Marian's Blog

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India-Africa Summit in Delhi: Hard questions?

April 8-9 mark the first-ever India-Africa Forum Summit. Might the Summit include any component addressing human trafficking and undocumented (i.e., illegal) immigration coming from the Asian subcontinent into East and Southern Africa?? India and the African Union each has its own summit website. From India's website:

"India and Africa have a historic relationship and this has grown into a sustainable partnership. From our struggle against colonialism and apartheid, we have emerged to jointly accept the challenges of a globalising world. Whether we have to deal with threats to international peace and security, the threat from international terrorism or the scourge of poverty, we believe that India and Africa traverse the same path, share the same values and cherish the same dreams." 

The AU's description seems decidedly less sentimental: "The Africa-India Forum Summit is intended to consider the modalities to strengthen the cooperation ties between the two partners in the areas of Economic; Political; Science, Technology, Research and Development; Social Development and Capacity Building; Tourism; Infrastructure, Energy and Environment and Media and Communication. The Africa – India Forum Summit aims also at adopting harmonized and comprehensive framework to reinforce the regional cooperation in a wide rage of fields as support to the already existing bilateral cooperation between African countries and India. The Forum would also be an occasion for the sharing and exchange of good practices in harnessing resources from the Diaspora."

"Harnessing resources from the Diaspora." The African Union wants to learn from Indians how to "tap into" its diaspora. Would the diaspora targetted for harnessing be the new one of the past 20-40 years or the far older and much larger one which was expelled and sold away to foreign lands during the slave trades? Thinking of the "historic relationship" between South Asia and Africa (including India before the Partition), it would seem far more logical, not to mention just, that Africa and India (and now Pakistan) would begin by collaborating to do something for the immediate and long-term benefit of the Siddi or Sheedi people and other African-Descendant populations in Asia and South Asia, and in India and Pakistan in particular, whose presence in Asia was created by and who survived the Indian Ocean Slave Trade.

Genuine Progress Indicator? Measuring economies as if society mattered

As so many consumer and exchange economies teeter on the brink, here's a fascinating index that could prove more useful to more people. Many of us are in the same time familiar with, yet put off by, words and terms like "GNP", "GDP", and "economic indicator." For over a decade a group called Redefining Progress has been working on what they call the "GPI" - the genuine progress indicator.

"... The GPI starts with the same personal consumption data that the GDP is based on, but then makes some crucial distinctions. It adjusts for factors such as income distribution, adds factors such as the value of household and volunteer work, and subtracts factors such as the costs of crime and pollution. Because the GDP and the GPI are both measured in monetary terms, they can be compared on the same scale. ..." - Redefining Progress

Africa: Kenyan truce, and Chinese and Indian colonialism

Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga and putatively re-elected second-term president Mwai Kibaki finally reached an accomodation for the country's political divide and the death and violence it wrought. I was excited to see BBC live coverage of the opening of Kenya's parliament for the first time since the December election and its aftermath. Everyone who loves Kenya, Africa - and the diasporic African world - wants this political accomodation to hold.

And yet at the height of the violence in Kenya in January I remembered how Asian Indians and Europeans continue to dominate Kenya's economy. I recalled a conversation I had with an African leader a few years back. This elected leader reminded me of the landmine issue of land distribution vs. need for land reform in six countries that were colonised by Great Britain in east and southern Africa. I do remember on the list were South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe - and Kenya. I'm wondering if Tanzania and Uganda were the other two on the list...    

Meanwhile, The Economist has a cover story on "The New Colonialism" in Africa, referring to China and India. Reuters has a Feb 2008 interview about this with Hungarian-born billionaire financier George Soros:

   "...European nations' scramble for resources, from slaves to diamonds and gold, led them to subjugate Africa's peoples under colonialism. After independence swept the continent in the 1950s and 1960s, they often supported corrupt and dictatorial regimes.

