Samoa

Here's hoping that Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga recover quickly from the earthquake and tsunami that just hit them. Pictured above is Fale of Solosolo, Upolu, Samoa.

From the ghetto intellectual archives: "Its not healthcare reform, its insurance reform"

Ok, so his "O"ness has already sold out to the insurance fat cats and rumor has it that "public option" went the way of jheri curl but hope runs eternal.

"Its not healthcare reform, its insurance reform"

View more documents from Dan Roam.

[Photo: Source]

We are bringing Black back y'all!

Bob Law, Dr. Claud Anderson and Haki Madhubuti (in that order) presenting at the first meeting of the Back to Black Movement



You can read more about the Back to Black Movement @ the following websites: Assatashakur and Muslim Bushido

Minister Farrakhan addressing the murder of Derrion Albert and black-on-black violence

Minster Farrakhan speaks to grieving mothers in Compton, California



Compton Part 2



Minister Farrakhan addresses gangs in New Jersey

Violence in Chicago is no accident. Remember Fred Hampton?

On 4 December 1969, US government agents assassinated Black Panther Party member, Chairman Fred Hampton, while he was sleeping in his bed. Hampton's crime? Chairman Hampton was a master organizer. He unified the local gangs and the oppressed people of Chicago into what he called a multi-racial "Rainbow Coalition" (Jesse Jackson would later co-opt the term). 




Black-on-black violence in Chicago is no accident. THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT DOES NOT WANT AFRICAN AMERICANS ORGANIZED! THEY WILL KILL YOU IF NECESSARY. 


Hampton's pregnant wife was also shot. She survived. Their son, Fred Hampton Jr., is political activist in the Chicago area. Below are videos of Fred Hampton and Fred Hampton Jr. 

The assassination of Chairman Fred Hampton, a revolutionary black freedom fighter.



Fred Hampton Jr. of Prisons of Conscience Committee (POCC) breaking down political leardership, Black Consciousness in the entertainment industry, and more.

Derrion Albert remix: A prison industrial production

step 1. sensationalization of (fill in blank_____ crack, gangs, violence...) with some black co-signers (e.g.,Congressional Black Caucus);

step 2. black people = "savages";

step 3. continue cycle of gross underfunding of education sector, whilst investing billions in warmongering;

step 4. feign outrage and surprise when some of our children reproduce US belligerence;


step 5. reinvigorate war on black americans under the cloak of being "tough on crime";


step 6. pause, repeat.

"The violence in me, reflect the violence that surround me." Dead Prez Assassination

Uno Vintage Purple

Color/Purple metallic
Headset/Tange Ritzy Vintage NJS
BB/Shimano BB-7400
Seat tube/52.5cm c-t
Top tube/54.5cm c-c
Rear/110mm
Seatpost diameter/27.2
Standover height/78.5cm
Model Year/1986
Condition/This NJS Keirin track frame has some chipped paint spots with surface rust (especially around the seatstay) but it is otherwise in good used condition. Paint looks still great and no dents!
Price/590usd

Baramon Archive

***Exported*** -------> Hertfordshire


***Exported*** -------> Auckland


***Exported*** -------> Kumamoto

Black student lynched by...black students? (Via Tanu)

16 year old student pummeled to death by fellow school mates in Chicago.


Black people, is this what it has come to? God help us...

The video shows dozens of people punching, kicking and swinging planks in a melee in a lot next to the community center and the adjacent street. At one point, four or five males -- including one wielding a 2x4 -- can be seen beating and stomping another person, believed to be Albert, who had fallen to the ground.

As the attackers flee, the person with the camera and several others approached Albert and carried him into a nearby building.

"Derrion, get up!" a female voice pleads.

Officials and witnesses say the melee was a culmination of a simmering rivalry between two groups of Fenger students, one that lived near the school and the other from the Altgeld Gardens housing development. Neighbors said the feud has been building since August, spilling across Roseland streets and, some say, into Fenger.

Albert's family was squeamish about watching the video and not all of them were able to watch it in its entirety. But they said they don't have a problem with the public watching the graphic video as long as it helps identify who beat Derrion to death.

