Boycott PayPal that discriminates against Palestinians but does business with Israeli settlers

 PayPal's recent IMAGE promotion that hides the real use of a money transfer system being used as a political weapon by Zionists against Palestinians.

PayPal's CEO is ready to break records on Giving Tuesday
Abigail Stevenson |

CNBC.com

 Mad Money 2 PayPal's CEO is ready to break records on Giving Tuesday
13 Hours Ago | 09:08

Ahead of Giving Tuesday, PayPal's CEO Dan Schulman says doing good is a responsibility for all companies.

"We cannot just rely on the public sector or the private sector. We all need to work together," Schulman told Jim Cramer on "Mad Money" on Monday.

Last holiday period, 7.25 million people gave over $850 million to 250,000 charities on PayPal. The company broke every record, Schulman said, as the platform facilitated $48 million in donations within a 24-hour period.

This was up from just $19 million the year before.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/28/paypals-ceo-is-ready-to-break-records-on-giving-tuesday.html

What PayPal's CEO Dan Schulman isn't telling Americans and the world


PayPal and Palestine

AUGUST 27, 2016, BY SAM BAHOUR

PAY_PAL

As a Palestinian-American management consultant in Ramallah, Palestine, I advise my Palestinian clients living under Israeli military occupation to use world-class software and online services, assuring them that it will help them enter global markets.  Some of these clients are not-for-profit outfits, like the Palestinian Circus School and Birzeit University; others are tech start-ups, many of which are funded by U.S. tax dollars via USAID.  Time and again, I regretfully must explain to clients that the most popular worldwide online payment system, PayPal, is unavailable to them.

As an American from Youngstown, Ohio, trying to contribute to building a modern Palestinian economy, and a former software developer who worked all over the U.S., I can never offer a satisfactory answer to those who ask why PayPal refuses to follow the lead of technology giants like Google, Cisco, HP, Oracle, and many others, that all operate in Palestine.

Palestine has a thriving banking sector and all Palestinian banks have corresponding U.S. banks that make money transfers daily.  The U.S. Treasury Department is also active in Palestine and has praised the level of Palestinian banking compliance.  Considering these financial ties, it is a mystery why PayPal, which is widely considered the most trustworthy company in its sphere, continues to ignores this market.  While it’s available to users in Israel and to Israeli settlers living illegally on occupied Palestinian land, PayPal does not extend its services to Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.

Many of these illegal Israeli settlers live literally a few minutes walk from my home, yet they have access to PayPal, but Palestinians do not.  This is doubly unfortunate since Palestinians who live in other parts of the world and are regular users of PayPal cannot use the platform to conduct business with Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel has continuously placed suffocating limitations on the Palestinian economy, many which have been directly challenged by successive U.S. presidents, such as Israel’s refusal to release the needed frequencies for Palestinians to have 3G services.  The Internet age has brought with it a bit of relief from these physical limitations, and the Palestinian tech sector is a key area of the economy that has potential to grow, especially considering the population is so young.  Palestine produces roughly 2,000 IT graduates per year that are well-positioned to address the huge gap between growing demand for online Arabic content and the current lack of supply.  Currently, however, only one-third of these graduates find work in their field.  Without access to the needed services that facilitate businesses to grow, more Palestinian youth will fall into the despair of unemployment and all that it carries with it.

In order to meet these market needs and generate employment opportunities, Palestinian startups and entrepreneurs need equal access to services like PayPal for business and charitable services. In December, the President of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy (AVPE), Edward Thompson, and myself, as Chairman of AVPE, wrote to inform PayPal CEO Daniel Schulman of the company’s shortcomings in Palestine, but our request for a meeting went unheeded.  Now, a group of 40 prominent Palestinian organizations have penned a public letter asking Mr. Schulman to reconsider.

Among the signatories are the Palestinian Telecommunications Group (Paltel) the largest private-sector company in Palestine and one that I assisted in establishing, the renowned startup incubator Gaza Sky Geeks, and Palestine’s National Beverage Company, whose CEO Zahi Khouri is an early stage startup investor through another signatory, the Ibtikar Fund.  And these are just a few examples — those in tech, business and finance have come together from across the span of the struggling Palestinian economy to make this request.  Seemingly small but poignant indignities like this one block the road toward freedom, justice and equality for Palestinians, and we hope to methodically clear them from our path.

In the letter, my co-signers and I explain that while other payment portals are available, there is no replacement for the trust and familiarity that PayPal inspires among potential users, particularly those that are unfamiliar with Palestine-based companies.  Without access to PayPal, Palestinian entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and others face routine difficulties in receiving payments for business and charitable purposes.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about PayPal’s presence in Israel-Palestine, however, is that access to it depends on ethnicity.  Again, while Israeli settlers living in the West Bank are completely integrated into the Israeli system and have access to PayPal and other technologies, the Palestinians they live among do not.  These are settlements that are considered illegal under U.S. foreign policy and international law, and the settlers who live in them enjoy access to resources that are regularly denied to the Palestinians next door.  In fact, Human Rights Watch released a report earlier this year stated that businesses should withdraw from the settlements entirely to end their complicity in “an inherently unlawful and abusive system that violates the rights of Palestinians.”

This is not just about access to PayPal.  It is about PayPal’s role in empowering entrepreneurs, small businesses, and individuals to make a living and conduct commerce, particularly in parts of the world where physical barriers and limitations are established by governments.  We would be doing ourselves, as Americans and Palestinians, a disservice by allowing any company to deny their service based on ethnicity, heritage or because of Israeli pressure to enforce a clear suppression of the Palestinian economy via the limitations of occupation.

