Marian's Blog

Chocolate City, a film on Washington, DC and gentrification

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

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

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

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."

Martin L. King III's sober, inspiring "Poverty in America", from 14-15 Nov on American Life TV

Whatever else Martin King III may need for his new venture, you have to give him credit him for excellent timing. King has announced he is ready to take up his father's fight against poverty. No one else with a stature that approaches his and that of his family is doing anything as ambitious or potentially far-reaching. The elder son of Martin and Coretta Scott King has produced a powerful documentary, in which he travels the USA to carry on his parents' legacy. On Wednesday, 24 October, King's foundation, Realizing the Dream, and Baby Boomer-oriented American Life TV put on an impeccable premiere for King's new documentary, Poverty in America. Also taking part in the film's Wednesday evening premiere was American Life TV journalist (and Kentucky native), Nick Clooney. Clooney is better known to some as the brother of the inimitable vocalist Rosemary, and father to actor George. King reminded premiere guests that 2008 marks the 40th anniversary of the historic yet nearly still-born Poor People's Campaign. Martin L. King, Jr. begun that Campaign, giving his life virtually on its maiden voyage. In the first week of April 1968 King, Jr. and scores of others committed to the Civil Rights Movement went to Memphis, in west Tennessee, to support that city's striking sanitation (aka "garbage") workers. With Dr. King's world-changing assassination the Poor People's Campaign not only began in Memphis, it was pretty much cut down there. Poverty in America is narrated by longtime King family friend and Movement veteran Andrew Young. Almost a third of Americans are poor or barely surviving on low-incomes and pretty minimal government benefits.

In person, and in the documentary Wednesday night, King III sounded almost eerily like his dad. His final assertion in the documentary: "We can build a society where everyone gets a fair chance to succeed, despite the circumstances of thir birth. That's what my father fought for, and that's what I'll fight for." Well, God bless him. Seeing the (opposite) direction the U.S. has steadfastly travelled the past four decades, MLK III has the anti-poverty territory pretty well to himself. I've posted my photos of the premiere to my Flickr website.

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

The American assassinations, part 2 - 1964, 68: Malcolm, Martin and John's brother Bobby

On the Web I found a photo taken in Washington, at Richard Nixon's January 1969 inauguration. A notation says ten thousand people came out in the cold for this event. Two thousand were protesters. In the foreground, above the crowd, a young woman holds her handpainted sign. "PEACE IS NOT SUBVERSIVE". I read those words and forty years later they make me ask myself what exactly is different today? Is America a sleepwalking society? Quite often that's how it feels. I started blogging this thread, "the American assassinations", before reading that this week BBC News has alleged U.S. CIA involvement in the 1968 murder of Robert Kennedy. The report by Shane O'Sullivan appeared November 21, 2006 on BBC Newsnight. It is possible some in the US still really do not want to think of such things. The evening he was murdered Bobby Kennedy had just won California's Democratic Party primary and was on the verge of becoming the party nominee for president of the United States. How many of us ever stop to consider the implication of these multiple assassinations in the US? All the victims were male political figures and not one of them right wing. All this violence and death. The violent reversal of the politically possible. All in less than five years, from 1963 to '68. The Boomer generation. My generation. Multiple political murders shaped my generation of American youth. In the face of serial murders and assassinations, wouldn't coming-of-age somehow change? One devastating death followed by another and another. All in barely half a decade. All with deep social and political effects that remain today. Who talks about how these killings in the U.S. marked the baby boomer generation? Many of us weren't even 18 by the time we'd lived through all this. How many people, Americans and everyone, ever think about that? Had Robert Kennedy not been shot in the recesses of an L.A. hotel it is possible, even likely, he'd have become the 37th U.S. president. Is this the real reason he died? Indeed this 'alternate reality': had Bobby Kennedy been allowed to live, at the very least would have spared us who we got instead: Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon. Some of us remember -only too well- his other "name", "Tricky Dick". Tricky Dick Nixon. Before Robert it was his brother, our president, on a routine political visit to Dallas where he, too, was assassinated in November 1963. Fewer than nineteen months later it was Black American leader Malcolm X (Malcolm Little), shot so many times, by multiple gunmen, in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. It was Sunday, 21 February 1965. In Pennsylvania my family heard the news on our car radio. This moment in my parents' car stays frozen in my mind. A sunny, early Sunday afternoon, right after church. I am in the back seat as we ride. The news comes on the radio as we're stopped at the light at East Market Street, heading north on South Queen. So much violence. And then barely three years later Martin Luther King is shot and killed, Thursday, April 4th, in Memphis, Tennessee. Then Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles on June 8th. Two more American assassinations less than eight weeks apart.

