The Original BRO-LOG: Minister Faust Speaks

Welcome to AFRICENTRIC MAGAZINE!

2012-01-20T00:48:00.000-07:00

Africentric is a full-colour glossy, a gorgeously designed and photographed monthly lifestyle and current affairs magazine.

The upbeat, exciting magazine features fashion, health, music, arts, science, technology, and business news, as well as columns by famous local and global figures and original reporting on local, national, and international issues.

With initial distribution to Edmonton, Calgary, and Fort McMurray, Africentric is the only magazine of its type, size, and quality with wide distribution to African-Canadians where they are and where they go: African-Canadian businesses, restaurants, professional offices, hair salons, churches, and mosques, as well as at high-traffic mainstream locales including, colleges, libraries, and major grocery stores.

NEWS
From Algeria to Zimbabwe, from Togo to Tobago, from the Amazon to Alaska, Africentric Magazine explores how global Africans across the planet are living, working, and creating the present and future.

From British Columbia to the Arctic Circle to the Maritimes, Africentric Magazine carries up-to-date coverage of the numerous ethno-national communities that make up the African-Canadian experience.

Edmonton, Calgary, and other municipalities in Alberta are home to thriving African-Canadian communities. Some of those communities began more than a century ago, and others are just beginning their African-Canadian odyssey. Africentric Magazine delivers their discoveries, experiences, and successes every month.

ECONOMICS

The best way to predict the future is to create it. Every month, Africentric explores the frontiers of labour, fair trade, and entepreneurialism to give you the information you need to build your future.

ENTERTAINMENT

Every month, Africentric engages film, television, comics, and gaming, delivering news and opinion about exciting cultural production around the African planet and beyond.

MUSICS

There’s no such thing as African music.

Nope.

There are, however, countless musics from across the African planet: multiple styles ad innovations from 54 countries on the continent, from all around the Caribbean, and from South, Central, and North America.Africentric delivers news about and interviews with African-Canadian talent and musicians from around the world.

BOOKS

More people can and do read today than at any time in human history. Indeed, this is a golden age for global African writers and the books they’re creating. Africentric delivers reviews, interviews with astounding authors, and the regular feature Favourite African Writing in which celebrities and folks in the community discuss their favourite books by African writers from any part of the world: from South Africa to Southern Alberta, from Brazzaville to Brazil.

MIND

The mind is the most powerful and versatile processor you possess. And education is one of the most easiest means to upgrade that processor continually, to shape yourself and your world.

But far too often, people simply accept their minds as they are, and the education they’re given, without questioning how they could change their own thought patterns, or how the content and delivery of education could be so much better.

Every month Africentric delivers thought-provoking articles on neurological and psychological frontiers, innovative directions for education, and fascinating developments in science and technology, all so that you can overwrite old programming to become a newer, more dynamic you.

BODY
Staying fit? Or just trying to get fit? Join fitness trainer and competitive bodyshaper Cara Fullerton for her monthly discussion of making your body strong and beautiful.

And just to make things harder on you, Africentric will also review the best global African restaurants, telling you whose jollof is most joyful, whose muscalo is the most succulent, whose beef tibs are tangiest, and whose chicken is the biggest jerk.

OPINION

Africentric features up-and-coming local journalists, and internationally accomplished writers, culture-creators, and world-shapers, including:

Sudanese telecomm billionaire Mo Ibrahim
African-American culture writer Greg Tate
Somali-Canadian blogger and opinion writer Idil Holif
Trinidadian-Canadian reggae star Waymatea of Souljah Fyah
Pioneering Ugandan journalist and editor Andrew Mwenda
Jamaican-Canadian hip hop sensation Arlo Maverick of Politic Live
Nigerian-American engineer, inventor, author Ndubuisi Ekekwe, founder of the African Institution of Technology, an organization seeking to develop microelectronics in Africa, and
African-American cartoonists Brandon Howard and Sean Mack, creators of The Revolutionary Times.

HISTORY & CULTURE

There’s nothing like the pride and power that come from knowing one’s history.

All scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, writers, artists, and justice leaders build upon the greatness that came before them in order to make their own. Knowledge of the past is the foundation upon which their own excellence ascends.

The same is true for every nationality. And while it’s legitimate to decry the total absence of an Africentric perspective in public education and corporate media (whose coverage rarely extends beyond the Four Ss: slavery, starvation, singing, and steroids), why curse the silence when you can turn on the sound system?

Every month, Africentric profiles fascinating and inspiring events, shapers, and leaders from global African histories, giving you, the children and students of the community, and your peers all the inspiration needed to ascend to the top.

FASHION

The international scene is sizzling with designs by global African designers. Join Africentric every month for coverage of the latest fashions, hairstyles, make-up techniques, and more.

Troy Davis will not die tonight

2011-09-21T17:47:00.001-06:00

"The execution of Troy Davis was delayed temporarily by the US supreme court on Wednesday night, in a dramatic intervention just as he was due to be put to death by lethal injection.

"As the first news came in at the Jackson prison that houses death row, a huge cheer erupted from a crowd of more than 500 protesters that had amassed on the other side of the road.

"Davis's supporters kissed each other and threw placards which read "Not in my name" into the air.

"But the jubilation was short-lived. Talk of a reprieve from the US supreme court quickly gave way to rumours of a stay, and finally the realisation that the court had only ordered a temporary delay as it considered the matter. The mood then grew more sombre as the waiting game that has now been going on for years with Davis resumed."

The Georgia State government is about to murder Troy Davis

2011-09-21T17:44:00.000-06:00

As of this writing, Troy Davis is still alive. But barring unforeseen intervention, by the time you read this, the government of Georgia state will have executed him.

Troy Davis is an African American man convicted of killing a Euro-American policeman. The Guardian newspaper in England has an article entitled “Troy Davis: 10 reasons why he should not be executed." Those reasons include:

That of the nine trial witnesses who said he shot policeman Mark MacPhail to death, seven have since recanted their claims.

“Many of those who retracted their evidence said that they had been cajoled by police into testifying against Davis. Some said they had been threatened with being put on trial themselves if they did not co-operate.”

Sylvester Coles “was the man who first came forward to police and implicated Davis as the killer. But over the past 20 years evidence has grown that Coles himself may be the gunman and that he was fingering Davis to save his own skin.”

The case has drawn international attention, including calls for clemency from Pope Benedict, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and former US president Jimmy Carter. Below is a four-part discussion on the Davis case by Amnesty International.

The link between firefighters and modern slavery

2011-09-16T10:18:00.000-06:00

(Charles Kernaghan spoke at the Convention of the International Association of Fire Fighters in San Diego, California, during August 2010.)

For millions upon millions of workers worldwide, exploitation remains a fact of life. Around 35 million coloured women and girls, mostly in Asia, working in conditions that most North Americans could not imagine enduring, sew the clothing and make the shoes upon which we spend billions of dollars. Most of them walked away with pennies for each hour of their drudgery and misery.

Discussing their fate and how it connects with the corporate drive to crush labour unions in North America is Charlie Kernaghan. Kernaghan heads the New York-based Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights (formerly the National Labour Committee), an NGO of global labour advocates who risk their own safety in the pursuit of justice for some of the most exploited workers in the world through exposing human and labour rights abuses perpetrated by US companies producing goods in poor countries.

Kernaghan, who’s made a living as furniture mover, carpenter, cab driver and university instructor, began his crusade for workers’ rights in 1985. But his international fame came from rattling the chains of one particularly famous hypocrite: Kathie Lee Gifford of Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.

A portion of Gifford’s family clothing line profits was supposed to aid disadvantaged American children. But the clothes themselves were made in Honduran sweatshops by thirteen year-old girls working thirteen-hour shifts for 31 cents an hour, under armed guard.

Gifford broke down in tears on North American television when Kernaghan broke the story, threatening to sue him and the tiny NLC. Her threats crumbled into defeat when she was eventually forced to sign a code of conduct which was to include independent monitoring, a story detailed in the acclaimed Canadian documentary The Corporation.

Being known as “the man who made Kathie Lee cry” is enough to endear Kernaghan to many; he’s been written up in Mother Jones magazine, been featured on David Barsamian’s Alternative Radio and gives somewhere around seventy speeches a year.

Glen Ford on America’s Ignored Imperial Wars

2011-09-13T09:56:00.009-06:00

Many people uncritically assume that the current Western war on Libya, which includes Canadian warriors, is aimed at bringing freedom.

No doubt, the Libyan people have suffered under the Qadhdhaafi dictatorship (a dictatorship that used executions as surely and as wickedly as do Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, and the USA)… but they were suffering under the last seven years of the Western courtship with Libya.

And innocent people also suffer under numerous Western-backed dictatorships or occupations, as in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Israeli-occupied Palestine, and many other countries.

It’s absurd to assume that countries would spend literally billions of dollars to “bring freedom,” when those same countries spend billions to suppress freedom elsewhere.

Countries spend billions in order to get billions.

If you understand that and nothing else, you’ll understand more about how the world works than someone who knows everything but that.

Libya possesses trillions of dollars of oil reserves. The Democratic Republic of Congo possesses trillions of dollars of mineral reserves. And both of those countries are targets of direct or indirect Western military destabilisation or attack.

Addressing those assaults tonight is Glen Ford. A journalist and editor, he co-founded of the online magazine The Black Commentator, and is a founding editor of the online magazine The Black Agenda Report. His career in news and broadcasting started early. Ford was only 11 years old when started reading newswire copy on air in Columbus, Georgia, and by 1970, was working as a broadcaster at a radio station owned by James Brown.

Ford later created Black World Report, a syndicated half-hour weekly news magazine, and in 1974 worked for the 88-station Mutual Black Network for which he was the Capitol Hill, State Department and White House correspondent.

In 1977, Ford co-created, produced and hosted America’s Black Forum, commercial televisions’ first nationally syndicated African-American news interview program, generating international headlines and commanding the attention of White news services such as AP, UPI, Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Tass.

Ford's many successes include the cultural broadcasting of his Black Agenda Reports, Rap It Up (the hip hop show he founded in 1987 which was the first nationally-syndicated show of its kind in the US), and three national hip hop conventions.

Ford’s been an editor and report for three newspapers, the author of the book The Big Lie: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion, and a national political columnist. In 2006, Ford and his writing team left Black Commentator.com to found BlackAgendaReport.com, an influential online political analysis magazine.

Glen Ford and Black Agenda Report have been at the forefront of analysing what Ford calls Obama-mania. Recognising the historical significance of the Obama candidacy, Ford has refused to be blinded by image and instead to engage substance. For his rigor, Obama’s boosters have vilified him.