It is our sincere hope that our latest attempt to right this wrong will not fall on deaf ears.  For the Palestinian people, breaking free from Israeli military occupation will mean carving out a meaningful space for ourselves in the global economy, and we cannot do that without equal access to indispensable tools like PayPal.

 This essay originally appeared on August 26, 2016 on ePalestine, a website featuring commentary by Sam Bahour.  It was reproduced here with the consent of Mr. Bahour.

New report confirms grim outlook for elephants

By Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondent, Johannesburg  

• From the sectioncie

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Image captionThe illegal trade in ivory has seen elephant numbers plummet

Elephant populations in Africa have declined by around 111,000 over the past 10 years according to a new study.

The African Elephant Status report says that poaching is the main driver of the fall, the worst losses in 25 years.

However the authors say that long-term issues such as the loss of habitat also pose a significant threat.

The report has been presented at the Cites meeting which is considering new proposals on elephant protection.

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War on elephants - Alastair Leithead, Africa correspondent

Image captionThe growing demand for ivory in Asian markets means the illegal trade continues to threaten the future of elephants in Africa

• Every year in Africa between 30,000 and 40,000 elephants are poached for their ivory, and it's thought there are only 400,000 left.
• Even accounting for the newborns, this rate of killing calls into question whether these amazing creatures will still be around in a generation, especially as Africa's ever-increasing population is reducing the space for them.
• Organised crime runs the ivory industry.

Extract from The War on Elephants; article on how the very existence of Africa's elephants is threatened by poachers

More from Alastair:

Why elephants are seeking refuge in Botswana

Shocking reduction in Africa's elephant numbers

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Wide range of sources

Figures published earlier this year in the Great Elephant Census indicated that African elephant populations had declined by around 30% over the past seven years.

This new study from conservation group IUCN incorporates this information but also uses data from elephant dung counts and individual observations amongst other sources.

The authors say the overall total for elephants in Africa is now around 415,000, although there may be an additional 117,000 to 135,000 in areas not systematically surveyed.

This represents a decline of some 111,000 from the report carried out in 2006.

Image captionPercentage change estimates are per year for 2010-2014, so total losses are three or four times the percentages indicated on the graphic

Poaching is the main driver of the drop. East Africa, the region most affected by killings for ivory, has experienced around a 50% reduction in numbers.

However it is not the only cause of concern to the authors.

"We are particularly concerned about major infrastructure projects that are cutting up the elephant ranges, this is a particular problem for road development in central and east Africa," said Dr Chris Thouless, one of the report's authors.

"These are all major issues that will have to be dealt with once the poaching crisis is over."

Community conservation

While report highlights the losses there are also some gains.

Elephant populations in South Africa, Namibia and Uganda have all increased. Elephant ranges have expanded in Kenya and Botswana, with community based conservation showing real success in Northern Kenya.

While these are positives, the overall picture is one of dramatic decline, fuelled by criminal activity that would decimate these giant creatures, if continued.

"Larger quantities of illegal ivory are leaving Africa than ever before," said Ginette Hemley from WWF.

"The transnational crime syndicates driving the slaughter must be dismantled, and consumer demand for ivory cannot persist if we hope to secure a safe future for elephants."

The report comes as the Cites meeting here in Johannesburg is facing significant division on how to handle the poaching crisis.

Talks on extra protections for elephants will begin on Monday with a number of countries led by Kenya seeking extra protection.

Others, including Namibia and Zimbabwe, are seeking to liberalise the safeguards and open up a trade in ivory. Another proposal here, which might garner more support, is aimed at ending all domestic markets in ivory. The meeting continues until 5 October.

All our elephants are gone here in California where we had at least three species, Columbian (Imperial) Mammoths, dwarf mammoths, and Mastodons. I believe California's problem with Sudden Oak Death has a lot to do with no elephants culling diseased trees in California for 12 to 14,000 years. Why not bring a herd of endangered African elephants to California where there are large tracts of oak trees for them to eat? If anyone wants to help with this, let me know.

U.S. government is breaking the Constitution by financing Israeli racist settlement building

The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the U.S. government cannot aid in the establishment of any religion yet we have been financing the establishment of the Jewish religion in Palestine against the peoples of Palestine interest, indeed, against their survival as a people. All legally-enforced public segregation was abolished by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If racial segregation is illegal in America, our government cannot finance racial segregation in other countries as it has been doing in Israel for decades. It's time to end the free money to racist Zionists.

Obama and all Congressional members who have voted for huge amounts of financing for Israel are all guilty of breaking U.S. laws prohibiting U.S. support of racial segregation. They should ALL be impeached. Hillary or Trump should be impeached if they continue this lawless course for the U.S. government with American citizens forced to pay for racial segregation in Israel. That's where most of Israel's U.S. tax-payer money goes, towards financing illegal and immoral racial settlement building protected by Israeli military protecting Israeli racist settlers who are illegally stealing land in Palestine where Israelis are not permitted to live.

Do not vote for either Hillary or Trump as both will continue American financing and military aid to a proven lawless rogue state, Israel, with the most violations of U.N. Resolutions and mandates of any country on earth. Vote for Jill Stein for President for a change of U.S. policy to make America inline again with desegregation. Segregation outside the U.S. with U.S. citizens paying for it must end.

The Obama Administration Temporarily Blocks the Dakota Access Pipeline

The surprise move came after a federal judge declined to stop the 1,100-mile fossil fuel project’s construction.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the hundreds of Native protestors who have joined them in rural North Dakota won a huge but provisional victory in their quest to stop the Dakota Access pipeline, as the U.S. government announced late on Friday afternoon that it was voluntarily halting work on the project.

