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T.I.’s”Beauty & Power”,”V.I.P.” & “Mogul” Books Are Must Reads This Fall

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This fall brings us great reads from first time author, rap extraordinaire Tip.’T.I.” Harris,  Terrance Dean and Scott Paulson  Bryant. Each one of their books tells stories that are  suspenseful, page turning reads in “Power & Beauty,  The V.I.P.’s” and “Mogul. Power & Beauty- Tip T.I. Harris Summary: Tip Harris, better known as Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum selling hip-hop artist and actor T.I., is at the top of his game. Now he displays yet another side of his remarkable talents with Power & Beauty, a love story of life on the streets. Set in the dangerous shadows of Atlanta, Georgia, Power & Beauty is a dark, gritty story of sex, violence, hustling, and redemption centered around Paul “Power” Clay and Tanya “Beauty” Long—two kids facing long odds and lethal temptations, yet whose miraculous, unbreakable bond ultimately becomes their salvation. A love story, a crime story, a survival story, Power & Beauty bristles with an electrifying authenticity born of Tip “T.I.” Harris’s hard life on the streets. This is exhilarating, brutally honest, page-turning urban African-American fiction at its very best. Review : The book is just good. It is fast read that is not the typical urban read, but a book that is clearly more on par with the Jackie Collin’s and Ricahrd Wright of the world. It is spiritual, yet grounded. It is heart wrenching, yet inspiring. The young travails of Power & beauty in the book are ones that are closely synonymous with the life discoveries of the two main characters. No fellas, there is no why mushy tales of romance here, but heart stopping deals, swindles, murders and life plans. Ladies, you will find the book races ahead a speed that will keep you gripped to the last page. The end is so shocking you will be talking about it for a long time after. Mogul- Terrance Dean Summary: After the sudden death of his father, a renowned jazz musician, Aaron “Big A.T.” Tremble clings to music as an escape. Making hip hop beats becomes his life. His love for music lands him at the estate of Larry “Pop” Singleton, a retired and respected Hip Hop music mogul who sees something special in Big A.T., and he also knows the truth about his sexuality. With Pop’s blessings and nurturing, Big A.T. is on the path to becoming the next great Hip Hop producer in New York.  With the help of Pop and “the family,” a network of secretly gay men in the Hip Hop world, Big A.T. finds success and starts his own music label. He’s signed and worked with some of the biggest Hip Hop artists in the country. One of them is Brooklyn native lyricist, “Tickman.” Together they are making sweet music together. Tickman and Big A.T.’s relationship goes beyond producer and rapper – they become secret lovers.  Nothing can stop Big A.T. All of the radio stations play his music. He has money, fame, and Jasmine, his girlfriend who doesn’t know about his secret love for men. However, at the pinnacle of his career, compromising photos of Big A.T. land on the desk of a national news program—and in the hands of his girlfriend. Big A.T., for the first time is at a crossroad in his career: come out publicly with his secret or watch his music empire crumble. Review : Mogul, breathes new life into the dreams of success and hip hop game. Terrance gives you a taste of the forbidden, expected and the unexpected. When the story opens up you are in the midst at the very pinnacle of “Big A.T”’s career. He can’t get much higher than what and where he is. The question arises when he must figure out what his truth is. Great read, that moves along at a quick pace. It harkened back to the Michael Baisden books of old. Watch the video below and see Terrance discuss the book. The VIPS- Scott Paulson Bryant Summary: On a steamy June day in New York City, mega-star rapper TNT gathers a group of four successful men together, childhood friends who called themselves “the VIPs,” signaling the big dreams they all once had. Leo Bradford is a gay publishing magnate who is learning to love again after a devastating tragedy. Barry Chambers is a playboy attorney with a working-class background who is starting to realize that the chip he’s carried on his shoulders all these years doesn’t go too well with the bespoke suits that have become his trademark. Joey Ramirez is a high-flying fashion designer who has managed to triumph over a life of abuse and neglect to become one of the most successful clothiers in the world. And Duke Maynard is a recently-retired NFL star facing the challenges of successfully transferring his competitive energies from his gridiron past to his entertainment world future. Having gone on to live their lives they are faced with a secret from a long time ago. These four men have a history and bond that could be torn apart by a night of passion one of them had long ago. The VIPs, who haven’t seen one another in years, are greeted at the Hotel Gansevoort by openly hostile TNT, who asks them the bombshell question: “Which one of you is my father?” Review : The story reminds you of a time when the “hot it books “came from Judith Krantz. The major themes of friendship, trust and betrayal are key throughout the novel. You will find yourself cheering and leering. I found myself recalling a scene from Scruples that is referenced early in the book that many 1980’s readers talked about for months when the book became a mini-series. It is a must read for commuters. Watch the commercial below for this page turner. Harrold Robbin’s  finally has company with these three men.

