As predicated, the National/International Reparations Summit
convened April 9th – 11th in New York by the Institute of the Black
World 21st Century was truly historic, a potential game-changer that
will fuel the global Reparations Movement for years to come. All across
the Pan African world, heads of government, activists and scholars are
stridently and effectively demanding repair of African people for the
damages inflicted during the holocaust of enslavement, the
trans-Atlantic slave trade and for enslavement during the colonial era.
As a veteran proponent of reparations, I have never witnessed such
energy, enthusiasm, optimism and momentum as was evident at the
Reparations Summit.
I strongly urge you to take time to review the Final Communique, videos
and photos in the multi-media package incorporated into this message [link below]. It’s the next best thing to being an eyewitness to history!
As
stated in previous appeals, IBW urgently needs your financial support
to expand the Reparations Movement in the U.S. in the months and years
ahead. To reiterate, this is not an Initiative for which we had a
budget, nor is it an Initiative that mainstream foundations and
corporations are going to fund. The expenses for the Summit were just under $40,000 and through various fundraising appeals and contributions for individuals and organizations, we raised $34,000, leaving a deficit of $6,000.
In the spirit of Marcus Garvey, I am asking you to make a sacrificial,
tax-deductible contribution/donation to erase the deficit and contribute
toward the $150,000 needed to finance the follow-up to
the Reparations Summit through the work of the National African American
Reparations Commission over the next 12-18 months. We really NEED your
support. If you have donated before, consider donating again and
signing-up to make a monthly contribution. Thanks for considering this
appeal. God and the Ancestors will surely bless you!
For the love of African people!
Dr. Ron Daniels, President
Institute of the Black World 21st Century
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Dr. Halifu Osumare, second from left at the Laney College Black Arts Movement 50th Anniversary celebration, Feb. 7, 2015. On her left, Elaine Brown, former chair of the Black Panther Party; to her right: Judy Juanita, BAM/BPP member, editor of the BPP newspaper, Portia Anderson, author, Kujichagulia, Author, Aries Jordan, author, BAM baby 2.0. Standing, Marvin X, BAM co-founder and producer.
Dear Friend, Colleague, Family,
I
have upgraded my official website and thought I'd share my new look
with you! It still has some of the old features, like my publications
and an updated bio, but it has a new BLOG, in which you might want to
participate. You know I have always been interested in the African
disapora, and Gene and I recently took a couple of trips to some
interesting places: BRAZIL AND NEW ORLEANS!
NEW WEBSITE BLOG
Check
out my entries about presenting in the August 2014 8th Annual Black Brazilian Researchers Conference, and our always-exciting trip to
Salvador Bahia in Northeast Brazil. Gene and I also went in April 2015
to New Orleans where I presented my same research paper at the Annual
Popular Culture Association Conference. While there, we had a great
ancestral time at Congo Square in Louis Armstrong Park. New Orleans is a
true testament to African American culture. It's easy to put in your
comments on the Blog, and I would love to hear from you.
NEW BOOK IN PROGRESS
After
my two books on global hip-hop, I am now turning to my own career in DANCE! I am writing a memoir that will chronicle my dance career in
Oakland-SF Bay Area, New York, Boston, Copenhagen and Stockholm, Ghana,
East St. Louis with Katherine Dunham, Hawaii, and so many other places
over 47 years. If you know me, you know I have been there and have done
it. I'm hoping it will be in print in 2016. I will post some blog
entries about the process soon. So check it out, and follow along my
life's journey, as I collect a life that I am still living.
Halifu
Osumare, Ph.D. Scholar/Artist Professor Halifu Osumare is currently
Professor of African American and African Studies (AAS) at University of
California, Davi...
Aries Jordan and Prosperity, Academy of da Corner students, both have their own books of poetry; they perform with Marvin X and do their original works.
Berkeley High B-Tech Students at the home of Marvin X, checking out his archives that were acquired by the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Marvin X on Writing
Perhaps,
one day I can present testimonies in the first person, especially since
I am pushing the suffering oppressed to write their narratives of How I Survived, the essential theme in North American African literature, beginning
with the so called Slave Narratives. We say Narratives of North
American Africans caught in the American Slave System of pseudo democracy and unfair free trade capitalism based on wage slavery and exploitation of the national resources of underdeveloped nations in Africa, Middle East, Asia and Indigenous America, i.e., USA, Latin America and the Caribbean (American Slave System is Ed Howard term).
