DISGUSTING: NICKI MINAJ

[Employee]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... s-dictator" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Divas Sing for Despots, Round 15

Give rap superstar Nicki Minaj credit for having not a sliver of shame.

After human-rights activists begged her not to sing at a Christmas show in the brutal African dictatorship of Angola for a reported $2 million, she flaunted her dealings with its regime. She posted photos of herself boarding a Gulfstream jet for Angola, another of her arriving, one of her in a sheer bodysuit prepping for the show, and one of her in concert with the caption Angola has my heart. And, obviously, the fat paycheck has her heart as well.

Minaj claims an interest in bettering people’s lives, and she and her managers have joined up with the Black Lives Matter movement. She even spent time last year lamenting to Rolling Stone that black celebrities are slow to speak out against injustice.

But Thor Halvorssen, president of the Human Rights Foundation, notes the hypocrisy in Minaj’s stance: “Minaj’s payday is all the more jarring given that she and her managers joined the chorus of the Black Lives Matter movement. It appears that when those black lives happen to be in Angola, their lives matter less than a paycheck from a dictator.”

Halvorssen’s watchdog group has been a singularly effective at tracking celebrities who cash in on dictator gigs. He has blown the whistle on Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, and Hilary Swank for cavorting with criminal regimes, whether it’s Qaddafi’s Libya (Beyoncé), Turkmenistan (Lopez), or Chechnya (Swank). When shamed by the Human Rights Foundation, all three singers apologized, and Beyoncé donated her fee to a charity in Haiti.

But Minaj has not backed down. Halvorssen wrote an open letter to her asking: “What kind of inspirational message is she sending to millions of young Angolans by performing for the dictatorship that has literally stolen their freedom and their future?” She tweeted this reply: “Every tongue that rises up against me in judgment shall be condemned.” Sounds like something the imperious queen from Alice in Wonderland might say.

Until her trip became controversial, Minaj could be excused for not knowing much about life in Angola. But by now, she must know that Lusty Beinao — a fellow rapper from Angola — sits in a fetid jail cell, condemned by dictator José Eduardo dos Santos. His crime? Along with 17 others, he was charged with “rebellion” for discussing a book on nonviolent resistance in the vein of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Other artists in Angola have been persecuted and barred from performing or sharing their work. Dos Santos’s security services have been linked to a massacre of religious dissidents earlier this year, an incident that has drawn the attention of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The 73-year-old Dos Santos has served as president of his country since 1979, maintaining power through rigged elections, a secret police network, and the ruthless exploitation of his country’s oil, diamonds, and other resources. He has parceled out lucrative positions and stakes in state monopolies to friends and family alike. A key beneficiary is Isabel dos Santos, his 42-year-old daughter and now a multi-billionaire. Much of her wealth is derived from her 25 percent stake in Unitel, a mobile-phone company with strong ties to her father’s government.

It was Unitel that sponsored Minaj’s trip to Angola. It charges extortionate prices for cell-phone usage thanks to its quasi-monopoly position. Maka Angola, a group that fights corruption in Angola, reports that Isabel dos Santos benefits more than anyone else from her country’s blood-diamond trade. Just this month, Transparency International identified her as one of the world’s 15 “most symbolic cases of grand corruption.”

But Minaj was thrilled — even starstruck — to meet the Dos Santos daughter. She posted a picture of the two of them with this caption:

Oh no big deal . . . she’s just the 8th richest woman in the world, (At least that’s what I was told by someone b4 we took this photo) Lol. Yikes!!!!! GIRL POWER!!!!! This motivates me soooooooooo much!!!! S/O to any woman on a paper chase. Get your own!!!! Success is yours for the taking!!!!! #Angola thank u to the women who brought me out here as well.

A common excuse made for those in the “Celebrities with the Dictators” club is that they can’t be expected to know much about places they visit, and they also aren’t political figures. But that’s not how songstress Mariah Carey now sees it. Carey was strongly criticized in 2013 for singing at a holiday party held by the Angolan despot. But years before, after her embarrassing 2008 New Year’s Eve concert for Libya’s murderous Qaddafi clan in St. Bart’s, she had pledged that she wouldn’t do concerts for dictators. In August 2014, Carey dumped her manager, Jermaine Dupri, perhaps in part over the bad publicity and ongoing fallout from her holiday concert in Angola for the Dos Santos regime.

