MINE: Contested ownership of Canine

MINE examines how we treat animals as an extension of how we view and treat each other.

Place: New Orleans post Katrina: uninhabited by man and beast

Subject: the new owners of the animals rescued from the hurricane
disaster and the owners who come back to claim "their own".

Director/producer: Animal Defence League

Trailer: http://www.minethemovie.com/trailer

An enjoyable, compelling view of humans and their animals. It highlights the best, the most loving aspect of our human nature.


Hailed by the New York Times as “Smart, sincere and affecting”.

Irresistible!

Released On DVD

Not Knocking on Heaven’s Door:* Black Atheists, Urban America

By Sikivu Hutchinson

Late Saturday afternoon, like clockwork, the street corner preachers on Crenshaw and King Boulevard in South Los Angeles take to the “stage.” Decked out in flowing robes and dreadlocks, they fulminate into their mikes about the universe, God’s will and “unnatural” homosexuals to a motley audience waiting for the next express bus. Members of the Black Israelites, they are part of a long tradition of performative religiosity in urban African American communities. This particular corner of black America is a hotbed of social commerce. Kids who’ve just gotten out of school mingle jubilantly as pedestrians flow past fast food places, mom and pop retailers, street vendors and Jehovah’s Witness’ hawking Watchtower magazines. The Israelites have become a fixture of this street corner’s otherwise shifting tableaux. Exclusively male and virulently sexist and homophobic, they are tolerated in some African American communities in part because of the lingering visceral and misguided appeal of Black nationalism.

While the Israelites’ millennialist “racial uplift” ethos ostensibly fits right in to the bustle of this prominent South L.A. street, other belief systems are not as easily assimilated. Since 2006, the L.A.-based street philosopher Jeffrey “P Funk” Mitchell has been documenting his conversations with everyday folk on questions of atheism and faith. Using the handle “Atheist Walking,” Mitchell also conducts free-ranging inquiries into Christianity’s contradictions with a rolling video camera and a satirically raised eyebrow. Adopting the role of the bemused urban flaneur, ala the commentator- pedestrian immortalized by French poet Charles Baudelaire, he delves into “atheist spirituality,” biblical literalism and the paradoxes of faith. Mitchell is a member of the L.A.-based Black Skeptics, a group that was formed earlier this year to provide an outlet and platform for secular humanist African Americans. The Skeptics are part of a small but growing segment of African Americans who are searching for humanist alternatives to organized religion. In May, the Washington DC Center for Inquiry’s first annual African Americans for Humanism conference drew over fifty participants. Chat groups and websites like the Black Atheists of America have sprung up to accommodate the longing for community amongst non-theist African Americans who feel marginalized in a sea of black hyper-religiosity. Organizations such as the Institute for Humanist Studies cultivate African American secularist scholarship and advocacy.

With over 85% of African Americans professing religious belief, black religiosity is a formidable influence. Racial segregation, the historical role of the Black Church, and African American social conformity reinforce Christianity’s powerful hold on black communities. Indeed, I was recently told that I’d been deemed an unsuitable culmination speaker for a bourgie philanthropic organization’s young women mentees because of my decidedly unladylike public atheism (Perhaps the Israelite’s Old Testament shout-out to silent prostrate women would be more acceptable). Proper role models for impressionable black youth are, at the very least, skillful church lady pretenders with ornate hats in tow. Secular organizations that seek to build humanist community with a predominantly African American base and social justice world view are challenged by the association of charitable giving, philanthropy, poverty work and education with faith-based communities. For many, successfully emulating the strong social and cultural networks that have sustained church congregations is an elusive goal.

And then, there is the deep and abiding desire for belief in the supernatural, the ineffable faith-passion that propels some through the trauma of racial indignities and personal crisis. Yet, humanism asks why we should cede enlightenment and the potential for restoration to the supernatural. Humanism challenges the implication that the sublimity of the natural world, and our connection to those that we love, admire and respect, is somehow impoverished without a divine creator. In one of his bus stop monologues, Mitchell comments, “I want people to look at each other with the same reverence that they look at God and realize that ‘we’ did this, we made this happen.” The “we” represents will, agency, and motive force; qualities that many believers would attribute to God as omniscient architect and overseer. Non-believers are compelled to ask whether individual actions (for good or ill) are determined by God, or whether human beings simply act on their own volition in a universe overseen by God. Since time immemorial, non-believers have questioned whether God exercises control over those who commit evil acts or whether hell is the only “medium” for justice. By refusing to invest supernatural forces with divine authority over human affairs, humanism emphasizes human responsibility for the outcome of our pursuits. Morality is defined by just deeds, fairness, equality and respect for difference; not by how blusteringly one claims to adhere to “Godly” principles.

