Ota Benga Alliance For Peace, Healing and Dignity

Letter to the government of Brazil concerning the safe return of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, by Mr. Eusi Kwayana, a distinguished elder from Guyana, known by many throughout the Caribbean region. He was central in bringing together Afro and Indo people in Guyana's independence struggle.

20 May 2008

HIS EXCELLENCY MR. ANTONIO DE AGUIAR PATRIOTA,
Brazilian Ambassador to the United States
3006 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 90008

HER EXCELLENCY, MS. THERESA MARIA M. QUINTELLA,
Consul General of Brazil
8484 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

YOUR EXCELLENCY,  read more »

In this lucid and eloquent article, John Maxwell traces the connections between European genocide in the West Indies and the devastation produced in Africa by the slave trade with modern day poverty, oppression, and degradation in both places. It is a powerful condemnation of the hypocrisy of western trumpeting of human rights. Maxwell writes a column called "Common Sense" for the Jamaican Observer where this was originally published. Reposted from Haiti-Cuba-Venezuela>Analysis .

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Christmas in Jamaica is bad enough. One good thing about Christmas Day is that it means the end of weeks of aural assaults by mindless rhymesters perverting songs of worship to paeans of praise for hucksters of all kinds, from shopkeepers to banks, from auto-parts dealers to purveyors of cheap, non-returnable, eminently breakable, non-biodegradable trash tricked out in plastic, tinsel and lead paint to lure innocent children and entrap their parents.

And, as a bonus, there are the sound-system parties, which allow you to dance in your own home to music played two miles away.  read more »

Reposted from IOL January 28, 2008.

Wellington - A veteran New Zealand anti-apartheid campaigner has rejected a nomination for a prestigious South African award for foreigners, saying he is dismayed over conditions in the country, local media reported on Monday.

John Minto, nominated for a Companion Of OR Tambo Award by a South African government official, asked for the nomination to be withdrawn, the Christchurch Press newspaper said.  read more »

Dear John Minto--Thank you for your open letter regarding (and refusing) the nomination for the OR Tambo Award. Your voice against the continuing impoverishment and discrimination against those who suffered the most under apartheid is a salutary reminder that one should not rest till everyone does benefit from the promised transformation of South African society.--In solidarity, Jacques Depelchin

Reposted from Abahlali baseMjondolo January 28, 2008.

Tena koe Thabo Mbeki,

I understand a nomination has been put forward for me to receive a South African honour later this year, the Companions of O R Tambo Award, on behalf of HART and the anti-apartheid movement of New Zealand for our work campaigning to end apartheid in South Africa.  read more »

Originally posted in Radical Philosophy Issue 123, January/February 2004.

Two hundred years ago this month (January 2004), the French colony of Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola became the independent nation of Haiti. Few transformations in world history have been more momentous, few required more sacri?ce or promised more hope. And few have been more thoroughly forgotten by those who would have us believe that this history has since come to a desirable end with the eclipse of struggles for socialism, national liberation and meaningful independence in the developing world.  read more »

Thank you, Martin, for this analysis which helps to put things in perspective. Is this really happening in South Africa? How come this kind of thing does not make the front page in international news? It could be a scene from Kenya, it could be a scene from one of the favellas in Latin America, it could be a scene straight out of pre-1994 South Africa. One does not even hear the usual voice of Desmond Tutu (but then one understands he is mending another trench with his own fundamentalist christian hierarchs).  read more »