Marian's Blog

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.

So where's my white folks??? Cheney and Barack Obama related

To be honest the only real news about Dick Cheney and Barack Obama being related is that yet again we see a person from a different background is treated quite differently from we
Black Americans.

Just like the central yet undiscussed fact that he bears his own family's African name (which by definition of our experience, Black Americans do not) Barack Obama's blood tie with Dick Cheney is not through enslavement. Instead it's through white families up to and including his mother, who conceived him with a continental African, from Kenya, to be precise.

What of we millions of Black Americans? Up to the present no white American (nor European) politico has yet bragged of or publicly mentioned their family relations with us. And yet that area is such fruitful turf! Through my own arduous and emotionally tortuous family research I've connected with maybe two or three white relatives from my mother's family. Luckily, they've been good people. Mind you, a bit like Mr. Obama, these folks were not slaveholders. They are not related to my family through slavery, but through my white female ancestors in Tennessee and North Carolina. In another part of my family, my maternal grandfather confided to me forty years ago how his white cousins came to eat and play at his mother's home in Leavenworth, Kansas. But when they turned twelve, with no warning, they just stopped coming. My grandfather added that some of the white kinfolk moved from Leavenworth to New London, Connecticut where they took jobs at a federal naval base. This was 60 years ago, at least.

U.S. Midterms: "Appetizer for 2008" - Gergen

What was unimaginable less than 48 hours ago has occurred. Democrats have won both the House and the Senate while Mr. Rumsfeld has been shown the District line. Sayonara, Don. I couldn't have said it better than David Gergen on CNN declaring Tuesday's election results "the appetizer" for Election Day 2008. Gergen also aptly declared what's happening in America as "political high drama". A-men. In today's early hours, Thursday, 9 November, Associated Press has now declared Jim Webb winner while Mr. Webb has publicly thanked the people of Virginia (1607-2007) for electing him that state's new U.S. senator. Unlike perhaps a few folks I don't really intend to brag. At least not much. Globally and inside the U.S. all of us are dealing with many sobering things. Yet now at least there's the opportunity to begin again and to do some things which are both practical and right. Tuesday's really was a seismic vote.

World Cup: Italia advances 1-0 over Australia

Italia's Francesco Totti put it away today at the World Cup. It may as well have been a photo-finish since for 94 minutes (and thus into overtime) neither team scored. Then, an Aussie stumble and some fancy Italian footwork handed Italia the chance for a penalty goal. In the 95th minute Italia WINS on Francesco Totti's penalty kick. He came all the way back from a badly broken leg in 2005 to his first-ever World Cup goal today on the penalty. They must already be in the streets and will be partying tonight in Roma and across Italia. Bravo Francesco, bravo Italia! Just one tiny thing: Was it me or did I really see Totti stick his thumb in his mouth as he celebrated his goal?? Anyway... thanks, Australia, for a game well-played.

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.

Fishing - Highlight of Bush presidency since 2001

Everybody's blogging this because it's so incredible.

George Bush says his best moment since becoming president of the US was catching a fish. The fishing took place at his private lake in Texas. He told this to Bild am Sonntag - a German paper, adding that his fish was a 7-1/2 lb perch.

What can anyone add to something like that? 

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.

Oilman's view of the State of the Union

Today's MSM news sounds like one of the chief talking points of Bush's state of the union speech was "Americans are addicted to oil." I thought we'd realised that in the '70s. So I suppose in another 30 years Bush will pronounce the world is experiencing global warming. He says it's technology that will save us. MEMO TO MR BUSH: Technology alone will not save the people of the US and the global North (along with the rest of the world) from its their own wasteful behaviour. Technology is a means - not a saviour.

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."

What if FDR met Bush?

