Fatimah Ali, A Good Friend, Shares Some Info About Her Two New Blogs

"Peace and blessings good Brother....‏"




Fatimah Ali




Dear friends,

I received the e-mail below today (10/14/09). It's from a friend who writes for the Philadelphia Daily News, among many other things that she does. In addition her work has appeared on this blog (Djatajabs.com), a number of times.

At any rate, please check out the two blogs that she mentions, as I already have. It's all real exciting! BTW, you may have to copy the link and paste it to your browser, if the link doesn't bring you to the site that's here.

One Love,
G. Djata Bumpus
***************************************
Peace and blessings good Brother....‏
From: Fatimah Ali (fameworksmedia@yahoo.com)
Sent: Wed 10/14/09 11:55 AM
To: Djata Bumpus (djatabumpus@hotmail.com)

it's been a minute since we've communicated. You keep on keeping on. Your blog site is good and you keep many fresh new ideas out here.

I want to tell you about an exciting new blog site, Weareblackwomen.com and my blog there at ‏Healthysoutherncomforts.com, all about food. I wrote about it in one of my DN columns here http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/62519792.html. Would you please you check us out and add us to your blog roll ?

Thanks,
Fatimah Ali
Healthy Southern Comforts

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Annette John-Hall on Double Standard of Health Care Debate

"Or publicly praying for Obama's death, as did Orange County minister Wiley Drake, who must be thrilled that death threats against the president have gone up 400 percent from the last administration."

Dear friends,

It is interesting to see that President Obama is always being threatened, in public, mind you, while past presidents have never had to experience such disrespect. As a matter of fact, I thought that it was illegal to threaten the life of a sitting president. Is this a double standard?

At any rate, on the link below, Annette John-Hall of the Philadelphia Inquirer raises some pertinent questions.

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/annette_john-hall/20090920_Annette_John-Hall__Infected_by_racism__criticism_of_Obama_obscures_the_issues.html
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Doctors versus Hospital Administrators

“Some stories are best told by numbers.”

Dear friends,

As the “Health Care Reform” bill passes through the US Congress we see that a plethora of “human inadequacies” are being revealed by these politicians, with their thought patterns. That is, they are displaying shortcomings that. as the great Freud pointed out, come from “short-sighted apprehensiveness to selfishly narrow interests to conclusions that are based on insufficient premises.”

Meanwhile, as usual, in finding humor in their abovementioned inadequacies, in general, agents of White Supremacy (euphemistically called “racism”) make jokes about the harangue by Senator Wilson of South Carolina, “That’s a lie!”, during President Obama’s recent speech regarding “Health Care Reform”.

In any case, on the link below, Stephanie Kraft, a distinguished western Massachusetts journalist, delivers a very short, but informative, piece about the inequities that are involved during the attempts by doctors to settle their patients’ claims, while outnumbered, exponentially so, by the huge amounts of hospital administrators with whom the former must deal in the process. About what is “Health Care Reform” really?

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=10556
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Dr. Ndibe on Consultants and Convicts

"The day Mr. Ibori and his ilk begin to cower, instead of strut the stage – that day will mark the beginning of a new, salutary ethos."

4The strange career of James Ibori
by Okey Ndibe

One easy way to describe James Onanefe Ibori is that he is a former governor of Delta State. It is also the least interesting way to describe the astonishing career of a man who mirrors much of what is wrong with Nigeria.

Here’s a more interesting fact about Mr. Ibori: Long before he became governor, he’d been convicted twice for crimes committed in Britain. In 1991, he and his then girlfriend (and now wife), Theresa Nakanda, were found guilty of theft. Mr. Ibori was fined 300 pounds sterling and ordered to pay another 450 pounds sterling as cost. A year later, Mr. Ibori was convicted again, this time for handling a stolen credit card.

Here’s another, even weightier, narrative: In 1993, during the reign of bespectacled Sani Abacha, somebody wired more than a million dollars into Ibori’s account in the US. That transaction drew the due attention of American law enforcement officers. Puzzled American officials were curious to know how a man – that is Ibori – who at the time lived in a subsidized council flat in London could have come by so much cash. The US government, suspecting that the money came from one 419 scheme or another, asked a judge to freeze the account. Ibori explained away the cash by passing himself off as a consultant, and he produced a letter from the Abacha regime to back him up.

Listen to yet another tidbit about the man. He and his associates currently face prosecution in Nigeria and the UK on charges of laundering billions of naira of public funds during Ibori’s eight years as governor. Nuhu Ribadu, who ran the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission until December 2007, has said that Ibori tried to “persuade” him with – wait for it – $15 million to discontinue the agency’s prosecution of the former governor on embezzlement charges.

Mr. Ibori looms just as large in the mystery department. On September 28, 1995, the Bwari Upper Area Court convicted a man named James Onanefe Ibori of negligent conduct and criminal breach of trust. Yet, when two men from Delta invoked the case in pleading that Ibori be declared ineligible to serve as governor, the case went all the way to the Supreme Court and produced a confounding verdict. Nigeria’s highest bench decided the plaintiffs had not proved that James Onanefe Ibori the governor was the selfsame James Onanefe Ibori the convict.

Ibori has a hardworking (but luckless) handler in Tony Eluemunor, a former journalist. Mr. Eluemunor’s unvarying mantra is that his master is a victim of a carefully choreographed malicious slander. Sadly for Ibori and his handlers, the repetition of this line has done little to improve its credibility index. And neither Mr. Eluemunor nor his principal has come forward either to identify those who are after Saint James or to convincingly prove the falsity of the many counts of corruption tagged to Ibori’s person.

If Ibori’s were a simple story of a public official whose greed overwhelmed his sense of restraint, he would be a commonplace. In the arena of Nigeria’s gubernatorial politics, too many stealer-governors love to play in the First Division. They often cart away more than half of the revenue accruing to their states.

Mr. Ibori’s genius lies in the way he has parlayed his criminal record into a swaggering performance. His political trajectory has been nothing short of amazing. From his humble beginnings as a petty thief in London, this man rose to the commanding heights of Nigerian politics. Nigerians ought to wonder why such a man – why men with similar pedigrees – are routinely permitted to rise to leadership.
Nigeria has a case against Ibori in a federal court in Asaba. Yet, that fact did not stop Umaru Yar’Adua from putting Ibori on an official delegation to this year’s Beijing Olympics. That fact did not inconvenience the ruling Peoples Democratic Party which recently elevated Ibori to the rank of “party elder.” That exaltation made Ibori a custodian of the party’s mission and exemplar of its deepest mores.

Several of Mr. Ibori’s front companies are on the list of rogue debtors whose delinquency brought some Nigerian banks to the brink of collapse. Even so, the former governor enjoys, and flaunts his, open access to Mr. Yar’Adua. Nobody in Aso Rock has the sense (forget the sense, how about courage?) to warn that Mr. Yar’Adua’s dalliance with Mr. Ibori, an ex-convict who happens to be the principal accused in trials on two continents, sells Nigeria as precisely the kind of crooked country that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described.

The day Mr. Ibori and his ilk begin to cower, instead of strut the stage – that day will mark the beginning of a new, salutary ethos.
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Jen Armstrong on Incest and MacKenzie Phillips

Dear friends,

The main taboos that are most necessary for any civilization to exist are murder and incest. "Thou shall not kill" may remind one of the first of the Ten Commandments; however, without such a prohibition a killer would soon realize that someone could commit the same offense against him or her until there are no people left.

The next precept, whether for purely moral or medical reasons regarding either the psychological harm to victims or the genealogical problems for the offspeing of such an affair is incest.

Moreover, the sad part is: considering all of the murder during wars and punishment by governments, much less for domestic violence, robbery, and revenge, the prohibition against murder, especially in the United States, is ineffective to put it mildly. Worse yet, since the consequences for committing murder make, at least, some people think twice about doing it ,but does not deter either many individuals or governments, then the less punitive sanctions for the crime of incest must make that offense occur far more frequently than murder. Additionally, a great deal of the incest has to do with sexism, since – like rape - it seems to happen to exponentially more females than males.

At any rate, on the link below, award-winning journalist Jenice Armstrong of the Philadelphia Daily News provides us with some information that may inspire victims to address this unconscionable behavior here-to- mentioned.

