The Greene County Democrat

Category: Newswire

  • Newswire : Land fever sweeps Southern Africa, pressing governments to act

     

    Aug. 27, 2018 (GIN) – The day of reckoning is arriving in Southern Africa for the hundreds of thousands of Blacks whose lands were taken forcibly by white settlers – a crime that goes unpunished despite promises for land reform year after year. Pressure is growing on governments to take action and return ancestral lands to their original owners. But government leaders have been cautiously backing away from some of their early militant calls for justice. ‘It’s true whites stole the land, but they also have Namibian blood’, said Namibian President Hage Geingob. “Whites are also Namibian,” he said diplomatically at a Heroes Day commemoration in northern Namibia. Geingob was the country’s first prime minister and was one of the drafters of the Namibian constitution which protected property rights of people who owned land prior to independence. At the time of independence, nearly all commercial land was owned by the white minority, which constituted less than 0.5 percent of the population, while 70 percent of the population lived on what is now classified as communal land. More than 17 million hectares of land are still in the hands of whites in that country. This week, President Geingob admitted that national efforts to restore lands to black farmers over the years had flopped. In response, he is planning a “national land conference” from Oct 1 to 5 to discuss ways to speed up “peaceful and sustainable solutions to the challenges of inequality, landlessness and the pains of genocide – whether voluntary or uncompensated.” Meanwhile, in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa pledged to speed up land reform in order to undo “a grave historical injustice” against the black majority during colonialism and the apartheid era. It was a reference to the 1913 Natives Land Act that reserved almost 93 percent of the land for the white minority and legalized the historical dispossession of the African population. At a gathering of more than 350 farmers this week on a game farm in Bela-Bela‚ Limpopo‚ to discuss land reform, they were caught by surprise by a tweet from President Donald Trump reading: “‘South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers’,” It infuriated many of the attendees for its misinformation. “I’m worried about the politicians and the politics in our country if they don’t get (land reform) right,” said Andre Smith, 49, who grows pecans and other crops on 100 acres in the Northern Cape. “We don’t love Donald Trump and his outspokenness.”

  • Newswire : Trump World finally crumbling

    By Hazel Trice Edney (TriceEdneyWire.com) – For the first time since his election, the world of President Donald Trump appears to be actually crumbling. In one day, Thursday, August 21, his former lawyer Michael Cohen confessed that he conspired “in coordination” with Trump to pay two women to keep quiet about their affairs with Trump. In the plea, entered at the Manhattan federal courthouse, said Trump directed him to break the law in order to influence the 2016 election. Cohen says he did so, “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” meaning Donald Trump. Cohen also pled guilty to violating eight laws pertaining to bank, tax evasion and campaign finance, including the payoffs of the women. Meanwhile, in a Northern Virginia federal courthouse, after a jury deliberated the fourth day, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty of eight of 18 charges against him. The eight convictions include filing five false tax returns; not disclosing a foreign bank account; and two instances of bank fraud in order to obtain a combined 4.4 million in loans from two banks. The jury was deadlocked on 10 other counts. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, prosecutors and defense lawyers will discuss the possibility of a retrial on those counts. The Manafort verdict was announced just before the Cohen plea deal. At Trice Edney deadline, the double news blasts, along with analysis, had only begun to permeate the airwaves and social media. The news stories appear to represent the undoing of an administration that has heretofore seemed immune to political damage regardless of how egregious the offense – including Trump’s constant racial insults and dog whistles to White supremacists. Two Trump confidants, Elliot Weisselberg, CFO of the Trump Organization and Foundation, and George Pecker, Publisher of the Enquirer Magazine have been granted immunity by prosecutors in exchange for their testimony in the cases against Trump in the Southern District of New York. So far, Trump’s responses to the announcements of the two felony convictions have leaned toward his reframe that the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has still not turned up any Russian collusion, the basis for the original investigation. But the investigation now continues as members of Congress watch closely. As mid-term elections draw closer, a Democratic majority in the House could spell certain impeachment for the President if there is sufficient evidence of criminal activity on his part. Trump said, “This is a witch hunt that ends in disgrace.”