On March 26, 2011, Glen Ford spoke in Washington, DC at the Black is Back Conference for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, at a forum addressing U.S. imperial wars on Haiti, Congo, Libya, Colombia and other targets historically ignored by most of the Euro-American Left.

Is it your Pan-Africanist duty to become a billionaire?

2011-09-12T10:10:00.009-06:00

How do we as African peoples, anywhere in the world, free ourselves from economic and political domination?

Maybe that question makes losers of us from the beginning.

Maybe the question should be, "Since we're living in what seems destined to be the Chinese Century, what giant leaps can we make now so that the 2100s will be the Pan-African Century?"

We could begin by asking Fred Swaniker. He's the founder of the African Leadership Academy, and he's recently launched the African Leadership Network Conference, which features a pan-African array of energetic leaders in a TED-style speakers’ forum.

Participants expand their social networks, allowing them to build the continent intellectually, culturally, economically, and politically with a range of allies they would otherwise never meet. The ALN provides a context in which the continent is not ignored, and is not a target for contempt disguised as compassion.

New generation of Africa's Leaders must rise to the challenge from African Leadership Network on Vimeo.

Instead, at the ALN, Africa is at the centre of participants’ existence, success, and future.

The African Leadership Network convenes its conferences regularly--regionally, and in a major international event. According to its website, the ALN measures its results, publishing hard data annually on “the number of new companies that have been fostered by the network, the number of jobs that ALN collaborations have created for the continent, [and] the amount of investment that members have managed to mobilize across Africa because of relationships they established through ALN.”

Bringing Prosperity to Africa through Enterpreneurship from African Leadership Network on Vimeo.

One speaker at a recent ALN, Francis Daniels, discussed what the Singapore success story has to teach the continent's new leaders.

I couldn’t disagree more with Francis Daniels on numerous points in his presentation, especially on the alleged need to suppress minimum wages, the alleged legitimacy of a repressive state to achieve economic growth for the owning class, and the alleged illegitimacy of reparations from the Maafa, the largest and most horrific human trafficking in global history.

Drawing lessons for Africa: Example from the Singapore story from African Leadership Network on Vimeo.

Nevertheless, Daniels challenges listeners to rethink their assumptions about how countries can achieve economic growth. When we engage in lively and intelligent debate, we begin walking the path to achieving almost anything.

When I was younger, and surrounded by friends who were Trotskyists, and cognisant of Malcolm X having said at the end of his life that capitalists were blood-suckers, I saw virtually all attempts to make money as morally bankrupt.

But a few things have become clear to me as I've gotten older:

a) Every social justice goal we have is much more easily attained when "we" (whoever "we" are) can pay people to work on the solutions full-time, rather than trying to squeeze in volunteer hours on the side while headed for burn-out. In other words, as Ralph Nader put it so perfectly when discussing his philosophical novel "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" (note the quotation marks), "Justice costs money."

b) People such as Sudanese telecomm pioneer Mo Ibrahim have demonstrated that one can make enormous technological progress that assists democratic change (as with using mobile phones for citizen-based, anti-fraud election monitoring), that has economic spin-offs that help people create jobs for themselves and others (the 20-year growth in continental phones from around 2 million to over 100 million means a lot of people buying phone cards, and those vendors also sell other products, which means personal economic self-determination), and which builds wealth that can drive a continent-changing institution such as the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, including through careful collection and analysis of data for informed progress).

That wealth can also create carefully-constructed incentives to promote outstanding, nationally-transformational leadership, especially for African presidents who cannot rely on what Western presidents and prime ministers take for granted: millions of dollars of consultancies and chairmanships and the like when they leave office.

c) Non-Marxist left analyses such as anarchism (literally, "no-leader system"), otherwise known as libertarian socialism, encourage people to create co-ops. In other words, instead of waiting for the revolution to sweep the world and create decent workplaces for all (what I call "Waiting for the Red Rapture"), create with friends and colleagues a workplace right now and run the place democratically or consensually.

Mondragon in Winnipeg is a well-known prairies example, but you can find co-ops all over the world, and some are nearer than we realise.

d) Many of us were raised with the Social Gospel, and were reminded frequently about how much harder it was for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven that it was for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle; how it wasn't unionists that Jesus drove out of the temple, but money changers; how "the love of money is the root of all evil" (not from the Gospel, but from the Torah); how Jesus told anyone who wanted to follow him not to give him their money, but to give it away. In other words, we got a radically anti-materialist, and anti-capitalist message (even dating from pre-capitalist times).

But the problem is that all powerful people across the world believe the opposite.

Money is power. And poor people, especially disorganised poor people, are almost completely defenseless against the wealthy in that asymmetric warfare.

Money can't make you happy. But as rapper Immortal Technique said, "It's better to be rich and unhappy than broke and miserable." And as rapper Mr. Lif said in the title song to the superb album Black Dialogue:

Yes, hellish foes, and now they rest in peace, thanks for asking
They’d rather teach each other how to fire chrome than to buy a home
There’s power in the land that we own
You need capital to start to win at capitalism
Take the money from the sales and find some places to be living
Rather Black landlords than white chalk on the floor
Our mentalities for casualties is keeping us poor
And the poor teach their kids how to work
Rich teach their kids how to invest
Hence we’re dying from stress....

If we don't have any money, individually, as African communities in the west, or as African countries or New World African countries, then we're dependent on... on whom? On the wealthy from other communities and nations? On "well-meaning" people who think they're our saviours... or our Saviour?

How's that been working for us?

Western "conservatives" want to occupy our communities and countries with gunmen. Western "liberals" want to occupy us with NGOs. Both hegemonies ensure that they're the ones who run our neighbourhoods or nations, while they control the wealth (either in salaries, or by stealing the material wealth of an entire continent).

But when we build wealth, we can create the institutions we need and deserve (such as the African Leadership Academy, the African Leadership Network, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Ashesi University, or the Green Belt Movement, or found innovative animation studios, or be the patrons for stunning artists, or publish our top writers, and sponsor research by our most remarkable engineers, roboticists, brain/computer scientists, young inventors, and historians, people whose work creates jobs in laboratories, publishing, distribution, film-making, festivals, factories, retail outlets, banking, media, and more.

Years ago I would never have imagined that I'd end up writing a novel in which the heroic mentor would be a small businessman. But perhaps I'd underestimated how much effect that Marcus Garvey's do-for-self philosophy, combined with Malcolm X talking on the same subject (prior to 1965), had had on me.

But now here I am. I created Brother Moon--and two of his friends and colleagues--to embody many of the actions and attitudes we need to lay the foundation for the African Century.

I hope you'll check out the book and let me know what you think about it. It's only $2.99 as an ebook, and the paperback is only $14.99.

Check out the book trailer and author interview videos here.

And I'd love to hear your stories about African entrepreneurs from any part of the planet who are building great products, services, and networks, and who are also improving their communities and nations.

(One exception: we all already know about Oprah, so please, no Oprah stories).

I Wish Obi-Wan Had Been a Brotherman

2011-09-08T17:06:00.014-06:00

Since as long as I can remember, I’ve loved stories that demonstrated an unshatterable bond between a boy hero and his mentor.

And why wouldn’t I? That archetypal relationship—for men and women—is ancient, found in all epics and religions and probably every cherished story that has survived its birth generation to be passed on to history.

That’s why it burns my balls that Hollywood, Big Publishing and the Edumacational System have delivered almost no stories featuring complex, fascinating, dynamic African characters in that role of life-deconstructor/reconstructor. And don’t be telling me about Bagger Vance or Mother Abigail or the dude from The Green Mile. More on all of that jive later.

Mentors, or in archetypal terms, shamans, are the transformational guides who train young, untested seekers to become heroes. Shamans help the foolish to become wise, the weak to become strong, the alienated to emerge celebrated, and the lost to find their destinies.

Luke had Ben. Tom Joad had Jim Casey. Neo had Morpheus who in turn had the Oracle. Odysseus had Mentor (who gave us the name); Arthur had Merlin; Cinderella had the Fairy Godmother; the Pandavas had Lord Krishna; Jesus had John the Baptist; Muhammad had Jibreel (Angel Gabriel), as did Joan of Arc; the X-Men have Professor X, Frank Black has Peter Watts, and the Powerpuff Girls have Professor Utonium.

It’s easy to spot a shaman. He or she, almost always, is all five of the following for the young, untested seeker:

1. A medicine man or woman, that is, a physical, mental and/or emotional healer

2. A mystic, that is, a visionary (via scientific, kinaesthetic, artistic, cultural, or supernatural knowledge)

3. A guardian and adept, that is, a protector and trainer in magic (meaning a great power, an important skill, a mysterious science)

4. A gatekeeper, that is, an initiator into a secret or closed order

5. A lunatic or even an imaginary friend.

Seriously: lunatic?

Let’s be clear: being labelled a lunatic is often as simple as being completely misunderstood by your community. If everyone thinks you’re not just wrong, but actually totally wrong about everything, they’ll call you crazy. And if they think you’re a big enough threat, they might even cut off your head (poor ol’ John the Baptist. At least Quebec gave you a day of your own every year. Hope you’re getting your fill of locusts).

Maybe they think you’re a head case because you’re making all kinds of claims about bizarre things no one else can see with their own eyes, things that exert massive control over all of us (germs, DNA, radiation, gravity), or forces you claim are basically the flesh of the entire universe (atoms, subatomic particles, or, my favourite, vibrating nano-nano-nano-strings).

So be warned: if you want to be teaching some far-out stuff, be careful about sending out for drinks.

Socrates, or maybe my friend Bernie.

And if your shaman happens to be an angel, a god, Caprica Six, Dean Stockwell in Quantum Leap, or the Great Gazoo, at least to the world, he or she is definitely in that “imaginary friend” category. But don’t worry… I understand the new straitjackets are much more comfortable. You can bet poor Joan of Arc would’ve settled for one if that’d been on the table.

Everybody needs a shaman, and if you never get one of your own, it’s damned near impossible to become an adult (no matter how old you are, or aren’t). Oh, you can do it… it’s just much tougher. Like putting on make-up with a paint roller. It works—it just takes longer. And the results aint pretty.

In terms of developmental psychology, shamans take over from where parents leave off. We all need and deserve effective, loving parents, but if we stay under their protection and training forever, we’ll remain children, or at best, second-generation (and probably second-rate) knock-offs of mum and dad.

I just wish that SF/F books, films, and TV gave us more African shamans.

And I don’t mean kot-tam super-duper magical negroes.

Super-duper magical negroes? What are those? As author Nnedi Okorafor explains:

He or she is a person of colour, typically [African], often Native American, in a story about predominantly white characters.
He or she seems to have nothing better to do than help the white protagonist, who is often a stranger to the Magical Negro at first.
He or she disappears, dies, or sacrifices something of great value after or while helping the white protagonist.
He or she is uneducated, mentally handicapped, at a low position in life, or all of the above.
He or she is wise, patient, and spiritually in touch. Closer to the earth, one might say. He or she often literally has magical powers.

