Marian's Blog

Ralph Bunche, edited by Beverly Lindsay

When I think of Ralph Bunche I remember the first time I saw the small sculpted bust of him in the U.N. conference center in Geneva. I also remember meeting his beautiful daughter, Joan, twelve years ago during the dedication of the Ralph Bunche Center at Howard University. Internationally, and especially in the international system as represented by the U.N., other than the offhand mention of Dr. Bunche, there is so little recognition of Black Americans' existence (i.e., we, the people who are the descendants of Black people enslaved in what is now the United States.) And now Beverly (Dr. Beverly Lindsay) has edited a new book on Dr. Bunche. The foreword is written by singular historian John Hope Franklin. Ralph Johnson Bunche: Public Intellectual and Nobel Peace Laureate is published by University of Illinois Press. Today Beverly's being interviewed on the Alvin Jones radio programme broadcast from Oxford, North Carolina. Those of us who may not be near Oxford, or North Carolina, or the U.S., can hear the programme playback via dralvinjones.com. List of the book's nine contributors:

Aime Cesaire, 1913-2008 - Negritude, gender, diaspora

Aime Cesaire est mort aujourd'hui. Aime Cesaire has died today. We awoke to this news, 17 April 2008. He made it to age 94. The Martiniquan poet, novelist, playwright and former mayor of Fort de France and member of French parliament was the last living member of the Cesaire-Damas-Senghor trio credited for inspiring the international Negritude movement. I certainly respect it though up to now in key ways, Negritude, rather than being truly universal, seems to me shaped by clearly masculinist claims. This reminds me of 2003 in Paris and a very curious and ultimately aborted attempt at an intellectual public encounter with a very self-absorbed young chap named Harlem Desir. Where, in the francophone (and other) Caribbean-African-European picture, is Black North America (women and men) permitted to fit? Negritude may have spread long before Hurricane Katrina but it came long after la Louisiane and New Orleans and Congo Square. Then last week my friend Marilyn Sephocle, la martiniquaise, and I saw each other for the first time in years. Me, francophone American; a francophone Black American and Black American woman. She, Caribbean and antillaise, citoyenne of France - a citizen of Europe through Europe's hold on its final outposts in the Americas. More than three decades ago, living in France, they called me guadeloupienne though my first time in Guadeloupe did not come till 1994. Our working group, "exiled" from Haiti, arrived by night at Pointe-a-Pitre airport where "outsiders" like me stood, waiting, in the "Non-EU" immigration line. I regret that I never met Monsieur Cesaire. Now for me along with others the task becomes to re-examine what came before and what we have inherited, while finding our way home from here.

Black History Month even in Paris! Family history and finding our Caribbean enslaved ancestors

I am sooo excited about this! Thanks and appreciation to France-based Comite Marche du 23 Mai 1998 (and S. Flainville) on their workshop on Sunday, 24 February. It's in French, of course: "Comment j’ai retrouve mes parents qui ont vecu au temps de l’esclavage." "How I found my relatives who lived during slavery." The geo-historical focus is on Martinique (and perhaps also Guadeloupe?) I will post more details on Marian's Blog en francais but here are a few: It all takes place 2:30-5:30pm in the Salle Saint-Denys at 8, rue de la Boulangerie, 93200 Saint-Denis, near Paris. Workshop leader is Dr. Emmanuel GORDIEN, director of CM98's own genealogy center. There's a nominal €2 (that's euro) charge, and the closest Metro is Saint-Denis Basilique. Dr. Gordien recommends a couple of French-language resources: Claire Sibille's "Guide des sources de la traite négrière de l’esclavage et de leurs abolitions" and "Les noms de famille d’origine africaine de la population martiniquaise d’ascendance servile," by Guillaume Durand and Kinvi Logossah from Editions Harmattan. I look forward to hearing how it went. Big props to Suzy and CM98!

