Multimedia House Productions: January 2009

Friday, January 30, 2009

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

R-Les for prez

GET THE NEW RYAN LESLIE ALBUM FEB. 10
IT IS TRULY R&B AT ITS FINEST

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Banned PETA Super Bowl AD

'Veggie Love': PETA's Banned Super Bowl Ad

Thursday, January 22, 2009

so this world is really messed up

Via CNN.COM

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Shivering in pain and calling for her mother, Shamsia's hands shake uncontrollably, her eyes swollen shut and her skin peeling from terrible acid burns.

The 19-year-old was heading to school along with her 16-year-old sister, Atifa, in Kandahar, Afghanistan. It was a warm November morning last year and their only anxiety was being late for class.

"We saw two men up ahead staring at us. One was standing off and the other one was on their motorcycle. I wanted to go but there was a black object in his hand and he took it out," Atifa says.

"He grabbed my arm and asked, 'Will you be going to school anymore?' He then threw acid on my sister and threw acid on me," Shamsia says. They weren't the only ones attacked that day. Several other teachers and students were targeted on their way to Meir Weis Mena School in Kandahar, the nation's third-largest city and one where the Taliban have long been influential.

Atifa was burned so badly that her red scarf melted onto her dark brown hair.

Parents were so frightened that many students were kept at home for weeks afterward.

It's not the first time girls in Afghanistan have been targeted for attending school. The Taliban have been responsible for dozens of attacks on girls' schools and female teachers, but even they condemned this attack.

Kandahar was the headquarters for the Taliban during its five-year rule of Afghanistan and was home to Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Omar.

Atifa was burned so badly that her red scarf melted onto her dark brown hair.

Parents were so frightened that many students were kept at home for weeks afterward.

It's not the first time girls in Afghanistan have been targeted for attending school. The Taliban have been responsible for dozens of attacks on girls' schools and female teachers, but even they condemned this attack.

Kandahar was the headquarters for the Taliban during its five-year rule of Afghanistan and was home to Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Omar.

During that time, girls were forbidden to attend school. If they tried to get an education, they risked beatings by the religious police, or worse. Parents and family members were threatened, and sometimes killed, for allowing their girls the chance to be educated.

Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the Afghan government has tried to extend access to education, with some success. About 6 million children attend schools throughout the country, 2 million of whom are girls, according to government figures. The case of Shamsia and Atifa gained national and international attention.

Monday, January 19, 2009

MY PRESIDENT IS BLACK RMX

Jay-Z My President is black Remix LIVE 1-18-09 from pleasedontstare on Vimeo.

MLK's Vision Fulfilled?

VIA CNN.COM

More than two-thirds of African-Americans believe Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision for race relations has been fulfilled, a CNN poll found -- a figure up sharply from a survey in early 2008.

The CNN-Opinion Research Corp. survey was released Monday, a federal holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader and a day before Barack Obama is to be sworn in as the first black U.S. president.

The poll found 69 percent of blacks said King's vision has been fulfilled in the more than 45 years since his 1963 "I have a dream" speech -- roughly double the 34 percent who agreed with that assessment in a similar poll taken last March.

But whites remain less optimistic, the survey found.

"Whites don't feel the same way -- a majority of them say that the country has not yet fulfilled King's vision," CNN polling director Keating Holland said. However, the number of whites saying the dream has been fulfilled has also gone up since March, from 35 percent to 46 percent.

In the 1963 speech, delivered to a civil rights rally on the Mall in Washington, King said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

"Has that dream been fulfilled? With the election of Barack Obama, two thirds of African-Americans believe it has," CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider said.

"Most blacks and whites went to bed on election night saying, 'I never thought I'd live to see the day.' That's what the nation is celebrating on this King holiday: We have lived to see the day," Schneider said.

What about the Voting Rights Act, one of the signature achievements of the civil rights movement, which will be reviewed by the Supreme Court later this year? Two-thirds of blacks questioned in the poll say the U.S. still needs the Voting Rights Act today, but white respondents are split down the middle over whether that law is still necessary.

In November, a majority of black respondents said that Obama's victory signaled a new era in race relations. The poll suggests that a majority today no longer feels that way, although most blacks predict some improvement on racial issues.

"In the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama's victory in November, African-Americans were cautiously optimistic about the future of race relations in the U.S., but some of that optimism has faded since that time," Holland added.

In November, a majority of blacks for the first time believed that the U.S. would eventually find a solution to its racial problems; now a majority of blacks believe that race relations will always be a problem in this country. Blacks do believe that the Obama presidency will be good for them -- 61 percent say that the quality of life for African-Americans will improve over the next four years. Optimism for a new era has also dropped among whites.

"We saw a burst of enthusiasm about race relations immediately after Obama's election. The initial excitement has cooled a bit. But most blacks and whites still foresee some improvement in race relations," Schneider said.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted January 12-15. Pollsters questioned 1,245 adult Americans, including 798 whites and 332 blacks, by telephone. The survey's sampling error is 3 percentage points for the overall sample and 4.5 percentage points for the breakdowns by race.