My man Morpheus, who I truly dig, is still dangerously close to being a S.D.M.N., especially since he seems to have no internal life or his own, and the films (notably the second one) grant him only a few relationships that have little or nothing to do with Neo (or Whitefolks in general).

But in fairness, except for Neo, Agent Smith, and Cipher, few of the Matrix characters have any emotional or psychological depth. (And what a shame, since Laurence Fishburne’s performance is one of the best in the series, and since Morpheus’s demeanour is so enigmatic and his deeds exciting).

A better example of the S.D.M.N. is Bagger Vance from The Legend of Bagger Vance, and I guess by mentioning that in public, I’ve destroyed any chance I would’ve had to write a movie starring Will Smith, which is apparently why Spike Lee didn’t get to direct Ali. Too bad. Will Smith would’ve been a great Brotherfly in Shrinking the Heroes. Ah, well… there’s always Andre 3000.

No, if you want a great coloured shaman who isn’t an S.D.M.N., check out Mr. Miyagi.

First off all, he clearly enjoys effing up Daniel-San’s head with all those wax on/wax off passive aggressive karate lessons, not to mention beating the shit out of bullies, rather than shucking and jiving to make them feel com-fort-able around his coloured ass and I-aint-even-trying-to-fit-in-after-forty-five-years-in-this-country accent.

Second, Miyagi has an actual personal history full of relationships radiating poignant trauma, which directly embrace the central irony of Karate Kid: Mr. Miyagi (Okinawan-American) has no son to whom to grant his family karate-do, because the (White) United States government put his pregnant wife in a concentration camp, which killed her and his son during childbirth.

So Miyagi’s only “heir” is a White youth, a child of the people who ended his line and put his fellow citizens in jails and stole their property. But Miyagi accepts Daniel, because the kid is an outsider and a victim of the same brand of thugs who exterminated his own family.

Had it not been for his compassion for another hunted human being, there’s no way Miyagi would’ve opened a Cobra Kai of his own to start schooling ethnic-cleansing hordes of gaijin. Maybe that’s why Miyagi enjoyed beating the balls off of Daniel’s tormentors so much—they were as close as he could get issuing a smack-down onto the people who destroyed his life. Either way, decades later, he still can’t stop himself from getting drunk and sobbing about what the (White) US government did to him.

Okay, great for Okinawan-American shamans (and while a martial arts role is a stereotype, it was an iconic role and outstanding performance, no doubt). But how many Nigerian, Jamaican, South African, Kenyan, Somali, Brazilian, Cuban, or African-American shamans do we have in books, in comics, or onscreen?

It’s possible that Book from Firefly could have become a quality African shaman, had that series not died in the crib and had Book not suffered (in the feature Serenity) the traditional Hollywood fate for a Brotherman in a movie about White heroes: becoming a sacrificial negro (I’m looking at you, X-Men: First Class) in a death that (for someone like me who hadn’t watched the series) had no emotional impact at all). But I doubt that. Let’s just say that Joss Whedon probably isn’t going to win any NAACP Image Awards in the near future.

Anybody else? I sure wish there’d been more of Old Man in A Man Called Hawk, but hell, I can’t even find a single YouTube video of him… or even a kot-tam photo! And in SF/F… man, is there anybody? Except for Morpheus and the Oracle who—excellent performances aside—were essentially devoid of humanity (literally in the case of the Oracle, despite Gloria Foster’s great performance and the best lines in the series), I can’t think of anybody.

So in the spirit of lighting a candle instead of cursing the darkness… oh, wait… um… lighting some incense instead of cursing the fart… allow me to present a few African mentors I’ve loved.

Socrates Fortlow from Walter Mosley’s Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

Usually shamans are supporting characters, but in Walter Mosley’s superb Socrates Fortlow series of “philosophical investigations,” it’s the protagonist who is the shaman (although he still has his own “untested seeker” hero’s journey to complete).

Socrates Fortlow, whose very name tells us he’s a wise man vulnerable inside a useless stronghold, isn’t one of those ex-cons who went to prison (for 27 years) for crimes he didn’t commit.

Oh, he committed the crimes. He committed the fuck out of those crimes. He was, by his own admission, a monster of a man who did monstrous things, and once inside prison, he became even more monstrous, not simply to survive, but because he’d come to enjoy inflicting agony and terror.

But eight years after he eventually leaves prison, full of rage and alienated from a world he could hardly recognise, Socrates determines to transform himself into something better than he’d ever been. And when a teenager named Darryl violently breaks into his life, Socrates recognises that the time to change is right there and then.

Over the course of two more novels, Socrates battles local criminals ranging from street thugs to economic exploiters, investigates a killer cop, engulfs Los Angeles in a riot, sends his dearest friend to his death, and raises a son.

I first encountered Mosley’s novel around 1998 or so, and it’s haunted me ever since. I can’t imagine it ever being dislodged from the list of my ten favourite novels.

I love Laurence Fishburne as an actor; while he was too young to play 57-year-old Fortlow in this adaptation, and while Michael Apted’s direction on the project rarely rises above workmanlike, I still enjoyed several scenes from the film.

Dr. Jerome Davenport from Antwone Fisher

Antwone Fisher is a real man, and Antwone Fisher is apparently a fairly accurate dramatisation of his life. Raised in poverty, misery, and abuse, Fisher joined the American navy (an instrument of global imperial enforcement and, in the case of Iraq, genocide) and ironically found a measure of peace there… and a mentor who changed his life.

(In reality, as I understand it, Fisher had more than one mentor, but in Denzel Washington’s brilliant direction of Fisher’s top-notch script, all the mentors are collapsed into a single shaman: Dr. Jerome Davenport, played by Washington himself in one of his most understated, vulnerable, and unforgettable performances.)

Because of his past, protagonist Antwone Fisher is terrified of most of the world, and when anyone disturbs the tiny and extremely separate peace he’s carved out for himself, he lashes out—even violently. He’s afraid of being vulnerable with anyone, so he has no friends, no girlfriend, and no guide. Sentenced to therapy following an assault against a fellow sailor, Fisher finds Dr. Davenport, a navy man who is one of the most well-realised shamans I’ve ever seen onscreen.

Davenport is no clichéd take-no-shit-military-man, nor is he an easy going, break-all-the-rules wild man like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. Instead, this shaman works the magic of personal and emotional forensic examination.

And like all the most engaging shamans, Davenport’s own interior and social life is full of its own conflict; the therapist is an incomplete man who himself suffers; he needs a young, untested seeker so that he can complete his own transformation. And that transformation demands a sacrifice than is almost too much for either Davenport or Fisher to bear. Antwone Fisher is, with Malcolm X, the only film I can think of that made me cry twice during the same viewing.

Uncle from Njabulo Ndebele’s “Uncle” in the collection Fools and Other Stories

“Uncle,” a novella by South African professor and writer Njabulo Ndebele, tells the story of a fatherless boy whose uncle, a jazz trumpeter/ladies’ man/shit disturber/prodigal son/Africentric intellectual, comes to visit when life on tour becomes too much hassle.

Uncle draws lessons from both everyday life and aesthetic experience to help his nephew discover and analyse the architecture of human existence. He descants upon the irony that the closed eye still sees, since its pupil reaches greatest dilation only when its lid is shuttered; that small humiliations are beneficial, since they inoculate us against committing the gigantic ones that would rip our asses right off our hips; that only highly-trained jazz players and painters can improvise beautifully, since true freedom requires the greatest discipline and preparation of all.

Not that the novella, or the character Uncle himself, is preachy. Instead it’s sexy, hilarious, touching, endearingly awkward, and as is as sweet and brimming with risk, exhilaration, and life as a bee-swarming honeycomb.

Furious Styles from Boyz N the Hood

Furious Styles, father and Blastmaster. As a dad, much less Mike Brady than Malcolm X. And dude even cuts heads.

And it’s Fishburne again, Rã love him, in one of my favourite performances. Furious Styles is an atypical shaman in that he’s the biological father of the young, untested seeker … but because he’s been the non-custodial parent for probably ten or more years, he still represents a break from the seeker’s primary parental experience.

The stand-out character from John Singleton’s 1991 directorial debut, Furious Styles was an electrifying dramatisation of the masculine side of the North American Africentric movement, even if he didn’t wear locks, beads, or dashikis, or carry a verb stick.

Brotherman delivered his own sermon on the mount, ripping the mic on economic self-determination and the hidden hand behind African American fratricide. And when he was cutting your head, he’d even school you on Jimmy discipline and defense.

For me, who always had to pay to get cut, seeing Furious up there trimming his boy’s skull was one of the most understated and touching movie moments I’d ever seen. And so archetypally rich: dude is cutting his son (branding him as his own, but marking him for manhood; the shears can inflict pain, but in the hands of a caring shaman, they’re an implement for bonding).

Understand that this was 1991. Only a few years before, when Spike Lee just resumed Oscar Micheaux’s revolution, Hollywood offered almost no roles to African actors at all, and the few it did offer were “only” parts, as in, “I’m the only Brother in this film.” If you weren’t a 3D Bugs Bunny like Axel Foley, or playing a toy, chances were against you appearing onscreen at all. And as much as I loved Spike’s joints, none of his films featured a shaman until 1992’s Malcolm X.

And, sadly, in movies at least, I can’t think of any characters like Furious Styles since 1991.

Major Bunny Colvin from Season Three and Four of The Wire

Major Bunny Colvin, played by screen juggernaut Robert Wisdom, is the 11:59 Drug War peace activist who creates—without permission from any level of government—several drug non-enforcement zones inside Baltimore’s most devastated neighbourhoods. His plan begins as a way of draining the marshes across his city, and dumping the waters into a few giant swamps: let the mosquitoes breed there, leaving the rest of the city free of malaria.

But Bunny’s in for the biggest case of mission creep of his entire career. Turns out you can’t simply decriminalise drugs and expect social misery just to up and disappear.

Instead, Colvin’s accidentally built a misery supercollider. And to clean up his own mess will mean bringing in security, clean water, condoms, a needle exchange (while trying to avoid getting caught by the media and his superior, or turned in by street cops who’d rather just smash heads).

As Mayor of “Hamsterdam,” Colvin sees that giant social problems can’t be solved by shooting them down or locking them up. Badges and beat downs won’t do shit. Nope. Giant problems need giant solutions. Marshall Plan-style.