Over the last decade, amid concern over minerals funding wars from Angola to Democratic Republic of Congo, Western governments and multinationals have largely accepted the need for accountability and transparency in extractive industries.

But India and China, which are pumping billions of dollars of loans and investment into Africa, have not, Soros said. ..."

Chocolate City, a film on Washington, DC and gentrification

In recognition of our colonised status, people around the world can help by taking a symbolic break from even uttering the words "Washington" and "Washington, DC." Leave our name out of conversation and put a blank space in print. Besides the general public, those encouraged to promote, observe and abide by the boycott should include bloggers, teachers and professors, clergymembers, tourists and tour guides, travel agents, economists, journalists, scientists, activists and politicians. To do so will send a powerful message in contrast to the real lack of power of our city's mostly Black and mostly Black women residents. Washington, the city, always has been about far more than national and international politics and tourism.

(In Washington, an image of DC native son the late Marvin Gaye shows up only in a vodka advert. U.S. Capitol with "don't walk" sign. Photos property Marian's Blog)

In fact, DC's reality remains hidden: a majority-Black American city with a buried yet deeply rooted history (and identity) as the former capital of the U.S. interstate slave trade. People live here, and for many years the majority of Washington's citizens have been Black Americans; or at least we have been the vast majority until the very recent past. Washington as a majority Black city has always been subjugated and segregated. We have been and are under attack. In spite of the presence of international organizations and the embassies of nations around the world, little news of the real DC and our status seems to get out, even and especially among journalists. Along comes a film to break the silence: CHOCOLATE CITY, a documentary by filmmakers Ellie Walton and Sam Wild. Just as they would have bought Black Americans' ancestors as slaves, property developers have bought my town and the local population is being forced out using means that are mostly foul. CC focuses on the displacement and dispersal of the community of 400 families who lived in public housing called Arthur Capper Homes. The film has two de facto "stars", Arthur Capper resident Debra Frazier and Anu Yadav, a performance artist of South Asian origin. The two form unlikely yet complementary poles in the moving narrative. A quickly built official website for Chocolate City is down now seems to be back up after having received so many hits it temporarily exceeded its bandwidth. I'm also pointing readers to Jennifer Tchinnosian's 6 Feb 2008 review in George Washington University's student paper, the Daily Colonial, a name which is wholly a propos.

Thank you to John and Elizabeth Edwards, 2008 Campaign

My thank-you to John Edwards and family, and everyone who worked so long and hard on this campaign. It will have been one for the history books.

As the Edwards campaign notified the press today, one news commentator noted that the U.S. "has never elected a populist."

As Americans that's nothing to brag about; in fact, it is our collective loss. How many Americans still would prefer that people tell us what some of us would like to hear? Things like we - the 'collective we' - can go right on self-centered and selfish, while simultaneously claiming to be king of the global hill. But our more and more frankenstein-like creation has little if any remaining sense of being one society. And that's just here in the US, let alone how we relate to the "outside world" which many of us can't find on a map let alone know.

It was late last year when a Southern scholar-friend of mine tried to school me about the USA. He said our country would not have any truck with a populist. I really didn't want to believe it.

Someone famous once said something like: There is no hell like the one we create for ourselves.

John Edwards knows it's the economy, not just Iraq

As the candidate said last night in New Hampshire, I too am on the John Edwards grassroots campaign bandwagon right through my ancestral South Carolina, called "the Black Primary", and the other 47, right up to the Democratic Party convention next August in Denver. John Edwards all along has been addressing what's touching, and crushing, the majority of Americans, middle- and working-class/working-poor and poor. I scoffed when I read a Washington Post headline quoting George Bush saying how 'good' the economy looked. I was wondering what planet he was visiting or what he'd been ingesting. That was only about ten days ago. Now Bush has backtracked, acknowledging there are issues with the economy, and today CNN (MSM - mainstream media) reports we're in a recession since the final quarter of 2007. I hear all the candidates. I'm supporting John Edwards.