The triumph tasted all the sweeter because it had followed so closely after a seemingly immense defeat. Mere minutes after a federal judge declined the Tribe’s request for an injunction to stop construction on the pipeline, the Obama administration made a surprise announcement that it would not permit the project to continue for now.

“Construction of the pipeline on Army Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe will not go forward at this time,” said a joint statement from the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Army. “We request that the pipeline company voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe.”

The Army will now move to “reconsider any of its previous decisions” regarding whether the pipeline respects federal law, especially the National Environmental Policy Act, the statement said.
The Obama administration also announced that it will invite tribes to formal consultations this fall about whether any federal rules around national infrastructure projects like the Dakota Access pipeline should be reformed in order to protect tribal resources and rights. It will also consider whether new laws should be proposed to Congress.

As planned, the Dakota Access pipeline would run 1,100 miles from oil fields in northwest North Dakota to a refinery and port in Illinois. Hundreds of people, many of them from Native communities or nations, have gathered on tribal land near the Missouri River since April to protest the pipeline’s construction. The camps are one of the largest Native protests in decades.

In July, the Standing Rock Tribe sued the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency which approved the pipeline. The tribe claimed that the pipeline’s construction would destroy nearby sacred and burial sites, and that, if the pipeline ever leaked or failed, it would pollute the tribe’s drinking water. It sought a temporary injunction to halt its construction. I wrote about the tribe’s case this week.

On Friday, the court declined that injunction request with a 58-page ruling. (The Department of Justice, apparently waiting for the decision, issued its own statement blocking the pipeline minutes later.)

The judge, James Boasberg of the D.C. district court, said that the Army Corps had sufficiently followed federal law in approving the pipeline. The tribe’s claims that the pipeline crossed archeological sites were moot, since most of those sites were on private property, he said. And he seemed to lament that the injunction was sought under the National Historic Preservation Act and not the Clean Water Act, where he hinted that the tribe would have had sturdier standing.

“This Court does not lightly countenance any depredation of lands that hold significance to the Standing Rock Sioux,” wrote Boasberg. “Aware of the indignities visited upon the Tribe over the last centuries, the Court scrutinizes the permitting process here with particular care. Having done so, the Court must nonetheless conclude that the Tribe has not demonstrated that an injunction is warranted here.”

Of course, all this will change now that the executive has stepped in. “This federal statement is a game changer for the Tribe and we are acting immediately on our legal options, including filing an appeal and a temporary injunction to force DAPL to stop construction,” said a statement from the Standing Rock Sioux on Facebook.

While the government’s block is temporary, the pipeline’s future now looks much more uncertain than it did hours ago. Most of the pipeline will be built on private land owned by Energy Transfer Partners, but it still needs Army Corps approval to cross federal waterways. Given the outcry from climate activists, the Obama administration may be more willing to cancel the pipeline’s federal permits, as it did with the Keystone XL pipeline last year.

I found it particularly interesting that the administration’s statement called out the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). That law requires federal agencies to account for environmental risks and hazards when they approve a project. Earlier this year, President Obama decreed that the NEPA process should account for the costs of greenhouse gas emissions—a potential opening for federal agencies to obstruct a huge fossil-fuel infrastructure project like Dakota Access.  

Regardless, Dakota Access looks like a tentative success for Native protestors and the climate activists who supported them. It also hints at how actively the current Democratic administration will involve itself in environmental issues, especially when pushed by the climate movement.

“In recent days, we have seen thousands of demonstrators come together peacefully, with support from scores of sovereign tribal governments, to exercise their First Amendment rights and to voice heartfelt concerns about the environment and historic, sacred sites,” said the joint statement. “It is now incumbent on all of us to develop a path forward that serves the broadest public interest.”

How one man repopulated a rare butterfly species in his backyard

Tim Wong (@timtast1c)

The California pipevine swallowtail butterfly is a wonder to behold.

It begins its life as a tiny red egg, hatches into an enormous orange-speckled caterpillar, and then — after a gestation period of up to two years — emerges as an iridescent blue beauty. Brimming with oceanic tones, the creature’s wings are considered by collectors to be some of the most magnificent in North America.

For centuries, the California pipevine swallowtail — or, Battus philenor hirsuta — called San Francisco home. As development increased in the early 20th century, the butterfly slowly began to disappear. Today it is a rare sight.

But one man's DIY efforts are starting to bring the butterfly back.

His story reminds us that we can all contribute to conservation efforts — sometimes even from our own backyards.

The butterfly whisperer

Via Tim Wong

As an aquatic biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, Tim Wong rarely has a dull day.

Whether he’s hanging out with an albino alligator, swimming with Javanese stingrays, or treating a hungry octopus to a hamster ball full of shrimp, Wong is constantly caring for one of the science museum’s 38,000 animals.

But outside of work, the 28-year-old devotes the bulk of his free time to raising butterflies, a hobby he picked up as a kid.

"I first was inspired to raise butterflies when I was in elementary school," Wong says. "We raised painted lady butterflies in the classroom, and I was amazed at the complete metamorphosis from caterpillar to adult."

In an open meadow near his home, Wong spent his days catching, studying, and raising any butterflies he could find.

Years later, he learned about the pipevine swallowtail — which had become increasingly rare in San Francisco — and he made it his personal mission to bring the butterfly back.

Via Tim Wong

California pipevine swallowtail butterflies typically lay their eggs in "clutches" of five to 30.

He researched the butterfly and learned that when in caterpillar form, it only feeds on one plant: the California pipevine (Aristolochia californica), an equivalently rare flora in the city.

"Finally, I was able to find this plant in the San Francisco Botanical Garden [in Golden Gate Park]," Wong says. "And they allowed me to take a few clippings of the plant."

