Rockin in the Free World

Pearl Jam with Neil Young - Rockin in the free world Toronto 2011 COMPLETE lyrics

Neil Young: I'm OK With Donald Trump Using 'Rockin' in the Free World'

Rolling Stone
By Daniel Kreps
May 24, 2016

"Once the music goes out, everybody can use it for anything," rocker says

Donald Trump's presidential campaign got off to a rocky start last June when – after playing Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" after the rally announcing his presidential bid – the rocker immediately asked the mogul to stop using the Freedom track on the campaign trail. The issue sparked a public argument between Young and Trump, as Young stated that Trump was "not authorized" to use the track, while a spokesperson for the GOP candidate insisted they had acquired the necessary publishing rights.

However, in a new interview with Reuters, Young said he doesn't harbor any resentment towards Trump for using the Freedom track; in fact, he might have okayed the mogul's usage if Trump had just asked permission first.

"The fact that I said I was for Bernie Sanders and then [Trump] didn't ask me to use 'Rockin' in the Free World' doesn't mean that he can't use it," Young said. "He actually got a license to use it. I mean, he said he did and I believe him. So I got nothing against him. You know, once the music goes out, everybody can use it for anything. But if the artist who made it is saying you never spoke to them, if that means something to you, you probably will stop playing it. And it meant something to Donald and he stopped."

Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told Rolling Stone in June 2015 after Young protested the song's usage on the campaign trail, "We won't be using it again. There are plenty of other songs to choose from, despite the fact that Mr. Trump is a big fan and likes Neil very much. We will respect his wish and not use it because it's the right thing to do."

After the "Rockin' in the Free World" incident, Young's rep issued a statement saying, "Donald Trump was not authorized to use 'Rockin' in the Free World' in his presidential candidacy announcement. Neil Young, a Canadian citizen, is a supporter of Bernie Sanders for President of the United States of America." Eleven months later, Young is still supporting the Vermont senator.

"He's the only one talking about the issues, about issues that matter to me, the issues on my mind," Young told Reuters. "Problems of corporate control of democracy and everything slipping away and not being able to have six major companies owning all the media in the United States."

Although Young supports Sanders, come November, he won't be able to vote for the Vermont senator, or any other candidate for that matter: The rocker maintains his Canadian citizenship, making him ineligible to vote in the presidential election. When asked if he'd consider U.S. citizenship, Young quipped, "Oh, that would be a big ruse. I'm a Canadian. There's nothing I can do about that."

"I vote in my own way, by making a lot of noise. If you don't want to listen to me, fine. If you don't want to vote like I would, don't," Young said. "But I still have a voice." Read more

Neil Young admitted in an interview that he might have allowed Donald Trump to use "Rockin' in the Free World" had the mogul asked permission first. Gus Stewart/Redferns/Getty

Combat veterans with genital injuries find little help overcoming intimacy, pregnancy challenges

Combat veterans with genital injuries find little help overcoming intimacy, pregnancy challenges

Seema Yasmin, Staff writer
Dallas News
December 15, 2016

Five months after his 32nd birthday, Aaron Causey stepped on a bomb. The newlywed from Alabama was on his second overseas Army deployment, working as an explosives technician in Afghanistan. That morning in 2011, Aaron was on the hunt, peering inside tunnels for improvised explosive devices.

Before he saw the small bundle of plastic and copper wires, he had stepped on it. The blast ripped off his legs and traveled through his groin. One testicle was destroyed, only two-thirds of the other remained.

Four days later in a German hospital, Kat Causey walked into her husband’s hospital room. "Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up," she told herself. The words repeated in her head as she stared at Aaron. How can he still be alive, she wondered. Her husband was in pieces. Surely their plans for having a baby were shattered.

The blast from an IED hits from below. It can hollow out a soldier’s pelvis, shredding the shaft of the penis, obliterating testicles and destroying the bladder and the tubes that carry urine and sperm.

Fighting on the front lines in Afghanistan means hopping out of trucks to walk on foot in terrain too rugged for military vehicles. Experts say service members are more vulnerable to IED blasts than ever before.

That could explain why more than 1,400 U.S. troops suffered injuries to the penis, testicles or bladder from 2001 to 2013 while serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their average age was 24. Experts describe the rise of genital injuries from combat as "unprecedented."