Leon Higginbotham and South Carolina, on Martin Luther King Day

Perhaps you already know the name A. Leon Higginbotham, or maybe you don't. Until his death he served as a U.S. federal judge. Earlier he was a friend and college classmate of my father and his siblings. Not only did Judge Higginbotham go on to be an attorney and federal judge, he became the twentieth century's chief scholar of the foundations of the position of Black Americans in U.S. law. My family had previously shared with me their story about Purdue. Years later I discovered that Judge Higginbotham had recounted it elsewhere again. My father was sixteen when he began studying engineering at Purdue. While she did her studies at Purdue, my aunt lived in the town with a local Black family. My uncle and my father, native sons of Indiana, were among eleven Black male students whose Purdue ordeal Higginbotham described. I found it on the Web and want to share it here. Tuesday night is the televised Congressional Black Caucus Foundation/CNN Democratic candidates' debate from Charleston, SC. Found a link to a Black South Carolina timeline that begins with the 1525 arrival of at least one African along with a group of Spanish settlers.

Major Owens unveils Black Caucus Members' opinion survey

The Congressional Black Caucus annual legislative conference ends tomorrow, Saturday. Monday, Oct 1st, I plan to attend "A New Challenge to the Congressional Black Caucus", my former boss Major Owens' Library of Congress think-tank panel on the CBC and his forthcoming book, The Peacock Elite: A Subjective Case Study of the Congressional Black Caucus. I'm interested in the results of Mr. Owens' opinion survey that he's asked his former colleagues - Black Caucus members (Members of U.S. Congress) to complete. Monday's panel includes current Congresswoman Maxine Waters (Los Angeles, California); former CBC members, Oakland (Cali) Mayor Ron Dellums and attorney Louis Stokes; author and Univ. of Maryland political science prof Ron Walters; and author Michael Eric Dyson, now on faculty at Georgetown University. I have not yet seen results of the congressional opinion survey, though I'm certain we'll hear more on Monday. Since retiring last January after 24 years representing Central Brooklyn, NY's 11th congressional district, Mr. Owens is now a distinguished visiting scholar in the Library of Congress's Kluge Center.

Re-connecting Africa with herself: 1619 Angola and Congo to Virginia

Re-connecting Africa with her history and her people means re-connecting Europe (and the Middle East) with its own history, too. "About 350 slaves were bound for Veracruz [Mexico], when the ship was robbed of its human cargo off the coast of Mexico in 1619 by two unidentified pirate ships..." Sandra sent me the link to Lisa Rein's Sunday, 3 September Washington Post article, Mystery of Va.'s First Slaves is Unlocked 400 Years Later. This was no "mystery". The countries who held these records for the past four centuries did not care. In fact, they've been evasive, hostile and secretive about this chapter of their own history. The Africa-Europe-Virginia story of 30 Africans cast ashore at Jamestown in 1619 from a Dutch-flagged ship is part of the larger story of 350 Angolans and Congolese among the tens of millions of Africans deported on ship after ship to the Americas over 300 years. Since then we have been kept apart from Africa. Apartheid. Forced to live apart forever. These Africans lived apart in the Americas, separated to the present day from Africa and each other. They were kept apart even inside every society into which they were shipped like goods. "They passed through a slave fortress at the port city of Luanda, still Angola's capital." ... continued

Iraq: Civil war and Nir Rosen's Green Bird; long live Zarqawi?

Thursday, 8 June 2006. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi no longer walks the earth and CNN has interviewed a 'less well-known' (to some of us) freelance journalist called Nir Rosen. Today Rosen became the first person I've heard in the mainstream media (MSM) to speak openly, and like he were making sense, about Iraq being in a state of civil war. Digest that. Most other media folk are still using that "sectarian violence" euphemism. This includes Wolf Blitzer who thankfully, unlike many of his CNN colleagues, I am not forced to endure or imagine discussing "Brangelina" with a straight face. Besides Nir Rosen has anyone in US mainstream media officially called the current state of Iraq a civil war? Rosen specifically says it's been a civil war since 2005. He is also author of a book I'd never heard of before today - In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq - briefly reviewed here. The book's subtitle seems appropriate on this day when some in "the West" are cheering and instant-replaying news of al-Zarqawi's death. May he, like all of us, have an opportunity to talk to G*d about who he was and the acts he committed in this life.

Color of wealth: what's the racial wealth divide?

The Color of Wealth is available June 2006. Subtitled "The Story Behind the US Racial Wealth Divide", authors include my girl Rose Brewer along with Rebecca Adamson, Meizhu Lui, Barbara Robles and Betsy Leondar-Wright.

Woman of colour and M.I.T.-trained economist Julianne Malveaux reviews TCoW: "... shows how contemporary wealth differences evolve from pivotal points in our history, and explains how public policy, even when well meaning, reinforces existing inequality. This book is an important contribution to critical work on race and economics.” Julianne's most recent book is Wall Street, Main Street and the Side Street: A Mad Economist Takes a Stroll.