Then in his own backyard, using self-taught techniques, he created a butterfly paradise.

"[I built] a large screen enclosure to protect the butterflies and to allow them to mate under outdoor environmental conditions — natural sun, airflow, temp fluctuations," he says.

"The specialized enclosure protects the butterflies from some predators, increases mating opportunities, and serves as a study environment to better understand the criteria female butterflies are looking for in their ideal host plant."

Tim Wong (Instagram: @timtas1c)

Tim Wong’s backyard butterfly enclosure includes the California pipevine plant, along with other native flora, to make the butterflies feel at home.

Though the California pipevine butterfly had nearly disappeared in San Francisco, it was still common outside the city, in places with more vegetation. With permission, Wong was able to source an initial group of 20 caterpillars from private residences.

He carefully transported them to his backyard and set them loose on the plants to feed.

"They feed as a little army," he says. "They roam around the pipevine plant from leaf to leaf, munching on it as a group."

Tim Wong (Instagram: timtast1c)

Top: early-stage pipevine caterpillars; bottom: a handful of late-growth-stage caterpillars.

Once situated, the caterpillars began their long, drawn-out process of maturation.

After about 3-4 weeks, a caterpillar pupates and forms a chrysalis (or outer shell). The insect liquifies itself inside, and either develops into a into butterfly in about two weeks, or stays dormant for up to two years (this delayed development is called "diapause").

"It’s like a long hibernation," says Wong. "And when it’s over, they emerge as adult butterflies."

Photos via Tim Wong

Typically the adult pipevine butterfly hatches from its chrysalis in spring, but it can be seen flying from February to October. Depending on temperature, predation, and food availability, the butterflies live for two to five weeks.

During this time, the females lay tiny red eggs on the pipevine plants. Wong carefully collects these and incubates them indoors, away from natural predators like spiders and earwigs.

"From there," he says, "the cycle continues."

Tim Wong (Instagram: timtasti1c)

Various stage of pipevine swallowtail growth (from bottom: eggs, different growth stages of the caterpillar, chrysalis, full butterfly).

When the eggs hatch and a new cycle of life begins, Wong raises the caterpillars at home, then brings them back to the San Francisco Botanical Garden’s "California Native" exhibit.

A DIY conservation effort

While other conservationists have succeeded in repopulating the pipevine butterfly in the neighboring counties of Santa Cruz and Sonoma, none have been successful in San Francisco. In the late 1980s, a woman named Barbara Deutsch had attempted to reintroduce the species with 500 caterpillars, but the butterflies vanished after a few years.

When Wong first started bringing caterpillars to the botanical garden, he’d only transport a few hundred at a time. But as his backyard caterpillar population grew, he was able to exponentially increase this. Last year he introduced "thousands" of caterpillars to the garden.

Tim Wong (@timtast1c)

Caterpillars pupate into chrysalises, remaining in this state for up to several years before emerging as butterflies. While inside, their bodies liquefy and reform as completely new creatures.

Wong attributes his success largely to the favorable habitat he's created for thecaterpillars. In the past few years, he's cultivated more than 200 California pipevine plants. Through extensive weeding, and the planting of additional nectar plants, Wong has been able to reintroduce the butterfly to San Francisco for the first time in decades.

"Each year since 2012, we’ve seen more butterflies surviving in the garden, flying around, laying eggs, successfully pupating, and emerge the following year," he says. "That’s a good sign that our efforts are working!"

Tim Wong (Instagram: timtasti1c)

"For most people, it’s the dream butterfly to work with in the region. It’s gorgeous. If most people saw it in SF, they wouldn’t think it’s a native butterfly." —Tim Wong

While Wong has had success raising native butterflies at home, he cautions that it "isn’t for everyone." A DIY conservation effort requires a special understanding of each species' natural history, a natural sensibility, and a lot of tedious work.

But there are much simpler ways to contribute. The flourishing of local species is largely driven by restoring native habitats. Planting native flora host plants is an effective way to boost endemic butterfly populations. Weeding (to allow easier access to food sources) and avoiding pesticides is equally beneficial.

"Improving habitat for native fauna is something anyone can do," Wong says. "Conservation and stewardship can start in your very own backyard."

Updated by Zachary Crockett on July 6, 2016, 1:10 p.m. ET 

THC in marijuana could unclog Alzheimer’s brain plaque

JULY 3, 2016 BY MELISSA TAYLOR

A new study suggests that the key agent in marijuana — THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol — just might have an effect in clearing up brain plaque, which is one of Alzheimer’s disease’s key features and one of the key reasons why patients suffer the symptoms they do.

The study, which was published in the journal Aging and Mechanisms of Disease, suggests that THC and other compounds found in marijuana were able to trigger the removal of beta-amyloid protein, which makes up the plaque found in the brain of individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s. Beta-amyloid plaque is a key feature of the disease, and studies have shown that it scrambles communication between brain neurons, thus causing memory problems and other classical symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

Although preventing the buildup of plaque might seem like a no-brainer when it comes to fighting Alzheimer’s disease, the lack of clarity in the role of beta-amyloid in the disease’s progress has made it hard to come up with such a solution. That’s what pushed the researchers to modify nerve cells in order to stimulate protein production.

Based on their findings, heightened production of beta-amyloid did make pro-inflammatory proteins in the nerve cells more expressive, which subsequently resulted in inflammation and nerve cell death.

“Inflammation within the brain is a major component of the damage associated with Alzheimer’s disease, but it has always been assumed that this response was coming from immune-like cells in the brain, not the nerve cells themselves,” said Salk Institute for Biological Studies researcher Antonio Currais, first author of the study.

