Alice Walker: Antigay Actress as Color Purple’s Celie Is ‘Betrayal’
Acclaimed author Alice Walker says it would be a “betrayal” for a homophobic actress to play the role of Celie Johnson in a musical adaptation of Walker’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Color Purple.
Oluwaseyi Omooba, who was set to portray Celie in a production of the musical that ran earlier this year at the Leicester Curve and then the Birmingham Hippodrome in England, was fired from the show after actor Aaron Lee Lambert shared a 2014 Facebook post in which Omooba called homosexuality a sin, saying it’s “legal” but not “right,” according to the New York Daily News. She also stated her belief that people are not born gay.
Lambert said Omooba would be a “hypocrite” if she played Celie, who finds love with a woman after having been abused by men, while holding homophobic views.
Last month Omooba said she plans to sue the Leicester Curve over her firing and the Global Artists Agency for dropping her as a client. The daughter of a prominent British anti-LGBTQ activist, Omooba contends she has suffered discrimination because of her Christian beliefs.
Walker had been silent on the matter until last week, when she sent a letter to Color Purple producer Scott Sanders and authorized him to share it on Facebook. She expressed “heartfelt compassion” for Omooba, then explained how she came to create Celie.
Celie “is based on the life of my grandmother, Rachel, a kind and loving woman brutally abused by my grandfather. … It is safe to say, after a frightful life serving and obeying abusive men, who raped in place of ‘making love,’ my grandmother, like Celie, was not attracted to men,” Walker wrote.
“She was, in fact, very drawn to my grandfather’s lover, a beautiful woman who was kind to her, the only grown person who ever seemed to notice how remarkable and creative she was. In giving Celie the love of this woman, in every way love can be expressed, I was clear in my intention to demonstrate that she too, like all of us, deserved to be seen, appreciated, and deeply loved by someone who saw her as whole and worthy.”
Walker, who has had relationships with both men and women, said she believes “sexual love can be extraordinarily holy, whoever might be engaging in it,” and that she urges readers to question the scriptures of all religions. “Love, however it may be expressed, is to be honored and welcomed into the light of our common survival as a consciously human, race.”
“Playing the role of ‘Celie’ while not believing in her right to be loved, or to express her love in any way she chooses, would be a betrayal of women’s right to be free,” she concluded. “As an elder, I urge all of us to think carefully about what I am saying, even as you, Oluwaseyi Omooba, sue the theatre company for voiding your contract. This is just an episode in your life; your life, your work, and your growth, will continue, in the real world. A world we must make safe for women and children, female and male. And the greatest freedom of all is the freedom to be your authentic self.”
The Color Purple was adapted into a 1985 film directed by Steven Spielberg, in which Whoopi Goldberg was Oscar-nominated for playing Celie. The first Broadway production of the musical, in 2005-2006, brought a Tony Award to LaChanze for portraying Celie, and Cynthia Erivo won a Tony in 2016 for playing the role in a revival.
Article via Advocate
How Bitcoin transactions were used to track down the 23-year-old South Korean operating a global child exploitation site from his bedroom
For almost three years, “Welcome To Video” was a covert den for people who traded in clips of children being sexually assaulted. There, on the darknet‘s largest-known site of child exploitation videos, hundreds of users from around the world accessed material that showed the sexual abuse of children as young as six months old.
Then it all began to unravel.
On Wednesday, the United States’ Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed how it had followed a trail of bitcoin transactions to find the suspected administrator of the site: A 23-year-old South Korean man named Jong Woo Son.
But the case is much bigger than just one man. Over the almost three years that the site was online, users downloaded files more than one million times, according to a newly unsealed DOJ indictment. At least 23 children in the US, Spain and the United Kingdom who were being abused by the users of the site have been rescued, the DOJ said in a press release. “Children around the world are safer because of the actions taken by US and foreign law enforcement to prosecute this case and recover funds for victims,” said Jessie K. Liu, an attorney for District of Columbia where the US case was filed. “We will continue to pursue such criminals on and off the darknet in the United States and abroad, to ensure they receive the punishment their terrible crimes deserve.”
In total, 337 people from at least 18 countries who used Welcome To Video have been arrested and charged, the DOJ said. And in a statement Thursday, South Korea’s National Police Agency (NPA) said 223 of them were South Korean.
Many Welcome To Video users likely thought they were untraceable.The site was on the darknet, the underbelly of the deep web which cannot be accessed by a regular browser. According to authorities, some customers paid for the explicit images of child sexual abuse in bitcoin, a digital currency that can be spent without users disclosing their true identity.But the downfall of Welcome To Video shows that bitcoin isn’t as private as some cybercriminals might have thought.