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

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

Ayan Hirsi Ali: Coming to the US and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)

Quick. Put your thinking cap on... This is not Eddie Murphy's movie about a continental African coming to the USA. And what's the message here: if you can't persuade more indigenous US Blacks to 'go conservative' then import them? As with so many other issues and events involving the US or touching it yet rarely reported to or discussed with average US citizens, this news has potential to influence other issues. Yet much of mainstream US media probably won't report this, let alone examine what it means, until later. If ever. In Europe the news is that Somali-born women's rights activist and member of Dutch parliament, Ayan Hirsi Ali, is "renouncing" life in the Netherlands to come to the US. Ali wrote the script for the tinderbox short Submission, filmed by Dutch filmmmaker Theo van Gogh (yes, a relative of the painter) who was murdered two months later in November 2004 by a man seeking revenge against the film's message. Since then Hirsi Ali has been under heavy guard. In recent days it surfaced that apparently she lied about herself and her eligibility to seek and gain refugee status in the Netherlands when she arrived there in 1992. According to Ali and the Wikipedia article about her (linked at her name), from September 2006 she'll be in the employ of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Dio mio. Sounds like the outline of yet another film.

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

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

State of the Black Union on CSPAN!

My brother just shared with me that the annual, public, free SOBU conference - the State of the Black Union - sponsored by broadcaster Tavis Smiley, is now being televised on CSPAN. Tavis says there are 5,000 persons attending the conference in Houston, Texas, plus scores more watching nationally and internationally via CSPAN. Thanks bro. Check it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

European Journalism Centre gets new director

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

Liverpool, Slavery and The Beatles: Modern Black Atlantic History

"As we write the 20th century what is the role of the Beatles - four white guys from Liverpool UK - in modern Black Atlantic history?" I feel a sense of betrayal when I recall that in the 1960s and later American kids made quite wealthy a group of young men from a city called Liverpool. And in recent years scholars of American popular music and culture have discovered the high cost of the "Liverpool music" phenomenon to the careers and livelihoods of U.S. musicians - especially Black American R&B groups of the 1960s. More than that, I freely admit I was one of these 'ahistorical' youth, though in most respects I wasn't really ahistorical. We simply hadn't a clue about Liverpool's earlier role in deporting, shipping, trading and enslaving our ancestors and those of millions more African descendants in the Americas. I loved the Beatles' music. I bought their records. I saw A Hard Day's Night. My friend Angeline and I even took Paul and John (Angeline and myself, respectively) as alter egos. Don't ask why exactly, but we really were into it and in a way our respective choices were on target. I think very few people in America "put two and two together" back then. I would be intensely curious to know whether any historian or social critic in any country ever attempted to put into the broader Black Atlantic context various interpretations of the meaning of the arrival in the Americas of a group of young Liverpudlian men. In America, apparently, we young Black, Native American, White, Latino and Asian American youth had no idea we were part of a longstanding socio-historical process between the US and UK - a system which without doubt was postcolonial contrary to opinions of some current observers [see my note below on Deepika Bahri's exclusion of postcolonial experience in the US]. Point of history: Among other settlements, in 1607 English settlers founded the Jamestown colony (Virginia). Over in the UK did the Beatles or anyone else reflect upon all this? It seems that even in the late 20th century and on both sides of the pond we still were part of the uninterrupted Atlantic relationship that conspired to silence and 'not remembering'. In the US there had to be those who knew this history and yet they said nothing, let alone jog public memory and foster discourse. More than a few Black American youth - including myself - were buying Beatles' records, singing their songs, we watched them on Ed Sullivan and stood in long lines to pay them to get into their concerts. We never asked - nor did we have means to do so - what Ringo, Paul, George or John thought of Black people - Black Americans, Africans, African Caribbeans, African Canadians or Black British - and of our post-slave-trade societies. We never asked what The Beatles thought of our history or of their own or of their intersections. Nor did we ask what they knew or thought of Liverpool's wildly lucrative links to Africa and the slave trade. Fast forward to 2006. Like the October 2005 STAMP project on the docks of Lancaster near the Millenium Bridge, does Liverpool have a public memorial to the way this city constructed and equipped itself from wealth acquired through catching, shipping and selling captive Blacks? Do Paul McCartney, George Harrison or Ringo Starr, or Sean Lennon or Yoko Ono Lennon or the John Lennon estate for that matter even care that these roots formed the cornerstone of Liverpool history? It's been almost a half century since four young musicians from Liverpool arrived on the shores of America and received an unbiased and unprecedented welcome. In turn that welcome afforded them the means, if not the responsibility, to contribute and to help make our common future different and better than our common past.

