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“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.”             Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian (1892–1971) In Orlando, Fla ., 53 people are confirmed dead and over 50 confirmed injured.  A gunman now identified as 29-year old Omar Mateen -- an American-born citizen of Afghani heritage-- apparently entered a gay-culture nightclub in the wee hours of June 12, 2016, and began a shooting rampage.  Hostages were held, and police eventually arrived on the scene.  Before the chaotic assault was over, dozens were left dead, including Mateen. Based on ongoing information released by police authorities, Mateen allegedly called 911 prior to beginning his assault, pledging an affiliation with global terror outfit ISIS. Among the far-ranging questions raised by this incident is an enduring narrative of how and why an...

Did Hip-Hop Fail Urban America? Ahmir "Questlove" Thompso n, bandleader for the Roots ,  is in the midst of a weekly editorial series about hip-hop music and culture and its relationship with the current state of African American economic and cultural interests. Thompson's second essay can be found here:  http://www.vulture.com/2014/04/questlove-on-money-jay-z-how-hip-hop-failed-black-america-part-2.html Hip-Hop's been praying at the altar of celebrity billionaire Warren Buffett for years, even if the vast majority of artists have no idea who that is..    Rappers can go on a rant against recently-embattled Los Angeles Clippers' owner Donald Sterling (bravo) but in various other aspects of their lives and songs, it's not unusual to find them openly fantasizing about having his same lifestyle as Sterling and his contemporaries, with virtually the same disdain for the have-nots: ostentatious wealth continues to be implicitly equated with mora...

Deltron 3030 concert review by Hypestyle - HipHopGods.com:

ZIMMERMAN VERDICT REVEALS AMERICA’S RACIAL CHASM Justice—as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary, it is: 1. The quality of being just; fairness . 2.         a. The principle of moral rightness; decency. b. Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness . 3.         a. The attainment of what is just, especially that which is fair, moral, right, merited, or in accordance with law. b. Law The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law . c. The administration, system, methods, or procedures of law . 4. Conformity to truth, fact, or sound reason. On Saturday, July 13, 2013, a jury of six people delivered the verdict of ‘not guilty’ concerning the trial of George Zimmerman , who was charged with 2 nd degree murder regarding the 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin .   ...

Concert Review: Kings Of The Mic Tour in Detroit - HipHopGods.com:

CARD'S ON THE TABLE DC Comics is being targeted by an online campaign for the publisher to drop one of its writers.  DC, one of the publishing arms of Time-Warner, Inc., owns the Superman character and has recently hired science fiction author Orson Scott Card to write a series of Superman stories, " Adventures of Superman " for its digital-exclusive publishing endeavors. Card, who has dozens of novels, short stories, stage plays and non-fiction works to his credit, is perhaps best known for his Ender's Game series of novels and short stories, the eponymous first of which is currently being adapted into a feature film by Summit Entertainment.  He is also known for his conservative social activism:  Card is a board member for the National Organization for Marriage (which formally campaigns against gay marriage policy in the U.S.), and he has reportedly written a number of essays sharply criticizing gay marriage and other LGBT rights issues. Some in...

DEATH BEFORE DISARMAMENT: America's Reluctance to Confront Gun Legislation “Just throw your guns in the air, and buck-buck like you just don’t care!” Onyx , “Throw Ya Gunz”, 1993 In Chicago , teenager Hadiya Pendleton , who performed at President Obama ’s second inauguration was murdered this week by gunfire. In Detroit , nearly 400 gun-related criminal homicides were recorded in 2012. In Phoenix , an office-building confrontation has, as of this writing, left one person dead and two injured by gunfire. The gunman is currently at large, and in the meanwhile, U.S. Congress is poised to debate new, nationwide gun policy. Dismally—and perhaps predictably—despite President Obama’s signing of 23 executive orders directly aimed at gun policy, the prospect of comprehensive gun control legislation is widely speculated to fall apart before it even begins. It is abhorrent that intellectual dishonesty tends to dominate of the hand-wringing that goes on with both elected official...

FIND A SOLUTION It's a new year, but some old issues unfortunately have tragically come to a head in the past month. In Newtown, Connecticut , a disturbed young man, Adam Lanza , committed a heinous act of seemingly wanton murder, laying siege to an elementary school, killing 26 people on site, and at home, killing his mother Nancy as well, before finally shooting himself dead as police authorities arrived.  President Barack Obama subsequently charged Vice-President Joe Biden to lead a task force that would come up with comprehensive proposals for public policy legislation related to gun access and mental health, to present before the new Congress.   This author wrote the following in response to the mass-shooting which grievously wounded Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2011.  In full acknowledgment of the horrific human tragedy that unfolded in Newtown and in other recent gun-related violent crimes, it seems appropriate to reiterate the issues t...