However, in communities that are plagued with double digit unemployment and a sense of cultural devaluation, notions of self-sufficiency and ultimate human agency may be perceived as demoralizing if not dangerously radical. As a child preacher steeped in the fiery oratory of the Black Church, writer James Baldwin recounted his growing cynicism about spreading “the gospel.” Lamenting the grip of religion on poor blacks, Baldwin said, “When I faced a congregation, it began to take all the strength I had not to…tell them to throw away their Bibles and get off their knees and go home and organize.” In Baldwin’s view organized religion’s requirement that believers suspend disbelief and submit to “God’s will” is a liability for working class African Americans. Religious dogma anesthetizes as it bonds, a dangerous combination in an era in which the proliferation of storefront churches in urban black communities is a symptom of economic underdevelopment.

Echoing Baldwin, Chicago-based Education professor and atheist Kamau Rashid argues that “Freethought is an extension and expression of the struggle that African Americans have waged for self-determination. In fact it represents a heightened phase of such a struggle wherein one of the final stages of ‘conceptual incarceration,’ the belief in a God or gods, is discarded for a belief in the human potential, for a belief in ourselves.”

And why, in a heritage steeped in the revolutionary thought of such dirty outlaw skeptics as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, A. Philip Randolph, James Forman and Alice Walker, would this be so viscerally frightening?

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org, a member of the Black Skeptics Group and the author of the forthcoming book Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and Secular America.

*With apologies to Bob Dylan

Aging, Cancer, Genes: Science for All

"A lot of people think we're biologically programmed to die, but the truth is that we're biologically programmed for survival" - Dr. Robert Kane Pappas


So why do we get old and die? Why do some people get cancer and others don't?

I. "Treatment: The Difficulties of Making a Cancer Drug" - Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker Magazine May 17, 2010

II. To Age or not to Age, a documentary by Doctor Robert Kane Pappas to be released on July 16, 2010

III. Dr Stanislaw Burzynski The Movie. Director: Eric Merola. Winner of the "Humanitarian Vision" award at the Newport Beach Festival

Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski the Movie reveals the results of the doctor's treatments administered to paying, hopeful patients and his seemingly endless battles against the FDA. The film might have been called: Dr. Burzynski Has the Answers'

At the heart of the matter as presented in these three popular efforts to communicate with us, the laymen of the world, and the potential or actual financial backers of the endless quest to Know, is the question Why: Why Cancer, Why Age?

For the Drug industry, as discussed in the New Yorker Magazine, the question is answered with an indirect reference to the chemical makeup of the human body. If only we can find the right chemicals, the right cocktail, the problem of Cancer containment, then cure, will be solved. This is a long, expensive, exacting endeavor the fruits of which are a long way from realization. But the scientists are on their way, sort of. And the total cost to date is well beyond our collective imagination.

There are literally millions of known chemicals and many of them are being tested - going through the mandated protocols from phrase I to phase 2, then phase 3. All remedies seem to have failed to pass all three phases but hope has not died, not yet.

The outstanding question is what is the cause of Cancer - without knowing the cause can a solution ever be found? Is it the chemical composition of the body that causes cancer, and if so, isn't the emotional component as much responsible for our chemical composition as the physical mechanisms that cancer infests. Maybe it isn't an injection of the "right chemical" that is needed but someone who addresses our emotional problems with the intent of achieving mental health and stability with subsequent alteration in our chemical makeup. The Psychoanalysts of the world could possibly be in competition with the invasive substance that the scientists want to inject.

Dr. Burzynski has another idea that he has been investigating through injections into live subjects who want desperately to be cured. He thinks and acts upon the belief that the cause of Cancer is in the genes. It is our Genetic makeup that causes cancer and with the right injection of a substance to alter our genes our cancer can be controlled and eliminated or put into remission.

In effect he is refocusing our attention away from the millions of chemicals known to man and onto the chemicals that would alter genes. But....he hasn't gone through the phase 1 or 2, or 3 of the mandated process established by "legitimate" medicine, with the unfortunate result that he is constantly brought to account by the legal profession (and FDA) for his treatment method and administration and his results.

His results are not perfect - far from it - but he claims to have cured enough people with his efforts that the Federal Government (FDA) wants to shut him down for fear that..........well, that is yet to be revealed. Maybe just cutting corners (and costs) is the crime for which he has been harassed.