Who wants to hear American Indians' own stories? National symposium, March 2-3

A national symposium on what I call the "enforced invisibility" of Native Americans in the USA?? Well it's about time. Speaking as a journalist I have to suggest that there's one big elephant in this room which this symposium should address - among many other things. That issue is why most U.S. news items that use a variety of US population statistics always, always leave out American Indians - as if they don't exist. I've actually had people in the United States of America (and sometimes in other countries) - including 'foreigners' and a few "domestics" (US natives) - try to tell me either a) "American Indians no longer exist", or b) "not enough American Indians exist today for them to matter, or to be included or consulted in U.S. public discussions on just about anything". Such dis-information is about as criminally negligent as it is sad and almost needless to say I've shot down such comments without blinking an eye. The whole thing of continually dismissing American Indians in their/our own country makes my blood run cold. And why are all of us as US communities of colour consistently and separately always compared to middle-class and affluent Whites instead of comparing our successes and the "challenges" we face to each other? Usually what's being compared revolves around some problem or something negative and basically it's almost invariably never a positive comparison in favour of Americans of colour. Why is that? Whether it's data on rates of diabetes or obesity or average levels of education or un/employment or home ownership, Latinos are compared to so-called "non-Latino" whites; Black Americans are compared to whites; Asian Americans are compared to whites, while both Native American and Pacific Islander populations (Hawai'i, Samoa, Fiji, Mariana Islands, etc.) usually are pretty well left out. March's upcoming seminar is: Who Wants to Hear Our Story? Communications and Contemporary Native Americans - A Media Symposium. March 2-3, 2006, Washington, DC. "The absence of U.S. media coverage about Native American communities means that Indian Country today is a mystery to most people. While there are rampant stereotypes, realities and cultural strengths remain hidden. ..." There's a $50 fee that pays for "two breakfasts, lunch on Thursday, a reception on Thursday night, and all symposium materials. Participants will need to make their own housing arrangements." The website also quotes Jose - Jose Barreiro: "... In the increasingly organized anti-Indian climate, a focus on media attitudes and content is crucial. We are glad to join FCNL in seeking both clear strategy and substantial engagement of media by Native Nations and a better and deeper education for mainstream journalists on the nature of tribal rights. -- Jose Barreiro, senior advisor, American Indian Policy and Media Initiative." The co-sponsors of the symposium are listed on the site (no, I haven't linked them!):

Friends Committee on National Legislation (conference coordinator)
American Indian Policy and Media Initiative
Americans for Indian Opportunity
American Friends Service Committee
Call to Renewal
First Nations Development Institute
Honor Our Neighbors' Origins and Rights (HONOR)
Institute for Tribal Government
The Interfaith Alliance
National American Indian Housing Council
National Congress of American Indians
National Council of Churches
National Indian Child Welfare Association
National Indian Council on Aging
National Indian Health Board
National Native American Families Together
National Urban Indian Family Coalition
Native American Journalists Association
Native American Rights Fund

News that Richard Pryor has died

It may be true that Black American comedian, Richard Pryor, has died, but his energy - his genius - are with us forever. I remember one of his comedy albums of the 1970s. I will never forget his monologue about people from another country whom the US government (and certain private interests) was 'transplanting' to the USA. In this case it was Vietnamese people. "They [the American interests responsible] are teaching them to say [the "n"-word]," Pryor declared. It was frighteningly believable and yet somehow hilarious, after a manner. And I'm sure it was not far from the truth, either then or now. Travel well, Richard Pryor. Thank you for the laughs - and the thoughts. [From Reuters news service via Australia's National Nine News: "Richard Pryor took a brutal look at racial attitudes in the United States and fashioned it into a comedy career. His chaotic personal life also provided material for a stand-up act that was as profound as it was profane. Born Dec. 1, 1940, and raised in his grandmother's brothel in Peoria, Illinois, Pryor served in the U.S. Army before heading to New York to pursue comedy in the early 1960s. The former class clown played it safe at first but later moved on to controversial subjects with a routine that was more like Lenny Bruce than Bill Cosby. His comedy albums, which included "Bicentennial [the "n" word]," "Is It Something I Said," and "That [the "n" word]'s Crazy," won five Grammys. He reportedly decided to quit using the word [the "n" word] after a 1980 trip to Zimbabwe, writing in his autobiography: "There are no [the "n" word]s here. The people here, they still have their self-respect, their pride." ..."]

