Last week, Kanye West debuted his music video for “New Slaves” by projecting it across the fronts of buildings around the world. But while Paris, Berlin and Chicago all agreed to be in on the rapper’s latest act, Houston apparently had a problem with whatever West had planned for Friday night at the Rothko Chapel. Local reports confirm that authorities pulled up to that location – after West announced the gathering via Twitter hours before – and threatened to arrest all attendees for trespassing. The crowd soon dispersed once it became clear that no video would be shown. Kanye West – “New Slaves” (Music Video) West’s new album, “Yeezus,” drops on June 18. Will he dare mess with Texas in promotion of it? Stay tuned!
In a slave ship, there can be 3,7999 slaves. 1,897 are dead. How many slaves are alive? What would you do if your nine-year-old brought this homework home? Had a student teacher not intervened, that’s exactly what would have happened at one NY school, but strangely enough it already happened just last month in Georgia . Via NY1 reports : It was quite a homework assignment that a fourth grade teacher at P.S. 59 wanted to give her students last Thursday. It consisted of a few math problems, but Aziza Harding, the student teacher who was asked to photocopy the worksheet, couldn’t believe a couple of the questions. “I’m just like, ‘Wow, this is really inappropriate,’” she said. Question 1 on the sheet, entitled “Slavery Word Problems Homework”, was written as a matter-of-fact subtraction problem. It asked: “In a slave ship, there can be 3,799 slaves. One day, the slaves took over the ship. 1,897 are dead. How many slaves are alive?” The second question had multiple parts multiplication and addition. It said: “One slave got whipped five times a day. How many times did he get whipped in a month (31 days)? Another slave got whipped nine times a day. How many times did he get whipped in a month? How many times did the two slaves get whipped together in one month?” “It shouldn’t be a homework assignment, and I did not want to make copies of this,” Harding said. The teacher who had told Harding to copy the assignment was in a meeting, so Harding made the decision on her own to photocopy another worksheet instead. She left the teacher a note explaining that she wasn’t comfortable with the first assignment and hoped to talk. Then, Harding turned to Charlton McIlwain, one of her professors at NYU, where she is a graduate student. “My first thought was, I don’t believe it,” McIlwain said. McIlwain contacted NY1, and we eventually showed the worksheet to the principal of P.S. 59. She later wrote to us, saying, “I am appalled by this.” But what’s perhaps even more shocking: it turns out this particular worksheet has already gone home, with another fourth-grade class, in January, and the questions had been written by students in that class, as part of their instruction on slavery. “You’re ostensibly teaching or trying to teach history or call attention to a particular historical moment, yet there’s no explanation, there’s no education, there’s no teaching going on,” McIlwain said. “And so, for someone who is probably, at nine years of age, has maybe heard of slavery but probably doesn’t know what it is really like, their first, perhaps, and most lasting impression about this historical event comes in a very abstracted, nonchalant type of thing that they have no real sense of connection to.” The Department of Education released a statement, saying, “This is obviously unacceptable and we will take appropriate disciplinary action against these teachers. The Chancellor spoke to the principal, and she has already taken steps to ensure this does not happen again.” The teacher who created the assignment has been at P.S. 59 for seven years. The teacher who asked Harding to photocopy the worksheet for her students has been teaching in city schools for five years, but is new to P.S. 59. The principal said she’ll be meeting with families and all staff members will undergo related training. The whistleblowing student teacher said she hopes that P.S. 59 students will get help understanding why slavery is a much more serious issue than these simple math problems. “Instead of these kids being desensitized to this type of violence, that they have a general idea that, ‘Wow, this was a terrible thing that happened to a group of people for over 300 years,’” Harding said. After seeing NY1′s story, State Senator Simcha Felder, who is the chairman of the New York City Education Sub-Committee, emailed a statement that read, “While the city, state and unions are busy haggling over teacher evaluations, New York City’s students are being subjected to reprehensible and irresponsible educational materials. I am calling for the immediate removal of these two teachers.” Felder also commended the student teacher for coming forward. SMH… What were they thinking? This is a damned shame. Seriously though, what would you do if your kids brought this home?