And that’s at the heart of Colvin’s heroic, Sisyphean struggle: his actual commitment to justice embodied in the true meaning of Malcolm X’s slogan by any means necessary. What began as a giant F-U to his vicious, ass-kissing/ass-covering superiors turned into a crusade to make his city a place where citizens could live, walk, and work in safety. Not the terrified safety of apartheid-walled-in-suburbs for the hegemons… but safety and dignity for everybody.

By his courage and his commitment, even at gigantic risk to himself, Colvin earns the moral credibility to help an undisciplined bully of a cop, the young, untested seeker Sergeant Ellis Carver, to leave behind his brutal, destructive, and counterproductive policing strategy (terrorise and rout), in favour of building respect and then trust so as to gain the intell necessary to do quality police work and make the alleyways, corners, and front stoops safe for decent folk.

And when Bunny chooses the school system as his next theatre of operations, he’s just as determined to use any methods, no matter how unorthodox, to build justice for and with his young charges.

For one arrogant, shit-talking, but smart young man, Bunny Colvin is a major levelling-up from his own dad, a drug dealer and killer who’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. Bunny Colvin becomes, in fact, the most profoundly transformative figure that this young man could ever hope to enter his life.

Kareem Said from Oz

The brilliant Oz, almost completely and unfairly eclipsed by also-excellent The Wire, portrayed the odyssey of one of the most complex shamans ever projected onto American screens. As played by Eamonn Walker, Kareem Said was a Muslim imam sent to Oswald Maximum Security Prison for torching a warehouse (I can no longer remember the reason, but I seem to recall the warehouse or its owner were threats to the African American community).

At series’ beginning, Said was a swaggering intellectual and devout mujahid (holy warrior) who was devoted to saw Oswald prison as an institution so corrupt that only war and fire could redeem it. But after surviving the Attica-style rebellion of his own making, Said confronts the defects of his own soul, especially that of his enormous pride, enough that he rethinks almost everything about his life.

Kareem’s quest for justice, regardless of his own personal feelings, turns him into a jailhouse attorney who defends Neo-Nazi Vern Shillinger in court because he thinks the man isn’t guilty of the crime he’s charged with; he risks losing control of his African-only congregation by allowing Tobias Beecher, a rich, White, bisexual man, to join them for Qur’anic study, reasoning that Islam is not racial, but universal. He nearly loses his own life by opposing the criminal conspiracy and depravity of the drug baron Simon Adebisi.

Said struggles—sometimes against himself—to lift up men from the mud, men such as the narcissistic Poet who betrays him, a mole aimed to destroy him, the rebel lieutenant Zahir Arif, and the reprobate Omar White. Said’s personal struggles and history are convoluted, conflicted, and full of half-victories and glorious defeats.

And with the elevated speech of a philosopher, a yearning for justice, an unquenchable intellect, and the gravitic performance of Eamonn Walker breathing life into him, Kareem Said achieved a dramatic height that is unlikely to be surpassed for the foreseeable future.

I was so impressed by Kareem Said that I gave the X-Man from my award-winning political satire Shrinking the Heroes the same first name.

(Kareem Philip Edgerton’s other two names are equally connected to Tom Fontana shows: Dr. Phillip Chandler from St. Elsewhere, and Harry Edgerton, the real-life Baltimore detective who was the inspiration for Frank Pembleton in Homicide. All three characters are what I call the archetype of the Malcolm X Professional, a welcome antidote to TV’s previous, well-intentioned, and hyper-boring, ultra-non-threatening African men. Those snooze-inducers are still around… looking at you, Star Trek: Enterprise.)

THE ALCHEMISTS OF KUSH

When I first started conceiving the story that eventually became the novel The Alchemists of Kush, had several goals, and many of them dealt with shamans, rites of passage, and transformation.

When I was in 20s I’d read and been moved by Robert Bly’s mythopoeic discussion of seekers and shamans in Iron John. I’d also been fascinated by the history of the Five Percenters, or Nation of Gods and Earths, a mystical community (with strong similarities to ancient “mystery systems” employing a catechism, passwords, and rites of passage) that separated in the mid-1960s from the Nation of Islam, led by founder Father Allah. (You can check the blog and radio series I did on the NGE here, here, and here.)

And the summer I turned 20, I read Cheikh Anta Diop’s classic book The African Origin of Civilisation: Myth or Reality?, about how Eurocentric, imperialist revisionists had de-Africanised Ancient Egypt; that was the same summer that KRS-One released Ghetto Music: The Blueprint for Hip Hop, which address some of the same issues Diop had.

I fell in love with Ancient Egypt, and in one way or another it’s influenced or been featured in all of my work, and in particular, the foundational story of Lord Usir (Osiris) and Lady Aset (Isis), their son Hru (Horus), and their enemy, the usurper Set. That story is the prototype for Cain and Abel, Moses, and myriad other tales that have inspired mythology and religion.

So I sought to create a novel that could embody all the above. My allegory would be three-way: telling a modern story that would parallel both the foundational Egyptian myth, and the founding of the Five Percenters. And through it, I’d dramatise the reality and necessity of rites of passage for boys to become men, via the fictional (allegorical) Africentric mystery school, the Alchemists.

And the shaman would be named Yimunhotep Ani, AKA Brother Moon.

The Alchemists of Kush has gotten intense and widespread acclaim. Ishmael Reed says, “It was only a matter of time before the hip hop culture would invade the literary world. With The Alchemists of Kush, Minister Faust is leading the invasion. His novel is possibly the first hip hop epic. Hip hop has a short attention span on most occasions. The Alchemists of Kush gives it gravitas.”

The ebook is only $2.99, and the paperback is only $14.99.

You can check out the book trailer and an author interview/walkabout below.

The Africentric TED: The African Leadership Network conference

2011-08-04T12:26:00.006-06:00

Fred Swaniker, Co-Founder & CEO of ALN, discusses the establishment and vision of ALN from African Leadership Network on Vimeo.

Fred Swaniker, founder of the African Leadership Academy and the African Leadership Network, is no Afro-pessimist. In fact, I’d say he’s a real-world, internationalist example of an Afrofuturist, a true Imhotep-hop man.

And while he’s busy building excellence, he’s also helping, among those who follow his example, to destroy two poisonous Western myths about the 54 countries of the African continent and their billion citizens.

One myth serves self-described conservatives, and the other serves self-described liberals.

The conservative myth is that Africans are so primitive and backward that they’re useless, and any attempt to save them is doomed.

The liberal myth is that because Africans are so primitive and backward, they’re useless in any attempt to save themselves, and thus require the benevolent intervention of White saviours… including people who may view themselves collectively as The Saviour.

Both myths ignore the foundation of humanity and civilisation itself in Africa, ignore African’s vast linguistic, cultural and national diversity, and ignore the remarkable political, economic and telecommunications achievements that many countries across the continent have accomplished in the last twenty years.

Fred Swaniker is a model of the very leadership that he teaches. Recognising that self-determination requires young, energetic leaders with excellent education, practical training, and diverse and far-ranging social networks, in 2004 Swaniker co-founded the African Leadership Academy in South Africa.

The ALA is a high school whose students hail from across the continent, recruited not only from elites but from the poor. In their Johannesburg school, student receive a world-class education with an emphasis on leadership development and entrepreneurship with a pan-Africanist perspective.

The ALA is a high school whose students hail from across the continent, recruited not only from elites but from the poor. In their Johannesburg school, students receive a world-class education with an emphasis on leadership development and entrepreneurship using a pan-Africanist perspective.

Emboldened by his success with the ALA, in 2010 Swaniker co-founded the African Leadership Network. Modelled in part after the international TED lecture series, the African Leadership Network conference is designed so that participants can expand their networks, allowing them to build the continent intellectually, culturally, economically, and politically with a range of allies they would otherwise never meet, and in a context in which the continent is not ignored, nor is it a target for contempt disguised as compassion, but rather as the centre of their existence and future.

The African Leadership Network convenes its conferences regularly regionally and in a major international event. According to its website, the ALN measures its results, publishing hard data annually on “the number of new companies that have been fostered by the network, the number of jobs that ALN collaborations have created for the continent, [and] the amount of investment that members have managed to mobilize across Africa because of relationships they established through ALN.”

The ALN site on Vimeo contains more than 20 outstanding speeches. A few highlights include:

Bright Simons, founder of MPedigree, discussing his cutting-edge platform for stopping the lethal sale of counterfeit drugs worth hundreds of millions of dollars, by using a telecomm drug-verification network, and

Innovations out of Africa: fighting pharmaceutical counterfeits with cellphones from African Leadership Network on Vimeo.

Zimbabwean Deputy Prime Minister Dr. Arthur Mutambara, challenging Africa's new generation of leaders.

New generation of Africa's Leaders must rise to the challenge from African Leadership Network on Vimeo.

Addis Alemayehou of Paconet on Ethiopia’s economic ascendancy.

Eradicating Poverty one person at a time. from African Leadership Network on Vimeo.

The Coyote Kings, Book Two: Uranium City... coming in 2012

2011-07-07T14:02:00.000-06:00

Minister Faust.com

Today's the day. Please buy THE ALCHEMISTS OF KUSH.

2011-06-15T11:53:00.001-06:00

If The Alchemists of Kush hits the Kindle Top 100 today, I'll donate $500 to ship university textbooks to South Sudan's Dr. John Garang Memorial University.

Please visit ministerfaust.com for the buy link. You can get the entire novel for only $2.99.

You can also get other books by me while you're there. Right now there are three books of short stories. By late afternoon, you'll be able to get BOTH of my previous novels at the same place.

Two books of short stories and two novels... only $2.99 each!

Advance praise for THE ALCHEMISTS OF KUSH

2011-06-12T17:26:00.004-06:00

“It was only a matter of time before the hip hop culture would invade the literary world. With The Alchemists of Kush, Minister Faust is leading the invasion. His novel is possibly the first hip hop epic. Hip hop has a short attention span on most occasions. The Alchemists of Kush gives it gravitas.”

—Ishmael Reed

Author of Mumbo Jumbo and Juice!

“Minister Faust’s first two books broke new ground in the SF field. His latest, The Alchemists of Kush, not only breaks new ground; with the story-telling skills of a modern jali, the Minister creates new vistas of history, mythology, erudition, uplift, tragedy, triumph, and contemporary community activism. Once you start the first page of this book, you won't be able to put it down until you’ve finished the last one.”

—Charles R. Saunders

Author of Imaro and Dossouye

“I started The Alchemists of Kush and kept reading until I finished. Minister Faust has the most electrifying and true voice I've read in years. The Alchemists of Kush is brilliant.”

—Sparkle Hayter

Author of What's A Girl Gotta Do? and Naked Brunch

“I loved the story, the mythology, and the characters. I found myself locked into it for hours at a time and couldn't put it down. Rich in detail ...A great book.”

