Tracey Love

[Michael Harriot @michaelharriot]

Is it possible to run a successful business without fully embracing the worst tenets of capitalism?

Black people have done it for centuries.

Here's a list that proves it. https://t.co/56Ynyf7BI5

[BREEZY SUPREME @BreezyxSupreme]

Tbh idk how to promote my band with these wild ass algorithms on here so if you black and fuck with rock just repost a nigga plz

[COMBATE |🇵🇷 @upholdreality]

A transnational Jewish-Italian mob network centered on Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante ran Cuba as a privatized extraction arm of US empire: gambling, laundering, narcotics, prostitution, political bribery.

What the US could not openly run on its own border, the syndicate ran for it in Havana.

Batista was on a $ 1.28-million-a-month retainer, delivered every Monday at noon. His development bank bankrolled half of every new mob casino.

And this was not just gambling. Havana was a key node in the postwar heroin pipeline: Turkish opium, Marseille labs, Havana transshipment, New York distribution.

By the late 1960s, that French Connection network supplied most of America’s heroin.

Then Castro won.

In January 1959 the casinos were smashed, the bosses fled or were detained, and Batista escaped with a fortune estimated around $300 million.

The national lottery, once a graft channel, was converted into a housing fund.

But the mob did not disappear. It was redeployed.

Lansky’s lieutenant Doc Stacher later said Lansky offered to finance Castro’s assassination as early as 1959. By September 1960, the CIA was running the operation directly.

The Agency hired Johnny Rosselli, Sam Giancana, and Santo Trafficante. The opening offer was $150,000. The weapon: poison pills from the CIA’s Technical Services Division.

The 1975 Church Committee found concrete evidence of at least eight CIA plots against Castro between 1960 and 1965.

The same Havana-Miami underworld that lost Cuba in 1959 became useful again as the deniable violence arm of US policy.

Of the three mob figures the CIA hired, Giancana was murdered before he could testify to Congress. Rosselli was murdered after he did. Trafficante survived.

The continuity is structural, not anecdotal: Tampa, Havana, Miami. Casinos became exile paramilitaries. Exile paramilitaries became lobby infrastructure.

Jorge Mas Canosa, a Bay of Pigs veteran and CIA-radio figure, founded the Cuban American National Foundation in 1981 at the suggestion of Reagan's advisors. It was modeled on AIPAC and built to harden Cuba policy permanently.

The lobby's most famous operative was Luis Posada Carriles: CIA-trained, Bay of Pigs veteran, Iran-Contra contractor under Oliver North, perpetrator of the 1976 mid-air bombing of Cubana Flight 455 (73 dead) and the 1997 Havana hotel bombings. By 1998, he had publicly named Mas Canosa as his financier. He died free in Miami in 2018.

They did not just lobby. They wrote the laws.

1992: Cuban Democracy Act.
1996: Helms-Burton.
2019: Trump activates Title III, letting US claimants sue foreign firms using confiscated Cuban property.

Today the legal afterlife of Batista’s Cuba runs through federal court: hotel chains, expropriation claims, embargo law, and Miami political power.

Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State, is a product of that machine.

When he says “freedom in Cuba,” hear the history underneath it:

the old casino mobster class wants its island back

[Rock'n Roll of All @rocknrollofall]

Origins of Purple Rain,

Purple Rain' was originally written as a country song, and was intended to be a collaboration with Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks.

According to Nicks, she received a 10-minute instrumental version of the song from Prince, with a request to write the lyrics, but she felt overwhelmed by the task.

She later said: "I listened to it and I just got scared. I called him back and said, 'I can't do it. I wish I could. It's too much for me.'"

Prince then asked his backing band to try the song: "I want to try something before we go home. It's mellow."

According to Lisa Coleman, Prince changed the song dramatically after Wendy Melvoin started playing the guitar to accompany the song: "He was excited to hear it voiced differently. It took it out of that country feeling.

"Then we all started playing it a bit harder and taking it more seriously. We played it for six hours straight and by the end of that day we had it mostly written and arranged."

Prince's explanation on the meaning of 'Purple Rain':

"When there's blood in the sky – red and blue = purple... purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/god guide you through the purple rain."

After recording the song, Prince phoned Journey member Jonathan Cain, to ask him to listen to it.