A career of playing righteous bad-asses in Pulp Fiction , the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the Marvel superhero movies has made Samuel L. Jackson one of the highest grossing actors of all time. Which makes his decision to play Stephen, the calculating and merciless right-hand man of plantation owner Calvin Candie ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Jackson’s most daring acting choice yet. Fans of the actor who see Tarantino’s spaghetti southern, which opens Christmas day, in the hopes of seeing Jackson in a Jules Winnfield -style role are in for quite a surprise. The 64-year-old Jackson originally wanted the role of the film’s titular hero, but when he learned he was too old for the part, he took the role of one of Django’s main antagonists and set out to make him, as he says in the interview below, ” the most reprehensible negro in cinema history.” Although it’s hard to imagine, Jackson told Movieline that he was initially depicted as even more villainous in earlier cut of Django Unchained , but that Tarantino “sanitized” Stephen in the editing room. Jackson also talked about his desire to reprise Mace Windu in Disney’s reboot of the Star Wars franchise and his frustration with America’s refusal to confront its history with slavery. Movieline: Stephen is such a complex character. He manages to be a villain, a slave and a father figure to Calvin Candie. There are also parallels between Stephen’s relationship to Calvin and Django’s relationship to Dr. King Schultz. Was all of this in the script? Samuel Jackson: It’s always been in the script. When Quentin and I were talking about it, he was saying that they were mirrored relationships and by the time Django and Schultz got to Candyland they would have developed the relationship that Calvin and I have always had. Theirs is more mentor/mentee. And ours is more father/son. But it’s still the same kind of relationship. Your character turns out to be the power behind the throne at Candyland. Yeah, I’m the brains at the plantation. I know what’s going on and I’ve been around longer. And Calvin is not the brightest candle in the room. As I said earlier, I’m the Dick Cheney of Candyland. Given what this movie has to say about slavery and how reprehensible your character is, did you have to think twice about taking this part? Not at all. When I read the script, and realized I wasn’t Django and then who Stephen was, I was like, okay, we’ve seen Uncle Toms, we’ve seen slaves, we’ve seen Stepin Fetchit, but we never seen this guy. And the potential for him to be the most reprehensible negro in cinema history is there. I think you succeed there. It’s in the film, but like Quentin says, we’re also talking about things that you don’t see. There are scenes we shot that aren’t in the movie in which I do some things that are way more reprehensible than what you actually see on screen.” Such as? Well in that scene where Django’s hanging upside down, and I give that speech. There’s a whole other section of that speech that goes on where I torture him. ” I burn his nipples off with a hot poker. I do all kinds of shit to him in that scene that would have just made people go, ‘ Ahhhhh!” Just for fun? There’s another scene we shot where, when Django first gets to Candyland, he and Stephen have a physical altercation. I show him to his room, and I say something to him and he slaps me down. He actually puts his hands on me. I’m supposed to be old and weak, so I don’t do anything. He puts his foot in my chest and he says all this shit to me about how fucked up I am and kicks me out of the room. He kicks me in the ass and kicks me out of the room. And from that point on, I’m on his ass trying to figure out what’s up. So there’s that, and I do some other things to some other slaves that are in the house that you actually see me do on the screen. I say shit about them, I reprimand them and do shit to them. So, Stephen is a detestable character who could have been much more detestable. Quentin sanitized Stephen a bit. What’s interesting about this movie is that it’s very entertaining and, yet, I had quite a visceral reaction to the scenes of brutality involving slaves. Yeah, they’re horrific. The guy sitting next to me walked out. Oh did he? And didn’t come back? No, he didn’t come back. And I got the impression that Tarantino wants moviegoers to really feel the brutality of those scenes. It’s not an easy time. You know, every time people do a movie about slavery, you don’t see that kind of shit. You might see a person get whipped, or you might see somebody get dressed down or shackled or whatever. But, you know, human life was cheap to those people. If you did something wrong, an example was made to make sure that whoever saw [the punishment] knew this is what could happen to you. We’ll cut your foot off. We’ll cut your hand off. You know, they used to take pregnant women — take one of them, cut her belly open, drop the baby out and just stomp it to death in front of all the slaves. Good lord. Just to let them know: I own you. I can do whatever I want with you. Like Leo says, “I can smash your brains out if I feel like it.” As a poorly informed white guy, by the end of the movie, I certainly felt like I had a greater understanding of why there’s so much lingering anger over that period in American history. Yeah, because we’ve been avoiding really talking about it. Okay, so you fucked over the Indians, and you gave them their land back and tax-free casinos. You fucked over the Japanese. You interred them during World War II and then you turned around and you gave all of them some money. Well, after you fucked us over, we didn’t get the 40 acres and a mule. You look at us every day and go, “Fuck y’all.” When the subject of reparations is raised, everybody goes: “Well, I didn’t have slaves. Those were my ancestors. Get over it.” Well you didn’t ask those other