ExiledOne Commentary

1959 Cadillac: length, 6.22 m or 19 feet. Weight, 5500 lb or 2500kg

As news of multinational oil corporations such as Chevron, Exxon and Total establishing deals with the wobbly Iraq government reaches us in 2009, it reminded me to pull out some research. The topic of Iraq, and the suffering of the people there is not spoken of too much anywhere, even though a war continues. There is a deathly quiet that has settled upon the corporate newsdesks as the calendar nears the third anniversary of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein hanging.

Saddam Hussein was hung on 30 Dec. 2006

The days gone by often are best for refreshing memory and clarifying what the present brings us. Let’s see what we have in the ExiledOne Commentary files from the months before the Iraqi’s controversial death at US run Camp Justice, outside of Baghdad:

Saddam Hussein (1937-2006) like dozens of other “leaders” in the world, had for decades been funded and feted by Washington DC to behave in the ways that he has. While television-tutored scholars can note Iraq’s oil resource importance in the capitalist economy, there may not be knowledge that the founder of OPEC was an Iraqi. Americans owned processing plants in Iraq in the past 50-60 years and eliminated various politicians there to fuel the gasoline gulping tail-finned behemoths that made Ford GM and Chrysler famous.

US drive-in movies, milkshakes, dancing the Twist and Saddam?

This isn’t far-fetched-the man from Tikrit was involved as early as 1959 in taking over Iraq. By the mid ‘60s, Saddam Hussein was a US political favorite. In early 1990s Philadelphia, I recall a speech I made where I mentioned that, in the rush Bush senior made for war (and attempted re-election) the “evil one” actually had a Cadillac limousine, bullet proofed, being serviced at a select Detroit garage.

21 November 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

New Website Coming!

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From The ExiledOne Commentary Archives… here is an article [PART THREE] about the exploitation of African people’s music and culture developed in America which has now reached international proportions. This last segment of 3 looks at the first racially integrated band to be commercially exposed in the United States of America. The music (so called jazz) may be more known about by Whites, Europeans and Asians than the original creative Africans in America. Read about some political and cultural (and financial) reasons why this came to be. The article’s title originally was The Seventh Decade: African People In America, Music and Politics

L to R: Lionel Hampton, vibraphone, Teddy Wilson, piano, Benny Goodman, clarinet, Gene Krupa, drums in the 1930s

Whites were about to play music in public with African "Americans".

The young Bix Beiderbecke, of prairie land Iowa and regarded as the "best White jazz musician" even today, had loathed the separation of the races in public performances. Mezz Mezzrow, of Chicago was fascinated with the music in its early Chicago days of King Oliver and Louis Armstrong and his wife Lillian, did too. Chicago born Benjamin David (Benny Goodman) said so too.

Yet it was the youthful liberal (NAACP board of directors in his 20s) John Hammond who spearheaded the racial integration of musicians on the high profile level. The son of an wealthy American family, the Vanderbilts, Hammond encouraged legendary leader Benny Carter to get hold of an aspiring and talented piano player. He had heard Teddy Wilson being broadcast one mid 30's evening over clear channel radio station WMAQ in Chicago.

The strategy of employing a role model, a certain kind of "respectable" Black to effect social and economic change is not new. Hammond found that he had what he wanted. It was the beginning of what is today mass marketing some parts of African people's culture to the world.

The Only Major Recording Label African People in America Controlled Was Black Swan (1920s) There Would Be No Others On This Scale Until Detroit’s Motown 45 Years Later

This Texas born artist, Theodore Shaw Wilson had a fluid way of conveying the gutsy "trumpet" piano signature of Earl "Fatha" Hines, a top rank keyboardist. Teddy was trained. He was refined in his performances and had come through Tuskegee Institute, a segregated US South school known for its upper class Blacks who strove to not upset White society. Other influences were the virtuoso out of Toledo, Ohio, Art Tatum. "Teddy" and Art had been radio hosts in Toledo, the Great Lakes city in the early thirties. Teddy Wilson was suave enough to gig professionally with the greats in Chicago, including "Dippermouth", Louis Armstrong, at one point.

Why Hammond chose Teddy Wilson may be that "Fatha" Hines was musically too advanced, even wild, for America. Art Tatum was also decades beyond what Whites could grasp-a savant, it can be said. He was blind.

And so, in 1935, John Hammond convinced Benny Goodman, a widely promoted Jewish clarinet player, to finally accept African so called American Teddy Wilson in his band. Goodman had resisted Hammond's request for several years, complaining that he would lose money if he hired African so called Americans. Finally, he hired mild mannered Teddy Wilson, the brilliant pianist.

It is true that the group faced hatred all across the US.

But John Hammond, who became famous for sponsoring and recording selected artists delivering African culture to the US recording industry (Columbia) and who vainly tried to define what many artists were expressing, went on to become rich.

By 1936, Teddy Wilson appeared in a trio with Chicago's Gene Krupa on drums, Goodman on clarinet and they became famous. Then came the vibe player/drummer Lionel Hampton, forming a quartet of two Africans and two Euro Americans.

Although US propaganda would announce to the world that the racial barriers were then dissolving in US society, (Jesse Owens winning Olympic medals in Nazi Germany) the background of this music group had a much deeper foundation than is generally known.

Krupa died in 1973. Goodman became very rich and is erroneously known as the King of Swing, a title which should have gone to Teddy Wilson or Fletcher Henderson, who Benny Goodman idolized and replicated a good many of his charts from. He passed on in 1986. Teddy Wilson was respected by peers such as Lester Young, Billie Holiday and others, but played internationally until age 72, passing on in 1986. Lionel Hampton also toured until his last years. He left this plane in 2002, age 94.

The shifting, volatile climate in the US society of the 1930s forced social changes.

Financial rebuilding of the capitalist system demanded that new markets were opened.

By the decade after the second imperialist war's expansion of industries, a watered down version of African cultural forms was being branded Rock & Roll and was played by Whites.

It was not the goodwill of Whites or an American government that created change. America remains in the 21st century a society catering to an economically and politically dominant White population.

The roots of the Black men and women emerging onto music stages with Whites came about methodically.

The Hatred/Desire For Cultural Mastery Of African Culture In America Is Deep Rooted: Bus Depot, 1940s And 21st Century ‘Jazz Star’ Diana Krall

There must be context when it is noted that Norah Jones or Diana Krall is considered a top jazz vocalist in 2006, piling up earnings for themselves and giant music corporations like British based EMI.

Even 70 years later, the realities are not as simple as they may seem.

30 May 2006

From Exile,

Bankole

New Website Coming!

