Hasta La Gadget!

Some vloggers have made it big on YouTube, so it’s not surprising that advertisers want to tap into their burgeoning audiences. But rather than shell-out for a traditional pre-roll ad, they’re paying the stars themselves to film their commercials. Th…

Speakers do come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and it does take a fair amount of market research to be able to know just which particular model would fit your needs nice and fine. Having said that, if you are a huge fan of the space opera known as Star Wars, perhaps you might want to fan that interest into a bigger flame, what with Star Wars Episode VII about to be released in due time. Enter the cute looking, yet functional $29.99 Rechargeable Mini Speaker, where these are tiny Star Wars speakers that aim to deliver Star Wars sound.

The Star Wars Rechargeable Mini Speaker will be equipped with a single cable which will feature ends for power and audio connections. After all, with everyone’s favorite astromech droid, R2-D2, being a jack of all trades, his expertise this time around would come in the form of speakers. Of course, if you feel that you would make for a decent Sith, then you can always pick up the Darth Vader version, where this once fully human Jedi Master plunged into the depths of darkness within his soul in his quest to save his beloved Padme, also has the ability to pump out music – since he is now more machine than man. Press the speaker down, and you’re good to go, pumping out the right tunes. Do bear in mind that the USB port is meant for power only, while the 3.5mm headphone plug will hook up to your audio devices.
[ Star Wars Rechargeable Mini Speaker is cute and functional copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

It’s day that sticks in Katina Crumpton’s mind with complete clarity: Aug. 29, 2000, when she and other family members watched helplessly as a police officer killed her uncle, who could not hear or speak, in his driveway.

Fourteen years ago, Detroit Police Officer David Krupinski and three other officers arrived at the home of Errol Shaw, 39. They were responding to a report of a domestic disturbance. A 911 caller had said Shaw was chasing his kids with a knife, though the tipster reportedly later said the account was embellished to hurry the police. At trial, police said Shaw’s father told them his son was under the influence of drugs and trying to attack his grandson.

The situation was made more dire because Shaw could not hear, and police could not understand the noises he used to communicate with his family. Officers told Shaw to drop the garden rake he was holding, while witnesses said family members tried to explain that he could not hear.

Police said Shaw then raised the rake over his head as if he were going to use it to strike one of the other officers, and Krupinski shot him once in the lower abdomen and once in the chest.

There are key details of the incident about which police and witnesses disagree.

“He never, ever, ever brandished a rake at all. Never,” Crumpton said. “He never swung the rake, never charged the officer, never did any of that.”

Krupinski was charged with manslaughter and acquitted in 2001.

Crumpton, who lives near Detroit, is now the same age as her uncle when he died. She told The Huffington Post she knew the “agony” felt by the family of Ferguson, Missouri, teenager Michael Brown after the police officer who fatally shot him was not indicted Monday. Here’s her story:

I was devastated, but not surprised by the decision. I was very hurt for that family because I can understand the agony, the pain, the sorrow. I understand it all because we’ve been there as a family.

Now, when I see a police officer, I literally cringe. I get nervous. It’s been that way with my entire family and people who know personally about our case. We have no trust in our judicial system, we have no trust in police officers anymore. It’s very, very difficult as a community to move forward if we can’t even trust the police to protect and serve.

There’s still not a sense of normalcy when it comes down to what transpired with my uncle. Each day its a struggle for his mom, which is my grandmother.

One thing that stood out that particular day with my uncle was that all four officers were there. To me, [that doesn’t show] an imminent threat.

I was actually pulling up [to the house] at the same time as police officers were arriving, not knowing exactly why they were there. When I got out of my car they were approaching him. He was deaf of course, and he had very high-pitched tones when he tried to speak. I think that maybe that had startled them. In the midst of all that, as I was walking towards the police officers, I was kind of stating to them, “He’s deaf, he’s deaf, he can’t hear you.” They were telling him to drop his rake, but he was actually going to do yard work. That’s what he did in the summer.

They proceeded to tell me to stop coming, and I’m like, “He cannot hear you, let me interpret for him,” and then one officer pointed the gun at me and told me to stay right where I was. Otherwise, they probably would have killed me too.

When [Krupinski] shot my uncle, my grandmother screamed to him and asked him why he did, and he said, “to protect my partner.” Mind you, this particular partner he was speaking of was behind him.

