Marian's Blog

Alpha Dogs: marketing candidates like snacks?

I do believe we just saw James Harding on The Daily Show. Meanwhile, Newsweek's Tony Dokoupil interviewed the (British) author of Alpha Dogs of London in the 26 May '08 issue: "In "Alpha Dogs," London Times editor James Harding investigates the Americanization of global politics and points to a culprit: the Sawyer Miller Group. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, the U.S. firm packaged and sold foreign politicians like consumer goods." Well, folks, who'da thunk it??

Zimbabwe Independence Day 2008: Where are the election results?

What is there to say about Zimbabwe? 18 April marks the 28th anniversary of Zimbabwe's freedom from colonialism and state-sponsored apartheid. Some of us, like me, marched and protested to help put an end to Rhodesia. Most people acknowledge something's gone very wrong in the last 28 years. The problem is not independence. but Zimbabwe's governance. The most recent affront is the national election of three weeks ago. Zimbabweans peacefully went to the polls and then they and the rest of Africa and the world awaited the count and announcement of the election outcome. Some reports say the opposition actually won yet today we're still waiting. This is almost as bad as the U.S. 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential election. Some hoped ex-freedom fighter Robert Mugabe might use today's Independence Day speech to gracefully and finally announce he's come to terms with the will of Zimbabwe's voters. Instead he and the ruling party have again done the unthinkable. Meanwhile, South Africa, the region, and much of Africa seem to sit on their hands. How long will this go on?

Italy can do better than deeply sexist Berlusconi

There are lots of things I admire and love about my other home, Italia. Overall though, the public status of women is not one of them. I haven't yet heard how the voting is going today and tomorrow but I do keep thinking of so many reasons why Silvio Berlusconi does not deserve a third term as prime minister. One need go no further than his attitudes and behaviour toward women, as outlined in Stephen Brown's recent Reuters article, "Berlusconi's sexism chafes as Italian vote looms." Chafe indeed. Here's a man in his 70s who always wears a dark wig and has undergone one or more cosmetic surgeries (facelifts) - in his constant attempt to make himself seem "younger" and (in Black American parlance) to pull women. He's married, by the way.

Brown quotes Berlusconi recently on the campaign trail, "The left has no taste, not even when it comes to women. ... As for our (women candidates) being more beautiful, I say that because in parliament they have no competition."

About Berlusconi, Brown writes: "His women supporters laughed when he called them the "menopause section" at a recent rally and urged them to bake cakes for campaigners [i.e., the candidates, who are vastly male]. His long-suffering wife Veronica, 20 years his junior, got her revenge last year by reprimanding him for lechery in an open letter to a left-leaning newspaper. He publicly apologized."

Exactly what type of leadership does someone with such an outlook offer Italy for the 21st century? Do we really want more of the same: the future turning to the past that is doomed to fail? Italy is an incredible society that deserves and needs to create a new national script; a switch from the 'national political theatre' of the past now grown very, very stale.

Two days after the Brown article, Deepa Babington's came out in Reuters, "Italian women fight to break political barriers." She quotes candidate Marianna Madia ("adopted" daughter of Berlusconi's Democratic Party rival and former mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni). Madia is "a 27-year old economist running for the rival Democratic Party in the parliamentary election": "Every now and then, I sometimes feel we in Italy live in pre-historic times."

The article cites the Inter-Parliamentary Union ranking Italia 67th in the world for the number of women elected to parliament. Italy can do better.

Italia back to the polls: it's Veltroni or the other guy, again

Not being there, I feel I'm missing out as Italia prepares to vote - again - on tomorrow and Monday. (Can't the U.S. take the hint about weekend elections?) Italy's current election situation seems sooo eerily deja-vu, like we've been here before, which, in a very real sense, we have, and like it hasn't been that long ago, which it has not. Sunday's choices for prime minister are Walter Veltroni of the Partito Democratico, and a resort to the immediate past in the form of already two-time former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (a billionaire also known as Italy's third-richest man and formerly the richest). Last fall Berlusconi morphed his Forza Italia party (named for the football - soccer - club he owns) into a new political party called Popolo della Liberta or the "People of Freedom" party. Back in January 1994 in her short essay, "Recent Italian Politics", in Z magazine, writer Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio described Berlusconi's first term as PM:   

"... the new government is in the hands of a person who came into politics only about a year ago, leads a party named after the national soccer league, and has more experience in manipulating the media than in being prime minister. The result is a situation in which, if you are a woman in politics, you need to either declare war to abortion or be a dictators' daughter to get in the news; the "family" is back under the supervision of a Catholic ministry; and the space for open discussion on cultural diversity has been dramatically reduced.