Michael Moore leaning toward John Edwards?

I got an email today with a very interesting "letter" (article) from Michael Moore in which he's definitely leaning toward John Edwards. Moore's article is entitled, "Who Do We Vote For This Time Around? A Letter from Michael Moore." He writes:

"...  And then there's John Edwards. It's hard to get past the hair, isn't it? But once you do -- and recently I have chosen to try -- you find a man who is out to take on the wealthy and powerful who have made life so miserable for so many.

A candidate who says things like this: "I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy." Whoa. We haven't heard anyone talk like that in a while, at least not anyone who is near the top of the polls. I suspect this is why Edwards is doing so well in Iowa, even though he has nowhere near the stash of cash the other two have. ...

Then he writes:

"... For months I've been wanting to ask the question, "Where are you, Al Gore?"

And then Moore refers to the earlier Edwards quote.

"... On second thought, would you [Gore] even be willing to utter the words,
"I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy"?" 'Cause the candidate who understands that, and who sees it as the root of all evil -- including the root of global warming -- is the President who may lead us to a place of sanity, justice and peace. ..."

Well, shut my mouth. We'll have to wait and see which way Michael goes next.

JOHN EDWARDS in Iowa and beyond: 2008 - 'crunch time' for U.S. democracy

Looking back at the tampered 2000 and 2004 U.S. elections from today, Tuesday, January 1st, 2008, it is crystal clear we now are down to the wire for democracy in America. No joke, folks. We need John Edwards for president as a veteran progressive elected leader. Edwards is also the only Democrat in the primaries with close-up, personal life experience recognizing and fighting the down-and-dirty neo-Confederate political culture that now - with the help of their allies up North and out west - has been spread to the whole USA. Bottom line, if you're anywhere in or near Iowa, or able to go there to help out, please help call and get out Iowa's local voters for John Edwards. Donations from U.S. citizens also are most welcome at his site. Happy new year, everybody!! www.johnedwards.com

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.

Black Women meet, and annual Congressional Black Caucus

It feels like everyone meets in September. The annual CBC - Congressional Black Caucus - Legislative Conference is underway through Saturday. Looking at the conference dates apparently the traditional Sunday morning prayer breakfast may no longer be fully included, though it's popular and is taking place. Black women's groups are hosting international meetings on two continents, opening the same day, with one in Europe, Vienna, Austria, and the other in America, in Washington, DC. In Washington, along with the Constituency for Africa, the National Council of Negro Women hosted a half-day panel of women from several regions of the African world. "Empowering Women of Political Power in the African Diaspora" took place Thursday at NCNW's historic brownstone building in downtown DC. Strangely, and hardly by accident, although Washington still remains a majority-Black American city, the National Council of Negro Women is the only Black American organisation which owns a building in downtown DC (a not-so-tiny fact in itself worthy of enquiry). Moderator was Cynthia Colas, director of NCNW's International Development Center while Dorothy Height, NCNW's venerable Chair, President Emerita and resident doyenne, presided. Among presenters were African Union ambassador to the USA, Her Excellency Amina Salum Ali, U.S. Congresswoman Diane Watson of California, Zakiya Wadada, exec. dir. of the Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago (Caribbean), and the Hon. Halima Mohamed Mamuya, Member of Parliament, Tanzania, East Africa. So many talented women and too many to list, but more are named here. In Austria (Arnold Schwarzenegger's home country) the Black women's group AFRA and its director, Beatrice Achaleke, host the three-day Congress of Black European Women, the first congress of its type. Co-sponsored by Austria's parliamentary president Barbara Prammer, the meeting was planned as part of the EU's 2007 European Year of Equal Opportunities for All. (Possibly for all save Europe's colonial populace in the Americas???) Anyway. Here's a news story on Thursday's Congress opening. Last week I e-interviewed Yvette Jarvis in Athens. In 2000 Jarvis became Greece's first Black elected official as a member of Athens City Council. Currently she is special advisor on immigration to the city's mayor. 

