News
& Politics
- August 2007
Jail
term for Nigeria ex-governor
(convicted of money laundering)
bbc.com
A Lagos
high court has sentenced a
former Nigerian governor to two
years in prison after it found
him guilty of money laundering.
Dieprieye Alamieyeseigha was
arrested in December 2005 in
Bayelsa's state capital after
jumping bail in the UK.
Officials said Alamieyeseigha
left the UK disguised in women's
clothing, a claim he has
consistently denied. As Nigeria
battles to shed a reputation for
corruption, this is the first
ex-governor to be convicted for
graft.
He was
accused of owning multi-million
dollar mansions in Nigeria and
abroad and pleaded guilty to
embezzlement and money
laundering. Five other former
governors are currently facing
sundry charges of corruption,
theft and money laundering in
courts in Abuja and Lagos.
Mugabe
Wants More Control
CNN.com (Reuters)
President
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe claims
that there is a conspiracy
against him. In a recent session
of parliament, Mugabe (who has
been president of the country
for over two decades), said that
his government was working to
revive the Zimbabwean economy,
which he says is being sabotaged
by Western and local opponents
who want to remove him from
power "Our economy continues to
face challenges arising from the
illegal sanctions imposed by our
enemies," Mugabe told the House
of Assembly and the upper
Senate. The 83-year-old head of
state is seeking re-election
despite accusations he has
plunged his country into its
worst economic crisis ever
through a series of
controversial policies.
Anger at SA
woman trouser 'ban'
BBC.com
Moves by
men to stop women wearing
trousers in a South African
township have been condemned by
politicians and civil rights
groups.
Earlier
this week, a woman in Umlazi
township, near Durban, was
stripped naked and her shack
burnt down. The incident
happened in an area called T
section which is a hostelry for
men. Men in the township are
demanding that all women wear
skirts or dresses. South
Africa's Gender and Equality
Commission said this incident
was extreme and unusual. It is
an issue currently being
investigated by the police. Men
in conservative rural
communities in southern Africa
sometimes harass women for
wearing trousers and short
skirts while it is usual for
women around Durban to wear
trousers. Most South African
societies are patriarchal and it
is difficult for people who
assume authoritative roles in
homes to adjust to women
assuming their own roles and
status within society. After the
community meeting, it was said
that an official ban is in place
for women who wear trousers.
Medics
Charged in Libya HIV Crime
Released
All Africa (Amnesty
International)
The six
foreign medical workers who were
convicted of deliberately
infecting over 400 Libyan
children with HIV have been
released. The six consistently
denied the charge and claim that
they were tortured in detention
to make them confess. The
decision was made by Libya's
Supreme Council of Judicial
Bodies after an alleged deal was
struck between Libya and the
European Union to improve ties.
Amnesty International official
Malcolm Smart stated that the
release of the workers was a
“welcome decision”. He called
for “a reform of the Libyan
criminal justice system” to
ensure that “nothing like this
can ever happen again in Libya.”
Amnesty International welcomed
the commutation of the death
sentences but criticized the
life prison terms that were
substituted. Amnesty reiterated
its appeal for the medics to be
released and reunited with their
families.
Ethiopia
attempts to kick the Red Cross
Out
BBC.com
The Red
Cross has been given seven days
to leave the Ogaden region
bordering Somalia by the
Ethiopian government. The ICRC
has been accused of working with
the rebel group Ogaden National
Liberation Movement.
Ethiopian
troops were preventing emergency
aid reaching the mainly Somali
speaking region. The regional
president of Ethiopia’s Somali
region, Abdullai Hassan said
that the ICRC has seven days to
evacuate the area. He accused
the organization of
collaborating with the enemy and
spreading rumors through their
website. The Ogaden has fought
for the secession of the Ogaden
region since the early 1990’s.
Recently they are responsible
for the attacks on a Chinese-run
oil field killing nine Chinese
and 65 Ethiopians.
Tanzania
Gives Hope to AIDS Sufferers
All Africa.com
Due to the
growing popularity of Care and
Treatment Centers (CTC), the
number of HIV patients on
anti-retro-viral therapy in
Tanzania has increased by 100
percent in 10 districts. The
increase is attributed to the
introduction of "fellows"
trained by the Benjamin Mkapa
HIV/Aids Foundation, a non-
governmental organization
jointly initiated by former
presidents of Tanzania and the
US, Benjamin Mkapa and Bill
Clinton, respectively. Under the
Mkapa Fellows Program, the
fellows educate society from
district level to schools and
communities on HIV/Aids issues.