The bold section is marked by yours truly. That reference to a "dictator['s] daughter" probably is about politician and self-declared fascist Alessandra Mussolini, who is Il Duce Benito Mussolini's granddaughter and film diva Sophia Loren's niece. I'm still learning what really goes on politically in my 'other home' though I am not looking forward to another Berlusconi term in office in order to find out.

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. ..."

Castro, Cuba, the Americas: next door, yet so far away

From Cuba this week, at age 81, Fidel Castro announced his retirement. As a child in the late 50s, early 60s, I remember the feeling if not every political detail, of the way Cuba's "surprise" revolution shifted forever the power relationship between one tiny Caribbean island nation and the United States. What probably stands out most is remnants of the terrible sense of dread during the so-called Cuban missile crisis. In school back then we had regular "civil defense" drills. In my safe and pleasant all-Black elementary school we watched film clips of white children climbing under and croutching beneath their school desks. Now forty, fifty years later I ponder all those decades, the years and lifetimes (including my own) of so much missed opportunity for us, the people of the Americas to know each other. Most of us hardly do, if at all. This is especially true from the side of the people of the United States whose gaze in the 20th century, and now continuing into the 21st, only briefly and rarely focused on our region and our 'cousins' (particularly for Black and Native people) who are our neighbors. We particularly and very deliberately ignore Cuba. The ninety miles from there to Miami feels more like nine-thousand. The official U.S. political playbook says Fidel Castro - and by extension all of Cuba - is 'off limits' and to be villified. Yet unlike many Americans, Cubans are able to access education, literacy and health care beyond what the people of the U.S. are led to expect as achievable for a nation of Cuba's size and history. And what of Afro Cubans? What was their lot in Cuban history, and their status since 1960?

Someone STOP this carnage in Kenya

I am in shock. Following a typical U.S. newscast two or three days ago, I suppose I was 'lucky' simply to have learned that there had been a terrible arson attack on civilians taking refuge in a church in Kenya. The American newscaster, in her or his all-knowing obliviousness to the name of the place where this had occurred, did not bother to share that information. (Could they not pronounce Eldoret?) It was only a day later, talking with my husband, that I learned this atrocity had taken hold right there in Eldoret. Eldoret, that quaint, rather raw, frontier-like town in the Rift Valley hills. Where Phyllis and Kip Keino, the Olympic runner, had their children's home and a farm to feed them, and a running camp for world-class athletes. Dusty Eldoret. A town with its own home in my heart, my life and my memory. Where so many people from so many countries converged with hope and energy, in 2002-2003; with plans and schemes and no shortage of rumours; with a controlled confusion as Somali men and women leaders, and a few "pretenders", along with the ubiquitous envoys of "the international community", took up temporary residence in the Hotel Sirikwa as they tried to negotiate peace. It was there on my kencell, seated in the car, parked on the Sirikwa lot that I learned I would be a grandmother for the first time. Now carnage and terror are the shameful news from Eldoret and Kenya. As last Thursday's election approached, from somewhere not quite in the back of my mind I re-visited being at the final political rally on Lamu the very day before the historic December 2002 race. Mwai Kibaki won. I cannot believe Kenya's brave electorate of 2002 ever bargained for the violence unleashed upon them today. Back then we braced for election violence that never came. Until now. Five years ago, during and after the polling, Kenya fairly bloomed, as joyful and optimistic and filled with peace as it's turned ravaged and traumatised and bloodthirsty today. I have many words yet no words, except to say to Kibaki and Odinga, for the sake of all Kenya and all who love her, stop this violence.

Burma's Saffron Revolution: Violent crackdown on day 10

The violent crackdown everyone dreaded is on in Burma. International press are reporting one Japanese man is dead after being shot today by soldiers. This now brings Japan (also a Buddhist country) into the picture. The military controls Internet service within Myanmar and are blocking access to certain blogs, but word is getting out anyway. Several deaths have now been reported. Are the attacks on Buddhist monks, nuns and civilians the beginning of the end of Burma military rule? Where is India's voice? In a muted response China is now telling Burmese authorities to show "restraint". Thailand claims nothing unusual is going on. What about Europe, and Germany in particular? India and Germany both are said to have commercial ties to the Myanmar regime. U.S.-based Chronicle of Higher Ed links to New Mandala academic group blog which has lots of info and in turn links to Burmese site Kachin News Group in English and Burmese. There's also the link to Awzar Thi's Rule of Lords blog with compelling photos of what's now called the Saffron Revolution. Representatives of the people's movement say their non-violent protests are no fluke and the people will not give up. 

