Duty to Warn

Neighborhoods are small communities. Communities have bonds. They also have rivalries. They also have gossip and intrigue, albeit on a petty scale. Through the efforts of Mayor Jean Quan and NextDoor.com, the intelligence community and the Oakland Police Department (OPD) are now privy to these tiny pieces of personal information and the larger patters they reveal. Under the auspices of community building and public safety, the public's participation is can now be freely enlisted in the creation of a database of that information.

Through the new partnership, the OPD and the CIA now know what Oakland residents had for breakfast, who their children have a playdate with, and if their dog wanders around the block. NextDoor.com is Oakland's social media surveillance experiment.

Time will tell what the results of that experiment will be. A metropolitan police department can easily fail at social media as the New York Police Department recently showed with their social media debacle with the #myNYPD twitter campaign.

May is International Masturbation Month

“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”

Beginning in 1995, the sex toy store Good Vibrations began a celebration of self-love as a protest against the firing of the Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders. After a speech at the 1994 UN World AIDS Day conference, Dr. Elders was asked about masturbation as a way to discourage youth from engaging in partnered sex to avoid the AIDS virus. She responded, “I think it is something that is part of human sexuality and a part of something that perhaps should be taught.” She was forced to resign from working for the government.

Acknowledgment of masturbation as a sexual practice is essential to having a healthy sex life, especially if you are your only partner. It’s safe, free, healthy and can be fulfilling and rewarding.

Georgia State Jim Crow Style Graduations

The systematic practice of discriminating against and segregating Black people, especially as practiced in the American South is called “Jim Crow”. This practice is still alive and well in Georgia. How do I know this you say? In 2009 the Montgomery County High School in GA continued to have two prom nights, as all the years before with the first prom night for “White Only” students and the second prom night for “Black Students”. The Black students, of course, weren’t allowed to attend the “White Only” prom (remind you this was in 2009) however the White students could and some did attend the “Black Prom” against their parents’ wishes. The white parents of Montgomery County High School have made it clear that they don’t want their white children “mixing” with black children in a “social environment”. One white mother stated “those niggers aren’t going to grind on my daughter”. Another said “We’re not having any mixed children in our family”. This was said at a “meeting” at one of the white parents’ home to discuss the situation with several students/parents.

I'm on a mission of love here y'all. I swear that I am. But every time I see a Facebook post crying to the heavens about the end of net neutrality, all I feel is seething rage. So many people so upset over something they know nothing about. What's worse is that I see it coming from progressives, even self-described radicals. I see these people talking about how this new government decision has ruined the open Internet, and how hard it will make it for innovators, with seemingly no awareness as to how they've been parroting the talking points Republicans have been using since before Reagan.

A petition to the President and the Attorney General has just been posted by several organizations, including one I work for, asking that the Department of Justice stop threatening New York Times reporter James Risen with prison if he refuses to reveal a confidential source.

This story, among other stunning features, I think, threatens to expose an unknown known of the highest magnitude -- by which I mean, not something lying outside Donald Rumsfeld's imagination, but something that everyone paying attention has known all about for years but which would explode the brains of most consumers of corporate media if they ever heard about it.

Here's a great summary of the matter at the Progressive.  The focus there and in the petition is on the threat to freedom of the press.  But read this offhand bit of the explanation carefully:

For those of you who don’t know it, aftermath means: result, consequences, outcome, upshot, repercussion, and the after effects of an event or action. In other words…what happens after a thing occurs.

The aftermath of electing a Black President in America should come as no surprise to anyone. At least not to those who haven’t been wearing blinders to the fact that racism is and has been alive and well in America regardless of the outward appearances to the outside world and even they aren’t fooled.

The rise in the number of different hate groups in America has risen so much that, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2012 the KKK chapters dropped from 221 to 152 in one year. Did you know that the Ohio-based Brotherhood of Klans was the second-largest Klan association in the country, with 38 chapters? And to think President Obama won Ohio electoral votes both times.