Yeidy Rivero's "Tuning Out Blackness" - Puerto Rican TV, Race, Racism & National Identity

"Donde esta tu abuela" (where is your Grandmother?), mis Latinos... The following book title and its subject remind me of a time when I studied Spanish with a certain international organisation. The teacher used videos intended to depict "Puerto Rican culture" and a "typical" Puerto Rican family. Problem was, not one member of the 'family' cast was Afro Puerto Rican. This is absolutely counter-intuitive to what some of us know about who Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rican communities truly are. Yeidy Rivero's refreshingly related new book is titled Tuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of Puerto Rican Television. It's published by Duke University Press (North Carolina USA). Rivero is assistant prof in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana (in the quite racist Midwest USA). I will never forget those JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY billboards I used to see in Indiana. And all you italiani who so love Latin culture and music when they come to Italia for a month every summer - while at the same time showing such solidarieta per l'Africa yet only when it's completely disconnected from the African/Black Americas - Italians might learn a few things if they take heed. On the Duke University Press website: "Tuning Out Blackness fills a glaring omission in U.S. and Latin American television studies by looking at the history of Puerto Rican television. In exploring the political and cultural dynamics that have shaped racial representations in Puerto Rico's commercial media from the late 1940s to the 1990s, Yeidy M. Rivero advances critical discussions about race, ethnicity, and the media. She shows that televisual representations of race have belied the racial egalitarianism that allegedly pervades Puerto Rico's national culture. White performers in blackface have often portrayed “blackness” in local television productions, while black actors have been largely excluded. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, archival research, and textual analysis, Rivero considers representations of race in Puerto Rico, taking into account how they are intertwined with the island's status as a U.S. commonwealth, its national culture, and its relationship with Cuba before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and the massive influx of Cuban migrants after 1960. She focuses on locally produced radio and television shows, particular television events, and characters that became popular media icons—from performer Ramón Rivero's use of blackface and “black” voice in the 1940s and 1950s to the battle between black actors and television industry officials over racism in the 1970s to the creation, in the 1990s, of the first Puerto Rican situation comedy featuring a black family. As the twentieth century drew to a close, multinational corporations had purchased all of Puerto Rico's stations, and they threatened to wipe out locally produced programs. Tuning Out Blackness not only brings to the forefront the marginalization of non-white citizens in Puerto Rico's media culture; it also raises important questions about the significance of local sites of television production. “This book not only provides a cultural history of 'blackness' in Puerto Rican television, it also locates Puerto Rico as a critical blind spot in both Latin American and U.S. television studies, one that can offer new insights into the televisual representation of race, family, and nation.”-Chon Noriega, author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema; “Tuning Out Blackness offers an astute and very well informed analysis of Puerto Rico's unique 'racial' programming, which in turn provides a valuable look at the deep ambivalence at the heart of the country's sense of national identity in the shadow of U.S. ideological and cultural power.”-Juan Flores, author of From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latin Identity. See more reviews here. The book's contents: Acknowledgments; Introduction: Translating Televisual “Blackness”; 1. Caribbean Negritos: Ramon Rivero, Blackface, and Black Voice in Puerto Rico; 2. Bringing the Soul: Afros, Black Empowerment, and the Resurgent Popularity of Blackface; 3. The CubaRican Space Revisited; 4. Mi familia: A Black Puerto Rican Televisual Family; 5. Translating and Representing Blackness; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Katrina, the writing on the wall for the "laissez-faire nation"

"No coordinated effort" - John Zarrella, CNN. "An engineering nightmare" - Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco. -- For more than 30 years, Americans of conscience have been forced to watch as a well-heeled and amazingly connected clique has dismantled virtually all of our national responses to national problems. Everything (except funding) has been "left up to" - read: dumped on - our cities and states. The Gulf Coast disaster of Hurricane Katrina is no exception. This must be "states' rights" at their finest - the right to fend for yourself. Most US governors and mayors (who aren't also part of the "laissez faire nation" mentality) must be taking all this as a very, very sober warning. 