A curious thought crossed my mind recently. What might Franklin Delano Roosevelt have thought had he ever met George W. Bush and engaged him in, um, conversation? Possibly even one about public social policy. Can one imagine the elite but also seriously social justice activist (especially in her appreciation of Black Americans and especially right there locally in Washington, DC) Eleanor Roosevelt in the same setting with Laura Bush? Equally fascinating considering that FDR and G.W. Bush share the same East Coast American social class (and no matter how much others constantly spin Bush's 'nouveau working class-cattle ranch' socio-economic and geographic pretentions), President Roosevelt must've known - or at least at some distance - the reportedly rather notorious Bush grandfather, Prescott, who allegedly organised and provided material financial and industrial support to Nazis in Germany - until some branch of the U.S. government "intervened". Are those accounts true? So many questions, so few answers, so little public discussion.

2005: Thank you from me to you

Habari gani? Nia. Purpose. Today is the fifth of the seven days of Kwanzaa 2005. In this sense, Ron Karenga's official Kwanzaa website explains that purpose means "to make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community..." The older many of us get (and perhaps among people across the world), the more we marvel at some mysterious "space" somewhere 'out there'; the place to which months and years and decades and even centuries fly away. Miraculously, 2005 has now done the same thing. And twelve months from now we will already have lived the first five years or 5% - of this still-new 21st century (by "western" time). For me 2005 has been a most amazing year. We began 2005 celebrating Capo d'Anno (while in shock over the tsunami) near Alberobello, in Puglia, in Italia (Italy). Two years ago we ate, danced and celebrated with my Mother, at Muthaiga Club in Nairobi. I sense that for me this New Year's will be one that is more contemplative, and I would like to take this moment to thank God and family, friends, readers and other colleagues for helping to make 2005 as amazing as it's been. We look forward to wonderful and beautiful experiences to come in 2006, and even to some of those not so easy things along with the friendship, love and support we share with each other to get through them. Thank you, also, for reading this blog, Marian's Blog!

A "Native Christmas" to all - and Ramadan, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa

Please accept our warmest greeting from Great Turtle Island - America. And thank you to my friend Sandra (One Feather) who shared this image with me.

Bush, Inc: GOPgate - Haven't We Had Enough Already??

Mr. Bush - there's a lot more than 'background noise' going on over your head! Those two words are from yet another "brilliant" (...snicker...) George Bush performance to stonewall a journalist. This one occurred just yesterday in DC. I don't have the original question but Bush replied: "There's some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of speculation and opining. But the American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to." Maybe there really are still one or two Americans out there actually waiting for Mr. Bush to start. His job that is. Bush may be meeting certain expectations of his self-described "base" - the "haves and have mores" - but alot of us are sure he is not working on behalf of "the American people." If you happen to be an American - do you consider yourself better off today than you were five years ago? Yesterday I was reading a blog which alleges George and Jeb (Bush) are waiting for Wilma - the latest mega-storm bearing down on the southern US - to strike, presumably in Florida, in order to further distract the American public from the (constitutional?) crisis metastasizing in Washington. I was calling this Whitehousegate but it goes deeper so I'll call it GOP-gate. Much of the so-called 'Republican revolution' was engineered over the past three, even four decades, but it ramped up big time once Newt Gingrich jumped into the saddle with the 1994 Republican Contract with On America. The Grand Old Party doesn't seem to need to speak of that one anymore. Today's citizen anger inside the US is not only about Iraq nor just about the leak of classified information - i.e., the name of a US intelligence agent - and evidently by sources right there inside the White House, no less. This is not just about government-sponsored perversity at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib nor just Commander in Chief Bush's time-delayed response to a storm called Katrina. It's also not just war-making so elegantly combined with massive contracts gifted to political cronies, nor is it just the related hemorraging of the United States budget. It's not even just those fishy outcomes of two - count 'em 1, 2 - US elections. The problem is all these and more. Haven't Americans had enough of the dullard 'press conferences' combined with the lying, smirking, self-serving arrogance? And why has the outrage about this - overall - been far stronger in societies and countries other than our own??? Answer me that one. I'm checking a site, After Downing Street, where someone posted Bernard Weiner's fascinating piece, "Arguments for an Impeachment Resolution." Weiner has a site called The Crisis Papers. And I particularly like Jane Hamsher's quote at Huffington Post from one of her recent articles on investigator Patrick Fitzgerald where she remarks that Fitzgerald "... sees into the ugly, greedy, oozing heart of the NeoCon kleptocracy, its mafia-like structure and the all-too-cozy overlap between the war party and the profiteers..." Like I asked, haven't enough of us had quite enough of all this yet??

