Marian's Blog

Hastings holds State of Black Europe hearing in Congress

In London in September or October 2004 this writer spoke on the panel, "Alliances We Need to Fight Racism" at the European Social Forum (Malmo, Sweden Sept. 2008). I participated as a member of the network Alliance of People of African Descent in Europe. Now, veteran Florida Member of Congress Alcee Hastings, who is Black American (and certainly likely, as most Black Americans are, a Euro descendant himself), has announced a hearing by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, or CSCE, a commission of the U.S. Congress. Mr. Hastings is CSCE chair. "The State of (In)visible Black Europe: Race, Rights, and Politics" will be held Tuesday, 29 April, at 10AM in Rayburn House Office Building. "The hearing will focus on the challenges and opportunities faced by the more than 5 million members of Europe's Black population amidst reported increases in hate crimes and discrimination, anti-immigration and national identity debates, and growing security concerns. The impact of recently introduced anti-discrimination laws and diversity initiatives aimed at ensuring and protecting equal rights for a population many do not know exists will also be discussed. ..." Invited participants are Dr. Philomena Essed of Antioch University, author of the book, Everyday Racism: Reports from Women of Two Cultures (1990), and member of Netherlands' Equal Treatment Commission; (UK) Guardian newspaper columnist Gary Younge; Joe Frans, vice chair of the UN Working Group on People of African Descent and former member of Swedish Parliament; Dr. Allison Blakely, Afro-European author and historian at Boston University; Dr. Clarence Lusane, international race politics author and faculty member at American University; and Afro-German actor Boris Kodjoe. Logically, Marian's Blog is very interested in this hearing and its outcomes. One hard look at the disenfranchised, excluded political condition of the people of the city of majority-Black Washington, DC, with NO VOTE in the very same U.S. Senate and House of Representatives where this hearing's being held, reveals a painful irony. Europe isn't the only place where Black people are ignored, disempowered, and treated as invisible.

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.

Africa "Outside" History? President Sarkozy's infamous speech in Dakar, July 2007

Since his accession to the French presidency, I seem to have lost track of the times when to hear Nicolas Sarkozy speak is to re-affirm that truth indeed is stranger than fiction. It's likely that for most of his listeners who were present on 26 July 2007, in an auditorium of Senegal's Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, this was another one of those days.

Nicolas Sarkozy's original discours in Dakar was in French, but as this event is so important, it was also important to share it as well in English. I'm sure there must be other language translations out there. We will look for them in order to post them. Now, a group of mostly African intellectuals has recently published a French-language response to Mr. Sarkozy. The edited volume is L'Afrique Repond a Sarkozy: Contre le discours de Dakar (Editions Philippe Rey, Paris, 2008) - "Africa Responds to [Nicolas] Sarkozy: Against the Dakar Discourse." Luckily for we Afrodescendants of the Americas (or "Negroes of the diaspora," as book editor Makhily Gassama quite oddly refers to us), the book includes a contribution by our Haitian writer-sister Kettly Mars. The following is an unofficial translation of Sarkozy's speech which is posted at the blog Dionysius Stoned. A thank you to DS, and certainly to the party or parties who made this original translation.

ADDRESS BY MR NICOLAS SARKOZY, PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHEIKH ANTA DIOP, DAKAR, SENEGAL, ON 26 JULY 2007

Ladies and gentlemen

Allow me first of all, to thank the Senegalese Government and people for their warm welcome. Allow me to thank the University of Dakar that allows me for the first time to address myself to the elite of the youth of Africa in the capacity of President of the French Republic.

I have come to talk to you with the frankness and sincerity that one owes to friends that one appreciates and respects. I appreciate and respect Africa and the Africans.

Between Senegal and France history has woven ties of a friendship that no one can undo. This friendship is strong and sincere. It is for this reason that I wanted to address, from Dakar, the fraternal greeting of France to all of Africa...

Kosovo: Albanians, Serbs - And what about the Roma?

