WASHINGTON – In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary.

But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance.

Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal.
msnbc.msn.com

We, the women of the United States, Iraq and women worldwide, have had enough of the senseless war in Iraq and the cruel attacks on civilians around the world. We’ve buried too many of our loved ones. We’ve seen too many lives crippled forever by physical and mental wounds. We’ve watched in horror as our precious resources are poured into war while our families’ basic needs of food, shelter, education and healthcare go unmet. We’ve had enough of living in constant fear of violence and seeing the growing cancer of hatred and intolerance seep into our homes and communities.

This is not the world we want for ourselves or our children. With fire in our bellies and love in our hearts, we women are rising up – across borders – to unite and demand an end to the bloodshed and the destruction.

We have seen how the foreign occupation of Iraq has fueled an armed movement against it, perpetuating an endless cycle of violence. We are convinced that it is time to shift from a military model to a conflict-resolution model that includes the following elements:

The withdrawal of all foreign troops and foreign fighters from Iraq;
Negotiations to reincorporate disenfranchised Iraqis into all aspects of Iraqi society;
The full representation of women in the peacemaking process and a commitment to women’s full equality in the post-war Iraq;
A commitment to discard plans for any foreign bases in Iraq;
Iraqi control of its oil and other resources;
The nullification of privatization and deregulation laws imposed under occupation, allowing Iraqis to shape the trajectory of the post-war economy;
A massive reconstruction effort that prioritizes Iraqi contractors, and draws upon financial resources of the countries responsible for the invasion and occupation of Iraq;
Consideration of a temporary international peacekeeping force that is truly multilateral and is not composed of any troops from countries that participated in the occupation.

To move this peace process forward, we are creating a massive movement of women – crossing generations, races, ethnicities, religions, borders and political persuasions. Together, we will pressure our governments, the United Nations, the Arab League, Nobel Peace Prize winners, religious leaders and others in the international community to step forward to help negotiate a political settlement. And in this era of divisive fundamentalisms, we call upon world leaders to join us in spreading the fundamental values of love for the human family and for our precious planet.
womensayno towar.org

Just north of the border, in the Canadian city of Toronto, African American Gary Freeman is fighting to stay in the country he fled to 35 years ago. Freeman is being held while a legal battle rages with the Canadian government, which wants to deport him to the U.S. to stand trial in Chicago for the 1969 shooting of a white police officer.

Prosecutors have announced that they plan to charge Freeman with attempted murder, which, in Illinois, can carry a sentence of up to 30 years. Freeman’s supporters and lawyers argue that it will be impossible for him to get a fair trial in a city notorious for its racist police force and corrupt judiciary.

If Freeman loses his appeals, the ensuing trial in Chicago will take us back to a year when the city’s police department killed 11 unarmed Black men and its infamous Red Squad ended the year by murdering Black Panther leaders Mark Clark and Fred Hampton.
counterpunch.org

Africa spends US$4 billion per year, representing 35% of total official development aid to the continent, to employ some 100,000 Western experts.

These are recruited to perform functions generically described as ‘technical assistance’, which could have been done by African experts lost to the brain drain of the western world.

This revelation was made by the Vice Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Prof. Kwasi Andam, yesterday at the 57th Annual New Year School, under the theme ‘Developing the Human Resource for Accelerated National Development’.

Speaking under the topic ‘Science and Technology for development’, the Vice Chancellor said Africa has lost about a third of her human capital and the three African countries, which have suffered most from the brain drain syndrome, are Ethiopia, Nigeria and Ghana.
allafrica.com

by Margaret Kimberley
On December 27, 2005 the New York Times printed an article entitled “Ghanaians’ Uneasy Embrace of Slavery’s Diaspora.” The New York Times rarely delivers on its claim to give its readers “all the news that is fit to print.” Even white politicians like John Kerry get biased coverage when they dare to challenge the established order. If a white presidential nominee can’t catch a fair break from the Times, then black people are definitely out of luck.

According to the Times, black Americans should just forget about visiting Africa or forging any links with Africans. Like people in poor nations all over the world, many Ghanaians seek to emigrate to the United States. The Times tells us that Ghanaians envy their American cousins for being taken into slavery.

Suppose, for arguments sake, that the statement is an accurate assessment of some Ghanaian opinion. A real newspaper would then ask how much Ghanaians know about the United States, and what if anything they have been taught about African American history or their own history for that matter.