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The Proposed Gas Pipeline (Finland to Italy) That Bypasses Gas Rich Russia

NYA Sverige (New Sweden) in The Delaware River (pre-USA) Basin

Worldwide, there have been efforts of peoples and nations to unite and provide better lives for all. It is common knowledge that five fingers forming a fist can do more than one finger. In East Africa, the federation of governments has long been a possibility but there have been starts and stops. The story of the ancient Indigenous nationstates of North America, famously undercut by European invasions showcase the test of peoples’ limits in the face of epic adversity.

Official Seal Of The Swedish Province of Lappland

But in Europe, too, the fractures and strains of the various peoples also have had monumental effect on that continent and the world. First, as in Africa, or any other part of the globe, and for differing reasons, political lines drawn by armies and religious powers, merchants and others, define and yet don’t define what is real. It is not spoken of much by the West or the sanctioned states that do not want to upset it, but a great chunk of the world population, the Indigenous peoples, rarely have a microphone at the United Nations or other “international” forums. National minorities, which many Indigenous peoples are, but which additionally include African people in America, may be even more isolated from being heard about their particular political status. Not very long before I became a Human Rights Defender in 1999, the chance at bringing a legal challenge to Geneva, Switzerland (UN headquarters) was just a daydream.

The Roma (commonly called gypsies) receive the worst of treatment as a standard European social reality. They have a situation that has not been addressed correctly. Speaking with them and observing the ragged view that is held by Europeans concerning their Human Rights was shocking. Meeting ‘tinkers’ in Ireland, who chose to tell me details of their plight and how it connected to the sprawl of Europe-wide Roma was intriguing. Sami people of northern Scandinavia, Basques, Bretons, their cousins the Welsh, folks from Scotland who identify as Picts; there are numerous peoples in the whole of the “countries”. Historian John Henrik Clarke wrote of the ‘tribes of Europe’ and though when I read his words years ago I didn’t know then that I would come to realize the notion for myself. Just as remote was the idea that I would be an exile here.

1950s Sign Discriminating Against Roma (London, England)

And so it is with interest that I take in the information on European peoples upset about foreigners entering ‘their lands’. The EU and it’s 27 governments are supposed to be begin working of one accord soon, now that part of the Czech Republic officialdom has capitulated to an EU constitution. The test now is to find a believable bureaucratic and practical way to deliver for nearly 500 million residents-without of course taking into account history. And the happenings down here on the ground.

18 November 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

New Website Coming!

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European Earthquake (Exile 2009)

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In 2009, Predatory Lender CitiGroup Is Expanding Overseas After Ravaging The Poor And Marginal Middle Classes In The USA

It will be a pleasant day in the event that governments and people of a country can be seen for what they are. One is not the other, though there are often those who identify with the government in charge.

The corporate officials have also gotten human beings to believe that they, the business, are caring. While this concept may be starting to slip due to the still swirling financial situation, a great deal of the ‘civilized’ world neither knows or wants to know that their bank invests in places and spaces that aren’t too clean.




USA/EU/UK Funded Iraq After SIX YEARS:
So Called Nation Building Costs Many Lives and Much Money

Then there are the so called ethical ones. Putting money into a charity that is continuing the missionary strategy of re colonizing nations is what many either are or are not aware of. NGOs that ignore the economic, cultural, or social injustice in their backyard cannot be taken seriously. But the privileged ones of us, who can benefit in many ways in society, will most times decide to not challenge the status quo. The ‘helping’ groups, money mills and the grinding machinery of the statehouse, along with their cozy corporate media have little to fear from people ruled by fear ignorance and the realities of struggling for a living.

17 November 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

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Kwame Nkrumah

“Osagyefo” Kwame Nkrumah passed away on April 27, 1972 while seeking cancer treatment in Bucharest, Romania. The “redeemer” had been born in 1909, exactly a century ago this year. By the 1940s he was one of the brilliant minds who helped move a weakened Europe out of Africa: hundreds of years of colonialism was at an end. By the ‘60s, Kwame was one of the forces creatively charting African consciousness and innovation across the continent and throughout the world.

What was Kwame Nkrumah, then an exile and former leader of Ghana doing 5000 km from his home? Medical care was available in Bucharest, the capital city for the man in his early sixties. ’72 marked a sixth year outside of Ghana. He had been overthrown by enemies in-country aided by Western counterintelligence. They feared African coalitions and USSR influence. Sekou Touré of Guinea had the same foes and took Nkrumah in.

Bucharest

Despite his achievements and popularity in Africa, the Eurasian country Ceauçescu ruled was where Kwame ended up trying to be treated.

Samia Nkrumah, now a Ghana politician, near her father’s statue

While this man's passing on in exile is not unique, a critical assessment needs to be made. When it is examined today, this incident demands that students of history and global politics question what it means to be an exile, what political figures are often forced to do and how their actions produce change and impact future events.

14 November 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

New Website Coming!

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From The ExiledOne Commentary Archives…..Part of one of the last website entries of the year 2000, written in Canada, is below. If there is one woman that has had a great impact on the last few generations of African people in the USA, it is Assata Shakur, who fled a US prison 30 years ago on 2 November 1979. She survived underground in America and emerged in Cuba. Read about why. Then reason for a moment about what certain geopolitical forces don’t want you to know!

Assata Shakur

Shakur was convicted of first degree murder by an all White jury on March 25, 1977.  She was sentenced to life imprisonment.

 

The travesty imbedded in all this was unmistakable, and Shakur's circumstances remained the topic of much discussion and debate.  Even in instances involving actual armed struggle on the part of liberation movements-leaving aside the probability that earlier applications of COINTELPRO tactics had done much to convince adherents that no other route to effect positive change lay open to them-the Bureau had been duplicitous in its approach.  One need only examine the case of Assata Shakur, to get the picture.  Publicly and sensationally accused by the FBI of being the "revolutionary mother hen of a BLA cell conducting a series of cold blooded murders of New York City police officers," Shakur was made the subject of a nationwide manhunt in 1972.  On May 2, 1973, Zayd Malik Shakur, Sundiata Acoli were subjected along with Assata to one one of the random harassment stops of blacks on the New Jersey turnpike for which the New Jersey state troopers are so deservedly notorious.  Apparently realizing who it was they'd pulled over, the two troopers-Werner Foerster and James Harper-opened fire, wounding Assata Shakur immediately.  In the fight which followed, both Zayd Shakur and trooper Foerster were killed, trooper Harper and Sundiata Acoli wounded.  Both surviving BLA members were captured.