Even though he was deaf, my uncle just had a way with people, had a beautiful smile, beautiful spirit, and he loved to cook for everybody. He was a good person. And the only thing that I think really hindered him that day was that he couldn’t hear, he couldn’t communicate on his own, which ultimately led to his demise.

As a human being, to be gunned down in the street like Michael Brown or my uncle Errol Shaw, it’s like the judicial system is dehumanizing us as a people, like we are not a concern, like we are just not human beings.

It’s utterly ridiculous how these officers are getting away with these senseless murders. The justice system needs a major investigation and an overhaul. That’s the only way that we’ll see change.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

More On Ferguson From HuffPost:

Photographic Evidence Reveals | ‘First Year Law Student Could Have Done Better Job’ | 61 Arrested | Ferguson Smolders After Night Of Fires | Protest Locations | Americans Deeply Divided | Police Chief: ‘Worse Than The Worst Night We Had In August’ | What You Can Do | Darren Wilson Interview | Darren Wilson Could Still Face Consequences | Timeline | Students Protest | Photos Of Darren Wilson’s Injuries Released | Shooting Witness Admitted Racism In Journal | Peaceful Responses Show The U.S. At Its Best | Reactions To Ferguson Decision | Prosecutor Gives Bizarre Press Conference | Notable Black Figures React | Jury Witness: ‘By The Time I Saw His Hands In The Air, He Got Shot’ | Thousands Protest Nationwide |

“You may be 38 years old as I happen to be, and one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause–and you refuse to do it because you are afraid; you refuse to do it because you want to live longer; you’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you’re afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house, and so you refuse to take the stand. Well you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90! And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right, you died when you refused to stand up for truth, you died when you refused to stand up for justice.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., November 1967

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This Thanksgiving most of us who read Huffington Post can rejoice in our ability to stand up against the craziness in our society and the global injustice that surround us. As we sit around our holiday table, we can celebrate the manifold opportunities to take Martin Luther King Jr.’s challenge seriously, and teach our parents, children, grandchildren and guests that it would be a terrible waste of life if all we focused on was our own personal blessings without simultaneously raising to consciousness all that needs ‘tikkun’ (the healing and transformation of our world).

Taking time to give thanks for all that we have–our lives, our health, the incredibly awesome universe in which we live, the love that we have in our lives–all this deserves genuine thanks. Yet celebrating our many blessings should not preclude us from addressing the pressing need for healing and transforming the world. So, if people tell you that it’s a bummer or bringing them down from their joy if you talk about the injustices that surround us, tell them that our very ability to do so is another one of our blessings.

It’s hard to know where to start, because once we wake up from whatever trance we use to drown out the cries of the oppressed and the suffering that pervades the planet, the pain can be overwhelming. Shall we talk about the horrible verdict in Ferguson, Missouri where America’s system of racist injustice once again confirmed what most young African Americans already have learned hundreds of times in their lives: that their lives are not valued, that any policeman can create whatever stories they want to justify shooting young blacks. In spite of the fact that it happens so frequently, we can rejoice that so many African Americans are standing up in protest and anger. They did so the past two nights in a collective cry of anguish and outrage. Would that our week-kneed president Obama had been able to give voice to that pain instead of focusing attention on why he is opposed to violence (so are we, but the violent are a tiny group, while the outrage and fear extends to tens of millions of minorities and the poor who are frequently facing police violence or wildly unfair treatment in the “criminal justice” system. But so much of what Obama faces in the way of irrational criticism is itself a barely covered manifestation of the racism with which he has been greeted through much of his presidency that it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between the legitimate upset with the way he has capitulated to the status quo and the interests of the 1% and the upset directed at him no matter what he does simply because he is African American. I only wish that Democratic Party politicians would call out this racism explicitly, but they too tend to capitulate rather than articulate when it comes to the racism that has shaped this country for the past hundreds of years. Yet on Thanksgiving, we should be able to raise this with our families and friends even if doing so makes some people uncomfortable, even as we simultaneously affirm the very good things in our life.