Prince was concerned that it might be too similar to Journey's 'Faithfully', a song composed by Cain which had recently been in the US charts.

However, Cain reassured Prince by saying that the songs only shared the same four chords.

"I thought it was an amazing tune," Cain said. "I told him, 'Man, I'm just super-flattered that you even called. It shows you're that classy of a guy. Good luck with the song. I know it's gonna be a hit.'"

Ladies and gentlemen,
Prince performing a special and an absolute classic song, Purple Rain, live at Paisley Park, in 1999.

Credits for the background information: @SmoothRadio

[Daniel Mayakovski @DaniMayakovski]

"Yo fui quién les quité a los palestinos todos sus derechos en prisión, les quité los comedores y la comida, las visitas, las salidas al patio, el derecho a estudiar... y ahora quiero quitarles también sus vidas".

El genocida nazi de Ben Gvir, ministro de seguridad de "Israel", se vanaglorió de quitarles todos los derechos humanos a los palestinos secuestrados en sus mazmorras.... y ahora dice que quiere quitarles sus vidas a través de la pena de muerte.

Este psicópata es ministro en un apartheid colonial sanguinario equipado con armas nucleares... pero la amenaza dicen que es Irán.

[Voice of Rabbis @voiceofrabbis]

“AIPAC isn’t about Peace. it’s about securing U.S. support for whatever the Israeli government wants.”

— Jimmy Carter 🇺🇸

This is a critique of lobbying power of Israel

[SwayLaughs @Persway82]

😩😩👏🏾🤣🤣🤣🤣
He Said the man got on the Vampire 11s
“I didn’t know vampires wear those”
Omg…I’ve been laughing for 5 minutes
straight! I am weak!!! 😭🤣
#Vampires #comedyvideos #blackx

[Tracey Love @mr_traceylove]

@Ecnerwal23 Correct!

[Norcalhoodie @YIN_and_YANG_oo]

Jordan is in that head permanently, you can see it in his face.
Chicago man tired of Thomas 🤣
Jordan Took his City

[Boston Smalls @smalls2672]

How ICE agents wake up in the morning.

[AirJordans23 @AirJordans2323]

Prime Isiah Thomas in 1989 explaining to Arsenio Hall why Michael Jordan is the best @NBA player he’s ever seen.

Analyst Isiah Thomas in 1998 offering similar sentiments to Doug Collins and Bob Costas on the @NBAonNBC.

Credit - @TheJordanTruth

[Financial Physics @FinancialPhys]

Reminder post

[Sentletse 🇿🇦🇷🇺🇵🇸🇱🇧 @Sentletse]

The CIA are the largest drug trafficking cartel in the US. They helped move Pablo Escobar’s cocaine consignment into the US.

60 Minutes in 1993 reported on how the CIA smuggled 1500kg of cocaine from Colombia with Venezuela as the transit route.

The CIA secured cooperation of the Venezuelan National Guard under false pretences. The National Guard was misled into believing that they were cooperating on an undercover operation.

This was long before Chavez and Maduro.

Maduro is being charged for historic CIA crimes in the same way that Noriega was.

[barbarism critic @barbarismcrit]

The Business Plot in 1933 was a coup attempt in the US backed by the wealthiest men in the country who wanted to overthrow the government and install a dictator when they felt their profits were threatened. None of them were punished. Sound familiar?

[Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده @RamAbdu]

Life in Gaza before October 2023

— from Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (2013), presented by Anthony Bourdain.

[Maine @TheMaineWonk]

The Sackler Family has done more to fuel the fentanyl epidemic in America than Venezuela.

Can we conduct a late night raid to arrest them too?

[RAHUL @RahulSeeker]

Twenty-Three years ago, she stripped bare the EVIL of the world called the Great Imperial America - Arundhuti Roy. Use 🎧Watch 🎥Share.
#Venezuela

[Be A King @BerniceKing]

🗣️A word from my mother about a few of the many forms of violence:

“Starving a child is violence. Suppressing a culture is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and child is violence. Discriminating against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical needs is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence. Even the lack of willpower to help humanity is a sick and sinister form of violence.”

#CorettaScottKing #BeLove #King100 #ChampionsForChange