All those who come to me claiming they have a book in their heads, I
tell them to write one page a day. They say, how can I do this? I say
turn off the cell phone, get the lover off your shoulder, put them out the
room for an hour or two; do not show them what you are writing, then write,
write, write. Got blockage? Get some Henny, weed or Blizo! No writer's
block up in here ! If you are serious about writing a book, don't call me until you have done one page per day, then call me. I don't have time for bullshit. I'm writing my own books, thank you very much! --Marvin X
The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience Tour 2015
I am so thankful to have Sun Ra as my mentor and comrade in the Black Arts Movement. What a wonderful teacher!
May 21
University of Chicago Sun Ra Conference
Screening: Film Space in the Place
May 22
Presentations, Symposium, Concert
Marivn X speaks on Sun Ra and Black Resistance at University of Chicago.
Marvin X performs with Sun Ra musicians Marshall Allen and Danny Thompson, also, David Boykin and invited Chicago musicians.
May 23
African Liberation Day Chicago. Marvin X and David Boykin will perform together.
June 5-7, 2015
The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience at Sacramento Black Book Fair,
June 5,6,7, 2015
Sacramento Black Book Fair
Marvin X will perform with his Academy of da Corner students, Aries Jordan and Prosperity, both have their own books as students of Marvin X. Student Aries Jordan coined the term "Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience!" Aries and her sister Prosperity have endured Marvin X's well-known Ordeal by Fire! But when the dross is removed, only gold remains!
Juneteenth San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Fresno
Marvin X will autograph books and/or speak. Look for his booth.
Scott
McIntosh details the Sun's seasonal weather patterns and demonstrates
how understanding the formation, interaction and instability of the
Sun's activity bands will considerably improve forecast capability in
space weather and solar activity over a range of timescales.
Magnetic variability over the last three decades.
According to Scott McIntosh's recent article published in "Nature Communications," and in the "Daily Camera Boulder News,"
solar magnetism displays a host of variational timescales of which the
enigmatic 11-year sunspot cycle is most prominent. This research
demonstrates that Earth isn't the only planet that has a kind-of
seasonal variability in its weather patterns. Bands of strong magnetic
fields in the Sun's northern and southern hemispheres appear to drive
variations in the Sun's solar cycle. Dr. McIntosh explains, "A good
analogy for this phenomena is the Gulf Stream, these (magnetic fields)
are like big, magnetized Gulf Streams that attract or repel one
another." He believes that a more holistic approach to space weather can
be gained by changing the focus from a singular sunspot cycle to the
individual magnetic bands that comprise the cycle.
Daily Camera Boulder News: New study from Boulder's NCAR details Sun's seasonal weather patterns
Nature Communications Article: The solar magnetic activity band interaction and instabilities that shape quasi-periodic variability
What Is Solar Activity?
The Sun is always active. It has weather. It has storms. And its storms can affect Earth's weather.
Sunspots are magnetic storms on the surface of the Sun.
Solar flares are intense blooms of radiation that
come from the release of the magnetic energy associated with sunspots.
The NOAA ranks solar flares using five categories from weakest to
stongest: A, B, C, M, and X. Each category is 10 times stronger than the
one before it. Within each category, a flare is ranked from 1 to 9,
according to strength, although X-class flares can go higher than 9.
According to NASA, the most powerful solar flare recorded was an X28 (in
2003).
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are bursts of solar
material (clouds of plasma and magnetic fields) that shoot off the sun's
surface. Other solar events include solar wind streams that come from the coronal holes on the Sun and solar energetic particles that are primarily released by CMEs.
Solar Flare. Credit: jpl.nasa.gov
What is a Solar Cycle?
The number of sunspots increase and decrease over time in a regular,
approximately 11-year cycle, called the solar or sunspot cycle. The
exact length of the cycle can vary. More sunspots mean increased solar
activity—flares and CMEs. The highest number of sun spots in any given
cycle is designated "solar maximum," while the lowest number is
designated "solar minimum." Eleven years in the life of the Sun, spanning most of solar cycle
23, as it progressed from solar minimum (upper left) to maximum
conditions and back to minimum (upper right) again, seen as a collage of
ten full-disk images of the lower corona. Credit: NASA
How Does Solar Activity Affect Weather and Earth?
Solar activity affects the Earth in many ways, some which we are still coming to understand.
Damage to 21st-century satellites and other high-tech systems in space can be caused by an active Sun which generates geomagnetic storms.
Even in inactive solar cycles, the Sun emits large solar flares—which
could cause billions of dollars in damage to the world's high-tech
infrastructure—from GPS navigation to power grids to air travel to
financial services.
