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Melissa Harris-Perry: Obama Administration Has Institutionalized ‘Perpetual War’ (VIDEO): via HuffPost http://huff.to/12hpzuB

Those needing last-minute tax deductions should avoid including this year’s breast augmentations and swimming pool installations or face the serious possibility of having the Internal Revenue Service scour your financial background with a fine tooth comb, according to Bankrate.com

Those items make the online financial information site’s latest list of craziest real-life tax-deductions, released annually as a warning to Americans about stunts that don’t pay off. This year’s installment includes:

• Hair transplant — Laura Cullen, a CPA in Fresno, Calif., admits she did a double-take when a new client tried to deduct his hair plugs.
  “The first year I did his personal tax return, being aware that you could itemize your medical expenses, he asked me to expense his hair transplant,” Cullen said. “I had a heck of a time explaining why I couldn’t.”
• Live-in boyfriend — Los Angeles forensic accountant Susan Carlisle was surprised to find that a man who had left the family home to live with his gay partner listed both his wife and the partner, along with his children, as dependents on his tax returns.
  It turned out the husband could claim the live-in boyfriend as a “qualified relative” since he shared the same residence, was a member of the husband’s household, earned less than the exemption amount and derived more than half of his total support from his new partner, Carlisle said.

  Read more of the article HERE

Whitney Houston died this afternoon … a rep for the singer told the Associated Press.

Houston won two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, 22 American Music Awards during her record-breaking career. Her album “Whitney” was the first female album to ever debut at #1 on the Billboard Charts. She has sold 200 albums world wide.

Houston holds an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from Grambling State University in Louisiana.

Houston had one child, Bobbi Kristina, with husband Bobby Brown. Houston and Brown were married from 1992-2007. 

Black AIDS organizations, as well as some Black Clergy, Black politicians and Black sports figures have been encouraging African Americans to take HIV tests and to take HIV/AIDS drugs. In making these recommendations it is clear that these individuals and groups have failed to research the debate over the validity of the HIV tests and whether HIV is really the cause of AIDS.

On the other hand, doctors, scientists and researchers for years have been challenging the HIV/AIDS hypothesis. Few in the Black community have heard their objections. The following is a brief summary of the controversy:

1. None of the manufacturers of the HIV tests guarantee the accuracy of their tests.In fact, they warn that their tests should not be used alone to determine if someone is HIV positive or negative. If the manufacturers of the HIV tests don’t have confidence in their own product then why should Black People?

2. There are about 70 different things that can trigger a false positive result on HIV tests. These include vaccines such as for flu, hepatitis B and others. YES, if you recently had a vaccine, it can cause you to test positive on an HIV test! Even pregnancy can trigger a false positive response on an HIV test.

3. Test results vary over time.That is, you can test positive one day and go back to the same hospital or clinic a year later and test negative!

4. Test results vary between hospitals. You can go to two different hospitals on the same day and take an HIV test and get two different test results!

5. Test results vary between countries. There is no international standard on how to even interpret the results on an HIV test. This means that you could test positive in America, but in Australia your same test result could be considered negative!

6. Test results vary depending on which test kit is used. This means that an ELISA test could indicate that you are positive, but a Western Blot test or PCR test could indicate that you are negative.

7. The HIV tests do not look for HIV in your body. The tests just look for chemical reactions which have never been proven to have anything to do with HIV. This is why doctors will say that you are HIV positive, but they will not state in writing that you have an active infection of HIV. There is a big difference between being HIV positive and actually having HIV!

8. The personal information you give at a testing facility will have a big impact on how they interpret the test results. That is, if you say that you are a homosexual or an intravenous drug user, this will drastically increase the chances that they will claim that you have HIV.

9. If you are told you are HIV positive this will have a devastating emotional impact on you and your family. Even worse, if you start taking drugs like AZT, DDI and protease inhibitors you will be poisoning yourself and most likely die a slow horrible death. AZT for example was originally a chemotherapy treatment, but in 1964 it was deemed too deadly and its use was discontinued. It destroys the bone marrow which is where a person’s blood cells are formed! Therefore, people who supposedly have an immune system problem are being given a drug which destroys their immune system!

10. No HIV virus has ever been isolated. The early claims of isolation have been proven false and turned out to be nothing more than cellular debris! Even the person who supposedly discovered HIV, French scientist and Nobel Prize winner, Luc Montagnier, has publicly admitted that he never obtained a purified sample of HIV. This means that all of the HIV tests are worthless because there is no purified sample of HIV which can be used to measure the accuracy of those tests. It also means that all of the HIV/AIDS drugs are worthless because they are based on a virus that nobody has ever isolated. This is why scores of prominent doctors and scientists have been denouncing the HIV/AIDS hypothesis as a hoax!

We in the African American Community must wake-up and start thinking for ourselves! We must take a serious look at the debate over HIV/AIDS and start asking serious questions. We can not afford to passively rely on the recommendations of others. Those who are in a leadership position in the Black Community need to do critical research before continuing to make recommendations which are taking our people down the wrong path.