  • Newswire :  Senator John McCain called Obama’s election ‘a triumph for the country’

    By Frederick H. Lowe

     

     McCain and Obama

     Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com (TriceEdneyWire.com) – In his 2008 concession speech to Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain declared that Obama’s election as president was ‘a triumph for the country.’ Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, along with predecessor President George W. Bush, will deliver the eulogies at McCain’s funeral. McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona and Vietnam War veteran, died Saturday night from brain cancer. He will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. McCain was 81. “Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it and offer him my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day. Though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise,” McCain said. McCain also noted how much the country has changed with Obama’s election. ”A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation of Booker T Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States,” he said. At the end of speech, McCain wished Obama well. “I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president. And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties, but to believe, always, in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.” McCain also made a great gesture when he took a microphone from a woman at a 2008 town hall meeting. The woman said she could not trust Obama because he was an Arab. To a chorus of boos, McCain corrected her, calling Obama a decent family man and citizen who he happens to disagree with on certain issues. He told the audience there was nothing frightening about Obama. The boos became cheers. And now Obama will eulogize his former colleague in the Senate, his former presidential rival, lauding John McCain as a man of commitment and courage, a steward of America’s highest ideals. McCain also served as a prisoner of war when his fighter jet was shot down over Hanoi during the Vietnam War. He was a prisoner for five years refusing to leave before fellow prisoners. He was tortured as a prisoner but became a strong opponent of torture when it was employed by U. S. military and intelligence forces during the Iraq war.

  • Newswire :  National prison strike sheds light on harsh inmate treatment

    By Barrington M. Salmon

     

     

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – In an extraordinary display of defiance, inmates from penal institutions in 17 states and Canada have gone on strike to protest treatment by prison guards and rejection of a system they condemn as brutal and abusive. Prison reform advocates say the 19-day strike is the biggest of its type in history. Among the protestors’ 10 demands are that they be treated like human beings, that the arbitrary use of force and punitive measures by guards be scaled back and that prison officials put in place measures that will give them a greater say in affairs that concern and affect them. The strike began on August 21 and is slated to end on Sept 9. The 19 days of peaceful protest was organized largely by prisoners themselves, said a spokesman for Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (JLS), steered by an abolitionist coalition that includes Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), the Fire Inside Collective, Millions for Prisoners and the Free Alabama Movement. JLS activists began preparing the action in April after prison officials in South Carolina put rival gangs in the same dormitory which ignited an outbreak of violence leaving seven inmates dead. Representatives of the largely Black population of striking prisoners said inmates are refusing to work in prison buildings, kitchens, laundries and on prison grounds. Palestinian inmates have expressed solidarity and about 300 prisoners in Nova Scotia, Canada also joined the strike. Nicole Porter, director of Advocacy for The Sentencing Project, called the strike unprecedented, saying that it’s a cry by inmates to be seen and heard. “We’ve had strikes and prison actions in the past, but the scale of this strike is new. We’ve seen incidents of in-prison activism and organized acts of resistance but we’re in new territory for this,” she said. “This strike is important to look at because it is a response to clashes in a South Carolina prison and severely inhumane conditions there and elsewhere. We need to recognize that people don’t lose humanity when they’re behind bars. Resistance is a part of US history. They carry history and the history of activism. It’s important for officials to listen to these activists and seriously consider some of their recommendations.” A JLS statement released before the strike, said, “Fundamentally, it’s a human rights issue… Prisoners understand they are being treated as animals. Prisons in America are a warzone. Every day prisoners are harmed due to conditions of confinement. For some of us, it’s as if we are already dead, so what do we have to lose?” Bill Fletcher, Jr., a veteran labor union organizer, said the strike highlights the problem of widespread abuses in the prison system that generally go unnoticed by the larger society, which he believes harbors a deep-seated bias against people behind bars. “I think this is really quite phenomenal,” he said of the strike action. “The problem is that it has gotten so little attention but the attention it has gotten is significant. The larger problem is that we are a society that believes in vengeance, not justice. People’s general position is, ‘Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.’” Fletcher adds, “A related issue is that the prisoners, because they are for the most part people of color, they are denied their human rights and humanity.” Fletcher, a talk show host, author and racial justice, labor and international activist, said there has been a slow erosion of prisoner rights since the 1970s and the emergence of the belief that rehabilitation is a waste of time and unfair to those who aren’t in prison. In an August 22 press conference, media representatives of the striking inmates said information about the scope of the strike would trickle in slowly. “We want to note that although there aren’t widespread reports of actions coming out of prisons, people need to understand that the tactics being used in this strike are not always visible,” said Jared Ware a freelance journalist who was asked to be part of team that coordinated with the press. “Prisoners are boycotting commissaries, they are engaging in hunger strikes which can take days for the state to acknowledge, and they will be engaging in sit-ins and work strikes which are not always reported to the outside. As we saw in 2016, Departments of Corrections are not reliable sources of information for these actions and will deny them and seek to repress those who are engaged in them.” Ware said, “We have spoken with family members who have suggested that cell phone lines may be jammed at multiple prisons in South Carolina. And New Mexico had a statewide lockdown yesterday. The departments of corrections in this country are working overtime to try and prevent strike action and to try and prevent word from getting out about actions that are taking place.” Although the United States represents one-fifth of the world’s population, 2.3 million people are incarcerated, the highest in the world. Estimates are that about 60 percent of that population is African-American or Latino. Those numbers could ratchet up with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, at the behest of President Donald Trump, relaunching the failed War on Drugs and giving state attorneys and law enforcement the green light to crack down on criminal suspects even for non-violent crimes, critics believe. The Prison-Industrial Complex is a sprawling entity that relies heavily on inmates’ labor to produce goods and services for an assortment of companies, including major businesses and corporations such as Whole Foods, Starbucks, McDonalds, Wal Mart, Victoria’s Secret and AT&T. While it is a more than $2 billion enterprise, many inmates literally work for pennies and others labor for free, said Dr. Kim Wilson. “Exploitation of prison labor is at the heart of this strike,” said Dr. Wilson, a prison abolitionist and co-host of the podcast, ‘Beyond Prisons.’ I don’t want people to get the idea that this is an at-will job. It isn’t a system where people have a choice to work. Some people are making zero and nearer to the release date, you are expected and required to work.” Courtney Stewart, a prison reform advocate released from prison in 1985 and chair of the National Reentry Network for Returning Citizens in Washington, DC, said the prisoners who went on strike had no choice. “The thing is that these people, the corporations who make up the Prison-Industrial Complex, have been getting away with murder for a long time,” Stewart said. “They’ve been able to sustain the Prison-Industrial Complex and they have ruined generations and generations of the Black community. It’s been so devastating and we still haven’t recovered.” “Using the school-to-prison pipeline and the War on Drugs, these people are criminalizing and have imprisoned Black men, women and children. It’s profit over people and power and money in this capitalist, white-privileged society we live in. They don’t see any value in the black family or Black people. They always throw pennies when it comes to fixing the African American community. We have to address this with force and radicalism. There has to be a radical revolution in how to address this.” Dr. Wilson agreed. “I’m a prison abolitionist. I see prisons as part and parcel of problem,” said Dr. Wilson, who has two of her sons serving life sentences at Vaughn Correctional Facility in Delaware. “I don’t know how they (prison guards) sleep at night. But those individual people are part of a larger system. I’m more concerned with the system as a whole.” “We want an end to the physical places we call prisons and conditions that make it possible in our society. But we can’t do that without addressing the underlying issues of racism, anti-blackness, capitalism, gender violence, ableism and other issues deeply implicated in the broader prison system. We must take seriously the things the prisoners are saying.”