Radiation hazards for astronauts and satellites can be caused by a quiet Sun. Weak solar winds allow more galactic cosmic rays into the inner solar system.
Weather on Earth can also be affected. According to Bob Berman, astronomer for The Old Farmer's Almanac:
Recently, NOAA scientists concluded that four factors determined global
temperatures: carbon dioxide levels, volcanic eruptions, Pacific El
Niño pattern, and the Sun's activity.
Global climate change including long-term periods of
global cold, rainfall, drought, and other weather shifts may also be
influenced by solar cycle activity, based on historical evidence:
Times of depressed solar activity seem to
correspond with times of global cold. For example, during the 70-year
period from 1645 to 1715, few, if any, sunspots were seen, even during
expected sunspot maximums. Western Europe entered a climate period known
as the "Maunder Minimum" or "Little Ice Age." Temperatures dropped by
1.8 to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
Conversely, times of increased solar activity have
corresponded with global warning. During the 12th and 13th centuries,
the Sun was active, and the European climate was quite mild.
Yearly-averaged sunspot numbers from 1610 to 2008. Researchers
believe upcoming Solar Cycle 24 will be similar to the cycle that peaked
in 1928, marked by a red arrow. Credit: NASA/MSFC
Solar Cycle 24
As of January 15, 2015, we are over six years into Cycle 24.
The solar minimum occured in 2008 and 2009; during
those two years, there were almost NO sunspots, a very unusual
situation that had not happened for almost a century. Due to the weak
solar activity, galactic cosmic rays were at record levels.
Solar Maximum: The Sun's record-breaking sleep
ended in 2010. In 2011, sunspot counts jumped up. In February of 2012,
the sunpot numbers reached a peak of 66.9.
In late 2013, NASA reported, "The sun's global magnetic field is about to reverse polarity." The sunspot number climbed into the 70s. This is still very low. By February of 2014, sunspots averaged 102.8 spots a day, which is the first time the cycle broke 100.
In April, 2014, the sunspot number peaked a second time, reaching
81.9. This is likely the solar maximum. Many cycles are double peaked,
however, this is the first time the second peak was larger than the
first peak (in February, 2012).
Cycle 24 has been a weak solar cycle—the smallest since Cycle 14 (which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906). What will happen next? Stay tuned!
What does all this mean?
Quiet-to-average cycles mean a cooling pattern over the next few decades. Temperatures
have been colder than it would have been otherwise. Sunspots are
similar to a bathtub of lukewarm water; if you trickle in cold or hot
water, it may take a while to notice the difference. If this cooling
phase on Earth, however, is offset by any warming caused by increasing
greenhouse gases, they also raise the question of whether an eventual
warming cycle could lead to more rapid warming on Earth than expected.
The
ghost towns of China, Ireland and Spain - full of large empty house
estates - may be a phenomenon that is on its way to Africa.
Built for people who never move in, they leave those who did with a worthless property they cannot sell.
Perched
in an isolated spot some 30km (18 miles) outside Angola's capital,
Luanda, Nova Cidade de Kilamba is a brand-new mixed residential
development of 750 eight-storey apartment buildings, a dozen schools and
more than 100 retail units.
Designed to house up to half a
million people when complete, Kilamba has been built by the state-owned
China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) in under
three years at a reported cost of $3.5bn (£2.2bn).
Spanning 5,000
hectares (12,355 acres), the development is the largest of several new
"satellite cities" being constructed by Chinese firms around Angola, and
it is believed to be one of the largest new-build projects on the
continent.
The jewel in Angola's post-war reconstruction crown,
Kilamba is the star of glossy government promotional videos which show
smiling families enjoying a new style of living away from the dust and
confusion of central Luanda where millions live in sprawling slums.
But
the people in these films are only actors, and despite all the hype,
nearly a year since the first batch of 2,800 apartments went on sale,
only 220 have been sold.
Eerily quiet
When you visit Kilamba, you cannot help but wonder if even a third of those buyers have moved in yet.
The place is eerily quiet, voices bouncing off all the fresh concrete and wide-open tarred roads.
There
are hardly any cars and even fewer people, just dozens of repetitive
rows of multi-coloured apartment buildings, their shutters sealed and
their balconies empty.
Only a handful of the commercial units are
occupied, mostly by utility companies, but there are no actual shops on
site, and so - with the exception of a new hypermarket located at one
entrance - there is nowhere to buy food.
After driving around for
nearly 15 minutes and seeing no-one apart from Chinese labourers, many
of whom appear to live in containers next to the site, I came across a
tiny pocket of life at a school.
