A rep for Selena Gomez has come out and made it official: The singer has has never suffered a miscarriage. The latest issue of In Touch Weekly dares to claim that Gomez got knocked up by Justin Bieber in 2012, wanted to carry her baby to term and start a life with the artist… but lost the child after about two months. It went on to write that Gomez’s heartbreak over this development helped land her in rehab a couple years later. Even by supermarket tabloid standards, this was an especially inappropriate cover story . Selena Gomez Pregnancy, Miscarriage Claim In response to the ridiculous rumor, Gomez’s rep tells Us Weekly the allegation is “100 percent fictional.” You didn’t actually believe them at any point, did you? Gomez and Bieber, meanwhile, were last spotted together at Coachella in Indio, California. Some sort of falling out took place soon after that has once again thrown a wrench into this relationship, with some even claiming Bieber cheated on Gomez with one of the Jenner sisters. It remains unclear what transpired between Justin and Selena. The latter appears to be focusing on her professional life, however: Gomez recently dumped her parents as her manager and is now expected to sign with Katy Perry’s manager, Bradford Cobb. Let’s hope this stupidly insensitive cover story didn’t cause her to fall off any kind of emotional wagon. Selena Gomez Adidas NEO Campaign Pics 1. Selena Gomez Adidas Campaign Pic Selena Gomez smiles for the camera as part of this Adidas NEO campaign. The company has launched a summer 2014 collection in her honor.
Trouble follows Chris Brown wherever he goes. Chris Brown Says He Is Being Extorted By Alleged Assault Victim If Breezy isn’t fawking up in rehab , he’s being sued for putting them paws on people. He can’t seem to catch a break. According to TMZ: Chris Brown is the victim of EXTORTION … and his lawyer is about to blow the whistle on the alleged evildoer … so claims Brown’s famous lawyer. Malcolm Ausbon filed a lawsuit against Chris, claiming the rapper and 3 of his goons beat the crap out of him during a pick-up basketball game at 24-Hour Fitness. TMZ has obtained a letter Ausbon’s lawyer sent to Chris’ legal eagle, Mark Geragos, demanding $250,000 from Chris … OR ELSE. As for the “or else” … the lawyer says if Brown doesn’t pay, “Mr. Ausbon is placed in a position by the LAPD where he needs to decide whether he will press charges.” The lawyer continues, “He would rather be compensated.” THAT, Mark Geragos tells TMZ, is EXTORTION … cleverly worded extortion, but extortion nonetheless. Geragos says he’s going after Ausbon by filing a police report. And, by the way, a lawyer in Geragos’ office says he met with Ausbon’s attorney back in August and the guy admitted Brown never touched his client. Geragos’ lawyer says the other attorney said the guy who struck his client had dreadlocks and it was all captured on video. Unfortunately, Chris’ prior bad behavior has made him a target for people looking for a come up. Poor Thang.
Gay H8 is alive and well in Africa … Ugandan President Agrees To Sign Anti-Gay Bill Via NY Times reports: Gay rights in Africa suffered another setback when President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda told members of his party on Friday that he would sign a bill imposing harsh sentences for homosexual acts, including life imprisonment in some cases. The measure would criminalize “the promotion or recognition” of homosexual relations. After a first conviction, offenders face a 14-year prison sentence. Subsequent convictions of “aggravated homosexuality” could bring a penalty of life in prison. The announcement of the president’s intentions came during a conference of Mr. Museveni’s party, the National Resistance Movement, according to a government spokesman. “The NRM caucus has welcomed the development as a measure to protect Ugandans from social deviants,” said the spokesman, Ofwono Opondo, in a post on Twitter on Friday. According to Amnesty International, homosexuality is illegal in 38 of 54 African countries. Homosexual acts can be punished by death sentences in Mauritania, southern Somalia, Sudan and northern Nigeria, where justice is carried out according to a version of Shariah law. After President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria signed a law criminalizing homosexuality throughout the country last month, arrests of gay people have multiplied amid demands for a crackdown. Colonial-era Ugandan law already prohibits homosexual acts. An earlier version of the bill, first introduced in 2009 and then withdrawn, included the death penalty in some instances. An international outcry helped scuttle that version, but legislators pushed ahead with a revised one. The Ugandan Parliament passed the most recent version of the antigay legislation in December. Later that month, Mr. Museveni wrote a letter to Parliament saying that lawmakers had made procedural errors in passing the bill and that in-depth study was needed before it could be taken up again. Mr. Museveni said at the time that he would seek further expert opinions. First Nigeria and now this? Do you think African countries are wrong for banning homosexuality? Shouldn’t these countries be more worried about rebuilding infrastructure, warfare, poverty and education??