 

Assata was, however, charged with none of the killings which had ostensibly earned her such celebrated status as a "terrorist".  Instead, the government contended she had participated in bank robberies, and the state of New York accused her of involvement in the killing of a heroin dealer in Brooklyn and the failed ambush of two cops in Queens on January, 23, 1973.  She was acquitted of every single charge in a series of trials lasting into 1977.  Meanwhile, she was held without bond, in isolation and in especially miserable jail facilities.  Finally, having exhausting all other possibilities of obtaining a conviction, the authorities took her to trial in NewJersey in the death of trooper Foerster.  Despite the fact that Sundiata Acoli had long since been convicted of having fired the fatal bullets-and medical testimony indicating her wounds had incapacitated her prior to the firefight itself-Assata became all the more true the night of November 2, 1979, when a combat unit of the BLA set the prisoner free from the Maximum security building of the Clinton Women's Prison in New Jersey.  now hyped as "the nation's number one terrorist fugitive," despite the state's failure to link her to any concrete "act of terrorism", was quietly provided sanctuary in Cuba where she remains today."

SOURCE: The COINTELPRO Papers, Churchill and Vander Wall,   South End Press, 1990

 

" Shortly after my return to New York, on August 30, 1984, I received the phone call I had been anticipating for five years.  Assata called me from Cuba to tell me she had been granted political asylum, her usually quiet voice pitched to unprecedented height above the telephone static.  But before I let myself believe it was Assata, I kept my voice cold and distant, asking her to tell me something only she and I knew, not permitting the flood of relief and happiness envelop me until I was sure."

 

In April, 1985, Kakuya, Doris (Assata's mother) and I made the first of many trips to Cuba, and while we were there decided that Kakuya would remain with Assata.

 

Inadmissable Evidence, Evelyn Williams, Trial Lawyer and aunt of Assata Shakur,                                     Lawrence Hill Books, 1993,  reprint, IUniverse.com, 2000


11 November 2009
From Exile,
Bankole

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From The ExiledOne Commentary Archives… here is an article [PART TWO] about the exploitation of African people’s music and culture developed in America which has now reached international proportions. This segment deals with the era just before strict social custom and law forbid Africans and Whites from performing together. Also, it points out that the cultural degradation/cultural appropriation long established in America was about to take a new form in the 1940s and 50s. The title originally was  The Seventh Decade: African People In America, Music and Politics

The Cotton Club, New York City was racially segregated except for the bandstand musicians (and very light skinned African women dancers) and was controlled by White gangsters

The Charleston originally was a folk dance in the rich African culture in South Carolina in the early 1900s
 

While much of the music of the people reflected the largely US South rural reality (blues) and the dehumanized existence in America's economic and social pit, the newer form called jazz celebrated some good times. Artists like Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington, band leaders of mainly trained musicians (they read music) who performed through the graces of Euro American crime figures like Al Capone and Dutch Schultz, became more famous despite the hardships of the day. The uptempo infectious rhythms at the Cotton Club were considered erotic and comedic rather than serious music to many of the all White patrons in New York City. Immune to the money troubles of The Depression, they kept the party going, guzzling bootleg alcohol. To escape this oppressive control, a young trumpet player Louis Armstrong fled to Europe for a time.

 

Strangely, as the film industry in California rallied the US myth with child star Shirley Temple movies (Bright Eyes, 1934) another myth was being built upon. George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess from 1935 portayed in song and theater the bright ray of hope that millionaire Gershwin felt America had for the poorest of Charleston, South Carolina Africans.

Willliam Warfield (1920-2002) baritone and bass vocalist

 

Expert in singing European Classical Music, (German, Russian) he was instead largely known for singing Old Man River from Porgy and Bess

But a major and highly public break with the order of the day was about to occur.

 

Kansas City's corrupt Prendergast machine festered ill health, petty criminal activities and deaths from disease even as The Blue Devils (Walter Page, Bill "Count" Basie, Lester Young) created branches of the music. The US Naval playground that sections of New Orleans once had been, where the marching and dancing music had blossomed decades prior, had overflowed--musicians were now in France and England before 1920 just as they were in Detroit and Philadelphia.

 

But like in hotels, trains, buses, restaurants and schools, the mixing of Whites and Africans on the music bandstand was forbidden. Intellectually, some Whites in the 1930s had liberal thoughts of changing the US society, even revolution (under their terms). But how would it unfold?

 

10 November 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

 

New Website Coming!

 

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Usain Bolt of Jamaica

 

Will The World Rush And Help The Caribbean Region With Its Ills?

 

There are few people that would turn down a chance to sit or frolic on a beach under the sparkling azure skies of the Caribbean. Indeed, from all over the world the privileged travel there on cruise ships, land on jumbo airplanes and in private sea and aircraft, floating down or through silent sun drenched atmosphere. Delightful could be the word to describe even one week in the climes famous for relaxation, romance and, if one maintains property there, luxury.

 

A Culture Has Been Buried Under Commercialism

Those who leave to return to Japan, Canada or Denmark or another ‘developed’ country may never see or care that the people who reside there are suffering. There may be no consideration for those who may never leave the islands between North, Central and South America, among the millions of kilometers of ocean water. Cuba’s state apparatus, once more supported by a score of neighboring Caribbean governments and 187 countries, was defended in international circles in the four decade call to end sanctions by those in Washington DC.

 

Sugar, now ruining peoples’ diets, was once what they were forced to produce 

Whether this is rooted in systematic oppression and still maintained by the earliest periods of recent historical European contact in the Western hemisphere is of little concern to the visitors. But to the people there are no escape routes: life expectancy ranges from 50 to nearly 75 years old. At least 18,000 people lost their lives due to climate related disasters in the new century in the Caribbean region. HIV AIDS, Type 2 Diabetes and homicide are raking countries such as Jamaica. Two questions: how do guns appear on an island? Are poor people and crime synonymous if they cannot leave their streets of shacks and open sewage gutters?

 Allen Stanford In custody

Shocked by the results, United Nations resolutions on diabetes is debated by otherwise vacationing panelists from the outer world. Murder, rape and hostility to foreigners isn’t likely put into a context that is reasonable. Islands and small populations remain dominated by Dutch, English, French, American and other former colonizers, whether individuals (Allen Stanford, the Texan $7 Billion Madoff of the Caribbean) or the Dutch Royals in far off Amsterdam deciding that this or that island can be “independent”.

  

England, for one place, has changed “territory”, “colony” to “commonwealth” and retained economic and political control of numerous islands such as Jamaica. It unilaterally dictates who can visit Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol or London, much less immigrate to study, work or live long term in the country.

 

Peter Fryer, editor of Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain explains some history of the Birmingham, England metalworking industry:

 

“…The Birmingham manufacturers took swift advantage of the opening of the African trade in 1698, and their exports of all sorts of increased enormously. The first order for flint-lock muskets to be exported to Africa was in fact executed at Birmingham in 1698. Soon the hammers and anvils were resounding more than ever. By 1707 the gunmakers, cutlers, and other manufacturers of wrought iron in Birmingham were petitioning the House of Commons…The steady demand for slaves and guns created a mass market capable of supporting what was for the time a large labour force.