Lancaster UK Remembers Role in Transatlantic Slave Trade: STAMP Memorial 10 October 2005

Native American Day is this week, which some still call "Columbus Day." Actually the Italian chap to whom they refer was Cristoforo Colombo, and his "adventures" were financed by Spain. Hmmm... all this sounds a lot like 'globalisation' - including the centuries' long kidnap and deportation of millions & millions - and more millions - of Africans. So, thank you to everyone involved in tomorrow's historic dedication of Lancaster UK's memorial to the African-descendant victims of the Transatlantic slave trade. The ceremony takes place tomorrow, Monday, at quayside in Lancaster near the Millenium Bridge. See the official press release, below. The contact is Dr. Alan J. Rice, who is Reader in American Cultural Studies at the University of Central Lancashire (UK), and author of Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic, published 2003 by Continuum. Black American former exile Preston King will be guest of honour. King is an "internationally acclaimed African American scholar and Civil Rights activist. In 1961 Mr. King was a very young man who "refused to be drafted for military service ... when a white Southern officer addressed him as "boy" and subsequently his [U.S.] passport was confiscated. It was not returned until 1999 after a long-running international campaign led to a Presidential pardon from Bill Clinton." That's just a gist of the irony. Bill Clinton was about the same age as Preston King, although unlike King, Clinton was (mostly) not Black. And of course Bill was allowed by U.S. authorities to leave the U.S. and go off to the UK to study at Oxford. The rest is history, as they say.

Official press release: "STAMP, the Slave Trade Arts Memorial Project, is proud to announce the official unveiling and dedication of 'CAPTURED AFRICANS' a memorial for the victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade on the quayside in Lancaster, close to the Millennium Bridge.

The memorial was conceived and developed by Manchester-based artist Kevin Dalton-Johnson as the culmination of an extensive education outreach programme involving over 300 children around the district working with ten supporting artists.  Its realisation was made possible with Millennium Commission Lottery funding.

The ceremony takes place on Columbus Day, 10th October 2005 at 5pm. The Right Worshipful Mayor of Lancaster, Councillor Joyce Taylor will welcome guests and our guest of honour African American Professor Preston King.

The ceremony should be lively and interesting. Professor King's dedication of the memorial will be followed by the launching of a willow boat of offerings of atonement and remembrance into the River Lune. This formal ceremony will close with a drumming performance by young people involved with the project.

Earlier this year, in Bristol, a resident asked where in that City he could pour his libation and honour his ancestors. Unlike other places that have shied away from moments of history that they are least proud of, Lancaster now has a sensitive marker to the loss of life and liberty of so many African people. Kevin Dalton-Johnson's 'CAPTURED AFRICANS' offers a place to pause and think, a place for quiet reflection on the human cost of this history.

STAMP are grateful to the Millennium Commission, Arts Council North West, Lancaster City Council and Lancashire County Council for funding the project and the American Embassy for enabling us to invite and welcome Professor Preston King to join this ground breaking event.   [End] (Editor's notes included below.)