The Color of Wealth press release explains that for every 100 cents (dollar) owned by an "average" US white family, an "average" US family of color has just 18 cents. "Why do people of color have so little wealth? The Color of Wealth lays bare a dirty secret: for centuries, people of color have been barred by laws and by discrimination from participating in government wealth-building programs that have benefited white Americans." This includes, for example, "post–World War II GI Bill programs [that] helped whites only—The Color of Wealth is the first book to demonstrate the decisive influence of government on Americans’ net worth."

Kenya: An "Old Etonian" accused of killing not once but twice

Some say certain people's claims to being African are not taken seriously. And I might ask, not taken seriously by whom? Perhaps not wholly by themselves? Then there's the strange Kenya case of Thomas "Tom" Cholmondeley (possibly pronounced "chum-lee"?), accused yet again (and pleading not guilty) of a recent murder. I was surfing the net for info on contemporary African-Caribbean Cholmondeleys when I stumbled on this latest news story. Thoroughly appalling. The headline seemed so outlandish that I checked the allegation in two or three places, just to verify I was not reading something from 2005. I was not. In 2005 other charges against this Tom were dropped in the separate shooting death of a Kenya Wildlife Service warden.

Tom's an aristocrat, though possibly without the bearing. He seems to have a nasty streak of 'bad luck'. Or maybe just a nasty streak. His family happens to "own" approximately sixty-five to one hundred thousand (65,000-100,000) acres of Kenya. And he's Kenyan. And white.

Neither killing allegedly committed by the above-mentioned occurred in the parking lot of the type of Naivasha or Nairobi club as is frequented by persons of Tom's particular (Kenyan) background. To look at this from one angle it would seem Tom's 'claims to fame' are 1) social and 2) material. Or perhaps the order should be reversed. You need to read the articles linked below to begin to grasp the depths to which Tom's mostly poor yet (hopefully) equally Kenyan neighbours despise him. They say they find him "arrogant". How shocking. (snicker) All of which is very sad and once upon a time might have been avoided, possibly had Tom ever had a personality transplant. But I digress. A couple of the articles I've seen on the latest shooting include Barack Muluka's biting commentary in The East African Standard (Nairobi) in which he declares: "We live in a white man's world" (no date Sat, 13 May, sorry), and (London) Observer writer Tracy McVeigh's 14 May piece, also from Nairobi: "Protests grow at Kenya killing." [I thought the previous title looked a bit long!] It's the mainly British western press that's alluded to Tom's studies at Eton and to him as "an expat". I thought he was Kenyan.

The alleged killer's full name is "(Honorable) Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley", born 1968 (he is not 46 as some have reported). He possesses British peerage #68401, as listed here and is the son of the 5th Baron Delamere - who (for reasons possibly only fully comprehensible and interesting to Brits/Europeans and a few in the ex-colonies) also is known as Lord Delamere (as his ancestor in that book Out of Africa). These titles are not Kenyan. The social core of Tom's existence (and political clout) seems to derive almost entirely from this British/European peerage system that seeped into Kenyan life along with the larger, now post-colonial problem (if I may go there) for Africa, of "who gets the land?" In many social circles not limited to any single continent or region, being African does not "cut" the social "mustard". Europe, the USA and Latin America all come to mind. Oh -and Asia and the Middle East. That rule-of-thumb, however, does not usually apply to Tom's type of African. And being in firm possession of a country-sized slice of Africa is handy on the material side of this social equation. I doubt that in the past hundred years it was possible for a "new" family to acquire one-hundred thousand acres of Scotland, England or Wales. I don't think even northern Ireland. But East Africa, yes.

Back to Kenya, where breadwinners from two families are dead in a similar fashion and allegedly by the same hand. This reflects an almost incomprehensible contempt for human life, in particular for the lives and families of the dead Kenyans. This whole scandal also does much to exacerbate and nothing to help resolve Kenya's piece of East Africa's lingering post-colonial land-tenure problem. I know you didn't think that was limited only to Zimbabwe...

I've already 'blabbed' too much. If convicted, British-hereditary-peerage-aristocrat African scion Thomas Cholmondeley could face Kenya's death penalty. Depending on the winds in Nairobi, maybe, maybe not.

