Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Crop Boys! Hey Jigga
On the hook to Rock Boys Kanye shouts: "We in the house" Me and my boy Cav decided to take that concept and flip it. They in the house! ... like house niggas. Check it out Crop Boys
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
The face of an estimated 8-10 million deaths in Africa!
Have you ever heard of King Leopold?
This was a European man who went into the part of Africa referred to as the Congo under the front of saving the Africans from the savage Muslim slave trade and scientific exploration. He ended up being responsible for the murders of an estimated 8-10 million Africans as a result of forcing the African natives of the Congo into labor for the sake of exploiting the lands natural resources - which were ivory and rubber. Under orders from Leopold to kill Africans that rebelled against him and refused to work, Leopold’s army cut off the hands and heads of Africans and used them as evidence of completion of their duty. Leopold’s exploitation and mass murder of Africans in the Congo were the cause for the first Humanitarian rights movement of the 20th century. Leopold received no punishment for his crimes and in fact was paid money and gifts for relinquishing control of the Congo over to the Belgians. I site this event in history for those that feel we shouldn’t be suspicious of the latest crusade to save Africa, and feel we should be enthusiastic about the idea of people caring enough to help. For those that would like to know more about King Leopold you can check out the info I scooped from this site, which does a great job of giving a detailed summary of Leopold in the Congo below. For those that wish to know the full story read “King Leopold’s Ghost” King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
If you want to read the cause for this post CLICK HERE AND READ "STOP TRYING TO SAVE AFRICA"For those that didn’t know, Oil has been found in Uganda. You can read up on that here
http://allafrica.com/stories/200710021161.html
King Leopold's "Heart of Darkness"
In 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium gained a vast area in central Africa as his personal possession. His greed and the system of forced labor he imposed there prompted the first human rights movement of the 20th century.
Five years after most European nations and the United States had granted colonial status to King Leopold's "Congo Free State," a young merchant seaman traveled up the Congo River in a steamboat. Joseph Conrad was one of the first outsiders to witness and later write about the horrors committed by Leopold's regime in its greedy pursuit of Congo ivory and wild rubber.
In 1902, Conrad published his novel, The Heart of Darkness. In this fictional story, a man much like himself travels up a river into a rain forest where he meets a European ivory trader named Kurtz. The methods Kurtz uses to force the native people to bring him the ivory elephant tusks is symbolized by his guns and a ring of poles around his house. On top of each pole is a human head.
Conrad attempted to show that the "heart of darkness" lay deep within the Europeans who exploited the land and people of the Congo. But the full story of the Congo Free State not only involves the evil acts committed there, but also the campaign to expose them to world public opinion.
Exploring the Congo
Ten years before Columbus reached America, the Portuguese entered the mouth of Africa's Congo, one of the great rivers of the world. At first, good relations developed between the Portuguese and the several million inhabitants of the Kingdom of the Congo. The Portuguese didn't want to conquer or colonize the Congo. They only hoped to trade and to introduce Christianity.
The Kingdom of the Congo was a strong unified state known for its advanced working of copper and iron. The Congo king welcomed Portuguese traders, artisans, and missionaries.
Slavery was a part of the Congo culture. Most slaves were war captives, criminals, or debtors who could eventually earn back their freedom. But Congo clan chiefs and African Muslim slave traders from upriver were happy to sell their slaves to the Portuguese and other Europeans who transported them to America. This slave trading gradually depopulated and weakened the once-powerful Kingdom of the Congo.
In the mid-1800s, European maps marked central Africa as "unexplored." It remained one of the few areas of the vast continent not colonized by a European imperial power. But in 1871, journalist Henry M. Stanley electrified Europe when he found adventurer David Livingstone who had disappeared years earlier on an African expedition. Stanley then became determined to fully explore the interior of Africa.
Financed by New York and London newspapers, Stanley left the east coast of Africa in 1874 to lead a massive expedition. Battling native peoples and mutinies among his own men, he reached the headwaters of the Congo River. He then navigated down the Congo for a thousand miles before encountering a 200-mile stretch of rapids. He finally arrived at the Atlantic Ocean in 1877, having traveled 7,000 miles across Africa. He announced that the Congo "is and will be the grand highway of commerce to west central Africa."
Leopold II Gets His Colony
Leopold II, the king of the Belgians, enthusiastically followed press accounts of Stanley's travels. Leopold was frustrated that tiny Belgium possessed no colonies. As a constitutional monarch, he held little power at home. But he yearned to rule a rich colonial empire.
Leopold invited Stanley to Belgium and persuaded the now famous explorer to return to the Congo acting as the king's personal agent. Leopold instructed Stanley, under the guise of doing scientific explorations and combating slavery, to secretly establish monopoly control over the rich Congo ivory trade. To do this, Stanley had to get local clan chiefs to sign treaties turning over their lands and the labor of their people to Leopold.
Over the next five years, Stanley signed more than 450 treaties with Congo chiefs. Clearly, they had no idea what they were signing in exchange for the cloth, trinkets, alcohol, and other cheap goods Stanley gave them. After Leopold sent agents to lobby Congress, the United States became the first nation to recognize his claim to the Congo.
In 1884-85, a conference held in Berlin, Germany, decided the colonial status of central Africa. Suspicious of each other's ambitions in the region, the European powers and the United States agreed to grant Leopold possession of the Congo River basin. This encompassed nearly a million square miles, an area 80 times larger than Belgium. Of course, the people of the Congo took no part in the Berlin Conference and were unaware that their lives were about to tragically change.
"The Heart of Darkness"
On May 29, 1885, King Leopold's agents proclaimed him "sovereign" (supreme authority) of the "Congo Free State." In reality, it was neither free nor a state, but the personal possession of Leopold to do with as he pleased. The delegates to the Berlin Conference assumed that all nations would trade freely in Leopold's colony. "Sovereign" Leopold, however, had other ideas.
Leopold, who never visited the Congo, issued decrees from Belgium. He required the native people to trade only with his state agents or with his "concessions" (private companies that paid him 50 percent of their profits). The natives hunted elephants for their ivory tusks and gathered sap from wild rubber vines growing in the rain forest. This involved the hard labor of many men who were often away from their families for long periods.