Ghanaians aren’t alone in seeking refuge in nations that exploited them. Most of the southwest United States was stolen from Mexico. Mexicans know this but still cross the border in hopes of improving their lives. The United States military killed hundreds of thousands in the Philippines at the turn of the last century. That unforgotten history doesn’t prevent Filipinos from waiting years to get green cards that ensure their passage to the country that caused their people so much anguish.

The reality is that Europe and the United States created terrible poverty and instability around the world. So much so, that the people they oppress yearn to live in the oppressor nations in hopes of improving their lives.

The real point of the New York Times article is to tell black Americans that they should just get over the past, realize they are in the best nation on earth, and stop trying to learn anything about their ancestral home. After all, Africa is poor and its people envy three hundred years of slavery, lynching and Jim Crow.

No other group is dissuaded from learning about its ancestry as much as black people are dissuaded. Even groups whose ancestors immigrated voluntarily came from poor countries. Their homelands weren’t just poor, they were often oppressive. There would have been no immigration if that were not the case. Yet the New York Times doesn’t tell anyone else to forget about identifying with their place of origin. Only black Americans are told to wise up and be grateful for what the system has meted out to them.

Not content to make light of African Americans attempts to connect to Africa, the times had to add the piece de resistance. They had to call Henry Louis Gates.

Gates’ area of expertise is African American literature. He is not a historian. He is not a mental health professional. He is not an expert on public affairs. He is not an economist. He knows literature and that is all. Despite his limited base of knowledge, he is continually called upon to opine on subjects he knows little if anything about.

Gates is definitely shrewd. He has gamed a system that confers top dog status on only a few black faces. Journalism schools teach courses like Gates 101 and grade students on their ability to get in touch with Gates when in need of a handy quote about black people.

Several years ago Gates proudly showed the world how little he knew in the PBS documentary series “Wonders of the African World.” In the slave trade segment, Gates’only moment of anger was directed at an Ashanti prince. If Gates wants to wax righteously indignant, he should interrogate a member of the Brown family of Brown University. The Brown fortune was made through slavery, as were many others. Gates ought to give a Brown descendant the third degree on camera.

In the Times article Gates gives us this nugget of wisdom. “The myth was our African ancestors were out on a walk one day and some bad white dude threw a net over them. But that wasn’t the way it happened. It wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Africans.” A real historian might have added that there would have been no slave trade without a demand from Europe and America.

From Canada, where slavery was once legal, to the Caribbean, and all the way to the tip of South America, white Americans developed and sustained a voracious need for African free labor. Maybe the Times will tackle that subject some day.

If the Times and their journalistic brethren stopped thinking of the head Negro in charge of all things involving colored people, they might find a useful perspective and write better articles. The New York Times can make local phone calls and find experts on any subject known to humankind. New York City is home to Columbia University, New York University and a 19 campus City University of New York, to name just a few.

Is it possible that some of these institutions have experts on African history? Of course they do, but they will never be heard from as long as a publicity savvy English professor is the only acceptable source of information.

So, if on your next visit to Ghana, you are referred to as “obruni,” a word usually reserved for white people, don’t worry about it. Take it as an opportunity to learn from another culture and to teach people who may need to learn from you. In any case, obruni has probably come to mean “foreigner who has more cash than I do.”
blackcommentator.com

WASHINGTON — In a case that echoes the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, two Northern California Republican congressmen used their official positions to try to stop a federal investigation of a wealthy Texas businessman who provided them with political contributions.

Reps. John T. Doolittle and Richard W. Pombo joined forces with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas to oppose an investigation by federal banking regulators into the affairs of Houston millionaire Charles Hurwitz, documents recently obtained by The Times show. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was seeking $300 million from Hurwitz for his role in the collapse of a Texas savings and loan that cost taxpayers $1.6 billion.

The investigation was ultimately dropped.
latimes.com

BERLIN, Jan. 7 — German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in an interview published days before her first visit to the United States, said Washington should close its Guantanamo Bay prison camp and find other ways of dealing with terrorism suspects.

“An institution like Guantanamo can and should not exist in the longer term,” Merkel said in an interview published Saturday in the weekly magazine Der Spiegel. “Different ways and means must be found for dealing with these prisoners.”

Merkel has vowed to repair ties with the United States, severely strained over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which her predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, strongly opposed.

But there was no sign she would hesitate to speak out on issues where disagreement exists. Asked about her comments at a news conference later in the day, she said, “That’s my opinion and my view, and I’ll say it elsewhere just as I have expressed it here.”
washingtonpost.com

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — The most popular instruments of robbery, torture, homicide and assassination in this violence-racked border city are imported from the United States.