  • Newswire: Kofi Anon, first African to lead U. N., fought for developing World causes

     Kofi Anon

    Aug. 20, 2018 (GIN) –Kofi Atta Annan, former Secretary General of the U.N., is being remembered today for his leadership over ten tumultuous years when the world faced a crisis of poverty, injustice and disease. Mr. Annan passed away this month at age 80. Secretary General Annan, a polished diplomat from Ghana and later the leader of the U.N., was considered a champion of developing world causes but encountered resistance from the U.S. “He had the bad luck to be secretary general when Washington was run by a band of ideologues,” Brian Urquhart, a former undersecretary general who is the dean of U.N. commentators, said in an interview with the Washington Post. Mr. Annan saw it as a top priority for the UN to focus constructively on the elimination of poverty in the developing world. He called on rich nations to provide the funding and poor nations to affect the necessary reforms to “make poverty history.” When the world’s top finance ministers voted to cancel the staggering debt of some developing countries, Annan called it “very encouraging,” adding “This will offer a chance to finally overcome the resource shortfalls that have kept so many millions of people mired in squalor.” A combination of self-assurance, self-control and unpretentiousness enabled him to make the most of opportunities to act as an honest broker. He was by nature a “diplomat’s diplomat”. But he also stuck to his guns even when powerful UN members urged retreat. A notable example was his intervention in Baghdad in 1998 to defuse a crisis over UN arms inspections in Iraq, going ahead with negotiations against strong pressure from Washington to stay away; and he spoke out against the US invasion of 2003, deploring the American failure “to solve this problem by collective decision.” Afterward, he called the invasion “illegal”, infuriating the White House. In his farewell address at the Truman Library, Annan unleashed his frustration with the U.S. “No nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others,” he said. World institutions could not accomplish much “when the US remains aloof.” Of the crises he oversaw, one in particular created deep distress. As undersecretary general for peacekeeping, he received a cable on Jan. 11, 1994, from the UN force commander in Rwanda asking for reinforcements to prevent an impending genocide in which 800,000 mostly Tutsis would be massacred. A later UN investigation found that Annan failed to act urgently on the request although the U.N. charter prohibits the U.N. from interfering in a nation’s internal affairs. “Guilt” over Rwanda has led Annan to now back military intervention to stop genocide.