This was a year when 400,000 Americans marched in NYC to protest the inaction of elected leaders to seriously deal with climate change and the environmental crisis that is deepening every day. Now a Republican Congress will seek to defund the Environmental Protection Agency so that it cannot move against carbon whose excessive release by corporate America and other industrial states has been a primary factor in the accelerating rise in temperature on planet earth. Most of the American public declined to vote, many out of disgust that the Democrats were unable to articulate any coherent alternative to the Right. But in the coming two years many of us will be able to exercise our American right to protest, and to use our electoral system to do that. Nothing could be more effective than to get your local city council and state legislature to endorse the ESRA–Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Read it at www.tikkun.org/esra. We have much to do to protest climate injustice. If we don’t, many of us may find our lives totally transformed by the coming environmental disaster. Even now, though, the worst impact of climate destructiveness is felt by the weakest, poorest, and least able to defend themselves parts of our world’s population. Environmental justice must demand that we share equally in the damage our advanced industrial society has brought to the whole world. If even China can “get it,” and agree to dramatic reductions in climate pollution in the coming years, why shouldn’t we be taking our outrage at the climate deniers directly to their constituencies. And give thanks that we are free to do that — if we choose to use the actual power that ordinary citizens have.

The greatest injustice to recall on Thanksgiving is the genocide perpetrated by European settlers against the Native Americans, successfully wiping out most of them over the course of some 200 years of ruthless expropriation of their lands, their means of livelihood and food, and their self-respect. At the Thanksgiving dinner it is particularly appropriate to invoke the memory of those natives, and recommit ourselves to doing all we can to ensure that no other people gets similarly treated.

Sadly, the Palestinian people may be facing a similar expropriation as Israeli settler daily expand their settlements on Arab lands. Those of us who have championed a two state solution for Israel/Palestine now find ourselves increasingly doubting if there will ever be a stop to Israeli expansionism before so much land has been taken away from Palestinians that the notion of two states living in peace will seem so implausible and the land available not adequate to create an economically and political viable state for Palestinians. The injustice of Occupation cannot wipe out from our memory the tragic murders of 3 Israeli teens last summer and 5 Israelis in a synagogue just days ago, nor can those tragic events wipe from our memory the burning alive by Israeli settlers of a Palestinian teenager or the killing of over 2,100 Palestinians by the Israeli army this past summer. And yet, voices of sanity are still around, protesting even today the decision by the inner cabinet of the Israeli government to pass legislation that will establish Israel as “a Jewish state” rather than a state of all its citizens equally. These are protests that are getting more and more dangerous for peaceniks, particularly after gangs roamed the streets of Israeli cities this past summer beating up random young men suspected of being Palestinian (perhaps thereby expressing their own outrage at having to duck into air raid shelters several times a day to escape the possibility that one of Hamas’ attempts to bomb Israeli civilians would work). The voices of protest have dimmed but they still exist, not least in the pages of Tikkun magazine www.tikkun.org.

When our Network of Spiritual Progressives was seeking to educate Congress on the importance of putting pressure on Israel to end the Occupation of the West Bank, many of them told us that it was only the “support-Israel-regardless-of-whether-you-agree-with-its treatment-of-Palestinians” crowd that pushed them hard. I asked “what is pushing hard mean” and over and over again I was told “if we get twenty to thirty phone calls on an issue that isn’t about self-interest that feels huge, because most people don’t call and don’t write letters to us–only standardized emails or faxes and hidden in ways that we can’t tell if these are really our constituents or not. Any cause that gets thirty people calling–we think they really represent something real!!!” So don’t underestimate what you could do in that arena. And there are other things outside Congress that may be even more important, like getting your city council and state legislature to endorse a constitutional convention to put the Global Marshall Plan and the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment into the revised constitution. And it would be great if readers of this statement were to call the White House and your Congressperson and 2 Senators to demand a federal intervention to make it a federal crime for a police officer to shoot an unarmed civilian. Just saying … be creative!

Ok, this is the place for your creativity in your own Thanksgiving celebration. Ask friends and others to contribute to the calling out of all the aspects of our society and our world where justice is whimpering but about which we can tell the stories of those who managed to stand up against injustice, even at great personal risk. Tell stories from your own lives or from the lives of others whom you’ve known about all these years–stories of how you stood up for justice and lived to tell the tale!! You’ll find it a useful spiritual practice this Thanksgiving, not as replacement for more personal things you are grateful for, but as a supplement to that way of thanking the universe for all the good in our lives.

And when you are finished doing so, write up your stories and send them to me: RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com for possible use on the Tikkun website at www.tikkun.org..