Some say certain people's claims to being African are not taken seriously. And I might ask, not taken seriously by whom? Perhaps not wholly by themselves? Then there's the strange Kenya case of Thomas "Tom" Cholmondeley (possibly pronounced "chum-lee"?), accused yet again (and pleading not guilty) of a recent murder. I was surfing the net for info on contemporary African-Caribbean Cholmondeleys when I stumbled on this latest news story. Thoroughly appalling. The headline seemed so outlandish that I checked the allegation in two or three places, just to verify I was not reading something from 2005. I was not. In 2005 other charges against this Tom were dropped in the separate shooting death of a Kenya Wildlife Service warden.

Tom's an aristocrat, though possibly without the bearing. He seems to have a nasty streak of 'bad luck'. Or maybe just a nasty streak. His family happens to "own" approximately sixty-five to one hundred thousand (65,000-100,000) acres of Kenya. And he's Kenyan. And white.

Neither killing allegedly committed by the above-mentioned occurred in the parking lot of the type of Naivasha or Nairobi club as is frequented by persons of Tom's particular (Kenyan) background. To look at this from one angle it would seem Tom's 'claims to fame' are 1) social and 2) material. Or perhaps the order should be reversed. You need to read the articles linked below to begin to grasp the depths to which Tom's mostly poor yet (hopefully) equally Kenyan neighbours despise him. They say they find him "arrogant". How shocking. (snicker) All of which is very sad and once upon a time might have been avoided, possibly had Tom ever had a personality transplant. But I digress. A couple of the articles I've seen on the latest shooting include Barack Muluka's biting commentary in The East African Standard (Nairobi) in which he declares: "We live in a white man's world" (no date Sat, 13 May, sorry), and (London) Observer writer Tracy McVeigh's 14 May piece, also from Nairobi: "Protests grow at Kenya killing." [I thought the previous title looked a bit long!] It's the mainly British western press that's alluded to Tom's studies at Eton and to him as "an expat". I thought he was Kenyan.

The alleged killer's full name is "(Honorable) Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley", born 1968 (he is not 46 as some have reported). He possesses British peerage #68401, as listed here and is the son of the 5th Baron Delamere - who (for reasons possibly only fully comprehensible and interesting to Brits/Europeans and a few in the ex-colonies) also is known as Lord Delamere (as his ancestor in that book Out of Africa). These titles are not Kenyan. The social core of Tom's existence (and political clout) seems to derive almost entirely from this British/European peerage system that seeped into Kenyan life along with the larger, now post-colonial problem (if I may go there) for Africa, of "who gets the land?" In many social circles not limited to any single continent or region, being African does not "cut" the social "mustard". Europe, the USA and Latin America all come to mind. Oh -and Asia and the Middle East. That rule-of-thumb, however, does not usually apply to Tom's type of African. And being in firm possession of a country-sized slice of Africa is handy on the material side of this social equation. I doubt that in the past hundred years it was possible for a "new" family to acquire one-hundred thousand acres of Scotland, England or Wales. I don't think even northern Ireland. But East Africa, yes.

Back to Kenya, where breadwinners from two families are dead in a similar fashion and allegedly by the same hand. This reflects an almost incomprehensible contempt for human life, in particular for the lives and families of the dead Kenyans. This whole scandal also does much to exacerbate and nothing to help resolve Kenya's piece of East Africa's lingering post-colonial land-tenure problem. I know you didn't think that was limited only to Zimbabwe...

I've already 'blabbed' too much. If convicted, British-hereditary-peerage-aristocrat African scion Thomas Cholmondeley could face Kenya's death penalty. Depending on the winds in Nairobi, maybe, maybe not.

"Great Society" Speech, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, Univ Michigan May 22, 1964

Friday, 22 May 1964 "... the "Great Society" is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor. ..." - Lyndon Johnson, 36th president of the United States of America

Marian's Blog does Open Source Radio, tonight

If you can, please join us tonight by tuning in to "Hidden Histories of Slavery" on Open Source Radio. Join us via the Internet. TIME: 19:00 to 20:00 (7-8pm) US East Coast time. "Marian's Blog", so to speak, will be one of OSR's guests, with host Christopher Lydon and the incomparable Dr. Simon Schama of the BBC series, A History of Britain and also Columbia Univ., and Dr. Jill LePore from Harvard. We'll be talking slavery in the USA: the history, the research; the social and political cluelessness and amnesia... which has got to be either a massive collective defense mechanism or else some kind of weird secret weapon. Schama and LePore both have recent books on enslavement. I believe I'm the only guest who's actually spent the past 30 years searching for my own enslaved and free ancestors: those who were enslaved and later freed, the free, the enslavers, and my American Indian ancestors. What a mix - 100% American, I might add. What a conversation. What fun! We're sooo looking forward... Join us!