T.I.’s”Beauty & Power”,”V.I.P.” & “Mogul” Books Are Must Reads This Fall

Popular Black Scholar Attacks Obama: Inexperience And Lack of Character Defines This Presidency

Looks like Shelby “Swirlin” Steele has a major problem with Barack Obama . The popular black scholar has decided to “go in” on the President stating that he lacks character and experience: President Obama is destroying the country. Some say this destructiveness is intended; most say it is inadvertent, an outgrowth of inexperience, ideological wrong-headedness and an oddly undefined character. Indeed, on the matter of Mr. Obama’s character, today’s left now sounds like the right of three years ago. They have begun to see through the man and are surprised at how little is there. Yet there is something more than inexperience or lack of character that defines this presidency: Mr. Obama came of age in a bubble of post-’60s liberalism that conditioned him to be an adversary of American exceptionalism. In this liberalism America’s exceptional status in the world follows from a bargain with the devil—an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world. And therefore America’s greatness is as much the fruit of evil as of a devotion to freedom. Mr. Obama did not explicitly run on an anti-exceptionalism platform. Yet once he was elected it became clear that his idea of how and where to apply presidential power was shaped precisely by this brand of liberalism. There was his devotion to big government, his passion for redistribution, and his scolding and scapegoating of Wall Street—as if his mandate was somehow to overcome, or at least subdue, American capitalism itself. Anti-exceptionalism has clearly shaped his “leading from behind” profile abroad—an offer of self-effacement to offset the presumed American evil of swaggering cowboyism. Once in office his “hope and change” campaign slogan came to look like the “hope” of overcoming American exceptionalism and “change” away from it. As a president, Barack Obama has been a force for mediocrity. He has banked more on the hopeless interventions of government than on the exceptionalism of the people. His greatest weakness as a president is a limp confidence in his countrymen. He is afraid to ask difficult things of them. Like me, he is black, and it was the government that in part saved us from the ignorances of the people. So the concept of the exceptionalism—the genius for freedom—of the American people may still be a stretch for him. But in fact he was elected to make that stretch. It should be held against him that he has failed to do so. Discuss… Read the piece in its entirety at WSJ

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Popular Black Scholar Attacks Obama: Inexperience And Lack of Character Defines This Presidency