Leopold and the concessions gave bonuses to their agents for paying native workers little for the ivory and rubber. When the Congo people finally refused to continue working under these conditions, Leopold had to develop a new system of labor. By 1890, Leopold's regime and the concessions were paying Congo chiefs to supply "volunteer" workers. The Congo Free State also purchased or forcibly took slaves from Muslim slave traders to work as laborers or soldiers.
In the early 1890s, Leopold's private African army, the Force Publique (Public Force), drove the powerful Muslim slave traders out of the Congo. While Leopold portrayed this as a great humanitarian act, his real purpose was to gain control of the upper Congo River and to acquire more workers.
Up to this point, Leopold's Congo enterprises had not made a profit. But his fortunes changed in the mid-1890s. A world rubber boom suddenly started, following the invention of the inflatable tire. Leopold and his licensed concessions now needed even more workers to go deeper into the forest in search of wild rubber.
Leopold decided to "tax" his Congo subjects by requiring local chiefs to supply men to collect rubber. Leopold's agents held the wives and children of these men as hostages until they returned with their quota of rubber.
The Congo people rebelled by ambushing army units, fleeing their villages to hide in the wilderness, and setting the rubber vine forests on fire. But Leopold's Force Publique crushed the rebellion. By 1905, the Force Publique had grown to a fearsome but poorly disciplined army of 16,000 African mercenary soldiers led by some 350 European officers. They burned villages, cut off the heads of uncooperative chiefs, and slaughtered the women and children of men refusing to collect rubber.
Force Publique officers sent their soldiers into the forest to find and kill rebels hiding there. To prove they had succeeded, soldiers were ordered to cut off and bring back the right hand of every rebel they killed. Often, however, soldiers cut off the hands of living persons, even children, to satisfy the quota set by their officers. This terror campaign succeeded in getting workers back to collecting rubber. As a result, Leopold's profits soared.
"A Secret Society of Murderers"
Edmund Dene Morel was a young British shipping clerk. Periodically, his company sent him to the Belgian port of Antwerp to supervise the loading and unloading of ships. In the late 1890s, Morel made a horrifying discovery. He noticed that while the Congo Free State exported tons of raw rubber to Belgium, little was shipped back except guns and bullets. He guessed rightly that the many natives needed to collect the rubber were forced to do so at gunpoint. "I had stumbled upon a secret society of murderers with a king for a [partner]," he later wrote.
After reading reports written by missionaries about Congo atrocities, Morel quit his shipping job in 1901 and began a campaign to expose Leopold's Congo regime. Morel worked as a newspaper reporter, made speeches, and wrote books and pamphlets condemning the mistreatment of the Congo people. His relentless activity caused the British government to send diplomat Roger Casement to the Congo Free State to investigate conditions there. Casement uncovered widespread evidence of hostage-taking, floggings, mutilation, forced labor, and outright murder.
Following the publication of his report in 1904, Casement joined Morel in organizing the Congo Reform Association, which resulted in the first major human rights movement of the 20th century. To expose Leopold's bloody Congo enterprise, Morel used photographs and slide shows picturing children whose hands had been cut off. Morel also expanded his movement to the United States where he met with President Theodore Roosevelt and enlisted the support of Booker T. Washington and Mark Twain.
Leopold struck back with a massive propaganda effort, which included lobbying both the British Parliament and U.S. Congress. But Morel's pleas for human rights in the Congo turned public opinion against the Belgian king.
Under pressure from Britain and the United States, Leopold turned over ownership of the Congo Free State to the Belgian government in 1908. But he demanded and received a huge cash payment and other benefits from Belgium for "his great sacrifices made for the Congo." Again, the Congo people had no say in their fate.
The Belgian government eliminated the worst abuses against the native people of the Congo. But the land along with its rubber and mineral resources remained firmly under European control. Belgium did little to improve the well-being of the people or to involve them in administering the colony.
Rich in copper, diamonds, oil, uranium, and other minerals, the Congo became an independent nation in 1960. In 1965, however, army leader Joseph Mobutu seized power. Like Leopold, Mobutu used his dictatorial powers to funnel the wealth of the Congo into his own pockets. Although Mobutu was finally overthrown in 1997, the future of self-rule in today's Democratic Republic of the Congo still remains uncertain.
King Leopold's Congo Free State was an economic, environmental, cultural, and human disaster for the Congo people. Historians estimate that 8-10 million persons perished from the violence, forced labor, and starvation caused by Leopold's lust for power and profits. When he died in 1909 at age 74, much of the world despised him. American poet Vachel Lindsay wrote this epitaph:
Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host,
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.
© 2000, Constitutional Rights Foundation, 601 South Kinglsey Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90005
This was a European man who went into the part of Africa referred to as the Congo under the front of saving the Africans from the savage Muslim slave trade and scientific exploration. He ended up being responsible for the murders of an estimated 8-10 million Africans as a result of forcing the African natives of the Congo into labor for the sake of exploiting the lands natural resources - which were ivory and rubber. Under orders from Leopold to kill Africans that rebelled against him and refused to work, Leopold’s army cut off the hands and heads of Africans and used them as evidence of completion of their duty. Leopold’s exploitation and mass murder of Africans in the Congo were the cause for the first Humanitarian rights movement of the 20th century. Leopold received no punishment for his crimes and in fact was paid money and gifts for relinquishing control of the Congo over to the Belgians. I site this event in history for those that feel we shouldn’t be suspicious of the latest crusade to save Africa, and feel we should be enthusiastic about the idea of people caring enough to help. For those that would like to know more about King Leopold you can check out the info I scooped from this site, which does a great job of giving a detailed summary of Leopold in the Congo below. For those that wish to know the full story read “King Leopold’s Ghost” King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
If you want to read the cause for this post CLICK HERE AND READ "STOP TRYING TO SAVE AFRICA"For those that didn’t know, Oil has been found in Uganda. You can read up on that here http://allafrica.com/stories/200710021161.html
King Leopold's "Heart of Darkness"
In 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium gained a vast area in central Africa as his personal possession. His greed and the system of forced labor he imposed there prompted the first human rights movement of the 20th century.