motherfuckers to get over it. Why do we got to get over it? When I was in Liverpool doing Formula 51 , that port was one of the first places slave ships stopped on the way over here. And there are huge shipping buildings that used to be shipping corporations and all of them have these slave faces painted on their facades. And people there told me, “Well, you know, there was a lot of slave trade here and this [city] was built on the blood of slaves. So we have their faces on the buildings.” And then they had a big apology ceremony while I was there. They owned up to their responsibility and their part in the slave trade. America has never done any shit like that. Do you think it would help or is too little, too late at this point? Fuck no. We’re past all that shit. There’s also been quite a bit of discussion in the media over the number of times that the word “nigger” is uttered in the movie. There was no other term for who we were. They weren’t talking about African-Americans and Negros. That was the name. That was it. How do you feel about white people using the word, for example in a pop-culture context. I’m kind of over it. I grew up hearing it. I grew up in Tennessee during segregation, so it was something that was screamed out, of course. When people ask me, ‘What’s the first time you were called nigger?’ I say, probably some time in my house when I was like one or two years old . So, I can look at a person and tell what their intent is, and I deal with it that way. I deal with it in context. Your performance as Stephen is full of surprises beginning with the moment that you first appear onscreen. What is your favorite scene in the movie? My favorite scene is not in the movie. Seriously? What happens in it? My favorite scene is the one in the barn where I explain to Django [who’s been captured and suspended upside down] what the problem was between him and me: He put his hands on me, and nobody has ever touched me in my life. I explain that I’ve been on this plantation 70-odd years and I’ve seen all kinds of shit done to niggers: hanging, drowning — Some of that does remain in the movie. And after I run through this litany of all this horrific shit that gets done to slaves, I say, you know I ain’t never been touched, and your black ass shows up and slaps me down. I’m doing this because you put your hands on me. Can you see any reason to empathize with the character you play? He’s a product of his environment. His grandfather did that job. His father did that job. He’d never been in the fields. He was raised to be Calvin Candie’s right-hand-man and because he’s in that position, not only can he read and write, he writes the checks. He runs the plantation. He makes sure the cotton gets picked. He is the king of a 75-mile radius world, and he knows that if he steps foot outside that, he’s just another slave in the South. So why wouldn’t he want that? As far as he knows, that system has worked all his life. Plus the white people on the plantation take orders from him. What better world could he be in? You’ve been pretty vocal about your desire to reprise the role of Mace Windu in one of the new Star Wars movies that Disney is making. Has the studio talked to you at all? I’m campaigning. They haven’t approached me yet. I’ve been putting my feelers out there, and I’ve got all my people on Twitter talking about it. So hopefully they’ll hear it and whoever’s writing the story will, you know, write me in as an Obi-wan Kenobi hologram ghost, or maybe even I can fuckin’ show back up with one hand. He is a Jedi. Right, and Anakin lost his arm in Episode II . Yeah. I’m down with that. I’m totally down with it. And I think they are going to need characters that audiences are familiar with to get [the franchise] going in a direction where people will feel comfortable and familiar with what’s going on. They just can’t bring in a whole bunch of new Jedi — no way. Read More on Django Unchained: Samuel L. Jackson Says He Burned Off Jamie Foxx’s Nipples In Cut ‘Django Unchained’ Scene Quentin Tarantino Says Slavery Still Exists Via ‘Mass Incarcerations’ & The ‘War On Drugs’ Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Earlier this week, Funny or Die tried to answer the question I hoped would never get asked this Oscar season: Who had it worse, slaves or poor, single mothers driven into prostitution? In a clever four-minute video, Samuel L. Jackson (Team Slaves) and Anne Hathaway (Team PSMDIP) campaigned for their respective sides in a “sad-off.” It’s a brilliant bit of movie promotion, with the actors selling their sad, sad movies ( Les Misérables and Django Unchained , respectively) through comedy. “My movie is literally called ‘The Miserable,’” throws down Hathaway. “Women get beaten in my movie,” boasts Jackson. “Same thing happens in mine,” Hathaway counters. “Guy gets his head blown off.” “Same.” “There’s a man ripped apart by dogs in my movie.” When Hathaway stays quiet, Jackson cackles in triumph. The two Oscar nominees eventually get into the yuletide spirit by cheerfully agreeing, “Nothing says Christmas like slaves and whores.” That’s cute and all, but it also smartly points out the paradox of the holiday movie season, that magical time of the year when, between maxing out our credit cards and stuffing our faces like it’s the Mayan apocalypse, we dutifully assign ourselves to watch “serious movies” about “important issues.” There seem to be way more of those this year, from the slavery-themed Django , the plebe-supporting Les Miz , the torture-approving Zero Dark Thirty , the dementia-sympathizing Amour , the insanity-forgiving Silver Linings Playbook , the FEMA-condemning Beasts of the Southern Wild , and the disability-sex-championing The Sessions . Looking at this group of politically weighty films, Salon film critic Andrew O’Hehir stated last week that he’s looking forward to a “meaty” 2013 Oscars because of the “ideological throwdown” promised by the likely award nominees, especially after the win of last year’s lightweight The Artist . It’s of course great that so many special-interest groups will have their issues heard throughout Oscar season. But given the fractured, us-versus-them nature of America today, it’s hard not to feel pessimistic that the run-up to the Academy Awards will turn out to be one interminable lose-lose game of Who Suffered Most? There’s certainly precedent for this. Back in 2005, the Best Picture race rapidly narrowed down to Crash and Brokeback Mountain . In a particularly ugly turn, the media narrative twisted the Oscars into a contest between racism and homophobia, as if declaring racism to be the greater injustice eased the pain felt by bullied gay teens. When Brokeback lost, some commentators exacerbated the situation by blaming the outcome on the homophobia of Academy voters, who are still mostly old, white men . (For the record, they probably just have really bad taste.) That’s why the best part of Hathaway and Jackson’s video is its preemptive mockery of the tendency to hierarchize different kinds of oppression. In a bit that recalls the 2008 Democratic primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the sad-off briefly veers into black man vs. woman territory. “You try being a black man in the South in the 1800s. I bet you couldn’t handle being a black in the South right now ,” taunts Jackson. “When there’s a French whore in the White House, then we can talk,” Hathaway challenges. “You say that like there’s never been a French whore in the White House,” says Jackson in the best line of the video. Let’s hope that’s the last round of sad-off we have to play this holiday season, because justice and equality doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. Inkoo Kang is a film critic and investigative journalist in Boston. She has been published in Salon, Indiewire, Boxoffice, Yahoo! Movies, Pop Matters, Screen Junkies, and MuckRock. Her great dream in life is to direct a remake of All About Eve with an all-dog cast.” Follow Inkoo Kang on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
It’s interviews like this that make 1%er Michael Moore the most popular US director in Iran. In an interview recorded by CSPAN Michael Moore told an audience that the United States was founded on genocide and built on the backs … Continue reading → Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Gateway Pundit Discovery Date : 20/01/2012 21:10 Number of articles : 2
A week or so ago I posted about this Egyptian Shaykh. Now he is back in the news, again translated by Translating Jihad. The seventh century mind in action. “When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her” He gets into sex slaves Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Real Revo Discovery Date : 12/06/2011 15:52 Number of articles : 2
Leave it to Dylan Ratigan, one of the star personalities at MSNBC who seems to be constantly looking for a reason to be angry. On his July 12 show, Ratigan posed his view on how trade between China and the United States operates. According to Ratigan, importing products where labor costs are significantly lower is akin to slavery. He specifically named Foxconn, a company that manufactures iPhones and iPads for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ). (h/t @KenShepherd ) “Do you want to get raw?” Ratigan said. “Let’s say that the American people happily, logically apathetic are perfectly happy basically with a slave culture of illegals and outsourced slaves in China making iPhones at Foxconn and that for as much as we talk about the liberation of the slaves and we like to pat ourselves on the back for the Civil War – got a big statue of Abe Lincoln. All we’ve really done is alter the color of some our slaves and moved them to other countries. Is that too extreme on my part, Matt?” What Ratigan doesn’t realize or isn’t willing to concede is that the industrialization of China hasn’t just made it possible for Americans to have cheap products or American corporations to make more money, but it has rescued the nation from poverty and propelled to China to a global power and could be a model for other nations . And as for Ratigan’s Foxconn example, the Associated Press reported the technology company is acknowledging its labor issues . But he still referred to their employees as “a slave.” “I think if you ask the kids making iPhones for Americans at Foxconn in China at a nice profit margin for an American corporation, they might think they’re more like a slave ,” Ratigan said.
Galactically vile Christian cleric Pat Robertson told his CBN viewers today that Haitians are “cursed” because their ancestors “swore a pact with the devil” to liberate themselves from the French in 1804. “True story.” What else would he say? Robertson can’t let human suffering pass without finding a way to insinuate that God did it deliberately because he hates gay people, black people, Catholics, or whatever other poor dying sap he can find to cruelly mock and use to his own political and fundraising advantage
I don’t keep track of all these half naked vaginas who get overpaid to get half naked on the beach for some corporation that use their half naked bodies to sell underwear and bikinis, when they could really re-work their strategy and have any half naked bitch modeling their shit, it would have the same affect, instead of these cunts who get paid too much and in turn get egos that make them not suck your dick for fame, because they are already more famous than you. But I do know there are too many of these bitches too remember, but never too many to get off to, I figure keep on recruiting these immigrants, steal them from their homes, turn them into your slaves and dress them in your clothes, because we’ll keep jerking off to the shit… Here’s Emanuela de Paula posing… Pics via Fame