“Warning,” reads the sign greeting motorists on the U.S. side as they approach the Rio Grande that separates the two countries here. “Illegal to carry firearms/ammunition into Mexico. Penalty, prison.”

The signs have done little to stop what U.S. and Mexican officials say is a steady and growing commerce of illicit firearms in Mexico — 9-millimeter pistols, shotguns, AK-47s, grenade launchers. An estimated 95% of weapons confiscated from suspected criminals in Mexico were first sold legally in the United States, officials in both countries say.

Guns are the essential tools of a war among underworld crime syndicates that claimed between 1,400 and 2,500 lives in 2005, according to tallies by various newspapers and magazines.

The biggest criminals in Mexico are engaged in an arms race, with an armor-piercing machine gun as the new must-have weapon for the cartels fighting one another for control of the lucrative trade in narcotics, U.S. and Mexican officials say.

In 2005, Nuevo Laredo residents endured the specter of more than 100 suspected drug-cartel executions in their city, and the release of a horrific videotape in which a suspected drug-cartel gunman executes a “prisoner.” The city has become a tragic symbol of the gun violence sweeping through the entire country.

“It’s obvious where all the arms are coming from,” said Higenio Ibarra Murillo, a Nuevo Laredo business owner in the city’s historic downtown district. “We don’t make any guns or rifles here” in Mexico.
latimes.com

They built more pyramids than the Egyptians, invented the world’s first “rock” music, and were as bloodthirsty as the Aztecs when it came to human sacrifices.

Yet ever since their demise at the hands of a vengeful pharaoh, the pre-Christian civilisations of ancient Sudan have been overshadowed by their Egyptian northern neighbours. Now, the race is on to excavate black Africa’s first great kingdoms – before some of their heartlands are submerged for ever.

In a highly controversial move, the Sudanese government is planning to flood a vast stretch of the southern Nile valley as part of plans for a big hydro-electric dam at Merowe, near what was once the ancient city of Napata.

The project has been criticised by environmental groups, who say it will lead to the displacement of about 50,000 people – small farmers and their families, who have tilled the Nile’s fertile banks for centuries.

The Sudanese government insists, however, that the Chinese-backed project should go ahead, saying it is essential to pull the country into the developed world. With the dam scheduled for completion in 2008, archaeologists are in a race against time to survey what will eventually become a 100-mile-long lake.

The affected area lies in what is known as the Nile’s fourth cataract, one of the six stretches of river divided from each other by sets of rapids impassable by boat.

Already more than 700 sites of potential interest have been discovered in just one small part of the area to be flooded – showing the need not only for an urgent programme to rescue the most important artefacts, but also for a reappraisal of Sudan’s archaeological importance.

“Previously we thought the fourth cataract was something of a backwater – it is wrong to say so,” said Julie Anderson of the British Museum’s department of ancient Egypt and Sudan. “But in the last year alone 700 brand new sites have been discovered – an indication of the untapped riches that exist.

“Although Sudan is the largest country in Africa it has often been in the shadow of Egypt. The fourth cataract is changing that perception. It is exciting, as everything we find is brand new.”
telegraph.co.uk

In pre-Dynastic tombs that have been found, it was clear that these ‘human sacrifices’ were voluntary.

India Digitizes Age-Old Wisdom
Effort Seeks to Keep Westerners From Poaching Folk Remedies

NEW DELHI — In a drafty government institute, Nighat Anjum reads from a dog-eared textbook on traditional Indian medicine and acquaints herself with the miracle fruit known as aamla, which is said to be useful in treating heart palpitations, immune disorders, bed-wetting and memory lapses.

Tapping on a computer keyboard, the 27-year-old physician enters its properties in a database that eventually will contain more than 100,000 such traditional remedies — the collective wisdom of the ancient healing arts known as ayurveda , unani and siddha , the latter based on the teachings of the Hindu god Shiva.

Other entries include powdered nightingale droppings (a skin lightener and laxative), nightingale flesh (an aphrodisiac), ostrich fat (for aches and pains), ostrich blood (for inflammation), charred sea crab (constipation, ulcers, cataracts and dental stains), honey (for improving vision), tumeric (for treating wounds and rashes) and coconut milk (urinary tract infections).

Employing about 150 doctors and technicians, the four-year, $2 million effort is aimed at protecting India’s traditional remedies from theft by multinational drug companies in a practice known here as bio-piracy. The database will also include hundreds of yoga poses so that foreigners cannot copyright them as their own.
washingtonpost.com