Category Archives: International

An Open Letter To President Olusegun Obasanjo

By Linda E. Edwards
Dated: December 26, 2006

Your Excellency
The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

Sir:

AfricansI e-mailed a Nigerian friend the article from the New York Times this morning, with a brief comment, “O God, Again?”

Again, because I am tired of seeing articles about a ruptured pipeline, with people stealing gasoline, which explodes and kills them. Another few hundred are dead, in Africa’s most populous country. Maybe that is less than the children who will die of AIDS related diseases today, scattered across the continent. Maybe that number, two hundred and sixty and still counting, may have starved to death by the time I am finished typing this letter, and so, maybe, that is a small number. None of the people to whom I sent the article, however, thought that two hundred and sixty city dwellers in Lagos were so dispensable that they behaved as if these people were not to be missed. The sounds of the mothers wailing because their children have died, the sounds of the girl looking for her brother, and getting only the ring tones of his phone, would not go out of my ears.
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They made sure Saddam took his secrets to the grave

Saddam Hussein was executed

Remember that this execution (assassination) of Saddam Hussein was carried out by the U.S. installed government in Iraq while the U.S. is illegally occupying Iraq. The U.S. had physical control of Saddam up until the time of his execution and transported the body afterwards. Simply put, Saddam Hussein was executed by the U.S. government. It is also important to remember that the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. –Ayinde
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Indian leader likens caste system to apartheid regime

By Maseeh Rahman, The Guardian UK
December 28, 2006

IndiansIndian prime minister Manmohan Singh became the first leader of his country yesterday to compare the condition of low-caste Hindus with that of black South Africans under apartheid.

Mr Singh drew the parallel at a conference in New Delhi on social and caste injustices saying it was modern India’s failure that millions of Dalits (meaning “oppressed”) were still fighting prejudice.
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An Inconvenient Protest

By Linda Edwards
December 21, 2006

A comment on an article in The New York Times of Sunday, Dec. 17th, 2006.

Sean Bell ProtestThe Times reported on Sunday, that there was a massive protest down Fifth Avenue in New York, to protest the killing of Sean Bell, the young man murdered on the morning of his wedding, by a gang of New York’s Finest, the city police. A total of fifty shots were fired by the police at a car with three unarmed young African Americans in it, one being the groom-to-be on his way home from his Bachelor Party. He died on the spot. According to The Times, the protest, a silent one, was organized in the heart of the shopping district to bring maximum attention to this grave situation. It was organized to say that human lives, even the lives of African American young men in New York, who seem on their way to becoming an endangered species, had value, and people should be concerned about this.
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Debt forgiveness

By George Alleyne, newsday.co.tt
December 6 2006

Tony BlairBritish Prime Minister, Tony Blair, can best demonstrate that he is serious with respect to his recent statement on slavery by having legislation drafted and introduced in the United Kingdom Parliament for the provision of reparations to former British colonies in Africa and the Caribbean, which were victims of slavery, the slave trade and/or de-industrialisation.
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Jamaica-led slavery resolution adopted by UN

WOLFE, jamaica-gleaner.com

SlaveryThe United Nations General Assembly has adopted a Jamaican-inspired resolution to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Some 160 countries, including former colonial powers the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as all countries on the African continent, supported the resolution last Tuesday.
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Let’s not be used as a pawn against Chavez

By Raffique Shah
December 03, 2006

President Hugo ChavezToday, the people of Venezuela go to the polls to elect a president. The election is of significance to Trinidad and Tobago because Venezuela happens to be the country closest to us. More than mere geopolitics, under President Hugo Chavez, that country has taken a leading role in hemispheric affairs as well as being a more-than-minor player in global politics. As the fifth biggest oil producing country in the world, Venezuela is also strategically poised to influence the Caribbean, as it did with the Petrocaribe initiative and several bilateral trade and aid agreements with member states of Caricom.
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Mr. Blair’s Regrets

By Linda E. Edwards

Tony BlairSo Mr. Blair regrets that Britain participated in the Atlantic Slave Trade. How gracious of him. I wonder, though, why his regrets, as if he is declining an invitation, was not addressed simultaneously in The Times, The Guardian, and The Independent. These are the papers created and sustained by profits from slavery. Why address it to a paper in the Black community?
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A Rejoiner to the Refutation of Adam and Eve

Time to deconstruct the social legacy of the myth

By Corey Gilkes, www.trinicenter.com/Gilkes
November 24, 2006

AfricansMy comrade Tyehimba’s essay on Refuting the Myth of Adam and Eve raised very important points that in my view are not discussed nearly enough as we set about the business of hammering out a Caribbean civilisation and reconstructing the Africa as we knew it to be. I wish to further add to his contribution by calling into question something I think he himself should have paid more attention to: the psychological, social and political impact of the historicising of the Adam and Eve story, indeed the entire Old Testament as well as the New Testament and its central figure.
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Hypocrisy in Middle East

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
October 09, 2006

Within recent times, it has been suggested that the international community is angered that the Islamic Republic of Iran has “enriched uranium” that may lead to Iran eventually possessing a nuclear bomb.

The notion has also been bandied about that the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly stated that, “Israel should be wiped off the map.”
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