Tagged: covert

“Under Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., the Supreme Court has developed a remarkably sanguine view of race in America. ‘Things have changed dramatically,’ Mr. Roberts wrote in 2013 in striking down the heart of the Voting Rights Act. In other words, he seemed to suggest, this is no longer the country of Bull Connor and fire hoses, and any lingering effects of our entrenched history of racial discrimination are best dealt with if everyone would simply agree to treat each other as equals. ‘The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,’ Mr. Roberts wrote in a 2007 case. The court’s latest target in its quest for a race-blind nation is the Fair Housing Act, approved by Congress in 1968 as the final cornerstone of civil rights legislation and broadened in 1988. The act makes it illegal to refuse to sell, rent “or otherwise make unavailable or deny” a property to anyone because of race, sex or other protected categories. The question before the judges during oral arguments on Wednesday morning was this: Does that language require that the discrimination be intentional, or does it allow plaintiffs to claim a discriminatory effect, regardless of intent?”

Source: “Discrimination With A Smile.” New York Times. January 22, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/opinion/discrimination-with-a-smile.html?_r=0.

“For more than two years, a U.S. agency secretly infiltrated Cuba’s underground hip-hop movement, recruiting unwitting rappers to spark a youth movement against the government, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The idea was to use Cuban musicians ‘to break the information blockade’ and build a network of young people seeking ‘social change,’ documents show. But the operation was amateurish and profoundly unsuccessful.”

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban rappers targeted by a clandestine U.S. program are “victims” unknowingly swept into an effort to spark an anti-government youth movement, the Cuban government said Friday in its first reaction to an Associated Press investigation into the initiative.

Vice Minister of Culture Fernando Rojas described the U.S. Agency for International Development program as “treachery” that drew in rappers Los Aldeanos and other Cuban musicians.

The hip-hop operation was conceived by one of USAID’s largest contractors, Creative Associates International, using a team of Serbian music promoters. The Washington-based contractor also led other efforts aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government, including a secret Cuban Twitter text-messaging service and an operation that sent in young, inexperienced Latin American “tourists” to recruit a new generation of activists.

The collection of USAID missions, which were all undertaken over the same period of 2009-2012 and cost millions, failed.

Rojas said Aldo Rodriguez, lead singer of Los Aldeanos, had received backing from the Hermanos Saiz Association, a youth culture group with close government ties, and “I don’t think he’s lost that support.”

“He, like all victims, needs to think,” about the sources of his backing, Rojas told reporters on Friday when asked about the USAID story. “There’s treachery in the way these organizations operate.”

The U.S. plan called for contractors to recruit dozens of Cuban musicians for projects disguised as cultural initiatives but really aimed at stoking a movement of fans to challenge the government. They filmed TV shows and set up a social network on the island to connect some 200 musicians and artists who would be encouraged to start a social movement. Artists were flown to Europe ostensibly for concerts and video workshops, but the real aim was to groom them as activists.

Rodriguez, who now lives in Tampa, Florida, told The Associated Press late Thursday that the effort had never influenced his lyrics or actions.

“Probably what they wanted was to help the music movement because Cuba is really a country that doesn’t have anything,” he said.

“Neither the American government, nor the Serbs, nor the Cuban government, not anyone, can control my thoughts and my heart,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t belong to the right or the left.”

Rodriguez’s musical partner, Bian Rodriguez, who also now lives in Florida, said in statement on his Facebook page: “We knew little about the real aim of those people. I think it’s important to emphasize that because I haven’t needed any subsidy to say what I think and I don’t criticize anyone who does because they must have their reasons. This (Cuba) is a country where everything one does is repressed.”

This should not come as a surprise to anyone that’s conscious of what’s happening to the black community. They have been doing this in the United States of America for more than two decades…which is why most of the rappers today are gimmicks and their music says nothing of substance — the complete opposite of how hip-hop started. Wake up black people!!!

Source: Desmond Butler. “US Co-Opted Cuba’s Hip-Hop Scene To Spark Change.” Associated Press. December 11, 2014. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ce2a878ea7a941fb93fe718ee6d46e9e/us-co-opted-cubas-hip-hop-scene-spark-change.  Andrea Rodriguez and Laura Wides-Munoz. “Cuba: Rappers Targeted by USAid Programs ‘Victims.'” Associated Press. December 12, 2014. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_SECRET_CUBAN_HIP_HOP_PLOT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT.

watch this insightful interview with Jim Douglass on the trial surrounding the U.S. gov’t’s role in the assassination of Dr. MLK: “When we have a terrorist threat out there, don’t think Saddam Hussein. Don’t think North Korea. Don’t think Algeria. Think CIA – number one and then go down from there. Certainly there are other terrorist threats besides the government of the United States, but the primary terrorist group in the world today is the same government that assassinated Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and John and Robert Kennedy.”

“The notions taught by patriarchy and white supremacy do not only effect our day-to-day encounters in reality; they shape our imaginations and our expectations, our intangible realities.” — Olivia Cole

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/olivia-cole/catching-fire-beetee-race_b_4334585.html.

correction! “nigger” found more than 349 times in emails by WMA and CAA executives!!!

This week, I found out that on March 2, 2012, Leonard Rowe filed a Motion to Vacate Judgment to reopen his case against William Morris and other talent agencies!!!!!!!!! He states:

Two years after oral argument, and after extensive discovery and pre-trial motion practice, this Honorable Court granted summary judgment to the defendants. The Court’s Order failed to include any mention of the derogatory utilization of the term “niggers” (which was found in the defendants William Morris Agency and CAA’s e-mail records some 349 times), “coons” and other blatant evidence of racial discrimination by defendants that has been and continues to be directed toward plaintiff and others similarly situated.

During the summary judgment phase of his case, the Court was unable to weigh this incriminating evidence because of the “improper actions and misconduct by certain involved attorneys” conspired to keep this evidence away the Court. I feel the timing of this news couldn’t be any more perfect!!!!! I raised concerns of judicial bias, prejudice and impropriety in September 2011.  Read the 15 page complaint for evidence of judicial corruption and institutional racism within America’s judicial system.

On 4/20, I filed a complaint with the Chief District Judge Loretta A. Preska under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980 to investigate the widespread corruption and racism permeating throughout America’s judicial system, including the Southern District of New York and the Second Circuit.