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/features/20090924_Jenice_Armstrong__Too_much_tell-all.html
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Dr. Ndebe on a Good Week for Nigerians

"...British prosecutors have called out his friends for shocking acts of corruption. Mr. Aondoakaa’s – and his friends’ – bad week was a good week for the rest of us."

A bad week for Aondoakaa and his clients

By Okey Ndibe

It was a bad week, recently, for Michael Aondoakaa, Nigeria’s attorney general and minister for justice. A week or so ago, Mr. Aondoakaa had occasion to put his warped sense of his office on display.

British authorities had the temerity to indict former Governors James Ibori and Victor Attah as well as Ibori’s associates, David Edevbie (a former commissioner under Ibori and now Mr. Umaru Yar’Adua’s private principal secretary) and Henry Imasekha for allegedly swindling the public of some $38 million in a stock divestment deal.

The indicted men seem to be some of Mr. Aondoakaa’s favorite people, and so he wasn’t going to fold arms and let the British traduce the men’s immaculate reputations.

To be sure, Nigeria has hardly been lucky in its roll of past attorneys-general. One or two who served under military regimes encouraged the juntas to lay siege on the judiciary and wage war against Nigerians’ fundamental rights. They wrote decrees that ousted the jurisdiction of courts to review any violations of the (partly suspended) constitution. Bayo Ojo, one of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s justice ministers, remained unfazed as his boss made vulgar attempts to tinker with the constitution in order to award himself a third term in office.

Yet, measured against his far from impressive predecessors, Mr. Aondoakaa has catapulted himself to the height of infamy. In a line-up of crass ministers of justice, he holds the record for badness and shamelessness.

Though called attorney general, Mr. Aondoakaa carries on as if he were a “protector-general” for men who could be Nigeria’s biggest, most mindless crooks.

Nigeria is saddled with an attorney general who parrots “rule of law” but acts what somebody has called “ruse of law.” To judge by the issues that trigger his passion, he appears to regard himself as a general factotum whose specification is to serve the interests of a cohort of former or serving public officials accused – or widely suspected – of blatant corrupt enrichment.

Mr. Aondoakaa never wakes up when egregious harm is done to “small” Nigerians. He remained nonchalant when some prisoners in Ibadan, protesting the subhuman conditions of their haunt, died horrific deaths. He never stirs when the police maim the limbs of riff raff, or even execute innocents in a homicidal orgy.

On the Internet is the disturbing videotape of Nigerian soldiers executing a cowering, unarmed man, identified as Buji Foi, during the July onslaught against real or perceived members of the Boko Haram group. There’s also the case of the extra-judicial execution of Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf. An attorney general worthy of the name should have been furious that the police (or soldiers) played prosecutor, judge and executioner. Mr. Aondoakaa was apparently too busy consorting with his “steak holder” friends to care.

He forgets that corrupt public officials – exactly the group he uses the rhetoric of “rule of law” to spare from serious prosecution – have done infinitely more harm to Nigeria than the dispirited Nigerians driven by desperation to embrace the anti-modern harangues of Boko Haram. In fact, the kind of unbridled plunder of which Mr. Aondoakaa’s favorite people are accused functions as fertilizer for the Boko Harams sprouting in Nigeria. Yet, when it serves the interests of his well-heeled “clients,” the attorney general deploys the abracadabra of “rule of law” to shield persons whose acts of turpitude create, or deepen, misery across the land.

Nigeria and the UK have a treaty on mutual legal assistance. But whenever UK police and prosecutors have asked for Mr. Aondoakaa’s assistance to prosecute Nigerian officials suspected of laundering looted funds in Britain, Mr. Aondoakaa has refused. And he’s invoked a false sense of national pride to justify his posture. As if seeking recognition as a national hero, he’s always argued that he would never hand over a Nigerian to be tried in the UK. Then, shamelessly – covertly – he sends letters of exoneration to the defense counsel of Nigerians being tried in British courts for money laundering.

With Ibori, Attah, Edevbie and Imasekha indicted, their “attorney general” came close to telling British law enforcement to go to hell. With the speed of a Usain Bolt, he rallied to the defense of the indicted Nigerians. He asserted, falsely, that the men had been scrutinized by agents of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and declared irreproachable.

Over all, Mr. Aondoakaa’s performance further ridiculed the office that his previous antics had debased.

The Nigerian “steak” holders’ minister for justice is twisted because British prosecutors have called out his friends for shocking acts of corruption. Mr. Aondoakaa’s – and his friends’ – bad week was a good week for the rest of us.
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Sunday SEPTEMBER 20TH 2009 AFRICAN AMERICAN DAY PARADE in New York City (Manhattan)

Sunday SEPTEMBER 20TH, 2009 AFRICAN AMERICAN DAY PARADE

DETAILS
Call time is: **12:30pm**

* gather at 111th & 7th Ave (Adam Clayton Powell) New York City (Manhattan)

*wear red, white or yellow garments
Please note that commerative NBT T-shirts are NOW on sale for $20
It is not too late to rsvp to this email if you want to march in the parade!


Dr. Barbara Ann Teer's National Black Theatre
visit our website
www.nationalblacktheatre.org
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Are Repubican attacks against Obama mere distractions from Health Care Reform?

Dear friends,

As the Congress attempts to make major chamges in the Health Care system, right-wingers, mostly of the Republican stripe are distracting us from genuine dialogue. However, unwittingly, others may be getting into the fray.

On the link below, as always, Elmer Smith of the Phioladelphia Daily News remonds us to stay focused on our goal"s).

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
ttp://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20090918_Elmer_Smith_.html
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A Glimpse at the "Health Care" Debate

"Enter Barbara Marino of St. Petersburg, Fla., insisting that, no, health care is not a right...'I don't think anybody's entitled to free health care. It's a privilege. It's not in the Constitution.'...Oh, you mean that ironclad document with 27 amendments?"

Dear friends,

While it seems to me that so-called "Health Care Reform" has more to do with cost analysis than correcting so many of the ills of the system, the Philadelphia Inquirer's outstanding Annette John-Hall delivers a glimpse at the "circus". Enjoy!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/annette_john-hall/20090918_Annette_John-Hall__A_puzzling_trip_to_a_political_zoo.html
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Are Racist Republicans Inciting President Obama's Assassination?

if an African American politician had ever jumped up and called Bush, Clinton, or any other "white" president a liar, as the racist Senator Wilson of South Carolina did, do you think that he would still be in office?




Dear friends,

There is currently a drive going on, that seems to be lead by members of the Republican Party, to bring harm to President Barack Obama. Not only has he been receiving exponentially more threats than any president in history, it is all being done under the watch of the GOP's "Black" chairman - Michael Steele. But where are the members of the Congressional Black Caucus? Just like the Katrina tragedy, they are nowhere in sight. Where are the two pious, loudmouth Black leaders that the government- and corporate-controlled media always summons when there is a problem? Moreover, if an African American politician had ever jumped up and called Bush, Clinton, or any other "white" president a liar, as the racist Senator Wilson of South Carolina did, do you think that he would still be in office?

On the link below, Elmer Smith of the Philadelphia Daily News gives us something about which to ponder.

One Love,
G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20090911_Elmer_Smith__It_s_a_small_leap_from__You_lie___to__You_die__.html
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Dr. Ndibe provides a eulogy for a giant

“Each man’s death diminishes me..."

"Gani, a giant failed by his country"

By Okey Ndibe

The 17th century English poet John Donne immortalized the verse that ends with these memorable lines: “Each man’s death diminishes me, / For I am involved in mankind. / Therefore, send not to know/ For whom the bell tolls, / It tolls for thee.”

There are at least two senses in which Donne’s sentiments apply to the late Gani Fawehinmi, a giant in several respects.

First, Mr. Fawehinmi’s crusading life was informed by an insistence that injustice to any citizen was deeply personal, nothing less than injustice to himself. Despite his privileged training – or actually because of it – he believed it was his place to combat the dehumanization of the least privileged among us. For him, the needless and senseless degradation of Nigerian lives translated into a personal diminution. When the poorest Nigerian was felled by the machinations of brutal, unconscionable power, Gani went to war on behalf of the voiceless, the powerless, and the dispossessed. The denigration of any Nigerian was, as far as he was concerned, a direct affront.