Curtis Cost is the author of the new book: “Vaccines Are Dangerous – A Warning to the Global Community 2nd Edition” which discusses the HIV/AIDS debate. His book is available at: www.vaccinesaredangerous.com, Amazon.com, and other book outlets. Mr. Cost has been featured in Ebony Magazine, The New York Times, The Village Voice and Tony Brown’s Journal among others. Video clips of his lectures can be seen on YouTube.

PRESS CONTACT:
The Secrets Publishing
(347) 220-1149 or (407) 361-3122
curtiscost@gmail.com

When the news came Wednesday morning that beloved icon and creator of Soul TrainDon Cornelius had died, there was a collective gasp of disbelief. Though he was 75, there seemed to be an understanding that Cornelius was immortal.

For as long as we could remember, he was, as a friend put it, “the arbiter of cool.” Growing up in the small college town of Stillwater, Okla., in the 1980s, I was exposed to few examples of that intangible “cool.” Michael Jackson was one; Soul Train and, by extension, Don Cornelius was the other.

Soul Train was the “hippest trip in the galaxy” and my only connection to urban America. No matter what happened during the week, no matter how often my blackness was overlooked and misunderstood, I could always count on my Saturdays being filled with music and magic. Soul Train gave me a definition. Watching these beautiful brown people juke and jive once a week was a conduit to my own self-actualization.

On Wednesday Facebook was filled with similar stories of awakening and pride that Soul Train provided. On the first day of Black History Month, we were not only grieving and mourning the man who was such an indelible part of our personal black histories; we were also celebrating our childhoods. We were trumpeting the first time we had a visual representation of “black is beautiful” that everyone could understand. It was interesting to see how similar our experiences were.

As morning rolled into day and details of this tragedy were revealed, competing with our fond memories was a small but vocal group of people expressing disbelief. Cornelius’ untimely death they could handle. What they couldn’t grasp was the method.

As a mental-health advocate, over the years I’ve heard variations of the “black people don’t commit suicide” meme. Yesterday the chorus was deafening. People went so far as to create elaborate conspiracy theories rather than accept what could be a simple truth — that Cornelius had taken his own life.

As we wait for authorities to confirm what’s been reported about his death — that he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound — it’s easy to let our stages of grief include conspiracy theory. Who wants to believe that someone they have treasured and admired for most of their lives could do such a thing? That state of shock and disbelief is understandable, but it is dangerous to assume that “black people don’t commit suicide.”

According to a report published in the Journal of Black Psychology, “Suicide was the 16th-leading cause of death” among African Americans in 2003 and the “third-leading cause of death among African American people aged 15 to 19 years, fourth among those aged 20 to 29 years, and eighth among those aged 30 to 39.” Yet somehow, there is still this dangerous collective misunderstanding that “black people don’t commit suicide.”

Tell that to the family of 17-year-old Houston teenager Ashley Duncan. Ashley died on Monday, also of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. For weeks Ashley posted to several social media sites about her despair and depression, even going so far as tweeting about the gun she was planning to use to harm herself. Though hundreds messaged, retweeted and “liked” her various status updates, nobody made any real attempts to help her.

We can speak of the false familiarity created by social media, but a cry for help is a cry for help. I wonder how much of the “black people don’t kill themselves” meme contributed to the overwhelming apathy that followed her into death.

As for Cornelius, as details of his tragic passing are still unfolding – including that he may have suffered from dementia — I won’t attempt to speculate on his state of mind or mental-health history, but we would be remiss if we didn’t use this as an opportunity to have an open dialogue about the mental health of our community.

In June of last year, I wrote about the tragic suicide of my dear friend Siwe Monsanto. Siwe leaped to her death in Harlem at the age of 15. She had spent most of her young life attempting and ultimately failing to manage her depression. I founded the Siwe Project in her honor and to help destroy the “black people don’t” mythology.

The stigma attached to mental-health awareness is destructive. Those who need help feel unable to ask for it, and those married to the “black people don’t” concept fail to see the signs in those close to them. Black people do, and until we begin the conversation that addresses why black people do and how to prevent it, our news stories will be filled with more tragedies such as these.

It is time we began to change how we deal with mental illness in our community. The time for inaction and apathy has passed. Cornelius in life taught us so much about who we are as a people. He was a touchstone for our authentic, wonderful selves. Let us honor his life by learning from his death.

Bassey Ikpi is a Nigerian-born poet-writer and mental-health advocate. She is the founder of the Siwe Project, a nonprofit organization promoting mental-health awareness in the global African community. Follow the organization on Twitter.

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Maino is calling this mixtape “the album before the album,” and the effort on this project reflects that. Maino put together 22 new tracks, including some with guest verses by big names like Meek Mill, Ace Hood, Jim Jones, Wale, Lloyd Banks, and Prodigy. Check it out below.

Maino – I Am Who I Am – DJ Green Lantern, DJ Infamous.