“Work is, after all not just a means to sustenance, it is also a form of social control: It occupies our time, structures our lives and channels passions. When work disappears, social organization breaks down.” From, “Lockdown America”
“A grand game of chess is being played on a level that we can barely imagine, and we are the pawns. Pawns are only valuable under certain circumstances and are frequently sacrificed to gain an advantage. Those who have seriously studied history have probably discovered the real reason we go to war on a regularly scheduled basis.” -William Cooper
The City has invested in a widespread marketing campaign, not imploring people not to use drugs, period; but to advertise that people should do drugs “safely.”
Last week, I got on a train that was wallpapered with advertisements in English and Spanish, bearing the NYC logo, that told people: “Every 6 hours a New Yorker dies from an overdose. Carry naloxone. Save a life.” “Avoid Mixing drugs.” “Avoid using alone. If you do, have someone check on you.” “Using cocaine tonight?…Safety Tips: Use with others. Carry naloxone/narcan.”
These ads clearly don’t scream a no tolerance drug-use message, or even a don’t do drugs directive. The ads seem more like an advertisement for naloxone, and permissive illegal drug use.
Can you imagine being a young child reading these befuddling messages on your daily commute? I, like many other NYC born and raised children, enhanced my reading skills daily by reading aloud posted advertisements to my parents during commutes. Can you imagine what kind of messages these ads are implanting in young minds and psyches? SMH!
According to NYC’s website the marketing campaign has a $730,000 price tag. The website also states: “The campaign will run citywide on subways, bus shelters, billboards, LinkNYC kiosks, online in local businesses and the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.”
In the opening scene of season 2 of Marvel’s Luke Cage, the main character is donning an African American College Alliance hoodie. The hoodie has the prominent logo of the 100% Black-owned AACA Clothing company.
The Black superhero doesn’t keep the hoodie as his uniform for the rest of the season. He states: “I don’t think this Black College sponsorship thing is going to work…Logo is too big of a target.” MESSAGE! Being that some of the historically Black colleges and universities are going through financial struggles and political challenges, that statement seems like a coded message.
• More than 2.5 trillion images are shared or stored on the internet annually.
• By 2020, it is estimated that 6.1 billion people will have phones with cameras.
• In a single year, approximately 106 million new surveillance cameras are sold.
• Worldwide, more than 3 million ATMs have cameras that watch its users.
• There are billions of pictures of citizens unknowingly captured on face-recognition technology and stored on databases, both private and governmental.
• In 2016, 2.5 million drones were purchased by American citizens.
• More than 1,700 satellites monitor the Earth.
• Manhattan has approximately 20,000 officially run cameras connected to its CCTV network. Chicago has approximately 32,000.
• High numbers of surveillance cameras can also be found in U.S. cities that have low crime rates and no history of terrorist attacks.
• Approximately 150,000 British police officers are equipped with body cams. It is reported that some British teachers have also tested out the use of body cameras.
[SOURCE: National Geographic February 2018]
“Knowledge, general in nature and unorganized, is not power; it is only potential power- the material out of which real power may be developed. Any modern library contains an unorganized record of all the knowledge of value to which the present stage of civilization is heir, but this knowledge is not power because it is not organized…
Power grows out of organized knowledge, but, mind you, it ‘grows out of it’ through application and use!
A man may become a walking encyclopedia of knowledge without possessing any power of value. This knowledge becomes power only to the extent that it is organized, classified and put into action. Some of the best educated men the world has known has possessed much less general knowledge than some who have been known as fools, the difference between the two being that the former put what knowledge they possessed into use while the later made no such application. ” -Napoleon Hill
“The animals got together in the forest one day and decided to start a school. There was a rabbit, a bird, a squirrel, a fish and an eel, and they formed a Board of Education. The rabbit insisted that running be in the curriculum. The bird insisted that flying be in the curriculum. The fish insisted that swimming be in the curriculum, and the squirrel insisted that perpendicular tree climbing be in the curriculum. They put all these things together and wrote a curriculum guide. Then they insisted that all of the animals take all of the subjects.
Although the rabbit was getting an A in running, perpendicular tree climbing was a real problem for him; he kept falling over backwards. Pretty soon he got to be sort of brain damaged, and he couldn’t run anymore. He found that instead of making an A in running, he was making a C and, of course, he always made an F in perpendicular climbing.
The bird was really beautiful at flying, but when it came to burrowing in the ground, he couldn’t do so well. He kept breaking his beak and wings. Pretty soon he was making a C in flying as well as an F in burrowing, and he had a hell of a time with perpendicular tree climbing.
The moral of the story is that the person who was valedictorian of the class was a mentally retarded eel who did everything in a halfway fashion. But the educators were all happy because everybody was taking all of the subjects, and it was called broad based education.” -Leo Buscaglia
“Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine as long as it’s contained.” -President Snow (The Hunger Games)