Carey’s statement of regret, issued after she performed for the Qaddafi clan in St. Bart’s, is worth quoting (though it’s also worth noting that she expressed her contrition a full two years after the performance):

I was naive and unaware of who I was booked to perform for, I feel horrible and embarrassed to have participated in this mess. Going forward, this is a lesson for all artists to learn from. We need to be more aware and take more responsibility regardless of who books our shows. Ultimately we as artists are to be held accountable.

In Political Pilgrims, the sociologist Paul Hollander skewered Western intellectuals for their credulous trips to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. He found it appalling that because of their estrangement from their native lands, they were eager to extend sympathy to almost any regime with a political system hostile to the West. But at least most of them were idealistic, even if clueless. Today’s celebrities are more pragmatic: They are going to Angola and Turkmenistan merely for the cold, hard cash.

[Employee]

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Nicki Minaj Shouldn’t Be Performing for Dictators

HRF president Thor Halvorssen and HRF International Council member George Ayittey in Slate on Nicki Minaj's upcoming performance for Angolan dictator José Eduardo dos Santos

She is supposed to sing for Angola’s brutal ruler on Saturday. Will she take the high road or a blood diamond paycheck?

On Saturday afternoon the American rapper Nicki Minaj will bring her award-winning talent to a southwest African stage in the Angolan capital of Luanda. It isn’t a world tour stop, but a special engagement at a “Christmas Festival” sponsored by Unitel, a telecommunications company controlled by Angola’s dictatorship.

Two years ago, Mariah Carey was paid $1 million to perform in Angola at another one of the regime’s holiday parties. Since she had promised to never perform for dictators again after singing for Libya’s Qaddafi family, the public wasn’t forgiving the second time around. The result was a global PR scandal that led Carey to sever ties with Jermaine Dupri, the manager who arranged the visit.

Minaj’s music performances are managed by Cortez Bryant and Gee Roberson of the Blueprint Group. According to a local source, Bryant and Roberson will earn somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of Saturday’s $2 million fee. Whereas Minaj will bear the brunt of the criticism, her managers will laugh all the way to the bank.

Jose Eduardo dos Santos has ruled Angola since seizing power in the fall of 1979. A cunning tyrant, dos Santos survived a legacy of colonialism and devastating civil war to consolidate control over the presidency, military, and judicial system, all while crushing independent journalism and civil society. He uses rigged elections to fake democratic credentials, and his suppression of dissent is ruthless. As part of a national wave of arrests his regime has put 17 activists on trial for reading books on nonviolent resistance. Earlier this year, his security officers carried out and covered up a massacre of hundreds of civilians.

For 36 years dos Santos has exploited Angola’s vast natural resource wealth to build an enormous business empire, enriching his family and positioning them at the top of the country’s key industries. From there, they steal what they want from Africa’s second largest oil producer. According to the International Monetary Fund, between 2007 and 2010 “at least $32 billion of oil revenue went missing” from Angola’s federal ledger.

This theft has led to what a recent New Yorker investigation described as “grotesque inequality,” where—in the shadow of palatial estates and exotic car fleets—Angolans have a life expectancy of 52 years. Half live on less than $2 per day, and 60 percent of the population lacks regular access to electricity. State coffers are emptied to satisfy the lives of a few, while the rest of the country suffers in legitimately pre-modern conditions.

Dos Santos is as generous a father as he is brutal a dictator. Today his 42-year-old daughter Isabel dos Santos is Africa’s youngest billionaire, with an estimated net worth of $3.5 billion. Her riches don’t just come from controlling stakes in the oil, banking, construction, and telecom sectors: According to the local anti-corruption organization Maka Angola, she is the largest beneficiary of the country’s deadly trade in blood diamonds. Just this month, Transparency International named Isabel one of the world’s 15 “most symbolic cases of grand corruption.”

Minaj’s payday is all the more jarring given that she and her managers joined the chorus of the Black Lives Matter movement. It appears that when those black lives happen to be in Angola, their lives matter less than a paycheck from a dictator.

Consider Angolan rapper Luaty Beirão. He is currently jailed by the dos Santos regime—accused of “rebellion” for reading a book—and has even gone on a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. But his suffering and Angola’s broader crackdown on artistic expression has raised no empathy from Minaj and her team.

