Yeah this scumbag cost many lives. A Culture Warrior's Impact on AIDS in Africa
Jesse Helms, former six-term Republican senator from North Carolina and de-facto leader of his party's "culture wars," found a way to make HIV-AIDS the communism of the 1990s. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Helms did not simply use his power to cut U.S. government assistance to international HIV-AIDS programs, he leveraged his political position to create an environment that sought to stigmatize and shame AIDS victims both at home and abroad.
President Bush's trip this week to Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia would appear at first glance to be a reversal of Senator Helms' efforts, but in many ways this administration's HIV-AIDS policy in Africa, and the current foreign policy apparatus that implements it, may be Helms' most desired legacy.
Most may remember Helms' long-held vile views on homosexuals and the AIDS crisis in America. Though he did not quite have the same repulsive reactions to the spread of HIV-AIDS in Africa – there, it wasn't about homosexuality, but poverty, he reasoned - it took some star-studded diplomacy to get Helms to support US assistance to fight the disease.
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CULTURE
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Passing Strange: Black Rock 'n' Roll on Broadway
For years, the singer/songwriter/guitarist known as Stew has led the band The Negro Problem and won accolades for his cleverly subversive lyrics and melodic arrangements. Now, he’s using the wit and attitude honed on the alternative rock circuit to expand the possibilities of the musical and the vision of blackness on Broadway. The new show Passing Strange, the fruit of his creative labor, is a smart, funny, and thoughtfully rendered portrait of a black artist as a young man on a sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll fueled quest for his artistic voice. Along the way he learns about himself and the power of love.
But how does a rock ’n’ roller end up on Broadway? "That’s the question I keep asking myself everyday," Stew said when we spoke. "Basically by staying open and flexible. My collaborator, Heidi [Rodewald] and myself, we never wanted to get to Broadway or ever tried to get to Broadway. When opportunities arose, we just stayed open and curious." Stew and Rodewald were invited to perform their cabaret show at New York’s Public Theater and worked with the Berkeley Repertory Theater and the Sundance Institute to develop the piece. After last year’s critically acclaimed run at the Public, the show is moving to Broadway.
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I just found this story very interesting.
From Dancehall Rapper to Nursery Rhymer
IF you’ve never heard of Father Goose, just ask a kid. As part of the eclectic family music ensemble Dan Zanes & Friends, Father Goose, a k a Wayne Rhoden, is the boisterous, big-bellied Jamaican guy who routinely steals the show with his gruff renditions of "Georgie Porgie" and the "Hokey Pokey."
Stevie Wonder performs "Superstition" on Sesame Street
Tony Bennett performs "Slimey to the Moon" on Sesame Street
"Biz's Beat of the Day" on Yo Gabba Gabba! "When I say Father, you say Goose!" he commands, and hundreds of little voices obey. Mr. Rhoden has appeared on all five of Mr. Zanes’s children’s CDs, including the 2006 release "Catch That Train!," which won a Grammy Award for best musical album for children.
"I notice a lot of people say they’re doing kids music, and they try to water it down," Mr. Rhoden said in an interview. "Just be yourself." (He will perform with Mr. Zanes in two shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music next Sunday.)
But Mr. Rhoden’s act wasn’t always so kid-friendly. Just as Mr. Zanes was once the lead singer for a 1980s rock band called the Del Fuegos, Mr. Rhoden’ had a musical career with an even more unexpected first act. During the 1980s and ’90s Father Goose was known as Rankin Don, a hardcore dancehall rapper (or "D.J." in reggae parlance) from Brooklyn. His best-known release was the 12-inch single "Baddest D.J.," a brazen declaration of lyrical superiority punctuated with gun-slinging hyperbole: "The 16 ’pon me back, the Desert Eagle ’pon me hip."
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Let's just say Time didn't hit it out of the park on this one.Time magazine published a list of 25 of the most important films on race. (the Black Blogosphere mostly thinks it sucks)
Time magazine and staff critic Richard Corliss meant well. A couple of days ago, "in honor of Black History Month," they released a list: "The 25 Most Important Films On Race." The presumption of the title pretty much guaranteed their fate; the actual list sealed it. And, though Corliss’ reflections were obviously well thought out, they reflect a worldview seen through a different lens. Time for the home team to weigh in. Some factions were tactful, like eurweb, which called the list "a little bogus." Another,
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INTERNATIONAL
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When I was a kid my father would tell me how Jamaica realized this a dead end and stopped it from happening when he was a young man. Haiti being much poorer has failed to do this.
Forests Vanishing Swiftly in Haiti
Far from the spreading slums of the Haitian capital, past barren dirt mountains and hillsides stripped to a chalky white core, two woodcutters bring down a towering oak tree in one of the few forested valleys left in the Caribbean country. Fanel Cantave, 36, says he has little choice but to make his living in a way that is causing environmental disaster in Haiti. And these days, he and his son, Phillipe, 15, must travel ever farther from their village to find trees to cut.