Five years after most European nations and the United States had granted colonial status to King Leopold's "Congo Free State," a young merchant seaman traveled up the Congo River in a steamboat. Joseph Conrad was one of the first outsiders to witness and later write about the horrors committed by Leopold's regime in its greedy pursuit of Congo ivory and wild rubber.
In 1902, Conrad published his novel, The Heart of Darkness. In this fictional story, a man much like himself travels up a river into a rain forest where he meets a European ivory trader named Kurtz. The methods Kurtz uses to force the native people to bring him the ivory elephant tusks is symbolized by his guns and a ring of poles around his house. On top of each pole is a human head.
Conrad attempted to show that the "heart of darkness" lay deep within the Europeans who exploited the land and people of the Congo. But the full story of the Congo Free State not only involves the evil acts committed there, but also the campaign to expose them to world public opinion.
Exploring the Congo
Ten years before Columbus reached America, the Portuguese entered the mouth of Africa's Congo, one of the great rivers of the world. At first, good relations developed between the Portuguese and the several million inhabitants of the Kingdom of the Congo. The Portuguese didn't want to conquer or colonize the Congo. They only hoped to trade and to introduce Christianity.
The Kingdom of the Congo was a strong unified state known for its advanced working of copper and iron. The Congo king welcomed Portuguese traders, artisans, and missionaries.
Slavery was a part of the Congo culture. Most slaves were war captives, criminals, or debtors who could eventually earn back their freedom. But Congo clan chiefs and African Muslim slave traders from upriver were happy to sell their slaves to the Portuguese and other Europeans who transported them to America. This slave trading gradually depopulated and weakened the once-powerful Kingdom of the Congo.
In the mid-1800s, European maps marked central Africa as "unexplored." It remained one of the few areas of the vast continent not colonized by a European imperial power. But in 1871, journalist Henry M. Stanley electrified Europe when he found adventurer David Livingstone who had disappeared years earlier on an African expedition. Stanley then became determined to fully explore the interior of Africa.
Financed by New York and London newspapers, Stanley left the east coast of Africa in 1874 to lead a massive expedition. Battling native peoples and mutinies among his own men, he reached the headwaters of the Congo River. He then navigated down the Congo for a thousand miles before encountering a 200-mile stretch of rapids. He finally arrived at the Atlantic Ocean in 1877, having traveled 7,000 miles across Africa. He announced that the Congo "is and will be the grand highway of commerce to west central Africa."
Leopold II Gets His Colony
Leopold II, the king of the Belgians, enthusiastically followed press accounts of Stanley's travels. Leopold was frustrated that tiny Belgium possessed no colonies. As a constitutional monarch, he held little power at home. But he yearned to rule a rich colonial empire.
Leopold invited Stanley to Belgium and persuaded the now famous explorer to return to the Congo acting as the king's personal agent. Leopold instructed Stanley, under the guise of doing scientific explorations and combating slavery, to secretly establish monopoly control over the rich Congo ivory trade. To do this, Stanley had to get local clan chiefs to sign treaties turning over their lands and the labor of their people to Leopold.
Over the next five years, Stanley signed more than 450 treaties with Congo chiefs. Clearly, they had no idea what they were signing in exchange for the cloth, trinkets, alcohol, and other cheap goods Stanley gave them. After Leopold sent agents to lobby Congress, the United States became the first nation to recognize his claim to the Congo.
In 1884-85, a conference held in Berlin, Germany, decided the colonial status of central Africa. Suspicious of each other's ambitions in the region, the European powers and the United States agreed to grant Leopold possession of the Congo River basin. This encompassed nearly a million square miles, an area 80 times larger than Belgium. Of course, the people of the Congo took no part in the Berlin Conference and were unaware that their lives were about to tragically change.
"The Heart of Darkness"
On May 29, 1885, King Leopold's agents proclaimed him "sovereign" (supreme authority) of the "Congo Free State." In reality, it was neither free nor a state, but the personal possession of Leopold to do with as he pleased. The delegates to the Berlin Conference assumed that all nations would trade freely in Leopold's colony. "Sovereign" Leopold, however, had other ideas.
Leopold, who never visited the Congo, issued decrees from Belgium. He required the native people to trade only with his state agents or with his "concessions" (private companies that paid him 50 percent of their profits). The natives hunted elephants for their ivory tusks and gathered sap from wild rubber vines growing in the rain forest. This involved the hard labor of many men who were often away from their families for long periods.
Leopold and the concessions gave bonuses to their agents for paying native workers little for the ivory and rubber. When the Congo people finally refused to continue working under these conditions, Leopold had to develop a new system of labor. By 1890, Leopold's regime and the concessions were paying Congo chiefs to supply "volunteer" workers. The Congo Free State also purchased or forcibly took slaves from Muslim slave traders to work as laborers or soldiers.
In the early 1890s, Leopold's private African army, the Force Publique (Public Force), drove the powerful Muslim slave traders out of the Congo. While Leopold portrayed this as a great humanitarian act, his real purpose was to gain control of the upper Congo River and to acquire more workers.
Up to this point, Leopold's Congo enterprises had not made a profit. But his fortunes changed in the mid-1890s. A world rubber boom suddenly started, following the invention of the inflatable tire. Leopold and his licensed concessions now needed even more workers to go deeper into the forest in search of wild rubber.
Leopold decided to "tax" his Congo subjects by requiring local chiefs to supply men to collect rubber. Leopold's agents held the wives and children of these men as hostages until they returned with their quota of rubber.
The Congo people rebelled by ambushing army units, fleeing their villages to hide in the wilderness, and setting the rubber vine forests on fire. But Leopold's Force Publique crushed the rebellion. By 1905, the Force Publique had grown to a fearsome but poorly disciplined army of 16,000 African mercenary soldiers led by some 350 European officers. They burned villages, cut off the heads of uncooperative chiefs, and slaughtered the women and children of men refusing to collect rubber.
Force Publique officers sent their soldiers into the forest to find and kill rebels hiding there. To prove they had succeeded, soldiers were ordered to cut off and bring back the right hand of every rebel they killed. Often, however, soldiers cut off the hands of living persons, even children, to satisfy the quota set by their officers. This terror campaign succeeded in getting workers back to collecting rubber. As a result, Leopold's profits soared.