 

By 1766…100,000 guns a year to the African coast…between 1796 and 1805, 161, 531 guns yearly…5,000 persons employed in Birmingham (1788) Despite the Abolition of the British slave trade in 1807…guns to Africa did not begin to decline until after the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1907…20,000,000 (20 MILLION) Birmingham guns had gone to Africa."

The triangular points from Northern Europe to West Africa and then to the Western hemisphere, principally the Caribbean in the 1500s and 1600s provided Europe with a genocidal profit in human beings. The basis of today’s capitalism mostly eradicated the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, worked till death generations of Africans, brought in indentured Chinese, Europeans and Indians, Arabs and various of the world’s peoples. The forces that brought this about allowed pirates and thieves to establish themselves. Still others gained enough wealth from the activity to distance themselves from it and spread the money out. Networked people from Alaska to Zanzibar watched the profits grow and involved their children, friends, fellow school graduates and business partners. They became known in the recent past as stockholders in corporations.

7 November 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

 

New Website Coming!

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A few facts about this part of the world:

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), author of Black Skin, White Mask and The Wretched Of The Earth was born in Martinique.

An African woman, Nanny, Queen of the Maroons, was key in ending direct English control of Jamaica.

Cuba is the most populous of the islands at 11.5 million people.

Andros Island, Bahamas was a refuge for African/Indigenous Seminoles who had retreated from Florida and the Americans in the 1820s.

From The ExiledOne Commentary Archives… here is an article [PART ONE] about the exploitation of African people’s music and culture developed in America which has now reached international proportions. The right context goes against the slanted grain of USA corporate and governmental propaganda. Music emanates from the heart of any culture, the people’s humanity and the experience of that humanity in their social and historical reality. Enjoy! It's title originally was  The Seventh Decade: African People In America, Music and Politics


Left to Right: Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa and Benny Goodman

In the American 1930s, there was one of the times in which the social and political bottom nearly fell out. After 1929 and a fall of the capitalist system of that era, uninsured bank failures countrywide, hunger gripped most people. This affected the whole of the Western world and the reaches of colonial Britain, Holland, France, Germany, Italy and the US territories as far away as the Pacific Ocean.

 VOICE OF THE EX CAPTIVE

An African Culture Had Already Bloomed In America For Hundreds Of Years When The Fisk Jubilee Singers Traveled To England, Czechloslovakia And Germany In The 1870s.

 

Within US borders, African so called Americans lost what jobs they had to Whites. After 15 million employment spots disappeared with the Wall Street collapse, it was seen as natural to strip the "negroes" of theirs and hand the jobs to Whites. Communists, Democrats and other registered US parties coaxed the Black allegiance and the Democrats won over many African people from the Republicans, promising an agenda of labor reform, nonracist unions and a New Deal that prohibited racial discrimination. These declarations were taken seriously-a huge number of African people had just begun to try and plant roots in the urban US North in 1930-33.

 

30 May 2006

 

From Exile,

 

Bankole

 

(New Website Coming!)

 

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Mary Lou Williams: She Brought Light (Exile 2007)

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Origin Of The Spirituals (Exile 2009)

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Gani Fawehinmi (1938-2009)

 

Your window is dirty. I’m speaking to the many who always have and always will treat Africa as some kind of stepchild, or worse, pet on a leash to Europe and Europeans. 

In 2009, the world reckoned with the truth about Africa on the rise. Yes, war and famine, corruption and all the negatives that almost anyone can spout ravage 53 nations. But what of the celebrations of the building up of Africa? If we know that Africa’s people are persevering through the hells of a hyper-colonial 21^st century, what is the problem?

There is the linking of Somalia to piracy. There is no proof that the whole ten million or more people are involved in taking over ships, but because capitalism is threatened and racist imagery persists, this is the rancid portrait that is painted. Look at the careful omission that US military bases are dotted all over troubled Yemen, a gateway to the Arabs the Americans bow to, the Saudis.

 

Part of the difficulty is that the usual White folks dominating Africa are back on their heels, shocked and alarmed that Chinese economic power is raining down on the smallest nations thirsty for development.

Even the most obedient servants to capital are carving out deals with Beijing, which sends chief officials to Africa to underline their serious intent. Imagine a European head of state going to Africa. Even that fabled son of Kenya, Obama, hasn’t found time yet to pop on over; his advisers had Egypt, the Israel linchpin, as his main stop before another geopolitical base, Ghana was used for a rest before the transAlantic trip back to his White House throne.

  

 Arcady Gaydamak, Israeli-Russian Billionaire Gunrunner
Was Indicted In 2009 In Angola

2009 has seen the passing of a political giant such as Gani Fawehinmi, lawyer, Human Rights defender and politician for the people in Nigeria. He stood for Human Rights and demanded Nigeria’s rulers end the trickery, murder and sucking up to global European power. He took risks in an era that wasn’t known for mass opposition to deadly military governments. Call him scholar activist, muckraker or stubborn donkey, the triumph of his life’s work has reached many of us. On this road of exile I was told that if I desired assistance from a soldier, call on Gani. While I did not follow up on this for my own reasons, it is obvious that his legendary profile was well deserved.

                                         Cape Town

From Azania to Zimbabwe, the absence of analysis has been used by The Continent’s enemies to batter the Africa we know; it is uniquely poised to change the world in the near future. Ukrainians, French and others have been implicated and even on trial for billions of dollars in gun running, the age old European trade with Africa. This imposes more strain on the situation of instability in nations in and around the Congo, the location of over 6 million lives lost in wars since 1998. For around two centuries, Arabs and Europeans have been slaughtering themselves and causing confusion among Africans in an effort to find and profit from riches in the heart of Africa’s deepest forests in the Congo region.

While the missionaries (NGOs to the religious ones), the White youth determined to continue to use Africa as a playground, and all the rest of the ‘soft contact’ efforts move in, the USA has shaky military plans to roll in to capture minerals, minds and make money. Corporate culture is on a warpath, with the relatively sudden concern with getting pharmaceuticals, computers and telemarketing headsets into places like the still recovering country Rwanda.

A million died, and like in the Balkans, the 1990s hidden American hand was at work.

 

Betty Nambooze: New Face Of People Power, Uganda

 

As 2009 comes to an end, gifts are going to be given and received by many in the world. What I would supply, if I could, might be a surprise. If I gave anything out on a mass scale, it would be to people who need to wash their window on the world and especially Africa and African people. I would be sending a simple message: your window is dirty.

 

31 October 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

 

 

New Website Coming!

 

See Related Articles:

 

 

Freedom Then, Freedom Now! Part Two (Exile 2005)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/67937.html

 

Ike’s lament part two (Exile 2006)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/73088.html

 

Burundi, big brother to America (exile 2007) http://exiledun.livejournal.com/55398.html

 

 

Somalia: Torment In the horn (Exile 2009)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/73811.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Forced Confessions, Not Criminal Evidence Rule In America’s System

 

There isn’t much to say, actually.