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Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of the Jewish and Interfaith magazine Tikkun and co-chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. He is the author of eleven books, including The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country From the Religious Right and with Cornel West Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin. He welcomes hearing from you directly at RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com–particularly if you have joined the interfaith and secular-humanist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives.

Holidays focus us on the highest expressions of our humanity.
Do we share and are we thankful and loving for just one or two days? For a season?

What a beautiful ritual we invented, celebrating holidays.
Rituals train us in the ways we desire to be on all days.

You may know that the word “holiday” comes from the Old English meaning “holy day,” a day to honor that which is sacred. Holidays focus us on the most sacred, highest expressions of our humanity.

Every year on the last Thursday of November in the United States we celebrate Thanksgiving, the essence of thankfulness. It is known that the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Canadians, and surely many other cultures also pay homage to the harvest, the resplendent fruits of the Earth that sustain us and give us pleasure.

On Thanksgiving we come together with family and friends to feast and honor the bounty that is ours, that daily, we have come to expect, and in these uncertain times, that none of us can take lightly. We’re grateful for all we’ve been given, and consciously bestow thankfulness on the people who matter most to us.

In contrast, we know that holidays can also bring out loneliness and remind us of those less fortunate in worldly possessions or emotional and spiritual fulfillment. Holidays provide the opportunity to share our bounty, our gifts with others.

Looking from the whole of life, you realize that the fact of the holiday itself cannot be taken for granted.

THANKSGIVING CAME ABOUT AFTER TRIALS AND TRIBULATION
When I researched how Thanksgiving came about, I discovered that even a day dedicated to giving thanks went through trials and tribulations before people could agree that a national holiday should be established.

Thanksgiving originated when a group known as Pilgrims left England for religious freedom, came to what was then considered The New World, and were aided by Native American Indians to survive a harsh winter in 1620. When their crop was bountiful the following year, they celebrated. The Governor declared a holiday for the settlers and for the Native American Indians who could now live in peace together. That peace soon turned into conflict again.

There are divergent stories as to what actually happened during the ensuing years of continual conflicts over land ownership and other racial, religious, and political power struggles. It took a few hundred years before people could agree that Thanks Giving should become a national holiday. Through the efforts of a journalist, Sarah Josepha Hale, who fought for it for 40 years and a president (initially Lincoln) who finally declared it as a national holiday, we get to celebrate many happy Thanksgivings. We truly are interconnected and interrelated, well beyond our own era and our own lifetime.

Ironic isn’t it that even a holiday meant to celebrate harvest and peace was itself fraught with controversy and conflict.

This does tell us something about ourselves and the state of our own human evolution. As much as we like to imagine ourselves as exhibiting all the noble traits and our divine nature, it is time to finally become aware of all the nonthinking ways we react to situations and one another.

When you realize we have the opportunity now to consciously evolve ourselves to a quantum reality of unity — wow, we really have something extraordinary to be thankful for! What must evolve now is our very own consciousness — our awareness. The paradox of an evolution in consciousness is that it must be chosen, consciously.

The task of our own mastery is to express the highest, not just on declared holidays, but as our daily way. To live this wisdom takes awareness, awakening, and action.

OUR SPIRITUAL HARVEST
We give thanks for our physical harvest.
What about our spiritual harvest?
What greatness are we cultivating in ourselves, moment by moment?
What seeds are you planting?
What nourishment do you give, day by day, to the seeds of kindness, of compassion, of respect, of cheerfulness, of thankfulness, for yourself, for others, for all the amazing treasures of creation — from your morning grapefruit to the person sitting across the breakfast table from you sharing it.

Traditional cultures honor the sun as it rises and sets, thank the animals that give their lives for us, and cherish the water that we drink. What can we say is not sacred?

The holiday rituals focus us on the highest aspects of ourselves.
Do we share and are we thankful and loving for just one or two days? For a season?

To reap a bountiful harvest of our humanity requires daily attentiveness beyond the celebratory rituals that so beautifully and dutifully remind us.

As we make this quantum leap to living in our highest nature, our holi-days will not only conjure our sacred qualities, they will be a true celebration of them.

Bibliography:
Fourth World Documentation Project
The Thanksgiving Story article by Jerry Wilson

Photo Credits:
Free Internet Pictures; Coolstylewallpapers.com; Wikipedia; Unity.org.