Hasta La Gadget!

Donald Trump on Monday continued his clumsy efforts to appeal to black voters, tweeting a false claim about “inner-city” crime nearing record highs.  

As his campaign again attempts to right itself after plummeting in the polls, Trump has argued that black voters should support him because Democratic policies have failed their communities. He’s largely relied on stereotypes and generalizations to make his case, and it hasn’t been especially effective: Trump’s support among black voters continues to hover in the single digits. 

Still, Trump is sticking to this approach even as it alienates the people he’s ostensibly trying to attract. Last week, Nykea Aldridge, cousin of NBA star Dwyane Wade, was shot and killed in Chicago. Trump’s reaction to the death of Aldridge, a mother of four, was to brag that it proved him right about unsafe cities, and to seize on it as evidence that “African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!” Not even Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, could defend that statement.

On Monday, Trump fired off several tweets about crime in cities, again leaning heavily on stereotypes and dubious claims:  

There’s a problem with Trump’s claims, though: Violent crime is on the decline nationally, having hit its lowest point in decades in 2014. And while some cities saw upticks in the homicide rate in 2015 from the previous year, the overall trend in most cities is still downward. Year-over-year changes don’t really give you the whole picture.

In New York City, for example, there were 350 homicides in 2015 versus 333 in 2014. But that’s nowhere near the city’s peak. In 1990, 2,245 people were killed in New York City. Something similar is happening in Chicago, where the murder rate fell dramatically from the 1990s to the mid-2000s. There are, of course, exceptions ― 2015 was Baltimore’s deadliest year on record, with 344 homicides.

A Brennan Center for Justice analysis of America’s 30 largest cities found that while the homicide rate did rise in 19 of those cities between 2014 and 2015, the overall number of homicides is relatively low compared to the 1990s.

“Murder rates are so low that a small numerical increase can lead to a large percentage change,” reads the report. “Murder rates vary widely from year to year, and there is little evidence of a national coming wave in violent crime.”

Also on HuffPost: Donald Trump Wants To Remind White People That Gun Violence Is A Black Problem

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

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Vidya V. Trivedi, my grandmother, passed away a year ago. To me, she passed down her hairline, her Gujarati daal recipe, her love of storytelling. I never properly thanked her.

My grandma wasn’t perfect, (nobody is, though it’s tempting to remember the dead that way) but she did what she could with what she had, and then some.

She only went to school until fifth grade, and always said she wanted to learn more, that she learned English quickly for that one year they taught it to her, but the schools kept shutting down so she wasn’t able to finish. She spoke reverently of her parents; I imagine she missed them dearly.

My grandma got married in her late teens, in India, in 1947. She married a freedom fighter and had supported the cause for azaadi, for freedom from British Raj. She always used to joke that she lost her own independence the year India gained it. She had nine pregnancies, eight children, seven daughters. She knew pain well, and prayer too.

Alongside my grandfather and often with my dad and his sisters, she visited Shantikunj, in Haridwar, an ashram where she completed countless anusthaans and met with our gurus, Pandit Shri Ram Sharma Acharya and Mata Bhagwati Devi Sharma. She fasted devotedly and memorized all the prayers she chanted.

Older, wiser, tired, after weddings and grandchildren expanded her clan, she and my grandfather temporarily followed my dad into diaspora, holding my baby brother’s hand in pictures at Chicago’s Sears Tower, the Saint Louis Gateway Arch, and the beautiful BAPS Swaminarayan Mandir in Chicago. A world so vastly different, so far.

Steadfastly and until her dying days, she was not afraid of hard work―out of necessity perhaps, or maybe habit, unwavering regardless. In the tradition of women of our kind, the soles of her feet were cracked and the muscles in her forearms were strong. While she worked, she told stories.

She told tales of Narad Muni and Narasimha, of angry rishis and selfless children, Shabri’s devotion, Hanuman’s strength, Arjun and Eklavya’s archery, Indra’s court in devlok. I think she knew them all. She told the stories to anyone who would listen, and with every beginning, I couldn’t wait to hear the middle and the end. I was educated by this woman, the one who never got past fifth grade.