"It hurt to watch," said LaTonia Williams, the teen's aunt. "It's one thing to hear about it and come up with your own theory of what happened. To see it is another thing. It gave us a real clear picture of what happened. That video was crucial." [Source]

Warning: this video is graphic


Predictably, the knee-jerk response to this incident will be a month or two of increased police presence, perhaps a few meetings for people to air their frustrations, from there forgetfulness until the next tragedy. We are not really very interested in getting to the source of black on black violence. Namely, centuries of brutal oppression under racism/white supremacy and the resultant internalized violence that has plagued some segments of the black community. 


A New York Times article, written in 2007, points out that the most abominable acts of white-on-black violence (e.g. burning victims alive and the mutilation of victims before throngs of white onlookers) have ended, but the long term effects are ongoing: 

although the most heinous forms of lynching were halted long ago, many perceive its legacy today in the presumption of black criminality, the disproportionate incarceration of blacks in our nation's prisons and on death row, and police brutality and racial profiling, as well as parents' anxiety about their children's encounters with white authorities.

I would add that the twin pathologies of internalized racism and white indifference are equal, if not more crucial, consequences that have been insufficiently addressed at the national and local level. (the "heinous" forms of violence are now exported to foreign nations or hidden behind prison walls.). Until we take collective responsibility and the legacy of white brutality seriously, the cycle of senseless killings will continue unabated, rising and falling to its own internal rhythm. 







Nadasia Thomas (cousin)

















Rhea Albert (sister); Anjanette Albert (mother, background)

Anjanette Albert (mother)

Follow-up: This article explains how privatization of some Chicago schools has contributed to the instability of the learning environment.

Baby the Human

My mother is my best customer. Recently she made another request for a baby of the human kind, as a gift for a pregnant friend. It was a bit different than sewing animals, but I like the result. Like the others he or she also looks slightly akward, but that was the point after all.

I also learned new things about Etsy and its Alchemy function. Did a couple of things wrong, like letting the order expire, screwing up the description and almost nothing went right with the pictures. But we learn from all of our mistakes, and luckily my mom is my most understanding customer. I hope she likes the baby.

Dr. J. H. Kwabena Nketia, Ghanaian ethnomusicologist

Brother Pierce Freelon interviews a living legend, Ghanaian ethnomusicologist Dr. Kwabena Nketia. "Dr. Nketia is a world-renown ethnomusicologist and composer. The author of over 200 publications, he is currently an emeritus professor at UCLA, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Ghana." [Source: Blackademics]

Peter Tosh-Lesson in my Life Original Version (repost@ Asiedu)

Peter Tosh's non-commercial version of Lesson in my life: sort of a self-portrait in song whilst offering a few life lessons. Jah!! Rastafari!!

LESSON IN MY LIFE

Peter Tosh




I've learned a lesson in my life
a lesson in my life


always be careful of mankind
be careful of mankind


they make promises today
but tomorrow change their mind
they make promises today
but tomorrow change their mind


I'm an upfill man and I love upfill people
I'm a progressive man and I love progressive people
I'm a truthful man and I love truthful people
I'm an honest man and I love honest people


I've learned a lesson in my life
a lesson in my life


always be careful of your friends
be careful of your friends


money can make friendship end
make friendship end


for a single pound
they will carry you down

I'm an upfill man and I love upfill people
I'm a progressive man and I love progressive people
I'm a truthful man and I love truthful people
I'm a determined man and I love determined people


I've learned a lesson in my life
a lesson in my life


you just can't please everybody
so you got to please yourself


you just can't please everybody
so you got to please yourself


you just can't please everybody
so you better please yourself


I'm an upfill man and I love upfill people
I'm a progressive man and I love progressive people
I'm a conscious man and I love conscious people
I'm an honest man and I love honest people
I'm a determined man and I love determined people
I'm a genuine man and I love genuine people
I'm a three eyed man and I love three eyed people
I'm an upfill man and I love upfill people
I'm a progressive man and I love progressive people


I've learned a lesson in my life
some lesson in my life

Not teaching English!

So this week I taught those sewing classes I was talking about! I had been so excited about them! It took me about 40 minutes each to create the two-sided fish, the ghost and the popsicle with a face, but most of the students took about two hours! Still they had a lot of fun and they were really proud of their little creatures! In total 15 students spread over 4 classes made 8 fishies, 5 popsicles and 2 ghosts:

Whatever the students are sewing in the next sewing class will have to be a lot simpler if we want to finish within one lesson. But that’s ok, I’m just so happy that the manager was already talking about a next time, because this was really fun!