As the brain’s nerve cells contain receptors which are activated by endocannabinoids, a kind of lipid molecule, the researchers thought of the possibility that marijuana, thanks to its THC content, might prevent the death of nerve cells. They applied THC to the nerve cells which had high beta-amyloid production, and that resulted in reduced beta-amyloid levels, making pro-inflammatory proteins less expressive and preventing the nerve cells from dying.

Although more studies and trials would be needed to prove THC can indeed shield nerve cells from death, the researchers are confident that their findings might inspire the discovery of new treatments for Alzheimer’s, now that the role of beta-amyloid in the development of the disease has become clearer.

“Although other studies have offered evidence that cannabinoids might be neuroprotective against the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, we believe our study is the first to demonstrate that cannabinoids affect both inflammation and amyloid beta accumulation in nerve cells,” said senior author David Schubert, also from the Salk Institute.

The Greatest Athlete in history has died

Muhammad Ali, the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion who helped define his turbulent times as the most charismatic and controversial sports figure of the 20th century, died on Friday in a Phoenix-area hospital. He was 74.

His death was confirmed by Bob Gunnell, a family spokesman.
Ali was the most thrilling if not the best heavyweight ever, carrying into the ring a physically lyrical, unorthodox boxing style that fused speed, agility and power more seamlessly than that of any fighter before him.

But he was more than the sum of his athletic gifts. An agile mind, a buoyant personality, a brash self-confidence and an evolving set of personal convictions fostered a magnetism that the ring alone could not contain. He entertained as much with his mouth as with his fists, narrating his life with a patter of inventive doggerel. (“Me! Wheeeeee!”)

Ali was as polarizing a superstar as the sports world has ever produced — both admired and vilified in the 1960s and ’70s for his religious, political and social stances. His refusal to be drafted during the Vietnam War, his rejection of racial integration at the height of the civil rights movement, his conversion from Christianity to Islam and the changing of his “slave” name, Cassius Clay, to one bestowed by the separatist black sect he joined, the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, were perceived as serious threats by the conservative establishment and noble acts of defiance by the liberal opposition.
Loved or hated, he remained for 50 years one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

Loved or hated, he remained for 50 years one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

In later life Ali became something of a secular saint, a legend in soft focus. He was respected for having sacrificed more than three years of his boxing prime and untold millions of dollars for his antiwar principles after being banished from the ring; he was extolled for his un-self-conscious gallantry in the face of incurable illness, and he was beloved for his accommodating sweetness in public.

In 1996, he was trembling and nearly mute as he lit the Olympic caldron in Atlanta.
That passive image was far removed from the exuberant, talkative, vainglorious 22-year-old who bounded out of Louisville, Ky., and onto the world stage in 1964 with an upset victory over Sonny Liston to become the world champion. The press called him the Louisville Lip. He called himself the Greatest.

Ali also proved to be a shape-shifter — a public figure who kept reinventing his persona.
As a bubbly teenage gold medalist at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he parroted America’s Cold War line, lecturing a Soviet reporter about the superiority of the United States. But he became a critic of his country and a government target in 1966 with his declaration “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.”

“He lived a lot of lives for a lot of people,” said the comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory. “He was able to tell white folks for us to go to hell.”

But Ali had his hypocrisies, or at least inconsistencies. How could he consider himself a “race man” yet mock the skin color, hair and features of other African-Americans, most notably Joe Frazier, his rival and opponent in three classic matches? Ali called him “the gorilla,” and long afterward Frazier continued to express hurt and bitterness.

If there was a supertitle to Ali’s operatic life, it was this: “I don’t have to be who you want me to be; I’m free to be who I want.” He made that statement the morning after he won his first heavyweight title. It informed every aspect of his life, including the way he boxed.

The traditionalist fight crowd was appalled by his style; he kept his hands too low, the critics said, and instead of allowing punches to “slip” past his head by bobbing and weaving, he leaned back from them.

Eventually his approach prevailed. Over 21 years, he won 56 fights and lost five. His Ali Shuffle may have been pure showboating, but the “rope-a-dope” — in which he rested on the ring’s ropes and let an opponent punch himself out — was the stratagem that won the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman in 1974, the fight in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in which he regained his title.

His personal life was paradoxical. Ali belonged to a sect that emphasized strong families, a subject on which he lectured, yet he had dalliances as casual as autograph sessions. A brief first marriage to Sonji Roi ended in divorce after she refused to dress and behave as a proper Nation wife. (She died in 2005.) While married to Belinda Boyd, his second wife, Ali traveled openly with Veronica Porche, whom he later married. That marriage, too, ended in divorce.

Ali was politically and socially idiosyncratic as well. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the television interviewer David Frost asked him if he considered Al Qaeda and the Taliban evil. He replied that terrorism was wrong but that he had to “dodge questions like that” because “I have people who love me.” He said he had “businesses around the country” and an image to consider.
As a spokesman for the Muhammad Ali Center, a museum dedicated to “respect, hope and understanding,” which opened in his hometown, Louisville, in 2005, he was known to interrupt a fund-raising meeting with an ethnic joke. In one he said: “If a black man, a Mexican and a Puerto Rican are sitting in the back of a car, who’s driving? Give up? The po-lice.”

But Ali had generated so much good will by then that there was little he could say or do that would change the public’s perception of him.

“We forgive Muhammad Ali his excesses,” an Ali biographer, Dave Kindred, wrote, “because we see in him the child in us, and if he is foolish or cruel, if he is arrogant, if he is outrageously in love with his reflection, we forgive him because we no more can condemn him than condemn a rainbow for dissolving into the dark. Rainbows are born of thunderstorms, and Muhammad Ali is both.”