NEEDY FAMILIES GET HELP FROM RITE-AID, HUMAN SERVICE AGENCIES Representatives from Rite-Aid Corporation and social service agency representatives in Detroit held a press conference Tuesday announcing a resource program targeting low-income families in the city of Detroit. The event was held at Matrix Human Services Mt. Zion Service Center on Detroit's east side. Two women who are clients of the Detroit Healthy Start program were on hand for the conference. They and other client families enrolled in the program will be receiving infant-care supplies and other child-health resources, as donated by the Rite Aid Corporation. Among the items donated by Rite Aid included over 100 "gift" bags (including diapers, baby shampoo, and other health and hygiene items) as well as several baby cribs. Members of the Detroit Healthy Start program and the nonprofit Institute for Population Health were on hand for the event. Comments were made by representatives of all the principal ...

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"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster."--   Friedrich Nietzsche At least 12 people are dead and dozens are wounded in the aftermath of a one-man shooting rampage in the city of Aurora, Colorado .  According to a police officer on the scene,  James Holmes , 24, identified himself as "the Joker" when confronted by authorities after Holmes entered a packed movie theater showing the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises and started shooting at the audience. http://tinyurl.com/733xbsd   Subsequently, Holmes reportedly surrendered to police without a fight, and is currently in custody.  Despite his declaration of affiliation with the iconic Batman arch-villain, Holmes had entered the theater in costuming more closely resembling the current antagonist in the Rises film, the terrorist leader Bane . In recent months, Holmes was a graduate student studying medicine at a local Colorado university.  In keeping with "super villain" modus...

BLOOD AND LORE:  CABIN IN THE WOODS REVIEW “…nobody wants to see vampire killers… or vampires… Apparently all they want to see are demented madmen running around in ski-masks, hacking up young virgins.” Peter Vincent (Roddy MacDowall), Fright Night (1985) If someone unexposed to horror films from the past 35 years or so were to watch a marathon of several of these films back to back (and let’s say none of them were sequels), how many would it take before he or she began to predict what’s going to happen next? For an American film audience culture that has by now endured the irony-heavy Scream franchise and the gloomily unironic spate of “torture porn” from auteurs like Eli Roth and others, can there truly be any genuine shocks in horror anymore? Cabin in the Woods film attempts to answer that question with a wink and a nod. The new film features five college-aged protagonists, each fitting a certain stock cliché to be found in assorted horror films: the jock/de fact...

GWYN AND BEAR IT This author is a week or so behind in tackling this particular hip-hop related scandal, but unlike the average shelf-life of a Twitter post, it still bears further discussion.  Indeed, Twitter is at the center of this particular celebrity faux-pas. It seems that Gwyneth Paltrow -- A-list movie actress, wife of Coldplay bandleader Chris Martin , and mother to quaintly-named children Apple and Moses, found herself in a foot-in-mouth social networking fuss when she typed a tweet "Niggas in Paris for real" while at a Jay-Z/Kanye West concert (Paltrow and her husband are apparently godparents to Jay-Z and Beyonce 's baby Blue Ivy.)  http://tinyurl.com/7tg2txr For the uninitiated, "Ni**as in Paris" is a Jay/Kanye song, though on radio and in the music-video it is officially referred to simply as "Paris"-- go figure, right? In interviews, such as with Tanning of America author/hip-hop manager Steve Stoute , Paltrow is upfron...

UNIVERSITY PROPOSES GREEN ACRES IN DETROIT In a recent Detroit News article, representatives from Michigan State University have made a formal proposal to Detroit city officials regarding an urban agriculture research project. As conceived, the project would take over blighted, vacant land in the city and convert it into farmland. Among the objectives of the initiative are to explore the prospects of contemporary urban cities growing their own fresh food supplies, seeking to meet the needs of indigenous populations who have challenges in accessing healthy food. More here: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120414/METRO/204140342 City leadership and some local activists have long been rigidly skeptical about urban farming. Among the concerns are prospects for locals to be hired for any jobs developed. Still yet, there are cultural and political challenges, as a segment of vocal Detroiters tend to openly equate any sort of urban-directed agriculture developments with sharecropping and...

DETROIT NEEDS TO LOOK TO THE PAST TO SEE ITS FUTURE There has been a lot of well-meaning but empty rhetoric about “job creation” in the city and state. When people speak of “jobs” in Detroit, I think it has to be parsed out exactly what type of jobs jobseekers are looking for, and from there just what type of jobs are jobseekers qualified for? The parts of Detroit’s economy which are not working mostly involve manufacturing. This cannot be over-stressed. Historically, Detroit has placed an inordinate amount of resources into assuming that the heavy-industrial manufacturing industry would be here forever. There was a time in which various factory and heavy-industry-related jobs were plentiful for local residents, whether they were simply a high school graduate, or even a dropout. At the risk of understatement, that era is over. From the 1960s forward, there has been both drastic and gradual disinvestment, by both larger corporations and smaller businesses, which has economically cripple...