Marian's Blog

Rafferin Out - de Villepin Named French Prime Minister

Dominique de Villepin: From interior minister to prime minister

French president Jacques Chirac names de Villepin prime minister. A bit strange since de Villepin comes from the same French political elite that voters rejected Sunday along with the EU Constitution (55% of votes were against).

BBC reports: "... The former interior minister replaces Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who tendered his resignation minutes earlier. President Jacques Chirac promised cabinet changes after the referendum, in which almost 55% voted "No". Correspondents say the result reflects domestic discontent as well as wider anxiety about the European project. Mr Chirac is due to address the nation on Tuesday evening to present a policy for the new team, which is expected to govern until elections in 2007. ..." Continued on BBC News website

My "Like Letter" to George Lopez

I just want George Lopez to know that from the first time I saw him doing stand up on national TV in the 1980s I knew he was loco in the very best way, and I fell in deep "like" & respect for him. George Lopez is intelligent, funny and yes, folks, he does bite. But mostly it heals. I love his website; it's warm and interesting and easy to read. You really see something in there about the vato. I also didn't miss the fact he has War's anthem Lowrider as musical theme of his site. I love that too. I didn't mention G-Lo has a new book, WHY ARE YOU CRYING? There's an excerpt here. And I didn't know he had a kidney condition and had a transplant. Wow. I'm so glad he's better and helping others and back to cracking jokes and diciendo la verdad. We love you, George; we are proud of you.

Es un chulitito, verdad? G. Lopez is a cutie

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.

Help me raise $500 by June 4 "Race for the Cure" against Breast Cancer

OK... one of my No. 1 goals for the next few days is raising 500 smackers for the Susan Komen Race for the Cure - and to finish next Saturday's 5k in good time. Thanks to some angels we've already raised about a third of the goal. If you can pledge something here’s the Marian’s Race for the Cure Pledge page link. Thank you in advance for a small or even a medium pledge. Less than 2 years ago I had a great time running Nairobi, Kenya's first women's 10k (for HIV/AIDS awareness) in about 1:40. That was then and this is now so my current race strategy is to practice without overdoing and see how well I do. A 5k is a fun run and that’s how it’s going to be. Oh cool, this is my 43 Things link... Run the 5k Race for the Cure against Breast Cancer.

The secret Downing Street Memo in The Times of London

How could US press have missed this story? (snicker) Here's the link to the Sunday Times of London May 1st 2005 article containing the top-secret July 23rd, 2002 memo now known as the Downing Street memo or the Rycroft memo. Rawstory points out July 2002 was "months before President Bush submitted his resolution on Iraq to the United States Congress and months before Bush and Blair asked the United Nations to resume its inspections for alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." The Times explains Andrew Rycroft, who drafted the memo, was a foreign policy aide at #10 Downing St, official residence of British prime minister Tony Blair. **And thanks in particular to Representative John Conyers, Democratic member of the US Congress and the Congressional Black Caucus representing the people of Detroit, Michigan, for carrying this issue back to the American people, his colleagues, the Bush admin and the US mainstream media. Apparently the US press has yet to discover these events. Give them time. And don't hold your breath. Meanwhile, would you mind answering our poll down the right side of this blog? It asks simply whether the Bush White House tries to influence or control the press in the USA. CNN host Lou Dobbs recently asked the same question in a public poll on his CNN website. More about those results later. FYI Lou Dobbs isn't exactly a pinko-communist-pacifist whatever.

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.

U.S. militarism

I've never lived in any other country as militarised as the US. Is constant, full-blown 'military preparedness' a normal way to live? Do Americans realise the tentacles being spread across the world in their names? We're busy waxing our SUVs and such. In some countries I've lived in the biggest military presence is the USA, though it's not US soil. I remember 1950's president Dwight Eisenhower's seemingly unheeded warning: Americans beware of "the military-industrial complex" (1961). Deaf ears... apparently drowned out by surround sound. I was deciding whether or not to blog this when what popped on the telly this a.m. but two - 2 - military commercials all in a row. These weren't your average, overkill ads for recruitment. The first was 'soft': a string of mostly middle aged to elder faces saying things like, "I'll never forget him," meaning others who died on military duty. Among the men was a single lady who managed reference to a 'her'. At the end was the word "Boeing" since they sponsored the spot. Next was a straight up, hardcore Northrup Gruman ad - not disguised by sentimentality. It showed 'men at work' on an aircraft carrier. It advertised "being ready" and some kind of high tech weapon system. In the past 40 years how much "ready" has ever been enough? They used gibberish techie jargon the ordinary public, including me, would not understand, though our taxes cover part of the bill. All this in less than 5 minutes. But we never see ads of our public schools that stand in ruin - with our children inside. Of American neighborhoods - mostly Black, whether middle, poor, or working class - disinvested and abandoned by Big Capital during the same last 40 years but now invaded by wealth and outsiders who by far are not Black. I'm sick of it all. Those of us who care have to change these things for the better.