Cassius Clay started to box at 12, after his new $60 red Schwinn bicycle was stolen off a downtown street. CreditAssociated Press

Ambition at an Early Age

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born in Louisville on Jan. 17, 1942, into a family of strivers that included teachers, musicians and craftsmen. Some of them traced their ancestry to Henry Clay, the 19th-century representative, senator and secretary of state, and his cousin Cassius Marcellus Clay, a noted abolitionist.

Ali’s mother, Odessa, was a cook and a house cleaner, his father a sign painter and a church muralist who blamed discrimination for his failure to become a recognized artist. Violent and often drunk, Clay Sr. filled the heads of Cassius and his younger brother, Rudolph (later Rahman Ali), with the teachings of the 20th-century black separatist Marcus Garvey and a refrain that would become Ali’s — “I am the greatest.”

Beyond his father’s teachings, Ali traced his racial and political identity to the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old from Chicago who was believed to have flirted with a white woman on a visit to Mississippi. Clay was about the same age as Till, and the photographs of the brutalized dead youth haunted him, he said.

Cassius started to box at 12, after his new $60 red Schwinn bicycle was stolen off a downtown street. He reported the theft to Joe Martin, a police officer who ran a boxing gym. When Cassius boasted what he would do to the thief when he caught him, Martin suggested that he first learn how to punch properly.

Cassius was quick, dedicated and gifted at publicizing a youth boxing show, “Tomorrow’s Champions,” on local television. He was soon its star.

For all his ambition and willingness to work hard, education — public and segregated — eluded him. The only subjects in which he received satisfactory grades were art and gym, his high school reported years later. Already an amateur boxing champion, he graduated 376th in a class of 391. He was never taught to read properly; years later he confided that he had never read a book, neither the ones on which he collaborated nor even the Quran, although he said he had reread certain passages dozens of times. He memorized his poems and speeches, laboriously printing them out over and over.

Muhammad Ali’s Words Stung Like a Bee, Too

Outside the boxing ring, Ali fought his battles with his mouth.

In boxing he found boundaries, discipline and stable guidance. Martin, who was white, trained him for six years, although historical revisionism later gave more credit to Fred Stoner, a black trainer in the Smoketown neighborhood. It was Martin who persuaded Clay to “gamble your life” and go to Rome with the 1960 Olympic team despite his almost pathological fear of flying.

Clay won the Olympic light-heavyweight title and came home a professional contender. In Rome, Clay was everything the sports diplomats could have hoped for — a handsome, charismatic and black glad-hander. When a Russian reporter asked him about racial prejudice, Clay ordered him to “tell your readers we got qualified people working on that, and I’m not worried about the outcome.”

“To me, the U.S.A. is still the best country in the world, counting yours,” he added. “It may be hard to get something to eat sometimes, but anyhow I ain’t fighting alligators and living in a mud hut.”
Ali would later cringe at that quotation, especially when journalists harked back to it as proof that a merry man-child had been misguided into becoming a hateful militant.

Olympian, Conscientious Objector and Heavyweight Champion

How The New York Times covered the career of Muhammad Ali.
FROM THE ARCHIVE | SEPT. 7, 1920

Cassius Clay Wins an Olympic Gold Medal

Muhammad Ali's first mention in The New York Times was a piece on winners at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. He won the gold medal in the light heavyweight boxing division.
The New York Times

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Of course, after the Rome Games, few journalists followed Clay home to Louisville, where he was publicly referred to as “the Olympic nigger” and denied service at many downtown restaurants. After one such rejection, the story goes, he hurled his gold medal into the Ohio River. But Clay, and later Ali, gave different accounts of that act, and according to Thomas Hauser, author of the oral history “Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times,” Clay had simply lost the medal.

Clay turned professional by signing a six-year contract with 11 local white millionaires. (“They got the complexions and connections to give me good directions,” he said.) The so-called Louisville Sponsoring Group supported him while he was groomed by Angelo Dundee, a top trainer, in Miami.
At a mosque there, Clay was introduced to the Nation of Islam, known to the news media as “Black Muslims.” Elijah Muhammad, the group’s leader, taught that white people were devils genetically created by an evil scientist. On Allah’s chosen day of retribution, the Mother of Planes would bomb all but the righteous, and the righteous would be spirited away.

Years later, after leaving the group and converting to orthodox Islam, Ali gave the Nation of Islam credit for offering African-Americans a black-is-beautiful message at a time of low self-esteem and persecution. “Color doesn’t make a man a devil,” he said. “It’s the heart and soul and mind that count. What’s on the outside is only decoration.”

Title and Transformation

Clay enjoyed early success against prudently chosen opponents. His outrageous predictions, usually in rhyme — “This is no jive, Cooper will go in five” — put off many older sportswriters, especially since most of the predictions came true. (The Englishman Henry Cooper did go down in the fifth round at Wembley Stadium in 1963, after he had staggered Clay in the fourth.) The reporters’ beau ideal of a boxer was the laconic Joe Louis. But they still wrote about Clay. Younger sportswriters, raised in an age of Andy Warhol, happenings and the “put on,” were delighted by the hype and by Clay’s friendly accessibility.

In 1963, at 21, after only 15 professional fights, he was on the cover of Time magazine. The winking quality of the prose — “Cassius Clay is Hercules, struggling through the twelve labors. He is Jason, chasing the Golden Fleece” — reinforced the assumption that he was just another boxer being sacrificed to the box office’s lust for fresh meat. It was feared he would be seriously injured by the baleful slugger Liston, a 7-to-1 betting favorite to retain his title in Miami Beach, Fla., on Feb. 25, 1964.

But Clay was joyously comic. Encouraged by his assistant trainer and “spiritual adviser,” Drew Brown, known as Bundini, Clay mocked Liston as the “big ugly bear” and chanted a battle cry: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, rumble, young man, rumble.”


