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.

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

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

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.

The international conversations Black America's not having: Reading Yvonne Bynoe

Came across an interesting article from nearly a year ago: author Yvonne Bynoe's Black America After Jim Crow: Still Feels Like Segregation, published on AlterNet. (They have good stuff and deserve your consideration of $upport.)

For decades I've been having "frank and candid" conversations, personal and public, with Black folks from around the world outside the USA, as well as with my folks here at home. I agree with much but not all of what Bynoe writes. I remember a surreal moment in the Kenyan government representative's speech at the U.S. 4th of July diplomatic event in Nairobi a few years ago. Johnnie Carson, a Black American, was ambassador. But I'll save this for another time.

"What has not occurred are frank and candid conversations between native Black Americans and immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean that aim to update the public face of "Black America." These dialogues would first need to acknowledge the unique cultures and histories of the various groups, while forging relationships based on our shared interests and challenges in this country as people of African descent." - writer Yvonne Bynoe

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. 

Jena as de Tocqueville's "democracy" where Black Americans are a "threat" to Whites

The issues and actions haunting Jena, Louisiana today were well-established and defined as long ago as 1835, and even earlier. The problem is that since that time, now more than 170 years gone, U.S. society has steadfastly refused to deal fairly and honestly with those issues. This brings all of us to the town center of Jena, and elsewhere. I'm referring to the 1835 publication of Alexis de Tocqueville's thoughts and observations of the USA in "Democracy in America". The book continues to be read, lauded and digested in the US and globally, so could it be that no one is reading Chapter 18? Titled: THE PRESENT AND PROBABLE FUTURE CONDITION OF THE THREE RACES THAT INHABIT THE TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES. The "three races" de Tocqueville writes about are Native Americans, Black Americans, and White Americans. Also look for this section, "Situation of the Black  Population in the United States and Dangers with which its Presence threatens the Whites." For people who have read Chapter 18, where is the feedback and public critique? How about shock, disgust, outrage and serious response?? The French writer wrote published this in 1835; it's now 2007.

"The Indians will perish in the same isolated condition in which they have lived, but the destiny of the Negroes is in some measure interwoven with that of the Europeans. These two races are fastened to each other without intermingling; and they are alike unable to separate entirely or to combine. The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact. ..."

Our society and perhaps especially our "free press"/news-cum-gossip media, still insists on speaking of Jena, nooses hung in trees, abuse, rape and murder of women of colour, of education, poverty and affirmative action, HIV and AIDS, incarceration and the death penalty, in a vacuum, as though in 170 years none of us has read let alone dissected Alexis de Tocqueville's much-revered words. His unambiguous views and observations of Black and Native Americans remain today in bold contrast to his admiration for and affirmation of a white, and whites-only, America.

On Racism & Fascism: Stan Goff's article at Alternet.org

Finished reading retired soldier Stan Goff's article which asks if the U.S. is becoming fascist. It's quite detailed. He even writes about the U.S. military recruiting, inadvertently or otherwise, straight-up white supremacist racists. Goff concludes: "They are not Arabs who are painting Aryan Nations graffiti on the shattered walls of Baghdad." Can you imagine?? Along with everything else Iraqi people have been forced to go through and to subject themselves to, to endure. Goff's last line made me recall a local train ride from Sisak to Zagreb, in Croatia. One afternoon I noticed something written on the gray stone wall at one station where the train always stops along the way. Unusually, what I saw not only was written in large, bold letters, but in perfect English. It caught me by surprise. It was the "N" word. In the middle of Croatia.

Right after, I wrote an official report to the international human rights mission in which I worked. No one ever responded. Two weeks later I again rode the train. Someone had painted over the N word. This was a relief and I'm glad someone did. And yet even that doesn't alter the fact the word had been there, and that I and many others witnessed it. That someone had thought about this, then gone and very deliberately taken paint and written this foreign word - the "N" word - in huge letters on a gray stone public wall facing every passing train. And they'd written it in perfect English.

Someday I shall remember which station it was, in which community. I wondered then and still it comes back. Who wrote it, and why? I was the only Black person for miles around. I never saw another Black person in that area, nor on the Sisak-Zaghreb train. Why that particular spot? Had someone written it for me to see? Was it written because of me? I'll never really know.

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

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 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.

Caribbean heritage: "I met History once but he ain't recognize me"

Recently I read somewhere a scholar's observation that if you want to understand Britain's early colonies in the Americas you cannot make a distinction between life in the British colonial Caribbean and life on the British colonial North American mainland. Charleston, South Carolina's deep connections to St. Catherine's (now St. Kitt's) and Nevis are just one example. The people and their interactions were so totally linked. Part of what our histories and heritages tell me is we have a lot of "re-discovering" to do - not only of each other but of ourselves. I found a few things I like on this site of professor A. Waller Hastings - including Derek Walcott's quote. I feel I know what he's talkin' about:

“I met History once, but he ain’t recognize me” (Derek Walcott, “The Schooner Flight”). And an 1882 quote from British politician Sir John Seeley: "We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind."

