By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 01, 2012
For anyone black and slightly conscious, Emancipation Day should be as exciting as Independence Day. One only has to look at the spontaneous response of Africans on the first Emancipation Day to realize how united we were at the gloriously liberating moment. Listen to Governor George Hill as he reported to the Secretary of State on August 7, 1834:
Continue reading Raced Memories
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
February 28, 2012
For the past five hundred years, the world has been under the sway of what deceased Guyanese anthropologist Dr. Ivan Van Sertima once called the “five hundred year curtain”. This geo-political curtain goes under the rubric of the European system of governance — a paradigm whose spinal cord is Divide & Rule.
Continue reading European Divide and Rule: Afri-centric Analysis
By Glen Ford
December 02, 2011 – blackagendareport.com
“The United States and its allies, principally the French, are positioned to ‘take’ much of the continent with the collaboration of most of its governments.”
The United States and its allies are engaged in an Asian and African offensive, a multi-pronged assault thinly camouflaged as humanitarian intervention that, in some regions, looks like a blitzkrieg. This frenzied aggression, still in its first year, saw NATO transformed into an expeditionary force to crush the unoffending Gaddafi regime in Libya and is now poised to topple the secular order in Syria. Although drawing on longstanding schemes for overt and covert regime change in selected countries, and fully consistent with global capital’s historic imperative to bludgeon the planet into one malleable market subordinate to Washington, London and Paris, the current offensive had a particular genesis in time: the nightmare vision of an Arab awakening.
Continue reading Africa Lies Naked to Euro-American Military Offensive
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 22, 2011
For the past week I have been visiting Salvador, Bahia, Brazil as a guest of the FUNAG, an independent foundation of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry. I was invited to participate in AfroXX1, a celebration of the United Nations “Year of the People of African Descent”; my having written a chapter in African Heritage in the making of National Identity in Brazil and the Caribbean, a book that was commissioned for the event. My contribution is entitled: “African Heritage in the Making of the Trinidad and Tobago’s Identity.”
Continue reading Homecoming: Bahia 2011
By. Dr. Kwame Nantambu
November 14, 2011
Since 8 January 1455, when Pope Nicholas V authorized the Portuguese “to subject to servitude all infidel peoples”, no Pope of the Roman Catholic Church has apologized for the European enslavement of Afrikan people.
In April 2006, the Church of England voted “to apologize to the descendants of victims of the slave trade” and in March 2007, considered paying reparations.
Continue reading Apology for Slavery and Reparations
By Rubadiri Victor
November 03, 2011 – trinidadexpress.com
So many of us cannot deal with history. We are frightened to stare down the naked horror that went into the creation of this modern world. It is simple. 500 years ago Western military conquest began a process that decimated hundreds of millions of people and created unprecedented wealth for itself. This wealth was predicated on a global apartheid caste system of white over brown over black. This passed through periods of Native American and South Pacific genocide, African slavery and holocausts, and Asian occupation and indentureship. This caste apartheid was practised in legislature, education, religion, and in distribution of resources like housing and employment. The only reason it is not as brutal as before is because people fought to reform it.
Continue reading State of the African nation
By John Pilger
October 20, 2011 – johnpilger.com
On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only “engage” for “self-defence”, says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.
Continue reading The Son of Africa Claims a Continent’s Crown Jewels
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
October 09, 2011
Apology for Slavery
In April 2006, the Church of England voted “to apologize to the descendants of victims of the slave trade” and in March 2007, considered paying reparations.
Continue reading Question of Apology for Slavery and Reparations: Updated
THE EDITOR: Raymond Ramcharitar’s 21/9/11 piece on Africentrism [How to do the Afrocentric Hustle] was a shameless display of intellectual laziness and generalising with enough vitriol to hint at something I won’t even dignify here with a mention. Which is unfortunate because it took away from a message that contained some validity. There’re quite a few scholars, politicians, artistes and activists who exploit enslavement, colonialism and Euro-centred racism to excuse self-defeatist attitudes and who manipulate racial insecurities, narrow tribalism and ideas of entitlement to retard real self-development among Afro-Trinis.
Continue reading Reply to Raymond Ramcharitar’s Africentrism
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 16, 2011
August and anyone who is anyone has left Paris (and other Europeans cities) for the country for vacation. As one looks at the shuttered apartment windows, the empty streets (except for places such as Champs Elysees Avenue) and the barely-filed cafes that inundate the city and its sidewalks one realizes that everything will remain in abeyance until September when Parisians return to work and attend to their business again.
Continue reading Messengers of the Invisible