It was feared Clay would be seriously injured by the slugger Sonny Liston, a 7-1 betting favorite to retain his title in Miami Beach, but Clay mocked Liston as the “big ugly bear” and chanted a battle cry: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, rumble, young man, rumble.” CreditAssociated Press

The Beatles, on their first American tour, were in town and showed up for a photo op at Clay’s training gym. Malcolm X, a leading minister for the Nation of Islam and a worrisome presence to many white Americans, was there, too, with his family members as guests of Clay, whom they saw as a big brother.

To the shock of the crowd, Clay, taller and broader than Liston at 6 feet 3 inches and 210 pounds and much faster, took immediate control of the fight. He danced away from Liston’s vaunted left hook and peppered his face with jabs, opening a cut over his left eye. Clay was in trouble only once. Just before the start of the fifth round, his eyes began to sting. It was liniment, but he suspected poison. Dundee had to push him into the ring. Two rounds later, Liston, slumped on his stool, his left arm hanging uselessly, gave up. He had torn muscles swinging at Clay in vain.
Clay, the new champion, capered along the ring apron, shouting at the press: “Eat your words! I shook up the world! I’m king of the world!”

The next morning, a calm Clay affirmed his rumored membership in the Nation of Islam. He would be Cassius X. (A few weeks later he became Muhammad Ali, which he said meant “Worthy of all praise most high.”) That day he harangued his audience with a preview of what would, over the next few years, become a series of longer and more detailed lectures about religion and race. This one was about, as he put it, “staying with your own kind.”

“In the jungle, lions are with lions and tigers with tigers,” he said. “I don’t want to go where I’m not wanted.”

The only prominent leader to send Ali a telegram of congratulations was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I remember when Ali joined the Nation of Islam,” Julian Bond, the civil rights activist and politician, once said. “The act of joining was not something many of us particularly liked. But the notion he’d do it — that he’d jump out there, join this group that was so despised by mainstream America, and be proud of it — sent a little thrill through you.”

The thrills gave way to darker thoughts. After Malcolm X left the Nation and was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965, by members of the group, there was talk that Ali had been tacitly complicit. Jack Newfield, a political journalist with an interest in boxing, wrote, “If Ali, as the new heavyweight champion, had remained loyal to his mentor, and continued to lend his public support to Malcolm, history might have gone in a different direction.”

Refusing to Be Drafted

On Feb. 17, 1966, a day already roiled by the Senate’s televised hearings on the war in Vietnam, Ali learned that he had been reclassified 1A by his Louisville selective service board. He had originally been disqualified by a substandard score on a mental aptitude test. But a subsequent lowering of criteria made him eligible to go to war. The timing, however, was suspicious to some; the contract with the Louisville millionaires had run out, and Nation members were taking over as Ali’s managers and promoters.

“Why me?” Ali said when reporters swarmed around his rented Miami cottage to ask about his new draft status. “I buy a lot of bullets, at least three jet bombers a year, and pay the salary of 50,000 fighting men with the money they take from me after my fights.”

But as the reporters continued to press him with questions about the war, the geography of Asia and his thoughts about killing Vietcong, he snapped, “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.”
The remark was front-page news around the world. In America, the news media’s response was mostly unfavorable, if not hostile. The sports columnist Red Smith of The New York Herald Tribune wrote, “Squealing over the possibility that the military may call him up, Cassius makes himself as sorry a spectacle as those unwashed punks who picket and demonstrate against the war.”
Most of the press refused to refer to Ali by his new name. When two black contenders, Floyd Patterson and Ernie Terrell, insisted on calling him Cassius Clay, Ali taunted them in the ring as he delivered savage beatings.

In April 1967, Ali refused to be drafted and requested conscientious-objector status. He was immediately stripped of his title by boxing commissions around the country. Several months later he was convicted of draft evasion, a verdict he appealed. CreditEd Kolenovsky/Associated Press

On April 28, 1967, Ali refused to be drafted and requested conscientious-objector status. He was immediately stripped of his title by boxing commissions around the country. Several months later he was convicted of draft evasion, a verdict he appealed. He did not fight again until he was almost 29, losing three and a half years of his athletic prime.

They were years of personal and intellectual growth, however, as Ali supported himself on the college lecture circuit, offering medleys of Muslim dogma and boxing verse. In the question-and-answer sessions that followed, Ali was forced to explain his religion, his Vietnam stand and his opposition (unpopular on most campuses) to marijuana and interracial dating. Now the “onliest boxer in history that people asked questions like a senator” developed coherent answers.

During his exile from the ring, Ali starred in a short-lived Broadway musical, “Big Time Buck White,” one of several commercial ventures. There was a fast-food chain called Champburger and a mock movie fight with the popular former champion Rocky Marciano in which Ali outboxed the slugger until being knocked out himself in the final round. The broadcaster Howard Cosell, one of Ali’s most steadfast supporters in the news media, was responsible for keeping him on television, both as an interview subject and as a commentator on boxing matches.

As Ali’s draft-evasion case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, he returned to the ring on Oct. 26, 1970, through the efforts of black politicians in Atlanta. The fight, which ended with a quick knockout of the white contender Jerry Quarry, was only a tuneup for Ali’s anticipated showdown with Frazier, the new champion. But it was a night of glamour and history as Coretta Scott King, Bill Cosby, Diana Ross, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sidney Poitier turned out to honor Ali. The Rev. Ralph Abernathy presented him with the annual Dr. King award, calling him “the March on Washington all in two fists.”