Second, it is no surprise that a man like Fawehinmi, who exuded extraordinary love, should attract fulsome affection in life and effusive praise – even by his erstwhile detractors and bullies – in death. Here was a man whose precepts and work buttressed a belief that others’ privations were his business. Generous to the point of being self-disregarding, this human luminary and brilliant legal mind was both larger than life and familiar. He was so familiar, in fact, that even total strangers would come to know him – to address him – simply as Gani.

His generous fellow feeling earned him the depth of public admiration we have seen on display since his passing on August 5, 2009. The relay of tributes testifies to one fact: that here’s a man whose death has impoverished us.

Fawehinmi’s death has come up in my conversations with numerous friends and acquaintances. There’s not a single person, even among those who never met him in flesh and blood, who did not express a deep sense of loss, indeed a personal testimonial of bereavement. Nigerians, it is safe to suggest, are mourning the passage of a man whose magnificence not even his most inveterate foes dare deny.

Consider, by contrast, the celebratory fever that gripped Nigeria when news spread of the death of maximum ruler, Sani Abacha. The dictator had funneled billions of dollars of public funds into his private foreign accounts, or those of proxies. Yet, all that loot could not buy him a moment’s reprieve when death came, nor could it procure the unspoken but solemnly observed stricture against ravaging the memory of the deceased. Abacha, like Ibrahim Babangida before him, had made a point of hounding Gani, rewarding the searchlight he beamed on their perfidy by processing him in and out of jail.

For the power-obsessed, in uniform or agbada, the likes of Gani are nothing more than insufferable irritants to be contained – through police beatings, detention, imprisonment, or defamation by the machineries of state power. Thus, an outstanding patriot like Gani was labeled a dissident, a disgruntled element, an idle rabble-rouser.

Yet, if any lesson is to be learned from the differing fates of Abacha and Fawehinmi in death, it is that, in the final consideration, the verdict of history cannot be rigged – whatever the size of the rigger’s pocket.

Gani Fawehinmi gave himself wholly to Nigeria, which makes it all the sadder that Nigeria betrayed him – as it betrayed Michael Imoudu, Mokwugo Okoye, Aminu Kano and a multitude of other true and tested patriots. It was Gani’s terrible luck to be born in a country whose hospitals could not diagnose his cancer, until it was too late. It was his bitter pill to live in a country where his advocacy of democracy, transparency and accountability was treated as high crime.

It is now up to history to redress the manifold wrongs done to this ethically agile and morally well-funded man. And history’s reparation is underway, even now. It is evident in the somber mood that’s enveloped Nigeria. In the end, it is Gani and citizens cast in his mold, not the Abachas, Babangidas and Obasanjos with their airy rhetoric (“all hands must be on deck,” “moving the nation forward,” “delivering the dividends of democracy”) who will be festooned for gallantry.

Gani’s expansive place in the national imagination appears assured. One trait of his greatness, remarked upon by many since his death, was his allergy to pretentiousness and cant. He was an intrepid foe to the enemies of the Nigerian people, and a dependable ally to those who fought to achieve democratic ends. He was quick to detect, and detest, wantonness and puniness in those who made the wrecking of Nigeria their main preoccupation.
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President Obama's "Health Care Reform" speech

"President Obama’s “health care reform” address, at least to me, seemed more like a “consumer protection” speech."


Dear friends,

President Obama’s “health care reform” address, at least to me, seemed more like a “consumer protection” speech. He even used the words “market” and “business” a number of times. Therefore, it was very confusing when he called the public option a “means” to an end. After all, are we not, as consumers, means to ends (i.e., profits) for businesses like insurance companies and banks?

In other words, is having access to health care to be viewed in the same context as buying a car? Most members of the Congress as well as President Obama, apparently, believe that it is. As a matter of fact, I suggest that we “reform” the method that is currently used for purchasing automobiles, based upon Obama’s “health care reform” plan. To be sure, just as the drug companies, insurance companies, and banks will now have greater access to government dollars/profits for “health care”, the Big Three auto companies, along with Big Oil, will “make a killing”, as it were.

Why not “reform” the educational system, by making certain aspects of health care part of the curricula for our schools? For example, emergency first aid can be taught to all sixth-graders. That will save a lot of emergency room visits, by allowing more people to use out-patience services, if anything, instead of running to emergency rooms for every injury or ailment. Additionally, we need to have mandatory grade school classes about personal hygiene that, for example, teach children to expel mucus, by blowing their noses into either handkerchiefs or paper products, when they have a runny nose, as opposed to making disgusting snorting noises and swallowing the viscous matter - which often leads to, or maintains, asthma (a far too prevalent and largely un-necessary health problem for today’s North American youth).

At any rate, Brother Obama mentioned that some people are acting “irresponsibly”, regarding their lack of consideration for others having to cover the health costs of the former. Unfortunately, our president fails to see the connection between a person’s responsibility to both his or her own welfare (e.g., health and education) and the well-being of his or her community, as opposed to relying upon for-profit enterprises or governmental largesse to deliver what he or she needs. For instance, as they should for other aspects of their lives, people should be taught by parents at a very young age, to take responsibility for their own education, as well as their health. That is, education is not something that someone gives to you; rather, it is something that one gets for one’s self. Dig? Likewise, one should be in charge of his or her own health – not a doctor or other health professional. Of course, in a market-driven, possession-oriented society such as ours, that message is taboo.

One Love,
G. Djata Bumpus
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Elmer Smith Reminds Us of War's Consequence

"At some point, we're going to have to assess this war in human terms, whether they are our children or not. "




ear friends,

On the link below, one of the nation's premier journalists, Elmer Smith of the Philadelphia Daily News, reminds us about the consequences of war.

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
ilynews/local/20090904_Elmer_Smith__Funeral_for_a_soldier_from_a_faraway_war.html
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The Many Colors of a W*O*M*A*N XXVI FREE Jazz Festival in Hartford, CT., Sept 5th, 2009

"Thanks for supporting global jazz, our legacy"



Saturday 5 September, 8pm
The Many Colors of a Woman, Inc. Celebrates Women in Jazz
The Many Colors of a W*O*M*A*N XXVI FREE Jazz Festival
Aetna Theater, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
600 Main Street, Hartford CT 06103
Headlining: Nicki Mathis’Afrikan Amerikan Jazz New Millennium All Stars: Ricky Alfonso, Katwren Anderson, Arti Dixson, Joe Fonda, Janice Friedman, Pat Harleston, Rozanne Levine, Dotti Anita Taylor, Camille Thurman, Deborah Weisz, Mark Whitecage; Special Guest Saskia Laroo; Featuring Carla Dean, Dawn Dumas, & MORE. CoSponsored by MCW, Inc., OPUS, Inc., SAND, Inc. Funded in part by The Evelyn W. Preston Memorial Fund, Bank of America Trustee; GHAC, MCW, Inc. Supported by Smith Whiley & Company, Cull Books, Jim Fentress. Open to the Public. Sponsors Invited. 860.231-0663, 860.429.6859

Monday 14 Sep 7P Nicki w/International Women In Jazz Choir St Peter’s Church
154/Lexington Ave NYC 718 468-7376

Saturday 26 September, 8pm
The Many Colors of a W*O*M*A*N XXVII FREE Jazz Festival
The Hoffman Auditorium, Saint Joseph College, The Carol Autorino Center for Arts and Humanities, Wheelchair Accessible
1678 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford CT, CT. 06117-2791
Map/directions: http://www.sjc.edu/content.cfm/pageid/264
Headlining: Nicki Mathis’ Afrikan Amerikan Jazz
Ricky Alfonso, Phil Bowler; Pat Harleston, Dotti Anita Taylor; Featuring: Carla Dean, Dawn Dumasl; Amina Star & Rodney Decarlos Edwards’ string duo.
CoSponsored by MCW, Inc. Saint Joseph College, The Carol Autorino Center for Arts and Humanities, OPUS, Inc., SAND, Inc. Funded by MCW, Inc. Supported by Smith Whiley & Company, Cull Books
Open to the Public. Sponsors Invited. 860.231-0663, 860.231-5529, 860.429.6859

Friday 9 October, Nik w/Andy Jaffe’s Big Band in Concert, Williams College, Williamstown, MA

Thursday 12 November 5:30P An Evening with Gloria Reuben third annual WE CAN (Women End the Course of AIDS Now) event, The Pond House, Elizabeth Park, West Hartford hosted by CARC, featuring Nicki Mathis’ Afrikan Amerikan Jazz 860.761-6699 x 111 http://matchbook.org/ArtistProfile1.aspxProfileIdt=741


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Dr. Ndibe honors Ted Kennedy and makes comparison to his opposites - corrupt Nigerian pols

"Ted Kennedy would have stood up and championed the cause of the 27 soldiers."

