEW YORK -- A gunman who killed two unarmed volunteer police officers and a bartender had been repeatedly kicked out of the pizzeria where the shootings began and may have been angry that a friend who worked there was fired, police said yesterday.

MON863 is a form of maize genetically modified to make it resistant to corn rootworm. It has been authorized by the European Union for use in animal feed since 2005 and for human consumption since January 2006....

The industry says the technology offers vast potential benefits, poses no health risk and has never been shown to contaminate other crops.

Oh really?

Fear and technology

Agricultural giant Monsanto has announced that it is halting plans to sell the world's first genetically engineered wheat.

In a statement, the company blamed a 25 percent drop in demand for wheat. (The Atkin's diet strikes again?) But industry observers speculate the company was bowing to pressure from American farmers who fretted that wheat buyers in Europe and Japan wouldn't buy the wheat because of heated consumer opposition to genetically modified foods. Even worse, some buyers threatened not to buy any U.S. wheat over concerns that the GM-wheat might get mixed in with nongenetically modified wheat. That intermingling is hardly an idle worry. Recently, there have been reports from Mexico that modified corn from the U.S. has somehow appeared in cornfields there.

Rice Recalled Over Gene Contamination
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 6, 2007; A08

The Agriculture Department last night took the unusual step of insisting that U.S. farmers refrain from planting a popular variety of long-grain rice because preliminary tests showed that its seed stock may be contaminated with a variety of gene-altered rice not approved for marketing in the United States.

GMO corn causes liver, kidney problems in rats: study

PARIS (Reuters) - Environmental group Greenpeace launched a fresh attack on genetically modified maize developed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, saying on Tuesday that rats fed on one version developed liver and kidney problems.

Greenpeace said a study it had commissioned that was published in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Technology showed rats fed for 90 days on Monsanto's MON863 maize showed "signs of toxicity" in the liver and kidneys.

"It is the first time that independent research, published in a peer-reviewed journal, has proved that a GMO authorized for human consumption presents signs of toxicity," Arnaud Apoteker, a spokesman for Greenpeace France said in a statement.

"Mortgage brokers pushed exotic mortgage products that allowed people to buy houses that only made sense if prices kept rising. Now that houses have stopped appreciating, people are going to lose their homes and their savings."

A major sign that broader trouble could be brewing emerged Tuesday after a national survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association showed a soaring number of homeowners failing to make their mortgage payments in the last three months of 2006. The group also reported that foreclosures on all homes leaped to the highest level in nearly four decades.

Where the Wolf Comes Knocking
Areas Already in Economic Distress Feel Rise in Housing Foreclosures Most
By David Cho and Nell Henderson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 15, 2007; D01

I wonder if he gets a bonus if Undercover Mike walks.

Grand Jury in Bell Case Hears From New Witness
By AL BAKER

A grand jury in Queens that is weighing evidence in the police shooting of Sean Bell interrupted its deliberations today to hear from a new witness, a law enforcement official said.

The witness testified for less than an hour, the official said, and the grand jury has gone back to deliberating.

On Wednesday, the first day of deliberations, the panel did not vote on whether to hand up indictments in the case.

A dream dies at NAACP
By Clarence Page
March 10, 2007

Mr. Gordon had the audacity to hope for an expanded NAACP mission. He set out with a corporate CEO's sense of urgency to target, for example, the continuing crises of undereducated black males. Mr. Gordon understood something that its chairman, Julian Bond, a star 1960s movement veteran, and numerous others in the organization's breathtakingly huge 64-member board refuse to face: White racism is not the biggest problem holding back the advancement of people of color today.

Oh? When did he say that?

C'mon, girl...R. Kelly will have you peeing on somebody...

Whitney working on new album