U.S. President Eisenhower, 1961 - This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. ... (continued below)

L.A.'s First Latino Mayor in 130 Years

Here's one of the news stories about L.A. electing its first Latino mayor since 1872. A "dry spell" that long is a story in itself. Can anyone figure out what these letters mean? - CNSLRDLA. Hint: has something to do with L.A.

Deutschland death knell? The End of German social capitalism?

We discovered a German American politics and culture blog: Dialog International. One of its recent entries gives a blow-by-blow view of what the writer calls 'the end of social capitalism' in Germany. One photo on the website seems to be a parody of a member of the Christian Democrat political party pouring champagne over the head of a seated protester.

"The success of [the German model] was that it avoided the excesses of the unrestrained free market economy. Most of the dynamic postwar companies were privately owned, and financed by banks. It was (and still is) the Mittelstand [middle ground? middle position?] that powers the German economy and generates jobs. Even the publicly listed companies had some flexibili[t]y (sic) with their balance sheets and could smooth out earnings over time by drawing on reserves. So German managers were not under the same quarterly earnings pressures as their US counterparts. But all of that has changed, in part due to the neo-liberal policies of Müntefering's own party, when it gave substantial tax breaks to banks for selling off their investment positions (Beteiligungen) in German companies. [Emphases added.] The share holdings were snapped up by unregulated US hedge funds who are making their presence felt. ..." If this is true then what comes next?

Scherf von Sektattacke unbeeindruckt

from Online Focus/MSN.de

Bremen, Germany, Reuters photo

A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRAT ABOUT TO POUR AND POURING CHAMPAGNE ON THE HEAD OF AN UNEMPLOYED PROTESTER.

Black Americans - truly A Multiracial People: When and Where We Enter

MEXICO - Pictured here, a Mexican (?) soap opera (telenovela) 'star'; an ode to Vicente Fox.

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BLACK AMERICA - Anna Julia Cooper - Educator, Author, Thinker; daughter of an 'Absent white, slaveholder father' and a mother who was enslaved. She lived until 1964.

"Only the Black woman can say 'when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.' " Anna Julia Cooper (1858?-1964) speaking to a group of Black clergymen in 1892. Anna J. Cooper became a truly incredible educator in the Black schools of Washington, DC, where she made her home. She was "[b]orn in North Carolina to a slave - an enslaved Black - woman named Hannah Stanley Haywood and Haywood's white master the white man who enslaved her Mother. Certainly he (and, too often, many contemporary white descendants of same slaveholders) would prefer to claim the white privilege of never being scientifically associated with their Black kin (through DNA) and remaining "unnamed."

A propos of we the people of African descent of the US and more broadly of the Americas - in most cases the majority of us who actively choose to identify with, associate with and participate in our historically multi-skintoned (often from horrific origins) Black, multiracial families and communities - I propose that we Black Americans are the most racially mixed Americans and the most racially mixed families in the US. But I get a distinct impression from some others that much or most of the so-called multiracial movement (we hope not every last 'member' thereof) just will not or cannot acknowledge this fact. Maybe the fact that Black Americans have been mixed/multiracial for the past 300 to 400 years would muck up their weltenschaung - their politic or worldview. Note to Vicente Fox: As he knows the exact same exclusion is pointedly true of a lofty concept afoot in America latina - that of the mestizaje and 'la raza cosmica' - the "cosmic race"... noble-sounding romanticisation of the same, largely brutal, and denigrating (to Black and Native Indian women and our offspring) "mixing of the races." Mestizaje politics still actively pluck Black Latinos right out of that mix - leaving it white and Indian - though not the people themselves while contradicting the racial/ethnic origins of physical features like skin, hair, etc. Mexico's Emiliano Zapata is now said to have been a person of African descent: an inconvenient detail by now almost conveniently 'forgotten.' As in other areas of life truth has long been a victim ... just another complication. For those busy averting their gaze from US Blacks, it might prove too much - psychically &/or politically - to look Black Americans in the face and truly listen to our unbelievable yet brutally true American family stories. Our stories also happen to be the still unclaimed parts of many white and indigenous Americans' family stories. I remember my maternal Grandmother's first cousin, Lockie Love Walston. Cousin Lockie, born in western North Carolina about 1896, died in Indiana in 1996, was a very fairskinned woman. Yet her fraternal twin brother, the late Reverend Julius Love, was brown. I think of how Cousin Lockie explained to me how she always told white people not to mis-take her for white. I remember when Reverend Love told me that just before I arrived to visit him for the first and only time he'd been remembering his "Uncle Thomas", Thomas Gudger - my Greatgrandfather, a "mulatto" 34 year old widower and father of four young children (from a mixed-race mountain family of East Tennessee and western North Carolina) ... crushed to death by whites at the Chanute, Kansas cement plant - the North Plant - where he worked, while he was inside a piece of machinery, cleaning it. This was March 1913. His death - not the murder - is documented graphically on the front page of the local paper of the day. Was the article also a further, graphic warning and threat to local Blacks? As I write this in 2005 I still hope someday police or historians or someone, somewhere, finally will investigate. Anyone, anywhere in the world who wants the truth of the Black American people and of our native land, the United States, has a lot of reality to wrap their minds around. Nothing less is satisfactory.