Derek Jeter will soon have a lot more time on his hands to sleep with really gorgeous women: The iconic Yankees shortstop has announced that 2014 will be his final season. Jeter has a lifetime batting average of .312 and has collected 3,316 career hits. He seemed poised to challenge Pete Rose’s record for most hits in a career until he broke his ankle in the 2012 American League Championship, missing nearly all of last season as a result. The shortstop also has five World Series rings on his resume, along with a record .351 batting average in the Fall Classic. He will be the second first ballot Hall of Famer to leave the game in as many seasons for the Yankees, following Mariano Rivera’s retirement last year. In a 15-paragraph message that started and ended by thanking his fans, Jeter broke this news via Facebook, writing: “The 2014 season will be my last year playing professional baseball.” Casey Close, Jeter’s long-time agent, then confirmed the development to multiple outlets.
Have you Heard the good news? Johnny Depp is engaged to Amber Heard! A source connected to the beautiful actress has confirmed the development to People, saying in a statement: “Of course they couldn’t be happier to be engaged and excited to share the rest of their lives together,” although only “good friends” have been told directly at the moment. Heard and Depp met on the set of 2011’s The Rum Diary went went public with their dalliance about a year later. Depp has two children with Vanessa Paradis , from whom he split in 2012 and who he never married, despite a 14-year relationship. “Amber has really taken well to the kids and really enjoys spending time with them,” People’s insider adds, saying of Depp’s daughter: “And she’s even taken Lily shopping on her own for some bonding time.” The engaged couple will both next be seen in the film London Fields. We send them our best wishes!
This just in: people really, really like One Direction. The band’s latest concert film, This Is Us , blew past the competition on Friday, taking in $8.9 on its first day of release. One Direction Movie Profits The mark places this documentary-type movie above the opening gross of Michael Jackson’s This Is It ($7.4 million), though it trails Justin Bieber : Never Say Never ($12.4 million). One Direction, of course, already dominates the music scene, having recently collected an MTV Video Music Award for Song of the Summer and owning the VEVO record for most video views in a 24-hour period. We’ll update the total gross tomorrow, but here’s a look at the top five money makes from the first day of this holiday weekend: One Direction: This Is Us: $8.9 million Lee Daniels’ The Butler: $3.6 million We’re the Millers: $3.1 million Planes: $1.7 million Elysium: $1.6 million
The third day of Electric Zoo has been canceled due to a pair of spectator deaths at the New York City music festival. A statement from loval government cites “serious health risks” and confirms that at least four people became “critically ill” and two died in the first two days of the event, likely as a result of “the drug MDMA (ecstasy, or molly).” The victims have been identified a 24-year old from Rochester and a 20-year old from Providence, the former of whom attended the festival with members of his Syracuse University fraternity. “The founders of Electric Zoo send our deepest condolences to the families of the two people who passed away this weekend,” reads a statement on promoter Made Event’s website. “Because there is nothing more important to us than our patrons, we have decided in consultation with the New York City Parks Department that there will be no show today.”
It doesn’t get much more in sync than this: Lance Bass is now engaged to Michael Turchin! The singer popped this life-altering question to his boyfriend of nearly two years just a few days ago, sources confirm to Us Weekly. He reportedly sealed the deal with a black diamond band after texting Turchin’s parents for permission, with the aspiring actor hinting at the development via an August 31 Tweet that read “Happiest guy in the world.” “They’re such a great couple, everyone is so happy for them,” an insiders tells the tabloid. “Their friends and family are thrilled.” Bass, of course, made headlines of a different sort on Sunday during the much-anticipated ‘N Sync reunion at the MTV Video Music Awards. We send this couple all our best wishes!