 

In the time I spend writing this web post, there will be untold numbers of deaths on the streets of the USA. City or country, the violent taking of life, mostly by one African who nullifies the life pulse of another.  ‘Toes get tagged’.

 

Since it has become fashionable courtesy of the self hatred industry posing as pop culture, the human cost isn’t registered. The only new film I have seen this year showed scene after scene of non African (so called Americans) social depravity as comedy. Whites, Asians and others thoroughly racialized in Americana  portrayed current genocide as fun.

 

Now, I’m not in any way in tune with what America pumps out other than what stuff washes up on the shores here. It’s crude, but then that can be matched by Europe’s corporate or traditional oddities they call culture. My information is gathered mainly by communications with those who can explain some trends and break it down to an older, banned person who was busy enough way back when to not know who Big Luther and Little Luther were. I am determined to never allow any screen that corporate and racist folk control to tell me what is going on anywhere if I can help it. Even if I don't know who Lil Bow Wow is.

 

I can learn a lot about my former region of the world from ‘O’.

 

Let’s be straight, this is not about Obama.

 

Obadyah Ben Yisrayl in the mid American state of Indiana writes of the society that is most obsessed by far off America worshippers. Being in prison, in fact, fighting against the state’s penalty of death for nearly twenty years, he has perspective, and supporters globally. At forty years of age, he is an elder in an 1800s dungeon called Michigan City Indiana state prison, which is incidently located in the hometown of the top federal judge of the American state, John Roberts. He’s the one that will have great clout on how the Guantanamo Bay prisoners will be judged and even placed in USA prisons eager to boost sagging economies in rural, White areas. There’s also the fact that Roberts grew up in the historically Whites-only Long Beach neighborhood there in the lakeside city. That means, mixed race people like Barack Obama cannot live there. In Chicago, the midwest commercial giant not too far away, Obadyah has had his legal appeals turned away at federal courts managed by those out of touch with the streets he survived. An old (born in 1920) judge named Stevens has sat on benches for decades in the city. Stevens is also on the nine person US supreme court in Washington, DC and helped to bring back the internationally despised death penalty, suspended from 1972 to 1976. As soon as the two hundred year anniversary of America was over, Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in the cold January air.

Judge Stevens Voted To Bring Back The USA Death Penalty

 

While it would be easy to relate to you how and why Obadyah has outlived much of his generation as an African so called American born in 1969, I won’t. If you are still reading and haven’t gotten annoyed that I am explaining the reality of ‘the world’s greatest democracy’, consider that 10,000 to 15,000 black and brown youth have killed each other in Los Angeles alone in the decade 1992-2002. There is no town or city in the 21^st century American landscape that does not have equivalent numbers if there are numbers of impoverished African people who historically are descended from captives of European settlers. Philadelphia, the USA birthplace of liberty (whose liberty and liberty to do what?) today contributes many youth to the Pennsylvania state prisons. 450 youth under age 18 are in prison with adults in that state alone.

 

From Obadyah, and others in prison I find out about what takes place in the land I had to flee. Other situations of a miscarriage of justice I’ve learned from provide more background on the youth and their absence of a future. For a lot of Westerners it is inconceivable that a ten year old knows that they are hated by society. I know, it is thought that only Muqdishu or Rio de Janeiro youth pick up a gun at age nine or twelve. The concept that the ‘only way out’ that they see is rampaging and killing among themselves as a release doesn’t make sense, does it? Being targeted for being poorly educated, in fact to build the careers of judges, lawyers and private prison corporations has to be too much for the outsider to Black America to handle. But that’s the deal.

Obadyah Ben Yisrayl

The first trial [of four trials] began in 1991.

 

 

And so, when I hear the educated middle aged professors out here while I’m in exile, the tourists to the Route 66 fantasyland and the popcorn eating youth of all races that want to spout their rehearsed Hollywood lines at me when they hear my accent, I just take a deep breath.

 

Much like the one Obadyah Ben Yisrayl takes when he prepares the continuation of year 18 of a freedom struggle unknown to any television screen. He's in a fight for his life.

 

25 October 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

 

www.geocities.com/exiledone2002

 

(New Website Coming!)

 

Resources:

 

Write!

 

 

Obadyah Ben Yisrayl #922005

Indiana State Prison

1 Park Row

Michigan City, Indiana 46360

USA

 

 

 

 

See Related Articles:

 

Against All Odds: Obadyah (Exile 2008)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/34546.html

 

Twin Nickles Zero Niner (Exile 2009)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/66675.html

 

Prisons Six Years Ago (Exile 2009)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/72227.html

 

 

From The ExiledOne Commentary Archives: Though the financial trainwreck has taken over the consciousness of people, the suffering of those made captive and never charged and those tortured into making forced confessions is not over. And neither have the consequences finished rolling in. Dirty politics in Europe, the state and media lies do not fool so many people three years later. Below, read some of my thoughts and research from 2006.

While Many People Are Concerned About Their Security,
There Are Those Subject To The Lawless.

 

For years the the whispers have gotten louder and louder and now it has happened.

 

Unmarked jets taking off and landing on several continents.

 

CIA directed and performed torture upon people suspected to be terrorists.

 

Corporate media compliance.

 

It has been virtually admitted by the USA Central Intelligence Agency and significantly, the politicians you may be calling your safeguards for democracy, that illegal and secret torture prisons exist.

 

In the spring of 2006 there have been get togethers of the suit and tie wearing elected (it is supposed) politicians. Some wear dresses and skirts.

 

Members of European Parliament and US Congress figures held talks about the prisons that the Western and Eastern European governments and Washington DC mostly denied even being real---less than 6 months ago.

 

Now the MEPs have gone over to GuantanamoBay and returned to the microphones of the corporate media to announce "Gitmo" isn't so bad. Swerving around the point that not one of the hundreds of men there in 5 years has ever been charged with a crime, the MEPs show their subservience to the USA. The capos at US State Dept. have neither confirmed nor denied the existence of these hellholes that unknown and doomed people are held in.

 

As in an organized crime movie the heavies are so tough as to manipulate the crime hearings at such venues as the Geneva, Switzerland United Nations Committee on Torture.

 

Concerning the secret prisons, an official statement from a ten member panel said "The state party (the United States) should take immediate measures to eradicate all forms of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by its military or civilian personnel ... and should promptly and thoroughly investigate such acts and prosecute all those responsible...," 

 

The mob is brazen. It is noted in a European parliament press release ("30 to 50 Extraordinary Renditions Undertaken According To Intelligence Sources, Say MEPs" 17 May 2006) the USA government's rationalizing is incredible:

 

It states that (the White House) "called the editor of the Washington Post and told him not to name the countries...Claudio Fava, a spokesperson of the EU parliamentary group said it's a "very strong confirmation of the existence of clandestine prisons."