  • Newswire:  President Truman integrated the armed forces 70 years ago

    By Frederick H. Lowe

    President Harry Truman

    President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order 70 years ago June 26, 1948, desegregating the United States armed forces, which provided more opportunities for Black women and Black men, and my father, Mitchell Lowe, was one of them. Executive Order No.9981 stated that “it is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.” My father served in the Army 21 years, retiring at the rank of Chief Warrant Officer. Black men have fought for this country since its founding. Crispus Attucks, a black man, was killed during the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, making him the first casualty of the American Revolution. Throughout the nation’s racist history, most blacks were assigned to segregated military units, where they were paid less than white soldiers. Black soldiers duties were mostly limited to cooking and cleaning. Some staff officers resisted Truman’s order, and the military did not become fully integrated until the Korean War (1950 to 1953) when the high number of casualties forced integration, according to the Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri. Truman’s order also established the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and opportunity in the Armed Services. Truman had been mulling integration of the armed services since 1947 when he appointed the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. In 1948, a White House memo indicated the president was ready to do it. The National Democratic Convention that year provided the opportunity when delegates approved a plank calling for desegregation of the armed forces. During a recent presentation and discussion at the Truman Library & Museum broadcast on CSPAN’s “Book TV,” Rawn James Jr., author of “Double V: How Wars, Protest and Harry Truman, Desegregated America’s Military,” said Truman also decided to integrate the armed forces after learning about Isaac Woodard, Jr., a 26-year-old U.S. Army World War 11 veteran who had been brutally beaten by white cops. Woodard, a sergeant, who had been honorably discharged, was riding a bus from Augusta, Georgia to Winnsboro, South Carolina, on February 26, 1946, to meet his wife. When the bus stopped, Woodard asked the bus driver if he had enough time to use the bathroom. The driver of the Greyhound Bus became angry and said no. He and Woodard, who was wearing his Army uniform, got into an argument. When the bus reached Batesburg, South Carolina, Sheriff Linwood Shull and other cops dragged Woodard off the bus and repeatedly jabbed him in both eyes with their police batons, blinding him. The beating was reported to Truman by NAACP leaders in a meeting at the White House on September 19, 1946. Truman was shocked and both opened a Justice Department investigation into the case and promised to create what would become the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, the first national civil rights commission. Another factor that may have influenced Truman’s decision to integrate the armed forces occurred during World War II. Nazis dropped fliers over camps in Europe where black troops were stationed, urging them to join the German army because of the racism and violence they faced in America. “There have never been lynchings of colored men in Germany. They have always been treated decently,” said the Nazi leaflet, dropped on African-American soldiers fighting across Europe.” We now know that more than 4,400 black men, women and children were lynched in 12 Southern States between 1877 and 1950. Another German leaflet said, “Uncle Sam’s colored soldiers are just cannon fodder!” Black men fought for Germany during World War II, but they were native born Germans.

  • Newswire :  US inmates stage nationwide prison labor strike over ‘Modern Slavery’

