It’s been nearly a month since Michael Jackson died and amazingly it’s taken nearly this long for me to really understand what we’ve lost and how I feel about it. When Jackson’s Thriller came out in 1982 [corrected, thanks Noel] I was a youngster pretty much fresh out of high school. The music of the eighties was the music of my generation and Jackson competed with other artists of the time such as Prince, Cameo, Terrance Trent D’Arby, and George Clinton. There were also jazz, rock and blues artists taking up my attention such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Police, Miles Davis and George Benson.

While I enjoyed the dancing and singing that Mike introduced to the MTV generation, I was way more into artists such as Prince who were more instrument oriented. I was also extremely turned off as Micheal started to bleach his skin and point his nose, which I saw as a rejection of his blackness. As he became stranger and stranger I stopped paying much attention to him, after all, I’d been listening to MJ since the early 70s…yawn.

But you never miss anything until it’s gone.

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A colleague sent me the link to this video. I was immediately taken by the motion graphics created to open the film. I know how labor intensive it is to put those kind of things together and the way the designer works the text and graphics is tight. As I watched, however, the content started to get to me. It’s the usual story of America projecting power into the third world. I’m no expert on Africom but I’ve been around the block enough times to know how things work. A serious understanding of history reveals the fact that nations don’t spend time and money in other countries unless there is something to gain. America is no different. When we talk about “American interests” we are talking about America’s ability to create wealth for itself. Or it’s ability to project power in order to allow it’s multinational corporations the ability create wealth. America’s foreign policy is an outgrowth of European foreign policy which, for the past 500 years has meant slavery, colonialism and exploitation for non-white people the world over. This is also referred to as white world supremacy and it’s rarely given any attention in the western press. (more…)

Black United Students (BUS) was founded 40 years ago this year, on the campus of Kent State University. The organization has gone through many changes over time. But, much remains the same.

Dr. Larry Simpson, the first president of BUS, returned to the campus November 8, 2008 for a celebration of the past 40 years.  He’s now the Senior Vice President of Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, in charge of academic affairs. Over the years his experience with BUS has served him well. As he stated in his keynote address the other night. Being involved in BUS gave him a window into the adult world that he may not have experienced had it not been for BUS. Mostly, it was about learning how to work with other people and function as a member of society. (more…)

Young people turned out in force for a political rally at the Quicken Loans Arena on October 29th, 2008. LeBron James, Jay-Z, the Obama Campaign and the Democratic Party held a large rally in downtown Cleveland that was well staged and attended.

News media from around the world were represented, including a Kenyan paper called “The Nation,” “Al-Jazeera English,” and all the major U.S. news outlets.
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Today Senator Barack Obama wrapped up the presidential campaign that began “on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, “with his “closing argument,” delivered to a full house at the Canton Memorial Civic Center in Canton, Ohio. His closing argument summed up the current state of the campaign and, I’m sure, inspired many residents of Northeast Ohio to continue to work even harder to put him in the White House, on November 4th, 2008.

Even as the diverse crowd basked in the words of the presidential candidate, plans to implement the “final solution” for African Americans, Barack Obama in particular, were being foiled by federal agents in Jackson, Tennessee. This makes the 4th assassination attempt on Baracks life, that’s been publicized, since he began his campaign on the steps of the Old State Capitol.
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I found this while surfing the web. I try to present original content on this site but I got a chuckle out of this video and sometimes a little comic relief is a good thing. This particular video comes with an advertisement. I can’t say I like that, so we’ll see if I include embedded video like this again.

Portrayal Of Obama As Elitist Hailed As Step Forward For African Americans