Ted Kennedy and the 27 soldiers

By Okey Ndibe

A few days ago, a friend of mine in Lagos recounted his online conversation with a Nigerian legislator visiting the US. The Nigerian lawmaker wrote admiringly about the crowds of Americans, rich and poor, who streamed into the John F. Kennedy presidential library and museum in Boston, Massachusetts to pay their last respects to Senator Ted Kennedy. Then he expressed a wish for the day to come when a Nigerian legislator’s death would inspire a similar expression of public adulation.

My friend essayed a sharp response. Gushing admiration for a deceased politician, he wrote back, does not come about through the carting away of “Ghana-must-go” bags of cash.

Perhaps my friend was in a testy mood, but his words rang true.

Senator Kennedy spent 47 years as a US senator. He won nine senatorial elections in a row, and these were real elections, not the sham that passes for Maurice Iwu’s idea of an election. But more than pulling off a string of electoral triumphs, Kennedy’s real achievement lay in the superb quality of his lawmaking. He sponsored, or co-sponsored, laws that made the lives of immigrants, workers, the elderly, and so-called racial minorities better.

It is an acknowledgement of his legislative vision, and in particular his drive to utilize his political leverage to improve the lot of numerous constituencies, that millions of Americans, including many political foes, felt drawn to the streets to commence celebration of his legacy. Thousands lined the streets of Boston to hail the memory of a gentle bear of a man. One man recalled a ten-page handwritten letter Kennedy had sent to his wife in reply to hers. Another man remembered how his mother, Kennedy’s constituent, received a surprise at her 80th birthday: Kennedy showed up!

To be true, Kennedy was far – very far, indeed – from being perfect. At one point in his life, he had a reputation both for womanizing and for drinking a pint or two too many. Yet, his constituents were willing to forgive, or overlook, his peccadilloes; they saw a man who was much greater than the sum of his personal flaws. At any rate, his job description was not to be a candidate for sainthood. They perceived in Kennedy a man willing to battle his personal demons – and determined to put in a hard day’s work on behalf of those who sent him to Congress.

Kennedy’s long-time dream was to husband health care reform, guaranteeing every American and resident, regardless of income, access to sound medical care. It is strangely fitting and ironic that he died in the midst of a raging debate over how best to fix his country’s too-expensive health care sector. His death may or may not lend impetus to the cause of universal health care, but nobody can deny that he gave the mission his all – and then some.

Place Kennedy side by side with Nigerian lawmakers – any Nigerian lawmaker – and we immediately shamble from the sublime to the absurd.

Kennedy loved to be addressed as Ted, or Teddy. No such simplicity for Nigerian lawmakers. Members of Nigeria’s House of Representatives have a silly ritual of addressing each other as “Honorable,” even as honor is frequently conspicuously absent from their conduct and lacking in their persons. But the grander gesture of inflation is to be found among Nigeria’s senators. Each member, even those who don’t know how to spell “bill,” is dubbed “Distinguished Senator.”

Yet, this is a body that is distinguished – along with the House of Representatives – by gargantuan greed and mediocrity, compounded by a steely indifference to the palpable, pressing needs of the citizens they purport to represent.

Take the manifest injustice meted out to 27 soldiers, three of them women, who served as part of Nigeria’s contingent to UN peacekeeping operations in Liberia. The Nigerian legislature has chosen to remain blind to the continued incarceration of these hapless soldiers whose crime was to raise their voices and expose a scandal: how some unscrupulous officers divert monies meant to pay these peacekeepers.

The 27 were originally herded to jail to serve life sentences, even as the officers who committed the real crime of sitting on their allowances were given nothing harsher than a (quick) sharp eye.

On August 28, the army announced that the life sentences were reduced to seven years each. In offering this inadequate dispensation, Chris Olukolade, Director Army Public Relations, reportedly described mutiny “as a very serious offence in the military.” He argued that “soldiers cannot exercise the same rights or approach to protests like civilians,” since this would adversely affect national “security, orderliness and survival”.

Ted Kennedy would have stood up and championed the cause of the 27 soldiers. Clenched fists pounding the podium, that extraordinary legislator would have reminded the army hierarchy that the graver threat to security, orderliness and survival comes from officers who eye their subordinates’ allowances.

Nigeria’s Senate and House of Representatives may shut their ears all they want, but the wailing of the 27 and their families will haunt their chambers until justice – in the form of a reversal of the odious judgment – is done to the soldiers.
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Elm Smith on Kennedy

“If it had been my call to make, the political legacy of Edward M. Kennedy would have ended at Chappaquiddick… But the words that come to mind for me as I consider his second-chance legacy are the words he used to describe why he had backed Barack Obama for president…Obama, Kennedy said, is a man ‘who refuses to be trapped in the patterns of the past.’”

Dear friends,

On the link below is a piece by the incomparable Elmer Smith of the Philadelphia Daily News, regarding the recent passing of Senator Edward Kennedy. I must say: I couldn't have said it bnetter than Elm has. Enjoy!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/55293337.html
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Sandy Banks on Poverty and Utopia?

"Penny stared at her with raised eyebrows, uncharacteristically silent. Twenty-four years in the projects and she had yet to consider all of its possibilities..."

c Dear friends.

It is easy to understand why luxury is a vice. Yet, its opposite, that is, poverty, can be a vice as well. Moreover, with poverty as a vice, people are often left to being content with their oppression. We witnessed this during the Katrina fiasco where we saw people running out of department stores into the streets, with water up to their hips, holding stolen televisions, as they grinned into TV news cameras. Meanwhile, simultaneously, others who were just as immersed in water as their television-carrying cohorts had several pairs each of expensive sneakers hanging around their necks that they had stolen, gawking the same way into the news cameras (vice). Where were these folks going to plug in the televisions or walk in the sneakers?

In any case, on the link below is a piece written by the exceptional Los Angeles Times columnist Sandy Banks that, although incredibly penned, seems troubling, at least to me, because the alleged vision of what seems to be a community’s future only reveals the fact that they are not a “community” at all (barred windows and doors, and so forth). Rather, many of the people in the story are those who have lived in poverty for generations and appear to have no desire, much less concept, of what it would mean to use their inner and outer powers of energy, physical and mental stamina, concentration, memory, and so many other strengths that will allow them to join in with their fellows and create a loving and prosperous environment in which to live and grow, without needing a great deal of outside aid. Instead, they act as if someone “owes” them something and waiting for a handout (more vice). Still, Sandy, an accomplished and established veteran words the predicament in a way that makes the whole reading experience involving this situation not just palatable, but thought-provoking as well. Enjoy!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jordandowns22-2009aug22,0,7348179.column
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Dr. Ndibe on Real-life African Folklore

"The Igbo have this cautionary tale about the perils of royal hubris. It concerns a man named Eze Onyeagwanam – roughly translated as: 'King let nobody tell me'..."

“Let nobody tell me!”

By Okey Ndibe

The Igbo have this cautionary tale about the perils of royal hubris. It concerns a man named Eze Onyeagwanam – roughly translated as: “King let nobody tell me.” This royal personage is credited with combining disastrous decisions with hectoring pride. If anybody sought to persuade the king against treading some ruinous path, the king screamed: “Don’t tell me!”

In time, the king’s aides learned to keep their counsel to themselves. Even when the king took a manifestly foolish step, his hapless advisors assured him that his action was the paragon of wisdom.

There are different accounts of how the king came to grief. Here’s my favorite: One day, the king set out for the marketplace. He was stark naked, in a drunken revelry. As he strode to his destination, none of his scandalized subjects dared warn him about his flapping manhood. The imperious man stunned onlookers when he finally arrived at the market.

It was one scandal too many for his subjects. Acting swiftly, they deposed the man and led him away to an asylum – where he spent the rest of his days among other deranged habitués.

Lately, I have been thinking about the undeniable connection between Eze Onyeagwanam’s legend and Nigeria’s crop of crass leaders. Nigeria appears cursed, not with one, but a multitude of Eze Onyeagwanams. Morally and ethically naked men and women dominate the country’s public space, but pass themselves off as lavishly dressed.

Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an Abuja stop as part of her 11-day tour to a number of African countries. Even before she arrived in Africa’s most populous – and most grandly disappointing – nation, the American media were speculating that she would speak candidly about Nigeria’s woes, especially corruption and record-setting history of fraudulent elections.

Mrs. Clinton lived up to the billing. At a town hall meeting in Abuja, she spoke in a manner that was uncharacteristically direct for a chief diplomat. “The most immediate source of the disconnect between Nigeria’s wealth and its poverty,” she said, was “a failure of governance at the federal, state and local levels.” In a country where militancy has become the disorder of the day, the American secretary stated that “Lack of transparency and accountability has eroded the legitimacy of the government and contributed to the rise of groups that embrace violence and reject the authority of the state.”

In speaking so directly, Mrs. Clinton gave Nigeria’s rulers (yes, they rule, but don’t know a thing about leading) a taste of what President Barack Obama thinks of them. Obama riled Nigeria’s rulers when he snubbed them and instead visited neighboring Ghana in July.

Mrs. Clinton took a swipe at Mr. Umaru Yar’Adua’s non-record in the fight against corruption. Her verdict on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was unflattering. “The EFCC, which was doing well, has kind of fallen off in the last one year,” she said. “We will like to see it come back to business to be able to partner with us.”

Her dour and – going by the enthusiastic applause she got – accurate portrait of Nigeria elicited the laughable pledge by Yar’Adua to continue combating corruption.

Once Mrs. Clinton left Nigeria, the Eze Onyeagwanam impulse was activated. Officials of Nigeria’s ruling party assured that nothing was amiss in Nigeria. David Mark, who presides over a high-priced but largely sleeping Senate, echoed that sentiment. A man who left a career in the military with amazing wealth, Mr. Mark told reporters that Mrs. Clinton’s take on Nigeria was misconceived. Where she abhorred Nigeria’s wishy-washy elections, the senator argued, “We will decide for ourselves what we want as our democratic system.” And the kind of system “we” have chosen is one where the ruling party captures any states and posts that catch its fancy, regardless of what the voters say!

Mark, a beneficiary of a questionable election, asked with a straight face: “What is the problem with the [Nigerian] electoral system?” For him, Mrs. Clinton’s statement that Nigerians lack a credible register of voters arose from her inadequate education. “That is the sort of thing we get ourselves into when we don’t educate those we ought to,” he bemoaned. Had the US Secretary attended Mr. Mark’s classroom, she would have learned that “This country is a sovereign nation, Nigerians belong to Nigerians and we would decide for ourselves the way we want to move ourselves forward.”

How exactly are Mr. Mark and co moving their nation forward? Here’s a sample. New Inspector General of Police Ogbonnaya Onovo has asked the legislature to empower the police to shoot during elections. Does anybody in her or his wildest imagination foresee the police shooting supporters of the ruling party? Mr. Maurice Iwu, who oversees Nigeria’s infamous brand of elections, recently stated that only the military can conduct credible elections. As I sat down to write, news came that veteran actor and broadcaster, Pete Edochie, had been kidnapped in Anambra.

That’s a portrait of Mr. Mark’s country marching forward into perdition.
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Is Single-Payer Health Insurance “Disruptive”, as President Obama insists?

"Mr. President, considering your response to the suggestion of single-payer health insurance, it was very “disruptive” to scores of millions of individuals, including owners/managers of businesses and other economic, political, and social institutions for a Black man who had a good chance of winning to run for the nation’s highest office, so why did you continue running?"

Is Single Payer Health Insurance “Disruptive”?

President Obama says it is. That brings the question, at least to me: Mr. President, considering your response to the suggestion of single-payer health insurance, it was very “disruptive” to scores of millions of individuals, including owners/managers of businesses and other economic, political, and social institutions, for a Black man who had a good chance of winning to run for the nation’s highest office, so why did you continue running?

Meanwhile, many citizens, especially Republicans, complain about not wanting “too much government”. To be sure, such a protestation is quite dubious, since it is precisely the threat capability of the government’s police and military forces that allow the former to be able to accumulate any measure of wealth in the first place. Moreover, without the aforementioned threat capability of the government’s power how would the wealthy be able to stop others from taking their fortunes?

Finally, at least to me, those who have way more ducats than the rest of us should pay far greater taxes as they relate to percentages of incomes, because they have so much more to lose. Otherwise, the wealthy are being even further subsidized than they already are by their fellow citizens who are of middle class and lower-middle class incomes, since the latter make far less use of airports and other facilities - whether for business or pleasure, that rely so heavily upon government funding. Let’s get real!

G. Djata Bumpus
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Dr. Ndibe on Problems and Solutions for Nigeria

"A permanent solution to the malaise in the delta, as well as the broader breakdown of law and order in the nation, lies in pursuing an agenda of accelerated economic development, the restoration of wholesome values, and humanization of the Nigerian space.,,"

"The real amnesty "

By Okey Ndibe

Last week, a correspondent of Radio France International hunted me down in Toulouse, France, where I was making a short visit to relatives. The reporter sought my opinion about Umaru Yar’Adua’s amnesty for militants in the Niger Delta. Did I think, he asked, that the gesture was going to address the festering violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich hub?

My short answer was no. It doesn’t take the gift of clairvoyance to realize that Yar’Adua’s amnesty, however well meaning, is akin to using paper to cover deep cracks in a wall. Sooner or later – in fact, sooner than later – the cracks will show once again.

Yar’Adua’s amnesty, I told the reporter, does little to fix the underlying causes of the crisis in the Niger Delta. These causes include decades of economic injustice, the ecological devastation of the area, and the shortsighted employment of military power to dispose of legitimate agitation for reparation. Add to the mix the irresponsible recruitment and arming of the area’s jobless thugs by rogue politicians – most of them members of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party – and what emerges is a perfect recipe for social combustion.

A permanent solution to the malaise in the delta, as well as the broader breakdown of law and order in the nation, lies in pursuing an agenda of accelerated economic development, the restoration of wholesome values, and humanization of the Nigerian space. Violence is, in the end, the recourse of desperate, hopeless, or broken people. Sadly, Nigeria has become a factory that mass-produces desperate, hopeless and broken citizens.

Are Yar’Adua and his cohorts doing anything to reverse this trend, to ameliorate the brutish conditions under which Nigerians writhe and seethe? Here again, the answer is no. Are they capable of envisioning a transformed Nigeria? Yet again, no.

There are a few exceptional figures in Nigeria’s public life. For the most part, however, the nation is in the hands of wretched pretenders, flight-by-night mediocrities and contemptible usurpers whose mission is to gorge on the public trough. These men and women are so daft that they hardly realize how perilously close they have brought the nation to the edge of unspeakable disaster.

Yar’Adua is a shadow of the kind of visionary leader that Nigeria needs, and urgently. The man doesn’t come across as understanding the depths of the crisis in which the nation is embroiled.

Far from grasping the nature and scope of the nation’s challenge and the rudiments of social engineering required to turn things around, he has at every turn exacerbated the crisis.

His coddling of the nation’s corrupt league is nothing short of scandalous. It’s still open to debate whether his amnesty to the delta’s militants was a success at any level. But there’s no question that his rule has entailed a bounty of amnesty to those who stole Nigeria to penury over the last ten years.

Under his watch, former occupants of public office who once dreaded the prospect of prosecution by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission have regained their swagger. Confident in Yar’Adua’s harmlessness, men and women who amassed illicit wealth by betraying the public trust have since crawled out of their cocoons. They’ve taken to strutting the stage in obscene pride.

The real beneficiaries of Yar’Adua’s undeclared (but more real) amnesty are his former gubernatorial colleagues lifted into cabinet positions in his regime, despite the existence of massive dossiers of their culpability in money laundering. Other profiteers from Yar’Adua’s amnesty are past and current office holders who have been spared fear of the consequences of corrupt acts. In the current dispensation, few undertakings are as safe and sanction-free as graft and money laundering.

Herein, then, lies Yar’Adua’s albatross. If he wishes to reduce militancy and de-criminalize the Niger Delta, then it behooves him to show a comprehensive distaste for corruption, a crime that acts as manure for the violence and instability in the Niger Delta. You can’t be fraternizing with high-intensity criminals like corrupt ex-governors and be preaching to militants and relatively low-grade criminals to disarm. Disarm for what? To watch in stupefaction as politicians fritter their resources?