Displaced family - "Family Links" - International Red Cross

Thank you, ICRC. If you or someone you know is looking for missing family, the International Committee of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies now has a Hurricane Katrina Family Links website. It's also en français. The main Family Links site is here with links to all the FL campaigns to reunite families separated by conflict or disaster. The ICRC also accepts your donations. "As a result of Hurricane Katrina's passage through the Southern coast of the United States, thousands of persons within the United States and abroad have lost contact with their loved ones. In an effort to help restoring family links, the ICRC in close cooperation with the American Red Cross offers the following services to all those seeking information about their relatives possibly affected by the hurricane. ..." After working alongside the ICRC in various countries I'm relieved to see them responding to this crisis. Just because this disaster (certainly not the only one in the world) is happening in "the USA" does not mean those affected aren't deserving of international aid. They too are part of the world. 

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.

Pow Wow this Weekend

The National Pow Wow is this weekend, 12-14 August, and it's sponsored by the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. Richard "Dick" West, founding director. Just about all the information most people need is on the website. The pow wow is happening at the MCI Center in downtown Washington, DC, Great Turtle Island. "A special three-day event celebrating Native culture through dance, art, and authentic food." Masters of Ceremonies: Wallace Coffey (Comanche), Oklahoma; Dale Old Horn (Crow), Montana; Jason Good Striker (Blood), Alberta, Canada; Arena Directors: Randy Frazier (Shawnee/Choctaw/Prairie Band Potawatomi), Oklahoma; Randy Medicine Bear (Rosebud Sioux), Arizona; Dance Judge: James Red Eagle (Nakota/Dakota) California; Dance Judge: Ralph Haymond (Pawnee/Otoe), Oklahoma; Head Man: Ardel Scalplock (Siksika), Alberta Canada; Head Lady: Karen Pheasant (Ojibway), Ontario, Canada; Drum Judge: Jonathan Windy Boy (Plains Cree), Montana; Host Northern Drum: Midnite Express (Chippewa/Sioux), Minnesota; Host Southern Drum: Yellow Hammer (Ponca/Otoe), Oklahoma; Host Contemporary Drum: Bear Creek (Sault St. Marie Chippewa), Ontario, Canada; Cultural Consultant: Dennis Zotigh (Kiowa/Santee Dakota/San Juan Pueblo), Oklahoma; Powwow Souvenir Program Editor: Russ Tall Chief (Osage), Oklahoma.

Everyone Survives Fiery Toronto Crash

The curse of the Toshiba keyboard is back. I'd written a slightly longer post but something with this keyboard "took care" of that entry. Just to say everyone, miraculously, survived the Air France crash yesterday at Toronto's Pearson airport. All on board as well as rescuers on the ground - but especially the Air France crew and passengers - is to be thanked and commended for saving the lives of so many people.

Blogher: Signs of Life in the Over-Developed World

After weeks and months of waiting the first-ever Blogher conference is already over. One woman, who also was not under 40 (I'm 'educately' guessing from what she said in our closing session on the other side of the "Blogher living room"), said this was the first women's conference she'd ever been to in her life - and now she wants more. In my book to have missed several tens of thousands of women's meetings over the past few decades I'm guessing she must've led either a deprived or a sheltered life. Depending on how you look at it. So much was going on at Blogher. Mostly the person-to-person and small-group conversations/contacts. I planned to join others at dinner yesterday evening but taxi "service" from my hotel was abysmal. When it hadn't arrived after 30 minutes I gave up and went back to my room. In any case I enjoyed meeting so many people with such varied experience and abilities. Some of them I'd previously been in touch with via our various blogs &/or email. One woman and I actually came up to SJ yesterday morning on the same shuttle from L.A. All the time neither of us knew we were heading for the same place. I really do love Cali - starting with years ago in Santa Cruz. It's just that for me it's a bit of a ways from the Other Coast (East); not to mention traveling from Africa or Europe. Funny how family, friends, colleagues and work can shrink or make us overcome physical distance. Usually with the help of trains or planes. And phones (and emails, etc.). Even bicycles for some. I prefer trains though planes are faster. But traveling over water I believe boats and ships are coolest - by far. At the same time I do hope before too many more years go by our combined humanity (which is a capacity -not an inanimate object) will help us overcome some of our more senseless, wasteful and numbing uses of mechanised efficiency in travel. That would help us clear up some of our social symptoms - like the horrible smog that chokes California and steals some of its undeniable beauty.