 

Did European governments know of this or did the CIA sneak airplanes into and out of their countries? Is it possible that they knew nothing of the secret prisons?

 

The EU was factually involved and a Mr. Coelho stated that the US State Dept. was both "diplomatic" and also had some of its delegation saying that it "admitted the involvement of European governments in a more straightforward way."

 

The press release from Brussels indicates that of a number of prisons, only one still is in use.

 

A North African nation is host.

 

So says the Mob.

 

Which answers to itself.

 

23 May 2006

 

From Exile,

 

Bankole

 

www.geocities.com/exiledone2002

See Related Articles:

 

Business As Usual (Exile 2008)

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Growth Of The Shadow Empire (Exile 2008)

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Resource Of Choice (Exile 2009)

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UN Boil Over (Exile 2009)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/82333.html

 

 

 

 

The woman who rocks the cradle,

she rules the home. 

The influence of a birth mother or a woman who raises children can determine much of what they accomplish in life.

 

By the year 2000, 52% of African so called American women single mothers were in poverty. 

In New York City, many women face a startling degree of injustice while attempting to live their lives and protecting the children. Juanita Young, a grandmother has not only taken on some of the greatest foes of humanity. She has held them in check and made demands and received answers. During October of last year, six criminal charges pinned on her were refused and a jury in court said she was not guilty in a 2006 case involving a confrontation with city police. The short, legally blind woman, an African in America, was accused of assaulting police and emergency medical crew members who had arrived at Juanita’s home to encounter her traumatized teenaged daughter. The Forty-Third precinct police in Bronx, she declared under oath, were out to destroy her family. During an arrest she was thrown down a stairwell in 2003. Through the years, as many Africans in America have, Juanita has been beaten, imprisoned and suffered serious injury just for speaking up about injustice in the presence of police. Being denied medical attention and having charges filed against people is just the usual way that black and brown people are dehumanized.



Juanita Young Organizing

The Bronx borough resident’s difficulties with New York City police grew from the March, 2000 murder by Louis Rivera, a cop, of Juanita’s son, unarmed Malcolm Ferguson. The Bronx district attorney (top government lawyer for where 1.3 million Bronx residents live) did not convict Louis Rivera. Rivera was a plainclothes agent then and today is still an officer in New York City’s 40,000 member ranks of police. He used his gun to execute Malcolm at close range,  shooting the 23 year old in the head. In 2007, prior to the 2008 court decision by the jury (all six people had the opinion that she didn’t attack police) Juanita Young had been awarded a $10 Million Five Hundred Thousand dollar judgment. Her civil lawsuit against the City of New York was in her favor. By this time Juanita had networked and formed coalitions with others rebelling against the police injustices and oppression around the USA.

 NYC mayor Bloomberg controls a business media empire besides a huge police force

 

A tireless campaigner for the rights of those in opposition to brutal police forces, Juanita Young has in 2009 continued the battle. On an August evening, 43^rd street precinct cops raided a Young family get together, roughing up and terrorizing children and youth and brutalizing James Ferguson, Juanita’s son. He was taken into headquarters although he was semi conscious and unable to walk. Motivated once more for justice, Juanita has gone to the barricades to make the professors of democracy and equal rights prove it has meaning.

The African so-called American must choose to be a part of the world beyond America's illusions. Left, UN building, NYC Right, Obama family

For the ninth year in this new decade, the life of Juanita Young and her family and supporters has been struck by government retaliation. The backslap of the blue is harsh, but as Juanita Young has proven, one person can respond with formidable human energy.

 

23 October 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

www.geocities.com/exiledone2002

 

(New Website coming!)

 

See Related Articles:

 
This article lays upon a foundation on this weblog. We urge you to see the 2 part presentation from July 2009 Women, Prisons and Resistance. Other articles will also give readers background. Thanks for reading!

 

  

Terri And The Thread Of Resistance (Exile 2007)

http://www.politicalarticles.net/blog/2007/07/13/terri-and-the-thread-of-resistance/

 

Dessie’s Spring (Exile 2008)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/30217.html

 

 

California Uncut (Exile 2009)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/62375.html

 

 

Killing Cosmos (Exile 2009)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/75304.html

 

1930s town scene, Kentucky

The blueberry tea is tasty.

 

That’s just one thought of many for today. Most of the time I have to put down what I can in a particular timeframe when writing this blog. It’s ridiculous to write every thought I have, every opinion about every item that crosses my mind. This is one reason that I have broad categories of what I write about on the blog.

 

Hot steaming organic tea is nearby the keyboard, so there you have it. Truthfully, I stay within my bounds for real reasons.

 

In the event that I get into my mind that I should say anything and everything, I might as well write books. I have accomplished that (and learned some lessons) and have others being put together. A few times, film recordings of my speaking engagements were made and that is a document of a certain time and place and what I had to say then. I’m even known for some musical and cultural expressions and also by managing my wife I gained a decade in these arts. As thrilling as public speaking can sometimes be, my growth and development was enhanced at the same time. I learned how fulfilling it  is to address different people in different societies and how there are both advantages and disadvantages to large group speeches and smaller informal talks.

 

In 2001, I Hosted My Radio Program ‘ExiledOne News And Views’ in Stockholm,  Sweden

And then there were the mostly nonverbal supporters (and many more offended detractors, enraged by our stance against racist governments and such) and getting to grips with the reality of how that plays out internationally. A dozen years in exile means countless encounters with people I have lots in common with and plenty I need time and space to relate to.

 

Well, it isn’t that I allow ten thousand mental images and past and present statements to dominate my life. No, though I have been accused of being ‘too serious’ for most of my more than fifty years on the planet, I am overly determined to never give my enemies such pleasure.

 

It may often be a task to arrange, but I do make it my business to relax. That brings me back to the topic at the top of the page.

 

The blueberry tea is tasty.

 

 

15 October 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

 

www.geocities.com/exiledone2002

 

See Related Articles:

 

Je suis "L' Haricotist" (Exile 2007)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/16633.html

 

Time To Go (Exile 2008)

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Three Plus (Exile 2009)

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Gil Scott Heron/Steel Road (Exile 2009)

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Looking Thirsty For Clean Water...But She Is 'Connected'

The forces that propelled much of the stuff of corporations is taken for granted in the West and the places struggling to imitate the West around the world.

 

Quaking and bursting from pressures from time to time, governments and multinational companies, not to mention kingpins of finance from Bahrain to Viet Nam, make mobile telephones and Coca Cola matter of fact. A person can be judged one way or another for having or not having items that are constantly on a billboard, television screen or in a magazine.