"A Secret Society of Murderers"
Edmund Dene Morel was a young British shipping clerk. Periodically, his company sent him to the Belgian port of Antwerp to supervise the loading and unloading of ships. In the late 1890s, Morel made a horrifying discovery. He noticed that while the Congo Free State exported tons of raw rubber to Belgium, little was shipped back except guns and bullets. He guessed rightly that the many natives needed to collect the rubber were forced to do so at gunpoint. "I had stumbled upon a secret society of murderers with a king for a [partner]," he later wrote.
After reading reports written by missionaries about Congo atrocities, Morel quit his shipping job in 1901 and began a campaign to expose Leopold's Congo regime. Morel worked as a newspaper reporter, made speeches, and wrote books and pamphlets condemning the mistreatment of the Congo people. His relentless activity caused the British government to send diplomat Roger Casement to the Congo Free State to investigate conditions there. Casement uncovered widespread evidence of hostage-taking, floggings, mutilation, forced labor, and outright murder.
Following the publication of his report in 1904, Casement joined Morel in organizing the Congo Reform Association, which resulted in the first major human rights movement of the 20th century. To expose Leopold's bloody Congo enterprise, Morel used photographs and slide shows picturing children whose hands had been cut off. Morel also expanded his movement to the United States where he met with President Theodore Roosevelt and enlisted the support of Booker T. Washington and Mark Twain.
Leopold struck back with a massive propaganda effort, which included lobbying both the British Parliament and U.S. Congress. But Morel's pleas for human rights in the Congo turned public opinion against the Belgian king.
Under pressure from Britain and the United States, Leopold turned over ownership of the Congo Free State to the Belgian government in 1908. But he demanded and received a huge cash payment and other benefits from Belgium for "his great sacrifices made for the Congo." Again, the Congo people had no say in their fate.
The Belgian government eliminated the worst abuses against the native people of the Congo. But the land along with its rubber and mineral resources remained firmly under European control. Belgium did little to improve the well-being of the people or to involve them in administering the colony.
Rich in copper, diamonds, oil, uranium, and other minerals, the Congo became an independent nation in 1960. In 1965, however, army leader Joseph Mobutu seized power. Like Leopold, Mobutu used his dictatorial powers to funnel the wealth of the Congo into his own pockets. Although Mobutu was finally overthrown in 1997, the future of self-rule in today's Democratic Republic of the Congo still remains uncertain.
King Leopold's Congo Free State was an economic, environmental, cultural, and human disaster for the Congo people. Historians estimate that 8-10 million persons perished from the violence, forced labor, and starvation caused by Leopold's lust for power and profits. When he died in 1909 at age 74, much of the world despised him. American poet Vachel Lindsay wrote this epitaph:
Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host,
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.
© 2000, Constitutional Rights Foundation, 601 South Kinglsey Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90005
Monday, October 08, 2007
Stop trying to save Africa!
Read this, read the whole thing. He took the words out my mouth and I'm glad there's other people that feel like I feel.
By Uzodinma Iweala
Sunday, July 15, 2007; Page B07
Last fall, shortly after I returned from Nigeria, I was accosted by a
perky blond college student whose blue eyes seemed to match the
"African" beads around her wrists.
"Save Darfur!" she shouted from behind a table covered with pamphlets
urging students to TAKE ACTION NOW! STOP GENOCIDE IN DARFUR!
My aversion to college kids jumping onto fashionable social causes
nearly caused me to walk on, but her next shout stopped me.
"Don't you want to help us save Africa?" she yelled.
It seems that these days, wracked by guilt at the humanitarian crisis
it has created in the Middle East , the West has turned to Africa for
redemption. Idealistic college students, celebrities such as Bob
Geldof and politicians such as Tony Blair have all made bringing light
to the dark continent their mission. They fly in for internships and
fact-finding missions or to pick out children to adopt in much the
same way my friends and I in New York take the subway to the pound to
adopt stray dogs.
This is the West's new image of itself: a sexy, politically active
generation whose preferred means of spreading the word are magazine
spreads with celebrities pictured in the foreground, forlorn Africans
in the back. Never mind that the stars sent to bring succor to the
natives often are, willingly, as emaciated as those they want to help.
Perhaps most interesting is the language used to describe the Africa
being saved. For example, the Keep a Child Alive/" I am African" ad
campaign features portraits of primarily white, Western celebrities
with painted "tribal markings" on their faces above "I AM AFRICAN" in
bold letters. Below, smaller print says, "help us stop the dying."
Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of
Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly
focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal"
conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital
mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save
Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between
the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but
such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European
colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to
education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."
There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help
of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given
in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is
dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a
litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy,
white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done
for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college
student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for
her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film
about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head --
because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in
the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to
ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate
situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work
Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.
Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been
"granted independence from their colonial masters," as opposed to
having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie
and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while
Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever
mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives
more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous
African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent
countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in
that crisis?
Two years ago I worked in a camp for internally displaced people in
Nigeria, survivors of an uprising that killed about 1,000 people and
displaced 200,000. True to form, the Western media reported on the
violence but not on the humanitarian work the state and local
governments -- without much international help -- did for the
survivors. Social workers spent their time and in many cases their own
salaries to care for their compatriots. These are the people saving
Africa, and others like them across the continent get no credit for
their work.
Last month the Group of Eight industrialized nations and a host of
celebrities met in Germany to discuss, among other things, how to save
Africa. Before the next such summit, I hope people will realize Africa
doesn't want to be saved. Africa wants the world to acknowledge that
through fair partnerships with other members of the global community,
we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.
Uzodinma Iweala is the author of "Beasts of No Nation," a novel about
child soldiers.
Do you agree with the article? Vote to the left.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
She sniffed coke off her babies stomach while breast feeding!
This chick was sniffing coke off of her babies stomach while she was breast feeding him. If that weren't enough she got caught giving head to two dudes in the front seat of her car while her two kids (5 year old girl, 8 month old son) sat in the backseat. Her dad is Jack knowles owner of the Kentucky derby champ Funny Cide.
Lifestyles of the rich and famous! Sometimes I wonder why so many of us envy them.