Michael's Not Guilty; Now get yourself a shrink

I was having a dream. Or maybe it was a nightmare. George W. Bush was on trial for something to do with cocaine. But of course I realise such a trial never happened. Thank goodness today in the real world not one but ten verdicts have come back not guilty for Michael Jackson. God's looking down on Michael's Mom, Katherine, and on him and the rest of their family. The last thing the US really needs is to send yet another Black American off to prison while throwing away the proverbial key. It's certain to me that even though the roots of our pain remain ignored and obscured, long before the Jacksons first became not-poor, then financially comfortable and eventually rich; long before all that, the Jacksons had already been through other unseen trials of suffering and survival in the belly of the North American beast. Everyone talks about Michael's 30 years in show business, but the sagas and miracles of the Jacksons' survival began long before that. And today in a courtroom millions of us saw that from time to time sometimes there can be grace for Black Americans in our own home land. It's now time for Michael to get on with his life and hopefully get a good, Black shrink. On the TV many white folks are still obsessing about Michael's money. How much does he have? Will he ever earn zillions again, so others can get back to their mooching? Leave Michael to rest and it's very likely with time his God-given creativity will return.

Europe in Black U.S. family histories - the 'gap' between there and here

Lowndes Square, London SW1. My paternal Lowndes ancestors were enslaved by wealthy, rice-growing white Lowndes slaveholders near Charleston, South Carolina

Not long ago I posted the story of the Afro German man who traveled all the way to the US to find his Black American family in Virginia. A few years ago while we were still in Skopje, via the Internet I helped a Danish guy in Denmark find his Black American cousins. The fact he found them was a miracle and for me it's still a great feeling. His family connections came from an aunt who migrated from Denmark to the US around 1915. Their family story ought to be a book. Then there's White America, representing the 'gap' in the family histories bridging the US with Europe. Too often the gap seems as much one of humanity as of the micro histories many, many people refuse to share. My apologies for being brutally frank but the 2 searches above were simple and straightforward compared to the endless and pointless dissimulation about ancestors' race that seems to exist in virtually every white US family. I wish this were different since like growing numbers of Black Americans I've found a few willing white relatives, in our case folks not related through enslavement. The Afro German did share that he has the same unfortunate problem of exclusion by his European [German] blood relatives as we've had for 200 to 400 years with most of ours. So imagine my surprise finding that someone had actually added a page to a Scottish Douglas website. Douglas: The family and the clan - Marian Douglas. I never even set foot in Scotland til 2004. A contact in Dundee has since asked me to write something about what my Scots' "connections" mean to me, i.e., the Douglases, Nichols, Fergusons, etc. There seems a preponderance of Scots names among Black Americans and our cousins in the Caribbean. We also have the Welsh, English and Irish, along with Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, etc. The truth is virtually all the early Scottish 'connections' to my family came from enslavement. The white branches with these surnames bought and sold my ancestors. Worse was the sexual exploitation; think of the highly visible Strom Thurmond and Thomas Jefferson, and millions more absent white fathers of renounced and unclaimed mixed race offspring with discounted and invisible Black mothers. The British colonial and early US branches of my "Scots connections" came from Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and elsewhere. The irony is even today Black Americans can barely get the time of day from many of our fellow/sister Americans, let alone discuss common historical community and family ties. And especially when a white American even suspects or realises there definitely is a link between their family and a Black American one with an 'amazingly similar' background (also physical features including genetic conditions). All this drama makes it refreshing to see a healthy interest from a website managed in Scotland. So I sent the webmaster another link that he might add: Joseph Douglas, Engineering Opportunities. A thank you to modern day Scots.