Yar’Adua’s policies and his body language do not bespeak a man who wishes to lift a finger in anger at his corrupt fellows. Knowing that about the man, one can confidently aver – as I told my French radio interviewer – that the amnesty plan was dead on arrival.
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Jen Armstrong on more of the effects of Violence on Female Growth

Dear friends,

In keeping with her constant effort to bring out relevant issues, award-winning columnist Jen Armstring of the Philadelphia Daily News reminds us of another of the many reasons why violence against females is this nation's, as well as the entire world's, biggest problem. As a matter of fact, if the foes of Michael Vick used their energies towards the aforementioned pandemic violence against females, as opposed to voicing their alleged concern for non-human animals, I am sure that the animal cruelty would dissipate a short time afterwards. Please check out the link below.

One Love,
G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/philly/phillywomen/20090820_Jenice_Armstrong__Staying_safe_on_the_run.html
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Smith on Michael Vick's "Second Chance"

"That's what makes second chances so special. They are an extension of grace that says more about the people who give them than the ones who receive them."

Dear friends,

Let's keep the recent re-instatement and signing of Michael Vicks in perspective. My longtime dear friend and veteran columnist with the Philadelphia Daily News, Elmer Smith, does just that, on the link below. Please reflect.

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20090817_Elmer_Smith__Credit_the_Eagles_for_trying.html
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Rabid Animal Rights "activists" and Michael Vick - a female perspective

"There are a couple of key parts to redemption," says the Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, pastor of Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church. "The person in need of forgiveness has to be able to forgive themselves. And the community has to be willing to give the person a second chance..."

Dear friends,

Is there something deeper going on, regarding the issue of Michael Vick and his re-instatement to the NFL? The Philadelphia Inquirer's outstanding columnist Annette John-Hall gives us a special point-of-view.

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/annette_john-hall/20090816_Annette_John-Hall__Vick_s_redemption_goes_deeper_than_football.html
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Dr. Ndibe continues to provide clarity about Nigerian politics

"There’s no question that, for the cabal, the protection of its members’ looting rights approaches a sacred duty. "

"Testing the “steak holders”

By Okey Ndibe

Last week in London, a friend asked why I thought the Umaru Yar’Adua regime deployed overwhelming force in dealing with adherents of Boko Haram, the group that blames western education for Nigeria’s woes. His question was informed by a sense of history. He remembered the studied slowness with which this and past governments had tackled outbreaks of sectarian violence. He also recalled the frequency and openness with which armed robbers operate in most states of the country.

“We never hear about the police showing up when armed robbers attack banks in Ibadan , Awka or Benin City for hours,” he said.

Why, then the alacrity and brutality with which Boko Haram was decimated?

My response was that the cabal that runs – and ruins – Nigeria is not in the business of protecting Nigerians’ lives and property. Their mission, instead, is to use the instrument of the state – principally the army and police – to sustain their ability to privatize the nation’s resources.

This cabal, whose members style themselves stake holders, set out to send a chilling message to all Nigerians. And this was the message: that it would not brook any campaign to impede its access to lucre.

It was the second such message that the Yar’Adua government has telegraphed this year. Earlier, the government had authorized a slash-and-burn military offensive in the Niger Delta. The ostensible goal was to rout militants who, in their attacks on oil installations, had shown scant regard for members of the Joint Task Force detailed to contain them.

In the earlier assault, as in the recent one, the Nigerian state beat its chest after slaughtering hundreds of citizens, many of them unarmed and defenseless, quite a few of them women and children. Apparently scared to face the Boko Haram guru in court, the regime contrived to murder him – and then to concoct an implausible account of the circumstances of his death.

As the corpses of hundreds of Boko Haramites defaced the streets of several states, Yar’Adua went off on his jolly way to Brazil . If there’s a worse case of atrocious political instincts, I’d like to hear about it. For Yar’Adua and his ilk, the majority of Nigerian citizens are worth less than cattle. Why delay a foreign junket just because a few hundred “cattle” had been hunted down and killed?

There’s no question that, for the cabal, the protection of its members’ looting rights approaches a sacred duty. There’s ample proof. Remember how, in one breath, Yar’Adua and Speaker Dimeji Bankole told the nation that former President Olusegun Obasanjo wasted billions of dollars on so-called power projects – with nothing to show for it. Then, after a panel of the House of Representatives launched a public probe that unearthed shocking details of the power scam, the entire machinery of the state went into panic mode. In a bizarre and shameless twist, the cabal in Abuja worked in concert to protect a principle dear to its members’ heart: the principle of thieving.

The collectivity of “steak holders” awoke to the grave consequences of exposing some of their number. What if Nigerians arose and demanded that all the players in the power scandal, including Obasanjo, Governor Liyel Imoke and ex-Governor Segun Agagu, be compelled to face prosecution? The nation-hijackers feared the domino effect of permitting Nigerians to see the callous manner in which men entrusted with high office conspired to defraud the nation. A new script was prepared: Tell Nigerians that not a single kobo was misspent on power projects, much less stolen.

It’s such tortured manipulations of reality, such barefaced lies, that ultimately fertilized Boko Haram’s central creed, a belief that secular education was the culprit. The group’s critique may be wrong-headed, but there’s no question that the depraved men and women who daily gnaw away the nation’s promise and potential are a disgrace to their education and training – western, traditional and religious.

Using superior armory, the regime has squelched the Haramites for now. But let nobody imagine, for a moment, that this is the end of the story. It strikes me, at best, as part of an opening act in what’s likely to be a prolonged, multi-pronged resistance to a political system arranged to aid and abet the mindless leeches who feed fat on the collective blood of a nation.

Unless the cabal cultivates self-restraint and learns curb its greed – and nothing inspires confidence in this prospect – the nation better brace itself for many more Boko Harams and other forms of resistance.

I suspect that the cabal’s victory will prove illusory and pyrrhic.

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John McCain Shows Some of His Real Self

When corporate interests were on the line, it seems, the senator hung up on that right to privacy.*

Dear friends,

Imagine that John McCain had been given the nod to be president, instead of Barack Obama. The article on the link below, written by the very progressive and insightful journalist Stephanie Kraft of western Massachuset's The Valley Advocate, reveals the true direction that McCain has taken.

G. Djata Bumpus

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=129975A1A8D2F550&p_docnum=1&s_dlid=DL0109073117511825732&s_ecproduct=SUB-FREE&s_ecprodtype=INSTANT&s_trackval=&s_siteloc=&s_referrer=&s_subterm=Subscription%20until%3A%2012%2F14%2F2015%2011%3A59%20PM&s_subexpires=12%2F14%2F2015%2011%3A59%20PM&s_username=freeuser&s_accountid=AC0107071613144804057&s_upgradeable=no
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Gates' Arrest is Good for Obama PR

“This whole affair has given Barack Obama a chance to make a little public relations move after he has recently been criticized for a number of actions that were “anti-Black”, like going along with the US boycott of the International Conference on Racism that was held this past April (2009) in South Africa…”

Dear friends,

The current furor over Henry Gates being arrested is humorous to me. After all, the story is not even newsworthy, in my opinion.

What is more laughable is: For many years, long before this incident occurred, a number of my friends who are longtime progressive African American scholars/educators have considered Henry Louis Gates to be the antithesis of the “angry Black man” that the news media is revealing. In fact, the aforementioned African American professors have, as I mentioned above, for years, attached the same type of pejorative monikers to Henry, as they have/do to Clarence Thomas.

My own personal experience with Henry is old – i.e., not recent. Almost forty years ago, as a young Black Panther from the Boston, Mass. chapter who, along with a dozen or so fellow Panthers from all over the country, was temporarily stationed in the New Haven, CT chapter for about a year (1970-71), in order to rebuild the aforementioned chapter after the F.B.I. had concocted a murder case against our comrades there, including our national chairman and co-founder Bobby Seale, and had them all jailed. Henry was an undergrad at Yale then. As I mentioned in a piece last year about occasionally running into then future President George “Dubya” Bush (who had already graduated), Henry was an unassuming brother who was around Yale campus, during the same period. As best I can remember, he was always with a buddy (I cannot recall the other cat’s name). I do remember Henry being a good brother, nonetheless. But having to take on adult responsibilities can really change some people.