They also educate village
leaders, faith leaders and
traditional healers in hopes of
reducing HIV/Aids transmission
in the districts. The result; a
significant increase in the
enrollment of patients in care
and treatment clinics.
roject 21 black leadership
network. Comments may be sent
to
DBorelli@nationalcenter.org.
Obama
is not black! In skin color and
DNA, he’s black, but he is not
“black”! When I think “black” I
think of my sisters and brothers
who are the children of West
Africans, brought over on slave
ships. Obama has never had the
“black” experience. Obama comes
from a voluntary immigrant of
African Descent. This group has
a different outlook on the role
of race in their lives and
politics. It’s like comparing a
Nigerian cabdriver and a 3rd
generation person from Harlem.
They have zero in common besides
the way a police officer would
check them (they can’t
differentiate the two.)
Politically and culturally, the
person from Harlem is the real
“black” man of America.
Aside from
that point, let's look at
Obama’s track record. If he’s
about to take the highest seat
in office, he had better be good
and ready. He’s 45, and what are
his qualifications? He might be
able to mature to be a capable
leader, but is he really ready?
I would think that after the
whole Bush fiasco in office,
we’d want to make sure this
time, we elect someone with some
real experience and vision.
Talking is one thing, but doing
is another. It’s not that I
don’t believe Obama can handle
it, but wouldn’t it be more
sensible to elect someone who we
are sure can handle it?
Let's look
at Obama’s background. He claims
he comes out of a Muslim
background, yet he confessed in
his book that he smokes. That
doesn’t sound like a good Muslim
to me. He claims he is
eco-friendly, yet he is
supporting coal, however
liquefied, as a way to wean
ourselves off foreign oil, he
wouldn’t happen to be talking
about his home state’s powerful
coal lobby, would he? Strangely
enough, he also supports
ethanol, which happens to come
from corn-rich Iowa, site of the
first presidential caucus?
He grew up
under a white mother, his Kenyan
father left the family when he
was at a young age. He came out
of Harvard Law School without
having to bear any burden. Does
he really understand what being
a black American is all about?
Obama is like the safe black
friend a white person would have
to justify their political
correctness. Is Washington
trying to erase the significance
of slavery and continuing racism
while giving the appearance of
progress? This race is framed to
the American people as a battle
between gender and race, and to
me, Obama is not black.
~
I wish
Obama were the only democratic
nominee for the race. It is
counter-productive to vote for
two democrats who are equally
obscure when letting the public
know what they stand for. A
third party might come in and
snatch all the votes away while
the two candidate bicker away.
I am eager
to see the results since it has
become an interesting test for
America to come clean with its
true feelings. Is America more
misogynistic or are they more
racist?! Many Obama critics,
surprisingly, come from the
black community. This is
counter-productive. People like
to say “he’s too white”, “he
doesn’t have enough experience”,
or “he’s more in touch with the
immigrant experience rather than
the American black experience”.
I would say that he’s the symbol
of America.
I vote
Obama. I think he will bring
about tremendous change not only
in the black community, but also
within all the ethnic
communities. America today is
not a black and white society
like 20 years ago. We look at
the multi-ethnicity that is
America, it is what makes up the
vibrant culture it is today.
Historically, America was built
by the hands of black slaves,
then came the Asians, the Latins,
and the rest. Much energy was
spent to segregate all of us.
Obama, though his skin color is
black, he is the symbol of what
America is and should be, an
integration of immigration, and
ethnicity.
Black
America might have not gotten
involved as they should in
politics because they’ve grown
apathetic towards the wrong
doings of white government.
However, black America only
makes up 12% of the population.
Now think what if ethnic America
came together, if you add the
numbers up, that is much closer
to 50% of the American
population, if not more.
Colored
children do not have the readily
available role models white
children have. Obama, if he were
to be elected, would open a
door. Even if it is a sliver of
a door, it is, at least an open
one for the future of these
black, immigrant, interracial
children living in the United
States.
I’d like to
point out that just because a
colored candidate is well
spoken, it does not make him
“white”. It makes him educated,
and communicative. Just because
Obama knows how to play the
political game, which every
politician is forced to play in
order to just get a foot into
the door, doesn’t make him
“white”. When politicians are
running for senate, he/she must
be well spoken. Especially for a
colored man, the public is
watching much more closely.