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.

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]

"The Israel Lobby" in London Review of Books

I've been told by those "in the know" that this piece by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt is a seminal article. It's about US foreign and domestic policy toward Israel, and its other effects in the Mideast. Also in Africa which seemingly often is caught somewhere in between. US Mideast policy always keeps Israel at its center. What are the effects? And for Americans when is it ever ok to question, examine and even to change the current "terms" of US-Israeli politics? The LRB article even quotes Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. He was born David Gryn in 1886 in a place called Plonsk which then was Russia and became Poland. Gryn/Ben Gurion "told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress: If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"

John Mearsheimer is author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and professor of poli sci at Univ. of Chicago. Stephen Walt is an international affairs prof at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and author of Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy, among other titles.

Kenya Bloggers Day, aka Madaraka Day

Today is June 1st - both Madaraka Day and Kenya Bloggers Day. Uaridi (Swahili for 'rose') has done a lively Madaraka Day post at her blog so I've linked it here. Unlike Uaridi I'd probably trade a Tuskers and nyama choma (barbecued or roast meat) for a glass of water (probably Keringet or something) or chilled vino bianco, with a nice green salad fresh from my Muthaiga garden (which I dearly miss). Madaraka Day took place June 1st, 1963, 18 months before Kenya's full independence from Britain on 12 December 1964. In the early 60s I was a little Black American girl who had never yet been outside her home country, but I vividly remember collecting the set of luncheon placemats each with a nice map and description of an African nation that recently had re-gained its independence. Even as a kid thousands of miles away - to the west across Africa and the Atlantic - I understood vicariously what African independence meant. It made me feel hopeful and proud. I also still hope that soon Africa will remember and be proud of us.

Blair and Bush: E. J. Dionne's Coalition of the Erring

It worked for "Brangelina", so why not Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush? We'll use "blush" - pronounced 'bloosh' the way Scots would say it. I love the George Orwell quote in E.J. Dionne's 30 May article. "[T]he slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." How 'twu'. Well, bring it on anyway. As soon as we're done we'll all hunt, fish, chop wood and ride bikes at George's private lake in Texas.

Somali Women's Appeal, December 2004

Statement and Appeal of Somali Women December 2004: Appeal of the Somali Women contrary to being denied their rights on the decisions of the future of their nation

The Somali Women, who before and after the years of Independence have taken an active participation in the construction of their nation; who have demonstrated a concrete capability in the last 14 years of war and inter-clan conflict; have alone carried a great burden previously shared with men.

Even though they have taken responsibility and participated in saving the Somali people throughout such a difficult period, they have been denied those rights of political participation, because these have been based on Clan structure.

As is well known, the Charter forming the institutional building process prescribed a minimum 12% of Parliamentary Members to be allotted to women. This position did not satisfy the initial demands of women which were for the 25% but was accepted because of the desire of the Somali Women who wanted a government after so many years of crisis and bloodshed. ... (continued)

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.

"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

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."

US, UK, and Iraq's Oil

Common Dreams has posted Philip Thornton's article, Iraq's Oil: The Spoils of War. In the mainstream media (MSM) who is reporting about something called 'production sharing agreements' - or PSAs - currently being negotiated over Iraqi oil? Thornton claims PSAs were "proposed by the US State Department before the invasion and adopted [post-invasion] by the Coalition Provisional Authority. ... The current government is fast-tracking the process." (Emphasis added.) From the top of the article: "Iraqis face the dire prospect of losing up to $200bn (£116bn) of the wealth of their country if an American-inspired plan to hand over development of its oil reserves to US and British multinationals comes into force next year. A report produced by American and British pressure groups warns Iraq will be caught in an "old colonial trap" if it allows foreign companies to take a share of its vast energy reserves. The report is certain to reawaken fears that the real purpose of the 2003 war on Iraq was to ensure its oil came under Western control. ..." The article goes on to say that with 115 billion barrels of known reserves Iraq has the world's third largest oil reserves and "plans to seek foreign investment to exploit its oil reserves after the general election" being held in December. Thornton also writes about claims of "high-level pressure from the US and UK governments on Iraq to look to foreign companies to rebuild its oil industry." It's all there.