     By Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK

    Prisoners working to fix water pipe

    The first part of the prisons likely to be hit will be the kitchens, where stoves will remain unlit, ready-meals unheated and thousands of breakfasts uncooked. From there the impact will fan out. The laundry will be left unwashed, prison corridors un-mopped, and the lawns on the external grounds ring-fenced with barbed wire will go uncut. On Tuesday August 21, America’s vast army of incarcerated men and women – 2. 3 million of them they form by far the largest imprisoned population in the world – will brace itself for what has the potential to be the largest prison strike in US history. Nineteen days of peaceful protest are planned across the nation, organized largely by prisoners themselves. The strike is being spearheaded by incarcerated members of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a group of prisoners providing mutual help and legal training to other inmates. A few days ago they released an anonymous statement setting out their reasons for calling a protest that carries the risk of substantial penal retaliation. “Fundamentally, it’s a human rights issue,” the statement said. “Prisoners understand they are being treated as animals. Prisons in America are a warzone. Every day prisoners are harmed due to conditions of confinement. For some of us it’s as if we are already dead, so what do we have to lose?” Organizers have put together a list of 10 national demands. They include improved prison conditions, an end to life without parole sentences or “death by incarceration” as the authors call them, increased funding for rehabilitation services and an end to the disenfranchisement of some 6 million Americans with felony convictions who are barred from voting. One of the most passionately held demands is an immediate end to imposed labor in return for paltry wages, a widespread practice in US prisons that the strike organizers call a modern form of slavery. More than 800,000 prisoners are daily put to work, in some states compulsorily, in roles such as cleaning, cooking and lawn mowing. The remuneration can be as woeful in states such as Louisiana as 4 cents an hour. The idea that such lowly-paid work in a $2 billion industry is equivalent to slavery is leant weight by the 13th amendment of the US constitution. It banned slavery and involuntary servitude, with one vital exception: “as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”. Prisoners, in other words, have no constitutional rights and can be blatantly exploited. In addition to a refusal to work, inmates engaging with the strike plan to go on hunger strikes, hold sit-in protests and stage a boycott of commissaries, collect phone calls and other payment streams where private and state-owned companies make money out of them. The boycott was the brainchild of Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun of the Free Alabama Movement under the rubric Redistribute the Pain. He called on fellow prisoners to stop channeling either their own or their relatives’ money to what he called the “prison industrialized complex”. He urged participants to spend 25% of what they saved from the boycott on books such as Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration. Inmates who join the action know that they face potentially serious consequences. Participants face being placed individually into isolation cells, while past prison strikes have been met with lockdowns of entire institutions. Communications too are certain to be blocked, leading potentially to a blackout of news on the protest. According to prison reform activists engaged in planning the strike, retaliatory measures have already started. Karen Smith, who runs the Gainesville, Florida chapter of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee that is backing the strike, said that prison authorities have moved most of the local strike organizers into solitary confinement wings where they will be unable to communicate with others. “Other inmates have been warned that if they continue to contact advocacy groups they will be moved to the most brutal camps.” The strike comes two years after the last major nationwide prison strike in September 2016 that saw more than 20,000 inmates refuse to show up for work across 12 states. That strike was coordinated out of Holman prison in Alabama, a state notorious for its overcrowded and dilapidated penal institutions, by a group of inmates styling themselves the “Free Alabama Movement”. As inspiration for what promises to be a tough 20 days ahead, strike organizers are leaning on history. The nationwide action begins on Tuesday on the 47th anniversary of the death of the prominent Black Panther member, George Jackson, who was shot as he tried to escape in the prison yard of San Quentin in California. The strike is then scheduled to close on 9 September, the 47th anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion in upstate New York. In an echo of today’s protest, the 1971 Attica riot was also framed by inmates as a push for humane conditions and basic political rights. But after four days of negotiations it ended in a bloodbath when New York’s then governor, Nelson Rockefeller, sent in state police armed with shotguns and tear gas. Twenty-nine inmates and 10 of their hostages were killed. Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971, said that it was symbolically important that Attica was being invoked. “Attica drew a line in the sand – it was a recognition that people have a right to rebel, and will rebel, when they forced into unbelievably horrific conditions.”

  • Newswire : Civil Rights leaders call for full examination of Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh’s record before confirmation

    ( WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Six prominent African-American civil rights leaders sent a letter today to Senate leaders to express their concern that the Senate is not meeting its responsibility to fully and impartially evaluate the fitness of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The letter, addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, demands that Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing be delayed until his full record has been carefully examined. “Our federal courts derive their legitimacy from the confidence of the people,” the letter says. “Any process that undermines the legitimacy of our courts, weakens the court in the eyes of the American people.” The civil rights leaders also requested a meeting with Senate leadership to discuss a process “to restore the faith and trust of the communities we represent in the Senate and the legitimacy of the Supreme Court confirmation process.” Senator Grassley recently announced that Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings will begin on September 4, even though large portions of his record – including documents pertaining to his time in the White House counsel’s office during the George W. Bush Administration – cannot be provided by the National Archives before that date. The letter was co-authored by Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of LDF; Kristen Clarke, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; Marc Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban League; Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP; Reverend Al Sharpton, President and Founder of the National Action Network; and Melanie L. Campbell, President and CEO of the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation and Black Women’s Roundtable. The NAACP is urging its members to write to their Senators to oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court because of its views.