Christiane Amanpour interviews President Robert Mugabe (24 September 2009) on land reform (Thanks to Nkrumah for this)

President Mugabe has gotten many things wrong and he has been in power too long. But he is 100% correct on the land issue. The white Zimbabwean farmers were invaders, as were the settler-Zionists in Is -it-real (Israel) or African Americans in Liberia or the descendants of the white colonists in the Americas. (South Africa has a similar problem. A tiny minority of white elites controlling vast tracks of fertile land. No complaints from the west.) The journalist, Christiane Amanpour, an intelligent person, comes off as ignorant and biased. She wants to get back to the good ole days of white supremacy, and she pretends as if she has never heard of the Lancaster House Agreement that the Brits subsequently reneged on. Its pretty obvious that she is really only interested in the white farmers. And why is it that western journalists never got uptight about Prime Minister Ian Smith? Smith should have been brought up on war crimes, but he lived and died peacefully in Zimb after losing power. The very fact that he was not brought to book suggests that the "international community" (read: white governments) were uninterested in equity and justice and, perhaps more importantly, the  Zimb freedom fighters, even in victory, negotiated from a position of weakness.

As one writer noted after the interview, Amanpour squandered a great opportunity:

Amanpour failed to rise above the familiar frames of the western media’s analysis of Zimbabwe -- dictatorship, hunger, land, Roy Bennett and white farmers. These are part of the issues, but more of symptoms of a deeper problem which we hoped CNN would probe. We expected Amanpour to bring these issues to the interview but in a way that makes it impossible for Mugabe to waive them away so simply. We expected more facts, events and names. And they are many that Mugabe cannot run away from. [Source: newzimbabwe.com]

I skimmed it quickly, but this summary looks to be pretty good. It gives you some of the political context of Mugabe's so-called "land grab."

Census worker lynched in Kentucky

On 12 September 2009, 51 year old Bill Sparkman, a white census worker in Kentucky, was found dead, tied to tree, with a noose around his neck and the words "fed" scrawled across his chest. The area where he was found is allegedly "anti-government" and hostile to outsiders:

Appalachia — particularly eastern Kentucky — has long had an image of being wary of and sometimes hostile toward strangers. Incidents such as the September 1967 shooting of Canadian filmmaker Hugh O'Connor — who was gunned down by an enraged landowner while making a documentary on poverty in nearby Letcher County — have done nothing to dispel such notions. O'Connor was killed as President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty highlighted the region's destitution. Many locals, such as confessed shooter Hobart Ison, had long since grown tired of outsiders exploiting the region's natural resources. [Source:AP]

Historically African Americans linked "anti-government" with anti-black racism and lynch mobs. Although the formal definition of a lynching is a murder carried out by a mob, we typically associate lynchings with murder by hanging. For several hundred years, indeed for most of America's existence, lynch mobs and hangings went hand in hand--extrajudicial mob "justice" was routinely carried out on black or other non-white victims. Yet, Mr. Sparkman's tragic death is a gruesome reminder that white racial terror sometimes victimized white Americans too. 

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga dissed (Thanks JP for sending this!) by the hypocrite Barack Obama. What would Minister Farrakhan say?

Many of y'all have already heard about complaints that Obama's first official visit to "black Africa"  should have made to the land of his father, Kenya, rather than Ghana. According to the Kenyan newspaper, the Daily Nation, the Obama administration has now established a pattern of snubbing Kenyan officials because of "corruption." Most recently the White House "disinvited" Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga from a luncheon.

New York-based Kenyan ambassador to the UN Zachary Muburi-Muita told the Nation on Saturday night that the State Department contacted him on Friday to “disinvite” Mr Odinga from the September 22 luncheon with President Obama in New York for African leaders. The ambassador last Monday confirmed to the Nation that he had received an invitation letter for the PM to attend the luncheon. A dispatch to the Foreign Affairs ministry from Kenya’s Ambassador to Washington, Mr Peter Ogego, seen by the Nation confirmed the cancellation.