Read the complete article @ TheNewYorkPost.com
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Do we teach hate?
You can show and tell someone something, but with the exception of mind control, you cannot dictate what manner they will interpret what they have been shown or allowed to hear. You can show a movie about slavery to a classroom full of students. You may have students who see the movie and think, “Oh my God that’s awful. How could anyone do that to another human being?” At the same time you may have students who look at the movie and see a weaker race being conquered and dominated by a stronger one. Your intent could have been to compel sympathy for the plight of Black Americans and indirectly you could have risen up sentiments of White supremacy. Look at the people you feel sorry for then answer this question, do you think we’re doing ourselves more harm than good by centering our history around slavery and the civil rights movement? You be the judge! Check out the poll on the left.
Written by S.F
Written by S.F
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Can I call you a nigga now?
NIGGA WHAT?
Out of pure disdain for closed minded individuals, I have devoted a substantial amount of time – perhaps way more than I should have - to explaining the use of the word “Nigga” by members of the Hip Hop community. I have had countless conversations that often turned into arguments or heated debates because of, what I felt to be ignorance toward the issue. When I mention the word “ignorance” in reference to those who stand in opposition to my position on the matter, I know many people may assume I side with those that are adverse to the use of the word “Nigga” I can assume this because these are the individuals who deem those that advocate the use of the word “Nigga” to be ignorant. Such assumptions as “Nigga” being used by members of the Hip hop community as a result of their lacking knowledge of its history, and the belief that “Nigga” derives from the word nigger, are things I view as ignorance for the following reasons; We use fire in many different ways than the cavemen who created it does that make us ignorant to the fact that cavemen created fire? In American history “nigger” is a word that was used to express racism, demean, and degrade individuals of African descent. The Ethiopian word “Negus” is defined as being a title of Ethiopian royalty. Who’s to determine from which the word “Nigga” owes its origin? Contemporary black music often gets connected to ancient African rhythms rooted in our subconscious, is it completely impossible for this occurrence to also take place with words?
ne·gus1 /ˈnigəs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[nee-guhs] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural -gus·es. 1. a title of Ethiopian royalty.
2. (initial capital letter) the Emperor of Ethiopia.
www.dictionary.com look it up
The laws of physics state that energy cannot be destroyed only transformed from one state to another. Words carry energy, the word nigger carries energy, a negative energy that has done nothing but spread hurt and hate throughout American society. The word nigger is a weapon, a gun that has been handed to an American public who have been taught to aim it at Blacks in America as well as around the world and fire at will. They fire that gun because they know it has the ability to kill and do harm because otherwise it would be futile to use it. If the Hip hop community decides to take that gun, melt down the metal, and use it to make spoons, why fight against them to have the word remain as a gun that can be used against us?
If the word “Nigga” is a manifestation of the word nigger, what’s wrong with the transformation of energy going from negative to positive through the process of that manifestation? If we're to say that because something has a negative history it can't be used in a positive manner, then why wear crosses when – according to popular belief - they were once used to kill Jesus Christ and others, why worship Christianity when it was once used as a tool to enslave and as a cause for mass murder during the crusades? Why even refer to ourselves as Black, a color that throughout American history has been associated with everything wrong and is defined as meaning evil, wicked, and sullen? Let’s not forget that there was a time when Africans in America resented being referred to as Black. James Brown came around and coined the phrase “Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud” After that the word Black wasn’t greeted with as much hostility and today it’s considered a none offensive manner of referencing people of African American decent.
You don’t get pass the pain by burying it, you get pass the pain by healing the wound. The Black politicians and churches are rallying the Black community to attack Hip hop for attempting to heal a wound and at the same time, asking that we forgive and live side by side, peacefully, with those we hold responsible for causing the wound. They show me images of Black bodies swinging from trees and say “Don’t say nigga” the word nigger didn’t do that, some racist White man did, the word “Nigga” doesn’t discriminate against me when I’m applying for jobs, the word “Nigga” didn’t shoot at Shawn Bell 50 times, the word “Nigga” didn’t shoot Amadu Diallo 19 times, the word “Nigga” didn’t kill Robert Stansberry, White people filled with prejudice, racism, and hatred did those things.
For us to say that by eliminating the use of the, now notorious, “N word” as my White friends like to call it, we're coming closer to eliminating the racist sentiments that are expressed through its use is absurd to me. I doubt if all the names I mentioned above heard “Die nigga, die!” before bullets were dumped into their bodies. The officer responsible for murdering Robert Stansberry received no criminal conviction and is still employed by the NYPD to this date, The officers responsible for murdering Amadou Diallo were found not guilty, and the officers who are accused of murdering Sean Bell are still awaiting trail almost a year later. Why are we not still protesting for justice for the families of these victims? Oprah Winfrey toured radio stations trying to persuade radio personalities to sign contracts stating they would discontinue their use of the word “Nigga” A Black couple decided to start up a website called “AbolishtheNword.com” calling for the abolishment of the word “Nigger” Why aren’t these same people attacking issues like the public school systems in Black neighborhoods, the incarceration of Black men in America, the aids crisis amongst Blacks in America, and etc. with the same intensity? Besides the idea that the energy they’re spending on banding a word could be put towards a more constructive cause, it also shows a total disregard for our constitutional right to free speech.
People want to just hold to their beliefs without ever questioning whether what they believe in truly makes any sense or brings any positive influence. The word nigga is more so used in the same manner as a pronoun amongst members of the hip hop community/"Hood" and belongs to a dialect spoken by the social group that makes up the Hip hop community. With in that community no one is offended by its use because the intent is well noted to not be derogatory or racist. Since its beginning hip hop has been used to heal and has turned negatives into positives. This was seen with brake dancing where kids would battle in dance rather than gang fights. It provided kids with an alternative means of venting their frustration by providing an artistic channel for venting that frustration and preventing the youth from lashing out violently. This is no different, let us heal.
"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything" - George Bernard Shaw
Related readings Hip hop slang; Dialect or just bad English?
Look for part 2 coming soon.