Slavery: The "holes and troubles" of our collective memory, France to Darfur and beyond

Pending adjustments to technical problems with typepad and/or my internet connection I'm going to go ahead and post this in draft.

Today, 10 May 2006, is the world's first-ever national day in which a country officially remembers its role in the international trade in African people. And while France has become the first country to do so, our collective belief in our continuing evolution as humans dictates that France's action cannot also be the last. The official program took place at the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. From today the whole world must give credit to France and Black French people as the beating heart - le coeur battant - of action among the countries and societies responsible to finally name and claim their roles in the slave trade. I am part of something called 'la francophonie', with my childhood in Louisiana shaped by France and Haiti. Later as an 18 year old working in Le Sauze sur Barcelonnette (Alpes de Haute Provence), people constantly assumed or asked me if I was from Guadeloupe and the Antilles. I told them "no", explaining I was Black American and that both my parents and all their parents, etc., were from the US. Back then I was still super-generously clueless to all the major historical links fueling the confusion of people in France. This confusion remains - and for sure not only in France - because the global public still is not encouraged to discuss our intersecting history and its geographies. Today I understand the logic of why the French and the Antillaise "recognised" me. We - "the descendants of the shipped" - are cousins. Captured Africans put off ships at Point a Pitre, Cartagena (Spain/Colombia) and/or Bahia (Portugal/Brasil) and those delivered as "human cargo" in Providence and Charleston (British North America/USA) - we're all related. Guadeloupean writer Maryse Conde and Reunionnaise political scientist Francoise Verges co-chair France's national committee for the memory of slavery - le Comite pour la Memoire de l'Esclavage. Verges also is author of a book on slavery, La Memoire Enchainee, subtitle translated: "Questions on slavery". The committee link is in French; there doesn't yet seem to be an English translation. More to follow.

Protest marches: No to Katrina evictions; Bush articles of impeachment

So much going on as February winds down. Your help is needed to support and help pass H.R. 4197: the Hurricane Katrina Recovery, Reclamation, Restoration, Reconstruction and Reunion Act of 2005. Email, snail-mail or call your congressional representatives and ask them to pass HR 4197. What about impeaching George Bush? Get your copy of this book available for $9.95 from Center for Constitutional Rights -featuring four Articles of Impeachment against George Bush. I'm sure his parents will be disappointed, though probably in the American people. Articles of impeachment include: warrantless surveillance, lying to Congress about Iraq, torturing prisoners, and subverting the Separation of Powers. By law US federal separation of powers is legislative, executive and judicial, though lately they seem all jumbled with someone in or near the White House pulling rabbits from a hat. KATRINA PROTESTS: Info from democrats.com and afterdowningstreet.org, "... on March 15, FEMA plans to evict thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina. ... Our federal government is engaged in a campaign to exclude poor and black people from the new version of the city it allowed to be destroyed. On March 14, tens of thousands of Americans will skip work and march from the U.S. Capitol to the White House, and we will not leave until Bush announces a plan for housing and orders an end to evictions. Press Conference: 1-2pm, Rayburn Office Building - Room #2237; Mardi Gras Style March for Justice: 2-3pm start from Capitol South Metro at 2pm to White House; Rally & Protest at White House 3pm- 11:59pm, Lafayette Square Park." Check websites of the protest march for those internally displaced by Katrina, and another to send an email to your voting member of Congress - if you have one (Washington, DC itself and Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, US Samoa, Mariana Islands, etc. HAVE NO voting representation in Congress). Ask your rep to cosponsor House Resolution 635 calling for congressional investigation into grounds for impeachment. Register here for local protests in your area.

