Box Office Win

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 Susette Kelo’s Supreme Court case now has a Hollywood ending, just not the one she hoped for.

What Kelo wanted when she took her case to the high court more than a decade ago was to Susette Kelo’s Supreme Court case now has a Hollywood ending, just not the one she hoped for.

What Kelo wanted when she took her case to the high court more than a decade ago was to get to stay in her little pink house in New London, Connecticut. The city was trying to force her out to make way for development, and Kelo didn’t want to go. The high court ruled against her.

Now, however, Kelo’s story has been turned into a movie, “Little Pink House,” opening Friday in limited nationwide release. It’s a movie she and those involved in the film hope will get people to think about the government’s power to take private property for public use. Governments can use that power, called eminent domain, as long as they fairly compensate owners.

Kelo, who was in Washington this week to speak about the film, said what city and state officials did “ripped our hearts out.”

Kelo wasn’t looking for a fight when she bought her house overlooking the Thames River in 1997 and had it painted Odessa Rose pink. Divorced and with five grown sons, she was looking for a place of her own. She found it in the 100-year-old cottage. Shortly after she moved in, pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer announced it would move in nearby, building a research facility that opened in 2001.

New London hoped Pfizer’s move could help revitalize the city and, with the help of a private nonprofit development corporation, sought to redevelop land near the facility. A hotel, housing, office space, restaurants and shopping were planned. To get it done, the city authorized the use of eminent domain.

Kelo thought that was wrong, and she and a small group of other homeowners took on the city. They acknowledged eminent domain could be used to take their homes for public uses such as a road or military base, but they argued the planned development didn’t count.

“She was just fearless,” said Oscar-nominated actress Catherine Keener, who plays Kelo in the movie. “She took on everybody.”

Kelo had help. The Virginia-based Institute for Justice represented her and the other homeowners. The group was also instrumental in the new movie’s making, bringing a book about the case to the attention of filmmakers Courtney Moorehead Balaker and Ted Balaker.

Courtney Balaker, the movie’s writer and director, said she was “blown away” by Kelo’s case but also by Kelo herself. She compared her story to that of Erin Brockovich, a nonlawyer and divorced mother of three who took on utility company PG&E over contaminated groundwater in Hinkley, California, inspiring a 2000 movie. One big difference: Brockovich won.

In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled against Kelo 5-4. Three justices who sided with the city — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy — are still on the court. The two others — John Paul Stevens and David Souter — have since retired. The justices wrote that the city had carefully crafted a development plan it believed would benefit the community. They agreed the use of eminent domain was permitted.

“I want people to walk away thinking about if that’s right,” Balaker said.

Stevens, the Supreme Court justice who authored the opinion, has acknowledged it was the most unpopular one he wrote. Justice Antonin Scalia, who dissented from the decision, ranked it among the court’s biggest mistakes.

After the decision, more than 20 states significantly revised their laws to make it more difficult to take property through eminent domain, said Dana Berliner, litigation director for the Institute for Justice.

Those changes didn’t help Kelo, who had to move. And despite the lengthy legal battle, her land still stands empty. Pfizer announced in 2009 that it would leave New London. But submarine builder General Dynamics Electric Boat now occupies its former facility with many more employees, said New London Mayor Michael Passero.

Passero said that’s now helping spur development. Passero, a Democrat who grew up in the city, said while the movie vilifies the development corporation, he believes the people behind it had good motives, though they also made mistakes. More than anything, he said, the story is a cautionary tale about two sides becoming so polarized they couldn’t find a middle ground.

Kelo’s little pink house was ultimately saved. Disassembled and moved but still painted pink, it stands on New London’s Franklin Street. Although Kelo doesn’t live there, she says she thinks about her former home and her legal fight often.

“A lot of people ask: ‘How are you all doin’? ... How are your neighbors? How did you survive this?’” she said of recent appearances in connection with the movie. She answers that they’ve left the city, bought new homes and are trying to do “the best we can to recover.”