—Kenneth T. Williams

Playwright of Thunderstick and Three Little Birds

“A hell of a story. A hell of a book. A hell of a style. A frenetic novel and voice—very enjoyable. Minister Faust knows how to write about male relationships, brotherhoods, and getting into the hearts of men, and about boys turning into men. The Alchemists of Kush is a triumph, not just for Minister Faust, but for Edmonton and the community of Kush.”

—Wayne Arthurson

Author of Final Season and Fall from Grace

“Inspired by a true story and set against an urban backdrop of African immigrant communities in present day Edmonton, Minister Faust weaves a masterful tale around the sacred Book of the Golden Falcon, ten Hermetical scrolls that expound upon the cross pollination of cultural themes and social considerations shared by Original People throughout the African Diaspora.

“The Alchemists of Kush is more than a story; it’s a philosophical elixir of Kemetic (Egyptian) folklore, African traditions, urban Sufism, hip hop culture, and Five Percenter pedagogy designed to transmute the challenges of colonialism, assimilation, juvenile delinquency, and moral decay into a universal solvent. Through an array of colourful characters facing unique struggles towards advancing a common cause, Minister Faust boldly takes his readers on an alchemical journey of Self Knowledge, Self Determination, and Community Action, a transformative terrain of true & living ‘gold’!”

—Saladin Quanaah Allah

Blogger, Allah School in Atlantis (ASIA)

Author of Tales of an Urban Sufi and MC on Brothers from Another Planet

“The Alchemists of Kush is both a powerful and vital contribution to Canadian literature that looks at contemporary Edmonton from an African-Canadian perspective. The characters in Minister Faust’s novel reflect the true diversity of African-Canadians living in Edmonton. Hopefully this is the beginning of more great novels from people in Edmonton that look like us that tell stories about us.”

—Arlo Maverick of Politic Live

MC and Producer on Adaptation and Market Share

“The Alchemists of Kush is its own kind of alchemy. Composed of ancient past, gritty present, mythic fantasy, social activism, it’s how Minister Faust blends it all that gives the book its rare power. Reflecting the brilliance of his earlier novels, Minister Faust again strikes the perfect balance between eloquence and entertainment.

“Within the first twenty pages, I could (and did) imagine The Alchemists of Kush on the big screen. It’s got that epic sweep to it. More importantly, I kept reading (and reading, and reading) because Minister Faust knows it’s all about creating characters you’ll love. I wept at the end.”

—Mark Kozub

Author of The Uptown Browns, A Calgary Album

Founding father of the Raving Poets

“Minister Faust presents a fierce piece of fiction in a way that only he can. I was entertained, educated and fascinated with his alchemy. The Alchemists of Kush has to be one of the best books I've read this year.”

—Milton John Davis

Author of Meji, co-editor of Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology

On Wednesday, please buy THE ALCHEMISTS OF KUSH!

2011-06-12T17:15:00.001-06:00

On June 15, 2011, my long-awaited third novel, THE ALCHEMISTS OF KUSH, will be launched.

It's the story of two Sudanese "lost boys" fleeing war, oppression, violence and horrible alienation, each of whom finds a mentor to guide him towards manhood through the chaos of pain.

One lives in the streets of modern-day Kush, E-Town.

The other lived seven thousand years ago, known as Horus, son of Osiris.

======================================

You can buy the e-book instantly on Wednesday for only $2.99!

You don't need a Kindle or any other reader. You can get the free Kindle app for your computer here.

Paperback is also available for only $18 from Amazon.com and your local independent bookstore.

WHY SHOULD YOU BUY THE BOOK? TO MAKE ME DONATE $500!

If the book hits the Kindle Top 100 on launch day, I will donate the first $500 of sales to the South Sudan Development Foundation's efforts to ship thousands of books to the Dr. John Garang Memorial University in South Sudan, which currently has no library.

Please invite your friends to the "virtual book launch." Remind them they don't need a Kindle to read the digital book... any computer can do it. And tell them there will be a paperback, but that doesn't count towards the South Sudan university book drive.

You can also buy the e-book as a gift! Merely input your friend's email address and skadoosh! your friend will receive a brand new book instantaneously.

I would really, really appreciate your help and support on Wednesday to recommend the book on your various platforms (for instance, with your status line and profile photo on Facebook, your Twitter feed, your blogs, etc., if you'd be so kind). Thank you so much. This is huge for me.

Author Interview and Kush -Walkabout: Minister Faust and The Alchemists of Kush

2011-06-02T16:11:00.000-06:00

The novel hits on June 15!

Invite yourself and your friends!

The Alchemists of Kush

2011-05-11T15:20:00.000-06:00

On June 15, 2011, Minister Faust's long awaited third novel, THE ALCHEMISTS OF KUSH, will be launched.

It's the story of two Sudanese "lost boys" fleeing war, oppression, violence and horrible alienation, each of whom finds a mentor to guide him towards manhood through the chaos of pain.

One lives in the streets of modern-day Kush, E-Town.

The other lived seven thousand years ago, known as Horus, son of Osiris.

======================================

You can buy the e-book instantly that day for only $2.99!

(You don't need a Kindle or any other reader. You can get the free Kindle app for your computer at http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_ipad_mkt_lnd?docId=1000493771)

Paperback is also available for only $18 from Amazon.com and your local independent bookstore.

======================================

WHY SHOULD YOU BUY THE BOOK ON JUNE 15?

TO MAKE MINISTER FAUST DONATE $500!

If the book hits the Kindle Top 100 on launch day, Minister Faust will donate the $500 of sales to the South Sudan Development Foundation's efforts to ship thousands of books to the Dr. John Garang Memorial University in South Sudan, which currently has no library. See http://www.developsudan.org/.

You will be able to pre-order the book in early May.

=======================================

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR *THE ALCHEMISTS OF KUSH*

“Minister Faust’s first two books broke new ground in the SF field. His latest, The Alchemists of Kush, not only breaks new ground; with the story-telling skills of a modern griot, the Minister creates new vistas of history, mythology, erudition, uplift, tragedy, triumph, and contemporary community activism. Once you start the first page of this book, you won't be able to put it down until you’ve finished the last one.”

Charles R. Saunders
Author of Imaro

“I loved the story, the mythology, and the characters. I found myself locked into it for hours at a time and couldn't put it down. Rich in detail ...A great book.”

Kenneth T. Williams
Award-winning playwright of
Thunderstick and Three Little Birds

“A hell of a story. A hell of a book. A hell of a style. A frenetic novel and voice—very enjoyable. Minister Faust knows how to write about male relationships and brotherhoods, about getting into the hearts of men, and about boys turning into men.

"The Alchemists of Kush is a triumph, not just for Minister Faust,
but for Edmonton and the community of Kush.”

Wayne Arthurson
Award-winning author of
Final Season and Fall from Grace

“The Alchemists of Kush is both a powerful and vital contribution to Canadian literature that looks at contemporary Edmonton from an African-Canadian perspective. The characters in Minister Faust’s novel reflect the true diversity of African-Canadians living in Edmonton. Hopefully this is the beginning of more great novels from people in Edmonton that look like us that tell stories about us.”

Arlo Maverick
Politic Live

“The Alchemists of Kush is its own kind of alchemy. Composed of ancient past, gritty present, mythic fantasy, social activism, how Minister Faust blends it all is what gives the book its rare power. Reflecting the brilliance of his earlier novels, Minister Faust again strikes the perfect balance between eloquence and entertainment.

“Within the first twenty pages, I could (and did) imagine The Alchemists of Kush on the big screen. It’s got that epic sweep to it. More importantly, I kept reading (and reading – and reading) because Minister Faust knows it’s all about creating characters you’ll love. I wept at the end.”

—Mark Kozub
Author of The Uptown Browns, A Calgary Album
Founding father of the Raving Poets

A Brave New Sudan... But Without Books?

2011-02-04T10:12:00.008-07:00

Imagine starting a country from scratch, a country devastated by war, poverty, PTSD, and crumbling or nonexistent modern infrastructure.

Now imagine that your university--the centre for training your country’s leaders--has no library. How do you rate your nation’s chances for stability and prosperity?

Buk Arop is facing that conundrum right now, because his countrymen and –women in South Sudan have voted 99% in favour of separating from the North. And Arap knows as well as anybody that without education, his ancient (and also new) homeland has no future.

Arop, a tall, 29-year-old Sudanese youth worker with movie-star looks, a baritone voice and a gentle demeanour, is the president of the newly-formed South Sudan Development Foundation.

The SSDF’s first major project is to stock—from scratch—the library of the Dr. John Garang Memorial University of Science and Technology , named in honour of the late leader of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army and Sudan’s First Vice President. That means acquiring second-hand university-level books, and the cash to ship them, half-way around the world. It won’t be cheap—which is why the SSDF is holding a fundraising dinner and dance at E-Town’s Vedic Centre. Says Arop: “To ship a container costs approximately $10,000.”

While many people characterise southern secession as the result of an “Arab vs. African” conflict, that racial characterisation is misleading. Physically, any Northern Sudanese walking the streets of Harlem—or Edmonton’s Kush—would blend in easily, without anyone offering directions to the Saudi embassy. Instead, Sudan’s north-south divide mirrors that of the Global North and South.

“If you Google Khartoum, the capital city, you will see skyscrapers; if you see parts of the city, you may think you’re looking at some Western capitol,” says Arop. “But on the flip side, if you Google [Southern capitol] Juba, it’s just typical small-town Africa. It’s not even close to any African capitol,” despite a population of 1.1 million people.

Prior to impending secession, Sudan is currently the largest of Africa’s fifty-four countries, and home to nineteen major ethnicities and 134 languages. To understand the urgency of building Garang U’s library, compare Sudan with Canada. Canada’s 34 million people have 90 universities and 175 colleges serving about 1.7 million students. Sudan’s 40 million people (war has impeded an accurate census) have only 47 universities; Southern Sudan (the size of 1.3 Albertas) has as few as ten universities, serving a population of 11 million (about 3.3 Albertas).

In 2008, the Government of Southern Sudan established Garang U in the town of Bor, but the campus is off to a hobbling start: so far it has only about 250 students, and doesn’t even have a website. Starving for funds, GU has no student housing, so students live in tents. And a library book budget? Forget about it. It’s a Catch-22 for economic development.

“The only employer seems to be the Government of Southern Sudan,” says Arop, noting that local entrepreneurs and businesses are rare. “In Edmonton, if you want to start a business, you can lease a space. But in Juba, you have to start building a building from scratch.” If the Southern Sudanese fail to generate their own economic titans, their national economic sovereignty will inevitably fall into the hands of foreign investors, including those of China.