Superstorm catches Bush the bookless jock "by surprise" - Millions Now Pay Price

Americans have been lied to so much in the last six years. We are told George Bush can't be bothered - day after day after day- to speak with the mother of a dead 24 year old, even as "mainstream" US media tout the occasional scenes of Bush riding bicycles, grinning, swaggering, and chopping wood. The nation's attention is diverted by a much-hyped space flight - yet none in the mainstream media has the guts to ask - let alone utter - how many people lost their lives in Iraq this week, or how many more billions have just been spent on "Iraqi freedom" - even though supposedly the war ended over two years ago. Bush does not allow thoughts of either an impending hurricane season or something called global warming to ruin his day. And he doesn't read books anyway. Was Hurricane Katrina intensified by global warming?? And please - spare us the self-serving photo-ops of George Bush off the ranch - the so-called "Western White House" - just long enough to go stand among the ruins. The ruins in Mississippi will be perfect for this. You do realise Bush's pal, former Republican chair Haley Barbour "just happens" to be governor of Mississippi. My mouth just about dropped open when I saw his face yesterday on TV. Millions in Mississippi and Louisiana have been abandoned to fend for themselves, faced with illness, birth, death, thirst, flood, hunger, frightened animals including venomous snakes, darkness, insecurity and crime. And long-term homelessness. The list goes on. A doctor at LSU in Baton Rouge says as people cling to their roofs for dear life they are exposed to the Gulf air thick with mosquitoes, and West Nile fever outbreaks probably will come next. I am ashamed. The American people and the world are watching as the US federal government again abandons its responsibilities, both to its citizens and to humanity. And hurricane season is not over.

The Constant Gardener: Kenya, Africa, Ourselves

This week I will see the new film version of The Constant Gardener. I'm fascinated by both the film's website and its soundtrack. "Big pharmaceuticals ... are right up there with the arms dealers," a voice declares on the website. "FMF" (who is not English, British, Kenyan or American) loaned me her copy of John Le Carre's The Constant Gardener (TCG) about three years ago when C and I were still living in Nairobi. Back then the book was banned in Kenya. I'm still not sure it's been officially unbanned. I read it in Kenya just before Daniel arap Moi completed his twenty four (24) year run as Kenya's president. He's mentioned several times in Constant Gardener and one can say it's not as a hero. The book was a fascinating read; I couldn't put it down, which I can't say for quite a bit of fiction. I hear they shot on location in Nairobi, including Kibera - Africa's largest slum[, and elsewhere in Kenya - including Lake Turkana?]. I keep thinking that whenever I recommend this book and film to others I must suggest they do 3 things: 1. Read Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost;(subtitle, "A story of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa") 2. Read Edward Hooper's online letter about his suspicions on the origins of HIV and AIDS, and take a look at his entire website investigating the origins of AIDS; and 3. See the related, Emmy-nominated documentary film, The Origins of AIDS, which the Sundance Channel aired in the USA in February 2005. Truth really is stranger than fiction, and in this case a book and film of fiction help lead us to examine certain truths. Despite faults of yet another heavily eurocentric plot set in Africa, in some other ways The Constant Gardener is on the right track. God bless Africa.

Hurricane Katrina - What Part of Mandatory Evacuation Don't Some People Understand?

Why are we watching video of a guy from a TV news crew - reportedly possibly from station WWL - risking his life in waist-high floodwaters to rescue some idiot trapped in his car?? Exactly what part of "curfew" and "mandatory [means required] evacuation" did the older guy refuse to understand? After his rescue, looking into the camera he explains he was on his way "driving to Kenner" (near NO) when he "mistook water for the road." Whoa. What kind of "cretino" is this? Barely 15 hours ago New Orleans' mayor Ray Nagin stated clearly in an official news conference which was broadcast that to disobey a state and city evacuation order would be a violation of law. Yet it does not seem to have crossed this other guy's mind that he deserves to be arrested. Not only for endangering his own life but the life of the young guy brave enough to run out and save him. One is a hero, the other an idiot.

X-Raying Robert McNamara's public Conscience - Coming clean in your 80s

My late maternal Grandfather loved to recite the poem Invictus to us, his grandkids. He was Detective Sergeant Reuben R. Nichols, Sr. He became a Black American pioneer in the Metropolitan police department (Homicide Division) of Washington, DC. Born in Leavenworth (Kansas USA) in March 1904, both he and my then-future Grandmother - Maude Gudger (married Nichols) - managed to graduate from 8th grade at Leavenworth's Black school. My Grandfather was very proud of having been class valedictorian, and decades later we were his audience as he recited William Earnest Henley's poem. Invictus. That's right. *(Do not believe every negative thing some others may tell you about Americans. Especially about Black Americans - or things you THINK you know after watching idiotic music videos (many of which I banned from my home years ago. I suggest you do the same for the worst ones.) More than a few Americans should take the same advice. One of my grandfather's favourite pieces of advice was, "To thine own self be true" (Shakespeare, Hamlet). I suppose Robert McNamara finally reached a similar decision. I recall seeing him some years back, in Washington, during the preparatory conference for the world microcredit summit. The summit was in February 1997, so the meeting where I met McNamara must've been November 1996. Even today I feel uncomfortable when I remember and write about that encounter. In recent years I've felt a bit sorry for Mr McNamara. To be literally despised by so many people. And - perhaps - forgiven by some. But in the years since that meeting and since the end of the U