 

The entire world does not revolve around capitalism, imperialism and exploitation. But the women, children and men that comprise the earth’s population have a difficult time standing against these bold powers, often unaware of their own collective human might. Not always visible in a time of automation, mass service industry and information systems that have mainstreamed human slavery and trafficking, the duration of the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath until the recent present relied on rippling or skeletal flesh and blood coursing through the millions and billions.

 

It has been, though under dehumanization and strain, people who worked the mines, farmed and cultivated the land under the whip and shotgun of the middlemen of the bosses. People steered ships that other people loaded by the brawn of their backs, canals and levees dug by thousands also were the graves of those who died with a shovel in hand. Horse and mule plows, wagons laid foundations for roadways. Lives were lost during and after hammers struck anvils until titan foundries poured molten metal and still more passed into oblivion in the overwhelming danger.

 

How vast was this production? Can a portrait of modern societies and nations be painted from this amassing of wealth drenched in hemoglobin?

 

Judge for yourself. Or you can be judged by the ones determined to judge for you.

 Exhibit A:  Freedom Ain’t Free

 

The 1833 ‘emancipation’ of Africans and Asians in the Caribbean Islands paid out £20,000,000 in compensation TO THE PLANTATION OWNERS and the man who spearheaded the politics of it all with ‘Lord’ Stanley, Secretary of the Colonies,  was John Gladstones who got £93,526 for the loss of his 2,039 humans labeled as slaves. This Liverpool, England pioneer in human trafficking and genocidal sale of Africans and others was well connected and an early globalization player with vile business interests in Russia, China and India. His estate totaled £600,000 at his death eighteen years after ‘freedom day’.

 

Exhibit B:   Imperial Power Continually Takes Various Forms

 

Japan, after ravaging China and other Asian nations for an extended period, was subdued by the USA in the 1940s. The constitution of occupied Japan (and present day Japan) over the next few decades was written by the Americans.

 

Today Japan is seen as a ‘neutral military power’ and a team player in the scheme of economic efficiency. While a governing state in Japan and its ruling class do not use aggression too much lately, this has little to do with power in the geopolitical universe.

Japan had threatened European nations on the trade front before the 20th century but when manufacturing (overworked humans) began to outperform England and it’s empire in clothing and textile production, the West took notice. While England had managed to wrestle India’s cotton growers and looms, build upon several centuries of American cotton field slavery, control the shipping lanes through commercial and pirate domination of other Europeans in the Atlantic waters, Japan had by 1932 50% of its machines automated looms as opposed to the fading London empire’s 5%. Unemployment plagued England and infected the worldwide networks despite the gains the elite arranged before, during and after the huge war of 1914-18.

 

Exhibit C:  A Tiny Creation of Europe Rules An African Region

 

One of the dreadful realities of European colonialism is the effect it had on the world. Another is the cause, centuries of inter European rampaging that had borderlines changing year by year in some cases, including the post 1945 era. From this constantly altered political map came the state of Belgium, (1830) which rose to dominate a part of Africa tens of thousands of times its size. Wedged between France, Holland, and Germany, below are some of the mineral wealth hauls Belgium gained through a systematic cruelty begun long ago and still spoken of a century and a half later.

 

DIAMONDS (In Carats, various African Nations):

 

1915    30,300                     1930    2,086,768      1960    10,357,000

 

 

COPPER (Tons, Zambia, Congo)

 

Zambia 1920    2,800                                                Congo 1920    19,000

 

Zambia 1951    254,900                                            Congo  1951    123,900

 

Zambia 1966    623,400                                             Congo  1966    316,900

 

 

URANIUM (Tons, Congo):

 

1923    670,194                                 1946    6,887,000

 

 

11 October 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

 

www.geocities.com/exiledone2002

 

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The M Word (Exile 2008)

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Manchuria 2K9 (Exile 2009)

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Switzerland: Up High For How Long? (Exile 2009)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/65577.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some Indigenous People Have Lived Here for More Than 11,000 Years

 

An exhausting time during the early years of being exiled was taking people to task about what they thought a dissident from the USA is. In Canada in the 1990s I can remember Africans, from Angola to Jamaica to Zaire, snorting, White ex US military men shaking their heads, a glint of doubt in their eyes. A so called Brother called out sarcastically, “why don’t you go to Cuba?” Caution kept me, then a United Nations Convention refugee claimant, from blasting him about why he was even at the information and support meeting some people had arranged at a Toronto university. Due to the nature of living our lives in the sometimes high profile situation of being refugees from a place many don’t believe there are people fleeing for their lives, patience has to rule encounters of this kind.

 

And whether one wants to do so or not, if there is a chance to educate, one educates.

 

The Viet Nam vet eventually came to see how sensitive the stand was that my wife and I had taken. As a European descended American he began to learn more of the society he had left rather than further Washington, DC’s 1960s reach with a gun. From darkened Bloor street music clubs turned into Human Rights panels for a weekend, to living rooms in trendy North York, to the outlying universities stretched around mammoth Ontario province, we were welcomed, mostly, to bring clarity. Countering a wave of racist treatment, including the stripping of our rights guaranteed other UN refugee claimants in the country by the government, were an outnumbered handful of Canadians of good will. The Bill Clinton Democratic Party was what we had fled and they recognized tyranny by any other name, even if it was delivered with a saxophone and a smile.

 

More than a decade later and still in exile for our political and cultural beliefs (and in decades of activism no charges by any government anywhere) there is still the strange tilt of the head from those who can’t fathom “why”.

 

It has to be said that the Indigenous people in what many of them refuse to call Canada, were mildly surprised, if at all, upon hearing what we had been through and continued to endure.

Actually, a readiness to share personal and centuries long travesties was more the case. Right on narrow Bathurst trolley islands, while packing food boxes with other refugees and jobless people, the Indigenous Sister or Brother didn’t so much as blink before sharing how it is.

 

Due to racist Canada’s historical neglect and terror, Toronto had drunken men and women piled on one another on certain street corners, but never too close to The Hummingbird theater, Movenpick restaurant or the glitzy King street area where I once saw NBA Raptor Kevin Willis ducking under street signs to get into a waiting SUV. I wondered if he had also been called out like my wife and I were on a late night TTC tram. “Cuz, you look like my people in Maryland,” a long black haired short reddish fellow said. Before long we were joined in the back bench by five Indigenous brothers and we laughed and traded jokes about our interlinked history. Africans and Indigenous, mixed blood extensively and this has only recently been seen as worthy of public knowledge.

