(Akiit.com) With the recent death of pop legend and musical icon Michael Jackson, people from around the world have taken pause to reflect upon his life, his music and his humanitarian message. The final period now placed at the end of his one of a kind life and career, Mr. Jackson’s work now stands as a witness to a world in need. Joining the ranks of those few persons, spoken and unspoken, who have diligently worked for freedom, justice and equality, his legacy will be remembered as a testimony to world peace and universal brotherhood.

Bringing to mind the necessity of human redemption, the condition of today’s common man bears witness that “greed, lust and inordinate self-interest” have together caused tremendous bloodshed and suffering. Not only with the earth’s human population, but also with the environment, the few who rule “this world” have done so through the degradation of the impoverished and defenseless.

The poor, many of whom live on less than two dollars a day, labor under multi-national indifference and corporate deal-making that treats them as assets or liabilities to be exploited. While the well-to-do knowingly or unknowingly live at their expense, the poor have few voices except for those bold teachers from among us who dare to speak truth to power.

Through his recordings, Michael Jackson lives and continues to teach of “the man in the mirror.” As other past and present teachers have taught, the message of individual transformation continues with his legacy. Providing the keys of redemption for both rich and poor alike, humanity, with all of its flaws and defects, is better served when voices of truth emerge as reminders. From the pulpit, to the street corner or within music itself, the speaking of truth banishes falsehood while giving people the opportunity to examine, analyze and correct their ways. A true mercy for humanity, right guidance and correction may take many forms as those who teach virtue struggle to do so in a world of opposition.

Reflective of a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach, the most effective servants and advocates for the poor have usually been from among those encouraging change from within self. While government and philanthropic organizations clearly have a role to play in the correction of society’s ills, it is the collective change of an ethos that ultimately forgives our trespasses and heals our world.
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(Akiit.com) I write this article at the risk of offending my daughters, who are all in the “We think Lil Wayne and Chris Brown were sent by God” age group. It doesn’t matter if you’ve admitted to beating your girlfriend, or if you use every word other than “woman” to describe females. If you are rich and famous, you’re suddenly sexy, cool and dateable. That’s just the way things work for some teenagers (and some grown folks too).

As I rode in the car for 16 hours listening to the radio with my daughters, I noticed that Lil Wayne seemed to feature in every song. I think I upset the girls when I said, “Yeah, Lil Wayne’s song about wanting to have sex with every girl in the world reminds me of Eazy-E…Oh by the way, he eventually died of AIDS.”

Yes, I had just puked on my daughters’ parade, but I had to say it. Kids don’t want to hear that kind of stuff, it disrupts their celebrity buzz. So, the same way my daughters grimaced when I compared Lil Wayne to Eazy-E, some execs at BET might grimace when they read this article. I hope they will take comfort in the fact that I am not into blanket indictments. But that never seems to matter in a dichotomous world, where you are either a critic or a supporter. I’m just a man with a brain and two eyeballs, and I try to use them both.

I’ve done a great deal of work with BET, and I’ve always loved it. The staff is courteous, respectful and professional. Many of their specials have been informative, progressive and provocative. I do not, however, consider the most recent BET Awards to be one of these shows.

The great challenge for BET is that there is a genuine concern from the African American community that BET has slipped away from acknowledging any kind of double bottom line that merges necessary profitability with equally critical social responsibility. For every million dollars earned in revenue, there is at least another 20 million dollars in lost productivity created by a generation that was raised to shake their butts in the club all night while holding a bottle of Cristal. Now, every black boy wants to be a rapper, and millions of little girls think that the word “bitch” or “hoe” in a song means that the rapper is talking about somebody else. Sorry sweetie, but Soulja Boy wants to “super soak” you too, and you’re dancing while he says it.
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(Akiit.com) Michael Jackson, the American pop legend, died of a cardiac arrest in a Los Angeles hospital just weeks before he hoped to resurrect his four-decade career with a series of sold-out shows in London.

The King of Pop was working for the past few weeks with a team of top choreographers to perfect a new dance move to rival the moonwalk. Four mornings a week, an SUV with darkened windows drove Michael Jackson through the gates outside a nondescript building near the Burbank airport. He spent the next six hours on a soundstage.

Jackson planned to perform between 18 and 22 songs, joined by smoke, fire, and acrobats in the concerts. Ten dancers were working with Jackson, scampering across as many as 22 different sets, in what was to be the biggest, most technologically advanced arena show – and the most expensive – ever mounted!

Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk), who has known Jackson for 15 years, said Jackson was “very energetic” during workouts and “was in fantastic shape”. Ferrigno, 57, said he last trained with Jackson about three weeks and would go to the singer’s home three or four times a week.