Written by: S.F
Out of pure disdain for closed minded individuals, I have devoted a substantial amount of time – perhaps way more than I should have - to explaining the use of the word “Nigga” by members of the Hip Hop community. I have had countless conversations that often turned into arguments or heated debates because of, what I felt to be ignorance toward the issue. When I mention the word “ignorance” in reference to those who stand in opposition to my position on the matter, I know many people may assume I side with those that are adverse to the use of the word “Nigga” I can assume this because these are the individuals who deem those that advocate the use of the word “Nigga” to be ignorant. Such assumptions as “Nigga” being used by members of the Hip hop community as a result of their lacking knowledge of its history, and the belief that “Nigga” derives from the word nigger, are things I view as ignorance for the following reasons; We use fire in many different ways than the cavemen who created it does that make us ignorant to the fact that cavemen created fire? In American history “nigger” is a word that was used to express racism, demean, and degrade individuals of African descent. The Ethiopian word “Negus” is defined as being a title of Ethiopian royalty. Who’s to determine from which the word “Nigga” owes its origin? Contemporary black music often gets connected to ancient African rhythms rooted in our subconscious, is it completely impossible for this occurrence to also take place with words?
ne·gus1 /ˈnigəs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[nee-guhs] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural -gus·es. 1. a title of Ethiopian royalty.
2. (initial capital letter) the Emperor of Ethiopia.
www.dictionary.com look it up
The laws of physics state that energy cannot be destroyed only transformed from one state to another. Words carry energy, the word nigger carries energy, a negative energy that has done nothing but spread hurt and hate throughout American society. The word nigger is a weapon, a gun that has been handed to an American public who have been taught to aim it at Blacks in America as well as around the world and fire at will. They fire that gun because they know it has the ability to kill and do harm because otherwise it would be futile to use it. If the Hip hop community decides to take that gun, melt down the metal, and use it to make spoons, why fight against them to have the word remain as a gun that can be used against us?
If the word “Nigga” is a manifestation of the word nigger, what’s wrong with the transformation of energy going from negative to positive through the process of that manifestation? If we're to say that because something has a negative history it can't be used in a positive manner, then why wear crosses when – according to popular belief - they were once used to kill Jesus Christ and others, why worship Christianity when it was once used as a tool to enslave and as a cause for mass murder during the crusades? Why even refer to ourselves as Black, a color that throughout American history has been associated with everything wrong and is defined as meaning evil, wicked, and sullen? Let’s not forget that there was a time when Africans in America resented being referred to as Black. James Brown came around and coined the phrase “Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud” After that the word Black wasn’t greeted with as much hostility and today it’s considered a none offensive manner of referencing people of African American decent.
You don’t get pass the pain by burying it, you get pass the pain by healing the wound. The Black politicians and churches are rallying the Black community to attack Hip hop for attempting to heal a wound and at the same time, asking that we forgive and live side by side, peacefully, with those we hold responsible for causing the wound. They show me images of Black bodies swinging from trees and say “Don’t say nigga” the word nigger didn’t do that, some racist White man did, the word “Nigga” doesn’t discriminate against me when I’m applying for jobs, the word “Nigga” didn’t shoot at Shawn Bell 50 times, the word “Nigga” didn’t shoot Amadu Diallo 19 times, the word “Nigga” didn’t kill Robert Stansberry, White people filled with prejudice, racism, and hatred did those things.
For us to say that by eliminating the use of the, now notorious, “N word” as my White friends like to call it, we're coming closer to eliminating the racist sentiments that are expressed through its use is absurd to me. I doubt if all the names I mentioned above heard “Die nigga, die!” before bullets were dumped into their bodies. The officer responsible for murdering Robert Stansberry received no criminal conviction and is still employed by the NYPD to this date, The officers responsible for murdering Amadou Diallo were found not guilty, and the officers who are accused of murdering Sean Bell are still awaiting trail almost a year later. Why are we not still protesting for justice for the families of these victims? Oprah Winfrey toured radio stations trying to persuade radio personalities to sign contracts stating they would discontinue their use of the word “Nigga” A Black couple decided to start up a website called “AbolishtheNword.com” calling for the abolishment of the word “Nigger” Why aren’t these same people attacking issues like the public school systems in Black neighborhoods, the incarceration of Black men in America, the aids crisis amongst Blacks in America, and etc. with the same intensity? Besides the idea that the energy they’re spending on banding a word could be put towards a more constructive cause, it also shows a total disregard for our constitutional right to free speech.
People want to just hold to their beliefs without ever questioning whether what they believe in truly makes any sense or brings any positive influence. The word nigga is more so used in the same manner as a pronoun amongst members of the hip hop community/"Hood" and belongs to a dialect spoken by the social group that makes up the Hip hop community. With in that community no one is offended by its use because the intent is well noted to not be derogatory or racist. Since its beginning hip hop has been used to heal and has turned negatives into positives. This was seen with brake dancing where kids would battle in dance rather than gang fights. It provided kids with an alternative means of venting their frustration by providing an artistic channel for venting that frustration and preventing the youth from lashing out violently. This is no different, let us heal.
"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything" - George Bernard Shaw
Related readings Hip hop slang; Dialect or just bad English?
Look for part 2 coming soon.
Written by: S.F
Monday, September 24, 2007
Was this man a racist or a realist?
Watch this video and let me know your opinion
If your undecided and need to see more, check out more clips from this Interview @ THEBARBERSHOPBLOG.BLOGSPOT.COM
If your undecided and need to see more, check out more clips from this Interview @ THEBARBERSHOPBLOG.BLOGSPOT.COM
Thursday, January 04, 2007
THEY WIN; YOU LOSE
Shawn F.
Few are aware, that one of the key causes of the Civil war was the North not wanting slavery to spread to their region out of fear of losing jobs to free labor. Fast forward to the twenty first century; where slavery has supposedly been outlawed, and job seekers deem their only competition to be outsourcing, technology, and the immigrant workforce. The immigrant workforce has become less of a threat due to the government’s new immigrant labor laws and border restrictions. I wonder if anybody ever took the time to think about why a country that has depended on cheap immigrant labor for so long moved so quickly to pass laws that would severely restrict it. Could it be that the government has found another more inexpensive source of labor, there by making the immigrant workforce expendable? I believe so. With corporate owned prison’s basically leasing out inmates to commercial enterprise at wages that make it comparable to slavery, it has become apparent to me that job seekers have a new competitor.