One summer when I was in middle school, we watched all 94 episodes of the 1988 Mahabharata TV series. Twice. My grandfather and older sister watched with us often, but it was my grandmother and I who never missed an episode. She wouldn’t let me skip past the narration at the beginning when the the voice of Time preambled the action, and we would pause periodically so she could tell the backstory when context or details from scripture were left out in the visualization. Even when my sister and I just wanted to get to the action, my grandma found joy in each story’s telling. Though I’ve now forgotten most of the stories, I remember that joy.

At first, when she died, I felt a confused sense of regret that I couldn’t remember more of those stories, that maybe I let them die, that maybe my children and grandchildren will never understand storytelling or Hinduism because I couldn’t remember. I was young, and she told a lot of details. Her stories were always about Hinduism, drawn from ancient texts, committed to her memory but somehow escaping mine. Stories about names I sometimes found hard to pronounce and superstitions I couldn’t make sense of. Stories that nonetheless captivated me entirely.

I miss her, we all do. It’s been a year since she died, and I think of her often. I hope that she has found peace; I’m not sure how much she found on Earth. I may not know remember all the stories she told, but I remember my grandmother’s story. I think that’s the one I’ll tell my children and my grandchildren. It is a part of who I am, and she told it not in Sanskrit or as an oral history but through hard work, prayer, resilience. Her story is about Hinduism, and it’s also about education, fighting for freedom, motherhood, service, diaspora―a story I will never forget.

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A 17-year-old girl who vanished outside a South Carolina resort in 2009 was gang-raped before she was murdered and fed to alligators, according to an explosive new report citing an FBI agent’s testimony.

An inmate who claims to have witnessed Brittanee Drexel’s final moments recently spoke out about the teen’s death in a stirring jailhouse confessional, according to a federal court transcript obtained by the Post and Courier.

FBI Agent Gerrick Munoz testified last week that inmate Taquan Brown, who is serving a 25-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter, said that just days after the Rochester, New York, teen vanished outside Myrtle Beach’s BlueWater Resort, he saw her being held in a “stash house” in McClellanville, South Carolina. It’s the same town, located about 60 miles south of Myrtle Beach, where authorities said her cell phone gave off its last ping.

The agent said that Brown alleged that in the house, Brown saw several men, including Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor, who was 16 at the time, “sexually abusing Brittanee Drexel.”

Brown said he met Taylor’s father, Shaun Taylor, at the house and gave him money, according to the FBI testimony cited by the Post and Courier. Brown also said Drexel was “pistol-whipped” for trying to escape, and then he heard two gunshots. Brown assumed that Shaun Taylor shot the girl. He alleged that the teen’s body was later wrapped up and removed from the property.

The FBI agent testified that several witnesses have since said that Drextel’s “body was placed in a pit, or gator pit, to have her body disposed of. Eaten by the gators,” according to the Post and Courier’s report.

Drexel was last seen on April 25, 2009, after traveling to South Carolina for spring break.

Authorities have said that she left the Bar Harbor Hotel to meet friends at the nearby BlueWater Resort. She arrived safely, surveillance video showed, but left about 10 minutes later and was never publicly seen again.

In June, police said in a press conference that they believed Drexel left the Myrtle Beach area and was held captive for “several days” before she was killed. “After seven long years of waiting and praying for the return of my daughter we know she isn’t coming home alive,” her mother, Dawn Drexel, said at the time. “Brittanee’s life was stolen from her in a brutal and senseless fashion.”

In July, an attorney for the Drextel family said a suspect or suspects had been named in the case, but didn’t release more details.

The Post and Courier reports that the FBI agent said authorities have searched the alleged stash house and multiple alligator pits in the area, but have not recovered any sign of the missing teen. He also said that since the June press conference, cops have received some tips that corroborate Brown’s version of events.

A different inmate in the Georgetown County jail has also offered secondhand information in the case, the FBI agent testified. That inmate says he was told Da’Shaun Taylor picked Drextel up in Myrtle Beach and took her to McClellanville, where the agent said Taylor “showed her off” to friends, “offering her to them.”