State of Black Union look at Katrina & Bush- Poppy won't be pleased; 2007 in Old Virginny

Barely a month ago George Bush pere (the daddy) told all of us how badly he felt for his boy George as Rev. Joseph Lowery and former president Jimmy Carter took W to task at Mrs. Coretta Scott King's funeral. Well, Daddy definitely will not be pleased with, and he and Barbara may not want to see, CSPAN's video of the 2006 Sobu conference. Al Sharpton, Harry Belafonte and Louis Farrakhan each takes a turn putting Bush act II's name in his mouth, and repeatedly including his role in the devastating federal response to Hurricane Katrina. All this was in Saturday's SOBU State of the Black Union conference. Um-um-um. I almost felt sorry for Bush. Again. But this time thank heaven he wasn't there applauding and wondering how to act. And all this was on his "home territory." No, not Connecticut. Houston. In Texas. No matter who or where you are, if you consider yourself a thinking human being please read and consider supporting SOBU's Covenant with Black America. In remembrance of the early British North American presence - the root of the UK-US 'special relationship', and of course not excluding Britain's role in the slave trade - SOBU organiser Tavis Smiley announced in Houston that next year's conference will convene in good olde Jamestown, Va. Throughout 2007 Virginia will remember the last four hundred years since American Indians saved the bacon of English settlers at a place that came to be known as Jamestown. So many Black Americans have ancestors and family from Virginia. Incidentally, we wonder how the quadricentennial planners intend to accurately incorporate the fact that until 1792 Kentucky was part of Virginia.

Impostor: Richard Nixon, George Bush - What's the difference?

Now for a history moment. What's the difference between George Bush and Richard Nixon? In my book - Nixon was impeached. In November 1973 Nixon spoke to a large group of Associated Press editors in Florida, stating, "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook...." He added he was "not a crook." The American public disagreed. In 2006 it would seem reasonable that US citizens have a civic responsibility to be interested in knowing not only whether their president is a 'crook' but also whether he is competent. US citizens need to know whether our legislative branch (Congress) and the judicial branch (Supreme Court) of government are even exercising their check and balance functions. We're supposed to know who actually is running the US government, and whether or not those actions truly represent the will of the American people. If the answer to any of those things is no, we're in it deep. In October 1973 the Nixon administration appointed special prosecutor Archibald Cox to investigate the break-in at Democratic Party national headquarters then located in Washington's Watergate complex. (The late Frank Wills was the security guard who discovered the break-in.) Within days Nixon had decided to fire Cox. This led to October 20, 1973's "Saturday Night Massacre." The firing was temporarily halted by US Attorney General Elliot Richardson and deputy AG William Ruckelshaus as both chose to resign rather than obey the order to fire Cox. These days who would have that much integrity? Let's not mention courage. Enter Robert Bork, Nixon's Solicitor General in 1973. Later as Supreme Court candidate he was "borked."  After the demission of Richardson and Ruckelshaus, Bork voluntarily carried out the order to fire Cox. That was then and this is now, as another conservative by the name of Bruce Bartlett has published a rousing book titled Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. I have absolutely no nostalgia for Mr. Reagan or his "legacy", but unfortunately before long more of us probably will agree with the first part of Bartlett's premise. - "Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people." - Archibald Cox

"What About the People Who Can't Eat?"- The Injustice Index, Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

"With all due respect to gay rights or abortion - What about the people who can't eat??!" - Kristina Borjesson, Feb 3rd, 2006, speaking to a small, live audience at New York Open Center, broadcast on CSPAN2 Book TV. Editor of Feet to the Fire - The Media After 9/11: Top Journalists Speak Out.

Injustice Index US domestic stats from Drum Major Institute for Public Policy:

*pounds lost by George W. Bush in first 7 months of 2005: 8

*growth in number of hungry US households since 1999: 43%

*income at which a US family of 3 qualifies for food stamps: $20,376

*average yearly wage of "sales associates" at Wal-Mart: $14,787

*number of Wal-Mart employees in USA: 1.2 million

*net worth of five (5) Walton family heirs to Wal-Mart fortune: $77.9 billion

European Journalism Centre gets new director

The Maastricht, Netherlands-based European Journalism Centre - the EJC - will get a new director from March 1st. Previous director Raymonde Griswold will be succeeded by a chap called Wilfried Rütten. Check other interesting info on their site.