Hurricane Ilene, Earthquakes and Libya…..The Separation State of Humanity

Ever wonder what makes a Qaddafi?  Here’s a thought: It is exactly the same component in you and me that thinks I am better than person A and not as good as person B.  It is the deeply entrenched program and social training to be better than – and one up on – the next person, rather than simply to excel for its own sweet sake. Ever diss someone, or judge someone harshly? Ever diminish someone or have someone seek to diminish you?  Ever get seriously on your own case with “not good enough” about this or that? Underlying that behavior is the judgmental and separation program the culture has immersed you in since you were born.  It is a way of looking at the world that is NOT universal.  It is simply endemic in hierarchal societies – and unfortunately most of the earth’s human population lives in such societies. As I explain in detail in the Free Download here, the core of the mind training here is a sense of being separate from others – just like Mr. Qaddafi. What does this have to do with earthquakes and hurricanes?  Well, when you aren’t mentally and emotionally trained from birth in how to experience yourself as connected to the world and are instead trained in feeling separate from and either better or worse than others, you are automatically denied the experience of a startlingly different and healthier sense of reality.  This happens to include how you would view and relate to the natural world. We are not better or less than nature; we are in symbiotic connection with it.  And when you cannot “live” that truth, then what takes hold is the false human belief that nature does not react to the human species in a major way. Otherwise that false belief would be a thought your mind would never entertain.  In this other reality, there would be no Rick Perry’s or Sarah Palin’s denial of the human contribution to global warming (which has accelerated hurricanes) and even to earthquakes as we drain oil resources from the substrata, blow up the substrata by “fracking” for natural gas, dig deep wounds into the seabed, eliminate entire mountain ranges for mining purposes, and so forth.  Such denial would literally be unthinkable. Without judgmental and separation conditioning by the society, there would also be no wars, only collective thinking on how best to raise the quality of life for humanity without harming other species or each other. What a paradise, you say?  You bet…except that the gap to get there is immense and is the same that causes you to think person A is better or worse than person B – and causes Quaddifi to be Qaddafi , who is just a more extreme expression and example of that core separation mind training. How did that gap come about? The short version is that we innately very wise and sensitive human beings get diverted from our true selves by the nature of what we experience from childhood on. Few of us experience unconditional love, unconditional and open communications, and unfettered education in and permission for our feelings. Few of us are nurtured in a way that we retain the sense of connection with which we came in or in a manner that allows us to feel 100%  safe, fully seen and appreciated, and free to express ourselves, including our emotions. Instead, we deal with the shock of not getting this nurturing experience by developing the coping mechanisms I detailed in my earlier blogs and by developing a chattering,  judgmental mind infused in us by the society. We also develop strong negative emotions that look for outlets, such as venting on someone we judge against.  All this separates us from our real selves – and so we try to make up a “self.” Psychologists call this the creation of the “Idealized Self” – a picture of ourselves that we think will work in the world and which we form up roughly from the age of 3 up to teenage years. The deep and wrenching problem is that this false self – this “double” as they call it in  the East – is trained in competition between humans to be one up or one down – it is not trained in experiencing and creating connection. It is a purely reactive self-image that we want the world to salute – and beware if the world doesn’t. In fact, it somewhat does and at the same time most of us are busy jumping on other people’s cases and on our own and vice versa. Just think of how you behave in relationship when you think you’ve been slighted and you get a sense of how vulnerable you are when your self-image is challenged. This one-up, one-down stuff runs a huge amount of  human affairs. It accounts for much of our anxiety and all of our repression and societal rip-offs. The gangs on Wall St. who rigged the political and financial system at the expense of hundreds of millions of people around the world, love the top dog role all that money and power brings. They are completely separate from the consequences of their behavior –  basically disconnected in their mental realities. The bigger truth is that none of us get off lightly on the up-manship mentality. We clique up in HS with in and out groups. We huddle up ethnically and racially. We clique up politically and decide our team is better. We clique up over sports and as nation states – and God forbid a politician should suggest that the U.S. is not top dog, the absolute bestest and mostest and most innocent and most extraordinary do-gooding thing ever. As top dog we can justify bombing to death 2 or 3 million peasants in South Asia who don’t want us in their country, or destroying Iraq.  That disconnected mind set has no bounds.  The Nazis said the Germans were better than the Jews and, accordingly, had the right to mass murder them.  Many Jews and most Israelis say the Jews are better than the Palestinians and therefore the Jews have the right to steal Palestinian land by force of arms and brutally suppress any resistance. You get it. Just think of the groups or people you put over others – and then recognize that the very process of your doing so is and defines separation thinking. Out of that destructive way of framing the world, you get every form of poverty and oppression as the” winners” constitute themselves as separate from those below on the class and cash scale and manipulate the system to their advantage. Or maybe you just strive to be cooler than everyone else. This way of thinking has a profound effect on individual lives. It is at the root of disrupted lives, anger, depression, and dysfunctional behavior of every stripe. It creates social injustice. And it is the root  of the sense that your own life might not be working as well as you’d like.  Fact is it can’t work as well as you’d like unless you retrain yourself to live and express from your authentic self and not from your programmed, separated, Idealized Self. It is the work of Life Coaches like myself to train people to get their false selves (and their childhood training in creating disconnection) out of the way so they can experience the fullness and joy and true success of a connected life.  That leaves the only major question for any individual. When do I start? **** J ay Levin, the founder and former Editor-in Chief of the LA Weekly newspaper, has been a highly successful life and relationship coach and trainer for 12 years.  He recently made the core of his work available as classes in Life Rehab and Mastery and in Relationships. See  relationshipcounselingtoday.com Here is the original post: Hurricane Ilene, Earthquakes and Libya…..The Separation State of Humanity