Arop emphasises that the SSDF will accept any university-level text, because GU’s library, like any other, needs as wide an intellectual archive as possible. Donors worried about their texts being out of date can take comfort knowing that so is virtually every library text in the world. Nevertheless, the SSDF’s book drive focus is on basic sciences, human and veterinary medicine, agriculture, engineering, construction, environmental studies, humanities, business, law, politics, conflict resolution and gender studies.

The South Sudan book drive is international, originating from a South Sudanese professor in Holland. Arop is impressed by the Edmontonian response, led in part by Political Scientist Chaldeans Mensah at MacEwan University.

“MacEwan University answered the call,” says Arop. “They were involved very quickly [last semester]. I understand that the space that was provided there started to overflow, and the book drive is still going on.”

South Sudan finds its microcosm in Edmonton, which hosts a range of Sudanese ethnicities, including Dinka and Nuer. Arop says local Sudanese may rival the Somalis in numbers—perhaps as many as 15,000—but admits nobody has hard numbers.

While most Sudanese-Canadians have more opportunities here than back home, many face familial and cultural dislocation, post-traumatic stress, under-employment and poverty, high debt from relocation, and savings drained immediately by sending remittances to relatives.

Neverthless, Arop remains optimistic for Sudanese at home and abroad: “Those who will take chances on [the Southern Sudanese people] are definitely going to go down in history as heroes, and will recognised for that.”

Listen to the interview with Buk Arop here.

==========

Books for Sudan Dinner and Dance
$20/$10 Student
Vedic Centre
12840 - 57 street
Saturday, Feb. 5, 7 pm – 3 am
www.developsudan.org
Tickets: 780-974-2294

Africentric videos for KLA students

2010-10-08T15:16:00.033-06:00

Watch and learn! Take notes! Then for Saturday's competition, and then light everyone up (with the illuminating facts).

Click on the photographs to be led to external video links.

If you don't have time to watch everything, watch at least one video from each category.

ECONOMICS

Who are Africa's billionaires?

Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, the world's wealthiest African

Former Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: Want to help Africa? Do business here

Euvin Naidoo on Investing in Africa

EDUCATION

Ghanaian Educator Fred Swaniker and the African Leadership Academy

The South Africa-based AIMS (African Institute for Mathematical Sciences)

Ghanaian Educator Patrick Awuah: Educating a new generation of African Leaders

CIVILISATIONS

The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu

(Watch parts 2- 6, if you have time: 2 - 6; double-click on the video file above and search for the title and part # in the video host)

Basil Davidson on the Origin of Egyptian Civilisation

(Watch the parts 1 + 3, if you have time; double-click on the video file above and search for the title and part # in the video host)

Timbuktu Scribes

(Watch part 2 if you have time; double-click on the video file above and search for the title and part # in the video host)

THE ARTS

Kenyan Artist Wangechi Mutu - This You Call Civilisation

Nigerian Author Chimamanda Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story

Kenyan Animation Studio

Nigerian Sculptor El Anatsui - "Heaven and Earth"

El Anatsui installing "Between Earth and Heaven" or see more Metropolitan Museum Videos

SCIENCE, INVENTION + ENGINEERING

Guyanese historian, linguist and anthropologist Ivan Van Sertima on Africans in Science

Ghanaian-American Entrepreneur and Technologist Nii Simmonds, Co-Founder of Afrobotics

Afrobotics Homepage

African American Lonnie Johnson, Inventor of the Super-Soaker

super soaker inventor

Malawian engineering prodigy William Kamkwamba

Ghanaian Computing Engineer and Brain-Computer Researcher

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Mohammed Ibrahim on Good Governance as the Engine of African Development

2010-09-01T16:46:00.005-06:00

6 pm Mountain Time
FM 88.5 Edmonton
cjsr.com worldwide
Download or stream

When Sudanese engineer and entrepreneur Mohamed Ibrahim built a cellular communication network across the African continent, he likely had no idea he’d meet such massive financial, social and political success.

Ibrahim eventually sold his Celtel company for $3.4 billion, and used his money to establish the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. The Foundation’s major goal is to improve governance across the African continent, since without government provision of security, rule of law, justice and human development, and facilitation of trade, citizens have a much more difficult time of transforming their societies for the better.

The Mohamed Ibrahim Foundation awards excellence in national leadership to any African federal leader who came to power democratically and left his or her country in better political, economic and social conditions.

Worth $5 million initially and $200,000 annually for life, the prize is awarded by a panel of internationally respected jurors including Nobel Prize winners, and can be given to any leader who left office within the previous three years. It’s the most lucrative prize in the world.

The money, argues Ibrahim, is not only to celebrate such excellent leadership, but to provide prestige, comfort and security for leaders who cannot, unlike their Northern counterparts, rely on endless consultancies and speaking engagements which routinely yield millions of dollars annually.

In 2007, Mozambique’s Joaquim Chissano won the prize for leading Mozambique from conflict to peace and democracy, and in 2008 Festus Mogae of Botswana won for “outstanding leadership [that] ensured Botswana’s continued stability and prosperity in the face of an HIV/AIDS pandemic which threatened the future of his country and people.”

But Ibrahim argues that his greater accomplishment is the Ibrahim Index of Good Governance, a broad and deep survey of governance across the 54 countries of the continent and its island satellites.

International agencies supply the Index its raw data, which a team of African academics analyse and translate into performance scores in key areas from human rights and education to safety and transparency.

By ranking countries, Ibrahim argues that states will engage in positive competition to attract investment by improving quality of governance and civic life.

Dr. Ibrahim has received recognition around the world, including the Economists Innovation Award for Social & Economic Innovation, the BNP Paribas Prize for Philanthropy, and placement on TIME Magazine’s 2008 and 2009 lists of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Mo Ibrahim spoke at the sixth anniversary of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore on July 15, 2010.

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Molefi Kete Asante - Du Bois, Africa and the Convergence of Consciousness

2010-08-04T17:49:00.007-06:00

6 pm Mountain Time
FM 88.5 Edmonton
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Few American scholars achieved the depth and breadth of accomplishment of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois.

Born in 1868, three years after the end of the American civil war, Du Bois was the first African to receive a PhD from Harvard University.

Du Bois also studied at the University of Berlin, becoming a professor of History and Economics, and wrote 36 books and more than 4000 articles and essays. For a time he headed the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People and was founding editor of its newspaper The Crisis.

After the US government refused to renew his passport, Du Bois moved in 1963 to Ghana at the invitation of President Kwame Nkrumah, where he directed work on the Encyclopedia Africana.

Du Bois died on August 27, 1963, having made a profound impact on African intellectualism globally, especially through his 1903 essay “The Talented Tenth” about the necessity of a vanguard of educated African-Americans to lead the upliftment of the entire nationality, and his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk, which described the “double-consciousness” or dual-identity of Africans in America.

Addressing WEB Du Bois’s cultural and intellectual significance, as well as perceptions of some his political or analytical shortcomings, is another giant of Africana thought, Dr. Molefi Kete Asante.

Molefi Kete Asante is a full professor in the Department of African American Studies at Temple University. He’s the founding editor of The Journal of Black Studies, and the author of more than 300 articles. His sixty-eight books include Afrocentricity, The Encyclopedia of Black Studies, Erasing Racism: The Survival of the American Nation, and Ancient Egyptian Philosophers.

The Utne Reader calls Asante one of the "100 Leading Thinkers" in the United States, and Asante has appeared on Nightline, The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, The Today Show, The Tony Brown Show, and 60 Minutes.

The African Union cited Asante as one of the top twelve scholars of African descent when it invited him to give one of the keynote addresses at the Conference of Intellectuals of Africa and the Diaspora in Dakar in 2004.

He spoke on November 12, 2008 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Dubois and Africa: The Convergence of Consciousness

Africa Day 2010

2010-06-12T00:51:00.002-06:00

This Saturday, June 12, Edmonton hosts the Africa Day Festival! The Africa Day Festival features a bounty of African cultures in Canada with musics, art, words of inspiration, community members and leaders, and a dazzling array of international cuisines.

The event begins with a family-friendly indoor-outdoor community celebration at the Africa Centre on 131st Avenue and 127th Street, featuring drummers, dancers, musicians and children’s activities.

The festival peaks with a dinner gala featuring the Juno Award Winning African Guitar Summit at the Edmonton Expo Centre at Northlands. Door Opens @ 7:00 PM.

Thulasiraj Ravilla: How low-cost eye care can be world-class

2010-05-10T23:32:00.001-06:00

3 Day Novel Contest, Season 1, Episode 3

2010-05-02T01:02:00.003-06:00

Superb television series by wunderkind producer Tate Young, featuring a dozen writers (some experienced, some brand new) trying to write a novel in three days in a box bookstore in E-Town, while being tormented by challenges and judges including yours truly, your friendly neighbourhood Minister Faust.

Part One of Three

Part Two of Three

Part Three of Three

Frederick Balagadde: Bio-lab on a microchip | Video on TED.com

2010-04-30T10:58:00.000-06:00

3 Day Novel Contest, Season 1, Episode 2

2010-04-22T14:34:00.010-06:00

3 Day Novel Contest, Season 1, Episode 1

2010-04-17T22:17:00.005-06:00

From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain - Unnofficial Book Trailer, Version A

2010-04-09T15:10:00.002-06:00

BBC News - Kenya enters children's animation arena

2010-04-04T14:10:00.000-06:00

BBC News - Kenya enters children's animation arena

Africa’s billionaires: who are they? | Voxafrica, La télévision Pan-Africaine

2010-03-31T10:12:00.000-06:00

Africa’s billionaires: who are they? | Voxafrica, La télévision Pan-Africaine

Aid: how much of it really gets through? | Voxafrica, La télévision Pan-Africaine

2010-03-31T08:34:00.000-06:00

Aid: how much of it really gets through? | Voxafrica, La télévision Pan-Africaine

Is Africa the new hotspot? | Voxafrica, La télévision Pan-Africaine

2010-03-31T08:33:00.000-06:00

Is Africa the new hotspot? | Voxafrica, La télévision Pan-Africaine

Don't you think it's time for a FAUSTIAN BARGAIN?

2010-03-25T10:25:00.003-06:00

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

How can you not love something called "Afrobotics"?

2010-03-04T22:56:00.001-07:00

"Afrobotics seeks to use competitive robotics to imbue the next generation of Africans with a cadre of scientists, engineers, innovators and entrepreneurs who are not only knowledgeable and skilled but critical thinkers and problem solvers.

"A cadre that is hands-on, technically creative and determined to apply their abilities to problems relevant to Africa.

"Our mission is to inspire African students to be science, engineering, and technology leaders, by enabling them in innovative team-based competitions that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire entrepreneurial risk-taking, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership."