The two used tools like exercise balls and did a lot of core training to get Jackson in shape. “He didn’t look like he was in pain because he was on the treadmill. He did the stretching exercises.” In addition to training, it seems that Jackson kept a strict diet.

A four-hour physical with an independent physician this spring found no medical problems.

But now, Michael Jackson is dead? How Did Michael Jackson Die?

Well, after suffering a cardiac arrest, a little more than 24 hours after his last rehearsal, the King of Pop went under a deep coma and later on declared dead by the staff hospital.

For many of us, until the death of Michael Jackson, sudden death from cardiac arrest is a major health problem that’s received much less publicity than heart attack.

The most common underlying reason for patients to die suddenly from cardiac arrest is coronary heart disease. Most cardiac arrests that lead to sudden death occur when the electrical impulses in the diseased heart become rapid (ventricular tachycardia) or chaotic (ventricular fibrillation) or both. This irregular heart rhythm (arrhythmia) causes the heart to suddenly stop beating.

The heart has an internal electrical system that controls the rhythm of the heartbeat. Problems can cause abnormal heart rhythms, called arrhythmias. There are many types of arrhythmia. During an arrhythmia, the heart can beat too fast, too slow, or it can stop beating. Sudden cardiac arrest occurs when the heart develops an arrhythmia that causes it to stop beating. This is different than a heart attack, where the heart usually continues to beat but blood flow to the heart is blocked.

There are many possible causes of cardiac arrest. They include coronary heart disease, heart attack, electrocution, drowning, or choking. There may not be a known cause to the cardiac arrest.

What is clear is that there are ways to lower one’s risk of sudden cardiac death such as eating healthy, exercising, not smoking and taking aspirins. The trouble, though, is that patients often don’t think they’re at serious risk until they are actually experiencing an attack. In about a third of all sudden deaths due to coronary disease, death is the first sign that anything major is wrong.

A sudden cardiac arrest is, of course, unexpected, but the process that causes it may begin many years before. In middle-aged men, it’s virtually always caused by degeneration in the wall of a coronary artery.

The sad fact is that the majority of acute heart attacks are associated with “non-significant” plaques. These plaques may suddenly rupture, which quickly leads to the formation of a blood clot. The blood clot acutely occludes the coronary artery, causing a heart attack.
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(Akiit.com) Michael Jackson got his final revenge on his alleged, tyrannical, abusive, and unfeeling father, Joe. He didn’t leave him a red cent in his will. That of course is the party line about Joe Jackson. Few fathers have ever been more reviled. Joe was slammed hard for laughing and joking with Reverend Jesse Jackson outside the family compound a day after Jackson’s death. He was slammed even harder when he turned up at the BET Awards allegedly shopping a record deal while uttering a few standard, impersonal platitudes about Jackson. And then the ultimate indignity, Michael allegedly blanking him out of his purported will.

With Joe, it was never the proverbial case of you love him or hate him. It was just simply hate. The line was seemingly set by Jackson in his autobiography in 1988. He lightly hinted at regrets over skipping a normal childhood, the forced march into child stardom, and of course the beatings. He minced no words in saying that he wanted to get back at Joe for the abuse.

But Jackson also admitted that his most vivid memory was of rehearsals, countless hours, spent in the studio to get the notes and the dance steps right. Joe’s ferocious push to harness his son’s talent and whip them into a world class act wasn’t just to satisfy a father’s obsessive ego, or vicarious thrills through his children, or dollar signs dancing in his eyes. To Joe, and so many other hard case black fathers of that time, saw entertainment and the stage as his son’s ticket out of the ghetto; a sure fire escape for potentially at risk young black boys escape from poverty, racism, and the perils of the streets.

In an age when parenting roles were far more rigid and sharply defined, Joe’s idea of being a loving, caring and responsible father was to bring home the paycheck, expect their dinner to be waiting on the table, and to be stern, tough, and no nonsense with their children, especially their sons. Joe’s fierce drive paid big dividends with the Jackson’s. The fame, dollars, and adulation rolled in. They boys did not do drugs, join gangs, commit any crimes, and they could not be accused of educational or professional underachievement.
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(Akiit.com) Been slow around here lately, as I do miss seeing the kids all playing across the street… Since it’s summertime, not much activity seems to be going on… Still for a chance it’s peaceful… Not much noise, and so on… On a good note, a few of my tarheels got drafted… Four total, as I know Coach Roy Williams is so happy for the guys.. Glad to see good kids witness their dreams come true… On that note must pick up those discount moving boxes before the day is up… So let me go take care of this…

Written By CTA