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Hurricane Ilene, Earthquakes and Libya…..The Separation State of Humanity

Election results Singapore 2011

Tony Tan shakes the hands of supporters at a stadium in Singapore early on August 28, 2011. Tan, a veteran politician and banker, was declared the winner of Singapore#39;s presidential election on August 28 after a recount gave him a razor-thin margin that exposed a sharply split electorate. Singapore#39;s former Deputy Prime Minister, Tony Tan, has won the presidential election, to become the country#39;s seventh president. He#39;ll be sworn in on September 1st, at the start of a six-year ter

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Election results Singapore 2011

Xhesika Berberi picture

Xhesika Berberi from Shkodra was crowned as the new Miss Universe Albania 2011. New Beauty Queen is 24 year old and stands 1.75 m Country:Albania Hometown:Tirana Xhesika Berberi Crowned Miss Universe Albania 2011 Xhesika Berberi will represent Albania at the Miss Universe 2011 beauty pageant to be held on September 12 in São Paulo, Brazil. Courtesy photo of Petrit Metohu Photography. Xhesika Berberi has been just crowned Miss Albania Universe 2011. She will represent Albania in Miss Univers

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Xhesika Berberi picture

Steamy Lesbian Drama Circumstance Earns Iranian-American Director Death Threats

You think getting a graphic nude scene by the MPAA is tough? Try making a lesbian coming-of-age movie in Iran. Well, actually, you can’t make a lesbian coming-of-age movie there, because according to president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , there are no lesibans in Iran. Iranian-American director Maryam Keshavarz , who grew up dividing her time between Brooklyn and Shiraz, Iran, knows this is bullshit. That’s why she made Circumstance , her new movie that explores Tehran’s underground subculture of dancing, drinking, sex, drugs, and everything else forbidden by the Mullahs, and two 16-year-old girls, wealthy Atafeh and orphaned Shireen, who fall in love in its midst. “It [doesn’t] adhere to the rules of Iranian cinema, where women have to have their hair covered,” Keshavarz says about Circumstance . “We even have sex scenes and nudity in the film”. In Circumstance , our rebellious heroines strip to their underwear for a forbidden swim in the sea, but even more controversial is a nude fantasy sequence where the girls imagine what it would be like to finally get Sapphic and graphic from the safety of a Dubai hotel room. Women aren’t even allowed to take off their headscarves in front of unrelated males in Iran, let alone film lesbian love scenes, so Keshavarz went to Lebanon to shoot her movie. But homosexuality is illegal in Lebanon too, and in order to pass the government censorship board and get permission to shoot, Keshavarz submitted a script omitting the sexy bits. “We shot those scenes anyway. We just didn’t submit them,” she says. But as filming went on, rumors started flying around Beruit than Maryam & Co. were filming a porno. On the basis of the rumors, the police decided to visit the set on the last day of shooting, so-skin-cidentally the day they were filming the lesbian scene. Keshavarz told The Daily Beast about the experience: “It was incredibly tense. We had 10 days of film on the set,” and she feared it might be confiscated before she could get it out of the country to be developed. The officials had been told they were making an American romantic comedy, so the actors were forced to improvise, in English, a scene where they were talking about their boyfriends. “Fortunately, filmmaking is such a tedious process that they left after the second take,” she explains. The film’s frank exploration of lesbian sexuality has raised feathers even in the Iranian-American community, some of whom (“it’s usually Iranian men in their 50s and 60s,” the director says) have sent her death threats. For her part, Keshavarz is laughing it off. “Threats in email are funny, because they are always in poor English,” she says. Carry on, brave nude warrior!