Railroad Can Seize Land

 

Sparta residents attend a Georgia Public Service Commission hearing on whether a railroad company can use eminent domain to condemn property in their community, in Atlanta, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Sigrun Albert, File)

A judge has ruled that a Georgia railroad can buy land against the will of property owners to build a track, rebuffing a challenge that a libertarian group hoped could make it harder to use eminent domain to take property.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Craig Schwall Sr. ruled Feb. 4 that the Sandersville Railroad could condemn a 200-foot wide strip of property running 4.5 miles to build a rail line serving a rock quarry and other users. Landowners fighting the railroad had appealed a Georgia Public Service Commission ruling allowing the land-taking.

Judge Schwall kept a freeze on construction for now, with landowners saying they would appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.

The case matters because private entities need to condemn private land for railroads and facilities including pipelines and electric transmission lines.

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The Sandersville Railroad, owned by an influential Georgia family, wants to connect the quarry to the CSX railroad at Sparta, allowing products to be shipped widely. Sparta is a mostly Black rural town about 85 miles southeast of Atlanta in one of Georgia’s poorest counties.

Sandersville has agreements to buy some of the 18 parcels it needs. But other owners say losing a strip of property would spoil land they treasure, and that some families have owned for a century.

“Every day that Sandersville isn’t coming onto our land and starting to build is a good day,” Diane Smith, one of the owners, said in a statement. “But we won’t rest easy until we know for sure that they’ll never be able to take our land from us.”

Brian Brodrick, a lawyer for the railroad, urged opposed property owners in a Feb. 6 statement “to return to the negotiating table so we can bring new opportunities and channels of trade to all the citizens of Hancock County and the region.” He said the spur would have “minimal impacts” on neighbors.

Some people in the rural neighborhood think the railroad would enable expansion at a quarry owned by Heidelberg Materials, a publicly traded German firm. They dislike the quarry because it generates noise, dust and truck traffic.

Supporters say if the railroad is built, the quarry will move its operation farther from houses, trains will reduce trucks on roads and the railroad will build berms to shield residents.

Railroads have long had the power of eminent domain, but Georgia law says such land seizures must be for “public use.” Opponents targeted the project by saying it would only benefit the quarry.

The Sandersville Railroad says there are other users, including a company located at the quarry that blends gravel and asphalt for paving. Several companies have said they would truck products to load them onto the new line, saying they want access to markets served by CSX.

Schwall found the railroad met the public use standard, saying it was necessary for the “functioning” of Sandersville and “also serves a public purpose because it will provide a channel of trade in east middle Georgia.”

The group representing opponents, the Institute for Justice, hoped to use the case to chip away at eminent domain, the power to legally take private land while paying fair compensation.

The libertarian-leaning legal group lost a landmark 2005 case allowing the city of New London, Connecticut, to take land from one private owner and transfer it to another private owner for economic development. Schwall cited that case in his ruling.

“We remain committed to proving to the courts that a private railroad’s desire to build a speculative new line entirely for the benefit of a handful of private companies is not a public use under the U.S. and Georgia constitutions and Georgia’s eminent domain laws,” Institute for Justice attorney Bill Maurer said in a statement. 

Long Life

 

Eat to live to bring about a return to perfection and long life; like Noah and Methuselah, who lived nearly 1000 years of our calendar year (containing 365 1/4 days).

LONG LIFE IS NOT enjoyed by eating food which will shorten and destroy life. Under this White race of people, we were not taught how to eat to live. They, the White devils, are not here to teach us, the Lost and Found members of the Aboriginal Nation, to live a long life. They were put here to cut short our lives, and for the last 6,000 years they have done so.

Eating as beasts eat (Holy Qur’an) all during the day and night will kill us at an early age—very few of the White race have regularity about their eating habits. Our stomachs are worn out in a few years, due to the continuation of trying to digest the food that we eat—some being of the type of foods which we should not dare put into our stomachs.

Poison drinks along with a mixture of good and poison foods have shortened our lives, on the average of about 63 1/2 years at the present time. This is a long way from the 600-800-900 years of life of our fathers.

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WE ARE A LONG WAY off from the life of the people on Mars, Who Allah in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, to Whom Praise is due forever, taught me, lived an average life of the equivalent of 1200 years of our earth calendar. This in fact has been the Original Nation’s calendar year ever since God created the Heavens and the Earth, so teaches the Holy Qur’an.