On the eve of beginning her three-month prison sentence for tax evasion, Lauryn Hill took to Tumblr to rant about racism, slavery, the IRS and more. Hill, who was sentenced in May for failing to pay taxes on around $1.8 million in earnings, appears to be pinning her fiscal woes on historical racism. “The concept of reverse racism is flawed, if not absolutely ridiculous,” Lauryn laments in what can only be described as one of the all-time celebrity rants. Martyring herself in dramatic terms, Hill summates that “the institution seeks to hide its own criminal history at the expense and wholeness of the abused.” You really need to read this for yourself after the jump … The concept of reverse racism is flawed, if not absolutely ridiculous. Most, if not all of the negative responses from people of color toward white people, are reactions to the hatred, violence, cruelty and brutality that they were shown by white people for centuries. Much of the foundation of the modern world was built on the forced free labor of black peoples. The African Slave Trade, the institution of slavery, colonialism, its derivative systems, and the multiple holocausts throughout history, where whites used race as the defining reason to justify their oppression, conquest, and brutal treatment of non-white peoples, are how race became such a factor to begin with. The initial claim by the oppressors, followed a moral imperative (so they said) that people outside of Occidental and European birth were in savage and cursed conditions, and that God justified the captivity of these people, and the rape and pillage of their lands. Ironically, these oppressors would try to discard this same God, who supposedly justified this brutality, in the name of Darwin, whose famous line ‘survival of the fittest’ was used to justify criminal behavior once the Bible could no longer be used as a hiding place for economic domination and evil intention. Spirituality and morality were replaced by capitalism, and with it a conscious shift of focus toward the exploitation of the vulnerable. In order to justify reverse racism one would have to first create an even playing field, undo the generations of torture, terror, and brutality, and then judge whether or not a non-white person is in fact a racist. This approach would require people to examine the need/addiction to feel superior to someone else for no justifiable reason, and the myriad policies: Spiritual, political and social, that it bore. True dominion is self evident and not the result of sabotaging another in order to achieve it. That would be an illegitimate as well as a fleeting position. The Universe, will eventually seek to right/balance itself. Of course there are white people who live transcendent lives, not exploiting ill-gotten privilege or perpetuating the sins of their ancestors who used violence and deceit as a means to gain advantage over others. Humanity in proper order is obligated to acknowledge the Truth, whoever it comes from, be they Black, White or other. Righteous indignation is simply a response to long-standing evil. Much of the world is still reeling from the abuses of Imperialist selfishness, misunderstanding, ignorance and greed. Black people remain in many ways a shattered community, disenfranchised, forcefully removed from context and still caged in, denied from making truly independent choices and experiencing existential freedom. Their natural homes, just like their natural selves, raped and pillaged of the resources and gifts God has given to them. Interpreted through someone else’s slanted lens and filter, they remain in many ways, misrepresented. Taxation without proper representation, might I remind you, was the very platform of protest that began the Revolutionary War, which gained this country its independence from England. Anger is not only the natural response to the abuse of power, but is also appropriate when there is no real acknowledgment of these abuses, or deep, meaningful and profound change. If we took all of what we deem horrible regarding the criminal abuses that black people have committed over this country’s history, and add it all up, it still does not compare to the hundreds of years of terrorism, violent domination, theft, rape, abuse, captivity, and beyond that black people have suffered under the ideologies and systems of white supremacy, racism, and slave based paradigms. I say this only to say that abuse unresolved begets or creates abuse. How then does the chief offender become the judge? Might does not necessarily mean right. Right is right. People forcibly reduced to sub-human existences, so that they behave in sub-human ways, helps a system to justify itself or feel less guilty about its blood saturated foundation and gross crimes against humanity. People, like plants, grow where the light is. When you enclose a plant and limit its light source, it will bend itself toward the light, for the light is necessary for its survival. This same thing happens to people locked in communities where little light and little opportunity is allowed them, survival then forces them to twist and/or bend toward the only way of escape. There