At the time, bitcoin still wasn’t a widely used payment method. The non-profit Internet Watch Foundation, which works to remove images and videos of child sexual abuse from the web, found that some of the most prolific commercial child sexual abuse sites first started accepting bitcoin as payment in 2014. According to the DOJ, Welcome To Video was “among the first of its kind to monetize child exploitation videos using bitcoin.” Bitcoin can be attractive for people hoping to slip under the radar. Bitcoin is decentralized, meaning there is no company or official bank which oversees transactions. Users store their bitcoin in a virtual account — known as a digital wallet — without having to prove their real identity, as they might for a regular brick-and-mortar bank. From about June 2015 to March 2018, Welcome To Video received at least 420 bitcoin through 7,300 transactions with users in numerous countries including the US, the UK and South Korea, the indictment released Wednesday shows. Those transactions were worth over $370,000 at the time. Some of those transactions would ultimately help bring about the site’s collapse.
How authorities brought down Welcome To Video
To get on the site at all, users had to have special software. Because Welcome To Video was hosted on the darknet, it couldn’t be accessed by browsers like Google Chrome or Safari. Users needed to download software — such as Tor — that concealed their Internet Protocol address (IP address), a unique number assigned to every device connected to the internet. But in September 2017, authorities did something simple, according to the indictment: they right-clicked on Welcome To Video’s homepage and selected “view page source.” When they did that, they discovered an unconcealed IP address. That IP address and another found in the same way October 2017 were both traced to a residential address in South Korea — Son’s alleged home. At the same time, US investigators were carrying out an undercover operation. Once in September 2017 and twice in February 2018, an undercover agent sent bitcoin to an account provided by Welcome To Video. Each time, the funds were later transferred into another bitcoin account — in Son’s name, and registered using Son’s phone number and email, US authorities alleged in the indictment.
In March 2018, authorities searched Son’s house and found the server for Welcome To Video was hosted in Son’s bedroom. Authorities also seized eight terabytes containing 250,000 sexual assault videos. In total, 45% of the videos analyzed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children contained images not “previously known to exist.” From there, authorities were able to track down other suspects. “(This case) involved a lot of cooperation between a lots of different people,” said Urszula McCormack, a partner at the King and Wood Mallesons law firm in Hong Kong who specializes in blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin. “Often it’s those weak links that expose the whole.”Data from the server was shared with law enforcement officials around the world, who used it to track down and prosecute customers of the site in 18 countries, according to a DOJ statement. In March 2018, Son was arrested in South Korea, and found guilty of producing and distributing child pornography, a charge that carries a possible 10 year jail term under South Korean law. In May this year, he was sentenced to 18 months in jail, South Korea’s NPA said. But Son could still face more prison time.In August of last year, Son was indicted on a number of child pornography charges in the US, including advertising child pornography which carries a possible 30 year sentence. In order for him to face those charges, Son would need to be extradited to the US — which has an extradition treaty with South Korea. He could be arrested if he travels there of his own accord. One of the reasons the US is interested in prosecuting Son is that the content was accessed in the country. CNN has reached out to the DOJ to ask if they will request an extradition. South Korean police told CNN they haven’t received an extradition request from the US — and while he’s in prison, Son cannot be affected by the US indictment.
Read more via CNN
Three young children who went missing in Missouri in 2017 found in Texas with their mother
Three young children who were abducted in Missouri in 2017 have been found safe in Texas and their mother has been taken into custody.
Shawn Rodriguez and offspring Daniel, David and Ariana Olivera were found at a home in Arlington on Thursday. The 42-year-old Rodriguez is expected to be extradited back to Missouri.
The father of the kids was given full custody earlier this year, according to TV station KSHB. The children were taken from Saline County, and a warrant was issued for the mother’s arrest for parental kidnapping in August, according to KCTV.
Authorities allege that Rodriguez took the children two years ago. The Saline County Sheriff’s Office asked for help from National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the U.S. Marshal became involved, according to KSHB.
Investigators came to believe that Rodriguez had traveled with the kids to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The children were all under the age of eight when they were taken, according to KCTV.
The children are under the supervision of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services “while they wait to be reunited with their father,” The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said.
Article via NYDailyNews
Suicide rates for children, young people jumped between 2007 to 2017: CDC
The suicide rate among those between ages 10 to 24 jumped between 2007 and 2017, according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday.
The 56-percent jump in that decade contrasted with a more stable suicide rate among the age group previously. In 2007, there were 6.8 suicides per 100,000 people among ages 10 to 24, while in 2017 there were 10.6 suicides, according to the CDC.ADVERTISEMENT
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people in that age range, behind accidents, according to The Washington Post. The suicide rate was higher than the homicide rate in that age group starting in 2011.