If you want a beautiful appearance, eat the proper food and eat one meal a day. When you are used to eating one meal a day, then eat one meal every other day. Your children may be able to eat two meals per week. This will put them into centuries as Noah and Methuselah.

Keys To Long Life

 

Fasting is a greater cure of our ills—both mentally and physically—than all of the drugs of the earth combined into one bottle or into a billion bottles. Allah (God) in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, has taught me that fasting and the right kind of food are the cures to our ills. He has told me there is no cure in drugs and medicine. And this, the world is now learning. We can take medicine all of our lives until it kills us, but we are still ailing with the same old diseases.

The bad food and drinks we are putting into our bodies keep us a victim to illness. There are not too many nice doctors who will tell you that drugs are not good for you, because they paid for their learning and want to keep practicing.

But “How to Eat to Live” is what we want to know, and have wanted to know all of our lives. Every man or woman wants to know how he (or she) can prolong his (or her) life.

Nature teaches us to stay here in this life as long as we can. Nature has never taught anyone that he should leave this life and find another one somewhere else, because we only have one life. If this life is destroyed, we would have a hard time trying to get more life; it is impossible. So, try to keep this life you have as long as possible. Go when you cannot stay here any longer.

ALLAH TAUGHT ME that one meal a day would keep us here for a long time; we would live over 100 years. And eating one meal every two days would lengthen our lives just that much longer. He told me you would never be sick, eating one meal every three days. The fact that fasting is the cure to 90 percent of our ills is known by the medical scientists. But, they do not teach you that.

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They know that tobacco, hard whiskey and alcohol are not good for you and will shorten your life and kill you. But most of them are too weak themselves to stop drinking or smoking or chewing tobacco. So they do not teach you that tobacco and alcoholic drinks—made into what is known as whiskey, beer and wine—are not good for you, although they know it to be true.

They will say, “Yes, it is good for you if you are temperate.” But, they know that once you get started on that stuff, it is such an enemy that it just takes you into its power, and it is almost like trying to break an iron chain to get away from the habit. So do not use tobacco in any form and you will live a few years longer.

Fast once a month for three days or four days—or for whatever length of time you are able to go without food without harming yourself—and you will feel good. Did you not know that if you would stop eating pig and the food that you should not eat; stop eating three and four times a day and stop drinking whiskey, beer and wine, you would save much in the way of money?

In prolonging your life by abstaining from the pig, alcoholic drinks and tobacco, you, also, will be adding money to your savings of hundreds and thousands of dollars. You will be depriving those pig raisers and tobacco growers and alcoholic distilleries of millions of dollars that they rob you of which hasten you to your grave.

YOU COULD STOP the tobacco growers from growing that stinking weed, by turning away from the use of it. And you could stop the pig raising by not eating the stinking hog. These things are death to your children in their early ages. And, they even affect the reproductive organs of people in the early ages, as well as affect the heart, the lungs, and your sharpness in thinking. And, after all of this, you die a victim of poison and commercialization. Learn to eat to live.

Rio1 - For You

‘Smear Campaign’

 

The UK foreign office runs a ‘smear campaign’ against African Stream

African Stream says leaked documents have revealed the British Foreign Office’s plot to run a smear campaign against the independent, pan-African media outlet.

Citing confidential documents, e-mails and WhatsApp conversations, African Stream said the London-based Center for Information Resilience (CIR) is at the center of the plot.

According to the report, CIR has recruited African journalists to write “smear” articles claiming that African Stream is "a Russian-funded propaganda outlet."

That’s while the claim is “not backed by any evidence other than similar accusations by the US government,” African Stream said.

Clarifying the motive behind the CIR's campaign, African Stream's editor-in-chief, Ahmed Kaballo, cited plenty of evidence indicating that the organization is firmly connected to the British and other Western governments and their intelligence agencies.

He said the alleged “independent counter-disinformation” organization was founded by two former British Foreign Office operatives, namely Ross Burley and Adam Rutland, adding that most of its senior staff have also worked with US, Britain's and Australia's intelligence wings.