After five years living in the Balkans, and longer if I count Italy and France, there are a few things I know about Europe and Kosovo, and even more I remember about that area and the rest of former Yugoslavia. I recall one particular orientation in Pristina; one of those sessions most, if not all, international civilian mission staff have endured. Usually I actually liked them for the information we learned on the people we would work with and the regions into which we were sent. Yet in much the same way media are reporting Kosovo/Kosova and the Balkans today, in this seminar in Pristina in 2000 we were briefed on the Kosovar Albanians and on the Kosovo Serbs, yet not one word about Kosovo's Roma. So, of course I asked. After all, we were in Kosovo to work with the Roma, too. I've written about Europe's Romani citizens before on this blog and will do so again, but I'll repeat myself - the Roma, the Rom, Romani, etc., are Europe's largest ethnic minority population, whom many outsiders still call "Gypsies". In all the public discourse and reporting on Kosovo, and even on the Balkans and Europe overall, why are the Roma still almost always excluded? More powerful than anything I can offer is Sani Rifati's own firsthand account of his birthplace, along with this link to a powerful, if a bit dated, related report. When I think of my time in Kosovo (and elsewhere in the Balkans) in my mind's eye I see the pregnant woman IDP ("internally displaced person") with two school-age kids. I remember the long, narrow storage container which was "home" to several unrelated families. I remember the refugee day center in Macedonia, near Skopje: Kosovo Roma refugees sitting, waiting for so-called 'third-country refugee resettlement' invitations that never arrived. As human beings wherever we are, all of us can and, hopefully, will do far better, for each other and consequently for ourselves.

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!

Black History Month on the Eve of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

It's Black History Month, folks. Today, renegade though it may be to some, my focus is on the peculiarities I'm observing in this 2008 U.S. presidential election season. I'll begin with a fact that may not be obvious to some observers, and the farther one is from the U.S. and our history the less obvious this fact will be. Let's call it Fact 1:

Come November, U.S. voters, after well over two centuries, still will not elect to the presidency a Black person who is the descendant of "we the people" who were enslaved not long ago in the U.S.A. These descendants are the Black American people, the group of Blacks whom Kenyan historian Ali Mazrui somehow has come to deem "undefinable" or "unmentionable", or who somehow should not be singled out n view of our long historical existence, lest in some way we might be seen as an "elite." That is his term, not mine. The other side of this issue is the current possibilitiy of electing someone to become the first Black president of a country - in this case the United States - but a person who in fact does not come from the indigenous Black population of said country. We'll call this Fact 2. Or as Mr. Mazrui informed all of us during the January symposium which was supposed to be about Blacks and abolition of the U.S. slave trade, the United States may beat Kenya by electing the first "Luo" president. Apparently Luo is the name of the Kenyan ethnic group Barack Obama's late father belonged to. Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga is a Luo also, hence the inside joke, though not to Americans in general or to Black Americans in particular. ...

Darfur: do Arab governments care? The Doha Debates on BBC

When I think of the Arab League usually I think of Somalia. I recall the League's presence and involvement in the 2002-2004 Somali peace talks in Eldoret and Mbagathi, Kenya. If you have real access to BBC TV, and not what I can only regard as the mostly pandering, mind-numbing soap opera, real estate and auction fare still being passed off as BBC America, make sure you catch the Doha Debates' segment on Sudan's genocide in Darfur. This originally aired on BBC 26-27 January 2008. The segment focuses on the Arab world's relationship to the Government of Sudan and its genocide in Darfur. I'd never before seen this series. It was taped in Qatar with a studio audience of maybe sixty, several of whom also asked a few questions of the panel aloud. The motion debated was "This House believes Arab governments couldn't care less about Darfur."

Edwards backers excluded from CNN interview on South Carolina Black voters

At this stage in the Democratic primaries why would CNN or any media outlet exclude supporters of any major candidate? Today, Friday, CNN "domestic" service interviewed two Black South Carolina religioius leaders, Revs. Timothy Browne (Cleveland Chapel Baptist Church) and Joseph Darby (Morris Brown AME Church; AME = African Methodist Episcopal, a Black American Christian denomination). It's also worth noting that no women were interviewed.

Rev. Browne said he supports Clinton. CNN introduced Rev. Darby, claiming declaring him among Barack Obama's supporters. Darby quickly corrected CNN's interviewer, pointing out he isn't supporting anyone yet. Looks like somebody at CNN must have "mis-underestimated" their homework... With apologies and a hat tip to GW Bush (sic). So why didn't CNN include an Edwards supporter?

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. 

Call your U.S. senators today in favor of S. 1257 - DC Voting Rights!