Blasts powerful enough to amputate legs and genitalia used to mean almost certain death. These days, advanced medical care in the field and quick evacuation to specialist trauma centers means soldiers who suffer severe blast injuries have a better chance of surviving.

Surviving means repeat surgeries, re-imagining relationships and wondering if you’ll ever enjoy sex or have children. And while there are more conversations about brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder in troops, experts and families say there’s not enough discussion about the men who return home with the most taboo of injuries.

Counting the injured

At his office in the San Antonio Military Medical Center, Army Maj. Steven Hudak tracks the number of wounded military service members. When he’s not treating the injured — Dr. Hudak is a reconstructive urologist — he studies the Department of Defense Trauma Registry to learn what kinds of injuries are afflicting military members across the services.

In a recent paper (PDF) published in the Journal of Urology, Hudak and colleagues wrote that there are more U.S. service members surviving with genitourinary injuries than ever before in the history of war. They described the different types of genital trauma suffered by young military men and said the range of trauma to the penis and testicles is varied. (Press release)

"There’s no characteristic pattern among the men who have penile injuries," Hudak says. "Really every service member that I’ve treated for a penile injury had a different kind of injury."

Of the more than 1,400 men who suffered injuries to the genitals while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan over a 12-year period, 75 men died from their wounds and were excluded from the analysis.

Hudak found that of the 1,367 wounded service members who survived, 3 out of 4 had injuries to the penis, scrotum or testicles. A third had injuries that were classified as severe and 84 suffered severe injuries to the penis.

In a separate study of soldiers injured in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom between 2001 and 2011, Hudak's team found 501 men suffered genital and urinary system injuries and that 1 in 5 of them had an injury to the penis.

Overall, the greatest number of severe injuries were among those who had testicular damage, says Hudak. "That obviously has a different set of ramifications with regards to long-term fertility potential." Read more

U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Aaron Causey (retired), wife Kat Causey, and daughter Alexandra Jayne Causey

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

The Field Negro blog
By Wayne Bennett
A Philadelphia Lawyer
Monday, January 16, 2017

It's MLK Day here in America, but I would like to remind you Negroes (I see you Steve Harvey) who believe that we are now "post-racial", that three states (Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi) celebrated Robert E. Lee Day, today. And in some towns across America, folks are upset because they have to give up their Lee parade for that King fellow.

Anywhoo, the following incident took place in October of 2015, but the police department involved is just releasing the video because of a previous lawsuit that was filed by the victim.

"Pinned to the ground by officers who kneed and struck him, Lawrence Crosby screamed whatever he could think of to convince them that he was a law-abiding PhD student, not a violent car thief.

"This is my vehicle, sir," he said, his voice captured by the dashboard-camera video. "I have evidence. ... I purchased this vehicle Jan. 23, 2015, from Libertyville Chevrolet."

It wasn’t enough. The officers placed him in handcuffs in the driveway of a church, two blocks from the police station in Evanston, Ill.

Police released the dash-cam video earlier this week, detailing the half-hour encounter that sparked a civil lawsuit from Crosby and a discussion about race and policing in this city of 75,000, just north of Chicago.

The video includes footage from the dash cam of one of the officers involved in the altercation. But it’s also synced with video of a personal dash cam Crosby kept running in his car.

On that night in October 2015, Crosby was headed to Northwestern University, where he was studying for his doctoral degree in civil engineering.

But something was wrong with the molding on his car, so he pulled out a metal bar to try to fix the strip on the roof, he says on the video.

A woman passing by saw him — a black man, wearing a hoodie, with some kind of bar pressed up against a car.

[Yesterday’s Ku Klux Klan members are today’s police officers, councilwoman says]
She picked up the phone and called 911, telling the dispatcher she thought she was witnessing a car break-in.

"He had a bar in his hand, and it looked like he was jimmying the door open," she told the dispatcher. Read more

Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Wikipedia

Martin Luther King Jr. Day (officially Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.)[1] is an American federal holiday marking the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around King's birthday, January 15. The holiday is similar to holidays set under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.

King was the chief spokesman for nonviolent activism in the Civil Rights Movement, which successfully protested racial discrimination in federal and state law. The campaign for a federal holiday in King's honor began soon after his assassination in 1968. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000. Read more