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Steamy Lesbian Drama Circumstance Earns Iranian-American Director Death Threats

VMA Black Carpet: By The Numbers

Take a look at the nitty-gritty details of transforming a hotel lobby into an intergalactic fantasia. By Gil Kaufman Crew members assemble the 2011 VMA black carpet Photo: MTV News LOS ANGELES — It takes an army to build the massive set for the 2011 VMAs . And over the course of the last week, that tireless militia has been working around the clock to transform the lobby of the J.W. Marriott hotel in downtown Los Angeles into the intergalactic fantasia that will greet stars on Sunday night. The production has taken over just about every corner of the lobby, with lighting designers hanging a series of shimmering white curtains laced with more than 300 twinkly lights over a space that was previously a couch-filled lounging area. They’ve also laid down more than 12,000 square feet of black carpet throughout the lobby, covering the nearly 18,000 square feet of real estate the hotel has ceded to the production. Watch the black-carpet live stream to see the action as it unfolds! The first thing fans will see when they tune in to the VMA pre-show is the space-age “portal” celebs will be stepping through, a series of four undulating white shapes, the tallest of which is more than 16 feet high. That will eventually lead them to a 100 -foot long, glittering paparazzi plaza, where the night’s biggest names will face a sea of flashes. That space will be blazed by 1,700 silver-tipped incandescent bulbs that will light up the A-listers for their close-ups. VMA pre-show production designer Scott Storey promised that viewers at home would not see the same old “step-and-repeat” space they always get at the average awards show, and he wasn’t kidding. His vision of eight rib-cage-like towers that will “hug” the talent loom large, their wavy forms broken up by more than 40 pop-art-esque angular “pow” signs for this year’s awards show. The production crew also ensured that the whole thing would look fabulous by laying sheets of black plastic over more than 300 windows and doors on the front and back of the hotel. The 28th annual MTV Video Music Awards will air live Sunday, August 28, from the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles at 9 p.m. ET/PT, following the Selena Gomez-hosted pre-show at 8. See the list of nominees, revisit last year’s highlights and vote for Best New Artist by visiting VMA.MTV.com . Related Videos Live Video From The 2011 MTV Video Music Awards Red Carpet Related Photos 2011 Video Music Award Nominees

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VMA Black Carpet: By The Numbers