Citing Declassified UK, he added that the organization has received significant amounts of funding from the UK Foreign Office, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Australian Foreign Ministry.

“Knowing who funds the CIR makes it clear why they are coming after us and accusing us of being Russia-affiliated.  Our reporting, which exposes the atrocities committed by the imperialist powers against our people, has rubbed them the wrong way,” African Stream said in a post on X.

African Stream stressed that such campaigns will not undermine its determination to report anti-imperialist content.

“This attack is not the first; we know it won't be the last.  But when the next one comes, it will also find us on our feet, not our knees.  No number of assaults by imperialism's attack dogs will deter us from our duties as pan-African, anti-imperialist journalists.”

African Stream is a Nairobi-based online independent media outlet covering affairs concerning Africans at home and abroad.

DRC fighting prompts EU

 

Trucks and cars full of Congolese soldiers carrying their weapons could be seen pulling out of Bukavu, South Kivu province on Feb. 14, 2025. It came as Rwanda-backed rebels in eastern Congo claimed that they have seized a second airport in the region following a days-long advance. (Photo by AP)

The European Union has considered taking measures "urgently" amid deadly fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

After Rwandan-backed forces seized a second major city amid an escalation of their years-long fighting against DRC government forces, the EU said on Saturday it was "urgently" considering all options in response to the widening rebel offensive.

Having captured the key provincial capital of Goma last month, M23 fighters pushed south and took a vital airport before marching virtually unchecked into another key city, Bukavu, on Friday, according to local officials and humanitarian sources.

"Alarmed by news of Rwandan-backed M23 forces seizing Kavumu airport and entering Bukavu, ignoring international appeals for ceasefire," European Commission spokesman Anouar El Anouni wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

"The EU urgently considers all the means at its disposal. The ongoing violation of the DRC's territorial integrity will not go unanswered."

Meanwhile, Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance [Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC)], a political-military coalition of groups including the M23, seeks to overthrow the government of the DRC’s President Felix Tshisekedi.

Nangaa has vowed to march thousands of kilometers from the eastern region to take Congo's capital city Kinshasa.

Hundreds of armed groups are fighting in eastern DRC, aiming to gain control of mineral resources rich swathes of the country.

One of the world's biggest lithium deposits is said to be in the country. The metal has medicinal applications and is also used in a variety of rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles, mobile phones, and laptops.

Last month, the Rwanda-backed Tutsi-led M23 rebel forces have quickly moved southward after seizing the key eastern city of Goma, the main city in the mineral-rich east where Chinese firms have been making investments. The Congolese government accuses Rwanda of sowing chaos in the region in order to benefit from its rich resources, a claim Rwanda has denied.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, DR Congo's President Felix Tshisekedi called for Rwanda to be sanctioned, accusing it of having "expansionist ambitions", the AFP news agency reports.

"We will no longer put up with our strategic resources being plundered for the benefit of foreign interests under the complicit gaze of those who feed on chaos," he is quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, the continent's heads of state are meeting for the African Union (AU) summit in Ethiopia.

At the summit opening in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Saturday, UN chief Antonio Guterres said a regional escalation "must be avoided at all costs".

It follows an appeal from the European Parliament, which this week urged the EU to suspend a minerals deal with Rwanda.

Lawmakers in Strasbourg on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a non-binding resolution that also called for the bloc's 27 member states to freeze all direct budget support as well as military and security assistance to Rwanda.

Meantime, the rebel forces' advance continues despite the international calls for a ceasefire and a resumption of peace talks between Kinshasa and the rebels.

In recent weeks the DRC conflict has killed thousands and driven vast numbers from their homes. There are reportedly 350,000 internally displaced people in Congo, presently.

Somalis denounce Trump’s plan

  

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Alb Muhammad

The world has reacted angrily to a shocking plan by US President Donald Trump to take control of Gaza and forcibly deport Palestinians from their land.

Somalis have raised their voices as well. They have denounced the plan, calling for Muslim unity to support the Palestinian cause and end the Israeli occupation.