There are numerous essays that have been written about American prison institutions and slave labor. Many American citizens could careless about the enslavement of prison inmates - believing it’s well deserved. Others feel that since the inmates are already in prison they might as well spend their time productively. Few have acknowledged the threat that prison labor poses to our society’s job market. Maybe the reluctance of mainstream media to expose companies that have been robbing job seekers of employment by employing inmates at slave wages have left people in the dark on the issue. People aren’t informed of the fact that companies such as Honda employ prison inmates to make car parts for $2 an hour when a free man would earn a wage of $20 or $30 an hour to do the same job. It even goes as far as companies like AT&T and TWA hiring prison inmates to do such things as telemarketing and taking reservations for airlines - processing credit card information and social security numbers. Think about the number of applicants these companies deny employment every year because they marked yes to the “Have you ever been convicted of a Felony” question, think about the number of applicants these companies turn away each year for not having a High School diploma or GED, the applicants they tell are overqualified, the applicants they tell are under qualified, now think about those companies giving those same jobs to an under qualified, in some cases uneducated, prison inmate. Allow me to use this analogy. Let’s say a girl named Sara works at a department store. Sara has two kids and is desperate for over time and any extra hours she can work (and use) to make extra money to feed her children. One day a guy, let’s call him Tom, walks into her store and steals a pair of pants. The store owner calls the police, Tom gets arrested, goes to court and the judge sentences him to work in that department store for 30 days for no pay. The owner of the department store realizes how much money he could save with this arrangement and cuts Sara’s schedule from 40 hours a week to 20. Think about who suffers in that scenario. Imagine the government adopting a policy which allows corporate owned prison’s to lease prison inmates to work for commercial enterprises. Imagine the amount of jobs that would be lost from the amount of revenue these companies could save on payroll, and then imagine this not being a hypothetical scenario, imagine it being reality. Here’s something I snatched off the net courtesy of WSWS (world socialist website). “Lockhart Technologies, Inc. closed its plant in Austin, Texas, dismissing its 150 workers so that it could open shop in a state prison in Lockhart. The prisoners assemble circuit boards for industrial giants such as IBM, Compaq and Dell. Lockhart is not required to pay for health or any other benefits. The company must pay the prison the federal minimum wage for each laborer, but the inmates get to keep only 20 percent of that.” If you’d like to know more about this issue I suggest you look at this site link http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/pris-
By: Shawn F.
Few are aware, that one of the key causes of the Civil war was the North not wanting slavery to spread to their region out of fear of losing jobs to free labor. Fast forward to the twenty first century; where slavery has supposedly been outlawed, and job seekers deem their only competition to be outsourcing, technology, and the immigrant workforce. The immigrant workforce has become less of a threat due to the government’s new immigrant labor laws and border restrictions. I wonder if anybody ever took the time to think about why a country that has depended on cheap immigrant labor for so long moved so quickly to pass laws that would severely restrict it. Could it be that the government has found another more inexpensive source of labor, there by making the immigrant workforce expendable? I believe so. With corporate owned prison’s basically leasing out inmates to commercial enterprise at wages that make it comparable to slavery, it has become apparent to me that job seekers have a new competitor.
There are numerous essays that have been written about American prison institutions and slave labor. Many American citizens could careless about the enslavement of prison inmates - believing it’s well deserved. Others feel that since the inmates are already in prison they might as well spend their time productively. Few have acknowledged the threat that prison labor poses to our society’s job market. Maybe the reluctance of mainstream media to expose companies that have been robbing job seekers of employment by employing inmates at slave wages have left people in the dark on the issue. People aren’t informed of the fact that companies such as Honda employ prison inmates to make car parts for $2 an hour when a free man would earn a wage of $20 or $30 an hour to do the same job. It even goes as far as companies like AT&T and TWA hiring prison inmates to do such things as telemarketing and taking reservations for airlines - processing credit card information and social security numbers. Think about the number of applicants these companies deny employment every year because they marked yes to the “Have you ever been convicted of a Felony” question, think about the number of applicants these companies turn away each year for not having a High School diploma or GED, the applicants they tell are overqualified, the applicants they tell are under qualified, now think about those companies giving those same jobs to an under qualified, in some cases uneducated, prison inmate. Allow me to use this analogy. Let’s say a girl named Sara works at a department store. Sara has two kids and is desperate for over time and any extra hours she can work (and use) to make extra money to feed her children. One day a guy, let’s call him Tom, walks into her store and steals a pair of pants. The store owner calls the police, Tom gets arrested, goes to court and the judge sentences him to work in that department store for 30 days for no pay. The owner of the department store realizes how much money he could save with this arrangement and cuts Sara’s schedule from 40 hours a week to 20. Think about who suffers in that scenario. Imagine the government adopting a policy which allows corporate owned prison’s to lease prison inmates to work for commercial enterprises. Imagine the amount of jobs that would be lost from the amount of revenue these companies could save on payroll, and then imagine this not being a hypothetical scenario, imagine it being reality. Here’s something I snatched off the net courtesy of WSWS (world socialist website). “Lockhart Technologies, Inc. closed its plant in Austin, Texas, dismissing its 150 workers so that it could open shop in a state prison in Lockhart. The prisoners assemble circuit boards for industrial giants such as IBM, Compaq and Dell. Lockhart is not required to pay for health or any other benefits. The company must pay the prison the federal minimum wage for each laborer, but the inmates get to keep only 20 percent of that.” If you’d like to know more about this issue I suggest you look at this site link http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/pris-
By: Shawn F.
HIP HOP SLANG DIALECT OR JUST BAD ENGLISH
Shawn F.
Dialect: Variety of a language spoken by a group of people and having features of vocabulary, grammar, and/ or pronunciation that distinguish it from other varieties of the same language.
Dialects usually develop as a result of geographic, social, political, or economic barriers between groups of people who speak the same language. When dialects diverge to the point that they are mutually incomprehensible, they become languages in their own right. This was the case with Latin, various dialects of which evolved into the different Romance languages French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian….