A whole history of the things Britain (and France and Holland and Spain and Portugal, etc., etc.) did - not to mention the hard cash they stashed - but of which she now has so little conscious memory. I say this as one of tens of millions of people of colour from the Americas (and elsewhere) with what I'll call "our unclaimed ties to Britain" (i.e., ties Britain thusfar seems to refuse to recognise). So Seeley's quote sounds accurate to me.

Nor is all the Caribbean English-speaking or linked to colonial Britain: "... one of the early revolutionary critiques of colonialism, [was] that of Frantz Fanon, a French writer born in Martinique [part of the Caribbean] and educated to conceive himself as French.  However, his education in France and confrontation with French racism made him aware of the disorientation he experienced as a black man taught to behave “white,” and he responded in part by writing his influential tract, Black Skin, White Masks (1952). ..."

"... Among the first British colonies were those that later formed the United States, and foremost among these was Virginia (est. 1617) [actually it was 1607, with major retrospective activities in 2007] where the cultivation of tobacco, previously unknown in Europe, proved a boon to the British economy. Virginia contributed enormous amounts of revenue to the crown; .... duties on tobacco amounted to £421,000 pounds in the two-year period between 1699 and 1701 - one-fifth of all customs revenue during that period (7). ... Britain also developed economic interests in the West Indies. The first British settlement was in Barbados (est. 1627), which struggled at first until the possibilities of the sugar trade became apparent. The sugar economy led to other West Indian colonies, but the climate of the region made it unattractive to British settlers; even indentured servants and deportees lacked the physical stamina needed, so the slave trade was introduced to provide an appropriate labor force (the local population having already been devastated as a result of being the first point of contact with European civilization). ..." We come from this history that once was whole and now we and it are fragmented. And so it goes. Happy Caribbean American Heritage Month to all of us connected to this common history.

June: Caribbean American Heritage Month 2006

Props to our Caribbean cousins/sisters/brothers for Caribbean American Heritage Month 2006. Jasmyn Cannick has a good link on her site where she writes about Oakland, California Congresswoman Barbara Lee's 2005 proclamation, with a list of a few US folks of (recent) Caribbean descent/origin, like California's Mervyn Dymally, "the first foreign born member of the United States Congress, Marcus Garvey, Sidney Poitier, Colin Powell, Cicely Tyson, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Shirley Chisolm." The folks are even going to show us how to play cricket on the National Mall in DC. Do they plan to let women join in? More events and details at CaribbeanAmericanMonth.org site.

Somalia - Peaceful protesters tell Islamic fighters: "Leave Mogadishu"

The Guardian reports "hundreds of protesters" (we also hear it was thousands) marched the streets of Mogadishu today asking self-styled Islamic sharia court militias to leave town peacefully. On the U.S. diplomatic side, a (San Jose) Mercury News article today reports former State Department official Princeton Lyman is advising the Bush administration to "begin working urgently with regional governments and Somaliland, an unrecognized self-declared independent nation in northern Somalia, to contain Islamist militias." That quote is from the paper, not directly from Lyman. And I added the emphasis. We hope "official Washington" 1) will not bring any more of its "shock and awe" into traumatised Somalia; and 2) that it also will not simply turn its back. I will try adding a link for info on Somaliland - a region once colonised by Britain. This is also where I first drank camel's milk, and I must say: not bad! My prayers are with all of our colleagues and friends.

Misogyny, "the English disease"; and Julie Bindel in The Guardian

I noticed Julie Bindel's commentary in today's Guardian and just sort of exhaled, thinking "finally". Finally a British woman writing openly about something which has disgusted me for years, and in spite of my appreciation for much of what makes the UK the UK. What has disgusted me is the glaring contempt toward women that exists and is even rewarded among some British men; even to the point of murder (femicide) and serial murder. Over the years watching British news I kept seeing how it seemed like almost every few weeks some woman's or girl's remains were being sought or found. There are also the stories of UK male doctors and nurses with a penchant for killing mostly women patients. The first and last straw was my own experience working with certain - not all - male Brits. Finally when I fairly screamed about all this, a male close to me - and an Anglophile mind you - told me of "the English disease". I'd never heard it before he said it though I'd definitely felt "the English disease". My friend did not invent this string of words which refers to a profound antipathy among some men toward women. I would love to know who coined it; how this phrase came to be. Bindel writes forcefully in The Guardian: It is high time we start treating murders committed because of men's hatred of us, and, where no conviction is achieved due to the internalised misogyny of police, as being as serious as the Stephen Lawrence case. Stephen Lawrence was a Black teen murdered in London in 1993 by a group of young white men. In 2000 in London I met Stephen's mother. His killing was so poorly handled by authorities that all of it required another, far-reaching investigation. My own hope is someday soon one of us with a 'special' human sensitivity, and one that is not 'selective', will be able to explain to Britain and the whole world the type of antipathy which obviously links both.

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

National Archives: Congressional records on slavery and the international slave trade

Interesting reading here; a link to the National Archives' holdings of US Congress records on American slavery and the international slave trade. If you want to know what the Continental Congress thought about enslaving Black people, or what congressmen said - on the record - about Haiti's fight for independence (doing just what the US already did), it's here.