United States Social Forum debuts in Georgia, 27 Jun-1 Jul

Hmmm... what's making headlines in the U.S. today? Paris Hilton out of jail and possibly giving an 'interview' to Playboy. Duh. In the UK Tony Blair steps out as prime minister as his Chancellor of the Exchequeur Gordon Brown steps in. And then there's the very first national U.S. Social Forum, opening in Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta and Georgia. Firmly part of the U.S. South; central geography in the original home region of the Cherokee Nation (no, it was not Oklahoma); home of Dr. Martin Luther King and historically Black American "Sweet" Auburn Avenue and Spelman (women's) and Morehouse (men's) colleges. The global social forum movement has been active and building for some time yet I would wager large numbers of Americans who probably consider themselves "informed" have no idea what a 'social forum' is. (In the U.S. staying "informed" seems to have become even more relative and challenging than it always has been - at least for news & info on certain kinds of democracy- and human rights-related topics, domestic as well as international.) The official USSF site reads: "The US Social Forum is more than a conference, more than a networking bonanza, more than a reaction to war and repression. ..." The global Social Forum theme is, "Another world is possible". The U.S. theme takes it a step further. "Another world is possible - Another U.S. is necessary." Amen.

Solstice yoga in Times Square: "Mind over Madness", free, June 21st

This is zehr cool... Mind over Madness public yoga, June 21st in Times Square, 7am to sunset. Has anyone else done this yet, say, in Nairobi, Sarajevo, Point-a-Pitre or elsewhere? About twenty-five NYC yoga studios are participating in this "free yoga-fest in the heart of Times Square. Yoga enthusiasts, both experienced and beginners, gather to face the challenge of finding tranquility and transcendence in the midst of the urban energy of the world's most commercial and frenetic place." (Inner) Peace.

WAR as "tax", only worse, & the U.S. 2006 elections

We're into the countdown to the 2006 U.S. mid-term elections. Tuesday, Nov 7, is election day, and if you're registered, I urge you to vote. On t.v. one of the usual political talking heads tries to "remind" us that "if Democrats win, they'll institute taxes."

What the heck?! Is that supposed to be an argument?

Isn't war a huge, bloody, tax???

No amount of taxes or other money that any of us pays will bring back one life lost in this war. Don't forget to add in billions going to some rather shadowy private corporations to "rebuild" the country where the war is. Then we hear not much really is being built. So we don't even know where the money has gone. "Your tax dollars at work." But in the Washington, DC metro area - mainly suburban Maryland and northern Virginia - you hear from reliable sources that so many of the people with money to buy big homes work (or do contracting) for Defense Department and "Homeland Security". So please don't talk to me about Democrats and "taxes". Let's vote.

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

A Coming Autumn of Discontent

The summer's been busy. It's not quite over. I don't really want to let it go. Fall won't arrive officially for a while but, in the U.S. anyway, the signs say we're entering a fall of political discontent. Let's hope so. 

Several tens of thousands of mostly Black New Orleanians fairly and justly need our moral support and practical help as they struggle to rebuild their lives and to get home.