Hip hop slang, in my opinion, is what could be characterized as a socialect, which is a dialect determined by social factors rather than by geography. In the opinion of others outside of hip hop it’s a sign of ignorance or lack of education, or just plain bad English. What causes the division?
I know to some this may come off as pure speculation, but what I have come to find is that the unacceptance of Hip hop slang as a dialect, is a result of an unwillingness of high class society to accept the idea of what is deemed to be a low class society having the intellectual capacity to actually develop a dialect (in other words arrogance). Often the Hip hop community is portrayed as unintelligent and as a result are often perceived as such. If someone you believe to be stupid speaks in a manner that you’re not accustomed to hearing, you might, in all likeliness, chalk it up to stupidity. The resistance towards hip hop slang as being viewed as a dialect comes from other angles as well. Many people who view themselves to be educated and accept the ideas that have been fed to them of what is an educated manner of speaking, also view hip hop slang as an unintelligible or uneducated manner of speaking the English language. Furthermore you have the fundamentalists that,in my opinion, fear the idea of hip hop slang being viewed as a dialect because, as I stated in the passage above, dialects have been known to turn into languages once they have reached a mutual level of incomprehensibility, which wouldn’t pose such a threat if the hip hop dialect was confined to a specific demographic. But the acceptance of the Hip hop culture nationally and internationally is what, in my opinion, alarms fundamentalist. As Hip hop receives more and more worldwide exposure through publications, T.V shows, radio stations, and other modern media, it bears the potential to change itself from being perceived as American culture to being accepted as a foundation American culture.
If you ask me it isn’t what it is, it’s what people have been taught to believe it is, that compels resistance against hip hop slang being accepted as a dialect of the English language. When in reality what we accept as English is actually a dialect of the British English language and even that is a stretch. If you look up the origin in which many American words derive you’ll find that the English language is a bastard language comprised of mispronounced and borrowed words of other languages, sort of like Hip hop slang.
Let us know what you think, Hip hop slang; Dialect or just bad English
Dialect: Variety of a language spoken by a group of people and having features of vocabulary, grammar, and/ or pronunciation that distinguish it from other varieties of the same language.
Dialects usually develop as a result of geographic, social, political, or economic barriers between groups of people who speak the same language. When dialects diverge to the point that they are mutually incomprehensible, they become languages in their own right. This was the case with Latin, various dialects of which evolved into the different Romance languages French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian….
Hip hop slang, in my opinion, is what could be characterized as a socialect, which is a dialect determined by social factors rather than by geography. In the opinion of others outside of hip hop it’s a sign of ignorance or lack of education, or just plain bad English. What causes the division?
I know to some this may come off as pure speculation, but what I have come to find is that the unacceptance of Hip hop slang as a dialect, is a result of an unwillingness of high class society to accept the idea of what is deemed to be a low class society having the intellectual capacity to actually develop a dialect (in other words arrogance). Often the Hip hop community is portrayed as unintelligent and as a result are often perceived as such. If someone you believe to be stupid speaks in a manner that you’re not accustomed to hearing, you might, in all likeliness, chalk it up to stupidity. The resistance towards hip hop slang as being viewed as a dialect comes from other angles as well. Many people who view themselves to be educated and accept the ideas that have been fed to them of what is an educated manner of speaking, also view hip hop slang as an unintelligible or uneducated manner of speaking the English language. Furthermore you have the fundamentalists that,in my opinion, fear the idea of hip hop slang being viewed as a dialect because, as I stated in the passage above, dialects have been known to turn into languages once they have reached a mutual level of incomprehensibility, which wouldn’t pose such a threat if the hip hop dialect was confined to a specific demographic. But the acceptance of the Hip hop culture nationally and internationally is what, in my opinion, alarms fundamentalist. As Hip hop receives more and more worldwide exposure through publications, T.V shows, radio stations, and other modern media, it bears the potential to change itself from being perceived as American culture to being accepted as a foundation American culture.
If you ask me it isn’t what it is, it’s what people have been taught to believe it is, that compels resistance against hip hop slang being accepted as a dialect of the English language. When in reality what we accept as English is actually a dialect of the British English language and even that is a stretch. If you look up the origin in which many American words derive you’ll find that the English language is a bastard language comprised of mispronounced and borrowed words of other languages, sort of like Hip hop slang.
Let us know what you think, Hip hop slang; Dialect or just bad English
Why Dream Girls Was A Nightmare
I got suckered I have to admit. Usually I'm not swayed by critical acclaim and award nominations but I got got this time around. Me and my girlfriend - who wanted to see a movie called "Children Of Men" - instead decided - upon my request - to see Dream Girls. Boy was I disappointed. To be frank, Dream Girls is corny and seems rushed. They didn't take the time to develop the characters and story lines. I didn't connect with any of the characters enough to actually care about anything that happened to them. I really don't see why any of the actors were nominated for anything. It turned out to be more of a musical than a movie but with out the appeal of a film such as the Moulin Rouge - which I surprised myself by liking. The singing scenes were not timed well enough to add any type of connection with the songs - It was kind of like confessing love to someone that hasn't known you long enough to care about you. Beyonce's acting annoys me. To me it seems like she approaches every role the same way. She's always this lively, wide eyed, bubbly character with a touch of Black sass and a tad bit of a mean streak. Jamie Foxx character was good. He played a money grubbing ass-hole but he played it well. Jennifer Hudson (American Idol reject) was impressive as well. Her vocal performances and overall acting was real good. Jennifer Hudson and Jamie Foxx characters were the only two that compelled any type of emotion out of you. She made you want to be in her corner and root for her to come out on top. He made you either laugh at the grimy things he did or want to see him take a knife to the gut. I have to say though thatJennifer Hudson did kind of look like somebodies Aunt Bunny. The scene where she sang "I'm telling you" They could of gave her a longer dress. Her legs looked like one of my aunts when their legs swell up with water - you know how some black women legs get all thick and swollen with the little black dots on them and stuff. I would have really been upset to have had wasted $19.95 to see that movie. Luckily me and my girl snuck in to see two other films. One being "Holiday" with Cameron Diaz which was kind of good - it made my girl cry - awwww!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