  • Newswire : Aretha Franklin the legendary singer called the ‘Queen of Soul’, will be buried August 31 in Detroit

    By Frederick H. Lowe

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Aretha Franklin, who died last week, will lie in repose August 28th and 29th at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. The public will be able to view her body in an open casket each of those days from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. A private funeral for family and friends will be held 10:00 a.m. on August 31 at Greater Grace Temple, a 4,000-member church in Detroit. The funerals for Rosa Parks and Levi Stubs of the singing group the “Four Tops” were held at Greater Grace. The undisputed “Queen of Soul,” whose recordings dominated the charts for 40 years, died August 16 at her home in Detroit from pancreatic cancer. Publicist Gwendolyn Quinn told The Associated Press that Franklin passed away Thursday at 9:50 a.m. “Franklin’s official cause of death was due to advanced pancreatic cancer of the neuroendocrine type,” said her oncologist, Dr. Philip Phillips of Karmanos Cancer Institute” in Detroit. She sang classics “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Respect,” “Think”, I Never Loved a Man The Way I Loved You”, “Do Right Woman” and “Soul Serenade.” She won 18 Grammy Awards and in 1987, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2009, Franklin sang at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration. Her death had been expected. She had canceled concerts and friends and relatives had visited her at home where she was undergoing hospice care. Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive form of cancer that develops in the tissues of the pancreas. Located in the abdomen behind the lower part of the stomach, the pancreas aids in digestion. Incidences of pancreatic cancer are higher among Blacks compared to Whites, but the cancer is misunderstood because of its high death rates, according to the book “Minorities and Cancer.” The Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine reported the incidence rate for pancreatic cancer among Blacks is 30 percent to 70 percent higher than other racial groups in America. Not only is the incidence rate of pancreatic cancer higher among African-Americans, they also have the poorest survival rates because their cancer is often diagnosed at more advanced stages. Cigarette smoking, growing older, diabetes and obesity increase the risk of pancreatic cancer. Some 37.1 percent of Black men and 56.6 percent of Black women are obese, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest public health philanthropy.

  • Newswire : ‘Skullduggery’ foils Zimbabwe inauguration of former Mugabe ally

    Mnangagwa supporters rally in streets

    Aug. 13, 2018 (GIN) – The hastily organized inauguration of Emmerson Mnangagwa as president of Zimbabwe has hit a brick wall. Invites to the heads of diplomatic mission, international organizations and consulates were pulled back after challenges to last month’s general election put a question mark around the slim victory of Mr. Mnangagwe over his rival Nelson Chamisa. Mr Mnangagwa allegedly beat Mr. Chamisa with 50.8% of the vote to Mr. Chamisa’s 44.3%. The ceremony was slated for Sunday, August 5, at the National Sports Stadium in Harare despite clashes between opposition protestors and soldiers that broke out shortly after polls closed.

    Some six people died in the melee, many others were beaten and a number sought refuge in neighboring Zambia. As the post-election violence increased, Mr. Mnangagwa called for “peace and unity” but this failed to unite the nation – at least half of whom had cast ballots for Chamisa’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). In early returns, the MDC was leading by about 50,000 votes over the ruling ZANU-PF. But that lead suddenly evaporated when returns from the fifth out of 10 provinces were announced. Mr. Mnangagwa, who ousted his predecessor, Robert Mugabe, in what was widely described as a “coup”, called the voting a “celebration of Zimbabwean democracy, a festival of unfettered freedom. With the eyes of the world on us we delivered a free, fair and credible election.” “It is now time to put the election period behind us and embrace the future,” Mnangagwa said during Heroes Day commemorations in Harare. “We should never be deterred by temporary setbacks or regrettable events which we encounter in our cause to build an open, free and democratic, prosperous Zimbabwe.” It is now up to the Constitutional Court over the next 14 days to rule on the challenges brought by the MDC. Meanwhile, according to reporters on the ground, hundreds of opposition activists are in hiding from an army-led crackdown. Over the weekend, soldiers were seen moving through suburbs of Harare, the capital, and satellite cities beating supporters of the MDC, firing weapons outside the homes of its MPs and sealing off the homes of leaders’ families. “There are people disappearing. We don’t know how many – maybe 30, maybe 50. They are clearly trying to scatter the leadership, to stop us organizing,” Nkululeko Sibanda, an MDC spokesman, said. As Mnangagwa struggles to unify sparring members of his own party and divisions in the armed forces, he may seem ineffectual but many remember his record as State Security Minister when in 1983 some 20,000 minority Ndebele people were murdered in “a moment of madness”, according to ousted president Mugabe.