Read: British Royalty Dined on Human Flesh (But Don’t Worry it Was 300 Years Ago)

This painting of Charles I’s execution in 1649 shows people surging forward to mop up the former king’s blood. It was thought to have healing properties.

According to The Mail Online (published May 21, 2011):

They have long been famed for their love of lavish banquets and rich recipes.  But what is less well known is that the British royals also had a taste for human flesh. A new book on medicinal cannibalism has revealed that possibly as recently as the end of the 18th century British royalty swallowed parts of the human body. The author adds that this was not a practice reserved for monarchs but was widespread among the well-to-do in Europe.

Even as they denounced the barbaric cannibals of the New World, they applied, drank, or wore powdered Egyptian mummy, human fat, flesh, bone, blood, brains and skin.

Moss taken from the skulls of dead soldiers was even used as a cure for nosebleeds, according to Dr Richard Sugg at Durham University.

Dr Sugg said: ‘The human body has been widely used as a therapeutic agent with the most popular treatments involving flesh, bone or blood…”

Read full article here

The book mentioned in the article is called Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires, will be published on June 29 by Routledge and charts the largely forgotten history of European corpse medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians.

Read: Vanity Fair’s “Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door”

A photographer’s representation of a typical scene at one of the motels in Central Connecticut used for sex trafficking. photo by Larry Fink

Not only this story but entire notion of human trafficking makes my soul hurt. I can only hope there is special place in hell for the pimps and johns that support this deplorable industry.

According to Amy Fine Collins of Vanity Fair (published: May 24, 2011):

Even as celebrity activists such as Emma Thompson, Demi Moore, and Mira Sorvino raise awareness about commercial sex trafficking, survivor Rachel Lloyd publishes her memoir Girls Like Us, and the Senate introduces a new bipartisan bill for victim support, the problem proliferates across continents, in casinos, on streets, and directly into your mobile device. And, as Amy Fine Collins shows, human trafficking is much closer to home than you think; victims, younger than ever, are just as likely to be the homegrown American girl next door as illegally imported foreigners. Having gained access to victims, law-enforcement officials, and a convicted trafficker, Collins follows a major case that put to the test the federal government’s Trafficking Victims Protection Act….

There are more young American girls entering the commercial sex industry—an estimated 300,000 at this moment—and their ages have been dropping drastically. “The average starting age for prostitution is now 13,” says Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (gems), a Harlem-based organization that rescues young women from “the life…”

From page 2:

In the fall of 2003, after turning 18, Gwen headed down to Hartford to visit her Aunt Lucy, her mother’s sister. Her aunt, in turn, introduced her niece to Brian Forbes. “She told me he was a really nice guy and stuff,” Gwen said. Employing a technique not unlike the “love-bombing” used by cults, Brian Forbes began to wine and dine her. “He was really nice,” Gwen recalled. “You know, he could give me, you know, anything I wanted.” Pimps refer to this trust-building courtship phase as “seasoning,” and they can be extremely patient. Forensic pediatrician Dr. Sharon Cooper, a specialist in treating juvenile victims of sex trafficking, terms the process “grooming.” Girls acquainted with “the life” call it “spitting game.” Forbes, Scates notes, was a master at singling out, on the high-school campus or at the shopping center, the vulnerable girl with abysmal self-esteem. “And,” she says, “he sensed what lines would be most effective on which girl.”

When Forbes took Gwen to his two-bedroom apartment above a hair salon in East Hartford, he introduced her to “Toni,” a woman in her 20s living there. Toni (real name: Shanaya Hicks), he explained, was his girlfriend. Gwen was startled, as she had every reason to believe that Forbes had fallen head over heels for her.

Gwen’s Aunt Lucy, of course, had set her up. Intra-familial recruiting of sex slaves is a common practice. Eva, a Norwich, Connecticut, girl, was forced by her mother-in-law—via starvation, drugs, and threats to her baby boys—into prostituting herself at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, the Connecticut casinos. Caroline, the former 4-H member, was taken to a brothel by her best friend’s mom and a pastor, the Reverend Henry L. Price. Gwen was especially easy prey for her aunt and Forbes because, before she had even left Vermont, she was hooked on heroin—a virtual epidemic nowadays in the New England and New York suburbs because of its current purity, potency, and cheapness…

Read the full article here

The documentary Very Young Girls by David Schisgall deals with this same same heartbreaking issue and interviews many of the girls participating in Rachel Lloyd’s GEMS program. Very Young Girls is available on Netflix’s watch instantly.

RIP: Gil Scott-Heron

According to Alec Wilkinson of the New Yorker:

Gil Scott-Heron, who died late Friday at the age of sixty-two, was among the very first musicians to understand the power of declamatory singing, of holding forth above a line of percussion and blending words into the rhythmic peaks and recessive contours of beats. He did not discover this, he heard the Last Poets do it, but he used their form to his own purposes and produced singular and scornfully brilliant observations such as “Whitey on the Moon,” and “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” which sound as vital and scornfully brilliant now as they did when he recorded them nearly forty years ago. The more cerebral rap and hip-hop artists knew his work the way British blues aspirants such as Eric Clapton and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger knew the work of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.

Read the full article here

Watch the video for “Me and the Devil” from Heron’s 2010 album I’m New Here

Below we’ve embedded the first part of a Gil Scott-Heron documentary entitled The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film was directed by Don Letts in 1996 for BBC television and features commentaries from Chuck D, Mos Def, Richie Havens, Clive Davis and more. Links to the other three parts are below the video.

Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Photo Flash: Joplin, MO – The Aftermath (And How to Help)

Residents of Joplin, Mo, walk west on 26th Street near Maiden Lane after a tornado hit the southwest Missouri city on Sunday evening, May 22, 2011. The tornado tore a path a mile wide and four miles long destroying homes and businesses. (AP/Mike Gullett)

I’ve got some family living in Joplin, MO and I’m happy to say that to the best of my knowledge none of them were hurt. At least 89 people died and countless others were injured in the most destructive tornado in Missouri’s history. My Grandmother’s house of 53 years was completely destroyed. Luckily 82-year-old Treva was out of town visiting her sister when the tornado struck. My father, who also lives in Joplin, said this in an email last night, “The center of Joplin is gone – looks like a nuclear bomb went off…”

See more photos of the destruction here

Read about 4 ways to help the tornado victims

Watch a video of the tornado here

Donate money to the Red Cross here

Facebook pages of note:  Joplin, MO Tornado Recovery / Joplin, Mo. Tornado Survivors

Infographic: Do Students Eat Like Prisoners?

Via GOOD:

Hopefully you haven’t gotten the chance to taste jailhouse cuisine, but if you’re a product of the American school system, you probably have childhood memories of standing in line for grey mashed potatoes, half-thawed mystery meat, and slimy canned peaches. How do the trays measure up?

Take it from someone who’s eaten both, I’d choose the prison food. At least prisons in Kansas offer some solid vegetarian options to pick from. Check out PETA’s list of the top 10 vegetarian prisons here