I believe
Obama will gain experience fast
through working in the White
House. It takes vision to be a
leader. Clinton voted for the
war that has a body count of
3,611 (plus) American men and
women. Obama’s visions were
clear from the beginning; he
was one of the few visionary
voices of sanity who were
actually against one of the
biggest blunders of our
history. I think that says
something, without directing the
attention to experience and talk
of whether he’s black enough or
white enough. A leader, white or
black if capable, should be in
office, and I believe 100% in
Obama.
By Kangsen
Feka Wakai
When
I visited New Orleans in the
summer of 2004, it still
possessed the charm of lore; the
accent, still a jambalaya of
patois and conventional speech
drenched in a southern drawl;
the streets, narrow with
potholes; the estates, vast and
green; the mansions, big and
white; the ghettos, black,
brown, white, poor and
dangerous; the people, lively
yet hospitable; the partying,
non-stop and rejuvenating;
voodoo symbols, hauntingly
everywhere; churches, coldly
omnipresent and huge; the food,
eclectic and delicious; the
sights, stunning, the contrasts,
too many to keep count.
I went
there in July, during the peak
of the hurricane season. We
drove into a wet city and the
roads around Dillard University,
where we stayed flooded. It was
my first trip to the Big Easy
and I wanted to see the city,
rain or shine. In spite of the
weather, the pulse of the city
hadn’t slowed; the French
quarter was abuzz; the thumping
and gritty sounds of New Orleans
Bounce floated through the wards
as braided teens with white
t-shirts moved their heads back
and forth on sidewalks and front
porches. A raspy voice blared
from the speakers as we made our
way through the blocks and
columns, which form the infamous
New Orleans wards.
I glued my
face to the car window and
watched the city roll by. A
beautiful but eerie city it was.
The unusual mix of voodoo and
Christian icons mesmerized me.
The aging mansions and rusted
lamp poles were charming. The
cemeteries, a tourist favorite,
were dull but evoked a mystical
serenity. The architecture and
ambience of the French Quarter
dazzled; the abject poverty of
St. Bernard Projects and the
countless wards revolted me; the
singsong-like lingua tickled me
as I walked and drove around the
nest where jazz was born,
vulnerable to its gleeful pulse
and afflicted by its dark
sorrows. Like the atypical
Delta blues song, New Orleans’s
narratives never seemed to have
pleasant endings.
In spite of
the turbulence that seemed to
characterize its identity and
survival, New Orleans still
boasted of a unique way of life,
blended and conspicuous—quite a
feat—when one considers that it
[New Orleans] is a single
ingredient in the gumbo that is
the American cultural platter.
As I walked
through the French Quarter, the
city’s pearl, I noticed
alligators and crawfish symbols
stamped on gift shop doors.
There were musical notes and
thick-lipped jazzmen blowing
horns on restaurants windows.
The art in the French Quarter
was animating and colorful. In
a way, it seemed to embody the
New Orleans identity—a medley of
decadent projects, plantation
mansions, dilapidated wards,
southern belles, gold teeth and
all night partying. Old South,
meet the New South!
With its
fair share of musical festivals,
elaborate and parade-like
funerals, the city is submerged
in music. New Orleans is where
jazz, brass bands and Zydeco
strings juxtapose themselves to
create a musical stew. The city
moans with the agony of a deep
Delta blues song, it’ll croon a
chain-gang favorite at dawn—
composed in the height of the
humid summer.
Then like a
demented spirit lusting for
blood, Katrina came blowing,
swirling rapidly, spewing death
with every breadth, dark like
the gulf waters, death and
destruction on her fang-like
teeth, singing a diabolic blues
song, pillaging, killing and
ruining. Her song was cursed and
spiteful, murderous and sour,
blind and deaf. She sang a
song of death. Homes submerged
under water, the city gone, but
still somehow, miraculously
alive, screaming and shrieking,
hoping its plight is heard and
seen. New Orleans grieved and
the haunting echoes of its
screams blared with the clarity
and passion of Satchmo’s horn.
The question is, did those howls
and tears permeate our
consciousness?
The truth
of the matter is that New
Orleans had been screaming,
screaming for ages—perhaps even
longer than most residents and
non-residents would want to
admit. Screaming from the
rivulets of blood that ran on
its streets. In fact, in the
early to mid-nineties, New
Orleans, earned the unflattering
tag of “murder” capital of the
country—an abomination that may
have done more good for the
city’s mediocre hip-hop scene
than it did the city’s
residents. Like so many, New
Orleans became a victim of its
own demography, a teeming
underclass, albeit the
subtleness of this poignant
truth. The fear of the ‘big’
flood submerging the city like
the debauchery of the erstwhile
religious Mardi Gras festivities
has always been part of the
city’s mystery and reality. That
foreseeable fear lurked in the
shadows as if anxious to shame
and punish man for his blatant
defiance of nature.