According to DC Vote, today is the second annual National Call-In Day for U.S. voters to ask their U.S. Senators to vote YES on S. 1257 - the DC Voting Rights Act. DC Vote says Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has committed to bringing S. 1257 to the Senate floor tomorrow, 18 September. You can call your two U.S. senators on the following 866 number before 5PM U.S. Eastern time today. Ask them to please vote to pass the DC Voting Rights Act - tel: 1.866.346.3008. Or call on 1.202.224.3121 and ask for your senators' offices. Ask friends, family and colleagues to do likewise. If you're not American but know others who are, ask them to do the same. And thanks. What's at stake is (finally) granting equal participation in the House of Representatives to the people of Washington, DC. You'd think we already had this right, huh?

Americans whose home is "the Nation's Capital" - Washington - have waited patiently and protested very peacefully for a very long time. We're again asking our sister and fellow citizens for a modicum of equal status. Even if we win tomorrow, we'll still be unrepresented in the U.S. Senate. 

One battle at a time. The House of Reps already has approved this change. Now the decision is up to the 100 senators who control DC's future yet are only based in Washington to represent all the other Americans out in the lower 48 States plus Alaska and Hawaii.

"Washington City", as we once were called, has been the US capital since the early 1800s. Enslavement of Black Americans in DC only ended in 1862. So why have Washingtonians been so long excluded from equal representation?

Earlier today, a Democratic email colleague shared the fact that Sept. 18 is "Constitution Day" in the U.S. I'd never heard of it but as a proud native of the District of Columbia it's hard to wrap my mind around, and just as difficult to describe, how it feels knowing every moment I've lived in Washington, I've been de facto excluded from, politically voiceless in and invisible to, our national system of "representative democracy."

Amanpour CNN - God's warriors

Quite possibly the reason NY Times reviewer Neil Genzlinger doesn't seem overly impressed with "God's Jewish Warriors" could be that perhaps sixty per cent of the people whom Christiane Amanpour interviewed in Israel are 'straight outta Brooklyn', from New York's Jewish Orthodox communities. So for Genzlinger and a few others, the info in part one of God's Warriors may just be 'old news', although I certainly learned a few things and was impressed. I thought of my friend, Amy, a brave and intelligent former Brooklynite, a woman who's also an orthdox Jew, yet hardly submissive. But that's another story. Tonight is part two of the series, on God's Muslim Warriors, and Friday, part three is on U.S. Christian fundies. Most definitely worth watching, and discussing.

Don't bother USA with facts? Dalits: India's own "Black" population

In Minneapolis in the late 80s or early 90s, along with two other persons of colour (Vincent who is Dalit and a U.S. Latina lady from St. Paul whose name I don't immediately recall), I initiated an "emergency" panel made up of the three of us to engage and question the Brazilian pedagogist, Paulo Freire. Interestingly, Mr. Freire's wife also sat in on the panel, next to her spouse, but I think she listened. Freire is the author of the classic, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The occasion was the afternoon session of an all-day adult literacy conference and the venue may have been Augsburg College. Vincent, the Mexican American lady and myself appeared to be the only persons of colour in attendance. Or at least that's the way the whole thing came off, which is why I proposed to the organisers the change in the scheduled afternoon session which eventually was accepted. Fast forward. 21 June of this year Washington Post (finally) ran a front-page article on the ongoing suffering still inflicted by society upon the Dalit people of India. For years I've wanted to discuss this with people like Deepak Chopra, Ravi Shankar, Sonia Gandhi (who is italiana, by the way), and all the "shris", yogis and yoginis running around Europe and the U.S. A couple of years ago I learned from a young Asian Indian woman living in the US that "desi" is a term by which some Indians and other south Asians prefer to call themselves these days. In certain circles - Silicon Valley par exemple - people from India have become quite "popular", along with yoga, the domestically infamous H1B U.S. immigration visas and 'outsourcing' of all kinds of formerly domestic consumer services, to places most of us never will see.

Hollywood Apartheid, Or appreciating the Films of Oscar Micheaux (1883-1951)

lncreasingly more frequently I think of the late, great American -and Black American - filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux. For me, Mr. Micheaux's prodigiousness and genius remain as freshly astounding as his obscurity still largely enforced by U.S. society.

Actress Hazel Diaz and three fawning male co-stars, in Micheaux's 1938 film, Swing! Britannica.com

Post-Katrina, Cont'd: Let the People Rebuild - 2006 Harvard Jnl of African American Public Policy

For some strange reason we just don't seem to be hearing as much regular, in-depth news and information as we should about post-Katrina issues facing New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and the USA. So, we suggest you check the Summer 2006 online table of contents of, and subscribe to, the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy. From Gulf Coast women's voices and the right of return of New Orleanians internally displaced (these are the two human rights' terms) across the U.S., and restoring regional health care infrastructure. This is all about salvaging and creating grassroots democracy (what other kind is there?) in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. And, really, in the USA. Thank you for showing that you care.