"There is no other way to get money," the father said, pushing his saw through wood that will earn him as much as $12.50, depending on how many planks it produces.
Such raw economics explain the disappearance of Haiti's forests, a process that has led to erosion that has reduced scarce farmland and left the island vulnerable to deadly floods. U.N. experts say just 2 to 4 percent of forest cover remains in Haiti, down from 7 to 9 percent in 1981. And despite millions invested in reforestation, such efforts have mostly failed because of economic pressures and political turmoil.
For example, the U.S. Agency for International Development embarked on an ambitious $22.8 million project in the 1980s to plant about 30 million trees that could provide income for peasants. But the project focused on trees that can be made into charcoal for cooking, and nearly all were eventually cut down.
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Did the Pan-African Dream Die With Apartheid?
Not long ago, I wrote an article for the Paris-based magazine, Africa Report, about the broken ties between African Americans and Africans. I described how the two groups had worked in harmony to end apartheid in South Africa some two decades ago, which raised hopes for a pan-African future.
But, I wrote, "The momentum was not sustained. Perhaps that was because South Africa was unique: [Apartheid] was about racism, something to which African-Americans and their political allies could relate."
I went on to quote several African Americans who had been involved in that struggle, including Salih Booker, now head of Global Rights, a human rights advocacy group. Booker earned his anti-apartheid spurs demonstrating in the streets of Washington, D.C., calling for sanctions against the apartheid regime. Booker told me the connection between Africans and African Americans was at its lowest ebb, and was surprised by the lack of interest in Africa. Booker continued: "It is ironic because now you would think at this moment in history, when all of Africa has finally achieved political independence and the rise of African Americans in terms of influence and power positions, you would think at this moment in history, pan-Africanism could be at its height. But it's just the opposite."
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Please Lord let this be true. Deal to Share Power in Kenya Appears in Reach
Kenya’s rival political parties have nearly completed a deal to end the crisis that has kept this country on edge for almost two months, with the government agreeing to create a prime minister position, one of the opposition’s chief demands, a high-ranking government official said Thursday.
Not all the details have been worked out, the official said, but lawyers were drafting language on Thursday evening that would outline the job of the prime minister and how the position would be incorporated into Kenya’s political framework.An opposition official confirmed that a deal was close, but was a bit more cautious, saying that the amount of power given to the prime minister had not been pinned down.
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Cameroon wants to sell a forest, but conservationists don't want to buy it
FOR rent: 830,000 hectares of pristine tropical rainforest. Rich in wildlife, including forest elephants and gorillas. Provides a regionally important African green corridor. Price: $1.6m a year. Conservationist tenant preferred, but extractive forestry also considered. Please apply to the Cameroonian minister of forestry.
That, in essence, is what the government of Cameroon has been offering since 2001 in an attempt to make some money from a forest known as Ngoyla-Mintom. The traditional way would be to lease the land to a logging company. But Joseph Matta, the country's forestry minister, would rather lease it to a conservation group. The trouble is, he cannot find one that is prepared to take it off his hands.
The idea of conservation concessions has been around since 2000. It was introduced by an American charity called Conservation International, which realised the going rate for logging concessions was often so low that it could afford to outbid the foresters. It has since leased forests in Guyana—where it has 80,000 hectares of Upper Essequibo—and in Peru, Sierra Leone, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Mexico. But even in 2001 it reckoned that at $2 a hectare Ngoyla-Mintom was too dear. Its land in Essequibo costs a mere 37 cents a hectare.
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POLITICS
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The answer to the next question is that he never admits his mistakes. Why Can't Bush Face Up to His Family's Slave-Owning Past?
The image most people have of slavery involves a cotton plantation with a big white house, a black village where 300 people live in cabins and a cruel overseer in the wings. This was not the model followed by the ancestors of President George W. Bush when, 175 years ago, they enslaved about 30 people on the shores of the upper Chesapeake.
It is an apt time to contemplate the link between slavery and the White House. This week President Bush is in the midst of a six-day trip to Africa, his second tour of the continent. He will visit several countries – including Benin, Ghana, and Liberia – from which the United States once drew slaves. That the trip falls on either side of President's Day, which honors statesmanship in the White House, makes the occasion all the more fitting. The moment is mature for the president to speak about slavery, especially given his personal connection to slavery's legacy.
A new book by Jacob Weisberg, The Bush Tragedy, mentions in passing that at one time some of the president's family owned slaves. Weisberg doesn't dwell on the links between the White House and the antebellum past except to say the Bush clan's story is a long-held "family secret." The Bush Tragedy, a revealing book about family dynamics in the Bush political dynasty, treats the slavery matter only briefly, focusing instead on the "spectacular, avoidable flame-out" of the receding administration. But the story that joins the 43rd president to predecessors who held title to dozens of people bears retelling in detail.
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I'm not electioneering. I'm an Obama supporter but I'm including this story only because it seems to be gaining more traction in the general public.
The second thoughts of Hillary's African American endorsers.