Once news of her disappearance spread nationally, the FBI agent testified that Brown said the captors killed Drextel and disposed of her body.

The shocking testimony emerged amid an unrelated bond hearing for Da’Shaun Taylor, who is facing a potential life sentence in connection with a 2011 McDonald’s robbery.

Though the now 25-year-old has completed a probation sentence for his role as a getaway driver in the robbery, prosecutors are now trying to bring federal charges against him in the case. His defense attorneys have accused those prosecutors of trying to “squeeze” Da’Shaun Taylor for new information in the Drexel case, the Post and Courier reported.

Joan Taylor, Shaun Taylor’s wife and Da’Shaun Taylor’s mother, agrees. She says the FBI is simply so desperate to crack the missing person case that they’re unconscionably relying on the story of a man who wants to pin the crime on the Taylor family in order to reduce his sentence or gain some other advantage.

“It’s sad to say that the system that we depend on legally so much would just want to close this case that they would take anybody and ruin our family for it,” she told The Post and Courier.

A representative for Da’Shaun Taylor’s defense attorneys declined comment when reached by The Huffington Post on Monday. Columbia’s FBI bureau referred questions to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which also declined comment due to the ongoing investigation.

In 2010, Shaun Taylor was one of three men named as a suspect in the attempted abduction of a 20-year-old woman from outside the very same BlueWater Resort where Drexel is believed to have gone missing, ABC 15 reported at the time.

Charges were eventually dropped against Taylor, who denied being involved in either case.

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The Spirit seed within my heart — like a flickering candle light — is always humble, but powerful. True strength, true power is gentle, and immensely beautiful in its modesty. It’s not about some trick or technology, forcing seeds to ripen quickly and prematurely to gather profits. No. It’s about slow, steady journey, savoring each step, contemplating each experience. It’s about growing strong, yet, flexible roots deep into the rich soil of our inner world. Outer appearances disappear; masks fall away, shattered into thousand pieces.

The organic process of growth is fascinating, unpredictable, refreshing in its continuous originality. You and I digest the gifts from the Spirit differently. We nurture the seed of Light within us in unique ways. Oh, the beauty of human diversity. Yet, at the same time, we are all of the same Light.

While time in solitude to explore the heights of the Soul and the depths of the Spirit is required for our inner development, we are never alone. We are always “all one” with our Highest Self in our own brilliant column of Light. We feel abandoned only when we are “on loan” to the lower vibrations of greed for earthly power and money. We suffer loneliness when we loose the sense of awe for nature, when we forget to be joyful and curious about Life.

Beware of the cosmic dark hole, the vortex, devoid of Life where our seeds of Light can shrivel up and die. We all venture into this void at times, but we need to return to Light, Love, Life through compassion and forgiveness towards others, as well as towards ourselves.

The Sun burst.
A million golden splinters
fell upon the Earth.
Then night came.
Now men are beating each other
for a spark of Light.
But I have hidden
in my heart
a splinter of the Sun —
therefore, I am not cold.
(This profound poem is from an unknown Russian author.
If you happen to know who wrote or translated it, let me know in the comments below. Thank you.)

Please remember that we all have a spark of Cosmic Light within. Each one of us. There’s no need to steel it from another, to kill in order to have. Don’t fight for shining objects. Stop yearning for that heap of “gold” in your neighbor’s yard. Appreciate the abundance in your own home. Discover the riches within you.

Know thyself. Love yourself. Nurture your uniqueness to blossom. Share your gifts with fellow human beings. Expand your vibrations to create communities. Weave a web of compassion around the globe.

Over to you, dear Soulful Reader:
How do you nurture the seed of Light within your Soul?

This article first appeared on the Soulful Sparks of Inspiration website.

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This mirror being smashed into a million pieces by a hammer at a 120,000 frames-per-second is a true sight to see. The Slow Mo Guys are back at it, showing us some more insanely delayed close ups of shattered glass.

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