In any case, the point that, at least to me, so many people are missing is: This whole affair has given Barack Obama a chance to make a little public relations move after he has recently been criticized for a number of actions that were “anti-Black”, like going along with the US boycott of the International Conference on Racism that was held this past April (2009) in South Africa. In other words, Obama’s well-calculated remark about the “stupid” actions of police, for example, has certainly won him brownie points with many African Americans.

Meanwhile, genuine dialogue about racism is swept under the rug, as usual, because racism in the context that is being presented by Obama and the government- and corporate-controlled mass communications media is defined as either a “disease” or some kind of xenophobia, as opposed to being what it really is: a system of oppression and exploitation that is instituted by citizens who disregard their true ancestral pasts and make the mean-spirited claim of being “white”, in order to form an artificial “majority” group and maintain White Supremacy. Dig? Peace.

G. Djata Bumpus
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Five Questions for President Obama

In spite of the welcome nomination of Ms. Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, what "change" has occured as promised to the historically exploitative machine of big banks and multinational businesses that enjoy the protection of "our" government, Mr. Obama?


Five Questions for President Obama

1) If there are only a finite number of citizens and, therefore, consumers in America, will there come a time when some American companies will reach their “saturation points” as it is called in “Economics”; that is, will they be unable to do business here?

2) Should the government “bailout” such companies, including banks, when they reach their aforementioned “saturation points”, since their profits will decline?

3) Do companies have a responsibility to produce results in order to keep themselves in business?

4) Does it seem reasonable for UAW members to take over the Big Three, since they are already building and distributing the cars, while being supported by government funds as opposed to helping the incompetent managers that caused the failure from the outset?

5) Is the claim of "whiteness" that so divides America's body politic based upon biology or convenience for some citizens to means-spiritedly pit thenmselves against others and form an artificial "majority" group, regardless of either the length of history of these aforementioned people in this country or even their skin color?
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Is Hartford, CT becoming North America's new "Jazz" capital?

Saturday 5 September, 8pm The Many Colors of a Woman, Inc. Celebrates Women in Jazz @ The Many Colors of a W*O*M*A*N XXVI FREE Jazz Festival
Headlining: Nicki Mathis’Afrikan Amerikan Jazz New Millennium All Stars: Ricky Alfonso, Joe Fonda, Arti Dixson, Pat Harleston, Rozanne Levine, Dotti Anita Taylor, Deborah Weisz, Mark Whitecage; Special Guest Saskia Laroo Featuring Carla Dean, Dawn Dumas, & MORE TBA Hartford, CT.
CoSponsored by MCW, Inc., OPUS, Inc., SAND, Inc. Funded in part by The Evelyn W. Preston Memorial Fund, Bank of America Trustee; GHAC, MCW, Inc. Supported by Smith Whiley & Company, Cull Books, Jim Fentress. Open to the Public. Sponsors Invited. 860.231-0663, 860.429.6859

Monday 14 September 7P w/International Women In Jazz Choir, St Peter's Church, Lexington @ 54 St NYC 718.468-7376

Saturday 26 September, 8pm
The Many Colors of a W*O*M*A*N XXVII FREE Jazz Festival
Saint Joseph College, The Carol Autorino Center for Arts and
Humanities, Wheelchair Accessible
1678 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford CT, CT. 06117-2791
Map/directions: http://www.sjc.edu/content.cfm/pageid/264

Headlining: Nicki Mathis’ Afrikan Amerikan Jazz
Ricky Alfonso, Phil Bowler; Pat Harleston, Dotti Anita Taylor; Featuring: Carla Dean, Dawn Dumas, Latanya Ferrell; Amina Star & Rodney Decarlos Edwards’ string duo.
CoSponsored by MCW, Inc. Saint Joseph College, The Carol Autorino Center for Arts and Humanities, OPUS, Inc., SAND, Inc. Funded by MCW, Inc. Supported by Smith Whiley & Company, Cull Books. Open to the Public. Sponsors Invited. 860.231-0663, 860.231-5529, 860.429.6859 Dean photos

Thursday 12 November 5:30P An Evening with Gloria Reuben 3d annual WE CAN (Women End the Course of AIDS Now) event, The Pond House, Elizabeth Park, West Hartford hosted by CARC, featuring Nicki Mathis’ Afrikan Amerikan Jazz; 860.761-6699

As a New England States Touring (NEST) Roster artist, presenters applying to hire Nick Mathis may be eligible to receive grant funding that can cover up to 50% of artist fee. http://matchbook.org/ArtistProfile1.aspx?ProfileIdt1 BOOKING Information 860.231-0663 websites:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/nickmathis http://www.myspace.com/nickimathis

Producer, The Many Colors of a W*O*M*A*N Jazz Festival
http://themanycolorsofawomanincorporated.webs.com/apps/photos/album?albumid589469

New Boston Fund 2008 Individual Artist Fellowship/Greater Hartford Arts
Council Award Recipient.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/musicwoman/2008/08/27/Creative-Vocalists-Nicki-Mathis-and-Renee-Fiallos
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/musicwoman/2008/10/01/Metaphysics-of-Music
google Nicki Mathis Jazz

...If the looking glass were asked, Mirror, mirror on the wall who was the coolest of them all? The answer would be Nicki Mathis... Ken Flynn, El Paso Herald Post

Sing Everyday Eric Dolphy

A silver timbered Texan. Owen Mc Nally, Courant Music critic, Hartford, CT

…I just learned that you will be playing at the upcoming WE CAN event for the CARC! I am thrilled to have you be part of this wonderful program. Thank you so much for signing on....You made our PCSW gala last November a huge success and I'm bragging about you to anyone who will listen. Thanks! ... Teresa C. Younger Executive Director Permanent
Commission on the Status of Women

Lots of things contribute to the makings of a great female jazz singer, beside just a great singing voice: a stylishly graceful wardrobe, a laid back (but spunky) demeanor, and a connection with the audience. Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Nina Simone, Dinah Washington and Nancy Wilson all had (have)(sic) it and so, too, does Hartford's own Nicki Mathis. Robert Cooper, The Hartford Advocate

Dear Nikki, you are a Star of Bright Dimension Citizen Carrie S. Perry (Mayor) Hartford
CT
...and another new singer- and what a GEM! she counted off such a fast swing- I said to myself HUH? and she meant it! you knew where you wanted it Ms. Nick Mathis! Taught me somethin! Wow! your amazing! they LOVED you! I cant wait to hear more! Thank you for sharing that with us! ... LaRe, Jazz Fever Jam, Sugar Bar NYC

Thank you for performing at the Festival's Lunch and Evening Concert Series. We appreciated having Nicki Mathis' Afrikan Amerikan Jazz on our stage to engage and entertain audiences in downtown New Haven. We are glad to know that such diverse programming is possible in our region. Thank you again, Melissa Huber, Program Manager, 12th Annual International Arts & Ideas Festival

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Ojo Maduekwe meets Barack Obama‏

"If Maduekwe were schooled in the basics of diplomacy, he would have known that state visits were not negotiated at chance meetings in hotel hallways..."

Ojo Maduekwe meets Barack Obama

By Okey Ndibe

Ojo Maduekwe’s recent account of a supposed encounter with President Barack Obama pointed up the profound confusion of Nigeria’s misruling elite.

Maduekwe, who’s Umaru Yar’Adua’s foreign minister, described meeting Obama in Italy during the recent G-8 summit. According to him, “President Barack Obama told me that he will be visiting Nigeria very soon.”

In what was a textbook case of diplomatic gaffe, Maduekwe claimed that he “walked up to Obama and said, Mr. President, nice to meet you. I'm the Foreign Affairs Minister of Nigeria. President Obama was warm when I introduced myself. He held me by the shoulder and said to me ‘well, Mr. Minister, I will be visiting your country very soon.’ The second time he told me that ‘Mr. Minister, wherever goes Nigeria, goes Africa.’”

Forget that US embassy officials in Abuja have told Nigerian reporters that they were not aware of any plans by the American president to visit Nigeria. Such blunt repudiation is embarrassing enough. But it’s even sadder that Maduekwe should make a statement, in public, that is so jejune as to guarantee him – and the regime he serves – instant ridicule from Washington and within Nigeria.