And if there was any doubt on the matter, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, put the matter plainly.

“We are looking to have a dialogue with responsible leaders about the future of Africa’s economic and social development,” Susan Rice said on Monday in announcing the luncheon.

Apparently, Kenya is now a charter member of an honor role of sorts: The US list of super "corrupt" (Obama endorses the racist view that Africa has a monopoly on corruption) African nations. 

Kenya has been left out of the list of 40-plus countries invited to the luncheon, and will be among nations the US is snubbing because of disputes over their governance or an antagonistic relationship with Washington. They include Eritrea, Guinea, Madagascar, Niger, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

[Source: Daily Nation via JP]


When will African leaders stop accepting this nonsensical, hypocritical, browbeating from western nations?  Any single American president has been one hundred times more corrupt than any African leader. Do you doubt it? Well, what then shall we call the 90,000 + civilians that have perished in Iraq because Americans need oil? Minister Farrakhan puts this deadly hypocrisy in perspective during an interview by Mike Wallace. 



Any questions?

Sewing at home, at Starbucks and at school

These days I’m slowly updating my blog, but mostly I’m sewing, everywhere. Currently, I’m sewing cats and dogs for my Etsy shop and I’m almost ready to put most of them some on sale. But I just wanted share some (low quality taken with my iPhone) pictures of what has been keeping me busy and happy!

I’ve also been very busy preparing for a couple of sewing classes I’ll be teaching next week. Next week is Silver Week, so we’ll have a four-day-weekend (yay!) and just a three-day-workweek. Regular classes have all been cancelled for that short week and replaced with numerous special lessons. Don’t worry I won’t get bored, I’ll still be busy teaching several different kinds of special lessons, of which the most exciting are the sewing classes! A couple of weeks ago a I sewed a few examples:

Since then students have been able to choose their favorite stuffed creature and their favorite color combinations and sign up for my classes. The fish is the most popular by far, and the least popular is the ghost, which happens to be my own favorite.

So far this week at school, I’ve been busy cutting felt and organizing embroidery floss and buttons so that next week the students can get right to the sewing, because one class only lasts about 50 minutes. I have to remember to take my digital camera with me, because my iPhone just doesn’t take very high quality pictures.

Kiyo Dark Purple Sparkle

Color/Dark Purple with rainbow sparkle
Headset/Hatta Swan Super Deluxe
BB/Hatta R9400
Seat tube/54.5cm c-t
Top tube/55.5cm c-c
Rear/120mm
Seatpost diameter/27.2
Standover height/80cm
Model Year/2006
Condition/This NJS Keirin track frame has a few chipped paint spots but is otherwise in great condition overall.
Price/1080usd

Minicards

Almost two weeks ago, I ordered some minicards from Moo.com, and they arrived this morning!

They look absolutely stunning and they are super sturdy. They will serve as super colorful business cards for my Etsy shop. I’m going to punch little bear-shaped holes in the cards and hang them around the necks of my creatures with a piece of ribbon.

Bella the Cat

I made my first request item: a black cat. She was requested by my sweet mother but it was a request item nonetheless. It’s a present for a leaving coworker and I wanted to name an give her a personality, but because it was my first time using Alchemy on Etsy (the request custom item service) I somehow missed the chance to add it to the cat.

Well her name is Bella the Cat and she loves Spain and sangria. I’m going to make some more cats soon and add them to the shop and they’ll have names and personalities. I’m sure Bella will pop up too!

Felt skulls for Halloween

Halloween is on it’s way so I made some colorful felt skulls for my etsy shop.

I know Halloween things are supposed to be scary, but I prefer life a little less frightening so I tried to make them cute rather than creepy.

the eleventh monkey

I’ve been really slow at updating my blog lately, and it’s not because I’m lazy but because I’ve been making this:

After our visit to an artsy neighborhood in Seoul I got inspired and started making my own little stuffed creatures, for fun but also to sell online. My first stuffed animal was a giraffe. I made it as a going away present for one of my old coworkers, and after that I’ve been unstoppable.

I have dozens of designs in my sketchbook, but it seems I don’t have enough time to turn all my ideas into actual felt creatures, but I’m certainly trying. And I’m going to put them all in my new Etsy shop.