 

In time, and through more and more serious talks, I began to see how the former British North America state had put the hammer down on ‘First Nations’ or ‘Aboriginals’ as opposed to the ‘Indians’ in America, the supposedly different country further south. Though I am still actively learning, my first exams so to speak were gaining knowledge from relatives of Dudley George an activist murdered in 1995 while defending Indigenous burial land in Ontario. It was not until 2007 that a definitive accounting was made about the actions of the Ontario Provincial Police and the various commissions, courts and legal bodies for Ontario. In mid 2009, Jesse Lobdell, an anti police brutality activist wrote for a Canadian civil liberties organization about the case and cancer victim Sam George:

 

This week’s death of Sam George is a grim reminder of the tragic death of his brother, Dudley George.  In 1995, Dudley George was shot during a protest by Ontario Provincial Police officer Sgt. Kenneth Deane.  Dudley George was unarmed.  Sgt. Deane was convicted two years later of criminal negligence causing death.

After the death of his brother, Sam George pushed for a public inquiry.  Dalton McGuinty made the inquiry an election promise in 2003.  The inquiry was called one month after the election, and Commissioner Sidney B. Linden’s report was released May 31, 2007.  The Ipperwash Inquiry found that the OPP, the government of former Ontario premier Mike Harris and the federal government all bore responsibility for Dudley George’s death. Premier Harris, in particular, was instrumental in creating an antagonistic atmosphere and ruling out a peaceful end to the occupation favoured by the OPP and civil servants.

Sam George led a distinguished life advocating for the rights of Aboriginal peoples and working to improve relations between Aboriginals, Metis and non-aboriginals in Canada.

 

 

 Sam George (1953-2009) with poster of Dudley George (1957-1995)

 

 Shawn Brant Continues The Struggle In The 21^st Century  

 

From 1995:
"Is there still a lot of press down there?" one officer says. "No, there's no one down there. Just a great big fat fuck Indian," replies another. "The camera's rolling, eh?" "Yeah." "We had this plan, you know. We thought if we could get five or six cases of Labatt's 50, we could bait them." "Yeah." "Then we'd have this big net at a pit." "Creative thinking." "Works in the (U.S.) South with watermelon."  Ontario Provincial Police taped while at scene of Dudley George murder revealed by CBC tv In 2004

 

If there was one idea I could relate to concerning the Indigenous people I met and interacted with, it was the sense of the endless battle needing to be won. Not one person that I knew of (several Indigenous people had to tell us they weren’t White in Toronto) did not acknowledge that the land had been taken from them, that they were steadfast in trying to handle their identity as best they could in a society full of hatred for their very existence.

 

In moments out here in exile I can see and hear the old friends in my memory. Some were gone, snuffed out before we could say goodbye and we were sent out of Canada in violation of UN guidelines and international law.

 

To the Canadians they may have had no meaning except that one or two more obstacles to their Great White North conscience was removed.

 

But my back straightens and I vow a more strenuous fight for Human Rights for the oppressed when I am reminded of knowing eyes and ears, hearts and minds.

 

 

9 October 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

 

 

www.geocities.com/exiledone2002

 

 

See Related Articles:

 

 

Hitler’s American Bible (Exile 2006)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/11133.html

 

Blind In Toronto (Exile 2007)

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People Of The Longhouse (Exile 2008)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/21488.html

 

Ancestry And Hard Truths (Exile 2009)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/75223.html

 

 

 

In a moment sweet and, for the two of us, not too fleeting, I told my wife how much it meant to grow organic vegetables for our meals. Both of us gain in health each day from the effort.

 

In just about three decades of involvement with food growing, food cooperatives and buying clubs, organic gardening, the benefits, hard won, have flowed our way.  The ones of us that take the earth seriously know there is a give and take relationship. Without a boss mentality over nature, the challenges are great but the harvests precious.

 

Governmental and big business operations are expert in picking a fight about whether organic grown fruits, vegetables and plants deliver wonderful nutrition. The best testimony the two of us have is our health and the comments we get on our youthful appearance. True, the wife gets more of these compliments. A little less grey hair and maybe I wouldn’t be behind in that race!




We Are But Grains Of Sand
  

One of the best ways of knowing how to be rewarded by the earth with nutritive, life giving foods is to regard the soil, indeed the earth, as an ancient gift. It isn’t something to be owned or controlled. This flies in the face of Western ‘thinking’. Listening to the soil means catching on to the rhythms of climate, excess of heat, rain and snow, trends in animal interaction, the insects and their patterns. All in all, there is a limited effect if one is intent on ‘conquering’ and trying to get the land to submit to you, one person and a fleck of matter in the universe.

 

As the warm season of growing ends, and it eases us into harvest, I reflect and savor time with my loving wife and with it the unifying fruits of staying in nature’s embrace.

 

7 October 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

 

www.geocities.com/exiledone2002  

 

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Earth Wealth (Exile 2008)

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A Plate Of Mustards (Exile 2008)

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Fire Down Below (Exile 2009)

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A Small Joy: Green Groove (ASJ13)

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Fear Of Youth, 1930s

Angelo Herndon Stood Tall

The way an oppressed people walks, talks, dances, mourns, celebrates, builds economically, makes music, practices religions and faces the dominant society has a lot do with its future.

 

How African people in America pass on knowledge of events and lives of its great and small is no less important to the legacy. Whether in cultural ritual, impassioned speech or nonverbal rebellious acts, the thread of resistance has been continually passed on since 1555.

 

A few years back, the story of Angelo Herndon (1913-1997), instrumental as a coal miner and unemployed organizer was once again published-after a 60 year period out of print. His Let Me Live , a 1937 autobiography written in prison detailed life in the grips of Jim Crow claws. It also focused on his arrest at age nineteen for having communist literature after leading a march. Organizing of workers of all races in Atlanta, Georgia and leading the fight against racism almost led to his execution by the state government. After several years taken from his young adulthood (he had begun work as a thirteen year old in Kentucky coal mines) Angelo was released from a twenty year prison sentence by a US supreme court confronted by both the racist Georgia courts and the international campaign to Free Angelo Herndon mobilized by communists worldwide.

 

Awaiting Prison Release Of Angelo : NYC train station

 

In the ironic times in which we live, majority African cities in the US such as Philadelphia are claiming that financial problems mean public funded libraries must be closed. How the information arrives at the door, providing that which is enriching to those needing ammunition from ongoing dehumanization is crucial. Instead the youth are readily invited to become a military agent where ‘nation building’ includes helping Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis have access to ‘proper education’ under democracy.

 

For many, books, computers and data locked away from all but scholars, are second or third choices after the oral tradition in relaying the message of resistance. Still, there remains the desired result of freedom.

Angelo Herndon scored high on the test for demanding of society what it has said is sacred.

5 October 2009

From Exile,

Bankole

www.geocities.com/exiledone2002

See Related Articles:

Curtis Goes To Korea (Exile 2008)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/53378.html

 

Info Privilege Syndrome (Exile 2009)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/58025.html

 

Context: Mumia Abu Jamal (Exile 2009)

http://exiledun.livejournal.com/66972.html