Poor Ojo Maduekwe! Like many in Yar’Adua’s circle, he’s infected with what one may categorize as Ghana envy. Yes, Obama visited Ghana two weeks ago and spoke charmingly about Nkrumah’s renascent nation. Not only did the American leader laud Nigeria’s much smaller neighbor, he also spoke in barely veiled accents about Nigeria’s deepening pathologies. Nigeria, once self-proclaimed giant of Africa, has cast itself in the tragic position of now looking up to Ghana. Even if Nigeria were to get a thinking, visionary leadership, not the comatose usurpers now in place, it may well take a decade or more to attain Ghana’s level of infrastructural development and civic order.

But the usurpers sulk and chafe when a man like Obama, a figure whose emergence as US president is suffused with historical symbolism, snubs them. Obama is no fool. He knows that, to be seen consorting with the vote thieves in Abuja, is the quickest way to deplete his moral capital and political assets. So he went to Ghana, a country governed with a measure of vision by decent men and women.

Aware of his boss’s pain at being ostracized by America, Maduekwe bravely decided to save the day. Seizing his moment in Italy, he boldly walked up to Obama and (no doubt, self-importantly) introduced himself. He reported that Obama was “warm.” What a merciful thing that Maduekwe is a poor mind reader. How he would have frozen and recoiled in fright to discern the pity and contempt with which Obama regards his ilk – the pompous derelicts who frolic while their nation withers.

Isn’t it something that Nigeria is now reduced to fantasizing about an Obama visit? Isn’t it sad that Maduekwe, much older than Obama, should salivate at the idea that Obama “held me by the shoulder” – much like a primary school pupil getting giddy on account of the principal’s endearing attention and touch?

If Maduekwe were schooled in the basics of diplomacy, he would have known that state visits were not negotiated at chance meetings in hotel hallways. Even if Obama broached a visit, a minister of foreign affairs should have known better than to go to a public forum and blab about it.

But Maduekwe, like the regime he serves, is a desperate man. The likes of Maduekwe have put Nigeria in the position of a sophomoric nation, desperate to prove that what Ghana can do, Nigeria too can do.

What if Obama said, as Maduekwe claimed, that Africa’s fortunes are tied to developments in Nigeria? Did Maduekwe have to hear it from Obama to believe it? Had he not heard Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and hundreds of other patriots enunciate that point before?

Desperate to snatch cheer out of a charred narrative, Maduekwe failed to recognize in Obama’s (ostensible) words a rebuke about Nigeria’s addiction to failure, its miscarriage of promise, and its habituation to mediocrity. Think of the kind of hope Ghana has given to many West Africans by getting the basic things – credible elections and infrastructures – right. Imagine, then, the kind of powerful, positive jolt Nigeria would have offered to the rest of Africa if, somehow, the worst among us did not always conspire to hijack the nation, and to reduce it to their banal level.

Obama accorded Ghana the respect its leaders and people have worked hard to deserve. Maduekwe sneaked up on Obama in Italy and, in the fashion of those who abort Nigeria’s highest aspirations, attempted to rig respectability for the Yar’Adua regime. It backfired!
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Obama challenges NAACP, but not himself

"We have had an issue with him for refusing to send a delegation to the world conference on racism in South Africa,"

Dear friends,

Recently, President Barack Obama addressed the NAACP’s 100th anniversary convention. He spoke of his “standing on the shoulders of giants”, To be sure, we have heard this from him before, However, ay least to me, it is a disingenuous claim on his part, especially since, as the piece on the link below reveals, Mr. Obama spent so much time talking about African Americans taking “responsibility” as opposed to expecting help from the government, when he, apparently, has no plans himself to take responsibility by allowing other younger African Americans as well as those who have yet to come, to stand on “his shoulders”. In other words, he. in effect, is telling African Americans that, while he stood on the shoulders of giants, he prefers not to reciprocate. He more or less is saying: Sorry Black folks, I’ve reached the pinnacle. Now, you’re on you own.

Wow! Is this the man who African Americans thought would be our newest Jesus? After all, it seems that we are always looking for a Jesus, instead of using our own “divine” inner and outer powers and imitating the path of the historical Jesus, so that we can make our own way.

Finally, President Obama never even hinted about our need to build our communities. Instead, he totally placed the “responsibility” on parents to guide their children to be educated. Yet, what kind of education does he mean? After all, lawyers in America go to jail everyday, for a variety of crimes. Also, Obama called racism “discrimination”. Interesting. Nevertheless, on the link below, a “giant” himself. Philadelphia Daily News columnist Elmer Smith talks about Mr. Obama’s recent speech to the NAACP

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/51004352.html
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Obama goes to Ghana

Obama goes to Ghana

By Okey Ndibe

President Barack Hussein Obama, a man who embodies hope and a can-do spirit, went to Accra, Ghana last week to deliver a clear message: Africa’s future lies in African hands.

It was Obama’s sermon from Mount Accra. As speeches go, this one had two parts to it. Obama used part of his speech to deliver a rousing, and well-earned, praise of Ghanaians – a people who have beaten a path out of forlorn despair into hope, an energetic present and a promising future. He professed pride that “this is my first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as President of the United States.” And then, in a line that must have made every Ghanaian heart swell with pride, he added: “I have come here, to Ghana, for a simple reason: the 21st century will be shaped by what happens not just in Rome or Moscow or Washington, but by what happens in Accra as well.”

Obama’s speech was also a thinly veiled rebuke to those African countries that still murk around, fiddling away opportunities to achieve their promise. Among those countries, Kenya (Obama’s patrimonial homeland) and Nigeria (home to the vast majority of the world’s Black people) stand out.

In 1998, novelist Chinua Achebe gave a lecture at the World Bank and gave his audience the simple, but not always understood, message that “Africa is people.” In Accra, Obama echoed that sentiment when he asserted: “the boundaries between people are overwhelmed by our connections…I see Africa as a fundamental part of our interconnected world – as partners with America on behalf of the future that we want for all our children.”

Obama’s speech was part rallying cry, part deep cry from the heart of one who confessed, “I have the blood of Africa within me,” testifying that “my family's own story encompasses both the tragedies and triumphs of the larger African story.”

Today, Ghana represents the renascent spirit of Africa’s triumphs as surely as Nigeria emblematizes the continent’s abiding tragedies. And Obama’s sermon was attentive to the contrasting narratives of success and failure, hope and grimness, Ghana (as well as Botswana, South Africa, Senegal, Namibia etc) and Nigeria (as well as Kenya, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Niger, Somalia etc).

With his host country in mind, the American president credited “considerable progress in parts of Africa” but also noted, with Kenya and, likely, Nigeria in mind, that much of the continent’s promise “has yet to be fulfilled.”

Obama’s speech was not always historically honest. He seemed in a haste to play down the West’s culpability for Africa’s travails, in the past as now. He acknowledged that the cavalier colonial map “made little sense” and “bred conflict,” and also that “the West has often approached Africa as a patron, rather than a partner.” Yet, instead of recognizing that those foreign interventions and meddlesomeness incubated much of Africa’s malaise, he sought to exonerate the West for “the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants.”

A more nuanced posture would admit that the West, in failing to follow through on its pledge to help Zimbabwe redress decades of racial inequity in land ownership, helped foster violence and precipitate an economic free-fall in that country. Besides, the West’s inordinate appetite for diamonds and gold has fueled many of the calamitous wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Congo in which children have become villains and victims.

Despite this historical short circuit, Obama’s message was on target. The European and North American media are often fixated on the image of Africa as a dysfunctional, misaligned location. In Ghana, Obama detected something different, “a face of Africa that is too often overlooked by a world that sees only tragedy or the need for charity.” He pointed to Ghanaians’ effort to “put democracy on a firmer footing”. He lauded them for nurturing “improved governance and an emerging civil society” that have, in turn, produced “impressive rates of [economic] growth.”

Obama could have been looking Nigerian leaders in the face when he uttered the “fundamental truth” that “development depends upon good governance.” He might as well be chiding the “stake holder thieftains” in Abuja who stake out their country’s resources when he described good governance as “the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long.” When he declared, “governments that respect the will of their own people are more prosperous, more stable and more successful than governments that do not,” he doubtless wanted Nigerians to take note.

Obama made a wise choice not to grace a disappointing Nigeria with his presence. But he also made sure that his message, taken from Accra, resonated with Nigerians. In condemning repression and the plague of man-made problems “that condemn…people to poverty”; in warning that “No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or police can be bought off by drug traffickers,” in portraying a state where “the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the port authority is corrupt,” Obama wanted his voice to resound in Nigeria.
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