When broken down by age groups, the suicide rate for those aged 10 to 14 almost tripled between 2007 and 2017. For teenagers 15 to 19, the rate surged 76 percent in that decade.
For 20- to 24-year-olds, the rate of suicides has been increasing from 2000 to 2017, at a rate of 36 percent.
The Post noted researchers do not know the reason for the spike in the suicide rate among teens and young people, though they saw it as cause for alarm.
“Just looking at these numbers, it’s hard not to find them completely disturbing. It should be a call to action,” Lisa Horowitz, a pediatric psychologist at the National Institute of Mental Health, told the Post.
Article via TheHill
(RIP) Etika’s mother defends KEEMSTAR amid accusations he contributed to her son’s death #fullbreakdown
Mari & Mercedes C0mm!tt Su!c!de Days Apart~ social media is calling them 2017 Romeo & Juliet
Baby powder recalled after testing finds asbestos
Johnson & Johnson is recalling some of its Johnson’s Baby Powder after testing found it contains asbestos.
At this time, the recall, announced Friday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, involves just one batch of the product. Any packages with lot number 22318RB should be thrown out or returned to the store where it was purchased for a refund.
The recall could later be expanded, however, to include packages with other lot numbers.
The baby powder was found to contain chrysotile fibers, which the FDA says are a type of asbestos.
The federal agency is currently testing about 50 cosmetics and beauty products to see if they contain asbestos. The tests began in 2018. Another batch of Johnson’s Baby Powder tested by the FDA came back negative.
Earlier this year, products from Claire’s and Beauty Plus Global were recalled over asbestos fears.
Exposure to asbestos is known to cause several types of cancer and diseases.
Article via LeesVilleDailyLeader
‘Insecure’ Star Issa Rae Launches New Label With Atlantic Records
Joint venture kicks off with the release of the single “Kinda Love” by Raedio’s flagship artist TeaMarrr.
Having already conquered the world of television, Insecure star and creator Issa Rae is making moves in the music business.
On Friday (Oct. 18) it was announced that Raedio — a record label recently formed by Rae — has entered a joint venture with Atlantic Records that will kick off with today’s release of the single “Kinda Love” by Haitian-American singer-rapper TeaMarrr.
Billed as an “audio everywhere company,” Raedio will extend its influence across media by aligning its roster of talent with film and TV projects, commercials, podcasts and more, according to a press release. Rae says the label was inspired by her history of centering the work of “female, independent, or Los Angeles-based artists” like SZA, Saweetie and Jazmine Sullivan on Insecure as well as earlier projects.
“Music has always been an essential part of every project I do and working with emerging talent is a personal passion,” Rae said in a statement. “Raedio allows me to continue that work within the music industry and audio entertainment space. The Atlantic Records team are innovators in terms of shifting and shaping culture. I’m excited to join forces with them to discover new artists.”
Added Atlantic chairman & COO Julie Greenwald: “Issa Rae is a next-level, future-thinking creative force who’s been breaking down cultural barriers and conquering one field after another. She’s made music a central character in her artistic evolution, and now she’s brought all that amazing passion, inspiration, and taste to the formation of Raedio. We’re thrilled to be partnering with Issa and her team on this exciting new venture, and TeaMarrr is the perfect artist to launch with.”
TeaMarrr came to Rae’s attention with her 2018 single “One Job,” which racked up over 1.2 million streams.
In addition to signing and fostering new talent, Raedio — led by Rae’s longtime business development executive Benoni Tagoe — also provides music supervision services for HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show.
Article via Billboard
Mariska Hargitay can’t believe she found love on ‘Law & Order: SVU’
Okay Sergeant…
Mariska Hargitay proved a matchmaker pal wrong by finding her soulmate, Peter Hermann, on the set of her hit TV show, Law And Order: Special Victims Unit.
The actress was single when she moved to New York to start work on the hit drama, so her friend decided to help her find a date.
“(She) threw a dinner party for me and she was like, ‘Mariska, you need to get out more…,’” she shared on Live with Kelly and Ryan on Wednesday. “I could never go anywhere because (it was) 15 hours a day, 16 hours a day (on set) every day.
“She said…, ‘No prince handsome is going to walk in on the show and you’re going to marry him’.
But the romance guru was wrong, and when the very tall actor arrived on set to play an attorney, it was love at first sight for Hargitay.
“I was so nervous and a little bit giddy,” she shared. “It was funny because (co-star Chris) Meloni was there. He was watching me and he’d never seen me act like this – ever.”
The couple has been married for 15 years and shares three kids.
Article via Canoe