is good. And I both acknowledge and encourage the good. Instead of throwing out the Baby with the bath water, we do well to expose the intentionally poisoned water the Baby has been forced to soak in since its origin in these lands. America’s particular brand of hypocrisy is gross (double entendre). I shuddered during sentencing when I kept hearing the term ‘make the IRS whole’… make the IRS whole, knowing that I got into these very circumstances having to deal with the very energies of inequity and resistance that created and perpetuated these savage inequalities. The entire time, I thought, who has made black people whole?! Who has made recompense for stealing, imposing, lying, murdering, criminalizing the traumatized, taking them against their wills, destroying their homes, dividing their communities, ‘trying’ to steal their destinies, their time, stagnating their development, I could go on and on. Has America, or any of the nations of the world guilty of these atrocities, ever made black people or Africa whole or do they continue to sit on them, control them, manipulate them, cage them, rob them, brutalize them, subject them to rules that don’t apply to all? Use language, veiled coercion, and psychological torment like invisible fences to keep them locked into a pattern of limitation and therefore control by others. You have to remain focused to cease from rage. The prosecutor, who was a woman, made a statement during sentencing about me not doing any charity work for a number of years during my ‘exile.’ A) Charity work is not a requirement, but something done because someone wants to. I was clearly doing charitable works way before other people were even thinking about it. And B) Even the judge had to comment that she, meaning I, was both having and raising children during this period. As if that was not challenging enough to do. She sounded like the echo of the grotesque slave master, who expected women to give birth while in the field, scoop the Baby up, and then continue to work. Disgusting. When you are beaten and penalized for being independent, or truly self reliant, then you develop a dysfunctional relationship with self-reliance, and a fear of true independence. When you are beaten or threatened with death for trying to read a book, then you develop a dysfunctional relationship with education. When families are broken up by force and threat of violence, then the family structure becomes dysfunctional. When men who would naturally defend their women and families are threatened with castration and death, then this natural response also becomes dysfunctional. When looking at the oppressor is punishable by violence, then examination of him and his system becomes a difficult and taboo thing to do, despite every bone in your body demanding it. When questioning or opposing oppression is punishable by death, imprisonment, or economic assassination, then opposing systemic wrong in any or all of its meta manifestations is a terrifying concept. Anyone forced to live so incredibly diametrically opposed to that which is natural to themselves, will end up in crisis if they don’t successfully find a way to improve or transcend these circumstances! All of which require healing. It is only by the Grace of God and the resilience of the people that things haven’t been worse. Much of my music, if not all of it, is about Love, a therapeutic resolve created in response to the lack of messages encouraging people like me toward free moral agency. Helping to ameliorate this condition has never been addressed through the political arena alone. It is a sacrificial work that doesn’t simply happen between the hours of 9 to 5 or Monday through Friday, but when inspiration leads us to avail ourselves for the Truth that needs to be said. Unlike the system too often contrarily demonstrates, we believe that people can be and should be helped, and that trauma should not be criminalized but acknowledged, healed and dealt with. This takes awareness, sensitivity and a level of freedom in my opinion the system lacks. And if we don’t know or understand how to do it, then we humbly refer to a higher authority. We have no desire to create humanoids, turn people into machines, or dumb them down so that they remain dependent longer than necessary to an antiquated system in denial of its many inadequacies and need to evolve. Instead we seek to educate and shed light on the snares, traps, and enticements that people set up in the name of business that are intended only to catch the sleeping and/or uninformed. Why would a system, ‘well intentioned’, wait until breakdown or incarceration to consider rehabilitation, after generations of institutionally inflicted trauma and abuse on a people? To me it is obvious that the accumulation of generational trauma and abuse have created the very behaviors the system tries to punish, by providing no sufficient outlets for the victims of institutional terror. Clearly, the institution seeks to hide its own criminal history at the expense and wholeness of the abused, who ‘acting out’ from years of abuse and mistreatment, reflect the very aggression that they were exposed to .