A Black History Month 2006 Plan of Action

"If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development" - Aristotle. I have three priorities for BHM 2006 - BHM being Black (or African American) history month. One is preparing for next year's 2007 quadricentennial (400th) anniversary of the founding of Virginia - or more precisely, founding of the Jamestown colony by subjects of the King of England, and eventual founding of the English Virginia colony, predecessor of what became the US state (including what today is Kentucky). Priority #2 is May 10th - le 10 mai 2006 - France's new national day to publicly, officially remember France's involvement in African slavery. Internationally it's fairly obvious that when it comes to modern world history's long era of slavery many or most of our societies long ago chose amnesia rather than historical accuracy and responsibility. (Read Alan Rice - "British Selective Amnesia and the Political Imperative to Conserve Black Atlantic Memory" in Revisiting slave narratives , ed. Judith Misrahi-Barak.) Yet even as Americans go on dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 10 May is central to France's other former territory, la Louisiane, and to the history and evolution of its people and descendants. As children in Baton Rouge, Louisiana we studied Longfellow's 1847 epic poem, Evangeline, about the Acadians' migration to Louisiana from what is now Canada. But no one ever mentioned a massive migration to New Orleans around 1803 to about 1812 from the French part of the island Saint Domingue in the Caribbean - the part of the island that now is Haiti. Somewhere someone must have written a story or poem about this. New Orleans' native Anne Rice's book, The Feast of All Saints, for example. Decades after reading Evangeline in Louisiana I want to know how Louisiane and Nouvelle France (New France) relate to each other. This leads me to my third priority, an affirmation of events 2 and 1 which are related to each other in the context of European expansion: the need for other European nations besides France to 'come out of the closet' about their own roles in the interconnected international slave trade. These nations will do well to follow France's example: Britain, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Norway - the old amalgamated Denmark-Norway. The annual May 10th commemoration would not be happening were it not for member of French Parliament Christiane Taubira (Guyane francaise), as well as the French parliament which in 2001 passed her Taubira Law, and president Chirac and others who now have formally acknowledged France's slavery and slave trade role. We also thank France for its eventual role in the abolition of same, as well as for its contribution as the first country to declare slavery a crime against humanity. "... On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was bought by a man in her own town..." - continued below, Chapter 3, The Slaves' New Year's Day, Harriet Jacobs' 1860 autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules... - Sands' book on the Bush-Blair Choice for War

Hmm... how will the public and press on the western shores of the Atlantic pond react to news of British human rights attorney Philippe Sands' revised account of the UK-US joint prelude to the war on Iraq? Sands teaches law at University of London. His aptly titled book is Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules--From FDR's Atlantic Charter to George W. Bush's Illegal War. As a matter of fact, recently I asked here: What might a discussion between FD Roosevelt and GW Bush sound like? The publisher's website - Penguin UK - features this short interview with Sands. "In the explosive Lawless World, Philippe Sands argues that recent American actions are undermining the global legal order established after WW2 and promoting its economic interests at the expense of human rights and the environment. Here Sands explains that his book is intended to challenge, inform and even outrage readers. ..." Meanwhile Simon Walters' article about the book appears in The Mail on Sunday (yesterday's newspaper, 29 Jan, from London) with the title, "Blair in Secret Plot with Bush to Dupe U.N." Could all this possibly be 'twew'? Walters says Sands' book claims Tony Blair "offered his total support for the war at a secret White House summit as Mr Bush displayed his contempt for the UN, made a series of wild threats against Saddam Hussein and showed a devastating ignorance about the catastrophic aftermath of the war." And continuing: "The revelations make a nonsense of Mr Blair's claim that the final decision was not made until MPs [Members of British Parliament] voted in the Commons 24 hours before the war - and could revive the risk of him being charged with war crimes or impeached by Parliament itself. ... The book also makes serious allegations concerning the conduct of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Attorney General Lord Goldsmith over Goldsmith's legal advice on the war. ... it alleges the British Government boasted that disgraced newspaper tycoon Conrad Black was being used by Mr Bush's allies in America as a channel for pro-war propaganda in the UK via his Daily Telegraph newspaper."

"Jim Crow Guide: The Way Things Were" - first published 1956 by Jean Paul Sartre

Jim Crow Guide:

This book is online! Here are the chapter links from author Stetson Kennedy's website - Why This Guide

No Room For Redskins

White Man's Country

America's Great Wall

Who Is Colored Where

Who May Marry Whom

Who May Live Where

Who May Study Where

Who May Work Where

Who Are Subject To Forced Labor

Who May Vote Where

Look Out For The Law

Who May Travel How

Open To All (Whites)

The Dictates of Racial Etiquette