In retrospect, the South Carolina results exposed a divide in the way the campaigns courted African American pols. The Clintons had largely operated from a top-down model--relying on personal relationships and the self-interest of black politicians and hoping their constituents would follow suit. In one now- famous episode, they went so far as to give State Senator Darrell Jackson, a prominent pastor, a consulting contract. By contrast, the Obama campaign generally observed a "no walking-around money" policy. It made the case to African American politicians by pointing to its grassroots strength (though it didn't hurt that Obama's PAC handed out nearly $200,000 to candidates and political groups in early primary states last year). "After we won Iowa, I went to a lot of leaders and said, 'You better get on the train before it comes rolling through here,'" recalls Anton Gunn, Obama's South Carolina political director. "Some laughed it off; others recognized this was for real."
Often the divide was generational. With some notable exceptions, the profile of the typical African American Clinton endorser was someone who'd supported Bill Clinton and had enjoyed some amount of White House largesse in return. (As president, Clinton had headlined multiple fund-raisers for Jackson Lee, for example.) For his part, Obama tended to clean up among those who had entered elective office during the post-Clinton era. Freshman Georgia Representative Hank Johnson told me he got a call from Obama before he was even sworn in last January. He was spoken for by the time a Clinton operative sidled up to him in the spring.
Whatever the nature of the split, it wasn't hard to see the problem for the Clinton supporters in the aftermath of South Carolina. "For individuals who endorsed Senator Clinton, [the risk was always that] Obama would prove to be enormously popular in the black community; he'd win the lion's share of your district," says Alabama Representative Artur Davis, who endorsed Obama last February. "You'd find yourself at odds with your constituents, and an opponent could use that against you."
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It's funny, a couple weeks ago Obama Blacks couldn't win White voters in the South. Hmmmm.....
Race Matters Less in Politics of South
The racial breakthroughs have come gingerly in Alabama over the years: a black mayor there, an old Klansman put on trial here, a civil rights memorial there. And a few weeks ago, voters in a county that is more than 96 percent white chose a genial black man, James Fields, to represent them in the State House of Representatives. It is a historic first, but the moment is full of awkwardness.
"Really, I never realize he’s black," said a white woman in a restaurant, smiling."He’s black?" asked Lou Bradford, a white Cullman police officer, jokingly. "You know, I don’t even see him as black," said another of Mr. Fields’s new white constituents (editors note: this always makes me smile when it's said), Perry Ray, the mayor of one of the county’s villages, Dodge City. A woman congratulates Mr. Fields as he stops in traffic, and afterward, he shakes his head ruefully: "Sometimes, I have to pinch myself: ‘Am I really black?’ "
Yet in a state once synonymous with racial strife, there is no denying this milestone, for all its tentativeness. Everyone — the voter in Cullman, the Alabama politician, the local historian — is rubbing his or her eyes, a little.
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RACISM
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The New Republic is right in their description of this blog at the National Review. John Derbyshire: Bigot
Maybe I'm jaded, but I really need persuading that when I look at Barack Obama, I'm not just seeing Al Sharpton minus the pompadour and the attitude.
Black folks and their "attitude", right? Derbyshire follows this post up with another gem, which I'll quote at length:
A thing I hear a lot, following the campaign trail (and just a few minutes ago, in my e-mail box) is something like: "Oh, this race business, it's just you older types who go on about it. Young people like me, the 18-30 crowd, we really are past it all. It just doesn't matter to us at all. Black, white, Hispanic, we really don't care."
Now, you know me; I really, really hate to burst anybody's bubble. However, the crowd of 21-year-olds I graduated with back in 1966 were just as convinced of their own post-racial righteousness as this present cohort are. So, I am sure, were the graduates of 1976, 1986, and 1996. It's to do with being young.
Those damn idealistic kids wanting to move behind racism--the nerve! In such a society, after all, there would be no room for bigoted writers at "intellectually serious" magazines. It's time National Review sent him packing.
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This is a very sad story. I only hope that this isn't coming from an adult, because that would only make it worse.
Hate Mail Sent to Blacks at Prep School Is Investigated
A police investigation is under way at an elite prep school here after many black students received anonymous letters that the head of the school described as "threatening hate mail."
A spokeswoman for the school, St. Paul’s, said the letters had arrived in the students’ mailboxes on Tuesday. The spokeswoman, Jana Brown, would not disclose the contents of the letters or how many students received them, but said, "Students of color do appear to be the target."
According to several people associated with St. Paul’s, each student received a copy of his own photo from the school’s internal face book with the words "bang bang get out of here" written below. They said the letters, sent through the Postal Service, were postmarked from nearby Manchester, N.H.
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DIARIES OF NOTE
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Oh my God, I just voted for a black guy. by LoneBlackMan
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The Black Latino Divide by Rican1
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O'Reilly Doesn't Want to Lynch Michelle Obama by Devilstower
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Analysis of Obama's performance vs. polls [Part 1 of 3: Black voters] by mkaplan
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BREAKING: John Lewis draws primary challenge! by Goldie Taylor
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