“The Fight,” as the Madison Square Garden bout with Frazier on March 8, 1971, was billed, lived up to expectations as an epic match. With Norman Mailer ringside taking notes for a book and Frank Sinatra shooting pictures for Life magazine, Ali stood toe to toe with Frazier and slugged it out as if determined to prove that he had “heart,” that he could stand up to punishment. Frazier won a 15-round decision. Both men suffered noticeable physical damage.

To Ali’s boosters, the money he had lost standing up for his principles and the beating he had taken from Frazier proved his sincerity. To his critics, the bloody redemption meant he had finally grown up. The Supreme Court also took a positive view. On June 28, 1971, it unanimously reversed a lower court decision and granted Ali his conscientious-objector status.

Resurgence and Decline

It was assumed now that Ali’s time had passed and that he would become a high-grade “opponent,” the fighter to beat for those establishing themselves. But his time had returned. Although he was slower, his artistry was even more refined. “He didn’t have fights,” wrote Jim Murray of The Los Angeles Times, “he gave recitals.”

He won 13 of his next 14 fights, including a rematch with Frazier, who had lost his title to George Foreman, a bigger, more frightening version of Liston.

Ali was the underdog, smaller and seven years older than Foreman, when they met on Oct. 30, 1974, in Zaire, then ruled by Mobutu Sese Seko. Each fighter was guaranteed $5 million, an extraordinary sum at the time. The fight also launched the career of the promoter Don King and was the subject of Leon Gast’s documentary “When We Were Kings,” which was released more than 20 years later. (Ali attended a special screening, along with hip-hop performances, at Radio City Music Hall.) The film won a 1997 Academy Award.

Ali reveled in the African setting, repeating an aphorism he had heard from Brown, his assistant trainer: “The world is a black shirt with a few white buttons.”


Rise of Muhammad Ali

Milestones and career highlights of Ali, a showman in and outside of the boxing ring.

As the fight progressed, the crowd chanted, “Ali, bomaye!” (“Ali, kill him!”), first out of concern as Ali leaned against the ropes and absorbed Foreman’s sledgehammer blows on his arms and shoulders, and then in mounting excitement as Foreman wore himself out. In the eighth round, in a blur of punches, Ali knocked out Foreman to regain the title. He leaned down to reporters and said, “What did I tell you?”

On Dec. 10, 1974, Ali was invited to the White House for the first time, by President Gerald R. Ford, an occasion that signified not only a turning point in the country’s embrace of Ali but also a return of the Lip. Ali told the president, “You made a big mistake letting me come because now I’m going after your job.”

Ali successfully defended his title 10 times over the next three years, at increasing physical cost. He knocked out Frazier in their third match, the so-called Thrilla in Manila in 1975, but the punishment of their 14 rounds, Ali said, felt close to dying.

In 1978 he lost and then regained his title in fights with Leon Spinks. Ali’s longtime ring doctor, Ferdie Pacheco, urged him to quit, noting the slowing of his reflexes and the slurring of his speech as symptoms of damage. Ali refused. In 1980, he was battered in a loss to the champion Larry Holmes. A year later, he fought for the last time, losing to the journeyman Trevor Berbick in the Bahamas.
Ali was soon told that he had Parkinson’s syndrome. Several doctors have speculated that it was brought on by too many punches to the head. The diagnosis was later changed to Parkinson’s disease, according to his wife, Lonnie. She said it had been brought on by Ali’s exposure to pesticides and other toxic chemicals at his training camp in Deer Lake, Pa.
A Champion Is Celebrated

After retiring from the ring, Ali made speeches emphasizing spirituality, peace and tolerance, and undertook quasi-diplomatic missions to Africa and Iraq. Even as he lost mobility and speech, he traveled often from his home in Berrien Springs, Mich. Product and corporate endorsements brought him closer to the “show me the money” sensibilities of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, the heirs to his global celebrity.

In 1999, Ali became the first boxer on a Wheaties box. On Dec. 31 that year, he rang out the millennium at the New York Stock Exchange. In 2003, a $7,500 art book celebrating his life was published. His life was the subject of a television movie and a feature film directed by Michael Mann, with Will Smith as Ali. (Both productions sanitized his early religious and political viewpoints.) The same licensing firm that owned most of Elvis Presley’s image purchased rights to Ali’s.
Thomas Hauser, his biographer, decried the new “commercialism” surrounding Ali and “the rounding off the rough edges of his journey.” In a book of essays published in 2005, “The Lost Legacy of Muhammad Ali,” Hauser wrote, “We should cherish the memory of Ali as a warrior and as a gleaming symbol of defiance against an unjust social order when he was young.”
In 2005, calling him the greatest boxer of all time, President George W. Bush presented the Medal of Freedom to Ali in a White House ceremony.


Calling him the greatest boxer of all time, President George W. Bush presented the Medal of Freedom to Ali in a White House ceremony in 2005. CreditKevin Lamarque/Reuters

In recent years, Parkinson’s disease and spinal stenosis, which required surgery, limited Ali’s mobility and ability to communicate. He spent most of his time at his home in Paradise Valley, Ariz., often watching Western movies and old black-and-white TV shows. He ventured out mostly for physical therapy, movies and concerts. He rarely did TV interviews, his wife said, because he no longer liked the way he looked on camera.

“But he loved the adoration of crowds,” she said. “Even though he became vulnerable in ways he couldn’t control, he never lost his childlike innocence, his sunny, positive nature. Jokes and pranks and magic tricks. He wanted to entertain people, to make them happy.”


Muhammad Ali was my hero and the supreme hero of my generation and it turns of all times. There has never been ANY athlete in history who has exceeded Muhammad Ali's contribution to sports and human dignity around the world. 

We will miss you, Ali
God bless you forever