Frantz Fanon and France's Wretched of the Earth

I'm remembering the brother of a friend of mine from the Maghreb - northern Africa. Yes - Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Algeria and several other countries beyond are in and are part of Africa. My friend's older brother was killed some years ago - murdered it seems - in a small town in France; a town I visited. To my knowledge up to now no one has ever been arrested, let alone tried for this young man's tragic and unnatural death. I don't even have any idea whether French local authorities investigated the circumstances of his death. Last year in 2004, in spite of our collective efforts and dialogue at the 2003 European Social Forum (ESF/FSE) right there in France, in St. Denis and in Paris, there was precious little global recognition of France's history and responsibilities in Haiti during the 2004 bicentennaire - bicentennial - of the entire world's first modern Black republic. In spite of all this I maintain my love of France, though certainly not uncritically. I have lived and worked, struggled, learned and shared in France. Now national authorities have activated a state of emergency - un etat d'urgence - for the first time since Algeria's war of independence against France as European colonial occupier. There's a huge gap of both time and politics from 1955 to now. Yet not nearly enough has changed it seems. Coincidentally, the Bandung Conference in Indonesia also took place in 1955. Two of my blog categories are "Bandung+50" and "Wretched of the Earth?" I was very much influenced in choosing these themes by a person, a Black Frenchman and an historical cousin - another person of African descent from the Americas - named Frantz Fanon. Fanon authored two seminal works of "anti-colonial revolutionary thought, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), works which have made Fanon a prominent contributor to postcolonial studies." Fanon died of cancer in Washington, DC on 6 Dec. 1961. In 1964, after his death, his third book appeared in English as Toward the African Revolution. Black Skin, White Masks originally was titled, "An Essay for the Disalienation of Blacks." The above quote is from Prof. Deepika Bahri's informative Fanon website. Bahri, from India, is associate prof of English and director of Asian Studies at Emory University in the US. Her site also notes British director Isaac Julien's 1996 film on Fanon - Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask, available from California Newsreel. Read more of this post below...

FRANTZ FANON, MD (1925-1961):

Native of MARTINIQUE, Caribbean Americas

Ethiopia: Civilians & protesters wounded or killed by military & police in Addis

Some A lot more of us in the international public need to be paying more attention to the killing going on in Ethiopia's capital. Many of us - rightfully - care what's going on in Washington and in the Senate and House of Representatives; a lot of us care about Argentina preparing for the Summit of the Americas and expected protests; some of us are also watching the terrible news of race riots in Paris. But what about Ethiopia? What is going on in Ethiopia? I googled "Addis Ababa" + "elections" + "violence" and I got one single article in The Scotsman. Thank you, Scotsman! I just wanted to try some sources in addition to AllAfrica.com. The end of The Scotsman article reads: "The violence erupted over protests of May 15 elections that had been seen as a test of Prime Minister Zenawi Meles' commitment to reform gave Meles' Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front control of nearly two-thirds of parliament. Opposition parties say the vote and counting were marred by fraud, intimidation and violence, and accuse the ruling party of rigging the elections." The top of the article begins: "Police shot and killed two people and wounded 12 others in Addis Ababa in the fourth day of protests against Ethiopia's disputed parliamentary elections, doctors said. The renewed violence came a day after police shot dead at least 29 people and wounded dozens more, according to doctors who said the previous death toll of 23 rose after six people died overnight in hospitals. The latest victims were shot at Old Airport, a wealthy neighbourhood where many foreign expatriates live, according to doctors at the Black Lion and Zewditu hospitals. Sporadic gunfire was heard near the French and Dutch embassies. Elsewhere in Addis Ababa, stone-throwing protesters had earlier defied a heavy military presence. ..." Read the rest at The Scotsman link - highlighted above.

Haiti - and France's Taubira Law

Right this moment I'm writing this from Haiti - the 'poor' country that made France rich. And if you haven't checked it out already, it's time to learn about the Honorable Christiane Taubira's huge contribution to French law: the Taubira Law, that established the trafficking and enslavement of Blacks in the Americas as a crime against humanity. You can read the Taubira law here. Next, we're hoping for Netherlands, Spain and Portugal ... and Britain (the United Kingdom) can step forward.

Srebrenica versus "political will": the tenth anniversary

I have this nagging question: whether the old robna kuca (department store) in the center of Srebrenica has been rebuilt yet, or if it's still there as a sad and enduring punishment. Live shots today on BBC, at Potocari, the site j