Afrobotics | Afrobotics.com

Herman Chinery-Hesse: Turn the brain-drain into the round-trip brain-train

2010-03-04T17:46:00.005-07:00

"Herman Chinery-Hesse, or ‘Africa’s Bill Gates’ as he is called by the BBC, is a highly respected Ghanaian technology entrepreneur who co-founded a million-dollar software company, SOFTtribe, and a truly visionary company, BSL.

"Chinery-Hesse had a fairly privileged childhood and left Ghana to study industrial technology at the Texas State University in San Marcos.

"However, he returned to Ghana in 1990 with the intention of staying for good. Unlike many of his peers who felt that all real opportunities were to be found abroad, he set about finding opportunities at home.

"His first project involved writing a software program for a travel agency in Accra to automate its accounting and customer service functions. The software was so successful that it was adopted by travel agents throughout the country."

Full story here.

See also:

Chinery-Hesse – Ghana’s Bill Gates

Using Technology to Boost Trade in Africa

Mo Ibrahim: "The other, brighter Africa"

2010-03-04T14:03:00.005-07:00

Mohamed Ibrahim, telecom billionaire, writes:

"Alongside this focus on improving African governance, we must also put pressure on our leaders to encourage regional integration. Many small, landlocked African countries will never become serious players in the global economy without increased cooperation within their own regions.

"Today’s haphazard, overlapping regional integration is proving largely ineffective, and this severely hampers African countries’ ability to compete in international markets.

"One of the consequences of this lack of cooperation for Africa’s 967 million people is the bureaucratic replication and currency-exchange issues that being divided into 53 countries entails. China, with 1.3 billion people, is just one country; and the European Union, with some 500 million people, functions as a single economic market, with most of its members sharing a single currency.

"If Africa’s small and diverse nations do not come together, they will never integrate properly into the world economy, and so will not reap the benefits of our globalised world.

"Economic integration must be backed up by increased intra-regional trade; less than 4% of Africa’s trade is between African countries, compared to over 70% in Europe and over 50% in Asia.

"The International Monetary Fund credits Asian intra-regional trade as the main factor behind its recent export boom and strong economic growth. Africa, with its huge and often untapped markets, must follow the same path."

The rest of the article.

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Ali Abunimah on Israeli Apartheid Week, and Chris Abani on Literature as a Vehicle for Humanity

2010-03-03T12:51:00.011-07:00

6 pm Mountain Time
FM 88.5 Edmonton
cjsr.com worldwide
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Around the world and right here in Edmonton, advocates of the Palestinian cause are presenting the sixth annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW).

The IAW is hosted by more than 40 cities worldwide--from Bethlehem and Caracas to New York and Johannesburg. From March 1 to 14, lectures, performances, films and more will educate the public about the punishing effects of Israeli military occupation of Palestine and the unequal status of Arab citizens inside Israel. Organisers also call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions.

A multi-ethnic coalition including Palestinian, Jewish and other activists, IAW organisers framed their demands in a July 2005 Statement:

“full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, an end to the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands – including the Golan Heights, the Occupied West Bank with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip – and dismantling the Wall, and the protection of Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in U.N. resolution 194.”

On Monday night, Edmontonians heard the lead speaker for the local series of IAW events, the Palestinian-American journalist and co-founder of the news website Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah.

A graduate of Princeton University and the University of Chicago, Abunimah is a well-known analyst of Middle Eastern political affairs and contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. He’s also published articles The New York Times, The Financial Times, Lebanon’s Daily Star and Ha’aretz, among others.

He’s the author of the 2007 book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, published by Picador, and one of the key figures behind the website The Electronic Intifada.

I spoke with Ali Abunimeh at the University of Alberta campus shortly before his talk.

“Bil’in weekly demonstration reenacts the Avatar Film”, December 02, 2009.

Chris Abani, Nigerian Novelist and Former Political Prisoner

Chris Abani, the dynamic Nigerian novelist and poet. When he was a youth, his James Bond-style spy thriller Masters of the Board delighted readers in Nigeria, but terrified the Nigerian government with the prospect that the book was a blueprint for a coup. So the Nigerian government threw the 18-year-old in jail.

Neither that nor future imprisonment would deter Abani from engaging in political art, nor from embracing life with humour, intelligence and dignity.

A prolific writer, Abani has created other novels such as Song For Night, The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail and GraceLand. He’s also penned poetry collections such as Hands Washing Water, Dog Woman, Daphne’s Lot, and Kalakuta Republic.

Abani has received numerous honours for his literary and political output, including the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the California Book Award, the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, and a Guggenheim Award, among others.

He’s currently a Professor at the University of California at Riverside. Chris Abani spoke at the TEDGlobal conference in Arusha, Tanzania, in June 2007, explaining how stories are a key component for generating cultural self-knowledge.

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Sudanese telecomm billionaire Mohamed Ibrahim on Building Communication, Wealth and Democracy Across Africa

2010-02-24T14:52:00.010-07:00

6 pm Mountain Time
FM 88.5 Edmonton
cjsr.com worldwide
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The prevailing imagery in Western corporate media about the 54 countries of Africa is predictable and simplistic. Jungles and deserts, swollen bellies and child soldiers, dictators and decay.

Yet the realities are far more diverse for the planet’s second largest continent, and often, they are remarkably inspiring. Take mobile telephones. It’s true that the Congo War has claimed 5 million lives, and it’s true that the war is fought to rob the Democratic Republic of Congo of its unparalleled resources.

Those resources include the planet’s greatest supply of coltan, the indispensable ingredient in all modern computerised technology including mobile phones, without which the world would fall silent.

But the untold and unknown story is that because it’s easier to construct cellular telephone towers than land lines, Africa has become a leader in mobile phone use and innovation.

People in various African countries use mobile telephones as debit cards, and they’re using them to outmaneuver corrupt officials trying to steal elections, and farmers are using them to outwit predatory middlemen and traders trying to steal their wealth.

Those victories are owed in large measure to one man, the Sudanese cellular billionaire, Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim. Born in 1946, Ibrahim received his PhD in mobile communications from the University of Birmingham and worked for various European corporations including British Telecom before founding the companies MSI and Celtel.

Ibrahim’s entrepreneurial insight was to build a network of cellular communication across the African continent. Despite repeated warnings from colleagues and partners not to take such capital-intensive risks, that venture made Ibrahim one of the wealthiest people in the world.

When he sold his company MSI, his 800 employees owned 30% of the stock, earning them rewards unseen for most tech-sector workers. According to Forbes magazine, Ibrahim himself possesses approximately $2.5 billion.

Ibrahim swears that money was never his goal. In 2007, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation awarded its first Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, a $7 million award for democratically-elected African presidents whose work substantially improved their citizens’ lives.

The money, argues Ibrahim, is not only to celebrate such excellent leadership, but to provide prestige, comfort and security for leaders who cannot, unlike their Northern counterparts, rely on endless consultancies and speaking engagements which routinely yield millions of dollars annually.

Dr Ibrahim has been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, and from the University of Birmingham and De Montfort University, Leicester.

Ibrahim has also received honorary the Fellowship Award from the London School of Business, the Wharton University Philanthropic Award, the Chairman’s Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Global Systems for Mobile Communications, the Economists Innovation Award for Social & Economic Innovation, and the BNP Paribas Prize for Philanthropy.

TIME Magazine placed Ibrahim on its 2008 and 2009 lists of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Tonight we’ll hear a talk Ibrahim delivered at the University of Geneva for the inaugural Citizens Cyberscience Lecture Series. He spoke in October 2009.

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Edwidge Danticat on Why Haitians Survive

2010-02-10T14:33:00.010-07:00

6 pm Mountain Time
FM 88.5 Edmonton
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In the midst of the horrifying tragedy of Haiti’s earthquake and the hundreds of thousands of people it killed, it’s critical to understand how the Haitian people have survived not just natural disasters, but more than 200 years of Euro-American oppression, occupation and economic enslavement.

Traditionally, artists collect people’s experiences and reflect them back. For people living under tyranny, the artist’s role is indispensable: distilling and harnessing those aspects of our lives which give us meaning, hope, joy and dignity.

Haitian-American novelist Edwidge Danticat rose to fame through the quality of her prose, and because she so carefully animated the experiences of Haitians surviving the Empire.

She’s the author of eight books, including 2008’s Brother, I’m Dying, 2005’s The Dew Breaker, 1999’s The Farming of Bones, and her most well-known novels, Breath, Eyes, Memory published in 1998, which became an Oprah Book Club pick, and her 1996 debut Krik? Krak!, which was an American National Book Award finalist.

Danticat also edited The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures.

Born in Haiti in 1969 and an American resident since age 12, Danticat holds an undergraduate degree in French literature and an MFA in creative writing. She’s taught at New York University and Miami University.

She’s also the recipient of the half-million dollar MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, popularly known as the Genius Award.

Danticat spoke at the University of California at Santa Barbara on June 2, 2004, to deliver the Regents’ Lecture for the Department of Black Studies, just a few months after the American, French and Canadian-backed coup and kidnapping of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Introducing Danticat is Claudine Michel, Chair of Chicana/Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara.

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Randall Robinson on Why the Empire Hates Haiti, Part 1

2010-01-27T11:14:00.010-07:00

6 pm Mountain Time
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On January 12, 2010, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale hit the Republic of Haiti.

The immediate result was hundreds of thousands dead and many more than that wounded and homeless.

Across the world, from Gambia to Gaza, people have opened their hearts and their wallets to the beleaguered people of Haiti. Here, Canadians have donated millions of dollars, and the federal government has pledged to match those donations, while sending human assistance and pledging to expedite adoptions nearly finalised.

But why is such intervention necessary in the first place? Why is Haiti seemingly incapable of stability, security and prosperity?

Why is Haiti, sharing the island of Hispanola with the much wealthier Dominican Republic, home to the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere... even while it’s possessed of magnificent natural beauty, even while sitting next to important waterways, and sitting upon oil?

Are the Haitians simply unlucky, sitting in the path of hurricanes and earthquakes? Or is their pain due to their laziness? Corruption? Stupidity? Cultural deficits? Or genetic inferiority?

If you got your sole understanding of history from corporate media including the CBC, you might be left to conclude that any or all of the above could account for Haitian misery. But you’d be wrong.

Amid the genuine generosity and compassion of citizens, the Canadian government and CBC have engaged in nearly endless backpatting for Canadian intervention.

What each of those parties acknowledges far less is how in recent years Canada has taken part in centuries of misery that France, the United States and England have savaged upon Haiti.

And it all goes back to the second republican revolution in this hemisphere, and why the Euro-American Empire had to crush a shining beacon of freedom from a country that could have been named Spartacus.