Beyond her outspoken views on racial injustice in America, Minaj’s commitments to various social justice and education charities inside the United States make her Angola trip especially confounding. Her rank hypocrisy when it comes to caring about justice in one place but not in Angola eliminates any shred of credibility Minaj may have to opine on matters of race or rights in the future.

Beyond Minaj and Mariah Carey, Human Rights Foundation has documented performances and visits from Leo Messi, Jennifer Lopez, Nelly Furtado, Hilary Swank, Kanye West, and Erykah Badu for tyrants in Gabon, Turkmenistan, Chechnya, Kazakhstan, and Swaziland in exchange for seven-figure paychecks. The outcomes have been predictable: PR scandals, the firing of management teams, and, in the case of Messi and Furtado, refunds where the performers end up donating the blood money away to charity. In 2010, Colombian superstar Shakira was invited to perform at the birthday party for Ramzan Kadyrov, the rape-brigade employing thug installed by Vladimir Putin as the puppet ruler of Chechnya. Our organization, HRF, sent her a letter detailing Kadyrov’s crimes, asking her not to go—impressively, Shakira canceled her performance.

Revealing the depth of her ignorance and her hostility to criticism, Minaj has done the opposite, tweeting excitement about the Angola show and warning critics that “every tongue that rises up against me in judgement shall be condemned.”

It’s quite possible that Minaj doesn’t know anything about Angola. But her management team is fully briefed. In some cases, performers like Minaj are manipulated by people willing to do anything for a bigger cut of the action. As of today, Bryant and Roberson have ignored HRF’s requests for comment.

[GUCCI CONDOMS]

Def my kind of girl. She all about getting money by any means necessary. That's what's up.

[step one]

pretty much every A-list entertainer has done shit like this. Its not quite as terrible as Outrage Twitter makes out.

[KhillA]

I will only accept outrage from people who have been offered $2 million to perform there and declined it.

[Comedy Quaddafi]

Pop/Kizomba/Afro-Beats from Angola >>> Nicki Minaj



I hope she tours Israel next if she really wants to piss the internet off.

[Gyangsta 4 Life]

Raw nights ... perform for Qaddafi. Any one.. Muammar, Comedy, Tragedy.

[EMCEE DARTH MALEK]

that african shit is the wackest thing i've ever heard

anyone surprised at nicki supporting dictators is an idiot.

[unbelievable dickhead]

brietbart cares

[watchout]

That's how kingdoms twerk!

[Comedy Quaddafi]

that african shit is the wackest thing i've ever heard

[GUCCI CONDOMS]

that african shit is the wackest thing i've ever heard

You obviously don't know how to dance, bro.

[Mindbender Futurama]

this shit is disgusting, B

but I don't really hear Nicki rapping about knowledge, wisdom and understanding so I don't expect her to have much of any of that stuff

fuck this bullshit f'real f'real

any rich celebrity who will take dirty money from super evil motherfuckers doesn't deserve respect

you're rich enough, fuckers. say no sometimes to big paychecks.

[Comedy Quaddafi]

Here's Obama kissing Angolan ass for an oil-discount. But clearly we should hold popsingers to higher ethical standards.

[EMCEE DARTH MALEK]

^

[EMCEE DARTH MALEK]

that african shit is the wackest thing i've ever heard

You obviously don't know how to dance, bro.

i'm very in touch with my body, bro.

[Career Over Like Mike(NJJ)]

Raw nights ... perform for Qaddafi. Any one.. Muammar, Comedy, Tragedy.

[Krook]

Here's Obama kissing Angolan ass for an oil-discount. But clearly we should hold popsingers to higher ethical standards.

Yeah..That makes sense

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[dubs]

I will only accept outrage from people who have been offered $2 million to perform there and declined it.

Most valid post in this thread.

[Dusty Fingers]

For 2 million dollars I'll suck a glass dick on public access television with the entire world watching... HATERS HATING

[dubs]

So you would suck a real dick for free though?

[Dusty Fingers]

insert forum tough guy rebuttal nobody is going to read here

[Kace]

that african shit is the wackest thing i've ever heard

anyone surprised at nicki supporting dictators is an idiot.

Nah that's just some Star Wars Episode VII rip-off shit.