We've just seen Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, on HBO. Nuestro vecino Mexico seems to be playing its own version of the US's Election 2000 debacle. Elected opposition politicians just blocked president Vicente Fox from giving his farewell speech in the national parliament. War in and against Lebanon and Hizbollah rocket attacks on Israel's north. Now gli italiani have stepped up to be first to send major numbers of peacekeeping troops. In a heartbeat the international community has pledged 950 million dollars U.S. to rebuild Lebanon (again). And what of Africa a few short miles away? How much funding's been pledged and how much delivered -- for Darfur? What of southern Sudan? What's going on there with foreign oil extraction and post-war development? In South Sudan we're talking basic development. Not recovery. Many of us are not yet paying attention to Africa, and the U.S. public is not getting this news in 'mainstream' media. What a waste. For in-depth detail go to AllAfrica.com, BBC online, and several other places. Shining a non-federal spotlight on local Washington, DC: the gutting and selling-out of our city and her people continues, wholescale and unabated. DC's traditional low-rise human-scale skyline, dominated up to now by lots of gracious trees and the tops of monuments, is being obliterated by massive condo-concrete construction. None of this "growth" is coordinated. There is no public planning of my city in the public interest. Corporate interests and ownership dominate, led by a "developer" called Douglas Jamal. As you check his site don't be fooled by the "down-homey" country-style guitar music. I wonder why he named his company Douglas Development Corporation rather than Jamal Development Corporation. Who is Douglas Jamal? Is he from some place, and who sold my hometown to him and his Douglas Development Corporation?

Washington - capital of the Upper South - is the new Wild West. Transformed into a frontier for and of outside settlers. Exiling DC's Black American majority as though we were never here. Which of course is a blatant, bald-faced lie that we will never, ever, tolerate. Then, a few days from now the U.S. and the world mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11/2001. I was in Hawaii, barely out of Kosovo/Kosova and Skopje (Makedonija). Then, September 12th will feature primary elections across the U.S. In heavily Democratic cities like the District of Columbia (Washington) and New York, whoever wins the primary in effect wins November's general election. In Washington's mayoral race, two Black city council members face off -- veteran Linda Cropp and relative newcomer Adrian Fenty. More later on that contest. So it's been busy this summer. Swam more, went to two writers' events, celebrated cousin Mary Belle's 90th birthday, joined a 6AM fitness group... and much more.

"Granulated slavery" - Michael Burke in the Jamaica Observer

It's August. This is a month to remember and commemorate Britain's end of its slave trade, from London to Guyana and the Caribbean and its "basin", and beyond. This also encompasses "local Washington, DC" since a sizeable number of Caribbean folk live and work in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. More Caribbean and Caribbean Basin folk are scattered across Canada and various parts of Europe. August also marks national independence of Britain's post-slavery Caribbean colonies, more than a hundred years after chattel slavery ended. So we're checking Michael Burke's fascinating column, Granulated slavery, Saturday, 5 August, in the Jamaica Observer. Burke pulls together related issues: economic enslavement, jobs and their absence, 1970s' Roman Catholic liberation theology throughout the Americas (conveniently abandoned by some), the virus of today's artificially induced mass consumption as well as the local and global co-operative movement and its underused ability to put a dent in poverty. Thanks for the overview, Michael.

Kenya: Lucy Yinda's Wema Centre for street children and community orphans

In 14 Million Dreams, Miles Roston's documentary film about Africa's millions of children orphaned by HIV and AIDS, Ms. Lucy Yinda describes how she started the Wema Centre for the rehabilitation of street children and community orphans. I can never forget the children I've seen, in Africa, in the U.S., the Caribbean, South America, the Balkans: children sniffing glue to numb hunger pain, refugee mothers with babies, smiling or anxious dirty-faced children in rags running through traffic at intersections, sometimes carrying a smaller child, begging passing drivers for change. I will never understand how anyone can take advantage of another person in such conditions. Please give Wema Centre your financial, political and spiritual support!

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

Why does Bush talk about 'the Americas' but not the OAS?

There's a major disconnect in the Americas. I can't figure when or where or how it began. Bush is in Chicago talking to the National Restaurant Assoc. and answering citizen questions about "the Americas" and relations with "our neighbors" in "the Western Hemisphere". Actually, seems more like throwing tomatoes at Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Chavez 'just happens to be' a pardo - which means he's a racially mixed person of African and Native descent; like a lot of us from the Americas. And Bush never mentions anything about the OAS. (As a matter of fact, neither does the MSM.) Heck. It's almost right out back of the White House.

Speaking of "neighbors" and "neighborhoods", this may ring a bell: "... In present day Venezuelan society, notes respect