The people looking after the lawns cannot afford to stay here
It opened six months ago, bussing in its pupils in from outlying areas because there are no children living on site to attend.
One
student, a 17-year-old called Sebastiao Antonio - who spends nearly
three hours a day in traffic getting to and from classes from his home
15km away - told me how much he liked the city.
"I really like this place - it's got car parking, places for us to have games like football, basketball and handball," he said.
"It's very quiet, much calmer than the other city, there's no criminality."
But when I asked if he and his family would move there, he just laughed.
"No way, we can't afford this. It's impossible. And there is no work for my parents here," he said.
His sentiments were echoed by Jack Franciso, 32, who started work at Kilamba as a street sweeper four months ago.
"Yes, it's a nice place for sure," he said.
But then he sighed: "To live here, you need a lot of money. People like us don't have money like that to be able to live here."
No mortgages
And therein lies the problem.
Apartments
at Kilamba are being advertised online costing between $120,000 and
$200,000 - well out of reach of the estimated two-thirds of Angolans who
live on less than $2 a day.
However, Paulo Cascao, general
Manager at Delta Imobiliaria, the real estate agency handling the sales,
told the BBC that the problem was not the price, but difficulty in
accessing bank credit.
"The prices are correct for the quality of the apartments and for all the conditions that the city can offer," he said.
"The sales are going slowly due to the difficulty in obtaining mortgages."
A
new legal frame work has recently been introduced to allow local banks
to give mortgages, but for the majority of Angolans, even the few with
well-paid office jobs, just finding enough cash for a deposit would be a
struggle.
"The government needs to start giving priority to
building low-cost housing because great majority of the population live
in shacks with no water, electricity or sanitation," Elias Isaac,
country director at the Angolan Office of the Open Society Initiative of
Southern Africa (OSISA), told the BBC.
"There is no middle class in Angola, just the very poor and the very rich, and so there is no-one to buy these sorts of houses."
According
to Mr Cascao, the government has recently announced a portion of the
apartments at Kilamba will be designated social housing, which people on
low incomes can rent long-term at low prices.
No-one is quite
sure how that scheme will work or who will be eligible, and cynics have
dismissed it as a vote-winning stunt ahead of parliamentary elections
scheduled to take place on 31 August.
There is also the issue of what will happen to all the full-cost apartments if they do not sell.
Kilamba was financed by a Chinese credit line - which Angola is repaying with oil - so it has technically been paid for.
But
if the houses go unsold, then the Angolan government will be left with
stock on their hands and a potentially wasted investment.
Election pledge
Manuel
Clemente Junior, Angola's deputy construction minister, staunchly
defended the scheme and said it would definitely be a success - although
he seemed convinced it was possible to purchase a flat for $80,000,
much cheaper than is advertised.
"It is with absolute certainty, an excellent project," he told the BBC.
Responding
to the complaints about Kilamba's isolated location, he said: "There
are always people who criticise but thanks to the new highways which are
being built, as a location it is only going to be about 15 to 20
minutes from the city centre."
The city of Kilamba is a government
flagship project that goes some way to helping President Jose Eduardo
dos Santos fulfil his famous 2008 election pledge to build one million
homes in four years.
Allan Cain, head of Angolan non-government
organisation Development Workshop that specialises in urban poverty
alleviation, has welcomed the investment, but has some reservations.
"What
we have been advocating for is a programme of upgrading in situ where
people are living now, something which is considered to be international
best practice," he said.
"I don't think many places in the world can afford actually to displace and re-house whole populations of cities."
Study accuses psychologists group of complicity in CIA torture program
April 30, 2015
The American Psychologists Association, the largest
professional scientific organization of its kind, was secretly complicit
in the adoption of torturous interrogation tactics used by the United
States against detainees, a new report suggests.
A study released this week by noteable
anti-torture critics reveals that an analysis of emails from the
inbox of a deceased US government contractor demonstrates
compliance on behalf of the APA with regards to the drafting of
so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, or EITs, developed
under President George W. Bush.
APA officials was in cahoots with members of the Bush
administration, including Central Intelligence Agency employees
and contractors, when the government struggled to codify policies
for its torture program following the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 200, according to the report – an effort led by
psychoanalyst and anti-war activist Stephen Soldz as well as
Nathaniel Raymond and Steven Reisner – two members of the group
Physicians for Human Rights.
“The APA secretly coordinated with officials from the CIA,
White House and the Department of Defense to create an APA ethics
policy on national security interrogations which comported with
then-classified legal guidance authorizing the CIA torture
program,” the authors say.
Dear Friend in the Struggle:
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