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.

From a wedding to killing at Qana: Lebanese prime minister brought to tears at Arab summit

Today, Monday, BBC carried live coverage of the Arab foreign ministers' summit in Beirut.

I grew up learning about Jesus attending a wedding in "Cana" where he transformed water to wine. This is described in John, chapter 2, verses 1-11 of the Bible. As news filtered out last week of the killing of children and adults in a place called Qana, in Lebanon, I asked myself if this could possibly be the same place where Jesus was a wedding guest. It is.

A Bible lesson online describes the wedding feast at Qana as "the first of seven miracles described in the portion of John’s Gospel known ... as "the Book of Signs." It says in changing to wine water meant for Jewish purification, Jesus began "a pattern of transforming the institutions of Judaism into those of Christianity." Today, a couple thousand years later, Qana stands for war, carnage, terror and fear.

At the Arab foreign ministers' summit in Beirut, at a certain point there was silence in the room full of Arab male diplomats and politicians as Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora stopped speaking. He was in the middle of affirming Lebanon's character as an Arab country - saying it is not negotiable - when his voice cracked and he worked to catch his breath. He repeated his statement while wiping tears from his eyes. Pulled himself together and concluded. A BBC summary of his earlier remarks says he proclaimed there can be no ceasefire as long as Israel occupies Lebanon and that the permanent solution must include Israel's withdrawal beyond the so-called green line as well as creation of that long-awaited Palestinian state - with its capital in Jerusalem.

Among the men dominating all sides of this carnage, which man will take on accountability for the killings (by aerial bombing) in Qana and elsewhere? After nearly 30 years of inconsisent Middle East peace talks (that started under U.S. president Jimmy Carter) - what is going on here? Why are we still collectively allowing such constant, blatant and horrific breakdowns of our humanity? All of it is beyond being unspeakable. It is thoroughly repulsive.

War and Collateral Civilians: Ethiopian women trafficked and trapped in Lebanon

The Blogher 2006 conference is happening in about a week. Meanwhile over at Blogher.org I posted my concerns about the least visible of the "collateral civilians" caught in the bombing of Lebanon and Hezbollah. Look here under "Race & Ethnicity."

Gaza, Haifa, Somalia, Colombia, Srebrenica: Nurit Elhanan's "Women" at the Euro Parliament

"Why does that streak of blood rip the petal of your cheek?"

Correction: Nine years have passed since I worked in eastern Bosnia in 1997. In July 1995 the mass killings took place there, in the town of Srebrenica. I also remember the quiet and private sheroism of two women whom I met there in early '97 in the course of my work. I want to thank those ladies. The first rushed up to us just outside Srebrenica's municipal building. She had the grace and courage to walk right over and personally welcome home the Bosnian Muslim man with us on his first return. I do not recall his name but he was the first Muslim member of Srebrenica's post-war municipal elections commission. Another member of our staff, a woman, had driven him over from Tuzla - across the IEBL. The IEBL is a boundary: the Inter-Entity Boundary Line, a border separating mostly Muslim parts of Bosnia from the eastern region's self-styled Bosnian Serb Republic - Republika Srpska. The second lady I met just before Orthodox Easter. I was walking in the center of Srebrenica when she intently crossed the main street to meet me. This wasn't far from the Dom Kultura (Cultural Center) building. She handed me a beautiful, hand-painted Easter egg, a real, edible egg, and I accepted it from her with a thank-you in her language and a smile. Srebrenica's a very small town. Yet even the whole world is small in many ways, especially once people begin to know each other. I was deeply touched by and will not forget the kindness at the root of these small yet expansive acts of willingness and courage shown by two women whose names I do not know; women I've yet to meet again.

Last March 8 (International Women's Day) in her speech to the European Parliament, Israeli educator Nurit Peled-Elhanan - mother of a 5 - correction: 13 year old daughter killed by a suicide bomber - posed a question made eternal by the writing of the late Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966; real name Anna Andreyevna Gorenko). "Why does that streak of blood rip the petal of your cheek?"

Nurit Elhanan's comments here about motherhood and the womb draw attention to this masculinist idea of 'womb as political demographic enemy', the verbal expression of which, sadly, I've witnessed in my international human rights work, often or usually expressed by men from their exclusively male positions of political and/or religious authority.