After 9-11, Americans asked, “Why do they hate us?” Tonight on the show, we ask that same question, but from the Haitian perspective. Answering it is Randall Robinson, a Harvard-trained lawyer and the founder of TransAfrica, a think tank and activist organisation which starting in 1977 attempted to add justice to U.S. policy toward Africa and the Caribbean.

Robinson worked for years inside the international anti-apartheid and pro-democracy movements of South Africa and Haiti.

A friend of the US-deposed Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide, Robinson is the author of five books, including The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America, and Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from his Native Land, on why he renounced his American citizenship for a life in St. Kitts.

On September 13, 2007, Randall Robinson visited one of Harlem’s best bookstores, Hue-Man Books, to speak on the subject of his then-new book An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.

How Canada collaborated with overthrowing Haitian democracy

2010-01-25T22:29:00.006-07:00

Thanks to Marguerite Laurent for these links.

Plus, directly from one of her links, these links:

Lies without Borders:
How CIDA-funded 'NGOs' waged a propaganda war to justify Haiti’s 2004 coup

Press for Conversion! magazine, Issue #63 (November 2008)
Published by the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT)

Front Cover (pdf)

Table of Contents & Acknowledgments

Background (pdf)

Demonizing Democracy:
Christianity vs. Vodoun and the Politics of Religion in Haiti (htm)

What is Vodoun?

CIDA’S Affinity with Elite and Blindspot for Vodoun (htm)

NCHR-Haiti: A Prime Source of Canadian-funded Lies (htm)

Epithets without Borders // What does Chimère Really Mean? (htm)

“2000 Elections” (pdf)

An Excuse to Destabilize Haiti’s Democracy (htm)

Canadian “NGOs” Aid antiAristide Election Rhetoric (htm)

“Black Friday” (pdf)

Creating the Necessary Pretext Incident (htm)

Video Evidence Reveals True Culprits (htm)

CIDA-funded Propaganda about “Black Friday” (htm)

“Operation Baghdad” (pdf)

Exposing the Big Lie of “Operation Baghdad" (htm)

A Fabrication by the Group of 184 (htm)

Two Human Rights Investigations (htm)

Not the Usual Suspects: Making and Breaking Illusions in Haiti (htm)

Alternatives, to the Truth // Alternatives, to Democracy (htm)

“Aristide’s Departure” (pdf)

Did he Jump or was he Pushed? (htm)

Aristide's so-called Resignation letter // Taken for a Ride (htm)

CIDA-funded “NGOs” Herald Aristide’s “Departure" (htm)

“No Political Prisoners” (pdf)

Mysterious Case of Haiti’s Disappeared Political Prisoners (htm)

Prime Minister Yvon Neptune: CIDA’s Top Political Prisoner (htm)

Why was Sò Anne Imprisoned for 27 Months? (htm)

Back Cover (pdf)
Remembering Marion Dewar (htm)
Stop Ottawa’s Arms Shows! Origins of COAT: 20 Years and Counting! (htm)

The three previous issues of Press for Conversion! also focus on Canada's nefarious role in Haiti:

Issue 62 (May 2008) "Putting the Aid in Aiding and Abetting:
CIDA's Agents of Regime Change in Haiti's 2004 Coup"

Issue 61 (September 2007) "CIDA's Key Role in Haiti's 2004 Coup:
Funding Regime Change, Dictatorship and Human Rights Atrocities, one Haitian 'NGO' at a Time"

Issue 60 (March 2007) "A Very Canadian Coup in Haiti:
The Top 10 Ways that Canada?s Government helped the 2004 Coup and its Reign of Terror"

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Martin Bernal on African Egypt

2010-01-13T17:13:00.011-07:00

FM88.5 Edmonton

CJSR.com Worldwide

6 PM Mountain Time
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For almost two hundred years, imperial Europe and America has systematically preached to the world that the Egyptians were pink-skinned Europeans, a depiction no ancient Egyptian painter or sculptor ever created.

To re-establish Ancient Egypt as an African civilisation is a complex task due to the awesome weight of two centuries of European racial brainwashing. That task requires a multidisciplinary approach engaging archeo-linguistics, philosophy, comparative religion, physical and cultural anthropology, and blood-type analysis.

Few scholars are better suited to such a daunting task than Dr. Martin Bernal, author of the monumental series Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilisation.

A maverick academic and historical investigator, Dr. Bernal has employed thousands of modern and ancient documents, and addressed innumerable cultural, philosophical, scholarly and scientific issues, in order to set the historical record straight, to revise what he called the Ancient Model of Egypt held by the Greeks and other ancient Europeans: that the Egyptians were Africans whose vast genius formed the basis of much of Greek religion, philosophy, art, architecture, mathematics, science and civilisation, with the West Asian Phoenicians supplying a great deal as well.

As Bernal points out elsewhere while discussing what he calls the “Semitic hypothesis,” linguists consider Phoenician and Hebrew as dialects of the same Canaanite language.

That’s relevant because a century ago, European bigots were even more upset about the reality that Semitic peoples influenced Ancient Greeks than they were about African influence.

Today, the antagonism has switched, with a far greater rejectionism of Egypt’s Africanity and influence on the Greeks.

We touched on many topics in our conversation, including:

• an alternate title for the series, African Athena
• the fate of Bernal’s relationship with his foes such as Mary Lefkowitz, author of Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History, and Tony Martin, author of The Progress of the African Race Since Emancipation and Prospects for the Future
• how National Geographic routinely attempts to discredit the reality of African Egypt,
• whether writing began first in Africa, or in West Asia, and
• whether the linguistic evidence proves that Egypt’s original name, Kemet, means “the Black Land,” or “Land of the Blacks.”

We also discussed the African-American scholar Molefi Kete Asante, one of the most influential academics on African issues in the world, and WEB DuBois, the pioneering African-American scholar from a century ago.

Dr. Bernal spoke with me by telephone from his home in Ithaca, New York, on April 20, 2008.

Today's Moment of Perfect Beauty: Duke Ellington's "Arabesque Cookie"

2010-01-12T21:08:00.002-07:00

If you can't see the above audio link, click here.

I don't give a damn about Harry Reid, and saying "Negro dialect" is just plain weird, but....

2010-01-12T20:53:00.007-07:00

I'd say that the American "Republicans" attempting to make hay out of this issue are too funny, and not in a good way.

Br. Davey D. has some excellent thoughts on the subject:

"The party of Ronald Reagan who supported South African Apartheid, the party of John McCain who said ‘No to a Martin Luther King holiday are suddenly getting all Jesse Jackson-like and riding hard for all those who have been on the receiving end of racial insults and oppression....

"I was more offended seeing a Professor Tricia Rose, Professor Marc Lamont Hill, BET’s Jeff Johnson and the dozen of other Black faces invited to discuss an old white man using the word ‘Negro’ versus seeing them invited on a regular basis to discuss a variety of other topics that have arguably more impact.

"I would’ve like to have seen some of those Black voices on the Sunday morning talk shows earlier this year dragging Harry Reid’s ass through the coals around the Healthcare debate when single payer and later public option got snatched off the table.

"To me the insult was seeing Black intelligence limited to just this topic, whereas I might see a dimwit like Ann Coulter invited to weigh in on everything from the War in Afghanistan to what Chris Brown did to Rihanna."

Terrordome guest and sociologist supreme Br. Algernon Austin also threw down:

"Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-NV) simply told the truth, in my view. I don't see what he has to apologize for.

"According to the Washington Post, the book Game Change states that when assessing the strengths of then candidate Barack Obama in 2008, Reid said that he 'believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama--a 'light-skinned" African American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one".'

"There is nothing offensive or even controversial here.

"It seems that some people are upset because they have deluded themselves into thinking that America is a post-racial society. Reid's remarks show an awareness that blackness poses challenges for success with the broad American electorate."

Righteous.

Course, the bwoi is still weird. "Negro"? What is this, 1970? Has dude been watching Good Times or something?

Keith Boykin: How Tiger Woods became "Black"

2010-01-12T20:50:00.002-07:00

Br. Keith Boykin writes, "We've seen the Tiger Woods story before, most notably with O.J. Simpson, but also, of course, with Michael Jackson.

"It's the story of the beloved crossover superstar who falls from grace in mainstream society and quickly morphs into the image of the stereotypically dangerous black male figure."

Nobody said Australia was "post-racial"

2010-01-12T20:46:00.003-07:00

If you can't see the above video, click here.

Journalist Allan Nairn on Obama: "Murderer and terrorist" who's killed more in first year than Bush did in first or last year

2010-01-12T11:41:00.001-07:00

Allan Nairn on Obama:

"“I think Obama should be remembered as a great man because of the blow he struck against white racism .... But once he became president ... Obama became a murderer and a terrorist, because the US has a machine that spans the globe, that has the capacity to kill, and Obama has kept it set on kill. He could have flipped the switch and turned it off…but he chose not to do so.”

Yet another act of depravity coming out of Saudi Arabia

2010-01-12T11:33:00.004-07:00

"A Kenyan woman is accusing her Saudi employer of throwing her out of a third floor window, breaking her legs and hands.

"Another maid, just rescued by relatives, said she had to live on dog food because her employers neither fed her nor allowed her out of the house."

That's Fatuma Athuman in the photograph.

Thanks to Black Electorate.com for the link.

Nigerian-American SF novelist Nnedi Okorafor asks, "Is Africa Ready for Science Fiction?"

2010-01-06T13:43:00.003-07:00

Quoting from Okorafor's article:

Naunihal Singh, a professor of comparative politics specializing in conflict, civil-military relations, and the politics of Sub-Saharan Africa at Notre Dame University (and a fan of speculative fiction), had some similar comments about science fiction in Africa.

“Science-fiction will have to adapt itself to the local market,” Singh said. “I don’t think there’s the sensibility for it right now. I remember seeing the Matrix in a mixed crowd of Ghanaians and Americans, this was in Ghana. Even though the room was dark, and there were some 40 plus people there, I could tell who was from where by their reactions to the movie.

“The Ghanaians just weren’t connecting to it. Bring The Terminator to West Africa, and he’d stop running in a day. He’d sit there and glitch. It’ll be hard to make people afraid of a future where computers take over the world when they can’t manage to keep the computers on their desk running.

"These are very western stories. On the other hand, classic science fiction, like space exploration stories, would probably work better… assuming it was adapted for the audience. Africans would love to see stories about Africans on a space ship. The idea that Africans might be dominant in the future would resonate so well with nationalism.”

Today's moment of perfect beauty: Senegal's Orchestre Baobab with "Dee Moo Woor"

2010-01-06T13:40:00.002-07:00

Cee-lo is just pretty terrific.

2010-01-05T22:02:00.005-07:00

And this video is bizarre and fun.