But what does Cancer have to do with Age and Aging? Dr. Pappas has convincing evidence that aging, that threat and reality of our bodies ever changing, does not have to be. What causes aging, he asks - a question we had hitherto decided was answered by life observed, lived and then ended most commonly before the age of 100. But Dr. Pappas says that we should live on and convinces those who watch his documentary To Age or Not to Age that aging is not normal.

Not normal! What I see and experience every day is not in sync with reality. Wow. How does he get to this conclusion?

Genes: That is the answer. He goes beyond the theory that if we consume fewer calories per day during our life time, our time on earth will be greatly elongated, our healthy life span will be seemingly endless. Beyond food means that the cause of aging is not just what we eat or fail to eat. He says the cause is in the Genes.

My observations (I am a complete layperson), based on my friends and acquaintances, are that the descendants of slaves in the southern United States come from a long-living and healthy lineage. In fact the slaves didn't just live longer than their owners, which is well documented, but the slaves and their descendants who are the parents of those in my age range outlive their children by a significant statistical margin. If Aging was just a matter of genes this could not be the case.

In summary, based on my limited observations:

The first generation were slaves
They lived the longest (discounting those murdered)
The second generation were black share croppers, small farm owners who worked the land and ate food that was unprocessed by corporations. They lived as long or almost as long as their parents.
The third generation were the children who came up North to seek fame and fortune - or just fortune enough to secure food, shelter and clothing without land of their own; they enjoyed a significantly shorter life span than their genetic inheritance would have predicted. Indeed, they often died before their parents.

Conclusion: emotional, physical factors not related solely to genes might be a significant cause of life span.

Genes are not a stand-alone cause for cancer or aging. Then why are we being exposed to gene analysis or given the rudiments of cost and future possible research for cancer at this time? What is going on? Coincidence or...... what is the Cause.

We seem to be bombarded with so much more information about the world, the Universe, the foundations of life in a test tube and the ability to replicate what had once been thought of as God giveth, and God taketh away, that there is an ever widening gap in applicable knowledge. Knowledge that will improve our lives and the lives of those we love and care for. Too much information seems to bread ignorance

This is the dilemma that confronts us every day. What food to eat, what clothes to buy, what cloth to touch our skin, what to drink, which water to avoid, which juice is okay and which is too sugary... is sugar bad or is it corn syrup or should both be avoided. These are some of the easy unanswered questions. Imagine having to think about, to live with, the uncertainty of which treatment to select, which doctor to see, which theory to bring to bear on our desire to continue to live... if living at all cost is what we want. Now there is the potential question of when should I die, should I register for prevention because I have the Gene or don't.

Chemical, emotional, physical, germ, infection, virus, bacterium, genes and more genes and the list goes on and on....

No wonder people choose to die rather than live in terrifying uncertainty.

See the films, read the New Yorker Magazine and feel like you are not alone because.........that's one truth that is indisputable: we are all in this together.

TO AGE OR NOT TO AGE
Opening July 16, 2010

Dr. Burzynski The Movie
available on DVD

Mother and Child: Now playing in New York theaters

writer-director Rodrigo Garcia (Nine Lives) and executive producer Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel)

“MOTHER AND CHILD”

Opens Friday, May 7th in NY at the Landmark Sunshine and Lincoln Plaza Theaters

Starring
Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Kerry Washington
Samuel L. Jackson, Jimmy Smits

with
Shareeka Epps, Cherry Jones, S. Epatha Merkerson, Amy Brenneman, David Morse, Marc Blucas, Elizabeth Pena

plot: Three women's lives share a common core: they have all been profoundly affected by adoption.

Mother and Child opened on May 7th to coincide with the great Mother's day recognition/celebration events that bode only good, kind and charitable warmth on women who assume the role of Mother.

While the phrase "happy mother's day" is repeated often throughout the day from even strangers to women they think might be a mother the phrase reemphasizes our fantasy notions of mothers which is even more potent when combined with "mother and child" Almost like the idealac Madonna recreated in all those perceived to be mothers, an image that is more destructive to human relations than supportive of women as real, complex vital contributors to society.

In Mother and Child the Mother is difficult to like and the child is adopted; Not of the mother's loins.
And the men........they are quietly supportive or not, in contrast to the role that men of this generation of new fathers are assuming.

To experience our fantasies crumble, delivered with brilliant actors and unusal clarity with attention to minute details is an experience that is essential for sorely needed change.


My mother was not a likable, lovable person. But she was my mother and as an adult I embraced her as such. If the fantasy of the mother had never existed, to accept my mother as she was wouldn't have been as difficult nor painful

And that is why I recommend this film. See Mother and Child and reunite with reality