The "Muslim womb" is hardly the only perceived enemy. On a personal tip, the same attitude's been in the U.S. and the Americas since Columbus arrived in 1492, followed by his son's arrival a short time later with his first cargo to the Americas of captured Africans. In recent United States' experience the hostility toward "other wombs" and the fertility of "others" - both female and male - has included forced sterilisation and sterilisation under vastly uninformed consent. A nurse in Pennsylvania once asked whether I wished to be sterilised. At that moment I was in active labour no less, and thank goodness with no drugs by choice. My immediate, unfiltered and exact reply was "HELL NO."

I received Elhanan's remarks as forwarded by Paola Manduca from Sami Ramadani of London. Paola shared them on an email list in preparation for last spring's Women's assembly of the 2006 European Social Forum in Atena (Athens, Greece). In the same vein we ask your support and signature on this online petition for the Kampala Resolution on Women, Peace and Conflict. Thank you. Peace.

                                                 Women

                             Nurit Peled-Elhanan

"Thank you for inviting me to this today. It is always
an honour and a pleasure to be here, among you (at the
European Parliament).

However, I must admit I believe you should have
invited a Palestinian woman at my stead, because the
women who suffer most from violence in my country are
the Palestinian women. And I would like to dedicate
my speech to Miriam Raban and her husband Kamal,
from Bet Lahiya in the Gaza strip, whose five small children
were killed by Israeli soldiers while picking strawberries
at the family's strawberry field. No one will ever stand
trial for this murder. [continued below]

World Cup: Italy 2, Deutschland 0, tied with an azzurro-blue bow!

Well, folks, it was wine over beer in Germany last night! Roger Cohen's Herald Trib piece nicely summarises what went down as Italia came through with back-to-back goals in overtime! Everybody was shocked - including Fabio Grosso - as he made that first score. Over by Circo Massimo in downtown Roma they were dancing in the street late into the night. Grazie, Deutschland, for the 2006 hospitality and a hard-fought game!

World Cup and Der Spiegel Online: German incident in an Italian hotel, 2004

None of us knows exactly how today's Italy-Germany match will go. Some folks are pulling even harder for Italia ever since Achim Achilles' "why bother" comments were published in his infamous (and now removed) column on Der Spiegel Online (DSO). (The last link is to a BBC story about the column.) I say "why bother" because, well, why bother writing and publishing such nonsense?? From what I read, the column wasn't witty and definitely was not funny. I won't say Achilles' comments came from all Germans because obviously they did not. Not to mention, as others have pointed out elsewhere, the name Achim Achilles isn't exactly culturally German itself. At the same time it seems his remarks aren't as isolated as most of us would wish. It's interesting to consider and discuss how such aggressively stereotypical thinking fits into "problem-making" versus the efforts at "problem-solving" that are going on simultaneously today across the globe, including in Italia and Germany. In his June 28 post titled "Heil Spiegel" Italian humorist/comedian Beppe Grillo ("GREEL-lo") writes about the Der Spiegel episode via his blog. To Der Spiegel Online's credit, two days after Grillo's post someone called "Roberto Longo" added DSO's apology - in 3 languages - on Grillo's site as a response to the "Heil Speigel" entry.

This forces me to recall the Italian press reports of the incident two summers ago (2004) in an Italian hotel (Il Tritone in Abano Terme, Padova) where German tourists actually demanded the hotel management remove from her job a young woman on a 1-month student internship working Tritone Hotel's front desk. If you read Italian, see Costantino Muscau's 24 May 2004 article in Corriere della Sera: "E nera, non puo stare alla reception". Translation: She's Black, she can't be [work] at the reception [desk]. The 18-year-old student worker was African and, for some reason, this particular group of foreign (German) tourists organised to get her fired; not because of anything incorrect in her work but because of who she was. Later the story came out of how her parents settled in Italy years earlier, her father, Ekoli Mahnge Zulu, being a former IBF welterweight world boxing champion. Unfortunately the Tritone hotel's management did cave-in to this crazy, racist pressure (from a group of German tourists no less), which justly brought lots of coverage and an outcry in the Italian media. This led to the young woman (Marlene Zulu, Zairoise by birth) being offered and accepting another "stage" at the "more appropriate" Rossini Hotel, also in Italy, in Pesaro. Daily injustices like this anywhere in the world and including Europe, Germany, Italy and elsewhere, should have such courageous outcomes far more often.