Africa's Collective Amnesia: BBC Africa Finally Links Brazil

Thanks to the BBC for including a link on their Africa news website about the Steve Biko Institute in Brazil. Even if the Institute had not been named for Biko it should be listed on the Africa website anyway. Isn't anyone else tired of being expected to ignore Africa's own history and being pressured to ignore how that same history affects Africa today? The pretending, denying, foot dragging and otherwise separating Continental Africa from her offspring in Europe, Asia and the Americas. It isn't only sad, it's pathetic and historically dishonest. In the extreme.

www.homestead.com/wysinger/mapofafricadiaspora2.html

Source: MacMillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery: Volume II. Finkelman & Miller eds. (Macmillan Reference USA - Simon and Schuster Macmillan New York, 1998), p. xiii.  In 1800 the US population included 893,602 enslaved Black Americans. 36,505 of them were in NORTHERN US states. Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey DID enslave Black people. Those states ended the enslavement of Black persons before 1804, most of them by "gradual"(?) measures. Only 40 years before the beginning of the 20th century - listed in the 1860 US Census (but not listed by their own names) - almost 4 million Black persons - 3,953,760 - were enslaved in the southern United States.

Guatemala's Mario Ellington, Black Human Rights

Thanks to Pietro for sharing the link to African Guatemalan social activist Mario Ellington's Spanish-language interview, "All we want is equality" - Solo queremos igualdad.

Speaking of "equality" - check the nice maps below which I found on a site called LASER, which has resources for teaching about Latin America. Well, I guess they've decided not to teach a thing about Afro Latin Americans 'cause here - as just one example- is the Guatemala census info:

Mestizo (Indian and Caucasian mix) 55%, Amerindian 43%, Caucasian and other 2%

- What does "Caucasian and other 2%" mean? Not one word about Blacks or Garifuna or Afro Guatemalans. From a human rights perspective I find that pretty scary. You, dear reader, might just drop an email to some human rights groups asking whether they know about this and other such sociopolitical disparities. And here's the link to leave questions or comments on the public online forum of the Guatemalan Congress.

The word Caucasian gets listed 2x. Did the folks running Guatemala, Inc. think we missed their point? As usual Caucasian is being used incorrectly in an attempt to describe the 'white' "race"." And the Caucasus is actually a region.

The Garifuna are one of the ethnic groups of people of African descent of the Americas. From the 1700s they allied and mixed with Native (indigenous) people of the Caribbean islands they occupied. (These were our African ancestors who had survived the Transatlantic slave trade - being kidnapped from Africa and transported in slave ships through the horrific "Middle Passage" crossing of the Atlantic.) Garifuna successfully fought off the British until eventually the Brits showed up with [gun]powder and guns. It was the British who expelled the Garifuna from their island homelands, sending them into a huge diaspora throughout the Caribbean Basin region that took them to countries such as Venezuela, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras. Today Garifuna are even up North in New York City and in the Washington, DC area in the Upper South. They have their own Garifuna language and Garifuna radio programs. In early '97 at the Interamerican Development Bank (in Washington, DC) I moderated a panel on Garifuna culture when the Government of Honduras honored the 200th anniversary of the arrival of the Garifunas in Honduras from the Caribbean. (Here's the official link for the Honduran Congress.)

We're Blowing It Bigtime, President Johnson; LBJ's "Great Society" May 1964

President Lyndon Baines Johnson's 22 May 1964 commencement address to the graduating class, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.

"... For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people. The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization. Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society. The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning. ..."

How will we use the 9 years left till 2014 ???

Today's Favorite Science headlines

My favourite headlines today: Obesity in middle age linked with dementia. If I'd written that I'd have called it 'Couch potato minds'. (A lot of us better watch out...)

... and after its maiden voyage yesterday 'en France' supposedly there's an "Airbus 380 for sale on Ebay," and the "Ivory-billed woodpecker flies back from the dead." In the US the last IBW was spotted in Louisiana in about 1946. Welcome back!