Katrina,
like an unsuspecting intruder
into the American household
caught a nation in its
underpants, stained but hidden
from sight, dirty but safely
covered by the finest of silks.
Whether it was the images of
black people straddled on
overloaded trucks, a mixture of
shock and relief on their faces,
or the rants of a frustrated and
helpless mayor, for a moment,
all eyes were on New Orleans.
In our
eyes, New Orleans was our little
Gomorrah, a place we could go in
March, drink, dance, fight and
puke. It was our hedonistic
latrine in which we dumped the
waste of suppression that is
life for some working people.
But New
Orleans is no more. It has been
submerged into the dungeons of
myth and memory. Whether one
agrees or not, New Orleans has
forever lost the ambience and
glee of yesteryears, and even if
it is structurally rebuilt, the
persona of what we knew as the
Big Easy is forever altered.
Katrina,
the chanteuse, had penetrating
eyes that pierced the hearts of
adulterous men while rendering
their wives sleepless. She
sings a soothing but dreadful
song. She sings of our
strengths and vulnerabilities
tinged in the deep Mississippi
drawl that lace the notes
dripping from her lips.
As Katrina
the hurricane transformed into
the showers that flooded New
Orleans, she left behind a
notepad and pencil, perhaps,
hoping we can inscribe riddles
and parables that encode the
blessings hidden in her wrath.
*Excerpt
from Mes memoires de New Orleans
featured in Kangsen Feka Wakai’s
collection available on
www.lulu.com. “Katrina Sings The
Blues” was previously published
on www.soulafrica.com in July of
2005.
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By Phil
Jackson
Last
summer, I visited Mississippi.
This was my first travel to the
rural, deep south. To my
surprise, I found that Black
people were not involved in the
planting, growing or harvesting
of cotton. Instead, while White
and Latino men drove machines
that harvested the cotton, I saw
hundreds of young Black men
standing idle on street corners,
drinking alcoholic beverages
throughout the day and evening.
Fifty-eight
percent of Black boys do not
graduate from high school in the
United States. Many of the
forty-two percent who do will be
given diplomas that graduate
them to low-wage jobs, or no
jobs at all, street-corner
hustling, incarceration and
violent death. At best, most
Black students in America are
getting an education that
prepares them to only pick
cotton—if there were cotton for
them to pick. Even so,
according to a report by the
Joint Economic Committee of
Congress, forty-seven percent of
non-institutional Black men in
Illinois are not working.
America’s
dilemma is: what to do with 36
million Black Americans who are
the descendants of the slaves
that were shipped to American
shores 400 years ago? If America
chooses to help Black people
find a proper and productive
place in American society, it is
probably the easiest, and for
the long term, the cheapest and
the best solution.
Here are
five key components to fixing
this dilemma:
1) Rebuild
the Black family. Every major
problem in the Black community,
including poor education,
massive unemployment,
hyper-incarceration, high
mortality rates and senseless
violence, can be traced to the
disintegration of the Black
family.
2) Provide
Black boys with strong, positive
Black men as mentors, role
models and, particularly, a
connection to their fathers.
Black boys, like any other
children, will imitate and
become what they see, including
good fathers.
3) Control
the negative peer culture and
electronic media that mold many
Black boys and men into violent,
irresponsible and uncaring human
beings.
4)
Understand that for the rest of
our existence, Black people will
live in a “STEMM” world, a world
based on Science, Technology,
Engineering, Math and Medicine (STEMM).
If we are to survive, it will be
because we understand and master
“STEMM.” We must teach Black
children accordingly.
5) Control
our economic fate by mastering
the principles of
entrepreneurship, business,
management, finance, accounting,
manufacturing and banking, and
by teaching these principles to
our children.
This is the
way, and the only way, to solve
the problems of Black people in
America. Unless we, Black
people, quickly respond to the
changes of our world, even our
cousins on the continent of
Africa will not want us. And we
will truly be “a lost tribe”
wandering the world without a
home. We must realize that we
live in an “Educate or Die”
society and an “Educate or Die”
world! There is no middle
ground. There is no more cotton
to pick!
Phillip
Jackson, Founder and Director
The Black Star Project
3473 South King Drive, Box 464
Chicago, Illinois 60616
773/285-9600 or email at
blackstar1000@ameritech.net
June 29,
2007
(A picture
of Phillip Jackson is available
upon request)