Hurricane Irene Forces NYC Concert Cancellations

Dave Matthews Band Caravan events, Afro-Punk Fest with Das Racist, final Summerstage show and many more succumb to approaching storm. By Terri Schwartz Hurricane Irene’s western edges begin hitting the North Carolina coast Photo: NOAA/National Hurricane Center New Yorkers: Trade your earplugs for some frozen dinners and a couple seasons of your favorite TV show on DVD, because chances are the concert you bought tickets to this weekend has been canceled. With Hurricane Irene tearing her way up the East Coast, many bands and venues that had shows planned in areas likely to be hit by the bad weather conditions are either rescheduling or canceling the gigs in anticipation of the storm. Forecasts are predicting the hurricane will affect states including South Carolina and Virginia and on all the way up to the eastern coast of Canada through Monday. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has declared a state of emergency, and the city’s transit system will be completely suspended beginning at noon on Saturday, which is having a direct impact on previously scheduled NYC concerts. A spokesperson for the Bowery Presents confirmed to MTV News that the Dave Matthews Band Caravan events at Governors Island on Saturday and Sunday have been postponed. New dates have not been announced, but ticketholders are being encouraged to attend the event on Friday (August 26) instead. Of course, it’s also unclear whether bands that were set to play alongside DMB at this weekend’s concerts will be around to perform at a later date. The Roots were supposed to perform Saturday, and Gogol Bordello were slated to perform Sunday . The Afro-Punk Fest was also a casualty of Governor Cuomo rescinding all event permits for the weekend. “The Afro-Punk festival has been barred from holding any public assembly in Commodore Barry Park this weekend. Afro-Punk staff have been meeting with officials and sponsors to try and avoid cancellation but have had to cancel this weekend’s festival due to safety concerns,” the festival planners said in a statement. “The event organizers are regrouping to plan the next steps and will keep the public updated.” Himanshu Suri of Das Racist, who was to perform at the festival, apologized to his fans over Twitter and said he might fly out to St. Louis early to avoid missing that gig as well. Fellow Afro-Punk performer Chaz Bundick of Toro Y Moi similarly apologized in a tweet . Fans planning to see ZZ Top perform in Westbury, New York, on Sunday are in luck, because the show has only been delayed until Monday, August 29, Pollstar is reporting. But fans that can’t make the new date will be refunded; the same goes for ticketholders who planned to attend Saturday’s now-canceled Bill Medley with Paul Revere & the Raiders concert. The last of the free Central Park Summerstage shows this season, set for Sunday, has been rescheduled. Jagged Edge, Avant and Melanie Fiona will perform on September 21 instead, according to Brooklyn Vegan . On Thursday, the Museum of Modern Art’s PS1 announced on Twitter that their Saturday night Warm Up outdoor music series would go on in spite of the forecast. But on Friday afternoon, they tweeted a follow-up, saying, “Sadly, we have to cancel.” At press time, many Broadway shows were set to go on, though Entertainment Weekly reported that all Saturday and Sunday performances of “The Lion King” and “Mary Poppins” have been canceled. Many events are being canceled and rescheduled outside of the New York area, as well. Journey’s concert at Jiffy Lube Live on Sunday has been postponed to September 4, MTV News confirmed with a Live Nation spokesperson. As a result of the date change, Foreigner will be unavailable to perform on the new date. (All tickets will be honored on the new date.) Unfortunately, fans planning to attend Saturday’s Silopanna Music Festival in Crownsville, Maryland, are out of luck, because the festival has been canceled and won’t be rescheduled, according to Pollstar . (Refunds are being issued at points of purchase.) Kenny Chesney’s Sunday concert at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, has been moved up to Friday (August 26), the country singer announced on his website . The Boston Herald is reporting that Sunday’s Rockstar Energy Drink UPROAR Festival show at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts, has been moved back two days to August 30. And the Essex Music Festival in Essex, Massachusetts, has been rescheduled to September 3, The Gloucester Times said.

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Hurricane Irene Forces NYC Concert Cancellations

Pitbull SHOCKED By LiLo Lawsuit — I Was Trying to Keep Her Relevant

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Filed under: Pitbull , Lindsay Lohan , Celebrity Justice Planet Pit Exclusive: Pitbull speaks on Lindsay Lohan Lawsuit from Planet Pit on Vimeo . Rapper Pitbull thinks Lindsay Lohan should be thanking him — not suing him — for including her name in his hit song, ” Give Me Everything ” … claiming he thought the shout-out would HELP her career. Pitbull went into serious mode during an interview… Broadcasting platform : Vimeo Source : TMZ Discovery Date : 25/08/2011 19:05 Number of articles : 3

Pitbull SHOCKED By LiLo Lawsuit — I Was Trying to Keep Her Relevant

WATCH: Selena Gomez Raps Nicki Minaj Song

http://www.youtube.com/v/6DkqjKvyspc

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Singer and actress Selena Gomez has been touring across the country this summer promoting her new album “When The Sun Goes Down,” but she’s been… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : PopEater Discovery Date : 25/08/2011 19:27 Number of articles : 2

WATCH: Selena Gomez Raps Nicki Minaj Song