Shemuses’s NewsCloud Journal

Fox News Channel anchor E.D. Hill apologized to viewers Tuesday for characterizing a set of Barack and Michelle Obama’s gestures as "terrorist fist jabs." The Emmy-award-winning journalist offered the mea culpa after the liberal media-watchdog group Media Matters launched an internet petition Tuesday morning urging viewers to let Fox know that the comment was beyond the pale.

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According to The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, Canada’s most expensive market is in "a buyer’s phase," but the cost of an average detached home is still $305,878 higher than the national average. The Canadian Real Estate Association lists the average price in May 2008 for a property in Canada as $318, 761, where houses in Vancouver are listed at an average of $624,639. According to the numbers from June 2008 released by REBGV, a typical detached residential property in Greater Vancouver sells for $765,654. That’s a change of seven per cent over one year and 89.5 per cent over five years. A typical apartment will cost $388,722, a change of 7.8 per cent over one year and 105.2% over five years.

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If we choose to view each of these problems and its race dynamics as separate issues, then we are guilty of ignoring the points of origin which connect them all together. According to Max Rameau, an organizer with the Center for Pan-African Development in Miami, Florida, the root problems of gentrification in the 2000s are the same as the root problems of segregation in the 1960s: people of colors’ lack of power and control over land, and white supremacy.

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The extent to which Obama’s white support has been directly related to his downplaying of race issues simply cannot be overstated, as evidenced by the kinds of things many of these supporters openly admit, possessing no sense of apparent irony or misgiving. So, consider the chant offered by his supporters at a recent rally-and frankly, a chant in which whites appeared to be joining with far greater enthusiasm than folks of color-to the effect that "Race Doesn’t Matter, Race Doesn’t Matter," a concept so utterly absurd, given the way in which race most certainly still matters to the opportunity structure in this country, that one has to almost wretch at the repeated offering of it.

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he Congressional Black Caucus has appealed to President Bush on behalf of the National Urban League’s Urban Youth Empowerment Program, which is set to be slashed from the budget of the Department of Labor next week. The funding, which enables the program to provide much-needed services to young people to reduce recidivism and to help them complete their high school education and to find jobs, will be terminated this week.

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Richmond, Ca - on July 15th the Richmond City Council has a chance to make history. On that day it could be the first city in the U.S. to decide to protect the health of its residents and stand up to the Chevron Oil Company and impose a cap on their plans for further expansion. To do that the Council will have to turn down Chevron Richmond’s proposed "Energy & Hydrogen Renewal" project to process thicker-dirtier crude oil. On the other hand, if the council approved it, it would expand some of Chevron’s refinery’s most polluting processes.

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The number of Americans who believe that the war in Iraq was a mistake has surpassed the number who felt the same way about Vietnam during that war. At the same time, a much quieter U.S. military build-up is underway on another continent. The ultimate objective of the two efforts is the same: securing Big Oil’s access to the regions’ oil. The impact in Africa will likely be the same as in Iraq: perpetual occupation, instability and growing anti-Americanism.

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The AP () reported today that the Justice Department is "considering" (and by "considering" they mean "we’re totally gonna do this") allowing the FBI to initiate terrorism investigations of Americans based on their "travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training" and of course, a person’s race or ethnicity. In addition, the FBI will have the authority to ask "open-ended questions of Muslim- or Arab-Americans, or investigate them if their jobs and backgrounds" match "suspect" trends in an effort to "root out terrorists before they strike."

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For the first time, Mexican immigration authorities have launched raids on safe houses where Cubans await transportation to the U.S. border. In the first such raid, reported widely throughout Mexico on July 2, 20 Cubans were arrested in Cancun. Once Cubans present themselves to U.S. officials on the border, they are automatically granted asylum in the United States. Mexicans are angered at the disparate U.S. laws that give Cubans permanent residency while Mexicans attempting to enter the United States are deported. Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon has also ordered Mexico’s Navy to increase patrols in the Yucatan Channel, the body of water that separates Cuba and Cancun.

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From shopping to driving to eating, Beijing residents are rearranging their lives to help save the environment just in time for the Olympics Games this August.

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